The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Election 2019: Lest President Buhari’s position on restructuring hurts him in the Southwest

    What we have currently is simply too chaotic to be productive. 

    I was in perfect agreement with President Mohammadu Buhari when, on his first anniversary, he declared as follows in reference to the 2014 National Conference: “I advised against the issue of National Conference. You would recall that ASUU was on strike then for almost nine months. The teachers in the tertiary institutions were on strike for more than a year, yet that government had about N9billion to organise that conference. I never liked the priority it attached to that particular issue because it meant that what the National Assembly could have handled was being handed over to the Conference, while the more important job of keeping our children in school was abandoned. That is why I haven’t bothered to read it or ask for a briefing on it. I want it to go into archives.”

    Any regular reader of this column would remember that I regard the conference as not only an exercise in crass political opportunism, but the means by which our respected Afenifere elders wanted to find a way back into political reckoning in Yoruba land where we used to swear by their names. So totally did Afenifere own that conference, even more than President Jonathan who, until then, was an arch enemy of a national conference, by whatever name called, that they not only pre-arranged the membership recruitment process, they changed, and replaced members at their whim and caprice, nominees of even state governors as they did to Governor Kayode Fayemi whose head of delegation, Chief Deji Fasuan, was summarily removed, installing my friend, Dr Kunle Olajide, in his place. A visit to the president by the duo of Governors Fayemi and Aregbesola to change this, changed nothing. They proceeded from there to donate their man, Senator Femi Okunrounmu, as the man to kick start the conference, while they also jostled, but futilely, for the chairmanship. Of course there is a litany of other minuses for the conference especially its opaque funding and the hidden intent to use it to gift the incumbent president two more years in office. It was nothing more than a special purpose vehicle to muddle our politics ahead of the 2015 Presidential election. Aside these negativities, APC had disavowed of it from scratch. To therefore now be calling on Buhari to implement its decisions, many of them as asinine as recommending creation of additional 18 states can only be a joke.

    But that was a clear four years ago. The president ought, by now, to have been properly advised on the essence, and the inevitability, of restructuring, given our current totally unworkable polity. What we have currently is simply too chaotic to be productive. That Nigeria is in a state of anomie is too self evident it no longer requires any persuasion with its multiplicity of flash points all over the country, with blood literally flowing on Nigerian streets and farmlands. Nowhere in Nigeria today is so safe the citizen can sleep with both eyes closed. The odds are that if you didn’t get kidnapped in your sleep or during those hazardous journeys on horrible roads, North, East, West and everywhere, Badoo murderers could very well  be at the ready to crack your brains out with a stone. No, there is no denying the fact that our number one security challenge, Boko Haram, which in Jonathan’s days occupied three quarters of Borno State, has been significantly degraded  there is still more than enough threat to make one totally uncomfortable, security wise. The president must appreciate that we cannot be doing things the same old way and expect to have different results.

    With his present stand on restructuring, the Yoruba vote, which made all the difference between his many attempts at the presidency, could very well be in jeopardy, in the process of being considerably endangered. To say no to restructuring, and do nothing about a serious attempt at devolving powers from the federal to the constituent parts, could bring very unpleasant consequences. To so benignly treat the Yoruba, who have been the chief protagonists of restructuring, unlike others who came on board only when they saw it as an instrument of  political opposition – those I call ‘fly by night restructurists, will not only be unfair, it will be un -politic.

    Yorubas, in case President Buhari doesn’t know, do not vote on basis of sentiment. Otherwise, the palaces and the Afenifere elders who we treat reverentially in these parts, would have tilted Yoruba votes to President Jonathan at the 2015 election, given the amount of money he burnt in Yoruba land. We vote based on ONE principle only, and it dates back to the days of immortal Awo which was the reason we never mind being in opposition. That one principle is called AFENIFERE, not to be confused with the group that goes by that name, but the philosophy that sees the very essence of government, its RAISON D’ETRE, as the happiness and well being of the greater majority of the citizenry. This is what Awo stood for and taught us, and since it accords with Yoruba’s pristine culture of ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, it has remained immutable in our political behaviour. The minority Yoruba you find outside our mainstream political perspective are those who are driven by self interest. And that is why they will, forever, remain losers in Yoruba land. Even when Obasanjo successfully rigged us out, we bounced back at the very next opportunity, disbanding his horde of self seekers to political Siberia.

    Restructuring is for progress. With restructuring, each state will better be able to cater for its development; it will ensure, as Awo did, almost full employment, security will be much better tackled, and enhanced. Above all, the era of state governments carrying begging bowls to Abuja, every end of month, would become history. It is neither separation nor destruction of Nigeria. On the contrary, it will ensure each state developing at its own pace, and responsibly playing its part in maintaining a much reduced centre.

    There are other reasons President Buhari must nurture his alliance with the Southwest, and here, I wish to borrow from the seminal ideas of Louis Odion, in a recent article. PDP is looking at the possibility of fielding a much younger person than Buhari and according to Louis: “to this school of thought, fielding a much younger Turk in whose presence the conservative North will feel more at ease and, more crucially, be spared the sneaky fear of the suspect health of a Buhari with all its ominous implications, might just be the perfect recipe needed to finally break the general’s fabled captive crowd in Arewa land, particularly in the North-West. He wrote further: “to further rally the North, part of what PDP strategists might also sell is assurance of an extra term bonus. In a recent interview, the immediate past chair, Ahmed Markafi, hinted that the North is entitled to two terms under PDP; suggesting that the North under PDP will relinquish power in 2027 whereas APC is 2023.”

    Ordinarily, there should be a catch in that as Igbos of the Southeast ought really to have raised eye brows about another Northerner starting afresh and having the constitutional right to two terms. Were they Yoruba, they would not believe any pious claims of one term only, a Mandela option, especially, for a president, if PDP wins, that will only be slightly over 50 or below.

    But with all due respect, it is Igbos we are talking about here and it will be a great surprise if a politician of Igbo extraction would not be the Director-General of that campaign since they are more attuned to personal gratification than to the common good. Igbo contestants for the DG position will vociferously make the point that the PDP already literally has the region under lockdown you would think that state of affairs is immutable.

    Also, wrote Odion, with its 1,643,409 voters, President Buhari can hardly count on Rivers State or the South-south as a whole.

    It is in this circumstances I am urging President Buhari to endorse restructuring, rejected in the North only by his Northwest, make new friends all over the country whilst retaining old ones, and coast home to victory in 2019.

     

  • PDP, Southwest and 2019

    So nonchalantly were the Yoruba treated that Governor Wike of Rivers State could, very petulantly, describe the Southwest as completely useless to their party.

    Christ is our corner-stone,
    on him alone we build;
    with his true saints alone
    the courts of heaven are filled:
    on his great love
    our hopes we place
    of present grace
    and joys above.

    It’s another year gone bye and we give God all the glory. A very eventful year it was with our president, Mohammadu Buhari, given up for dead but bounced back radiant as Nigerians have never seen him.  As he was  ‘resurrecting’, Nigeria  was  also exiting  the mother of all recessions,  the cumulative effect of PDP’S 16  years of utter planlessness  and corrosive  corruption which, according to DFID, set Nigeria back by N32 Billion in  6 years.  So much happened on the political arena, one of them being the return of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to the PDP, the second time, understandably to have another chance to contest for the presidency, an absolutely legitimate ambition by such a consummate politician.

    Here’s wishing him all the luck.

    However, in terms of its import, no event during the year can match the ignominy with which the Yoruba wing of the PDP was treated both before, and during its recent Abuja convention. So nonchalantly were the Yoruba treated that Governor Wike of Rivers State could, very petulantly, describe the Southwest as completely useless to their party. To get the full import of the put down, one would have to do a mental picture of Yoruba’s who is who, still claiming membership of the opposition party.

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif

    However, if anybody surprised me in his position on the shambolic manner in which Yoruba was treated, it is none other than Chief Ebenezer Babatope, my very intimate friend of over 50 years. Days before the convention, Babatope had, in his usual no nonsense manner, spoken on the Southwest quest for the party’s chairmanship. I can say without mincing words that PDP was never Ebeno’s first choice party as nothing in his persona aligns with that ultra conservative, rent seeking ensemble. The  story would have to be told another day of how  he, after being personally nominated by Chief  MKO Abiola to serve in the Abacha government,  came out totally misunderstood  by the Afenifere elders  who,  despite  his best efforts,  frustrated his intent to return to the Awo political family.

    Days before the convention, Babatope had said in a public statement: “I want to make it absolutely clear that if Mr. Makarfi is an honourable man, he will voluntarily resign his position without waiting to be pushed out.  Continuing, he said: “His game plan is simply to handover the party to Nyesom Wike, through his acolyte Uche Secondus.  …this is indeed a road to perdition … as the Yoruba will never accept any attempt to insult our people and denigrate our collective intelligence. We are absolutely resolved in our position. We will not stand idle and fold our hands while all kinds of machinations are being hatched to destroy the collective interest of the Yoruba people. If we are denied the chairmanship of the party, we will walk out of the PDP and take our fortunes elsewhere.”

    Then the somersault: a week after his Southwest had been mercilessly purloined by those Bode George, a chairmanship candidate who would later withdraw, had called “little men whose sun will soon set”, Babatope again  declared :”We have contributed to the party immensely and helped hold it together since its inception. We will not jump from one party to another. Those of us who believe in PDP will never compromise on our membership. The controversy will not have adverse effect on the party’s performance in 2019, especially if a reconciliation mechanism is put in place to address genuine grievances. The PDP will not suffer in the Southwest, because of what happened. Southwest PDP still see Wike, Secondus and others who denied the region the chairmanship slot as friends”. In  his own case, Bode George had, while withdrawing, said, “the Yoruba people have been openly maligned, savaged, tormented, treated with contempt, scurried, scoffed at, humiliated and denigrated by little men, whose sun will soon set”.

    These are the people now being led through a so- called reconciliatory chimera.

    The PDP Abuja convention was, indeed, the graveyard of the party’s old guard. General Babangida, like former President Goodluck Jonathan, were brutally buried, and their interment has seen Turaki, the man they recruited, now speaking in tongues about whether or not he will still contest. This is because, with their massive shellacking, he can, in his mind’s eye, already see Markafi as the anointed Presidential candidate. And why get involved again in a primary election only to be trounced as Senator Kwankwaso did to him in the APC primaries I 2015.

    I digress, and back to the Southwest shellacking.

    Now after the volte face by Babatope and Bode George, who are  now being toasted by their tormentors, how can Governors Wike, Makarfi or Fayose, nearer home, be expected  to respect these PDP elders?  Of course, they know only too well that the average Nigerian politician is concerned only with self. The elders are, therefore, most unlikely to see what happened to them as insult to the entire Yoruba race, which is what it is. For this reason, PDP will only be talking to the top guns, not the masses, the electorates.  Governor Wike has, without mincing words, told the Yoruba what awaits them whenever PDP ever comes to power which can, however, not be in the foreseeable future given their record of service. For instance, the federal government recently had temporarily forfeited to it, over 100 houses, by only three of the women who were closely connected to the Jonathan government. This is precisely why I am at a loss when Babatope exudes: “the PDP will not suffer in the Southwest, because of what happened. Southwest PDP still see Wike, Secondus and others who denied the region the chairmanship slot as friends”. Granted that my friend and his Yoruba PDP  compatriots  can see these Yoruba tormentors as friends and paddy paddies, do they think  Yoruba people  can forget, in a hurry, what they suffered in the six years of  President Goodluck Jonathan, when militants  of  Ijaw extraction were not only establishing universities offshore, but were buying warships. Are these Yoruba PDP elders of such short memories they could forget they had less than five of their compatriots as chief executives of federal agencies when another geo-political zone literally controlled all the regulatory agencies? And that was at a time when the Southwest chapter had not been as categorically rubbished as Wike just did. As I cannot adequately describe how beggarly the PDP/Jonathan government treated the Yoruba, I crave the indulgence of that seminal gentle man, Chief Nnia Nwodo, President Ohanaeze Ndigbo, who I knew way back in the 70’s when he was only a student at the University of Ibadan where he shone brightly as the Student Union President, to quote from his inaugural speech.

    Said Nwodo: “I remember a time in this country when all the six ministers in Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet were all Igbos. Ayim Pius Ayim was Secretary to Government, Ngozi Okonjo Iwealla was in charge of Finance, Emeka Wogu was in Labour and Productivity, Berth Nnaji was in Power and Energy, Dieziani Madueke was the powerful minister for oil. The six of them outside the Federal Executive Council would meet and decide what and what not to be discussed at the larger Federal Executive Council meeting. Okiro and Onovo had the police under their control. Ihejerika and later Minimah controlled the Army. These powerful Igbos could do and undo. Nigeria was in their pockets. Rather than care about the poor Igbo chaps scattered all over the country, they were busy diverting billions of naira into their accounts at home and abroad. The 2nd Niger Bridge, they did not do. They shared the money. The Lagos/Calabar rail lines passing through nine states, three of them in the South East, they shared the money.” (Any wonder DFID recently said Nigeria lost 32Billion dollars to corruption during President Jonathan’s six years). “Enugu/Onitsha, Aba/PH and other roads of economic importance to their fellow Igbos, he continued, they abandoned.” “Who is to blame? Who is marginalising Igbos? You had your chance, you bungled it. There was only one Yoruba minister worth mentioning at the time, Akinwunmi Adesina. He was in Agric. His budget was less than 1% while Emeka Wogu in Labour had over 10% for his ministry, Ayim had unlimited access to the  treasury for  the benefit of himself and family members. The poor Igbo guys meant nothing to him.”

    Res ipsa loquitor.

  • Ekitipanupo: The Nigerian economy on our minds

    Nigeria must produce what it consumes before any of the monetary policies of the CBN can make sense

    Ekitipanupo is a web portal, founded some 12 years ago by Okan Adetunmbi. It is an Ekiti intellectual roundtable, with membership around 2000 Ekiti intellectuals, home and Diasporan. We discuss from ‘sand to steel’, as long as the subject is not lurid and, though mostly concerning Ekiti and Nigerian affairs, it is actually without borders. This past week, for the second time in as many months, we spent considerable time discussing the Nigerian economy.  What you will be reading below is largely a summary of that discussion.

    In a country with robust economic policies, unreasonable, totally atavistic actions of some ill-educated labour leaders who see unionism only in the blinkered manner of oppositional politics, would never be enough to turn everything into a tailspin as we saw these past two weeks, consequent upon a pseudo fuel scarcity which was particularly galling, coming at year’s end when business activities and travelling by families, should ordinarily begin to peak.

    At the prompting of a member (forumite), we decided to dig deep into this and what we found, as culprit, is really not the ever self- seeking labour leaders but our extant economic policies, especially our foreign exchange management policy which is largely the result of the failure of past governments to diversify the economy thus ensuring that fuel importation accounts for as much as 40 per cent of the country’s total foreign exchange earnings.

    Kicking off the discussion, Port Harcourt -based Tope Ojo wrote: “The Central Bank’s monetary policy alone, without diversifications and import substitution, is insufficient to bring about the desired level of economic growth needed to take Nigeria out of recession and poverty. Nigeria must produce what it consumes before any of the monetary policies of the CBN can make sense. Only this, he continued, can grow the economy and help create jobs for the millions of jobless Nigerians. Any nation that imports majorly foreign goods, rather than producing its own, will only be hurting its people. He goes on to quote the thoughts of Femi Kushimo, who, on another forum, wrote as follows: “the Nigerian government is not encouraging local producers, because it flouts its own economic policies. For instance, the import ban on maize is not working. Farmers produced a lot of maize this year, expecting a good price for their harvest, but the government dashed that aspiration when it allowed members of the poultry association of Nigeria, and others, to import large quantity of maize. Maize currently sells for about N75,000 per ton, farm gate price, as against N130,000 per ton at the same period last year. Our government is not serious about local production.” Also, wrote Ojo, we must be on top of our foreign exchange management as well as improve on the value of the national currency by deliberately reducing all pressures on it. According to him, the following measures should help: Health sector reforms will reduce our appetite for health tourism abroad.

    Education sector reforms (increased capacity and quality) will reduce our penchant for educational tourism and the associated forex demand. There is also the urgent need to encourage local production and reduce importation of finished goods, especially, consumer items. With such holistic approach, we will arrive at a better value for the Naira and be able to develop the country. A nation is as good as her national currency. When we keep importing foreign made products, he concluded, we keep importing poverty into our country and exporting jobs abroad”.

    Those were the thoughts whch prompted Abuja-based Ayo Omowumi to write: “These prescriptions (no rocket science really) have always been with us. The problem, really, has been having people, at the helm of affairs who do not have the will and the interest to implement them. The government prefers forex interventions that are operated in such a way that it enriches the elites, including some of the those in government. We all can remember Emir Sanusi’s allegation that forex allocation is such that makes for easy money making by selected members of the society. A discriminating process of allocation, to non-productive activities like medical tourism, travelling allowance, student remittances, brought about by the elites’ argument that our educational facilities are below par, and that they can afford to send their kids abroad to study, without personally sourcing their forex, are the main problems. This is the state of affairs that engenders currency trading, speculation and round tripping. Meanwhile, no conscious efforts are being made to tackle the causes of medical tourism and thirst for overseas study. Our health and education facilities remain in their old substandard states, despite electoral promises to improve them.

    William Aborisade of the University of Ilorin kicked in with the following: “all it takes in matters of forex management is to make allocation solely to the productive sector – manufacturing by small and medium scale enterprises. They are the creators of jobs. The Japanese government embarked on providing a solid support, including favourable forex allocation to these sectors and they, in turn, launched Japan into economic success.

    Lagos-based R.O. Okunmuyide then weighed in with:”This is a deeply thoughtful diagnosis of Nigeria’s economic problems! It also shows that this government’s approach through import substitution (that inevitably generates poverty among those whose livelihoods have traditionally depended on the import chain etc) and diversification through the window of agriculture is strategically correct. And it confirms that the future gains from the strategy cannot be without its present pains. This, however, urgently requires stronger tactical bites that will whip the opportunistic abusers of the strategy, especially the customs service, into line through appropriate deterrent sanctions. This is the critical missing gap that not only reduces local productivity but widens the gap between the economic goals and the strategy as the resources and resourcefulness being expended, are falling short of their expected goals. This is why the pains are becoming more resented with the likely risk of the strategy being compromised with grave risks to the country’s future prosperity potential.”

    MY THOUGHTS

    Terrific views there,  but all things considered, it will  still be  kudos  yet,  to the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank and every  other agency of government responsible, not only for the formulation of our monetary policies, but their rigorous implementation which saw the country exit a very atrocious recession, in a mono economy which suffered the unprecedented debacle of a massive oil price drop; indeed, a near total crippling of the oil business, public as well as private with all its deleterious consequences on the nation’s banks. The same agencies have also ensured that the economy has witnessed a straight 10-month drop in the rate of inflation. But for the single-minded determination of  these agencies, under the lead of the President, not to fecklessly submit to the demands  of the International Monetary Fund, and its other Washington accomplices, the naira would have long become no better than ordinary paper which is why, in place of  the jeremiads we see daily on the social media, what Tatalo of this newspaper describes as a “virus of unremitting gloom and pessimism”, Nigerians must thank God we did not experience that oil price collapse some five or so  years ago, when it was leakages galore in the management of the nation’s finances with all manner of scams – oil subsidy scam, pension  scam etc -ravaging  the  country. Just as  have been said above, what needs be done now is firm up the present import  restrictions, stop allocating forex to non productive causes  but,  improve on our  health  and  education sectors, ensure that those who choose to train their children abroad source their own foreign exchange, just like the importers of all those cheap perfumes etc,  being hawked about  by street traders should also do,  and be  honest  in all matters pertaining to forex allocation so as to kill off those abuses identified by the Emir of Kano. Government should also seriously galvanise its diversification policy as alternative to the unhelpful dependence on oil which, among other things, must, henceforth, be mostly refined here in Nigeria to create employment opportunities as well as conserve our foreign exchange earnings.

  • 2019 Political jigsaw: an aide memoire to the Yoruba

    2019 Political jigsaw: an aide memoire to the Yoruba

    I need not repeat that we suffered enough under the PDP’s 16 years of the locust when we were treated like aliens in our own country.

    1.”This is clearly an attempt to distract the APC federal government from the yeoman’s job it has been doing in rescuing the country from the deep rooted socio-economic, political, security and moral mess inherited from the PDP’s 16 years misrule of Nigeria, instigate crisis within the party, stoke dangerous embers of religious disaffection within the party and the country generally and stem the remarkable progress being made in the reinvention and revitalisation of Nigeria”.
    2. “About $32bn was lost to corruption during the six-year administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development said on Monday. The agency said the huge amount represented 16 percent of the previous government’s resources that could have been channeled to development” – Debbie Palmer, DFID Head of Office, Nigeria.

    Ndigbo can boast about having some of the most astute politicians at any point in our country’s history. Historically, Igbos are not used to being in the opposition. You can therefore imagine the agony that has been theirs since they unwisely put their entire eggs in the political basket of former President Ebelechukwu Jonathan, going into the 2015 elections.  So bruised were they that, as he has severally told Nigerians, even a hard-headed politician like Governor Rochas Okorocha was being treated worse than an outcast for giving APC a foothold in the entire South East. But truth be told, that has become history as top Igbo politicians are now trooping into the APC like it were an armada.  Thanks to the fact that life in opposition is as uncomfortable for them as it is uncharacteristic. The Igbo situation was, however, worsened by what the highly seminal Chief John Nnia Nwodo, economist, lawyer, and president, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, said at his inauguration. In what can best be described as a jeremiad about how Igbos in public office treat their homeland, and people, Chief Nwodo said: “I remember a time in this country when all the six ministers in Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet were all Igbos.  Ayim Pius Ayim was Secretary to Government, Ngozi Okonjo Iwealla was in charge of Finance, Emeka Wogu was in Labour and Productivity, Berth Nnaji was in Power and Energy, Dieziani Madueke was the powerful minister for Oil. The six of them outside the Federal Executive Council would meet and decide what and what not to be discussed at the larger Federal Executive Council meeting. Okiro and Onovo had the police under their control. Ihejerika and later Minimah controlled the Army. These powerful Igbos could do and undo. Nigeria was in their pockets. Rather than care about the poor Igbo chaps scattered all over the country, they were busy diverting billions of naira into their accounts at home and abroad. The 2nd Niger Bridge, they did not do. They shared the money. The Lagos/Calabar rail lines passing through nine states, three of them in the South East, they shared the money.” (Any wonder DFID recently said Nigeria lost 32 billion dollars to corruption during President Jonathan’s six years). “Enugu/Onitsha, Aba/PH and other roads of economic importance to their fellow Igbos, he continued, they abandoned. Who is to blame? Who is marginalising Igbos? You had your chance, you bungled it. There was only one Yoruba minister worth mentioning at the time, Akinwunmi Adesina. He was in Agric. His budget was less than 1% while Emeka Wogu in Labour had over 10% for his ministry, Ayim had unlimited access to the  treasury for  the benefit of himself and family members. The poor Igbo guys meant nothing to him.”

    The consequences of that lost opportunity, more than any marginalisation by President Buhari should, in my view, account for the increased Biafra/IPOB agitations in the region. It is in the determined intent of the new Igbo leadership, under Nwodo, to make up for that lost opportunity that is now driving top Igbo politicians to embrace the ruling party, especially, as they can’t  see the PDP defeating President Buhari in 2019. For this hard-headed reasoning, I congratulate both Ndigb and the APC. However, while it is fascinating to see this paradigm shift in Ndigbo’s political calculations, what nauseates is their serpentine attempts to overawe the Yoruba, exaggerate and embellish whatever the Yoruba angst against the Buhari government is, and deliberately stampede them out of a party to which they have given everything and which they voted massively in the 2015 despite the best wishes of their revered Afenifere elders.

    To this plot must, therefore, be attributed the Sun newspapers’ (an Igbo medium) last week story which Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appropriately described as a “classic case of utterly and irredeemably-fake news.”  Apparently assuming that all Nigerians operate on the same cultural ethos, the story has it that Tinubu, who nominated Professor Yemi Osinbajo for his Vice Presidential position, was going to replace him as Vice to President Buhari at the 2019 elections. This, in Yoruba land, in case they don’t know, is considered, culturally, as infra dig. But even if they knew Yorubas well enough, they were yet undeterred because the objective was to present the Yoruba as unreliable, untrustworthy and so, not worth the President’s trust.  There was, of course, more. As the APC National Leader correctly put it, it was intended to instigate a crisis within the APC, as well as stoke dangerous embers of politico-religious disaffection amongst the members and within the country at large.  Also, in a classical example of crying more than the bereaved, the social media is another forum which they have been using to drum this so-called ill-treatment of the Yoruba by President Buhari.

    This, in essence, is why the Yoruba, as the holy book says, must be as wise as the serpent going forward, in the march to 2019. While Yoruba land luxuriated in the opposition under the sterling leadership of the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, things have so changed in our country that to allow ourselves be coyly ousted, in numbers, from the APC because of some misgivings which are, incidentally, being wantonly exaggerated by persons who do not wish us well, would tantamount to torridly shortchanging ourselves. All things considered, it needs no robotic science to know that Yorubas are many times better than we were under the Goodluck Jonathan government. Should we require any reminding, I wrote as follows in ‘THE PRESIDENT’S BROADCAST’, The Nation, August 27, 2017: “are Igbos the first to be denied plum appointments? Was it that we didn’t have the Bode George’s, the Ebino Topsy’s, the Olajumoke’s , great bulwarks of PDP, in the Southwest when President Jonathan literally completely overlooked Yoruba’s in his appointments just as Anyim Pius Anyim and Okonjo- Iweala ensured that they appointed Igbos and a few Niger Deltans, to the headship of over 60 per cent of all federal agencies?”

    Also, smart politicians that Igbos are, they have good reasons to wish to see Yorubas lose out in the APC, by whatever means.  They have realised that  remaining within the PDP as solidly as they have always been, they will be obligated to vote for a PDP Presidential candidate who, if he wins, -God forbid – would be heading to a possible two terms of eight years, thus postponing the possibility of an Igbo presidency to a future that is clearly uncertain .

    While I perfectly agree that, compared with our Northern compatriots, the Yoruba has not been compensated enough for their contribution to the victory of President Buhari and the APC in the 2015 elections, I am equally certain that Yoruba interests would be much better served negotiating, re-negotiating, and fighting, if need be, from within, rather than permit our position in the party be undermined. The treatment meted to the Southwest wing of the PDP at the party’s recent Abuja convention, should further serve an ‘aide me moire’ to us Yorubas as to what could happen to us again in a PDP controlled government. Meanwhile, Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State has been going round saying that PDP needs the Southwest to defeat Buhari in 2019 but a stitch in time, they say, saves nine. So rather than seeing this article as ethnic baiting, it should appropriately be seen for hat it is: a shout out to my Yorubas compatriots to tread gently, all eyes opened, as we head to the 2019 elections. I need not repeat that we suffered enough under the PDP’s 16 years of the locust when we were treated like aliens in our own country.

  • In Nigeria, which of the law or the Judge is the ass?

    And what exactly would have to happen for the Nigerian judiciary to buy into the Buhari anti-corruption war?

    “Femi, you got it right. We have been very unlucky with the Attorney General’s thrust at us. This Mainagate episode makes me blush. President Muhammadu Buhari does not need these distractions. You know I believe very much in this government. That is why I feel very pained at all these unforced errors. The president should just let him go. It remains a puzzle why he did all he did” – Pet Mmonu. Port Harcourt.

    What is the essence of The Law? When exactly does it serve the ends of justice? Is corporate well being, that is, national interest, inferior to individual right?  Why do our judges routinely find it convenient to deploy technicalities to upend critical programmes of incumbent governments; corruption or poor thinking? Although, in asking these questions, I am not by any means suggesting, even where I will not say the same thing for the detained former national security adviser and  his other  military colleagues who should, more reasonably, be defending themselves before a court martial, that the government of President Buhari is right in not releasing somebody like Sheik Ibrahim Elzakzaky, what exactly are our judges thinking when they fail to take into account, the primacy of  the national interest in arriving at their decisions? In other words, which is superior, national interest or individual right ensuing mostly from the strictest interpretation of the law? Shouldn’t judges naturally give greater weight to national interest just as the Appellate Court did in the Hamza Al Mustapha fundamental rights’ case against the federal government?

    These musings were my immediate thoughts on learning that Justice Binta Nyako, sitting at the Abuja High court, had on Tuesday, 5 December, 2017, vacated her order of 30 May, freezing  16 separate accounts linked to the wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience.

    I urge Nigerians to mentally convert the 9.3 million dollars in these accounts to naira to see the reasonableness, or otherwise, of granting Mrs Jonathan access to these humongous amounts of money on the absolutely flimsy ground that the order had lapsed and could not be renewed by the EFCC. Is man made for law or the law for man?

    EFCC’s case against Mrs Jonathan and the associated companies reads as follows: EFCC by an ex parte motion it filed before another judge of the same high court, applied for an order of interim attachment/forfeiture of assets and properties of Mrs Jonathan’s foundation, at stated addresses.  It sought for an order stopping any disposal or alienation of the assets and an authorisation to appoint a competent person (s)/firm to manage the temporarily forfeited assets pending the conclusion of investigation. It contended that the assets are subject matter of investigation, enquiry and examination by it, and that there was need to preserve them as any transaction on any of them will render nugatory, judgments that may arise from possible criminal charges against the suspects.

    It may be pertinent to mention that, amongst other things, the agency’s investigation unearthed the fact that none of  all the  huge payments, transfers and purchases traced to these accounts had any contract award whatsoever, backing them up leading to the very reasonable suspicion that these are fraudulent payments and an illegal dissipation of the nation’s resources’.

    Now, if the agency’s case was so straight forward, why would the judge not find a way of maintaining the status quo rather than facilitate a possible ‘attack’ on the accounts as we have seen before in this country? Why are our judges so incapable of thinking about this country if President Muhammadu Buhari would be so traumatised about the country’s systemic corruption that he would say the following at a recent public event in Kano: “Those assigned to public positions of trust are mortals, they will transit and appear before their creator to answer for the misdeed carried out while holding forth the positions entrusted in their care by the populace.” Not yet done, the president who made anti corruption his ‘numero uno’ campaign promise said: “Those who ruled Nigeria without vision and looted the nation’s treasury are the same people boasting that they will displace the APC government and return to office. We will wait and see if they think Nigerians are ignorant.”

    But why is the Nigerian judiciary – especially the higher bar, and the bench so unmindful of the deleterious consequences of corruption on our country? Why is it impossible for them to see the correlation between corruption and all the pervading lack in the county: the poor and niggardly infrastructure stock, the poor healthcare services so self evident in the atrocious maternal mortality rate which, at 814 deaths/100,000 births in 2015, more than quintuples the world’s average, and the very predatory, unsustainable life of the poor who does not know where the next meal would come from?

    Why?

    And what exactly would have to happen for the Nigerian judiciary to buy into the Buhari anti-corruption war?

    Pa. G.O. OKOOBO, FCA, WRITES THE SENATE PRESIDENT

    From his home in Idumebo Irrua, Edo State, one of my most distinguished and most cherished, dedicated readers, Pa Okoobo, Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Accountants, who not only reads, but regularly sends a reaction to many of the articles on this column, even at 86, writes to the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki on the trending subject of RESTRUCTURING.

    Your Excellency

    1. Restructuring Nigeria for UNITY

    My voice may be a lone one from the wilderness. Many people have made various suggestions about how Nigeria should be restructured. Some ask for more states when some of the existing ones cannot pay workers salaries while others ask for autonomous local governments many of which are merely “Local Estates” for Chairmen and Councillors.

    With the existing 36 states and 774 local government councils, Nigeria succeeded in emphasising things that divide us Eg. ethnicity, tribal affiliations, language and culture. Rather than being source of unity they have divided us more and more.

    In the days of regional governments they had their own constitutions and people thought more of their own region than the federal government, ethnic groups worked together to promote the development of their regions.

    With the creation of states and yet more states followed by military intervention in government, unitary form of administration came into being because the military are used to central command. With the oil boom everybody became economically complacent waiting to be “fed” by the federal government which controls nearly all economic resources. Today, local government are impotent while states are not viable; the much that is distributed from the centre they share out through fraud, money laundering and “ghost workers”.

    My own idea of restructuring Nigeria is one that emphasises the need to work and cooperate with one another for the development of their areas. In other words I suggest the following:

    1. A central or federal government
    2. Six geopolitical regions to replace 36 states

    3.109 Mayoral municipalities to replace the 774 local governments.

    Those concerned can then dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” to make the system work. With the control of resources in their areas the viability of the regional governments and municipalities is guaranteed.

    Registration of political parties and party supremacy

    I think the Supreme Court of Nigeria carried Fundamental Human Rights and Freedom of Association too far when it permitted households to form political parties. Ideally Nigeria does not need more than three political parties. This will save cost and emphasise manifestoes and Ideologies.

    As for party supremacy, it is ridiculous that a person sponsored by a political party for an elective position turns round to become the leader of the party. Where is the check and balance? The present system encourages dictatorship, impunity and corruption. The party should be able to discipline the president, governors, legislators etc, when they go wrong or fail to ‘toe the party line’.

    Time was in the old Western Region when legislators before taking their seats in the regional assembly were made to sign an undated “Letter of Resignation”. When a legislator ran foul of the party’s “laws” the party just dated the “Letter of Resignation” and submitted it to the clerk of the regional assembly. If party supremacy had existed, President Obasanjo would not have gone far with his third term bid nor would the Senate President Dr. Saraki have succeeded the way he became President of the Senate.

    May God bless and save Nigeria.

     

  • It will be quite a shame if Abubakar Malami survives a cabinet reshuffle

    It will be quite a shame if Abubakar Malami survives a cabinet reshuffle

    Mainagate, therefore, brings into the open, Mr Malami’s obvious unsuitability for the post he currently holds.

    OF a truth, Nigeria has had a slew of totally incompetent and obfuscating Attorney-General’s and minister of Justice. During the Obasanjo era we had one who would always insist on giving his own interpretation of court judgments, however tangential, his was to the Lord Justices’ decisions.  And his was what got done. Bad as that was, and when you think Andoakaa must reckon as the worst ever, I do not think Nigeria has had the ill-luck of having an Attorney-General and Minister of Justice like the incumbent, Abubakar Malami, SAN, who has been fingered as the mastermind in the clandestine return to the country and subsequent re- appointment and promotion of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdullahi Abdulrasheed Maina, as a director in the civil service. He is already claiming, against all the evidences, that there is a press war against him.

    What for? you’d like to ask.

    Malami first came to my, and I guess, national recognition, when he intervened in the inglorious Kogi State gubernatorial debacle where he was the face of the ethnic, as opposed to, the legal interpretation of that election. At the end of the day, they got what they wanted for a governor: a non Yoruba and Muslim, asides which, many could have very well committed suicide. He had then appeared before a group of journalists looking fresh, but somewhat timid and withdrawn. When he spoke, he confirmed my inner questions as to what attracted President Muhammadu Buhari to him in the first place.

    Apart from several leaks about Mr Malami being integral to the dizzying distrust amongst top aides and agencies in the Buhari administration, Malami’s hands have best been shown in the ongoing video: Mainagate, where he is already being cast as the lead actor. He had even cleverly claimed that he would like inquiries into the matter to be open to all Nigerians. And I call that being clever by half.

    It remains a modern day wonder how, and why, a country’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice,  would set  himself upon a journey, all the way to as far  away as the Middle-East, to meet with a fugitive at law, claiming he took permission from the National Security Adviser who should ordinarily be profiting from his legal know how, and advice. We would never know all that transpired in Dubai, but we could be guided by Maina himself where, referring to a document in his trending tape, he claimed to have told the minister: “Sir, I will not let you go empty handed.”

    As soon as the minister came back from the trip, series of letters rapidly flew out of his office, asking, directing, and literally countermanding various persons and agencies of government, not only to recall, but to ensure that a huge sum of money, in back salaries, was paid Maina,  with a promotion as the icing on the cake. Rather than honourably own up to his faux pas, and accept responsibility by promptly resigning his appointment, Attorney-General Malami has been doing everything to find a fall guy in an aide, as if any letter could have left his office, without his say so, especially in a sensitive matter to which the Head of the Civil service of the Federation was clearly opposed. Till tomorrow, and according to the Head of Service, no letter of reabsorption into the service has been written to Maina.

    Mainagate, therefore, brings into the open, Mr Malami’s obvious unsuitability for the post he currently holds. This, however, should not stop the President from deploying him to where his capabilities would be more relevant and appreciated. Not to act, is for the president to further compound this unfortunate incident which could very well be the harbinger of far worse consequences.

    MINISTER ADAMU ADAMU MUST REALLY THINK NIGERIANS ARE FOOLS

    On this column on Sunday 3 September, 2017, I wrote as follows:

    “What therefore rankles  the most about the constitution of boards of agencies and parastatals under the ministry of education is not only that the ministry, under a minister of northern extraction, could gloat uproariously about being sensitive to federal character  in the appointments even with 15 out  of the 21 Chairmen in the colleges of education, 10 out  of  25 in the Polytechnics and  12 out of the 19 in the mostly regulatory agencies and para-statals under the ministry all going to the north, but that six months after that announcement, nothing has changed as none of the supposedly brand  new boards has been inaugurated. And let nobody ascribe this to President Buhari’s indisposition as examples are legion, even on You tube, of ministers inaugurating boards of their respective ministries. I do not see any of these appointments as doing anybody any favour since the boards and councils are meant to guide and assist the administration of these various institutions by putting in place policies and ensuring their compliance in running the institutions since, as we recently saw in the case of the National Health Insurance Scheme, many are they, who believe they can run them like their fiefdom”

    I wrote further: “How can officials of state be this arrogantly disrespectful of not only persons, but institutions of state too? But it is not only disrespect that is motivating this; rather, it is the crass opportunism being used to disguise ethnicity. As you read this, literally  all the executives running the core agencies in the ministry,  like TETFUND and UBEC, are under the headship of Northerners whilst Southerners are consigned to those agencies which require real hard work like the National Library of Nigeria and others in that category. It is obviously in order not to upset the apple cart that Adamu Adamu, who is being assisted as minister of education, by a highly experienced Professor from the South, is not keen about inaugurating the boards. It is beyond him to realise that most of these appointees, especially those from the South, are reputable and very busy people who, put in the lurch in this highly arrogant manner, are stopped from properly planning their schedules and itinerary. If anybody had said that after all the promises made by President Buhari at his party’s recent meeting Adamu Adamu would still retain the management of literally all the above parastatals in the hands of his Northern brothers, not many could have believed, who have come to trust President Buhari in spite of  everything. I think the only honourable thing to do is for Malam Adamu to immediately cause a retraction of his ministry’s publication of  April 22, 2017: by Mrs Chinenye Ihuoma, to the effect that ‘President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the reconstitution of the boards of 19 agencies and parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Education for a period of four years,  adding that in doing  so, the President took into cognizance provisions of the respective legislation with respect to composition, competence, credibility, integrity, federal character and geo-political spread.”

    If only these people would know what many of those sincerely supporting the president go through in the hands of those who believe that it is all a question of ‘monkey dey work, baboon they chop’, they will think less of ethnic solidarity. Why would it take you eight months, still counting, to inaugurate boards you constituted without being pushed.

    Enough then, of these bloody lies.

    CHIEF OLADEJI FASUAN BECOMES THE ASIWAJU OF AFAO-EKITI.

    All roads lead to the palace of the Alafawo of Afao-Ekiti, HRH Oba Ademilua, on Saturday, 9 December, 2017 as the multi-honoured, super Nigerian patriot, Chief Oladeji Fasuan, a retired public servant, per excellence, with glittering service spanning all the states of the old Western Region, and known, unarguably, as the leader of the effort that culminated in the creation of Ekiti State, is honoured with the title of the ASIWAJU OF AFAO.

     

    Time is 9.00am.

    Entertainment and related ceremonies will take place at his place under the usual Cocoa and Palm Tree Grove.

     

    Congratulations, Sir. Oye a mori.

  • Properly interrogated, Mainagate can be the defining moment in the Buhari anti corruption war

    Too much is involved in this scandal for it to be left to a senate inquiry, however, grandiloquent.

    “Everyone who says he needs a private jet to make important appointments is a liar. He needed it for his ego. Name me one who is busier than I am, who owns more U.S corporations than I do. I travel constantly across the U.S and the world in commercial jetliners, live in the same house since the 70s, still buy $9 ties and $75 suits and still drive my 22 year old immaculately maintained Lincoln. These flash lifestyles are simply ego driven!” – Warren Buffet.

    Let me start this piece by quoting a commentator on Ekitipanupo: “There is no reason why Maina cannot be arraigned in the morning and executed by noon of the same day”.  To that I say yes, but please do me a favour, let the President first set up today, a judicial panel of inquiry into this Mainagate conundrum. Diligently handled, Mainagate could turn out to be the rewarding juncture in the Buhari anti corruption war. Spanning two administrations, and with the humongous amounts of money being bandied about, the last of which is Maina lawyer’s claim that Nigeria is indebted to his client, the fugitive at law, to the tune of N159 Billion, a judicial interrogation, as is being proposed here, leading to full disclosure in the entire Mainagate saga, has the distinct possibility of completely unmasking the stupefying corruption ravaging our country. In making this suggestion, I am not unaware that the senate, this past week, opened a hearing on the subject. But history being our guide, Nigerians can only trust that exercise to their own chagrin. Apart from the national assembly, especially the seventh senate, being severally implicated in the rot, these national assembly hearings are never about what we are told. Witness what happened in the Hon Herman Hembe-led inquiry into capital market operations, the oil subsidy probe as well as the Hon Ndudi Elumelu probe into the power sector before it? The national assembly has become so unreliable in such matters as they have shown, definitively, that they are more concerned with benefits for selves than for Nigerians, bearing in mind that in the instant case, in particular, there is too much money to play with that we should not so wantonly  invest our trust.

    Once beaten, they say, twice shy.

    At the end of a judicial hearing into this mess, not only are we most likely to identify the kingpins of pension corruption, largely domiciled within the very locus of power in our country,  we should be able to positively assert that the office of the Head of Service is the very epicentre of  pension corruption in the country. From what we learn daily about Mainagate, the office of the head of service seems more like a putrefying centre of nihilism. It must be clinically x-rayed with all the rogues identified. According to Maina, a very dangerous, indeed murderous, cabal operates with the connivance of that department of government. Maina could still be hung, even upside down, but for Christ’s sake, not before we’ve heard all he has to say. He must not be hushed, he must not be hurried, nor must he get killed before his time. Too much is involved in this scandal for it to be left to a senate inquiry, however, grandiloquent.

    What to do then?

    President Buhari, if he is serious about this war, as I am sure he is, and is mindful of his legacy and place in history, he should set up a judicial panel of inquiry to be headed by an untainted, retired judge with some Nigerians of proven integrity, like himself, making up the membership. Once that is done, he must, willy nilly, close his eyes to whatever is being unravelled, as what should interest him is the end product, the final report. Naturally, with an election only some two years away, all manner of characters would like to interfere, pleading the cause of some people they would like to convince the president, are critical to his re-election. Mainagate must be the crematory of many a political/professional career.

    What is oozing out of Mainagate is like a horror film and unless Nigerians are allowed to hear the last of it, the anti corruption war could lose steam which would be quite a shame, and a huge denudation, of a key campaign promise by candidate Buhari.

    The latest Nigerians woke up to hear this past week is Maina’s lawyer, Barr Sani Katu, like Jerry Kushner’s attorney in faraway United States, declaring his client a hero, and claiming that the Nigerian government was owing him over N159BN, as against the N2.1bn he is being accused of siphoning while in office. That, he claimed, represents 5% of what Maina recovered, forgetting that even if the recoveries were true, the whistle blower law cannot take retrospective effect.

    But he said much more.

    So let’s hear him at some length. Recalling Maina’s exploits, Katu said: “In 2011, Maina stopped the stealing of N300m daily from police pension. Also, in 2011, he stopped the stealing of N1.04bn monthly from police pension allocations. Same 2011, he was able to stop the yearly stealing of N52.5bn, which has been an annual ritual at the head of service pension.” Between 2011 and 2012 the PRTT under Maina’s leadership, he said, recovered cash and asset worth N1.63trn which had been with the EFCC. “It would be recalled,” he continued, “that some pensioners petitioned the National Assembly to ensure that EFCC produce these recoveries so that Nigerians would know about them. “Similarly, between 2016 and June 2017, Maina, released the intelligence and tip-offs that stopped the annual stealing of N1.3trn. (This, he said, has been confirmed by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice). “Also,” he continued, “between February 2017 and October 2017, Maina recovered N152bn, N60bn, and other sensitive materials”. Now two things:  If these are true, how many of these thieves have been punished, administratively, even if court cases continue, and, are we being told Maina has been back in the country and in the civil service since February, 2017 – a fugitive at law, in a country with an IG, a Department of State Service, EFCC etc, complete with a sitting government?

    How safe are we in this country?

    The Mainagate conundrum is absolutely stupefying and only a judicial inquiry can prove conclusively that this government is not out to protect some people.

    Here is what has filtered out of the EFCC to confirm that for the good health of our country, Mainagate must be completely unearthed. Not only is there a very dangerous cabal, going by Maina’s words, giving it life, this corrosive corruption has its very epicentre right within the office of the head of service of the federation. This shows how dangerous this whole matter is because very many people are now so loaded with huge sums of money they can effectively wage a war of attrition against the country. But there is a silver lining: government can recoup so much money it won’t have to borrow a dime to execute its 2018 budget.

    According to snippets from the EFCC, about N17billion has been traced to Maina with a long list of beneficiaries located all over the commanding heights of the Nigerian government, as well as sundry top officials of our security agencies. It must be said, however, that some of those alleged to be involved have since denied their involvement.

    Another major plank of Mainagate revolves around those government officials who colluded to bring him back to Nigeria, smuggle him into the service and facilitate his being paid millions of naira in back salaries. As I wrote elsewhere, it will be interesting to see the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, convince Nigerians that he acted in the interest of the country in the Maina saga. His Dubai meeting with Maina still rankles to high heavens.

    In concluding this piece, I wish to sincerely plead with the president to do that which this matter very urgently requires. Mainagate has damaged, and retains the clear possibility of further negatively affecting the country in the comity of nations in addition to diminishing the president’s well known integrity.

    He should authorise a judicial panel of inquiry today.

  • Fine tuning the Buhari anti-corruption war

    Fine tuning the Buhari anti-corruption war

     It is far too obvious that any powerful person on corruption charges can easily leverage on their disagreement to frustrate his/her trial.

    I thank God that in spite of the tragedies befalling our country in terms of governance; we still have leaders like the Kaduna State governor, El Rufai. During the last presidential election, I said that the leaders we urgently require are those who are willing to step on toes, leaders who would  ‘blandly’ fight vices in a bid to move society forward; leaders who won’t be crippled by the allure of “second term”. Of what use is a leader who leaves no footprints on the sands of time like Awo,  Kwame Nkrumah and the Nwalimu did? Africa desires asset leaders, not liability leaders. El Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Femi Falana, Gen Ishola Williams and their kinds, all have the type of courage Nigeria badly needs to move it out of the doldrums. Nigeria deserves to be a destination place for humanity – Dr William Aborisade on Ekitipanupo.

    I thank God that in spite of the tragedies befalling our country in terms of governance; we still have leaders like the Kaduna State governor, El Rufai. During the last presidential election, I said that the leaders we urgently require are those who are willing to step on toes, leaders who would  ‘blandly’ fight vices in a bid to move society forward; leaders who won’t be crippled by the allure of “second term”. Of what use is a leader who leaves no footprints on the sands of time like Awo,  Kwame Nkrumah and the Nwalimu did? Africa desires asset leaders, not liability leaders. El Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Femi Falana, Gen Ishola Williams and their kinds, all have the type of courage Nigeria badly needs to move it out of the doldrums. Nigeria deserves to be a destination place for humanity – Dr William Aborisade on Ekitipanupo.

    Had the immediate successors of President Olusegun Obasanjo continued with the anti-corruption war where he left it, it is doubtful if candidate Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress would have been able to profit half as much as he did, from his campaign promise of fighting corruption during the 2015 presidential election.  Under Obasanjo, the fear of the EFCC was the beginning of wisdom for politicians, in general. Nigerians had watched on television, breathless, as its chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, taught his former Inspector-General the fear of the Lord.  Corrupt state governors were being serially yanked off their giddy offices, even with not as many as half the constitutionally prescribed number of legislators required for impeaching them.  So completely in charge was Ribadu’s EFCC that you need not be told that the anti-corruption agency had become fatally compromised, its efficiency and effectiveness denuded, by the time Mrs Farida Waziri, Ribadu’s successor, had spent her first three months.  She was already actively doing the bidding of the likes of former  Governors James Ibori and  Bukola Saraki, who were believed to have recruited her for Yar’ Adua, as corruption began to enjoy an unprecedented new lease of life. So lifeless did the EFCC become that Ibori would easily walk off hundreds of charges, only to be jailed in the United Kingdom for almost the same offences, an incident that showed the outside world that the Nigerian judiciary was one of anything goes which is why it is funny to see her pointing fingers at President Jonathan as she recently did. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, however, every villainy, as long as it was committed by a member of the PDP, was a ‘family affair’. It was a time the most heinous corruption incidents like the oil subsidy and pension scams, massive procurement infractions like buying two armoured cars for more than ten times the cost, all became routine. Impunity generally loomed large.

    This was the parlous state of the anti-corruption war, weighed further down by President Jonathan’s laughable quip : ‘stealing is no corruption’, which candidate Buhari, a man of  immense  moral integrity saw,  and needed no further persuasion, to make anti corruption one of the three main pillars of his campaign. Everywhere he went, he told Nigerians that unless we kill corruption, it has the distinct possibility of killing Nigeria. This easily resonated with Nigerians who had been at the receiving end of President Jonathan/PDP’S tantalising romance with corruption; a situation that led the American Council on Foreign Relations to describe the government as a rent seeking contraption.

    One major difference between corruption fighting under President Obasanjo and the present administration is this: whereas, either as a result of Obasanjo’s no non-sense predilections, or Ribadu’s effectiveness, or both, literally everybody around the president who should lend a helping hand to the anti corruption fight did, while the opposite is the case today. As you read this, the extremely hard working EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu, has no worse enemy than the SSS which had not hidden its wish, and determination, to see him replaced in order to irretrievably weaken the anti graft war because of their friends who are under  the agency’s siege. Towards this end, working in cahoots with elements within the National Assembly, the agency has twice written to frustrate Magu’s confirmation as the substantive chairman of the EFCC, so mindlessly exposing to an unprecedented odium, the president who nominated Magu in the first place. Till today, it surprises not a few Nigerians that President Buhari has not been able to decisively deal with these characters in his government.

    Add to this uncooperative attitude of agencies so critical to the anti graft war, the incidences of corruption oozing directly from within the corridors of power. Not only have they caused the sack of a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, it has elicited, from no less a person than the First Lady, a very sharp rebuke of those in charge of the State House Clinic which has proved to be nothing but a sink hole, where with a budget in excess of N3 Billion, not even a single functioning x-ray machine is available. Nor can one fail to see the monstrosity of the country’s Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Abubakar Malami, going all the way to Dubai to discuss with Maina, a fugitive at law, albeit, loaded with billions of naira to play with, about how he would not only be surreptitiously brought back to the country, smuggled into the civil service and be paid millions in back salaries. With Malami’s three subsequent letters to the Public Service Commission, furiously asking, or rather, directing the commission to do all these, Maina got reabsorbed with his millions, even as honest Nigerian workers are committing suicide because of unpaid salaries. It will be interesting to see how Malami will prove to Nigerians that, like his predecessor Adoke, who he has taken to court, he too was not illegally compromised, to become Maina’s cheerleader and advocate.

    With these insidious happenings so close to the president, it has become obvious that for President Buhari’s anti-corruption war to succeed, it would need to be urgently fine tuned, which is where organisations like SERAP deserve commendation.  SERAP’s unrelenting effort in this regard has been abundantly enhanced by the duo of Akin Oyebode, a Professor of Jurisprudence and International law, and the human rights activist, per excellence, and member of the higher bar, Femi Falana SAN.

    I shall now proceed to indicate in what ways the president can meaningfully rejig the anti corruption war in an exercise which must begin from his immediate environment. Given that many of his top officials seem to be ego driven, he must move, first and foremost, to sanitise that circle. As things stand amongst them today, relations have become so soured that it would amount to a modern day wonder to see them work harmoniously to see the anti-corruption war succeed.  The president should, therefore, either determine the appointment of some of them, or at the very least, deploy some. It is far too obvious that any powerful person on corruption charges can easily leverage on their disagreement to frustrate his/her trial.

    Between them, Professor Oyebode and Femi Falana SAN, have made the following suggestions. For Falana, the president must first fight the root causes of corruption, as well as do everything possible to ensure that the citizenry buys into the programme. According to him, “the fight against corruption is in the streets and everyone has the locus standi to assist law enforcement agencies in the fight. Civil Society Organisations and Nigerians, he went on, must rise to the challenge and ensure that perpetrators of crime are brought to justice”. He also canvassed the activation of Nigeria’s laws which, according to him, are adequate as they currently stand, adding that whistle blowers must be well protected to encourage more people to come forward with reports of corrupt practices. For Professor Oyebode, “corruption has become a crime against humanity in the country”. “If drastic measures are not urgently put in place to contain it, he says, corruption might ultimately result in the mortality of Nigeria as a nation-state”. The citizenry, he added, must be mobilised against impunity, concluding, like Falana, that “mass action by the citizenry is urgently needed to put pressure on the authorities to end impunity for grand corruption.”

    Rounding up, it is my view that government must also appeal to the moral integrity of the traditional authorities, the church, the mosque, but much more importantly, the judiciary, if the Buhari anti corruption war is to have any chance of success.

  • PDP, the elephant in the room (Lest we forget)

    PDP, especially with one or two current APC leaders likely porting to join them, hoping thereby, to actualise their presidential illusions, would like us to forget where we are coming from.

    “Amazing loads and loads of stolen public funds in various currencies are being recovered and returned to government coffers. Thanks to the whistle- blower initiative, more and more disclosures about the hidden loots are being made to the relevant agencies. And unlike what obtained in the past, the big guns of society, hitherto untouchable, are being hauled to the law courts on account of fraudulent activities’ – Godwin Onyeacholem. 

    This is the second time I am having to quote Onyeacholem, first time being in the article: “What Does PDP Take Nigerians For?” (The Nation, 8 October, 2017). It is cited here today for its relevance to the topic.

    Towards its 9 December, 2017 convention, elements of the PDP from the south, jousting to emerge  chairman of the ‘ once upon a time’  political party,  are all out, traversing the country, campaigning for the lofty office . Many of them are feverishly reminding us about what a great party the PDP is,  and how, once back in power,  it would outperform President Muhammadu Buhari, and that is where they accept that Buhari is doing anything, at all, which is  rare. Their refrain, like that of their ‘village’ of nay- saying supporters, is that nothing is happening under the current government and that its promised change was nothing but a mere propagandist fluke. This obvious obfuscation is why it behoves us, as chroniclers of events, and history, especially given that we are a people of very short memory, to remind Nigerians of our recent history. This desideratum has become an urgency of now, indeed, something of a national emergency, since the PDP people are already  beginning to believe themselves; unexplainably waxing lyrical about what a great party they are, and what a fantastic government their ‘greatest rally in Africa’, ran during those better forgotten 16 years of the locust.

    While it would have suffice to merely list the mind boggling heists of that era,  calling special attention to the  escapades of two  of their most powerful and influential women who allegedly stole enough to  each own more than 50 properties spread  literally in all regions of the world, and preferring to, momentarily, forget the looted N2.1 billion arms money about which the former president is about being hauled to court as a witness, we would rather opt to press into service, the number two man in the Buhari administration, the respected Professor Yemi Osinbajo, to put into bold relief, where exactly the PDP, particularly during the six years of President Goodluck Jonathan, left our country. The Vice President was speaking at the recent Legislative Economic Summit, titled Legislative Framework for Economic Recovery and Sustainable Development.

    We would have to quote him at some length, indeed, throughout the piece.

    Declaring that Nigeria witnessed barefaced stealing, one that is unprecedented anywhere in the world and  a situation he alleged, caused the  economic recession Nigeria recently excited,  the Vice President  said that  between 2013 and 2015, with oil prices averaging about  $110 per barrel, and sometimes going as high as $150, the PDP government  still  contrived not only  to increase the national debt from N7.9B  to N12.1 trillion, it also shrank  external reserves from $45 billion to $28 billion as  at May 2015.  Under President Jonathan’s watch, he continued, there was a massive inflation of contract sums and other procurements which, he noted, made the cost of infrastructure necessary for development unaffordable, adding: “of course, we all know that there was very little, if any, investment in infrastructure and capital projects peaked at less than 11%”.

    We are not yet done with the Vice President who went further to say as follows: ”I don’t want to keep repeating some of the incredible things that happened a few weeks before the last elections: how large sums of money, first, a 100billion in cash, ostensibly for security, and then another $289million, also in cash, were paid out during the same period”. ”No country can survive that kind of unbridled waste and corruption. We must never forget that corruption is about the most outrageous cause of our economic decline. Aside barefaced stealing, he continued, the inflation of contracts and other procurements under that government ensured that the cost of infrastructure became absolu-tely unaffordable, explaining that if what we should have spent, building a 200km road ends up being spent on a 20 km road, there would be no way Nigeria can make progress but would, instead, run into an economic cul de sac, which indeed happened.

    Unfortunately, he went on: “In 2015, oil prices fell to as low as $28, at some point. But worse was that, in 2016 we lost almost a million barrels per day in oil production due to deliberate vandalisation and sabotage of oil facilities and pipelines. We thus lost about 60% of our revenues. We would yet have survived without going into a recession if we had savings. But we had debts, not savings. ”As economists would put it, we had no fiscal buffers to enable us employ a counter-cyclical approach. In other words, we lacked the savings to see us through the lean times”. These were the doings of a thoroughly rapacious party and government, now eager to have power back. God forbid.

    Why, he asked? Why did we have no savings, when so much money was being made? This is the elephant in the room”. And I wager, as you see from the title of the article, that PDP is that huge elephant.

    Let’s then hear Osinbajo on some elements of  the “change” which  the PDP people, and their supporters claim they can’t see, indicative, I suspect, of the fact  that some people obviously need to see their ophthalmologist. ”Today,” he explained, “we can say that despite the 60% or even more reduction in revenues from oil, we are bailing out the States and our capital expenditure  in 2016 alone was close to N1.3trillion, the highest ever in the Nigerian history. So with prudent management, h concluded, it is possible to do more with far less money”.

    I decided to quote the Vice President at length so nobody thinks the columnist is manufacturing stories since the opposition continues to characteristically deny things that are so self evident. Additionally, I did so to respond to those who dispute the otherwise obvious fact that President Jonathan it was, and certainly not his successor, who ran Nigeria into economic recession, a situation Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently described as a sinking hole.

    This timely alert to Nigerians is being sounded now, well ahead of PDP’s 9 December 2017 gathering when all manner of lies would be told to confuse Nigerians about who they really are, what a great party they have, and how they would give Nigerians “four square meals” daily, as if they were not in power for well over a decade.

    PDP, especially with one or two current APC leaders likely porting to join them, hoping thereby, to actualise their presidential illusions, would like us to forget where we are coming from. While their paid internet warriors would like to forever remind Nigerians of ‘grass gate’ and Mainagate, as if the latter was not originally their baby, mum would be word about their several scams, the last of them being the oil subsidy scam to which Nigeria lost trillions, most of which had since been traced  to the children of  two past PDP chairmen. They are, happily, already having their day in court, and long before the 2019 elections, many should be where exactly they belong.

    It could therefore not have surprised Nigerians when at their recent  special non elective national convention in Abuja, the Chairman of its Caretaker Committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, promised to “ give Nigerians money to save them from the unemployment, insecurity and hunger unleashed on them by the APC”, as if what a government does is share money. Never for them to come up with appropriate policies for anything, believing that all you have to do is throw money at problems. As indicated earlier on in this piece, when in 2019 they come offering to buy your votes, just know that money, being offered you, is your own looted money. But yet, throw it back at them and remind them that yes, that short memories Nigerians might have, but they had stolen far too much for you, the owners, not to know.  Tell them, without mincing words, that what the country needs is a consolidation of the ‘change’; the full achievement of which their unrestrained lootocracy during their stranglehold on the country, had hamstrung.

  • Prayer for Nigeria and a piece of advice for Nigerians

    If, in spite of all government at all levels are doing, insecurity still roams the land as it does, in its various manifestations, it is obvious we have to seek the face of  God to heal our land.

    On any given day, open to the CITY BEATS pages of any Nigerian newspaper to see how morally degraded Nigerians have become over time. Read these pages and discover that there is hardly any conceivable criminal act from which you can now safely claim Nigerians are innocent of.  We need not itemise them all out but you won’t go too far before you find several cases of rape, even incest, criminal breach of trust, murder etc.  So virulent, and Pan –Nigerian, has kidnapping become that in THE NIGERIAN KIDNAPPING CONUNDRUM (4 June, 2017) I wrote, inter alia:” … BREAKING:   Patrick Ugbe, a former commissioner for Information in Cross River state has been kidnapped at a burial ceremony. The kidnappers allegedly stormed the burial ceremony and threatened to kill everyone if the identity of the owner of a particular car was not made known.  It’s now over 40 days ( My God, now over a hundred days!) that Mr. Pade Ojoodide  has been held by kidnappers on his way back  from an official assignment in a country that has a government and laws.  Add to the above, the totally incredible kidnap of six students from Lagos State Model College, Igbonla,  in the Ikorodu area of the state.”

    “No, this is no attempt to trivialise security issues or mess up with the men and women who keep watch over us, most times exposing themselves to incredible risk. It is also not an attempt  to downplay how far they have  gone protecting our behind, but for Christ’s sake, when you read about the ubiquity of the kidnapper, whether in the North, East or  West  of our country and how he continues to be steps ahead of our security agencies, you will be hard put not to ask what our police men learn in those police colleges or  our military and the  men and women of our 61- year old navy in their various training  and retraining institutions,  as well as during their several training tours  overseas, gulping millions of dollars annually”.

    If, in spite of all government at all levels are doing, insecurity still roams the land as it does, in its various manifestations, it is obvious we have to seek the face of  God to heal our land. Whatever our faith, therefore, I urge us all, to pray this chain prayer by The Ven. Jide Iyiola, for our dear country, Nigeria:

    A PRAYER CHAIN FOR NIGERIA.

    Father, in the Mighty name of Jesus Christ I thank You. I thank You because all power belongs to You. Thank You because You always answer my prayers. I ask for forgiveness on behalf of our land and nation, Nigeria. Forgive us for we have not walked in your ways. I and our Leaders have wandered away from your laws.

    I repent for all wickedness, injustice, nepotism, tribalism, hatred, bloodshed, idolatry, and having not given You Your rightful place in our nation.

    Wherever we have exalted any idol before You, please forgive us, Lord.

    Father, have mercy. Remember mercy, O Lord. I contend for the destiny of country Nigeria, O Lord.

    You say, ask of Me for the nation of Nigeria.  Lord I ask for the land of Nigeria, starting from the North, South, East and West., Remember Your people oh Lord, those tossed about, oppressed and trampled upon by situations, hunger and thirst created by wicked men.

    O Lord, remember mercy and heal our land. Bring the latter rains, O Lord, I pray. Open the flood gates of heaven and let it rain on our perched land.

    I plead the blood of Jesus Christ over this land. Let that Blood that speaks better things than the blood of Abel speak peace in Nigeria. Raise leaders like king David, judges like Samuel that are after your own heart, O Lord. Give us leaders chosen by You and let them be vessels to bring this land back to the fear of You, O Lord. Let there be peace and love for one another. Let any power thirsting for the blood of any Nigerian be quenched by the blood of Jesus Christ. I cancel violence in Jesus mighty name. I declare your justice to reign over this land because you will not by any means discharge the guilty. I decree peace that comes with justice, prosperity that comes with your peace and all material and spiritual blessings upon this land.

    Reward trouble to those who trouble this land with wicked deeds. Judge without mercy those who defile our land with idols, who shed innocent blood without a cause.

    Let peace be upon Nigeria let peace be upon the four corners of this land where you have planted us. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour I pray.

    Amen.

    And, since prevention is better than cure, I would like us to read, and internalise, the lessons of this short story:

    “‘At the point of death, a man, Tom Smith, called his children and advised them to follow his footsteps so that they can have peace of mind in all that they do..

    His daughter, Sara, said, “Daddy, it’s unfortunate you are dying without a penny in your bank.

    Other fathers’ that you tag as being corrupt, thieves of public funds, left houses and properties for their children; even this house we live in is a rented apartment..

    Sorry, I can’t emulate you, just go, let’s chart our own course.

    Few moments later, their father gave up the spirit.

    Three years later, Sara went for an interview in a multinational company.

    At interview the Chairman of the committee asked,”Which Smith are you?”

    Sara replied, “I am Sara Smith. My Dad Tom Smith is now late.”

    Chairman cuts in,”O my God, you are Tom Smith’s daughter?”

    He turned to other members and said, “This Smith was the one who signed my membership form into the Institute of Administrators and his recommendation earned me where I am today. He did all these free. I didn’t even know his address, he never knew me. He just did it for me.”

    He turned to Sara, “I have no questions for you, consider yourself as having gotten this job, come tomorrow, your letter will be waiting for you.”

    Sara Smith became the Corporate Affairs Manager of the company with two cars with drivers, a duplex attached to the office, and a salary of £1,000,000 per month excluding allowances.

    After two years in the company, the Managing Director came from the U.S to announce his intention to resign and needed a replacement. A personality with high integrity was sought after, and the company’s consultant nominated Sara Smith.

    In an interview, she was asked the secret of her success.

    With tears, she replied, “My father paved these ways for me. It was after he died that I knew that though he was financially poor, he was strikingly rich in integrity, discipline and honesty.”

    She was asked again, why she is weeping, and she replied: “At the point of death, I insulted my dad for being an honest man of integrity. I hope he will forgive me in his grave now. I didn’t work for all these; he did it for me to just walk in”.

    Finally she was asked, “Will you follow in your father’s footsteps, as he requested?”

    And her simple answer was, “l now adore my father, I have a big picture of him in my living room and at the entrance to my house. He deserves whatever I have, after God”.

    Are you like Tom Smith?

    It pays to build a name, the reward doesn’t come quickly, but it will come however long it may take, and it lasts longer.

    Integrity, discipline, self control and fear of God makes a man wealthy, not the fat bank account.

    Leave a good heritage for your children.”

    As I pleaded earlier, have we Nigerians acted like the Tom Smith of this story, our country would not be what it is today. And there would have been no finger pointing, name calling and all those abusing those old enough to be their father would have given their lives to doing better things. It certainly is not too late for you and I to change for the better. Nigeria, posterity, even God, will remember us for good. Beat a retreat, today, from all evil.