The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Nigerian parents beware

    What we see in some homes, even churches and mosques, and finally in society, point to nothing but the dreaded end time sodomy

    My article: Seriously Thinking – Nigeria and Religion of 6 August, 2017 was so well received I believe Nigerian parents should benefit from the following piece which revolves around private universities to which they send their children and wards at great cost. The worst mistake any parent can make is to say, no, my daughter cannot do this. Satan, by its own confession, is “going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” (Job 1:7), and peer pressure can be very strong. I therefore urge a sober reading of the piece, though apocryphal, it may very well be. Slightly edited for our purpose, this being a family paper, it is signed off as indicated at the end. After all, if the exertions of newspaper columnists go to nothing for our politicians, segments of our society should, once in a while, find them useful.

    … It was a pool party.

    And they were there.

    Men who have achieved.

    Money, power and fame.

    Men in their prime, who tell time to hold still since they have refused to age, and it grudgingly obeys.

    They dress young, they dance young, and act young.

    They are current on all fronts.

    Most of them parents themselves but mentally and emotionally single.

    At this party which they threw in a high brow residence in an exclusive part of Ikoyi there was an abundance of food, drinks, drugs and real youth.

    Girls in their late teens and early twenties.

    Well spoken and extensively travelled.

    Daughters of the very rich.

    All of them students.

    All of them wearing nothing.

    Some were in the swimming pool, some at the bar, some danced under the cabana, others were hobnobbing with the men, all in swimming trunks clad men at the specially lit pool area that stood under the starry night sky.

    And I sat with one of them.

    She was caramel smooth, finely contoured, delicately featured and doll like.

    She was twenty going on twenty-one.

    And a sophomore at?  university.

    To every question I asked, she took a drag from the reefer in her hand, blow out the smoke through her mouth and nostrils, took a sip from her glass of Hennessey and coke on ice before she responded.

    Her voice was sweet.

    And her smile, rapturous.

    “I heard students need permission to leave your school. How could you get out this late and stay overnight?”

    “We have our ways.”

    “We?”

    “Yeah all of us.”

    “From? University ?”

    “Not all. Some from Covenant, Redeemers, Madonna, ABUAD, Pan African, etc.”

    “No UNILAG or UI?”

    “They ain’t boujee.”

    “Boujee?”

    “Yeah. They are crass. Men like you guys don’t want to roll with local cats like those, right?”

    I looked at her silently as she took a drag from her reef.

    The aroma assailed it. It was caustic yet not aggravating.

    “What’s that?”

    “Comorado.”

    “What’s that?”

    She laughed.

    “It’s good stuff. Hits you slowly and then makes you soar like superman.”

    I looked around and saw the girls doing one thing or another in their nudity.

    She was staring at me.

    “Is this your first party?”

    I nodded.

    “No wonder you are asking all these hang questions.”

    “Why do you do this?”

    “I’m young. I need to live life before it becomes too serious and I have to be all grown up.”

    “But why the drugs?”

    “Because.”

    “Because what?”

    “Because this is how we roll. Everyone has their poison. If you not on reef, you do codeine or cocaine or heroin or speed or AZT or ecstasy or royfenol or fentanyl or meth or oxy or worst case you inhale glue and get your high.”

    I stared at her as she inhaled and exhaled languidly.

    “Why the parties?”

    “You get your hit for free here. You have fun. You make good money.”

    “But for you to attend those schools you must be rich.”

    “My parents are not me.”

    “But they give you money.”

    “They pay the tuition and all. Not like they can give me a million in cash.”

    “Do you get a million here?”

    “Well two or three parties can make me that.”

    “Aren’t you afraid of running into your Dad at places like this?”

    “Naaaa… my dad is too square and busy but even if he is not then it is his problem after all he came here for what I came here for, so he can’t tell me nothing.”

    I fell silent and watched her inhale and exhale smoke.

    “But you know, your folks put you in schools like that to protect you?”

    “To protect me?”

    “Yes.”

    “They are too busy to even bother.”

    “No they are not.”

    “Yes they are. They think the school will be both my teachers and my parents.”

    “I think they are just worried about you getting corrupted.”

    “I was balling like this under their nose and they didn’t even notice. Funny thing is that even the innocent Jane gets influenced in school, so what was the use of all the headache of keeping us locked up in all these secondary schools that front as universities.

    “They did it out of love and with the belief that those schools are way better than the public ones.

    “Well they fucked up.”

    “Fucked up?”

    “Is this an interview or what?”

    “No I am just intrigued.”

    “And I am horny.”

    I fell silent.

    She dragged, exhaled, took a drink from her glass, sucked on one of the ice cubes in her mouth and asked in a whisper.

    “Are you going to do anything about it?”

    Jude Idada Copied.

    Below are a few comments on the forum from which I first saw the piece.

    Kunle, a business consultant, quipped: Again we are seeing the effects of failed parenting! Parents are the first teachers, trainers, mentors and the all-time mind builders. These girls did not get to all these in a dash. What we see in some homes, even churches and mosques, and finally in society, point to nothing but the dreaded end time sodomy.

    And Goke, a widely travelled geologist, wrote: I am speechless!  Speechless that it is confirmed to be a culture of many of our children in these private and restricted colleges.

    I am not particularly surprised as about two years ago I ran into some students (male and female, in their late teens and early 20) from a popular university at the poolside of a popular hotel in town and I couldn’t but turn up a parent’s instinct. I called them up from the pool side as they were rowdy, licentious, and appeared to be high on something. They were openly smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor like there would be no tomorrow. I gave them a lecture on the need for decorum in public places and the need to be less adventurous on the road to perdition. I honestly thought we were up to something with my ‘sermon’ until one of them asked me to buy them more drinks and cigarettes, a request which they all endorsed.

     I was aghast and sad.

     The reader will be free to make, his or her pick of the above. But let us conclude this homily by this sobering thought, offered by another commentator.

    “The government, parents, the legal institutions, the educational system, the faith-based organisations and public morality have all failed. In this kind of situation there cannot be a snow-white family apron. Even when you have a gracious parentage, the offspring surely will be influenced by peer groups and the decadence of human existentialism, which is the lot of Nigeria today. When you have extremely bad governance, at all levels, the negative impact creates the osmosis that sinks into the fabric of the entire filthy edifice of our nation. Bob Marley had wondered why we were building universities only to produce thieves and murderers. What, for instance, has government done to extirpate the violent cultism in our institutions of higher learning? Absolutely nothing!!! If you want to have a feel of how many miles Nigeria has been walking backwards, just pay a visit to the primary school you attended.”

     

  • What does PDP take Nigerians for: A colony of loonies?

    If in 15 years this debauched party generated less than 4000 megawatts, what magic was Buhari expected to perform in two?

    “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 regularly being hauled to the law courts on account of fraudulent activities’ – Godwin Onyeacholem.

    THE Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word loony as crazy, foolish and I think that is precisely what the PDP mandarins think of Nigerians seeing they have neither stopped their  jollification nor the  backslapping since the Supreme Court, not unexpectedly, ruled in favour of the Senator Makarfi  group of the party. We saw this childlike display again this past week as they gathered to inaugurate the Special Non-Elective National Convention Committee. While  its  Chairman, Delta state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, was civil and moderate, declaring  that “the party has NOW embraced good governance anchored on ACCOUNTABILITY (God be praised), not so the perennially loquacious Femi Fani Kayode who  contumaciously declared  PDP winner of an election not  due until  2019 as if it is big grammar that wins elections and ‘change the change’ is a Deus ex machina.

    Given the way they so recklessly raped the country, Nigerians know,  without being told, that PDP thinks nothing of  them, their welfare or their future. We could all go jump in the Atlantic ocean. They know we have very short memory; a people they have so pauperised we are only waiting for handouts, at polling centres to vote them. And they can be quite generous at that point, offering us a  princely N2-5000 for our vote. Not that they were ever voted in by Nigerians  having, election after election, successfully deployed the selectorate, in a manner so callous, former President Yar Adua had to personally disavow of the election that saw him to office. They are sure we have all forgotten what hole they dug this country into, so deep, recession was the outcome. But there have not been a letdown on the man whose unhappy responsibility it has been to dig the country out of that hole. They even once claimed that he was dead, simply because, like any other human being, the man, 74 year old President Muhammadu Buhari, fell sick. Having stockpiled tonnes and  tonnes of money, they assume we could forget their 16-year stranglehold on the country, complete with all its dire consequences.

    Granted  that  all manner of accusations had been leveled at the APC government which, truth be told, has not been stellar in its overall performance, and  conceding,  but not agreeing with the sometime, banal  accusations, do they in their heart of hearts, really believe that  even a Buhari outright failure would compare with  their indescribable villainy of a decade and a half?

    Let us recap PDP’s archetypical critique of President Buhari’s government. Their cheer leaders, being mostly disrespectful, I would rather just take one example from the loudest PDP megaphones, a pastor to boot, to represent them all. That way, we will also save time and space. Writing on the first year anniversary of the Buhari government, the iconoclastic Femi Aribisala wrote: “Now it is not just 100 wasted days, it is 365. It is one full year and there is no difference, except that things have gone terribly wrong. I repeat: Nigerians have never had it so bad. No light, no petrol, no economic policy, no government. Just vain platitudes”. I must thank him for these crisp categorisations because they make my job of analysing PDP’s years of the locust very easy except that I would be adding those things he was probably too ashamed to include, given their extremely poor performance on the two, namely: anti-corruption and road infrastructure.

    Long before Buhari became President, PDP has so ruined Nigeria that  John Campbell, a former U.S Ambassador to Nigeria could not help writing as follows: Nigeria, onetime giant of Africa, rich in both human and natural resources, has in the past decades or so descended into ‘praetorian ism’ – control of society by force or fraud, especially by a venal and corrupt people citing, as its components: endemic corruption, maladministration, election malpractices …” That was after he has pungently observed that: “In 1960, when the British abruptly brought Nigeria to independence, its social and economic development was comparable to that of Taiwan or Malaysia. Now following generations of bad governance and an economy distorted by oil, Nigeria is near the bottom of most human development indices with sixty-nine percent of the population living on less than $1 a day”. So I only laugh at them when, in their jeremiads, they write as if  a patriot of President Buhari’s standing, a full general of the Nigerian army and former Head of state,  it was who brought Nigeria to its lowest ebb whereas, as that U. K Judge described one of these predators, Nigerians have been dealing all these while with rogues in state houses and in other high places.

    All those things cited by Campbell must be hung squarely on the PDP. When Aribisala criticised Buhari on power, he  merely feigned ignorance of the fact that it was PDP that turned electricity into a huge sinking hole. In a report  this past week by SERAP, PDP  under Presidents Obasanjo, Yar Adua and Jonathan, allegedly squandered  over N11 trillion on the pretence of providing regular electricity for Nigerians. If in 15 years this debauched party generated less than 4000 megawatts, what magic did they expect Buhari to perform in two?  The result was that with their multi-faceted corruption in that sector, they crippled both industrialisations, thereby worsening the unemployment problem in Nigeria. Whereas, in their entire 15 years in power, we were importing petrol despite Nigeria being an oil producing country, simply owing to their corruption as exemplified by the trillion naira oil subsidy scam in which two of the sons of the former party chairmen were implicated. It is worthy of mention that Buhari’s first challenge in office arose over the strike by oil marketers over a backlog of unpaid debts running into several billions. On road infrastructure, I could not but pity my compatriots from both the Southeast and the South South who continue to remain loyal to the party even with hardly anything to show for it. The East-West Road remained a chimera throughout the Jonathan years, just as he did nothing about the Second Niger bridge. I was completely speechless, this past week,  watching commuters on the Calabar- Odukpani Road on television. Need we be telling these people who should have fixed those roads, 4 or 5 years ago?

    Also, the fact that the IMF  has confirmed that Nigeria would, before year end, transit into positive growth, out of an economy the PDP stole into recession, is proof positive that the Buhari administration has a viable economic policy and roadmap as was also confirmed by the dramatic improvement of the naira in the forex market.  For a certainty had President Jonathan been re-elected, Nigeria would have since gone under. His government was already borrowing in billions to pay salaries even before the Presidential election which Diezani allegedly shelled out millions of dollars to rig. Between 1999 and 2011, PDP rigged elections so badly each election was worse than its predecessor. On corruption, rather than dwell on the likes of Dasukigate which turned the Boko Haram menace into an incubus over which President Buhari is now spending billions upon billions of naira,  my approach will again be  to just take one single example. And that will be President Jonathan’s Petroleum minister, who we read in the papers recently stole enough to have built six world class airports. And she obviously could not have been stealing for herself alone. It will make me giddy detailing the things she allegedly bought with stolen funds but concerning her,  I would advise Nigerians to watch out for the about to be released drama from the U.K. If after  all the above Nigerians, in their collective un-wisdom, still choose to elect a PDP President come 2019, I would simply conclude that, of a fact, Nigerians are worse than loonies.

    God forbid.

  • Seriously thinking: Nigeria and religion

    This is because religion does not develop a nation. It is righteousness (in being & doing) that exalts a nation

    WhatsApp Messenger is a freeware and cross-platform instant messaging service for smart phones. It uses the Internet to make voice calls, one to one video calls; send text messages, images, GIF, videos, documents, user location, audio files, phone contacts and voice notes[11][12] to other users using standard cellular mobile numbers. All data are end-to-end encrypted. It also incorporates a feature called Status, which allows users to upload photos and videos to a 24-hours-lifetime feed that, by default, are visible to all contacts, similar to Snap chat, Facebook and Instagram Stories. The client was created by WhatsApp Inc., based in Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. By February 2016, WhatsApp had a user base of over one billion,[15][16] making it the most popular messaging application at the time. – WIKIPEDIA (The free encyclopedia)

    Huge, indeed, humongous should be the word to describe Whatsapp. However, if others have my disposition to it, Facebook would not have had a ghost of a chance, acquiring it in February 2014, as Whatsapp Inc. would long have folded up. As you read this, and God is my witness, I have an alert on my phone saying I have 5403 messages from 86 chats.  I just hate opening the Whatsapp icon on my phone: what with old, recycled, absolutely irrelevant stories being flung at you from sources, known and unknown. It is worse when, like me, you have your telephone number in the public space like most newspaper columnists. Unfortunately, this attitude comes with a price, like when I railed at my dear aburo, Hon Bimbo Daramola, when this past week I had started accusing him for failing to invite me to his Daddy’s (Papa F.A Daramola) 90th birthday ceremonies, even when I have not heard a word of what he was calling me for. He had to send a screenshot of his Whatsapp message to me dated 18, April 2017. Humbled, I apologised, explaining I was offended because, long before him, we had been Papa’s children, our most affable and extremely loving Arts teacher, Sports Master, and much more, at the prestigious Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti in the 60’s. Equally, my 59/63 set has very kindly forgiven my taciturnity in getting actively engaged on our Whatsapp chat forum, and are content with reading my weekly column article which I, unerringly, forward for their reading pleasure.

    This past week, however, on one of my rare visits I chanced upon the message below which I think deserves to be published for the great lessons it is capable of teaching all of us, Nigerians. It should be particularly helpful for the Nigerian youth. I apologise to the many who must have long seen it and remain confident that repeating it will not diminish anything from its usefulness to us as a country.

    It is edited for the column. Happy reading.

    Recently, I met a top real estate agent who facilitated the purchase of one of the biggest warehouses in Lagos for a mouth-watering amount by a popular Lagos church.  What intrigued me was his assertion that more than half of the warehouses in Lagos (meant for industrial purposes) have been taken over by churches. Someone, somewhere also asserted that out of every five Nigerian Christians, two are pastors, while one out of the remaining three is ‘sensing’ the calling to ministry and the other two are seeking for miracles from the first two. I dare say this is not revival! This is unarguably the product of lack of employment. Or what manner of revival comes along with increased rate of crime, infrastructural decay, business failures and tribal and religious conflicts as in Nigeria, today? Every historic revival reduced crime and boosted social bonding and development in the society since Jesus’ (kind of life) would have taken over most peoples’ lives,  including those of  the criminals, and leaders in those societies. How? Simply because Jesus life births vision, quest for positive influence, and societal contribution in people and this way, more jobs are created, unemployment, tribal conflicts drop and crime rate reduces.

    I dare say that the fact that every Tom, Dick and Harry is jumping into religious ministry in Nigeria should give us huge concern; not celebration. This is because religion does not develop a nation. It is righteousness (in being & doing) that exalts a nation. In the next 20 years, at the rate we are going, Nigerian may not have 1 doctor to 50,000 people but will have 50,000 pastors to 1 person. This can also translate to the ugly truth that expatriates will take over our labour market while young Nigerians will be jumping from pulpit to pulpit across Africa, looking for where to pastor or who to ‘prophesy’ to, with the expectation of ‘prophet’s seed offering’, in return. Lest I be misunderstood, I am an unrepentant believer in the pastoral and prophetic ministry as I actually ‘sensed’ the calling myself years back, but I became awake to the fact that my ministry is not of the pulpit but rather of the marketplace, contributing to societal development through my calling: inspired creativity and innovation.

    Fellow Nigerians, we need to teach our young people that they can fulfil ministry while coding in a technological laboratory. We need to teach this generation that pursuing ministry should not stop them from pursuing a university degree, trade or profession. We need to ‘de-religionise’ the mind of the average Nigerian youth; and we need to do this speedily before we get to the point of justifying the conversion of hospitals to cathedrals, factories to prayer camps, and colleges to prayer houses. We must teach this generation that God gave us knees to pray and hands to work, mouth to preach and brain to create – not knees without hands, or mouth without brains. We must hasten to remind this generation that we can still be apostles and still maintain a productive professional career. Apostle Paul is our witness. If we get carried away with how our 10 year old is preaching, while his Chinese/Indian age mates are building a robot, we might end up being re-colonized by the Chinese or Indians in the nearest future.

    It is true Jesus charged us to occupy until HE comes. Those who heard Him first hand (the disciples) never asked: occupy what, how, why and where? – possibly why many Christians assume that it is all about occupying the church building or pulpit. May we be that peculiar generation, the royal priesthood and holy nation that will ask these questions. Amen. Religiosity should no longer drain our brain, it should train our brain. The blood of Jesus didn’t wash our brains, it washed our sins. What washes human brain is the right information. If we, as a nation, don’t want to be conformed to this world (systems and values that cause poverty, crime, bad economy, infrastructural decay, bad leadership, etc,  as they pervade Africa) but be transformed  (cross over to the other side of being informed); we  will have to consistently review our mind (our beliefs & thinking ) that  prioritises miracles over responsibilities, forgetting that manna (representing miracles) in the wilderness, was just a temporary solution to the Israelites’ unbelief and inability  to take responsibility for their upkeep. That is why the manna came not from heaven, but from the earthly atmosphere. What later came from heaven is the word of God (His thinking pattern and systems) which turned flesh (Jesus) and dwelt amongst men. Africa (especially Nigeria), is past her manna dispensation. God is no longer in the business of only offering temporary solution and, obviously, not in the business of raising irresponsible children that are prayer warriors but thinking only of character horrors. Manna in the desert is over and done with and Israelites have turned a desert into one of the richest, and most fertile points on earth. He can miraculously heal your diabetes or hypertension if He needs to help your unbelief but He also expects you to sustain ably change your lifestyle, thereafter. He can miraculously give you your dream job to show you His love, but he expects you to work on your mind and behaviour, for high performance on that job so that you can sustain it. God can miraculously save you from that road accident, but He expects you to, thereafter, take your car maintenance, and speed checks, seriously. Nigeria shall be great again, but only when we Nigerians rise up from religiosity to do those things that can make us great again. God bless Nigeria! We are unstoppable!

  • Constitutional amendment: an absolutely self-serving national assembly

    The members are so arrogant, and self- serving they will not be bothered whatever happens to this country

    “Any action whether legislative or executive in this country today that is not programmed to respond to the yearnings of the populace will amount to excise in futility”. – Ohanaeze Ndi-Igbo

    Should the National Assembly ever have its way with these convoluted constitutional amendments, Nigeria will be guaranteed to make no headway, whatever, this entire century. The members are so arrogant, and self- serving they will not be bothered whatever happens to this country. They showed this total disdain for Nigeria’s well-being the way they egregiously shut out devolution of power to states which a responsible National Assembly should have realised is the most assured way to stem the mushrooming fissiparous tendencies tearing at the very heart of the nation. And were they perspicacious enough, they should have known that it was disingenuous to base the approval of local government autonomy on the laughable excuse of fighting executive- induced corruption at that level for, were that to be true, there should have been no justification for having a national assembly which has turned oversight functions to an avenue for corruption, harassing and intimidating heads of federal agencies, abusing the service wide portion of the national budget.

    While I appreciate, on average, their intellectual limitations, I make bold to say that they need not be a professor of law,  like Akin Oyebode, to know that all these self-serving amendments are an exercise in futility. It is only a truly peoples’ constitution that can get Nigeria back from its present perilous road to Golgotha. Why should these people need be told that Nigeria is at the precipice, on the brink? Where is their love of country as opposed to self-love? IPOB, and several other groups are on the prowl, strenuously challenging the country’s very existence, yet what gnaws at them is having immunity, being members of the Council of State and subordinating the country’s president to themselves in constitutional matters. Are they so remiss they don’t know that the federating units in this country are two: federal and state? So from where did they manufacture autonomy for local governments? If INEC could hardly make a success of conducting national elections, is it reasonable to inflict local government elections on it?  How does this completely inane amendment accord with federalism and in which civilised country of the world is this the norm? If the idea is to stop state governors from tampering with local government funds, who will protect Nigerians from these rapacious legislators whose humongous quarterly allowances owe nothing to the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission?

    Since they hardly read, let us now invite Uncle Bola Ige, unarguably one of Nigeria’s most sagacious politicians ever, to put them through a learning curve. Writing in his Tribune column of 27 April, 1996, he said, inter alia:”In a federal set-up, the federal government must have nothing to do with the creation or running of local government. Nigeria is the only federation in the whole world where the federal government decides how, where, and when a local government council must run. In all civilised countries, and in all democratic countries, it is the state or provincial or regional government that legislates on local government”. Writing further, he said: “Unfortunately, the Murtala-Obasanjo federal military government began the nonsense that has remained with us ever since when it set  up the Ibrahim Dasuki  commission whose recommendation is the worst disaster to happen to local government system in Nigeria because it was there that the idea of uniformity in size, scope and administration was introduced.”

    Of course, the perspicacious legal guru naturally suspected a hidden agenda which was to “strengthen the administrative stranglehold” of the north over the whole of Nigeria.

    Without a doubt, that same northern agenda is in play in this local government autonomy affair. It is, in fact, as I will show below, now more urgent than ever before, in this era of grazing land seeking, murderous Fulani herdsmen.

    I shall now proceed to a write up, which I did not author, but shared on my Face book wall during the past week. The author wrote as follows, mutatis mutandis, on the topic: LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY, ABROGATION OF  STATE INDEPENDENT ELECTORAL COMMISSION [SIEC] AND WHY  FEDERAL GOVERNMENT  MUST RELINQUISH RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENT CREATION:

    We are all aware of the efforts to make local governments autonomous. We are told it is to curb ‘corruption and ensure development at the grassroots” because state governments do not allow their fund to reach them, thereby stagnating growth at that level. There is also a strong move to abrogate State Independent Electoral Commission [SIEC]. Local Government autonomy sounds very noble, reflecting the mindset of a government concerned about reducing corruption and encouraging development. Let us now analyse its hidden objectives to see if truly, it should be supported. Firstly the federal government has the sole responsibility for creating local governments which has been more in favour of the north. To be deemed an indigene of a state, one’s local government must formally confirm your status based on established guidelines. Thirdly, the State Independent Electoral Commission is responsible for local government elections in line with the concept of federalism. Therefore, before you can contest an election, your status as an indigene must be confirmed by your local government

    IMPACT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY

    What will then happen once local government autonomy is achieved, together with the abrogation of SIEC, taking the following into consideration?

    Immediately it is assented to, federalism as we know, it ceases to exist and Nigeria, in effect, becomes a unitary state, with 774 local governments and 36 state governments on the same level. We will then end up with 36 governors and 774 local government chairmen, all running to Abuja to receive money, thus rendering state governors irrelevant in a state  which they were elected to govern.

    Since the federal government has sole authority to create local governments, let us imagine a situation where it decides to create local governments in Lagos State. If Hausas in Obalende or Agege are inspired, by federal forces, to begin an agitation for whatever reasons or Agege is to be broken into two local governments, with the federal INEC now conducting the election, Hausas are guaranteed to get a distinct local government in Agege where they are an obvious minority.

    1. It is then a small step for Hausas in Agege, or Igbos in Festac, to become ‘indigenes’ of Lagos State, and can contest for governorship.

    Meanwhile, that will never happen in Kano or Enugu.

    1. Before we know it, a bye-law can be passed whereby the new local government becomes Sharia compliant, in an LG area where Muslims are in the minority.
    2. They can then legislate to have an Emir or Eze as the ‘numero uno’ traditional authority in the local government.
    3. They will now be able to receive funds directly to fund their activities, whatever activities, in other peoples’ states.
    4. The local governments could then become a staging post for their next moves right within states belonging to others.
    5. This can and will happen in all southern states but never in the north as they will kill and chase out ‘strangers’. Some Igbos are even refusing a Pope – appointed Igbo bishop, for not coming from their ethnic domain.

    The most dangerous scenario will be where the federal government desires to have an objective which the state government objects to for religious or cultural reasons or on  principles of federalism, the federal government can easily rely on the  local government chairmen in the states get to have it done since “he who pays the piper dictates the tune.”

    Ability to protect our traditional institutions, land, religion, or rights to indigene-ship in our states would have been summarily abrogated.

    As Nigerians know only too well, the North has severally attempted to secure access to land in areas very far away from their homestead and have tried to  use  even the National Assembly to pass a grazing law, all of which failed. The least said about Islamisation, about which some elders recently warned, the better.

    All these will now become a fait accompli and the road to dipping the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean would have become an expressway.

    This move looks brilliant in its simplicity and attraction but it is a northern ploy, eventuated by the northern majority in the National Assembly, to subjugate other parts of the country.

    Unfortunately, Southern and North Central legislators cannot see through the subterfuge.

  • When the grim reaper tore into the Nigerian academia

    I have in mind here, Professors Enitan Bababunmi, Tunde Osotimehin and Abiola Irele, not forgetting my good friend, Dr Femi Adebanjo

    Barring the solemnity of today’s topic, and my having indicated publicly, elsewhere, that it would be the column’s menu today, I should have been writing about the Peoples’ Democratic Party.  It is a great surprise, and pity too, that the party has, rather unreflectingly, permitted itself to be seized by an un-explainable joy, arising they claim, from the Supreme Court judgment which, for me, is more of an elixir to the entire Nigerian political system than to the PDP as it neatly exorcised from the system, an unmistakable rabble rouser who has been nothing more than a political nuisance.  Senator Modu Sheriff’s not exactly gentlemanly parting from the APC, not to mention his alleged, though yet unproven, links to Boko Haram, ought to have warned any serious political party off him. But then, even former President Goodluck Jonathan thought nothing of having him on his entourage to a neighbouring country in his then half hearted effort to rein in Boko Haram.

    But that is even by the way. Were PDP leaders reflective enough, they would have engaged in far less back slapping and there obviously would have been no reason, whatever, to head to any ecumenical centre for any so-called thanksgiving.  Was it that  they did not see, at  about that same time,  the  putrid expose on Diezani, their once upon a time poster girl, showing  how, in cahoots with her oil gang, Nigeria  was fleeced  of over  6 Billion dollars? I was speechless reading former President Jonathan exude about those he claimed telephoned to congratulate him.  Was he too unaware of that devastating testimonial to his administration?  If the answer is yes, then he should go read the article:  “Kola Aluko …His Style, Mansions and More” in The Nation of Monday, July 17.  He should afterwards be able to answer the most popular question in Nigeria today, namely: Is President Jonathan complicit or was he sleeping on duty?

    I digress.

    In the preamble to last week article while posting it on my Face book wall, I wrote as follows:

    WHEN THE GRIM REAPER TORE INTO THE NIGERIAN ACADEMIA.

    “These, indeed, are very sad days, days when some of our best and brightest academics, who I was privileged to have come across during my memorable tour of duty at the universities of Ife, Ibadan and Ilorin, men who not only proved themselves within the Nigerian academia but were, indeed, revered internationally, in very quick and depressing rapidity, translated to higher glory, joining the Saints Triumphant.

    I have in mind here, Professors Enitan Bababunmi, Tunde Osotimehin and Abiola Irele, not forgetting my good friend, Dr Femi Adebanjo, all of who I should have been celebrating here today had I not promised a feedback on the recent article on Afenifere. These were men who glamorised our universities at a time when rampart militarism ruled the roust in Nigeria and when General Ibrahim Babangida missed the historic opportunity to leverage on his personal charm and charisma, to positively impact the course of Nigerian history.

    Notwithstanding the near bestiality of the anti-intellectual wing of the Nigerian military on the university system then, the ‘70s and the ‘80s must, without a scintilla of doubt, reckon as the golden age of tertiary education in Nigeria; a time, and this is no curse,  that can hardly ever be re-invented in the Nigerian university system, ever again. That was when, God be praised, I was privileged to have been linked with the three universities mentioned above. Sans Ife, my alma mata, I was lucky to have been specially invited to join the other two, right from their topmost echelon.

    The well deserved encomium already showered on Professor Abiola Irele  by Professors Ojo-Ade and Biodun Jeyifo can only be mildly improved upon as was beautifully done by the deceased’s  family  which, in an obituary advert this past week, aptly  described the erudite professor as a “Renaissance Man and cosmopolitan scholar”. Professor Irele was literally the non pareil: a cosmopolitan scholar, suave, and with a unique dress sense, mostly in his French safari’s. They are no longer made like that.

    Diligently studious, rather self-effacing and permanently simply, but very well dressed, Tunde Osotimehin was always rooted to his Chemical Pathology laboratory which he shared with another of our  friends, Yinka Sogbesan, P.HD,  both of who were then  graduate students with the delectable Professor Osunkoya as Head of Department. That was at the UCH where the Faculty of Medicine was located with almost as many rarefied professors as you would find at the university’s main campus – a thoroughly engaging, and stimulating environment. I can remember now, he never stopped admiring, but teasing me on my telltale, tall chubby checker boots.

    Femi Adebanjo, I still can’t believe has left us. With the likes of Professors Femi Otubanjo, Bright Aishiku, late Dr Kola Alli and a few other friends, it will be extremely difficult to recapture the gregarious life we lived at Ife. Dainty, also ever nattily dressed, and with an unmatchable gift of the garb, Femi was simply winsome. He would very easily have outfoxed Michael Jackson at his own dance steps. Femi was as sociable as he was brilliant and years after he had quit lecturing, he still radiated around him, an unmistakable intellectual aura.

    For the second time, I felt extremely miserable recently missing out on the obsequies of a close friend and egbon. The first was that of the Ven Ibukun Falope (UP SCHOOL!) a few years ago, and now some three weeks ago, that of egbon (Prof) Enitan Abisogun Bababunmi, a quintessential gentleman, if ever there was one. It pains, even now because Tinu and I had called and promised Abox that we would be joining the family to pay our last respects. On both occasions, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway was the culprit.  First time, it was a no go area a result of the then permanent gridlock on the road. I had, therefore, headed towards Ota en route Ibadan via Abeokuta but even on that other road, nobody needed tell me to turn back when after two hours I had not left Ota. Remember that never, never bridge that inspired some political fisticuffs a little later? Yes, that was the turning point. This time around, it rained all night and continued in the morning and since I knew that the express road would have become an ‘ocean’, I just sat back, moaning.

    I met Professor Bababunmi at the Ibadan Faculty of Medicine and he just took to liking me. A very respected faculty member and protégé of the very powerful Professor Olumbe Bassir, we would become much closer in Lagos after he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Lagos State University. Before his appointment, I had been quite close to the university being a regular visitor to Yomi Lawanson (Great!), Professor and inaugural dean of Science at the university, and I could literally write a book on the politics within the university. Professor Bababunmi marvelled when I ‘lectured’ him during my first visit to his office. He left for the U.S soon after his tenure, designated as a Permanent Resident – a U. S Recognised Alien of Extraordinary ability, 3203 (B) (1) (A) INA.

    Founder & President of ENHICA-Research International, Inc, he focused largely on mitochondrial bioenergetics and calcium uptake, cancer and toxicological studies among other medical issues and contributed to the work of International Programmes on Chemical Safety and the World Health Organisation. His magnum opus must, however, be his U.S approved Patent  on EPIGENETIC TECHNOLOGIES for the treatment of  human diseases – HIV and AIDS,  Cancer, Prostrate, Heart Failure etc. Nothing would have interested him more than having Lagos state – his state –  buy into, and maximize the benefits of this Patent and for this purpose he held many meetings with the state’s relevant officials which were all futile. I partnered with him in trying to market it, even writing to a present member of the President Buhari cabinet, suggesting what innovation this would mean for both government and country. Good news, however, was he told me at our last meeting in 2016,that test runs were already being carried out at the UCH, Ibadan.

    May the beautiful souls of these our wonderful compatriots rest in perfect peace.

  • Reactions to:  Contemporary Afenifere in a moment of dire national strife

    Not a word was heard from our elders

    At the last count, there were over 80 reactions to the above article which appeared on these pages on Sunday 25 June, 2017. In the article, I  had critiqued Afenifere’s call on southerners living in the North  to  quit and move Southwards in solidarity with  Kanu’s  IPOB on the grounds  that while Kanu’s  demand might be considered an appropriate reaction to the northern youths call on Igbos living in the North to leave before 1 October, it was totally unbecoming of elders,  not only to encourage such massive national dislocation, but to egregiously include non-Igbos  who were  not included  in the atrocious northern youths  call. Reactions were mostly critical of the elders and, not a few of them were dribbling with outrage, anger and outright disdain for elders who could so cavalierly encourage such mayhem. What initially excited me that Sunday were the telephone calls I received, commending the article, from three distinguished Ekiti elders who I hold in great esteem.  I  was,  therefore,  not  in the least,  surprised when  I  received  the  following  mail, later during the week.

    Yes, a coin has two sides!

    “The story of our kinsmen – the Afenifere Stalwarts – is a study in self-perpetuation, self- recognition and self aggrandizement. Claiming to borrow from the old sage, they continue to make claims that can no longer hold water: they represent ‘Yoruba Interest; they fight for the masses; Nigeria can only survive in a restructured polity; they are a group of  Messrs ‘CLEAN’ etc. Discerning Nigerians, however,  know that the present hot air  is only aimed at supporting their Biafran friends in total disregard of what we all know of Yoruba/Igbo political history. Without a doubt, failure to condemn the idea of a Biafra in this generation tantamount to supporting the break-up of Nigeria.

    We are not deceived that these people are not as patriotic as they claim.  Events of 2014 and 2015 are too recent to be forgotten. When those in power were going round distributing money, did our clean men shun the bait? They were collaborators in our unenviable past, and there is no sense in now struggling to befriend a group at the expense of the other. All the major ethic groups in Nigeria, Yoruba inclusive, have contributed to Nigeria’s present problems. Imagine, for instance, how federal appointments in the South West have been distributed among the six states with Ogun and Lagos having more than 80%, while Ondo and Ekiti have less than 5%.  What do these two states expect from a restructured Nigeria?  Can the Afenifere puritans explain this?” – Deji Fasuan MON, JP

    If the above could come from a respected elder like  most Afenifere leaders, one can only begin to imagine the vitriol from younger Yoruba elements, some of who actually said the organisation belongs in the past, a past in which they thought nothing of supporting a totally debauched government like that of President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP. One wrote: “Do you mean Afenifere of Goodluck Jonathan?  The same people that tried to sell the soul and conscience of Yoruba to Jonathan? Of course, they are bitter like their IPOB brothers that Buhari won in 2015 and they will, forever,  be sad for  the time  of President Buhari in office. They hate Buhari more because he is fighting corruption”. Another, a highly regarded lawyer, former student union President and ex-state commissioner wrote: “If the statement credited to Chief Femi Okurounmu is correct, it will be as unfortunate as it is bizarre. Elders should not dance naked in the market place nor lead by venom and hate nor expose their people to unnecessary danger they won’t be able to control. Afenifere is still struggling with its pathetic loss of credibility arising from its support for the looting and utterly unaccountable government of Jonathan and the moral depravity of that government. No Yoruba leader with clean hands can be comfortable in that company. But once more, Afenifere is in the bad company of a notoriously anti-Yoruba IPOB”. Yet was another so disenchanted he went all the way back as he wrote: “This Afenifere disaster is no laughing matter at all. Once upon a time, in times of uncertainties, all waited for Afenifere to speak. Whenever it spoke, it was believed the gods had spoken”

    I almost cried reading that.

    It was, however, not all gloom and doom. There were those who, tortured by the Yoruba traditional respect for elders, could afford to stand truth on the head in order to be politically correct. I say that because none of them can deny having severally heard how wantonly Kanu daily poured invectives on Yorubas and heaping curses on the  one  man every Omoluabi Yoruba sees as belonging in the pantheon of Yoruba gods – the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. In utter disbelief do our people watch those who not only wined and dined with  Awo, but have profited hugely by his name, look askance as an upstart daily decorates that revered name with abuses and curses. Nor did it start yesterday. When, during the 2015 campaigns Afenifere elders were happy being seen with President Jonathan, Asari Dokubo, his kinsman was not only pouring invectives on the entire Yoruba race, he and his fellow reconstructed militants were promising to sink the entire Yoruba nation in the lagoon. Not a word was heard was heard from our elders.

    This was why I laughed when a friend, a Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti classmate, to boot claimed, rather inelegantly, that I was attacking the elders. Long before I could tell him I did no such thing but only criticised their position which negated all that Igbos have done to the Yoruba politically, beginning from how Zik spurned Awo’s offer to work under him, other commentators had put him to sleep because another comment we no longer received from him again. But permit me to recall a bit of my response to that huge charge. I wrote: “Nobody is out here condemning our respected elders; no not at all. On the contrary, what most commentators, and I, are saying is simply that the Yoruba should, in no circumstances, or for whatever reasons, be unreflectively, tied to the apron strings of Ndigbo, since they didn’t even ask for our support, in the first place, nor do we have identical interests. You probably  know  why  those who  were Awo’s associates, and earned our respects thereby, cannot now  appeal to some petulant Igbo youths who daily rubbish  that name to stop that nonsense, even if they had become so compromised they can no longer look the Igbo in the eye and abuse them back. Are these the people, not individually but corporately, some say we should still see as some infallible Yoruba gods?”

    Olu was, of course, not alone as one of these cultural purists and apostles of political correctness wrote: “My worry is, should we Condemn and crucify Afenifere en bloc?  Granted Jonathan/PDP solicited their support for the 2015 Elections, didn’t Buhari/APC also solicit the support of another Section of the Yoruba nation for the same Elections? “Afenifere has been the Pan Yoruba socio cultural organisation since the days of Awolowo. *In whose interest is this Campaign to throw away Afenifere wholesale? Is there a veiled big masquerade somewhere who believes he loves Yorubas more? *That some Yoruba members lost with Jonathan and some won with Buhari – should that foreclose the Yoruba Nation forging a common front and moving ahead for our Progress which has critically retarded over the decades?’ He, of course, got  appropriate answers to his questions.

    God be praised, the reactions ended on a good note which should be a decent point to end this piece. Wrote a highly perspective Omoluabi: “Egbon, let’s see how we can enable some dignified soft landing for our elders who might from time to time make mistakes. I believe Prof Banji Akintoye described it as Oduduwa’s style of Dignified Inclusion. It is a case of Oduduwa accommodating Obatala, and in any case just as Afenifere’s misadventure started with romance with GEJ; there is always the chance that romance with Buhari could have the same effect on Yorubas.

    However, I think the notion that Yorubas should be involved in a conflict which had played out in the past as a straight fight between Igbo’s and Hausa is absolutely disingenuous. It’s like putting Yorubas in harm’s way for no just cause.”

  • Re: The Yoruba Assembly demands Referendum on Nigerian unity

    Apart from obviously aping Kanu’s IPOB, and putting the cart before the horse, this is one occasion when the Yoruba Assembly should profit from history

    Circumstances have again ensured that I shall not be able to run readers’ comments on the Afenifere article which appeared on this column some three Sundays ago today. Like a bolt from the blues, and quite unlike Yoruba’s well known preference for wide ranging consultation amongst stakeholders, news broke this past week that The Yoruba Assembly, an umbrella platform for all socio-political groups in the South-west,  has  joined Ndigbo  in asking  for  a referendum  on  Nigerian  unity.  Unfortunately,   they took this position completely in contrast to their claim that:  ”As it is our culture, the Yoruba Assembly will begin a consultative process with all Yoruba people including conducting an internal referendum and their decision will determine the next steps.”  So from whence came this demand?  Apart from obviously aping Kanu’s IPOB, and putting the cart before the horse, this is one occasion when the Yoruba Assembly should profit from history.

    At its meeting of 30th August, 2013 in Ibadan the Assembly took decisions they are now standing right on the head. To insist on this demand, therefore, they will have to tell us what invalidated those well distilled decisions (in particular, no. 8 below).

    Attended by delegates from every strata of the Yoruba nation, including Kwara, Kogi, our Itsekiri kith and kin from Delta state and the Republic of Benin, the following is the abridged COMMUNIQUE of the meeting.  I happened to have been a member of the communiqué committee.

    It reads:

    “At the end of robust deliberations on pertinent issues, the following decisions were adopted as resolutions:

    1. Noted that Nigeria is, once again, at a critical crossroad. After more than 50 years of Independence and less than 2 years shot of 100 years after the 1914 amalgamation, deep structural issues and Nationality Questions, such as Federalism, Fair and Equitable Revenue Allocation, Security, Free and Fair Elections, State Police and inter-relationship amongst the different Nationalities remain unresolved! Indeed, the need for a National Dialogue to resolve the issues has never been more pressing. The general state of the Nigerian federation is disturbingly unhealthy. There is general insecurity in the land, there is growing decay of infrastructure, and there is increasing tension in the polity, exacerbated by mounting unemployment all over the country.
    2. Observed further that the failure of the Nigerian Federation to meet the challenge of building a modern multi-ethnic democratic state can be traced to several factors which include: absence of a negotiated constitution by citizens, corruption and the menace of religious and cultural intolerance.
    3. Noted in particular, the 1999 Constitution, on the basis of which the country is governed today, is seen as a source of tension between federating units. The constitution imposes a unitary model of government on a country with diverse cultural and religious orientations and values, thereby putting most of the powers and resources to develop the federation in the hands of the government at the centre.
    4. Noted that the growth of the Yoruba region has been stalled by the imposition of a unitary form of government that denies states the right and benefit of fiscal federalism, a corner stone of federalism worldwide. In this respect education, health, transportation, and social welfare of citizens have declined so sharply in Yoruba land that the quality of life of the average citizen today is lower than it was in 1970.
    5. Observed that sustainable unity and development of the country cannot flow from over concentration of power and resources at the centre. For example, we note that lack of effective law enforcement and assurance of security and safety for citizens is traceable to the over concentration of powers in the central government
    6. Noted that on the basis of the evidence that the failure of governance in the country has grown with the transfer of powers from federating units to the central government, we affirm the urgency to restructure the polity at a national conference of federating units, which will produce a new constitution to be ratified through a national referendum.
    7. Agreed that the process of restructuring should start with federating units, which must in their own space first discuss and determine the type of relationship they want between their region and the central government and relationship between states and the region in which they are located. For we, the Yoruba, the country Nigeria, is a forced marriage of diverse ethno-national groups, struggling to find form and shape, and limiting promises and possibilities.
    8. Re-affirmed the commitment of the Southwest to the territorial unity of the country and resolved to work for enhancement of the country’s unity by cooperating with other regions to resolve peacefully the conflict and tension thrown up by the current unitary constitution that limits the control of federating units over their affairs and development.
    9. Recognized that the best way to sustain unity in a culturally diverse polity and society is to organise its politics and economy on the basis of a federal system of government. Culturally diverse countries which are able to sustain peace and development have done so through a federal constitution. Nigeria’s cultural diversity is too pronounced for the political elite to pretend that a unitary constitution can be substituted for a federal constitution that is generally designed to respond to diversity and optimise the benefits of diversity for peace and development.
    10. Resolved to set up the Southwest Constitutional Commission (SCC) for the purpose of coordinating memoranda from citizens and groups in the Southwest towards a federal constitution for the country and of producing a constitutional framework for the region as unit of the Nigerian federation.
    11. A new Nigeria consisting of a federal government and six regional governments (based on the current six geo-political zones) operating federal and regional constitutions, respectively.
    • A single legislative list which will be the Exclusive Legislative List consisting only those functions ceded to the Central Government.
    • The adoption of the Westminster model of parliamentary government.
    • A Regional and State Police force structure.
    • The establishment of a Constitutional Court with jurisdiction over inter-governmental cases and petitions from elections to the national Assembly
    • The Conference fully supports the on-going Regional integration in the South West.
    • That all public officers who currently enjoy immunity be made amenable to court processes on charges bordering on commission of crimes.
    • That an informal role for traditional rulers in the political structure be recognised.

    The conference further decided as follows:

    • The adoption of Open-Secret ballot system for voting at elections.
    • Total condemnation of Boko Haram’s indiscriminate violence in killing people, including Yoruba in the North.
    • The setting up by the South West States of vigilante groups to protect them against the re-insurgence of crimes and violence perpetrated by nomadic tendencies or motivated by faith or otherwise. In this respect, each State House of Assembly in the region should pass appropriate laws.
    • That the Yoruba as an ethnic group should design and produce a common flag and anthem. This is without prejudice to the anthems and flags of each state”.

    Reason for the new demand they wrote:  ”lies in the altruistic effort to establish a development-oriented and sustainable governance structure for Nigeria on the one hand and on the other hand, the objectionable attempt at sustaining Nigeria’s unitary constitution by the ruling clique that desire to permanently control the leverage of power in Nigeria for egoistic reasons.”It affirmed that the modern concept of sustainable development is a process that must begin with the active consultation and participation of the people – therefore the need for a referendum is imminent.”

    Whoever understands that should please educate me. And if one was considerate enough to assume their intent, how are Nigeria’s present circumstances, exacerbated  as it is by the Kanu cacophony, different from the circumstances thoroughly interrogated at  the Ibadan meeting?

    If the Assembly was influenced by Afenifere’s chummy political relations with Ndigbo, I have news for them – thanks to my good friend, R.O Okunmuyide.  While Afenifere remains rooted to its Southern Solidarity credo, a more profound Ohaneze, under the lead of a suave Nnia Nwodo, has decided on a much more pragmatic route.  Seeing the futility of the IPOB/MASSOB mob approach to achieve their political objective, Igbos have designed a skilful master plan to repeat what Catalonia and Bavaria did respectively in Spain and Germany when their bids for separation failed in those countries which will transform the Southeast to Nigeria’s economic powerhouse and change it completely from being a region of economic migrants!

    It is in view of the above I would plead that we put on our thinking caps. Fifty years post Biafra, Igbos have not stopped accusing Awo, albeit wrongly, of betrayal.

  • The increasing call for restructuring (2)

    Restructuring Nigeria has become something of a divine undertaking, aimed, primarily, at ensuring peace, development, progress and overall sustainability, for our country

    Apart from the deleterious consequences of President Buhari’s illness and the near complete lock down of the presidency by a Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri cabal, as well as the cacophonous and felonious IPOB chants, not to mention the Arewa Youths’ impertinent quit order to Igbos living in the North, all of  which have remorselessly heated up the country, the rather unprecedented chant of restructuring ‘now, now’ by some, otherwise highly regarded, elders, who should ordinarily know that such an important and sobering project cannot be meaningfully undertaken under our current highly impassioned circumstances, has made a revisit of the piece below, first published Friday, June 17, 2016, an utmost desideratum. It contains my honest thoughts on restructuring. Restructuring Nigeria has become something of a divine undertaking, aimed, primarily, at ensuring peace, development, progress and overall sustainability, for our country. The urgency of this is why I have deferred running readers’ comments on last Sunday’s article on Afenifere which, God helping us, should be published next week.

    “Restructuring is the best way to go. It is long overdue and doing it will address many of the problems confronting us. However, you have to structure the country in such a way that every ethnic group, no matter how small, will have a sense of belonging. The proponents of June 12, i.e Afenifere and others, believe very strongly that whichever party got elected at the federal government level should restructure Nigeria. Therefore, fiscal federalism, I think, should be on the agenda of every political party in Nigeria and, ipso facto, the government. Some tribes and people are working while others are eating and this is not the practice anywhere else in the world. Chief Awolowo, in his lifetime, severally advocated federalism as the only basis for national integration. He predicted that South Sudan would one day  break from North Sudan because the two are not one and so exactly it happened” – Quoting Lt Gen Alani Akinrinade, mutatis mutandis.

    It was no surprise then that the dominant theme of this year’s June 12 anniversary revolved around the issue of restructuring Nigeria. Almost everybody who spoke at the various events had something to say about the subject. Restructuring is that important, if Nigeria is ever to get it right, that the Buhari administration must ensure it takes it seriously so as not to commit the mistake of earlier governments. Nigeria needs a new lease of life to be worked out by an impartial body that would proffer  genuine ways to properly reconfigure and rescue it from what it presently is – a totally unworkable and, therefore, not working  ‘geographical expression’ as Awo  described it . The many flashpoints we are confronted with as a nation today irrefutably confirm that description. Apart from the impossibility of wishing restructuring  away, President Buhari’s  unfortunate  claim that the report of the 2014 confab will rot away in the archives, has massively upped the ante of the associated problems with some parts now saying they want out of Nigeria. Although I did not support the conference which I saw as a product of crass political opportunism, I expected that the president should have since sought some briefing on it. Following the trenchant negative reactions to his disclosure on the conference report, I think the time has come for him to empanel a small, but smart, group from amongst his cabinet members who would study and summarise for him, the recommendations, not only of the 2014 conference, but of ALL such national efforts, including even that of Abacha. The recommendations on which all or majority of the reports are agreed, he could immediately actualise through executive action or by executive bills to the national assembly to try to douse the looming danger.

    Historically, some parts of the North have constituted the greatest opposition to restructuring, but that position, happily, is beginning to change. Before the recent  call by  former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, suggesting that “restructuring and renewal of our federation will make it less centralised and less suffocating,” elder statesman, Ahmed Joda, had  lent  it a ringing support  when he wrote: “Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must, however, not mistake the fact of our survival to anything like military might; rather it was because ordinary Nigerians overwhelmingly desire to live together in one united country, but under some acceptable arrangement.”

    At this year’s June 12 anniversary, Lagos State governor, Akinwumi Ambode, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd) and Ayo Opadokun, amongst others, also threw their weight behind restructuring which they described as a must if we want to overcome most of our national challenges. They believe that Nigeria will not get out of the woods until it restructures its skewed federal structure. Also at the 17th Annual Convention of the Igbo Youth Movement, former Vice President Alex Ekwueme, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Prof. Jerry Gana, amongst others, vigorously canvassed restructuring, concluding that it is the only guarantee for peace in the country.

    A lot has been written on how beneficial restructuring would be that we need not repeat them here. Our various theatres of mini wars, North and South, have turned restructuring to a very urgent matter. However,  given our  current  economic and security challenges – the naira has been  pummelled to submission- and Boko Haram remains a menace, I  sincerely believe  that the immediate problems confronting the  Buhari administration is how to  definitively fix  the economy as well as conclusively rout Boko Haram. The 2014 national conference, we were told, gulped a princely N9Billion. If that was possible when oil was selling for more than 100 dollars per barrel, our current economic circumstances which has rendered 27 states literally comatose, should warn us against any undue haste about convoking another jamboree of a national conference. Elsewhere, I have suggested a Constituent Assembly comprising no more than three elected members (elected on a zero party basis) from each state and one from Abuja, but even that should not start work until the first quarter of the President’s  third  year in office when we expect that the economy should have been sufficiently stabilised  and Boko Haram, hopefully, no longer a  major threat. The reports of all previous national conferences should serve as their working paper.

    In the Ahmed Joda model, the National Assembly would constitute the Assembly but I think Nigerians have seen enough of this 8th Assembly to ever leave such a huge responsibility in its hands.  As suggested by Joda, “there should be no representation in the Assembly for special interests because of the abuses such could engender, and serving members of any legislative body should not be eligible just as interested public servants must resign their posts to contest.” The Assembly should have full powers to comprehensively review the Nigerian Constitution bearing in mind the fact that “there is, in the extant constitution, too much concentration of power and resources at the centre, thus stifling the country’s march towards greatness as well as threatening its unity because of the abuses, corruption and reactive tensions which over-centralisation generates.”

    The Assembly should have about six months to work, and present its report to the president. Rather than take it directly to a national referendum, the conference report should, at a formal national event, be handed over by the president to the political parties to study, and WITHOUT ANY CHANGE, WHATEVER, turn to their party manifesto for the 2019 general election. This should then be regarded as the respective party’s contract with Nigerians on the basis of which each would campaign for the election. This is about the only way to cure the current constitution’s lie about ‘we the people’. It will also eliminate the controversy about whether the current constitution permits a referendum or not. Whichever party wins the general election should, ipso facto, be deemed to have secured the peoples’ mandate to begin restructuring Nigeria with effect from 29 May, 2019.

    1. The suggestions in the original article (2016) have been slightly, but certainly not profoundly, modified.

  • Contemporary Afenifere in a moment of dire national strife

    Have you seen a single Afenifere member berate Igbos for the unprintable names Kanu calls us?

    According to some reports, Afenifere, a onetime Yoruba, no Nigerian voice of reason, has literally transmuted to a war mongering machine, egging southerners, especially Yorubas living in the north, to start a millennial movement that will see all of them back South by the time Hausa-Fulanis start killing every other Nigerian, and I couldn’t help wondering aloud as to how things have changed. This according to the reports is because Afenifere allegedly claims that the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, is arming the northerners ahead of an October 1 deadline. Such scaremongering from elders!

    It will be pertinent to quote the chief protagonist of this call, the selfsame, Senator Femi Okunrounmu of the 2014 Jonathan confab fame, at some length. According to the report, filed by Sam Uche Okoro, apparently written by an Igbo to drive a Yoruba understanding with Kanu’s IPOB, Okunronmu was reported to have said the following: “This quit notice by the northern youths should not be seen by any wise southerner as being meant for only people from the South-East, or that it is an empty threat. These northern youths meant business, and not only that, they have the backing of the northern elders who have not only expressed their support for the youths, but have also affirmed their backing for the quit notice given to the South-Easterners.” (You would think there are no northern elders with contrary views). Continuing, he bellowed: “These northerners should not be underrated. One of the major reasons we are insisting that all southerners should start coming back to the south now, is that when these attacks on them begin, the northerners will attack all southerners. How are they going to separate a Yoruba from Igbo? It is going to be difficult. Southerners should not be gullible. They should start coming home now. They should not wait until the end of the ultimatum. We do not want a repeat of 1966-1967 pogrom, when hundreds of people of southern origin, especially those from the South-East were massacred in the North.’’

    Many questions popped up in my head on reading this clarion call to industrial level disaster, among them: ‘when will these Afenifere elders quit their 2015 campaign in which the Buhari machine completely routed them? Did this man consider how many of his beloved southerners would die in accidents during his recommended exodus? Did he have a thought as to the logistics and will his friends, the Igbo, abandon so easily, their ‘N43 trillion’ investment in the north?

    Who told him this is what majority Igbos want despite Kanu’s demagoguery?

    And the following, specifically with reference to the Yoruba:

    How exactly is Afenifere defending Yoruba now?

    When was it, any of these elders visited the north to inquire after the welfare of Yorubas living there?

    Have these elders imported guns like the other regions of Nigeria?

    Who are their fighting commanders and the foot soldiers?

    Who, among them, don’t have valid visas to literally all the western countries?

    Are Yoruba youth, presently being egged on by persons who have already seen the better part of their own lives, on the same level of war preparation and readiness with IPOB, Niger-Delta militants or the Arewa youths? Is their over-politicised OPC united, or can anything unite them after Jonathan’s oil pipeline security contracts has scattered them?

    What is their grand plan for the defence of Yoruba land?

    Have they, these elders, ever fought a war?

    And will their children/grandchildren be available to join the Yoruba army of their imagination?

    I have also argued my position on a forum where there are others with contrary views and to one, in particular, I reacted as follows: “what new message does Afenifere have now that is different from what they and Igbos’ preached during their symbiotic relationship, campaigning for President Jonathan’s re-election in 2015? Have you seen a single Afenifere member berate Igbos for the unprintable names Kanu calls us? Have you forgotten the Ojukwu agenda for Yorubas, had his protégé, Col Banjo, captured Lagos during the Biafran war? Of what relevance is the Igbo to Yoruba and because you claim we are tied to Fulani apron strings must we now become slaves to Ndigbo? What shows you they love us? I am not one to be carried away by these elders who are parroting Igbo agenda. They are one with Igbos in their disdain for President Buhari and his government after the crushing blow he dealt the man through whom they had intended to crawl back to political relevance in Yoruba land. Didn’t we see them join Igbos, Ijaws etc the day they, under the lead of  Gani Adams’ OPC, brought Lagos to ground shortly before the election? Was that the way to love Yoruba and was it done for free? This is nothing but payback time just so they won’t be called ingrates, as their Igbo friends always say of the Yoruba. Haven’t we heard Abacha’s man claim he has a video of when and where money was collected by these leaders during the Abiola saga?  We are yet to see them definitively controvert that. And haven’t some established portfolios they couldn’t before the Jonathan confab and the campaigns?

    Who is deceiving who?

    If these elders who I doubt had ever fought a war and had, therefore, never been war refugees truly love Yoruba, there are two things, either of which they should aggressively be doing now. The first is to organise Yoruba into fighting cadres; bring into their army the millions of unemployed Yoruba youth some of who are so highly educated they should be charged with preparing for a scientific/technological war, different from what we saw during the Kurumi war because this will not be a war of dane guns. They should, of course, get an external arm, which like the Igbos, will mobilise the Yoruba Diaspora into sending millions of dollars and arms towards the war effort. And by the way, they should not forget to appoint a ‘Yoruba Kanu’ who will be equipped with all the braggadocio and abusive epithets Kanu is so abundantly gifted with. Not to do all these is to be sending Yorubas, young and old, to either their early graves or refugee camps.

    Incidentally, these elders,  who would rather bequeath millennial suffering, blood and tears to their beloved Yoruba compatriots, are the disciples, foot soldiers and confidants of the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo who I have not read, anywhere, was a war monger. That they now prefer war and are earnestly canvassing it, can only be the consequence of where they found themselves during the 2015 general election: that is, on the same side with Igbos. To attempt to change course now could lead to somebody else from the East claiming they too have a video of their own  as former governor Peter  Obi of Anambra state and one other Igbo fellow were permanently, unexplainably chaperoning them all about during that period and could know one or two things the generality of Yorubas don’t.  And here is the other thing they could do. Granted that they are arch enemies of both the  APC, and President Buhari, who unfortunately has presented more as a Hausa-Fulani President (e.g his nepotistic appointments and extreme tolerance for the murderous Fulani herdsmen who are killing Nigerians  in their thousands) couldn’t these Afenifere elders, if they truly love  us, be seen supporting one of their own, the generally acknowledged OMOLUABI, per excellence, Prof Yemi Osinbajo who, as Acting President, has spent his entire time on the seat appealing to all and sundry, speaking with elders of all the various regions of the country, emphasising that what unites us are far greater than what separates us? Just wait until it is the Afenifere turn to visit Osinbajo to see how obtuse, unlike other leaders, their position and demands would be. Nor can they tell us that Igbos would not be found, hundred per cent, behind Osinbajo were he to be Igbo.

    I am sure Awo will, for good reasons, be turning in his grave.

    My conclusion will be this, however: let nobody who would not prepare Yorubas for war as well as enlist their own children and grandchildren in the ‘army’, by whatever means, entice or cajole our people into any useless war the end of which they are in no position to predict as they won’t know if they, would, themselves, not be spending their last days on earth, as war refugees.

    Ibi agba lo ye ka ma ba agba, meaning there are positions a Yoruba elder should never take.

     

  • The nigerian judiciary in the eye of the storm

    And I say to such lawyers claiming to defend human rights, where were our rights when their clients were sucking our national patrimony dry?

    NO, No, No, forget it. This has nothing to do with last week’s politico-judicial abracadabra at the Code of Conduct Tribunal in Abuja. But those who surreptitiously inspired that theatre of absurd in which Nigerians were cast as simpletons, should please not add to our anguish, claiming they want to appeal it. Enough of that tomfoolery by the  office of the Attorney-General, PACAC  and  the EFCC, an anti-corruption agency the government is increasingly presenting as toothless to the entire word by its several, curious rapprochement.  Enough of all these political paddy paddy  and welcome then to the next President of Nigeria,  Olubukola Saraki, who has shown again, that he is always one ahead of his ‘traducers’. Okay, you don’t believe the CCT saga has nothing to do with this article and therefore need a proof? I assure my readers that the title, chosen way back Monday of the past week, was the result  of  these two reports in The Nation of  that very day, Monday, 11 June, 2017: Supreme Court outlaws stay of proceedings in criminal trial, and the other,  AGF, EFCC  get court’s order to prosecute Ifeanyi Ubah, Capital Oil.

    Unfortunately, long before that, Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen and his National Judicial Council, NJC, – yes, he owns it, doesn’t he,  given the structure of the NJC? –  has opened the hornet’s nest when at the body’s 82nd meeting on June 1, it recalled judges who had been suspended consequent upon a sting operation by the DSS during which it was discovered that homes of some of the judges were more financially buoyant than banking halls, swimming with cash, in diverse currencies, stocked up in bundles, with the judges looking like mere bank cashiers. On this subject, I would recommend no more than a good reading of Kunle Abimbola’s: ’Vandals at the court gate”, The Nation, 13 June, 2017 from which I take the following sampler: “But the courts themselves are no fiat from space. They are a creation of society: a set of legal Leviathans created by law to adjudicate disputes and punish crime. Remove that societal moral cover, and all the courts, with their arcane procedures and scholarship, become hollow jokes. If that would affect judges and lawyers alone, it would be fair comeuppance for NJC’s rashness. As the Yoruba would say, you don’t counsel a wilful child against growing crooked fore-teeth. The paralysing ugliness would impress him soon enough! Rather, it is the sad case of a wayward child, whose rascality soon entraps his community in avoidable ruin.”

    Unfortunately, all that philosophical musing was beyond the cognition of the NJC. Pity.

    Other than the above, one would have, with considerable justification, started to celebrate the Onnoghen era, which in some critical instances has already started  reminding one  of the golden era of the Nigerian judiciary; the days of Taslim Elias, Chukwudifu Oputa, Kayode Esho and  the other greats this country has witnessed. A look then at the crucial instances.

    SUPREME COURT OUTLAWS STAY OF PROCEEDINGS IN CRIMINAL TRIAL

    Femi Falana SAN, if he is not pouring champagne already, must be so happy a horse could ride in his stomach.  Or what have some rogue lawyers not done to make a complete mess of the Administration of the Criminal Justice Act (ACJA)?  So  nauseating  was their roguery and  near complete bastardisation of the Act that  Biodun Jeyifo, a Professor,  and highly regarded columnist with The Nation on Sunday, took weeks to interrogate ACJA in form of  a dialogue with Femi Falana SAN.  Against the opponents of the act who claim that the provisions in Sections 306 of ACJA and 40 of the EFCC Act prohibiting courts from staying proceedings in criminal trials was a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to appeal, the Supreme Court held, unequivocally, that granting a stay was unlawful, violating, not only the provisions of Section 306 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015,but Section 40 of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act, 2004 as well.  Justice Clara Ogunbiyi actually held that staying proceedings was violently in conflict with those provisions. The court further added that “the provisions of both laws were in conformity with the constitutional provision in Section 36(4), which provides that any person charged with a criminal offence “shall be entitled to fair hearing in public within a reasonable time.” That was the ruling of the apex court on the application for stay of proceedings brought by ex-spokesman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh.

    EFCC must feel quite relieved with this noose off its neck as it has been one of the greatest tools in the hands of  the  lawyers who, in sheer moral depravity, have chosen to be arrayed against the anti corruption war which trumps every other election promise by President Buhari to the people of Nigeria. These lawyers, mostly of the silk category, some of who run to the television networks at prime time, spewing grammatical inanities on issues on which they smell the possibility of briefs, have done the greatest disservice to our country, representing, as they do, those who are hauled to courts for the heaviest heists ever. And I say to such lawyers claiming to defend human rights, where were our rights when their clients were sucking our national patrimony dry?

    Their comeuppance will be inescapable.

    AGF, EFCC GET COURT’S NOD TO PROSECUTE UBAH, CAPITAL OIL.

    If anything would show, beyond a shadow of doubt, the utter depravity of the Goodluck Jonathan era, it must be this or the Ibori case as both are archetypical of the depth to which the judiciary of that era sank. It was an era in which those who held Jonathan captive throughout his forgettable years in power actually got away with murder. In the particular case of Ifeanyi Ubah, the man who kick started Jonathan’s campaign a whole one year ahead of INEC permission, using Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) as his special purpose vehicle and who would later, deservedly, profusely weep at the Villa on Jonathan’s defeat, curious would be an inadequate word to describe what happened. As in the Odili case, Ubah and his firm, Capital Oil, via separate letters from the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and a report by the ad-hoc Committee of the House of Representatives, were protected from being investigated or prosecuted over their alleged complicity in the massive petroleum subsidy scam Nigerians saw under a listless President Goodluck Jonathan. Can any word sufficiently describe this legal debauchery to which a permanently corrupt Nigerian National Assembly lent its awesome weight? It was this shame of a judicial decision that the court, in a unanimous judgment by a three-man panel, smashed to smithereens while giving its decision in the appeal initiated by the Chairman of the EFCC and AGF against the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja delivered on July 25, 2013 in a fundamental rights enforcement suit filed by Ubah and his firm. It was prosecuted by Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), with Ajibola Oluyede and Babs Akinwumi representing Ubah and Capital Oil. According to The Nation’s report, court documents revealed that trouble started for Ubah and his firm when the Presidential Committee on the Verification and Reconciliation of subsidy payments to petroleum marketers queried the payment of about N43.291billion subsidy payment to them on the ground that the process leading to the payment was suspicious. The case was referred to the Special Fraud Unit for investigation and it issued two interim reports dated November 2, 2012 and November 3, 2012, claiming that the transactions were suspicious. Then the Jonathan machine went to work and the following happened: the police, on February 28, 2013 issued a third report exonerating Ubah and his firm, the House of Representatives gave a similar verdict in its report of April 18, 2012 and the ever available AGF, in a legal advice to the EFCC Chairman and the IGP, dated October 2014, exonerated Ubah and his company from criminal liability.

    Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen deserves plaudits – acclamation, acclaim and éclat – for leading the Nigerian judiciary that washed the county clean of that judicial rapacity and we look forward to more from where this came.