The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • A tale of two states

    A tale of two states

    Perspicacious Ekitis, if any remains at all, should ask themselves where El Rufai got  the tens of  billions he is going to spend providing free education in Kaduna State but Fayose must inflict this punishment on poor Ekiti parents.

    On these pages last Sunday, I showed how President Goodluck Jonathan, eager to ensure his own victory at the 2015 Presidential election, suborned the entire Nigerian army to rig the 2014 Ekiti gubernatorial election for candidate Ayo Fayose of the PDP. As should be expected with an order from the Commander-in-Chief, Major-General Kenneth Tobiah Minimah, the Army Chief of Staff, a Cross Riverian, unerringly delivered Ekiti to Ayo Fayose. Since his ‘victory’ and inauguration on October 15, 2014, Governor Fayose has shown abundantly, that he is a product of the gun, and not of the ballot box, no matter how many times he repeats 16:0, 20: 0. He can, of course, take consolation in the fact that he is ruling over an awe-struck, fawning and adoring Ekiti people. Concerning this emerging Ekiti sociology which tramples all the qualities everybody once knew Ekiti for, some young researchers must show interest in what is certain to be a rewarding academic exertion.

    Two momentous events happened this past week. The first: concerned with education and how it has plummeted in Ekiti under governors who did not deliberately encourage cheating at public examinations as we  learnt in the course of the sittings of the Fayemi Education Task force, governor Fayose took the decisive decision of conveying a 3-hour education Summit under the lead of a highly respected monarch, a former Chief Justice of the state who cannot  be described  as a novice in matters of Education. Fayose evidently needed such a highly regarded Oba to lean on even if his intentions were not pure.  Then the second, in faraway Kaduna State,  in those far flung places where those of us in these parts humour  ourselves into foolishly believing they know nothing, the new governor of example, the stormy petrel, no nonsense and,  take no prisoners Nasir  El Rufai,  literally re-invented the wheel. It is not that fees had ever been a major part of the school architecture in the North, but here, indeed, was a John the Baptist, in the depth of his free education programme.

    Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai is an educated governor.  He could have read any of Medicine, Engineering, or Chemical Engineering and he, indeed, had a scholarship from the Kaduna Polytechnic to read Mining Engineering at the Camborne School of mines in the U.K which he declined and opted, instead, to read Quantity Surveying at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.  Nobody will therefore be surprised that he appreciates the value of education and its place in the development of a people, state or nation. There was no way he could have introduced school fees in Kaduna State.  I quote below, how newspapers reported what El-Rufai did in Kaduna State in this regard: “The Kaduna State government yesterday instituted free education across all government owned primary and junior secondary schools in the state. According to the state Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai who announced this, his administration would spend N9 billion annually on free feeding of over one million primary school pupils. He further stated that the free education in junior secondary school will gulp N600 million yearly noting that the programme will save parents N3.7 billion for them to channel to other family demands. He added that, 5,000 tailors would be engaged to sew free uniforms which will be distributed to pupils across the state. He mentioned that,  (not  surprisingly) the free education introduced by the former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration in the state was a fraud to milk parents dry as the programme did not work.”

    And what did governor Fayose do in Ekiti, leveraging on his 3-hour Education Summit? Here, I must say that we have variations. While his spokesperson gave some ludicrous figures of   N2, 400 and N3000 per term for primary and secondary schools respectively, figures for which Fayose would never even as much as consider a minute’s summit, parents of new secondary school students claim they had been asked to pay N35, 000, besides the cost of   chairs, desks, bags, school uniforms and books that the parents will have to bear. Even if N2400 per term is correct for primary schools, you are still talking of a lot of money for some parents. Add to that, the cost of chairs, desks, books etc.

    These patently illegal charges will not stand in Ekiti as long as the Lord liveth. Some concerned individuals are already working at calling governor Fayose’s attention to the provisions of the Universal Child’s Rights Act, already domesticated in the state and they may, if he refuses to withdraw the charges, head to court. The Act sets out to “Empower our children with Children’s Rights Education so that they can build a global culture of respect for human rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child. Then each child can fully develop into critically literate, rights- respecting citizen who will collaborate with others to uphold human rights and question the root causes of social injustice in the pursuit of global peace.”

    Besides that act is the UBEC Law, flagged off 29, September 1999, by President Olusegun Obasanjo and being executed by the government and people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to eradicate illiteracy, ignorance and poverty as well as stimulate and accelerate national development, political consciousness and national integration. By the law, years 1-9 of schooling in Nigeria is free of all charges as the federal government intends to make it a world class education intervention and regulatory agency for qualitative and functional basic education in Nigeria, and one which will operate as a monitoring agency to progressively improve the capacity of states, local government agencies and communities in the provision of unfettered access to high qualitative basic education in Nigeria. It also has the objective of providing unfettered access to nine (9) years of formal basic education which will be FREE to every Nigerian child.

    I have gone all this length just in case the governor or even the summit acted out of ignorance of these extant provisions. I shall not be surprised, however, if Governor Fayose knows all these but still decides to use all manner of nomenclature to rake in some free money he could spend without question. Perspicacious Ekitis, if any remains at all, should ask themselves where El Rufai got  the tens of  billions he is going to spend providing free education in Kaduna State but Fayose must inflict this punishment on poor  Ekiti parents.

    Fayose revokes Ayo Orebe’s house

    In a classical case of the son being punished for the sins of the father, governor Ayo Fayose this past week revoked my son – Ayo Orebe’s sale agreement with the Ekiti Housing Corporation all because, as chairman of the tenants’ association he, with the executive, went to court when the governor barricaded their homes, he with a 3 day old baby. Fayose wants the case withdrawn to give him a free hand to send them packing. This, in spite of Ayo, a banker, paying monthly to his primary mortgage institution and the governor rejecting the tenants’ payment terms of N30, 000.00k per month.  My family is happy that  the ‘Daramola Option’ hasn’t been contemplated. But even then, he who the gods will destroy, they first make mad. Some three weeks ago, I contacted  Wole Olanipekun, SAN, about this probability, asking him to  talk to  the governor and  informed Femi Falana, SAN, as soon as it happened. Let Ayo Fayose continue to add to his long list of cases none of which has a statute of limitation. He is neither God, nor is four years eternity.  Post Buhari, a thousand SANS will not be able to help the likes of Fayose and the consequences of his disregard for Nigerian courts will be fully visited on him. Even while the case is in court, the world now knows  he will still send his thugs to evacuate the family even with a month old child. He will have his comeuppance as palaces in South Africa or Dubai will have no more effect than they did in the Ibori case.  And what is more, government being a continuum, since none in Ekiti – not  Obas,  not  nobility whose hero he is,  nor  his beloved Okada riders – can  advise or restrain  him,  Ekiti people should  know  that be it 20 years,  they  will  end  up paying  for all of Ayo  Fayose’s impunity and  infractions in office.

  • Revisiting Ekitigate

    Revisiting Ekitigate

    If the giddiness of his office will not permit governor Fayose to forever seek forgiveness from God, we, as chroniclers of events, owe him the duty of reminding him of the events surrounding the 2014 Ekiti governorship election.

    Sacrifices are paramount in the development of any society. However, it is nothing short of a scam to impose stiff sacrifices on the people when those who sit on their wealth live in ostentatious opulence. Fayose has not cut  his salary the way President Buhari  did, nor has he reduced his fleet of cars or the huge public burden of maintaining the state house where he lives like a  pampered and over fed king presiding over an impoverished people. Rather, he lives in filthy lucre, inflicting neck-breaking sacrifices on those he governs. It is all a ruse; a state-orchestrated deceit of the highest order. The imposition of tuition fees on Ekiti parents by an uninspiring leadership, with no economic vision, is just a plot to dis-empower the poor further.” – Wale Adeoye, a multi-award winning journalist.

    That epigram popped up on the ekitipanupo web portal as I wrote this article. And how timely it was as, being a member of the Fayemi Education Task Force, and knowing what great work that committee of experts, with many professors of education, former vice-chancellors, school teachers, parents and administrators did only a few years back, I had no hesitation in concluding that the Fayose  Summit  was  just a  ploy to free state funds for the governor’s  unaccountable use as we have seen him do, wasting state resources, serially, on irrelevant advertisements. Otherwise, how could a governor in Nigeria’s Southwest impose school fees in the year of our Lord 2015,  some sixty years after Awo introduced free primary education in the region?

    Incidentally, it was the reports from the summit that prompted this article. For instance, it was reported, and I hope he was misquoted, that the highly regarded Ekiti icon and respected legal luminary, Aare Afe Babalola, said he and Fayose are two of a kind. I am hoping all he said is that he will co-operate with the governor in developing education in Ekiti. That way, many of us, his admirers, will sleep easy.

    Another, which is the leitmotif for this article is this, credited to Fayose: “I have not seen in the history of the state where a man gives an incumbent governor 16:0”.

    If the giddiness of his office will not permit governor Fayose to forever seek forgiveness from God, we, as chroniclers of events, owe him the duty of reminding him of the events surrounding the 2014 Ekiti governorship election. And here, I shall rely exclusively on their own words as captured on the yet to be controverted Ekitigate tapes. None of those named in that show of shame has yet headed to the courts.

    God is not man that you will deceive Him and He gives to all men according to the work of their hands. When President Jonathan instigated, approved and funded Ekitigate – Chris Uba came  to Ekiti with truckloads of naira drawn from the Umuahia branch of  the CBN – his intention was to test run the rigging plan for his forthcoming election; a  seemingly foolproof  plan Musiliu Obanikoro relied upon to predict the president’s unalterable victory. They obviously forgot that ‘there’s God o’.  So solicitous was the president about not being disgraced out of office that, according to the details of the Ekitigate tapes, he ordered the entire Nigerian army, through instructions to the Chief of Army Staff, to rig an election. I leave the reader to judge whether he succeeded in that vain hope. Ekitigate must, in its entire ramification, represent President Jonathan’s lowest point in office as no Nigerian alive could have thought that the day would ever come when a head of state would suborn the Nigerian army to such infamy or debauchery.

    The Capt Sagir Koli tape features the following individuals:  Now governor, Ayo Fayose, Senator Iyiola Omisore, Brig General Aliyu Momoh, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, Captain Sagir Koli and one Hon. Abdul Kareem.

    I wish to specifically draw Fayose’s attention to these key quotes in the hope that if anything would ever make him sober, they should:

    Musiliu Obanikoro: –

    Jonathan’s Minister of State for Defence: “I’m not here for tea party, I am on a special assignment by the President.”

    “That Daramola (Fayemi’s Campaign Manager) I want him picked up in the morning! “Look here, you can’t get promotion without me sitting on top of your military council – (has promotion in the higher ranks of the Nigerian Army become so cheap?). If I am a happy man tomorrow night, the sky is your limit” -(voice)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO2SyPkk52w

    Ayo Fayose: – PDP Gubernatorial candidate and now Ekiti State governor.

    “We agreed in Abuja on the modalities to work, we agreed on a sticker, that any vehicle you see that sticker, you allow that sticker. That sticker is on those vehicles; his own was sent to him, mine was sent to me. The one by SSS – (the same SSS  Fayose  now daily moans about its so-called illegal use) – was given to me to give to them. There is

    no vehicle that left this place without that sticker. The people you just disarmed had that sticker clear and clean.” “Today they went to “Efon”; they carry all the ….. where we are supposing (sic) to be collating THE THING INEC GAVE TO US – read RESULT SHEETS – soft copies we now PRINTED and everything, because they see INEC  on top of it. Why is my CONTACT MAN not with them? I said my contact man would be sitting in (sic) the check point PERMANENTLY. I convince this man to leave this people, they were said to sit in the sun. They packed all the COMPUTERS – (tell me what a candidate was doing with computers on the field on election day) – it took me more than 2 hours to get this man to release this people.”

    “CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF CALLED ME and he told me, you are in safe hands, he [General Momoh] would perform and if you have any issues, call me. He told me that I have made it clear to him that I AM JONATHAN for this election.”- (Voice) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOce2g4O9XM

    Brigadier General Aliyu Momoh: – Commander of the Nigerian Army’s 32nd Artillery Brigade, Akure.

    “We have strike force, they just entered into the force. We can start arresting in the afternoon. There are about six special teams. “I have one “Strike force – Koro cuts in. “I have almost forty soldiers after deployment”. We have done a lot of arrest. Chief never believe me… he said OC mopol should handle them, we did. Now we have nothing less than 500 vehicles – (the same vehicles used in distributing the photocromic ballot papers Uba brought all the way from Igbo land) – with specific instructions”. It’s not because you are here sir. In fact if I start crying now….. No no no. (A General?)

    Fayose: “Excuse sir, I told Chief Uba (Chris Uba – a bloody civilian Jonathan turned to an army commander?) that he should send me some soldiers that should go with me. The war is eminent (sic). I was in my house when CHIEF OF ARMY STAFF called me, and told me he has briefed him (Momoh), and gave me his number because I never met him before. He told me he would perform, and if you have any issues, call me. He told me that I have made it clear to him that I am JONATHAN for this election. He only called me WITH INSTRUCTION FROM THE VILLA”.

    Now is that the election Fayose never stops breaking our ear drums about? Is that his licence to lead Ekiti to complete ruination? I think decency and penitence require that he stops these his funny jokes about 16: 0 20:0 or 30:0 and settle down to a modicum of governance.

    There can be no stopping us drawing attention to these things as death will come when it will.

    What remains to be done on the Ekiti governorship election, not for Ekiti, per se, but for the integrity of the Nigerian Army which for decades have been involved in peace keeping activities, mingling with armies from the civilised world, is for the Chief of Army Staff and the Director-General of the DSS to appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to institute an in-depth investigation into this lowest levels both the institutions have sunk  so as to salvage something of their integrity and make their re-branding efforts a  success. Also, Captain Koli, a hero and a patriot of the highest order, should be promptly recalled and integrated into the service he gave so much for.

  • Dr Vincent J. Palathingal: Honour so truly deserved

    I must thank His Royal Highness for this honour done a worthy Dr Palathingal, not for monetary considerations, as is mostly the norm among the Nigerian royalty, but for services rendered to the very poor in society.

    It was a magnificent outing at the palace of His Royal Majesty, Oba Alamu Oloyede Onikosi, Ketu, Lagos on Saturday, 5 September, 2015 as his highness honoured the genial,  almost self-effacing  medical doctor  with the chieftaincy title of  Are Basegun and his wife, Elizabeth,  Yeye Are Basegun,  of  Ikosi/Kosofe Land, Lagos.  I met Dr Palathingal not too long ago at the upscale Michel Dental Clinic located within the Alausa Shopping mall along Obafemi Awolowo Way, Ikeja.  Notwithstanding the huge  number of patients waiting to be attended to that day, Dr Funso Afelumo, the Medical  Director,  did not  just introduce us but went all the way into the massive humanitarian services Dr Palathingal has rendered in several parts of Nigeria since he arrived the country some 40 years ago.  His current work, he said, is the free surgical operations for cataract for those who cannot personally afford the cost. Listening to both Funso, and the doctor reel out all he has done, and continues to do in Nigeria, I was not surprised that I took to him like fish to water.  Neither was I surprised when, a few weeks later, he invited me to grace his installation as the Basegun of Ikosi/Kosofe Land, by His Royal Highness, the Onikosi. I daresay Dr Palathingal and his wife of over four decades -they got married in 1972 – are eminently worthy of this honour.  I must thank His Royal Highness for this honour done a worthy Dr Palathingal, not for monetary considerations, as is mostly the norm among the Nigerian royalty, but for services rendered to the very poor in society.  To qualify for the surgery, Dr Palathingal’s only condition is inability to personally fund it. Except in some Catholic eye centres where they are hugely subsidised, these surgeries ordinarily cost between N300 – 400, 000.  He has facilitated more than 50 of these and plans for the next batch are already under way.

    Dr Vincent, from Kattoor Kerala, India, was born in 1943 and, according to him, it was obvious from early in life that he was destined to live a life of assisting the needy.  It was in the full knowledge of this that he headed to Africa in 1974, just two years after completing his specialist training in medicine. He had graduated from the well regarded Medical College of Allepey, Kerala, India, in 1972 and completed his internship a year later.  While working at the Holy Cross Hospital in Kerala, he met Elizabeth, to whom he got married in ’72.

    They arrived Nigeria in 1974 with Adazi Nnku, some twenty five kilometres from Onitsha in the then East Central State, as their first point of call. His employer was the Catholic Church under the headship of Cardinal Francis Arinze of the Catholic Arch Diocese. Adazi Nnku community in those days was nothing but a sprawling population of people heavily in need of medical help given the rudimentary nature of medical services in Nigeria in the ’70’s. Apart from  attending to that horde of  medically in need, Dr Palathingal did a lot  to promote health education and in organising preventive medical programmes  throughout a cluster of villages in very remote areas of the East Central State. For 15 years, he remained in the East and relocated to Lagos only after their two children have grown up and needed to go to higher school. Both have since returned to India for their university education.  Dr Palathingal also worked at Ihiala, Ozubulu, Idemili, Onitsha and Uga. I am sure many of those reading this  would remember the kind-hearted, easy-going Indian doctor who came like a God-send angel to help them out of their medical challenges.  Those who remember him are, right now, most probably saying some well deserved silent prayers for Dr Palathingal and his family. They absolutely deserve such prayers from a grateful people.

    In Lagos, he worked in several hospitals, one of them being the Jajo Hospital, Ikeja. To date, Dr Vincent has been in medical practice in Nigeria for 40 years. Although this is enough to earn him our utmost appreciation, he has additionally been involved in several philanthropic activities. I specifically asked him to list out these for me. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

    • Village adoption: In his words, most Nigerian villages do not have access to hospitals or medical care. He, and his team under the banner of what he calls WMC, Nigeria Province, decided to adopt Akure village near Agbara estate in Ogun State, to which they make periodic medical visits complete with medications and injections for treatment and they also undertake routine medical tests. This is done in collaboration with the community whose leaders assemble persons in need of medical treatment ahead of their arrival. These treatments are free of any charges.
    • During his tenure as chairman of WMC, he facilitated the provision of potable drinking water to the Akure community in Ogun State.
    • He regularly provides assistance to the medical camp and consultations conducted by the Rotary Club of Palm grove Estate, Lagos.
    • Dr Vincent and his team provide fashion training apprenticeship for young, under privileged girls in remote villages, and, on completion of training, gives them sewing machines at no cost to them
    • Under the KCA free eye cataract surgery programme, he organises, with the assistance of a certain Dr Erikotolae, free cataract surgeries. At the last count, 51 persons have benefitted from the programme and plans are under way to conduct the next exercise for a batch of not less than 50 persons in the Ikosi/Kosofe area of Lagos State.
    • In association with the Kano Heart Foundation, and working through the KCA, Dr Vincent arranges for some children of poor Nigerian parents to have heart surgeries in India.
    • According to him, discussions are ongoing with some Indian hospitals to send specialist cardiac teams to Nigeria to conduct heart surgeries for persons who cannot afford the cost.

    As a mark of appreciation for Dr Palathingal’s services to Nigeria and Nigerians, the Nigerian-Indian community, including a representation from the Indian High Commission, was fully involved in the celebration of one of their own. At the reception which held at  the Cardinal Anthony Okogie Hall, St. Agnes Catholic Church, Maryland, Lagos, a  very interesting cultural performance was staged by a group of young Indian children. At the event, a member of his family, the Revd Father Palathingal, who came for the event all the way from India, proposed his brother’s toast.  All these were intended to show appreciation for how well Dr Vincent has represented, not just the Palathingal family of Kattoor, Kerala India, but the entire good people of India.

    It is kudos and congratulations to His Royal Highness, the Onikosi, who, in this era of change in our country, has demonstrated a paradigm shift in how it is much preferable to appreciate and honour services to the community over and above transient financial considerations.

     May your kind increase in Nigeria, Kabiyesi, and may this worthy example translate into the new template for bestowing chieftaincy titles on worthy individuals by your brother Obas.

    I sincerely congratulate the new Basegun, Dr Vincent J.Palathingal, and his adorable wife, the Yeye Basegun, on the occasion of this well-deserved honour. I wish them God’s continuing uplift as I hope and pray that they will continue to extend their philanthropic services to the needy in Nigeria.

  • Bishop Kukah’s grandiloquence: A mere rearguard face-saving effort

    Bishop Kukah’s grandiloquence: A mere rearguard face-saving effort

    The Peace Committee having been denied the joy of playing a Job’s comforter to now President Muhammadu Buhari, is merely out on a fishing expedition, eager, always, to protect the object of its adulation as well as its raison d’etre.

    Tatalo scored the bull’s eye when in ‘The Trial Of Bishop Kukah’, (The Nation, 23 August, 2015) he wrote:  “Let it be bluntly and baldly stated that this committee, the Nigerian Peace Committee, that is, is not about peace at all. It materialised as a last ditch ruling class initiative to force General Buhari to accept dishonourable defeat and hence to stave off the revolutionary turmoil and anarchy that would have accompanied electoral miscarriage…’ Indeed, I make bold to say that it was, essentially, the apogee of the many schemes  put in place by the core Jonathanists and  their acolytes like  Afenifere  to hoodwink  Nigerians  into silence after gifting an undeserving President Jonathan a second term. Granted that it would be uncharitable to suggest that Afenifere is not serious about restructuring, they were well aware they sold the idea of a national conference to a most unwilling President Jonathan who would later show his utter revulsion for the event by failing to do anything about those aspects he could, very easily, have effected by a mere stroke of the pen.  Yet they wanted him to win and would do everything to secure that victory. For Afenifere therefore, the national conference was seen as a ‘deu ex machina’ to guarantee Southwest votes go to Jonathan.  That intended victory must also be sustainable because only then would Afenifere get out of its decades- old consignment to political Siberia in a region where they used to be the undisputed leaders; its most important reason for supporting Jonathan. In the certainty of that victory, to get which the PDP had other schemes to eventuate, and about which Afenifere may have been completely unaware, they had to help Jonathan prevent any post election conflagration as we saw in 2011. Because of the urgency of that victory, Afenifere raised no objection, whatever, to the president’s intent to inundate the country, especially the Southwest, with soldiers and masked members of the Niger-Delta Volunteer Force. Not even when Asari Dokubo threatened to level the entire Southwest did we hear a whimper from Afenifere. Jonathan’s victory, without a repeat of the 2011 post-election conflagration was uppermost in their calculations and for this reason, we would have some international diplomats come on a ‘salvage mission’.

     Aside Afenifere, PDP was, of course, certain of its candidate’s re-election. Many were the strategies, legal and otherwise, put in place to ensure it. Up until the eve of the election, when the respected Professor Chidi Odinkalu weighed in, supporting deployment of soldiers all over the country in a democratic election, the Ekiti model, which failed in Osun because we were fast in unravelling what happened at the Ekiti election, and the yeoman’s effort to frustrate them, was to be the template.  Nigerians have since come to know the details, courtesy Captain Koli’s Ekitigate tapes. For a confirmation of this claim, I quote from my article titled: “It Will Be Most Unlike PDP Not To Rig The 2015 Election,” of  4 January 2015 in which I  quoted Musiliu  Obanikoro ( a major player in  the Ekitigate saga) in an interview boasting as follows: ‘I can tell you that we are going to win. The president is going to win BIG; we are going to clear the Southwest. You can mark today’s date and quote me.” I invite the reader to note Obanikoro’s emphatic arrogance. As at that date, Nigerians have not known anything about the tapes.

    While the PDP was scheming, APC was working on much surer ground, a fact which enabled Dr. Femi Olufunmilade, a member of its Presidential Campaign Council to observe as follows in a recent interview: “The schisms within the PDP and the support of innumerable groups across the federation and the Diaspora were there to ensure victory. Many youth organisations, trade unions and so on lined up behind the Buhari-Osinbajo ticket. It was a rainbow coalition that cut across ethnicity, religion, region, class, professions etc. A unique feature of the ticket was that the talakawas, the lower class, the very poor in society gave their time, money, and intellect to it. It was unprecedented. I recall that when my campaign team of the Buhari-Osinbajo Support Organisation (BOSO) campaigned in the Ibarapa region of Oyo State and we offered to pay some local folks to paste the Buhari-Osinbajo posters we took along, they rejected our money and felt somehow insulted.”

    Incidentally, this widespread cult following was also being observed by some people in the other camp. Such persons knew that to rig the presidential election would be tantamount to inviting a conflagration far worse than we saw in 2011. This, I suspect, was how the former U.N Secretary-General, Kofie Anan and his former Commonwealth counterpart, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, suddenly emerged on the scene. It must be recalled, however, that this was soon after Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, with clear sympathies for Afenifere, proposed the signing of a MOU between the two leading presidential candidates. Integral to the proposed memorandum of understanding was the suggestion that the two candidates should sign that their supporters will, willy nilly, ACCEPT WHATEVER THE RESULT(caps mine) of the election.  Because I have never seen or heard anything like this before, I soon reacted to the suggestion. On these pages, Sunday, 18 January, 2015, I queried: “Is this diplomacy or duplicity? Nobody wants violence but how has PDP shown it won’t rig the election, being in power? Will the president deploy soldiers, policemen, militants in masks or not? Why didn’t the diplomats or Professor Akinyemi emphasise transparency and integrity of the electoral process? Left to me, this accord is a carte blanche to PDP to rig to their hearts’ content. I am sure something preposterous is afoot and APC had better wake up.” In my view, these were all attempts to mollify Nigerians into quietude after candidate Buhari would have been mindlessly rigged out and I believe this was when the Peace Committee was birthed; aimed at giving a victorious, re-elected President Jonathan, a safe landing, devoid of any of our usual post-election bloodletting.

    I could be wrong, anyway, but this is the logical deduction I can make from the extant circumstances.

    With Muhammadu Buhari’s victory having become obvious hours before the close of vote tabulation, wringing a congratulatory telephone call from the defeated candidate to the winner became about the only remarkable thing the peace people could do. And the success of that must, to a great extent, be attributed to the massive and totally uncompromising stance of the UK and the U.S whose ambassadors were on ground, literally, eye ball to eye ball. To this must be added Olusegun Obasanjo’s earlier, and very timely, warning to President Jonathan about the not too pleasant circumstances of President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire.

    Given this background, it should not surprise Nigerians that Bishop Kukah has since experienced a reverse Pauline conversion which took him away from the Nigerian hoi polloi and dropped him, ‘dead’, on the side of the oppressors. But there is something more about this Peace committee. According to the inimitable Olatunji Dare in his article: “Between ‘national icon’ and iconographer” (The Nation, 11 August, 2015) the Peace committee Chairman, in a newspaper advert, recently congratulated Chief Tony Anenih as follows on his 82nd birthday: “A leader of uncommon achievement, keeper of the peace of the nation, a political heavyweight and mentor to the upcoming generation; an elder statesman and a leader of indomitable mien. No doubt yours has been a life of consistent hard work, total commitment to higher principles and unalloyed loyalty to the national cause.”  Conceding that all this is true of the elder statesman, and given what Nigerians know about the relationship between Chief Anenih  and former President Jonathan, I ask, is it likely  that the Peace Committee  could ever lend its  weight to a probe of  former President Jonathan? I doubt.

    Nigerians should, in the light of all these, take Bishop Kukah’s grandiloquent disavowals as nothing more than blowing an empty wind. The Peace Committee having been denied the joy of playing a Job’s comforter to now President Muhammadu Buhari, is merely out on a fishing expedition, eager, always, to protect the object of its adulation as well as its raison detre.

  • Obasanjo’s conceit

    Obasanjo’s conceit

    The retired general, two time Head of State – a third unconstitutional attempt failed spectacularly at the senate of the federal republic – should be humble enough to pray to God to remove conceit far away from him rather than continue to pull others down, even posthumously.

    Like him or hate him, the man, Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo, two-time Nigerian Head of State, is the ‘numero uno’ Nigerian statesman alive.

    Although he is as loved as he is hated, those who like him do so with a passion. Witness, for instance, this panegyric of a contribution by a forum member on  9 December, 2013  : “As far as Nigeria’s presidents, past and present are concerned,  none  could be called into OBJ’s peerage. Reading OBJ from a distance, as I do not know him personally, I believe he is head  and shoulders above all of them, civilian as well as military. He is intellectually sound and has a high capacity for understanding complex socio-political and economic issues. It doesn’t take him long to understand what the experts are explaining to him and can break it down into ordinary people’s language, and, in fact,  go ahead to  weave local proverbs around them. Being an engineer, he is easily at home with technical issues.

    He is a prudent, and wise man by all measures. He has grown into the class of sages. We should celebrate him and his accomplishments while still alive and  not wait to write funeral dirges about our own courageous, fearless and accomplished Chief Matthew Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo GCFR, former military head of state, two-term democratically elected president, retired army General, civil war hero, international diplomat, accomplished writer and author, committed Pan –Africanist; a leading light of the Yoruba race and  traditional chief of the Owu kingdom. I will leave writing about his excesses, foibles and faults to his close friends and detractors alike. I admire his tough guy persona.”

    There is little, if any at all, to dispute in the above, but it is somewhat disingenuous that the author preferred to inflict on Obasanjo’s friends, and foes alike, any mention of the man’s many stunts and excesses, not to talk of his outright dubiety. Although General Obasanjo’s name has become very popular, given his reported exploits during the Nigerian civil war,  6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970 – the reader is advised to read General Alabi-Isama’s:  ‘The Tragedy of Victory: On-the-spot Account of the Nigeria-Biafra War in the Atlantic Theatre’, for a more nuanced account of that – I came to know the general, close up,  a little later  through a senior colleague,  and  Estate Manager,  of the University of Ibadan  in the mid-70s whose views of  Obasanjo  unambiguously mirrored Mama Iyabo’s about her husband. From that point on, I came to pay more attention to news concerning General Obasanjo, either as military or civilian Head of state, as a distinguished diplomat with his views on African juju, whether in Abacha’s gulag, or visiting Ekiti dancing ‘omo o le jo baba’ during Ayo Fayose’s first coming,  and, seriously, up until  his PDP membership card was torn to pieces for him by proxy.

    As I write this, I have not stopped watching him, coyly scheming to play the baby feeder to President Buhari, albeit, from  behind the shadows.  Through all these, Chief Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo comes up, indisputably, as an enigma.

    He showed his hands again this past week on a matter so weighty my life teacher – my teacher in the secondary school, at the university and ever since –  a solid,  gracefully aging  intellectual,  a Nigerian senior citizen whose sole concern now is aggressively canvassing ways out of  Nigeria’s unfortunate circumstances – had to devote his entire column in The Nation of  Thursday, 20 August, 2015, to the latest of  Obasanjo’s  gaffes ; his ever ready predilection to shoot down anything that does not revolve around him or present him as the hero.

    Writing in an article he titled “Message to Obasanjo”, Gbogun Gboro began as follows: “I make it a point of duty to be respectful of President Olusegun Obasanjo, whether I happen to mention his name in public or in private. I am sure that is part of my respect for my country. For me, it is not a small thing that a person has once been

    head of the country of my birth.” Obviously, this intro would have  been non sequitor, if his subject was ever willing to extend the same measure of courtesies to others. Unfortunately, it would appear that Obasanjo considers extending respect to others as taking something away from his assumed self-importance.  The columnist then went on:

    “In the past few days, President Obasanjo has been widely reported to have made some thought-provoking statements about the issue of leadership in the Yoruba nation. I see no need to probe into his motives for making these statements – and I will not so probe, out of respect. Whether he is out to shoot barbs at some person or persons among the Yoruba people is not unimportant, but I choose not to step into such considerations. It is quite possible to look into the statements themselves on purely objective basis, and that is what I would rather do.”

    Unfortunately, the Yoruba say, if you do not tell an evil doer that he is wicked, he would most probably consider himself the best person ever. I therefore make bold to say that Obasanjo, by that statement, was aiming  at none other than the Avatar;  the man believed by most, Nigerians as well as foreigners, and with utmost justification, to be Nigeria’s greatest political visionary ever, the man Awo. Nor would that be Obasanjo’s first time of taking a dig at Awo. In one of his books, written about the time he became quite close to the likes of Professor Billy Dudley of the University of Ibadan, he had written that what Awo longed for, futilely all his life – the Nigerian presidency, that is – was handed to him on a platter. Obasanjo did not stop there. When, as President, he went after Afenifere, the highly regarded Pan-Yoruba organisation, and shredded it beyond recognition, putting in its place a formless Yoruba Council of Elders, it was intended to rubbish a man whose place in history is far beyond diminution.  When through all manner of subterfuge and dubiety, he literally killed off the Alliance for Democracy, with only the LagosState governor, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, being the sole surviving governor out of six, in a thoroughly rigged election, it was for no other reason than to submerge an imperishable name with the  hope of emerging primus inter pares, amongst Yoruba political leaders,  even though he should come far below in the pecking order.

    What then drives a man so truly blessed of God but who is forever looking for something? What exactly, like forever, puts him in a seeming competition with non-existent rivals?  It is that elusive thing that pushed him to inflict on Nigerians, a decent, but obviously sick Yar Adua and, subsequently, Goodluck Jonathan, a man, the consequences of whose incompetence, as we are getting to see daily, President Buhari is almost guaranteed to spend his entire first four years in office cleaning up. For things to be otherwise, it would mean that Saraki and his friends in the National Assembly, support the president by effecting appropriate amendments to our extant weak anti-corruption laws; which  weaknesses lawyers take undue advantage of to  make cases seemingly unending.

    Obasanjo makes so much of his belief in God that you would think he should have abandoned all these bush fires which can only end up diminishing him in the estimation of a citizenry which should, ordinarily, have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for his services to Nigeria, warts and all.  I have heard many attribute not less than 70 percent of  Nigeria’s current woes  to him which is why it is befuddling reading him present, as he did in his recent interview with Mojeed, to be  the best thing  to have happened to Nigeria, ever.

    The retired general, two time Head of State – a third unconstitutional attempt failed spectacularly at the senate of the federal republic – should be humble enough to pray to God to remove conceit far away from him rather than continue to pull others down, even posthumously.

  • The obstreperous judge of the state of Osun

    The obstreperous judge of the state of Osun

    There is no way a judge would spew such banalities on a state chief executive if, indeed, she was not consumed by hate and it is rather a shame that we still have such bigoted individuals, with the power of life and death, adjudicating in our hallowed courts of justice

    No matter in which university her worshipful majesty, Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, read her law, she could never have passed through the likes of Professors Okunuga, Ijalaiye, Kasunmu or Olawoyin, the way she completely desecrated the judiciary by her ill- advised petition against the Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, which petition, it is obvious, she must have written out of some deep-seated bitterness. There is no way a judge would spew such banalities on a state chief executive if, indeed, she was not consumed by hate and it is rather a shame that we still have such bigoted individuals, with the power of life and death, adjudicating in our hallowed courts of justice. Reading this woman’s petition, you would not think that any other state, besides Osun, has a backlog of unpaid salaries.

    Meanwhile in Benue State, for reasons not unconnected with non-payment of workers’ salaries, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja temporarily froze the state’s accounts in Skye Bank, Zenith Bank, First Bank of Nigeria and First City Monument Bank while for the same reason. The Daily Independent of May 16, 2015 reported that workers in Plateau State sacked the entire state 24 lawmakers from sitting over their failure to prevail on the state government to pay their salary arrears running to about seven months. While this is the situation in at least 23 of Nigeria’s 36 states we have the words of the Edo State governor, Comrade Adam Oshiomhole, to the effect that President Jonathan “could only be said to have paid wages only to the extent that Okonjo-Iweala borrowed from the Central Bank; from various bond instruments including drawing down over N3 trillion from pension funds. It was in realisation of this truly pervasive problem that governors of both the APC and the PDP approached the federal government for a bail out which was granted. Unfortunately, given Yoruba’s historic bad belle and pull-him-down syndrome, things were bound to be treated differently in the Southwest, especially in Osun State, where a particular individual, forever wanting to be governor, was sure to find ‘agent provocateurs’, ready to pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him. This, I suspect, is where this judge, who has subsequently been thoroughly excoriated for desecrating the judiciary by legal juggernauts like Chief (Mrs) Folake Solanke, SAN and Professor Itse Sagay, SAN, comes in.

    It  is  also with  this  macabre circumstances in mind, this complete disregard for judicial norms  as well as  everything that can be  considered  decent, and respectful, that Adewale Adeoye, a CNN African Journalist Award winner,  decided  to weigh in on Oloyede’s monumental faux pas. His views are presented, mutatis mutandis:  “Governors should, by all means, be held accountable for their deeds.  All the same, Justice Oloyede erred.  Her petition is curious, suspicious and raises serious issues about the separation of powers just as it is a complete negation of the prescriptions of the code of conduct as it concerns judicial officers.  As one, it is obviously not in Justice Oloyede’s place to initiate impeachment proceedings against the governor. Her petition is novel, has never been known to happen; not here nor in the advanced democracies. This Judge has no history of being a radical and so must have acted at the prompting of politicians, or of a political party.  That she did so publicly is as dreadful as it is bizarre.  No judge, not even in a banana republic, should be seen acting in such a rash and repugnant manner. Why, for instance, has the Chief Justice of the Federation not written such a petition to the Senate calling for the impeachment of former President Goodluck Jonathan when the federal government was borrowing in trillions to pay salaries?  Without doubt, her action demonstrates a gross lack of professional etiquette and so she can justifiably be described as a threat to the judiciary. We have heard that a section of the judiciary stinks with corruption and by this, she has confirmed that such corruption is not limited to financials only; it could very well be attitudinal.  Her inability to check and moderate her sentiments smells to high heavens, exposing her as being extremely weak and unable to rein in her impulses. She demonstrated a flirtatious display of reactionary alliance with the roguish PDP; a party which has spared no effort in making governance in the State of Osun impossible.  Without a doubt, that  party is from whence came the contents  of her petition and it is meant to distract  a governor who is doing his best to ameliorate the effects of their party’s  unrestrained looting which ensured that trillions of naira that should have ended up in the federation account  never got there in the first place.  Nigerians must thank God PDP et al, have been dispatched to political Siberia to rot.

    Judges are neither police nor expected to be politicians. Judges are there to interpret the law based on evidence before them. They are not prosecutors, nor can they be judges in their own case. This misdirected judge quoted figures that are confidential to the state even when she did not get them, leveraging on the FOI law, which obviously means  that she has either been personally spying or has agents  leaking state secrets to her.  Clearly, Justice Oloyede is a remnant of the old order, a rookie of the political clan, planted in the judiciary; a clan that wishes to see Nigeria remain a fiefdom of ineptitude, run by a rogue cartel wishing to dominate government for selfish ends. It is the responsibility of any society that wishes to uphold the separation of powers, that intruders like her must not go unpunished by the appropriate authorities.”  Were Justice Oloyede a woman of principles, or a citizen who truly means well for her state; if she were a woman of her word, she should have promptly resigned her appointment except she still cannot see the difference between her high office as judge,  and that of  a mere busy body who has obviously been playing  ‘Edward Snowden’, on the state’s  official secrets . The State of Osun, I think, should proceed to make her have her day in court for this profanity. In concluding, let me say a word for the poor, suffering Nigerian worker.  Nothing can be worse than not getting paid for work done and it becomes more excruciating when this situation continues for months on end.  And, given Nigeria’s parlous circumstances, this situation could go on for years. Or how many times can state governors run to a federal government that is, itself living by its shoestrings? This is why I think the Nigerian Labour Congress should now quit adversarial relationship with the different arms of government. Labour should set out to properly serve the interest of Nigerians workers by posing and finding answers to questions that are crucial if they hope to take workers out of their present cul-de-sac.  For instance, labour’s insistence on uniform salary in all states of the federation is unhelpful because states are not equally endowed.  Also, if the federal government will not perpetually come to states’ assistance in the payment of salaries, then it must quit negotiating salaries and allowances on behalf of other tiers of government. It is absolutely fallacious to think that states like Ebonyi, Ekiti, Osun etc, can comfortably pay the same salary as Lagos, Rivers, Kano, Akwa Ibom, for instance. States must be allowed to pay salaries it can afford based on honest negotiations between Labour and government. For instance, Osun did not have its current problem until the senior workers union arm twisted the government to extend the minimum wage agreement to all categories of staff. From that point on,

    most states discovered they could no longer afford their monthly salary bills. It must be pointed out that in any state of the federation, the public service does not cater to more than about 10 percent or thereabouts of the population. When this small fraction takes everything a government earns in a month, what is left for government to do anything else?  Only this past week the House of Representatives decided to investigate why the capital component of the current budget is not being implemented.  Should any serious body go into such things when even a kindergarten knows why?

    Labour must do this hard work on behalf of workers or give states a free hand to determine their staff strength.

  • This Saraki Senate can delay, indeed, frustrate PMB

    This Saraki Senate can delay, indeed, frustrate PMB

    When I read about the obfuscation coming from an Abuja court about  the forgery at the senate,  claiming it was an internal affair, I knew, instinctively, that we  were beginning to  see a recrudescence of  PDP-ism , now emboldened  by Saraki’s  ego-driven theatricals.

    Unless and until Senator Ike Ekweremadu honourably steps aside/or is eased out as Deputy Senate President, the crisis in the senate cannot be said to be over. The intrigue and contrivance woven by Saraki to bind and bond with Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President is most subversive. It cannot breed trust between the senate and the ruling party, APC, and the Buhari presidency. Since we are not running a government of National Unity, the question of a bi-partisan legislature becomes an aberration. What is not morally right can never be politically correct.” – Canada-based Sir Fred Akinsanmi, JP.

    Granted that Senate President Bukola Saraki has, in the past, severally proved himself totally unscrupulous in the pursuit of power, it  still comes as most  puzzling,  if,  indeed, not  politically suicidal, that he, a medical doctor, two-time state governor and former Chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum,  one  you would have no qualms describing as a brilliant politician could, well aware of the plethora of  allegations against him, still decide to railroad himself  into the office of the president of the Nigerian senate, not only against his party’s  preferences, but  do so through standing orders he knew were  forged, as has now been confirmed by the office of  the Attorney-General vide a statement by the Head of  Civil Litigation, Federal Ministry of  Justice.  Talking about his multitude of outstanding  problems,  a  yet  to be controverted  report by POINTBLANKNEWS of  13, August  2013 reads as follows:”Senator Bukola Saraki who returns to the EFCC today to face further grilling over some alleged fraudulent transactions, is having tons of massive fraud charges hanging on his neck. He was a guest of the EFCC on Monday for several hours, but was released on administrative bail and asked to return Tuesday. The former governor maintained that he had no cause to be invited, since the issues had been investigated by the agency over the years. It will be recalled that the commission had, last week, vowed to take all necessary measures to arrest and bring Saraki to justice over his tenure as governor and at the SGN bank. EFCC vowed last Friday to take necessary steps to arrest and try him for several fraud-related cases. He allegedly laundered billions of naira belonging to Inter Continental Bank of Nigeria Plc (now Access Bank) and also allegedly used fronts like Sintex Ltd, Skyview Properties Ltd, Asam Oil, Quality Packing Ltd, Bastone Ltd, Madison Properties Ltd, and Airline catering Services, to launder billions of naira. The monies, which were given out as loans, were later written off as bad debts’. (Report slightly edited for space constraints). The last Nigerians heard about this is not that he has been discharged and  acquitted but rather, that  efforts to get him prosecuted  are being frustrated by a certain bank.

    My respect for Senator Saraki inched a notch higher when it turned out he was the whistle blower in the humongous oil subsidy scam. President Buhari, no Nigerians, would still have had to be wary of the present senate even if it had not started off forging its own standing orders consisting, as it does, of a glut of former state governors who literally ran their states aground; those the respected former Nigerian Attorney-General, Chief Richard Akinjide, recently described as very corrupt. For instance, an investigation by Saturday PUNCH has revealed that over N172bn fraud cases are in court against these former governor -senators.  It should not surprise therefore that most of their states lead in the unpaid workers saga.

    I digress.

    Can a determined effort to escape justice then be the  sole reason  a former governor and returning  senator, would smuggle himself into the National Assembly premises at an ungodly hour, hide in a small car – his own words – and proceed, rather shamelessly, to trade off the Senate Deputy President  position which should normally be held by a member of his own party to a member of  a discredited PDP, which party Nigerians so comprehensively rejected only a few weeks earlier?  Could it be he momentarily forgot that the ancien regime was gone with all its wiles? Could this be why, sitting pretty in that office, and edged on by some ex- SUG, karate fighting muscle-men, he permitted /schemed the elevation of a first time senator to the post of  Senate  minority leader where there are ranking senators?

    Obviously, ambition must have limits.

    My fear of this senate leadership, perched there dangerously just because Bukola Saraki so disrespects both the president and the APC on whose platform he emerged senator, is enormous. At least, a more respectful Speaker Dogara, has since shown respect to both the president and to party supremacy. My fear of the senate  leadership’s capacity for evil is huge because  it can delay, if not frustrate, the president’s change agenda  and  thus  constitute a stumbling block to  a country genuinely and eagerly in search of real  change: a  change  from  the suffocating kleptomania of the recent past, to a robust, corruption-fighting government which will be seen to be  working for the good of the greater majority of  the people – a change indeed, that Nigerians are beginning to see.

    Only this past week, the Buhari administration appointed a first class and very experienced Ibe Kachikwu, as the new helmsman at the NNPC and before you know it, eight hitherto wasteful and unaccountable group divisions came crashing down to four. That can only be the least of the positive tidings to come from a corporation that has since been turned to a cesspool of corruption.

    When I read about the obfuscation coming from an Abuja court about  the forgery at the senate,  claiming it was an internal affair, I knew, instinctively, that we  were beginning to  see a recrudescence of  PDP-ism , now emboldened  by Saraki’s  ego-driven theatricals. The PDP crowd has always believed that everybody has a price since money, illicit money, is not their problem.  But God be praised, both the Attorney-General’s Office, and that of the Inspector-General of Police have made a short shrift of that effort. It was particularly fascinating reading the IG’s office saying that: ‘IGP Solomon Arase believes that the allegations are criminal and that the police cannot be restrained from investigating it.’ It actually went on to question the powers of the court to restrain either the police or the AGF from performing their statutory responsibilities.

    How time changes?  GEJ days, the A-G would have simply withdrawn the case from court.

    I am happy for  IGP Arase who,  it seems, wants  to  use the  short time at his disposal to make a mark,  reposition the police and leave a worthy legacy like the Hon. Justice Alfa Belgore (GCON) – 2006-2007-  did within a few months, as Chief Justice, and left his name in gold. With the current senate leadership in place, not only could it be maneuvered into opposition against the change agenda, the president could, indeed, be serially frustrated by delaying tactics, especially in enactments  and in appointments that require its approval. Also with Saraki successfully rebuffing the ruling party, and given these senators’ penchant for, and  their unquenchable thirst for what they call juicy committees which underpinned  Saraki’s recent endorsement by 81 members, a very bad precedent would have been laid, literally making them  untouchable. Who then will ask them to reasonably, and substantially, reduce their mountain of remunerations which has seen them emerge as the highest paid legislators anywhere on the face of the earth?

    It is heart-warming, however, to hear the I-G’s office say that the senate forgery raises issues of criminality about which the police owes Nigerians the duty to unearth the truth. It is  equally  sweet  music  to hear  that the investigation has since been concluded and, according to the Head of Civil Litigation, Federal Ministry of Justice, Taiwo Abidogun, who gave the clincher,  those involved will very soon have their day in court, since, according to him, ‘a completed act can no longer be stayed.’

  • The prince polyglot at 75: Whither Ekiti?

    The prince polyglot at 75: Whither Ekiti?

    However, writing about Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi is, without doubt, the equivalent of carrying coal to Newcastle

    For example, by sheer manipulation, Ekiti was represented by five members, Ondo nine, Ogun 19   inclusive of the opportunists called civil society groups. In a restructured Nigerian society, the imbalance, even in the West, would be so obvious that we would be exchanging one imperialism with another (with Ekiti five and Ogun 19″, for instance). This, of course, is totally unacceptable.’ – Chief Oladeji Fasuan, MON, JP on President Jonathan’s 2014 talk shop.

    As at the last count, he speaks some six different modern languages and that, by the way, is only a minuscule part of this incredible human being, this senior citizen of a great country, who has, and continues to leave his mark on several areas of our national life. However, writing about Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi is, without doubt, the equivalent of carrying coal to Newcastle.  Too much has already been written about him, his background, and student activism at the then University of Ife which culminated in his election as the Secretary-General of the World Student Movement, a position which took him to about 140 countries, his impressive and continuing involvement in the organised private sector, as well as his philanthropy, the last leading his law firm to be mostly involved in pro bono services.

    Therefore, in order not to just  merely celebrate  him  on  his 75th birthday, I  decided  to pidgeon-hole him – not an easy prospect – zeroing in on the usefulness to Ekiti, or  otherwise,  of  the  IGBIMO URE EKITI (IUE) which he founded. After all, has he not told us that “the template had been laid to ensure that URE does not end up as a nine day wonder?”

    Consisting the likes of  Sir Remi Omotoso, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), Dele Adesina (SAN), Professor Peter Adeniyi; Chief Sam Bolarinde; Admiral Dehinde Joseph; Ambassador Bayo Ayeni , Dr.(Mrs) Funke Adebajo, and several  distinguished Ekiti citizens, IGBIMO, from its published statements, ‘is open to all qualified Ekiti indigenes who imbibe the core values of the Ekiti people, including dignity, reliability and integrity; who are committed to the development of the state;  understand their psyche and the need for reason, accommodation and patience in handling matters of mutual interest, who are passionate for results, but are not involved in partisan politics.  Proven leaders in their professions, businesses, vocations or community and who are socio-economically stable. “IGBIMO,” we are further told, “aims at bringing together people of impeccable integrity who are prepared to pool their resources towards re-establishing the state’s respectability, political stability, peace, progress and development.”

    I paraphrase below my reference to IGBIMO in my write-up on the occasion of Prince’s 71st birthday in 2011: “If there were an organisation oga would have wanted me enlisted in but which, however, proved impossible because of my not-so hidden involvement in political activities, it is IGBIMO.  I was obviously  one of the first people he discussed IGBIMO with and it is no self-glorification when I say that he was kind enough to ask me to do the draft of his speech at  the body’s inaugural meeting, before settling down to carve it in his inimitable  style.’

    So, to the meat of this entire article.

    If IGBIMO URE EKITI is all we have been told it is, and Prince, the founder is alive and kicking, aging more gracefully and the organisation waxing stronger, why is Ekiti in its present dire straits? What has the body done, or how does it intend to help the present government settle down to proper governance, now that the governor is no longer bogged down with any threats of impeachment?

    I would be the very first to admit that mediating the Ekiti conundrum is not the easiest thing on planet earth.  Many, including the respected Prince, are aware that in spite of my not being in governor Fayose’s political party, I contacted, in the heat of  his troubles with the G.19,  eighteen distinguished Ekiti non political icons, pleading with them to kindly intervene in what was obviously  a major blur on the state.  That effort led directly to Chief Deji Fasuan calling a joint meeting of Ekiti Elders and the rump of the committee for the creation of Ekiti. Unfortunately, like the one at the instance of Aare Afe Babalola, it led nowhere. I subsequently took the matter up with Prince who then informed me that he had much earlier involved both Chief Olanipekun and Elder Adesina, both Senior Advocates of Nigeria, and two of those I had earlier contacted and discussed with severally by phone. Unfortunately, even after they had been promised a meeting with the two groups, nothing eventually came from their efforts.  My suggestion then which I once published on these pages, was that the House should drop all threats of impeachment in return for a guarantee by Fayose of an unfettered resumption of legislative duties and payment of   the legislators’ outstanding entitlements.  In addition,  fearing that the state  might graduate into an orgy of armed robbery and kidnapping, which has since happened, I suggested that all political thugs, especially the imported members of the Niger Delta volunteer force,  should be paid off  after all  the dangerous weapons shelled out to them must have been  meticulously withdrawn.

    So what now do I want Prince Adelusi-Adeluyi and URE to do?

    Effective 5th June, 2015, circumstances changed completely in Ekiti. As things stand in the state today, political contestation has literally receded into the doldrums since my party, the APC, would first have to sort out its own internal convulsions which, among other things, has enabled Fayose metamorphose into something of a conquistador.  That situation has been further accentuated by the fact that it does not appear there is anybody in the state today, whose word he respects or whose advice, he will readily take.  To further worsen matters, he equates the party in Ekiti; which reminds me of a PDP top shot,  indeed, a former LG Chairman in Ekiti, who walked up to me in church last Sunday and said: “Oga, you people should  get ready to receive  Fayose in the APC because we are going to run him out of our party”. I know that the governor and his aides will vigorously deny and denounce my conclusions here, the best they can.

    In my view, however, the time has come for a body of eminent personalities like URE to now seriously engage the governor to, at least, let him know the consequences of the prevailing state of affairs. I know from interactions with several Ekiti compatriots who no longer  dare  go home, and those  at home who can still whisper their honest feelings if there is no chance of their being overheard by Big Brother, that the state economy , already in the doldrums, is heading  into  more dire straits. Nor does any serious minded businessman any longer consider Ekiti worth visiting except he is a PDP member out to get some contract. My plea is that URE should, on this glorious occasion of its founder’s birthday, decide to meet with Governor Fayose and advise him to deliberately reduce the prevailing tension and fashion out a genuinely people-friendly mode of governance. It is not enough for Okada riders to claim they are in Eldorado. That chimera does not a state make. He must change course and become everybody’s governor. The only time I saw him at his first coming as governor, was when he visited Ekitis resident in Lagos. He could very well go on such trips again and  reassure citizens outside the state of their security  whenever they visit,  rather than  this seeming  eagerness to act  as  PDP’s  national leader. He needs Ekitis everywhere to come help him out of the present miasma.  I know from discussions with those who should know, that Governor Fayose holds Oga Juli, Wole, and Dele in very high regards. These three could be in an IGBIMO delegation of about five or six persons to seriously engage him on the way forward.

    Happily, the next election is a long way away.  He should therefore be able to see that their effort is beyond politics.

    Here is wishing our delectable Prince many happy returns.

  • Still on a successful Buhari anti-corruption war

    Still on a successful Buhari anti-corruption war

    If the National Assembly, expected to be the bulwark of the government, could be so easily compromised, God help us with a judiciary crawling with corrupt judges and where some very senior lawyers serve as conduit for bribes to sway court decisions

    The first part of this article indicated a few inescapable actions President Buhari must take if he wants to succeed in reining in corruption in the land.  Corruption has become so hydra-headed, even systemic in Nigeria that were it not going to fight back any war aimed at it, any attempt to stamp it out would still be a helluva duel. Those eating our country raw are so entrenched, and loaded,  that they have wasted no time in showing  what they are capable of  in the National Assembly the way they made minced meat of the  time honoured practice of  having members  of the majority party in parliament holding the principal  posts in both chambers, whether  at  home here in Nigeria,  or in  the U.S from where we borrowed the presidential system. If the National Assembly, expected to be the bulwark of the government, could be so easily compromised, God help us with a judiciary crawling with corrupt judges and where some very senior lawyers serve as conduit for bribes to sway court decisions.  Except President Buhari demonstrates unmistakable seriousness, early enough, by ensuring that every member of his party not only  respects party supremacy, but  acts in support of his government’s  policies,  which one is sure will be people friendly, there is enough stolen money out there to make nonsense of his  change mantra, the anti-corruption war, inclusive.

    Fortunately, as I was busy making suggestions on the subject here last Sunday, Itse Sagay, a distinguished legal scholar and Professor of Law, in concluding his article: ‘Politics, Public Service, Morality and Integrity in Nigeria’, (The Nation of the same date), was leveraging on his huge knowledge of the underlying weaknesses in our extant legal system to prescribe the following ways of strengthening current laws if the president is to successfully fight corruption. Wrote Professor Sagay:  “I wonder whether Nigeria has not gone too far down the depths of the abyss to be saved.  Recently, Professor Ben Nwabueze suggested that only a bloody revolution could save Nigeria.  I hope not.  What we absolutely and urgently need is a leader who can impose discipline and eliminate corruption.  There will be need to amend our laws to strengthen the state at the expense of individual liberty at least for a short while, if we are to get to redemption point.  All legal provisions permitting preliminary objections to prosecutions for corruption must be repealed from our laws.  The power of any court to issue an order of injunction against a trial for any crime, particularly corruption, should be repealed.  Interlocutory applications in cases concerning corruption should be banned.”

    I am not quite sure whether being a legal scholar, Professor Sagay could not bear to suggest, as I did in the first part of this article, that anybody facing corruption charges should be presumed guilty with the responsibility devolving on him to prove his innocence. Nigerians just have to appreciate the fact that corruption in our country has assumed the stature of a virulent cancer which demands nothing short of a drastic surgical intervention. Like President Buhari has been quoted as saying, if we do not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria and “the house would have truly fallen”, to quote the German, Karl Maier. Over and above Professor  Sagay’s  prescriptions,  it is my view  that  a Special Court should be established to try corruption cases so as to avoid the shenanigans we see daily in our courts; shenanigans which  lawyers exploit to thwart justice, thereby ensuring that corruption remains alive and kicking, even emboldened.

    The Nation editor, Gbenga Omotoso, took us through some of these in his recent article: “An Anti-Graft War Advisory” –The Nation, Thursday, July 23, 2015 – from which we shall quote at some length.

    He wrote: “Here we go: Merely taking you before the court – if you fail to get a perpetual injunction against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), its agents, privies, officers, operatives or whatsoever called – does not make you a prisoner. Be ready to shell out a fortune – obviously a small fraction of the cash they claim you have stolen – to get a damn good lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). There are many of them in town nowadays. Your adversary, the tempestuous EFCC, cannot afford them. When you are remanded, don’t panic and give your traducers a chance to say: “Oh; he’s finished.” Remember, the offence, no matter how huge the cash involved, is bailable. In fact, the charges may be as long as the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Never mind; as the case progresses, they may be withdrawn, amended or consolidated into one or two.

    Bail will come in very liberal terms

    When the case proper begins, your lawyer will tell the judge he has no jurisdiction to entertain the matter. The judge could be stubborn. He may fix a date to determine his jurisdiction and, in actual fact, rule that he is fit to hear the matter. Don’t fret. Your lawyer will simply head for the ever-busy Court of Appeal. This, no doubt, will take months to resolve. The appeal may be decided, most likely against you.

    Another judge will naturally take over the case. A plea is taken – “Are you guilty or not?” Be firm in replying: “Not guilty at all, my Lord.” Your SAN will then raise a preliminary objection, saying again that His Lordship has no jurisdiction to hear the matter. “The offence was not committed in Abuja,” he will tell the court, “and the money involved is, after all, not the federal government’s.” Besides, no prima facie case has been established against you, the lawyer will say confidently.”

    At this point, after many years in court, the accused most probably becomes a governor and for the next eight years, our man is untouchable – no thanks to immunity. And if he decided to become a senator, I ask Nigerians to guess what chances EFCC, which could not afford a SAN in the first place, would have against an individual legislator- for whose gluttony, immodesty and outright immorality, if not thievery –  Nigeria spends an estimated N290 Million annually to maintain in a country with more than 70 percent of its populace living below poverty line, who  could thereby easily afford to buy the entire system to escape justice.

    It is therefore crystal clear that President Buhari has his job cut out in his promised war against corruption. He has to present to the National Assembly a steely executive bill , with none of those debilitating clauses as in the present EFCC Law, which passed into law, will then  form the regulatory underpinning of a serious anti corruption war. Presidency officials must ensure that the National Assembly is not allowed to embed in the new law, any of those their usual shifty clauses which lawyers turn round to mindlessly exploit for money.

    Reactions

    I  present below, for lack of space, a few of my readers’ reactions to the first part.

    A brand new anti-graft agency will be great especially with a head like Gen. Ishola Williams (RTD) which is the only way we can be sure the fight will be certain and thorough  –  080338392. (The general’s name appeared in more reactions).

    May you continue to live long with the ink ever-flowing from the source of truth. An organisation like the current EFCC cannot be the institution President Buhari envisaged would salvage Nigeria from the present wreck -080536571..

    Thanks for your article on anti-corruption. One obstacle in the way of implementing your revolutionary idea is the role of lawyers. The legal profession is based on lying and immorality as lawyers are always concerned with making money even if it means defending Lucifer and ensuring he is declared a saint. So the role of lawyers and the legal profession must be examined and debated nationally with a view to finding how to neutralise their satanic role in the war against corruption -080338562..

    Femi, I am sure you must have forgotten that the legislature that makes the law is having Saraki as the president despite the issue of Trade Bank and that of his family. I have written you earlier on this. Why do you think he wants to be Senate President at all costs? Why are former governors all heading to the senate? This legislature will block all anti corruption moves by the executive. That is why Saraki and Dogara are there. I pray that the president reads your piece of yesterday. It is more than marvellous -080556794..

  • For Buhari’s anti-corruption war to succeed, he must do the unusual

    For Buhari’s anti-corruption war to succeed, he must do the unusual

    To succeed, President Buhari needs  a brand new  agency which must be freed of all the entanglements the present one was deliberately made to suffer

    The  flurry of EFCC activities, as  observed  in the past  two  weeks,  which  former  Governor Murtala Nyako’s  former Director of Press and Public Affairs,  Mallam Ahmad  Sajoh, has summarily, but understandably,  dismissed as effete,  goes a long way to show the  critical role  the person, even the mere body language  of  a President   plays  in  the war against corruption even though in the instant case,  it s President Muhammadu Buhari’s well known anti corruption stance that has put the agency on over drive.  Long before President Goodluck  Jonathan  verbalized his now oft-quoted ‘stealing is not  corruption’ gaffe,  he had shown, in every material  particular, but  especially in his body language, as well,  as  his government’s  penchant   to withdraw ongoing corruption cases from  the courts- and that was where prosecution was  allowed  at all – that he saw nothing wrong  in allowing corruption to luxuriate  under his watch.

    Nor was this unpremeditated.

    As I once wrote on these pages, President Jonathan’s re-election bid  began as soon as he was sworn in 29 May, 2011 and it was more of a South-South project than one nursed by the President who was  then  confronted  by the huge  challenges  confronting him as he stepped  into  high office, for the first time ever, on his own mettle. His election in that year’s general election was his very first.  For his minders who were, mostly his South- South compatriots, they were going to use what they have, that is, oil, to get what they want. Therefore, go through  the major incidents of corruption in his four years –oil subsidy scam, unremitted crude sales, oil swaps, LNLG dividends and taxes,  to mention  the most disruptive of the Nigerian economy, they were all linked to oil and to the NNPC. Indeed, it was to perfect one scheme or the other that the Petroleum Minister of the era accounted for more Group Managing Directors than any of her predecessors, going down several decades. They knew exactly those who must be appeased with  one  thing  or the other and for that same reason the number of  oil importers, just like  the  amount  claimed to have been spent on subsidy which more than tripled the  appropriate amount, all ballooned  beyond  belief.

    A recent article on  Wikipedia  summed  up corruption  during the Goodluck Jonathan administration as follows: “In 2014, Nigeria’s rank improved from 143rd to the 136th position on  Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.  In late 2013, Nigeria’s then  Central Bank  governor Lamido Sanusi  informed President Goodluck Jonathan that the state oil company, NNPC  had failed to remit US$20 billion of oil revenues, which it owed the state. Jonathan, however, dismissed the claim and replaced Sanusi for his mismanagement of the central bank’s budget. A Senate committee also found Sanusi’s account  lacking in substance.  After the conclusion of the NNPC’s account Audit, it was announced in January 2015 that NNPC’s non-remitted revenue is actually US$1.48billion, which it needs to refund  to the Government.  Upon release of both the PwC and Deloitte report by the government at the eve of its exit, it was however determined that truly close to $20 billion was indeed missing or misappropriated or spent without appropriation.  In addition to these, the government of Goodluck Jonathan had several running scandals including the BMW Purchase by his Aviation Minister, $250 million plus security contracts to militants in the Niger Delta, massive corruption and kick backs in the Ministry of Petroleum, Malibu Oil International Scandal, and several scandals involving the Petroleum Ministry including accusations of sweetheart deals  with select fronts and business people to divert public wealth. In the dying days of Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the Central Bank Scandal of cash tripping of mutilated notes also broke out, where it was revealed that in a 4 day  period , 8 billion naira was stolen directly by low level workers in the CBN. This revelation  brings to the fore, a crime  suspected to have gone on for years  but went undetected until revealed by whistleblower”.

    Five weeks into the new administration, that mild view of corruption under Jonathan has been completely shredded as gory details  of more pour in. For instance a 4-man committee  set up by the National Economic Council (NEC) is now  investigating  how  out of  N8.1 trillion it  earned  between 2012 and May 2015, NNPC  paid only N4.3 trillion to government,  illegally withholding  N3.5 trillion.

    I am sure Nigerians now know how Jonathan’s Petroleum minister was able to  fund her multi-billion naira luxury flights, an investigation of which, by the National Assembly,  President Jonathan defiantly foiled.

    If NNPC  is tear-inducing, EFCC’s performance during the Jonathan administration makes everything  more  galling. So nauseating is it that Governor Nyako’s man,  Malam Sajoh could describe the agency  in the following words: “an agency that was very sloppy in prosecution and losing virtually all high profile cases cannot in any way help in the current anti-corruption war”. That is  nothing but the truth so  EFCC  should  please get off  this pretended  resurgence which is, of course,  nothing more than  a façade.  How many cases did it win  in the entire four years of President Goodluck Jonathan?

    Here then is where my advice to the President comes in if he hopes to succeed in the anti-corruption war; a war in which the other side has already taken the commanding heights of the national assembly.  But the President is already assured of the backing of Nigerians if those who allegedly  financed the mala fide at the National Assembly ever thought  payback time had come when the President  moves to put  up the legal structures for  his  anti corruption war.

    To succeed, President Buhari needs  a brand new  agency which must be freed of all the entanglements the present one was deliberately made to suffer.  If it could be done in electoral matters, a maximum of  not more  than  6 months  should  be prescribed  as the  duration of any corruption case.  In the new Law,  the accused must be presumed guilty, ab initio, and  the onus  put on  him to prove his/her innocence.

    The  President should consider an anti-corruption agency patterned after the Hong Kong  Independent Commission Against Corruption which is,  itself,  modeled after the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) of Singapore.

    Established in 1974 The Prevention of Corruption Act of  Hong Kong has the following powers:

    The power to investigate not just the suspect, but also the suspect’s family or agents and to examine their financial and other records.

    The power to require the attendance of witnesses for interview.

    The power to investigate any other sizeable offence which is disclosed in the course of a corruption investigation.

    A time limit for cases ( to avoid the penchant for sundry adjournments as we see with Nigerian courts working in cahoots with lawyers and EFCC officials).

    As of January 2015, a review of the Act and a new One-Stop Corruption Reporting Centre is in the works which is guaranteed to come up with stiffer penalties. Investigations carried out by the CPIB are habitually completed efficiently and with limited public exposure.

    Drastically weakened under the Jonathan administration, with Attorney-General Adokie hardly ever allowing it to function,  EFCC can no longer effectively partner with  the President to successfully fight corruption. .Dead already, it should just be buried to enable the Buhari government start on a fresh slate, a tabula rasa of sorts. Most of those involved in EFCC cases are complicit: EFCC officials, the lawyers on both sides, and even some of the judges who all ensure that the cases run like forever with some now as old as seven years, replete with poor investigation, and far worse prosecution. As you read this, many of our swashbuckling senators, especially the former governors among them, have anti corruption charges hanging on their necks but, stinking rich as they are, they know exactly how to wangle their way through.  If President Buhari must succeed in this war, he would have to set up a brand new anti-corruption agency, name a respected anti-corruption Tsar, expunge all those loopholes the legislators deliberately include to weaken laws and put the agency on a first line vote to ensure it is financially buoyant to perform its functions. Above all, it must be independent. And the new  law must also provide for the establishment of  a Special Court to handle corruption charges with the express directive to complete cases within not more than a period of 6 months.

     Anything less, we would not have started the anti-corruption war, at all.