The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Mr President know-nothing of Nigeria

    Mr President know-nothing of Nigeria

    ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me twenty times and I keep believing you, call me a Nigerian’-Rotimi

    “You need foolproof ways to lead your people to achieve outstanding results, especially in challenging times’ -Brian Tracy, in HOW THE BEST LEADERS LEAD. Breaking this down further, the celebrated author lists the following as the minimum desiderata for success in any organisation: setting and achieving goals, fostering innovation, problem-solving and decision-making, setting priorities, setting high standards and leading by example; inspiring and motivating others and, finally, performing and achieving results.

    Were President Jonathan’s spokespersons remotely aware of these ingredients for achieving success in any given leadership position they would not be ever so eager to declaim his knowledge of things happening in a country where he is the undisputed numero uno. Had they known how clueless they make the President look with their jejune disclaimers on behalf of the president, they should have become fully aware what damage they do to his image as Nigerians now regularly ask what exactly their president knows. No wonder cluelessness has become about the most used word in describing the Jonathan presidency just as he had, in fact, been likened to the snake.

    We need not delay ourselves enumerating the countless instances supposedly highly educated presidential spokespersons have titillated Nigerians with stories to the effect that the president heard of events like you or I, or even via newspapers, that you begin to wonder if what we have at the helm of affairs in the country is not actually a sleeping president. Unfortunately for them, they deceive only themselves as Nigerians know only too well that the president is either the sole beneficiary or has the most to gain from these events they attempt to shield him from by resorting to their spurious spins.

    They succeed in deceiving nobody else because Nigerians are already acutely aware that their president is not exactly on top of too many things even if he claims to the contrary. When, for instance, he claims to be on top of the citizens’ security concerns and that his government is on top of the situation, a statement Nigerians now know by heart, it is obvious what the people believe. When his government promises improved electricity at some target date that now gets routinely changed, Nigerians know they had better go acquire new generators. It can only be most uncharitable then, if from these extant circumstances, the president’s own men would still continue to cast him in the mold of a know-nothing president who is, like forever, ignorant of events which ordinary Nigerians, without the luxury of an access to intelligence reports, know only too well. For the sake of our president’s image, local and international, I think Nigerians must advise these obstreperous media aides to desist from their obsequiousness.

    The latest of these disclaimers concerns how innocent Mr President is about the goings-on in Rivers State, especially the attempt by five pro- Wike, and, ipso facto, President Jonathan-leaning legislators, to forcefully, and illegally, take over the House of Assembly even though two thirds of the 32-member House is required to successfully impeach the Speaker. Of course, since we are talking here of the PDP, this should be no news as it has become commonplace since the impunity-driven days of former President Obasanjo to forcefully remove even state governors as happened in Bayelsa, Plateau and Oyo states.

    But how uncanny can history get? On the very day that Senator (Dr) Chris Nwabueze Ngige, OON, was being joined by millions of Anambrarians to celebrate the 10th anniversary of what is now popularly known as the Anambra Liberation Day, July 10, 2003, PDP legislators, thugs etal, vainly attempted a repeat performance in Rivers State albeit, starting this time around, from the House of Assembly. Ten years earlier, similar knaves and all manner of mendicants, led by a detachment of heavily armed police mobile force stormed the Government House, Awka, disarmed security operatives and made their way to the office of the then governor whose phones they promptly seized before locking him up in the toilet. The rest is history.

    But in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, 9 July, 2013, Nigerians saw, via the UTube and on sundry television networks, at least one policeman beating up a legislator. And that was in the course of the five anti-Amaechi members and their accompanying thugs had turned the chambers into a theatre of war. It took the hurried appearance of the state governor to save the day. Meanwhile, pro and anti-Amaechi protesters have hit the streets of Port Harcourt.

    A complete dumb in Nigeria today knows that nothing will interest President Jonathan more than seeing the back of Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the evidence for that is all over the place. It had started with the whispering allegation that the governor was preparing to pair up with a northern governor to contest the 2015 presidential election; the same election for which everything is already being done by the PDP to present none other than the sitting president. For the Jonathan group, Amaechi’s alleged audacity deserves nothing but a fatwa, and at every point, Amaechi is daily made to feel the presidential heat especially as he is in no position to as much as discuss state security matters with the state Police Commissioner who, to all intent and purposes, answers only to his Abuja minders.

    Abuja first showed its hands when a case against the PDP Chairman in Rivers State was filed, not in Port Harcourt, where the congress in dispute held, but at an Abuja High Court. It was there in Abuja -where else – a judgment was delivered removing the Amaechi-leaning chairman for a man, we are told, who did not even contest the election. The new chairman quickly showed his hands, dissolving the party’s state executive , a point that was neither canvassed nor granted by the court. He soon came up with a series of diktats he expected governor Amaechi to live or die by; the type even their swashbuckling National Chairman, Alhaji Tukur, have not had the temerity to replicate in his Abuja imperium.

    If the Presidency could not be accused of procuring that change in the River’s State chapter of the party, certainly not so the election to the Chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum which, in spite of governor Amaechi’s drubbing of his opponent, governor Jang of Plateau State, the president still clings to the totally ridiculous position that the man who scored 16 votes is his NGF Chairman over the one with 19 votes. A more invidious situation will be extremely difficult to find. And if any further evidence of presidential collusion, indeed instigation, was needed, President Jonathan’s hosting of governor Jang at the Villa as the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum more than provided that.

    The Jang defeat so rattled and unsettled the presidency that our ‘unknowing presidency’ promptly saw to it that Amaechi was suspended from the party by alleging some other spurious reasons. All manner of PDP elders from the state have since visited the Villa to rave and rant at Amaechi and for once, former governor Peter Odili resurrected. Since a court literally declared he was no longer on terra firma, stopping the EFCC from prosecuting him till the second coming of Christ, mum has been the word from the otherwise charismatic politician who, but for Obasanjo’s convoluted and serpentine politics, might today have been much more visible in our political history and who you would therefore have expected to be talking peace. However, knowing how desperate the president is about the Amaechi project, he has chosen to become an equal opportunity protagonist on the side of the president. A battle against a single individual does not get more pitiful.

    It has equally been suggested that the First Lady’s four-day sojourn in Port Harcourt during which everything, governance inclusive, was reported to have shut down, was to attend the wedding of the man now claiming to be the speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly. It doesn’t get more scary.

    It will be extremely grotesque, however, if the president’s wife was in Port Harcourt in furtherance of this macabre plot. But the height of presidential collusion in the crisis would come later during the week when on Friday, 5 July, 2013, the trio of President Jonathan, Dr Odili and Nyesom Wike asked Amaechi to quit the PDP. It can now be safely assumed that because he did not quit as quickly as they wanted, thugs were sent after the House of Assembly where he obviously has his strongest supporters in order to teach him a lesson.

    May God forgive those presidential spokespersons who are keen on taking Nigerians on a merry go round of lies, claiming Mr President knows nothing when the truth really, is that our president is the all-knowing hand behind most, if not all, of our travails as a nation.

  • ACN national leadership endorsement: A defining moment for Fayemi

    ACN national leadership endorsement: A defining moment for Fayemi

    Ekiti people should still rally behind Gov. Fayemi

    A part from Ekiti’s demographic considerations which should ordinarily restrain Iyin-Ekiti born Hon Opeyemi Bamidele, MHR, (Iyin has produced two past governors) from wanting to contest the 2014 governorship elections in the state, one would have expected that a party leader of his standing, even if he could so easily discount friendship, would at least think of party solidarity, and control his ambitions, at least for now. Instead, so eagerly did Opeyemi pursue his ambition that very long ago, while Fayemi was making the rounds of Election Tribunals trying to reclaim a mandate Ekiti people have so handsomely twice given him, he had begun to expend enormous resources wanting to contest the 2011 elections with the believe that the then men of impunity would triumph at the tribunals.

    I got the first inkling of this from a very senior party leader in the Ise-Orun Local Government Area who asked me if the Central Senatorial District where Bamidele wanted to contest, extended to that Local Government Area. Asked why the question, I was pleasantly surprised to be told that Mr Bamidele, as he was then known, was already extending tantalising items to party members in the area. I would later have firsthand knowledge of how LG executives have been split down the line -no thanks to him. Then came the rancorous Senate primaries about which we need not delay ourselves here.

    Before the party’s national leadership came into the open with their heartwarming endorsement of a hugely performing Fayemi at the epochal meeting of of last week Wednesday, a lot of water has passed under the bridge as the national leadership has done everything to appeal to Hon Bamidele to rally round the party by supporting a performing governor with whom the party at all levels is happy.

    Opeyemi’s recalcitance was one of the reasons for the meeting and as Ashiwaju did not fail to say, the meeting was intended to settle all, and every disagreement, endorse the incumbent for the next election, and set the party ready on the path for the 2014 election. For this reason, Hon Bamidele was expected to be at the meeting with the national leadership.

    Both leaders, the Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande and the National Leader, Ashiwaju Ahmed Tinubu did not hide the fact that their mission at the meeting was ‘to set in motion processes to settle our in-house misunderstandings’, where any exists, just as Ashiwaju who said such meetings will hold in other states appealed to Bamidele when he said: ‘if anyone here knows Opeyemi, tell him that Jagaban has sent you to him to drop his ambition.’ He went on to say the party in the state should invite him and appeal to him. But if anybody should know Opeyemi, it should be the Jagaban. During a mid-night call I made to Ashiwaju the night before the 2011 Senatorial primaries rerun between now Senator Babafemi Ojudu and Hon Bamidele, the National leader told me how he had tried, without success, to dissuade Bamidele from unnecessarily fouling the waters, insisting on the Senate when he could literally effortlessly go to the House of Representatives.

    With that for experience, I wrote as follows on a forum to which Opeyemi also belongs a few hours after the National leadership endorsed Fayemi, thereby concluding the series of endorsements we have seen at all levels of the party in the hope that he could still be appealed to as sugested by the leaders:

    ‘It is a warm and hearty congratulations to our party and our hard working governor who remains an exemplar. I have got tens of calls concerning my absence at the defining endorsement meeting and these included the one from our Deputy Governor but the callers were mollified when they heard I was at an Annual General Meeting, which I chaired, a few hours earlier.

    It doesn’t get any better and because we need a united front to, once again, comprehensively deal with our ragtag, ever- feuding opponents, I hereby plead with my dear aburo, and Rep, the Hon Ope Bamidele MHR, to PLEASE heed the advice of the leaders. Like Otunba said, he did nothing wrong but we need all hands behind this performing governor. Opeyemi should wait for his time and, that time, God willing, he will have our prayers for success.

    He should not allow anybody to use him to burrow into the A C N fortress in the South-west and ignite an Akintola- type scenario. He should know that we are daily making history and should therefore be guided by what legacy attends to those political leaders who ignited intra party feuds in Yoruba land. Their ugly skeletons are strewn over the entire Yoruba landscape as they are remembered only with ignominy’.

    Opeyemi Bamidele comes from my Irepodun/Ifelodun LGA which forms a part of his federal constituency. He is, therefore, my Rep and he sure represents us well. That fact has made him, like some others, a target of that party with sundry minor surrogates, Labour inclusive, which, lacking good people, is running from pillar to post in the South-west looking for some of our progressive friends who would fly their governorship flags even when their own internal governorship wannabes would consider nothing reprehensible in their quest to be governor. The wise one should, therefore, keep them at arms length no matter how many times they had been led to the Villa. In case they are not far gone yet in the company of those who will not only use them to make Abuja money and dump them when they fail, as they sure will do, but are bound to shipwreck their future political aspirations because the Yoruba knows exactly how to treat traitors.

    Asiwaju had barely got home in Lagos when , with the Party Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, present, Fayemi again launched what will go down in the state as a veritable milestone. At an impressive gathering at the St Augustines Comprehensive High School, Oye-Ekiti, of party faithful and representatives of Ekiti people from all over the state and amidst early morning showers of divine blessings, the governor distributed a total of N300 million as grant -in -aid to self-help projects in 82 towns and communities in the first phase of the trail-blazing programme.

    This was in fulfillment of his campaign promise and his resolve to develop and transform Ekiti and make it comparable to any state in the country. This developmental paradigm, said the governor, ‘is based on the principle that his administration will only do development with the people and not for them. This, he further said, was borne out of his belief that development is more enduring when the people take full ownership of what is done by government by not only suggesting what they consider most valuable to them, but also participate actively in its implementation and monitoring’. But the philosophy girding this developmental model is much deeper.

    On Saturday December 1, the governor brainstormed with the Chairmen and Secretaries of Community Development Associations in the State along the lines of the 8 point Agenda of the administration. The following were agreed:

    – Continual brainstorming for budget process, implementation and feedback by all stakeholders.

    – Creation of the Ministry of Rural Development and Community Empowerment to bring development to all the nooks and crannies of the state.

    – Grants in-aid to communities for self-help projects.

    – Revitalisation of Cooperative Development in Ekiti State.

    What transpired at Oye therefore was a clear indication that the Fayemi administration’s word is its bond. As part of its efforts to bring development to the rural communities where over 75% of the populace reside, the Ministry of Rural Development and Community Empowerment was created in January, 2013. All the stakeholders in the state were fully involved in the preparation of the year’s budget which is based on the zero budgeting method as is currently being practised all over the world. This means that the opinion of all the various strata/segments of Ekiti people were sought before the 2013 budget was prepared using a dynamic bottom-up approach.

    I am sure that a federal government, which by July 2013 is still at daggers drawn with the National Assembly on its 2013 budget, has a lot to learn from the Fayemi model.

  • Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    Christ’s school  ado-ekiti  at 80

    In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars

    As all roads lead to Ado-Ekiti this weekend for everybody  that ever had anything to do with our truly remarkable school- Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which we call The School: alumni, parents, spouses, family  and the lot, it is all glory to God that He inspired some of His anointed men to plant and water what has turned out to be a truly phenomenal institution molding men and women of intellect,  not only in Ekiti, its location and primary catchment area, but all over Nigeria. Today, hundreds of Christ’s-School products are professors in all areas of study; from the Humanities to Medicine, to the professions, even to Aerospace science and are spread all over the world doing what they know best to do – banishing ignorance and expanding the frontiers of knowledge just as thousands of its alumni, as medical doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc are providing various services to humanity both at home here in Nigeria and overseas. Amongst our alumni are two of the earliest winners of the Nigerian Merit award, just as The School has produced university Vice-Chancellors and state governors – military and civilian.   Or need I say that two of Nigeria’s most celebrated professors of Neurosurgery, the late Professor Kayode Osuntokun and Professor Adelola  Adeloye cut their teeth in The School? The Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi is, for instance, a distinguished alumnus of The School just like his deputy, Professor Dupe Adelabu and the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Ganiyu Owolabi. Such is the sheer profundity of Christ’s School that a whole page of this newspaper will be infinitely inadequate to tell its story.

    Our School is so unique that not a few has  accused us of acting like a cult because whenever or wherever we ex-students  meet, irrespective of age and when exactly you  attended The School, you immediately become like uterine brothers and sisters.

    This was precisely the objective of the founding fathers.

     Archdeacon Henry Dallimore who founded The School in 1933 was clear in his mind as to what sort of education he intended and what manner of character he wanted foster among the students from the very beginning. ‘The total impact of the education to be given,’ wrote Professor Olofinboba and co in THE BUILDER, ‘was to make the individual a useful person to himself and his community’. For this reason, initial subjects taught in The School included the following outside the normal academic subjects: Tailoring, Brick-making, Plastering, Building, Carpentry for boys and Weaving and Knitting for girls. Agriculture and Cattle keeping were added in 1945, thus by many decades before, Christ’s School was already doing what today’s 6-3-3-4 and all its other newer variants had been grappling with for decades. Above all, however, the founders wanted to nurture the ‘total man’, whose entire life will be rooted in and around Christ. To amply demonstrate this, everything about the school revolved around Christ: the name, the motto, Christus Victor, just as the first two letters of the word ‘Christ’ is inscribed in Greek.

    But if Apollo (Archdeacon Dallimore) planted The School, our Paul, who watered and nurtured it to world renown is the Rev Canon Leslie Donald Mason, C.B.E, O.O.N, M.A, Dip.Th, Dip Ed, whose children we all are since he never was married. To all Christ’s School students, Canon Mason was Principal, father, counsellor, benefactor, friend, teacher, all. He ensured you never dropped out of  The School for financial reasons. He indeed paid the fees of many a student.  He knew all the students by their first names and could identify thousands by their voices.

    For a very long time, he was our doctor and dispenser as he converted one of the rooms in his hilltop house to a dispensary. A strict disciplinarian, all the same, Canon Mason was a man of simple taste and life style and so was able to handsomely impart in the students respect, simplicity, humility, honesty, loving kindness and diligence. It should therefore not be a surprise that wherever you find an old student of Christ’s School, you are face to face with a complete gentleman/lady who is ever willing to lend a helping hand, whatever the circumstances.

    In appreciation of all that Canon Mason did for us at The School, a book: The Reverend Canon Leslie Donald Mason (1908-1989): THE BUILDER, was written in his honour by the alumni association under the lead of the late Professor M.O.Olofinboba.

    He was succeeded in 1967 by Chief R.A. Ogunlade, another truly remarkable man of God who also gave his all. Indeed, he made Biology easier for us than eating very ripe banana. He was such a gifted and exprienced teacher.  An old student of The School himself, Chief Ogunlade ensured there was not the slightest diminution of all the good standards Canon Mason with whom he had worked very well had laid down. One of his key achievements was the seemingly effortless manner in which he successfully achieved the tasking merger of the Ekiti Anglican Girls’ Secondary School which was founded in 1955 by the Anglican Church, with Christ’s School; a thoroughly daunting  assignment.

    Christ’s School had been founded in 1933 as Ekiti Central School, taking students into classes V and VI and took in students from within and outside Ekiti. It moved to its present AGIDIMO HILLS site in 1936 and it was there, on a visit by the Governor-General of Nigeria in that year, that he named The School, CHRIST’S SCHOOL.

    Christ’s School has, however, also had unsavoury stories to tell. For a very long time you would think it was taboo for an old student of The School to be appointed the Principal. It was even rumoured at that time teachers of some specific subjects, like Mathematics, were being deliberately denied the school. This time, therefore, coincided with that period when a series of individuals for whom our culture, history and practices meant nothing, or principals who were, in fact, jealous of its popularity were appointed as principals over it. This was mostly during the military era but there can be no denying the fact that some principals in the same period did their very best for The School. A good example of the latter is Chief R.F Fasoranti who gave impeccable service to The School that he is still fondly remembered till today.

    Christ’s School will always remain a pace setter and its products exemplars. In a particular year at the University of Ibadan, Christ’s School accounted for 8 out of the ten University Scholars, chosen solely on performance at the entry point examination. Today, there is hardly a university of note without some of its professors being ex-students of The School. In Medicine in particular, where it must have close to a hundred professors, if not more, Christ’s School continues to make terrific impact even in the UK, and the U.S.A, just as it has produced men and women in the professions and in the Episcopacy, especially the Anglican Communion where it has produced many Bishops.

    The 80th Anniversary, which is a mammoth home-coming for ex-students from every nook and cranny of Nigeria and the Diaspora, kicked off to a wonderful Thanksgiving service in many churches locally, and abroad on Sunday, 23 June, 2013. In my church, at the Archbishop Vining Memorial Cathedral, Oba Akinjobi Road, Ikeja, Lagos where the Lagos branch had its own thanksgiving, it was a wonderful sight-seeing  the entire congregation, not only joining us to mellifluously sing The School song, CHRIST IS OUR CORNER STONE,  but for most, who must certainly be aware and appreciative of the huge impact Christ’s School has made and continues to make, to  actually join us at the altar for the blessings.

    Friday, 28 June, 2013 will equally be awesome as the one and only, Sir Christopher Kolade, himself an old student and former Nigerian Envoy at the Court of St James’, London, takes to the rostrum to give the anniversary lecture. Saturday will be unique as we spend the day with the students and the evening, is already billed as an evening of fun at the evergreen Quadrangle where I had last been in my final year which is exactly 50 years ago this year. On Sunday, we shall return again to church to thank our Lord Jesus Christ for all He has done for us individually and collectively and, very importantly, for The School.

    All these will then come to a befitting end with The School Prayer:

    Grant O Lord

    That Christ’s School may continue

    To be a Christian School

    Not in name only

    But in deed and in truth

    For the sake of Christ

    Whose name we bear

    Amen.

  • The Ikogosi graduate summer school:

    Fayemi introduces another paradigm shift in education

    Post the PDP locust years, 2003-2010 in the entire Southwest, but more poignantly in Ekiti, we can, with more than considerable justification, thank God as the Holy Writ enjoins us in 1 PETER 2: 9: ‘But ye are a chosen generation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light’.

    When, between 2007 -2010, Ekitis rooted for Dr Kayode Fayemi and swore to stick by him whatever the odds; when men, both within the state and outside it were playing god; when then President Obasanjo believed he could turn daylight to darkness, we were counting on nothing more than the almighty God and the young man’s democratic pedigree, his good moral upbringing, his well-known erudition and scholarship, the fact that we know this one is in good political company and will never lie to us and, indeed, that which we knew of his exertions in the cause of democracy and human rights. Even when ‘Mama’ was suborned, by the powers that be, to eat up her Christian conscience and ran, Awol, from her duty post in Ado-Ekiti, we stood firm just like we did as Fayemi and his illustrious Deputy, our own late MOREMI, Mrs Funmi Olayinka, went all through the judicial acrobatics and shenanigans a thoroughly misbegotten Nigerian judiciary could manufacture. Ekiti stood ramrod behind Fayemi until when The Nation’s highly perceptive columnist, Dele Agekameh called ‘Fayemi’s Final Triumph’, in his column of Wednesday, June19, 2013. That was at the Supreme Court on May 31, 2013.

    Now, there can be no going back as we see every stratum of the Ekiti society endorsing him, asking him to continue the good work even the blind can see -4 More Years for JKF – they say -Just Keeping the Faith. Fayemi’s good work is seen in every nook and cranny of the state. That, he ensured simply by deriving his government’s annual budgets bottom up. How?

    The governor, ahead of his budget preparations, goes on a state-wide tour of the Local Government areas during which the peoples’ immediate and preferred projects are presented to him by the people themselves. And, in clear contradistinction to our friends of the other party, Fayemi will let the constituents know that all the projects cannot be accommodated in a single budget, and that what could not be taken immediately will be included in the next. That way, there is no single Ekiti community that can claim not to have felt the government’s presence.

    I am happy; even ecstatic. Last week, it was: ‘Aregbesola waohs them’, during the past week it was a woman of real conscience, Mrs Bose Adedibu, widow of the late strongman of Ibadan politics, Papa Lamidi Adedibu, who could not , like other PDP members in the state, continue to live in denial, celebrating the Oyo state governor, Abiola Ajimobi for his great strides. Said Mrs Adedibu: ‘I remember vividly that at that time, the people of Oyo state lived in perpetual fear of insecurity. But now, everywhere is peaceful and people are going about their business without fear or molestation’. That was aside her good words for the governor in other areas and we do hope she will help drum that to our Accord friends.

    Like his Oyo state counterpart, Fashola continues to dazzle, now building institutions that will immortalize him , just like Ibikunle Amosun and Adams Oshiomhole continue to receive rave reviews of their sterling performance. This is what I call being in a good political company; one that does not deceive the people.

    And this is where Governor Kayode Fayemi and the Ikogosi Graduate Summer School initiative comes in. Just like the Lagos state governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, once said: ‘The buildings will come down in 20 or 30 years time. It is the institutions and the policies underlying them that will remain and once those policies are there, whoever is there in future can erect other buildings’. Fayemi has by the IGSS programme once again demonstrated that building institutions is the fulcrum of his administration, thereby erecting for himself, imperishability. This man will be remembered and celebrated long after many an Ekiti state governor had been forgotten. Of that, I haven’t a scintilla of doubt.

    What then is the Ikogosi Graduate Summer School?

    From his first day in office, Fayemi has agonised over the state of our education, at all levels in the country, but more pointedly, in Ekiti. He has been tortured to no end, for instance, about the loss of the culture of inquiry and moderation that the university represents in other climes, about journal articles that are everything but scholarly; to publications that are driven solely by quest for promotion and so add nothing to real knowledge as well as to the menace that VCs without CVs represent to the university system. Of course, says he, there are VC’s that are still eminently worthy of that name. I should know these concerns of his because I served on his Education Committed – one of his first set of committees – established very early in the administration to interrogate all the issues accounting for collapsed education in Ekiti. The IGSS is another building block to re-mediate that albatross. The IGSS is a bold move to turn Nigeria’s endemic brain drain to brain gain. In the words of the two co-coordinating directors of the programme, the suave and seminal Drs Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare: ‘higher education has, from the period of the regime of structural adjustment, suffered so much depreciation from which it is yet to recover. A glaring consequence of this is brain drain with Nigeria now exporting what it so desperately needs, namely, it’s human resources and mental capital. This hemorrhaging of human resources, they assert, has in turn led to the loss of high quality manpower in our universities. The IGSS is therefore designed to provide access to highly-trained and accomplished Nigerian academics abroad to interact with graduate students in Nigeria alongside the home-based but no less accomplished and highly-trained scholars thus leading to the blending of global and local scholarship of the highest standards for the benefits of graduate students, first, of Ekiti origin. It will give the students an opportunity to access free and fine grain mentoring from foreign-based scholars in addition to local supervision which will constantly expose them to world-class research as well as engage them with ongoing global discourses not only about their particular disciplines, but also the place of Africa in the world’.

    The programme which has an inaugural 50 Ekiti graduate students spread over the liberal arts, social sciences, law, education, banking and finance, and that rallying ground and crucible of diverse disciplines – Africa Studies – kicked off on Monday, 16 June, 2013, to a wondrous keynote address delivered by my friend of many decades, the world acclaimed poet and teacher, Professor Niyi Osundare, on what he titled: THE SPIRIT OF IKOGOSI and there could be no better way of ending this article than by quoting Niyi at some length on what the government of Dr Kayode Fayemi has made of Ikogosi Warm Springs in its single-minded determination to make Ekiti the tourist’s destination of choice.

    Wrote Professor Osundare: ‘Consider the very location of the Ikogosi Graduate Summer ‘School’. Ikogosi. A place of near-Edenic serenity tucked away in the awesome flanks of Ekiti hills, made popular by the differing temperatures of its springs. Until recently, Ikogosi was nothing more than a promissory mantra in political campaigns and recurring decimal in the arithmetic of annual state budgets. Half-executed projects littered its landscape. Giant mosquitoes and dragon-like reptiles played host even in the most executive of its executive suites. Government after government extolled its potential as a tourist money garnerer, but fell tragically short of taking adequate care of the goose that was expected to lay the golden egg. But as we look round today, a terrific difference arrests our gaze: gleaming access roads, enticing swimming pools, cozy chalets, capacious multi-purpose halls, spacious amphitheatre (with dramatic intimations of the famous Christ’s School Quadrangle), wood-terraced tour walks, etc. A world-class golf course is rearing to tee off into existence to the pastoral astonishment of a sleepy Ekiti terrain, etc. A world-class golf course is even teeing into existence much to the pastoral astonishment of a sleepy Ekiti terrain. There is every indication that Ikogosi is beckoning to the world; the tourist naira rain is about to fall.’

    My last word though: those packaging Ikogosi Tourist Resort for the world should go no further than Osundare’s keynote address to carve its profile from the Advert nuggets he gave, pro bono.

    Without a doubt, God is good to us in Ekiti state.

  • O’odua children’s day celebration: Aregbesola dazzles them again

    The world should expect more monumental innovations from ACN governors

    It is settled amongst progressive academics and intellectuals, of not just Southwestern Nigeria extraction alone , but the world at large, that the fundaments of Yoruba politics remain: A liberal, democratic state governed by competent, cerebral leaders, founded on social justice, equity, equality, enlightenment and freedom. Look around today, even in the non-conformist Ondo State, and you will see that deep down, this is an undeniable truism though some basic differences remain, especially in the latter’s obvious readiness to play the spoiler to mainstream Yoruba sociopolitical aspirations.

    That though, is for another day.

    Today, we are celebrating a key member of that class where the Lagos state governor, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, is captain. Go to Edo, find your way to Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos and you will not but be euphoric at the multi-sectoral building blocks being laid by the clear-headed and focused leaders the good Lord has gifted Yoruba land with, especially at a time the country, under a dissembling PDP, is itself weighed down by totally avoidable crises, and visibly tottering. I speak here of none other than the Ogbeni governor, Engr Rauf Aregbesola, the restless, prodigious and ever thinking governor of The State of Osun, who seems daily to come up with something new.

    In his article of June, 9, 2013: ‘Is Osun Truly At The Onset Of A Revolution?, my friend, Tunde Fagbenle, the withering journalist and farmer rolled into one, wrote: ‘There’s been a flurry of activity in the State of Osun in the last few weeks to invite the attention of Nigerians everywhere and raise the curiosity of many a serious thinker – what is all these about? Is there much substance to it or is it more of noise and make-belief?’. Tunde is from Osun State but because I have a bragging rights here, I can tell him without equivocation that he is seeing the real thing. Here, without a scintilla of doubt is a revolution, albeit in the making, because you dare not take a bet on what next is coming from that prodigious mind. Ogbeni is simply unfathomable, and here I do nothing of making him a god.

    My bragging rights? Okay, I know Engr Aregbesola a long way back and even as the marauders held tight to the mandate the good people of Osun had long given him, he never stopped engaging me with his plans, not only for the state of Osun but the entire Yoruba land. You see him at his most enthusiastic and gregarious, telling you what a million things leadership can do in this clime to banish poverty from our midst and make us count among the civilized world where he contends the Yoruba nation rightly belongs.

    These discussions therefore led me, way back, 12 January, 2011 to put my views of Aregbesola on paper in this very column in an article I titled: AREGBESOLA: Osun State Has Turned The Bend. I shall quote moderately from that article because today’s focus is the totally unprecedented, culture ennobling O’Odua Children’s Day the State of Osun celebrated on Monday, 27 May, 2013 with children and royalties from as far afield as Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo, Lagos, Kwara, Kogi, Edo and Delta States of Nigeria; West African countries of Benin, Togo, Ghana and Sierra Leone; South American countries of Brazil, Argentina and Colombia; Cuba; Caribbean; and the United States.

    It will be interesting now to know which of these countries Osun PDP clowns would say Aregbesola wants to overrun Nigeria with. Last year it was Cuba..

    That article began as follows: ‘

    ‘Given the breath of fresh air in Osun state today, all its citizens, young and old, must thank God that He made nonsense of the counsel of Ahitophel on the state of the living spring. They must not even begin to imagine what the state would be like today had the PDP succeeded itself in the 2011 general elections. Just cast your mind back to the era of Senator Iyiola Omisore as Deputy Governor in the state; recall the many horrendous consequences of a young man’s unrestrained political ambition and begin to imagine him as state governor.’ We cannot thank God enough.

    The article goes further: ‘Go to Oshogbo today and you will not believe this was the ‘gangster’ state where a poor 16- year old girl was serially gang-raped by political roughnecks, with neither the First lady nor the Deputy Governor, mothers for that matter, saying a single word in condemnation. Nor will you believe that mere queuing up at the gas station to buy fuel had once become fatal in the state, courtesy the same PDP political thugs’.The article then went into a discussion of the governor’s plans for agriculture; how he had built up a synergy between the state and the Nigerian railways which will evacuate farm products as well as bring to the state manufactured goods that would sell at Lagos prices. He was not only keen but eager to get the state to supply a huge chunk of the billions worth food items consumed in Lagos daily. On another occasion, as a member of the Afenifere Renewal Group delegation to present the Dawn Document to him -we could not see him in his office until about 11pm – he dropped snippets of the Opon Imo – the revolutionary, standalone learning tablet that provides the senior secondary school students with the contents required to prepare for the school leaving examinations and providing 3 major content categories in text books, tutorials and past questions. A total of 150,000 students will benefit in the first instance and would thus have access to learning regardless of means, location or status. Like Chief Awolowo’s free primary education programme, the Opon Imo will be talked about for generations. But I am probably the very first columnist to ever write about it because it is so unique I could not hold on to the newsbreak and promptly wrote about it in the article under reference, even at a time Ogbeni was still holding it to his chest.

    I wrote as follows on Opon Imo:

    ‘As the governor told a recent delegation of the Afenifere Renewal Group on which I was present, his government will soon unveil what it calls OPON IMO (Tablet of Knowledge). This is a computer system, in the mold of an IPAD which will contain the curriculum of about 39 subjects offered at the School Certificate level complete with past questions and answers and divided into subject areas with students accessing relevant course areas. Apart from exposing these young minds to basic computer literacy, the Opon will enable students study anywhere without the burden of having to carry text books around.

    To this year’s children’s day celebration then.

    The purpose of this year’s O’odua Children’s Day celebrations according to Ogbeni’s are multifarious:

    The State of Osun, has decided to give their children the solid educational and moral foundation that will enable them to be well-rounded adults in the future.

    **They are of the conviction that the realisation of the sociocultural and economic integration of the Yoruba race can be greatly enhanced by imparting that vision into the children. Indeed, such a cultural renaissance agenda, they believe, cannot succeed without including the children, for they are a key factor in its success. The Yoruba cultural integration can only be meaningful if the children, who would carry on the culture are properly socialised into it, along with the inculcation of value underpinning it.

    ** They also want to deliberately re-awaken the cultural and value consciousness of Yoruba people to make them realise the beauty of Yoruba virtues and to give them a sense of pride in their culture. It is such consciousness and re-awakening that can generate the willingness to reach out across the barriers of space and borders to others with the same culture and thereby foster integration among the Yoruba peoples, home and abroad. Children are therefore given their pride of place in the agenda.

    Like his other colleague ACN governors, sans those of Lagos and Edo, Aregbesola is only in his first term. From these men, like the stratospheric Fasola and awesome Oshiomhole, the world can only expect much more monumental innovations as they do not believe in the ‘share the money credo’.

    For any of them, there is going to be no dull moment.

  • Trending now

    Trending now

    After all, in spite of its tumultuous, literally asphyxiating existence, the PDP still managed to hold what  it  called a Family Party

    Olatunji Dare, the iconic satirist, would have titled this article MATTERS ARISING, being that which he has not only patented, but popularised in the Nigerian journalistic world. So much has happened within so short a time that concentrating on a single one, like that historic Supreme Court decision by which the PDP finally buried itself in Ekiti, no Yoruba land, grandiose as it is, would still have robbed my readers of something. After all, in spite of its tumultuous, literally asphyxiating existence, the PDP still managed to hold what it called a Family Party just as its one time Alpha and Omega did not only give its party a wide berth but managed to haul stones at the umbrella-loving party from nearby Dutse.

    Since then, Abuja has been planning a major putdown whilst Baba has himself roused his disillusioned, old reliables to Ota to try cobble together a rearguard response just in case the now famous suspension without defence lands on their laps.

    However, since the Holy writ says where thy treasure is, there also will your heart be, let us begin our raconteur with the heartwarming event of Friday, 31 May, 2013 which sent the entire Ekiti and every Omoluabi Yoruba, not to mention most democracy-loving Nigerians, into a delirium.

    I rode in company of the Deputy Governor, the First Lady, the Secretary to the State Government and the Chief of Staff from the State House into town and I could hardly believe the sea of heads, in assorted uniforms, brooms in hand and all singing panegyrics that I had thought only Osun State A C N people were capable of. I had seen them in Osogbo and was completely bowled over during the swearing in ceremony of the people’s governor, the Ogbeni, in 2010, and I can never forget: ‘inu igbo loyin ngbe (2ce) a ki nkole adete si gboro, inu igbo loyin ngbe (Bees will always be found in the bush, not amongst human beings), impliedly banishing some people from town.

    But that drive which took close to two hours from statehouse to Ojumoshe – a distance of less than 5km – was to be completely dwarfed the following day when the governor, Dr J K F -Just Keep the Faith-Fayemi, Ilufemiloye 1, of Ekiti, breezed into town to thank Ekiti people who, through thick and thin have said: A mo ti ruun ka i wa o, Ekiti kete -meaning, Ekiti has got what it wants/desires.

    His drive into town was simply awesome and for kilometres long, dancing and jubilating, grateful Ekiti citizens thronged him all the way.

    I have always said that the Yoruba know their leaders and are appreciative when, like immortal Awo, a government’s concern is the happiness of the greater majority of the citizenry.

    The lesson of those two town rides, in my view, is that aspiring PDP gubernatorial candidates should be humble enough to set their gaze, not on the 2014 election, but, may be, the one after, in 2018 or thereabout because Ekiti spoke so loud and clear on those two days. All these, not because Fayemi is such a handsome young man, which he is, rather it is because this is a non obstructive, Omoluabi governor, almost self-effacing, who knows nothing other than burying his head, a minimum of 16 hours a day, in their service.

    The evidence of his achievement is everywhere. So we need not go into the details of Engr Oni’s case which any serious lawyer should have advised would fall flat on its face as long as the legal doctrine of RES JUDICATA has not yet been annulled by some Nigerian judges. Credit for that not happening, even in this case, must go to the Nigerian Chief Justice, Hon. Justice Aloma Mariam Mukhtar, to whom Nigerians, to the last man, owe a debt of gratitude for her daring do; her no-holds barred cleaning of the Augean stable one of her recent predecessors left in the judiciary. Nigerians know all too well that the roforofo that one left is still simmering, with a faultless Mr Justice Ayo Salami still out in the cold.

    Back in Ekiti, what name did the PDP people not drop; who did they not say had the ears of the ‘oga at the top’; he who would merely dictate what he wanted for his party man? All that we in Ekiti could rely on were, first, the Almighty God, given that this is a country of anything goes; second, the fact that the case was long dead, concluded at the Ilorin circuit of the Court of Appeal, way back 2010, and thirdly, the fact that Justice Ayo Salami, who they never ceased to demonise, had been investigated by no less than three NJIC panels with him emerging from each smelling like a thousand roses. Only President Jonathan, his conscience and his advisers can answer fully as to why Justice Salami is yet to return to his post long after the NJIC has so requested of the President.

    As to reasons why Ekiti will always root for governor Kayode Fayemi, just two examples of his multi-sectoral achievements will suffice: His government’s Urban Renewal project, which took off in the state capital and is being extended to other towns this financial year and his Tourism programme, which is a critical part of his 8-Point Agenda..

    Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, will confuse a returning visitor who last visited some 3 or 4 years ago. The urban renewal programme has completely rejuvenated Ado-Ekiti. The entire town is illuminated all night and the roads, all tarred, mirror the great and beautiful work governor Fasola is doing in Lagos.

    Take a trip out of town and see a completely re-engineered Ikogosi warm spring, the linchpin of the state’s tourism programme. The Ikogosi Tourist Centre, decrepit and literally abandoned at the commencement of the Fayemi administration is today a wonder to behold with a total of 10,000 hectares of land dedicated to its wide life, golf course, apartments, conference centre etc, without any sexing up of the natural conjunction of hot and cold water which is its primary allure.

    The centre is already being developed into a destination of choice for local and international tourists, complete with good roads and internet facilities. The Ikogosi ecology richly showcases nature’s endowments in the state. As a visiting writer recently put it: ‘long stretches of green valleys, vast rain forest and mountain ranges dotting the landscape; Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort will simply take your breath away’.

    It already boasts of a well landscaped 116-hectare resort, one executive VIP chalet, three VIP villas, 12 western suites, 70-five standard rooms of various styles, and seven support staff quarters. Others include nature spa / beauty centre; gym/fitness shop; herbal shop for local medication; arts and crafts shops for souvenir items; 300-seat multi-purpose conference hall, 120-seat and 50-seat meeting and function rooms; variety/shopping mall; amphitheater; double standard rooms for students on excursion and campers and 300-car parking space. As mentioned earlier, Tourism is a critical part of the governor’s 8-Point Agenda to transform the state as it is programmed to be a major source of internally generated revenue.

    We conclude our pot pouri then with the totally ludicrous Nigerian Governors Forum brouhaha where, in our very face, they are trying to replicate another election annulment, probably as a precursor to what 2015 may portend. The most unfortunate thing here is the spectacle of Mr President, like he did when governor Gbenga Daniel inspired a legislative coup in the Ogun State House of Assembly in 2010, and the president on a visit to Abeokuta could say nothing of that illegality, he is today backing a man who was roundly trounced in a very transparent election which the entire world has watched on U.Tube. You will not but wonder whether they care a hoot about how the outside world views Nigeria.

    In all these, however, and like Snooper did not fail to mention in his column in the last edition of The Nation on Sunday, the greatest loser will most probably be governor Segun Mimiko of Ondo State, who appears to have put his integrity on the line over this so obvious a matter. Incidentally, he is, as yet, not even officially a member of the ruling party. He is yet to stop questioning the bona fides of the election, even though he has not denied that he voted, nor has he stopped lampooning the video of the event. How convenient.

    However, anybody near governor Mimiko right now should please ask him the following question: Mr Governor, will you kindly explain to the Nigerian public, the morality behind the SSS Reports, as well as the Video Record plus the Waribi Idepe incidents in Ese Odo with which you made your case at the Election Tribunal in 2007-2008?

    Or has Mr governor forgotten so soon?

  • NGF Chair: Nigeria becomes the butt of jokes as presidency settles for weakest link

    NGF Chair: Nigeria becomes the butt of jokes as presidency settles for weakest link

    That those who wanted governor Amaechi out by all means could settle for governor Jang must be eloquent testimony to their desperation,

     

    Those who get to power by false or fraudulent means curse themselves and are cursed by the people. Those who collaborate with evil systems and tyranny cursed themselves, and are cursed by the people’ -Uncle Bola Ige in IS NIGERIA CURSED? 21 April, 1996.

    I can no longer remember how many times I have had this feeling that Plateau State has no governor, properly so called. Governor Jang’s tenure has proved so lacklustre that hardly does a week pass by without reports of ethno-religious killings; you are bound to think it is only in that state you have Hausa/Fulani living alongside indigenous peoples in the country. At first I thought he was the victim and that people like my good friend, Antony Sanni, the A C F Publicity Secretary, who thoroughly understands the terrain, were being unkind when they accused him of always complicating simple issues and turning them to the leitmotif for horrendous bloodletting. I actually pointedly accused Tony of tormenting the governor until he assured me that on the contrary, he has every reason to wish for a peaceful Plateau State to which he is related by marriage. It was at that point that I decided to pay closer attention to the Jang persona and I have come to the conclusion that by his election as governor, it would appear he has been promoted over and above his ken. The only thing I can unreservedly credit Mr. Jang with is his unremitting stubbornness which, for instance, led him to neglect warnings from the federal authorities not to conduct the ruinous local government election which subsequently resulted in the death of many.

    That those who wanted Governor Amaechi out by all means could settle for governor Jang must be eloquent testimony to their desperation, especially after they were reported to have earlier-on zero-ed in on the Bauchi State governor. The Katsina State governor is alleged to have said on a BBC Hausa radio programme that the President personally told him to go and replace Governor Amaechi as chairman so all these denials will not sell as Nigerians are no fools. Increasingly, presidential spokespersons are presenting the President as being totally in the dark, all in the ridiculous attempt to present him as innocent. Yuguda, one must say, has never hidden his presidential ambition since the Yar ‘Adua era on whose demise he most probably considered himself the prime northern candidate to step in to complete the late President’s two terms. If Governor Akpabio is as smart as he is often regarded, he should have stood by Yuguda who would do just about anything to become the NGF Chairman, hoping that by that mere fact he could edge out the incumbent Vice President come 2015.

    The ways of the PDP is truly bewildering. But what led them to Jang this time around? I can hazard only two reasons: first, Mr President apparently cannot stand a powerful northern governor as chairman of the forum. As Nigerians know only too well, both he and the coordinating minister need unfettered freedom to operate both the Excess Crude Account and the Sovereign Wealth Fund, among other things. Second, they know that being isolated, Governor Jang will need the elixir, even though as chairman, the President will consult him the least amongst northern PDP governors.

    The video recording of an election which some governors claimed did not hold has since gone viral on the internet and Nigerians are now waiting for the nay-sayers to also claim that the recording is fake. Apparently these governors are least concerned about the embarrassment to the country and I was not in the least surprised to learn that Nigeria was the butt of jokes at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the African Union. That is what happens when a resource-rich country, the size of Nigeria, demonstrates puny leadership traits and prefers to play, not in the big league, but at the peripheries of civilisation.

    Why has the NGF suddenly become this important, a beautiful bride of sorts? In my opinion, that flows directly from the president’s new ambition to be master of all he surveys. Every segment of society and any person, or institution against that single-minded determination must be crushed or subsumed one way or the other. But this is not new in our clime.

    IBB did not stop until he had run literally every institution out of town: labour unions, the Nigerian Medical Association inclusive, and for the really tough ones like the Nigerian Bar Association, he merely plucked from their leadership by recruiting almost every succeeding president to his cabinet thereby giving the association enough problem to occupy a life time. What appears to be trending now is that for President Jonathan’s 2015 ambition, just about anybody or anything is dispensable. And that is why today’s cheer- leaders must beware because revolutions do consume its own children: a mis- spoken word, an unintended act there etc, could spell doom. So if today, the President’s ‘soldiers’ are coming for the Russians, the Poles and the Jews do not remonstrate, there may be nobody to talk tomorrow when it is the turn of the Jews to be herded into the ‘Auchwitz concentration camp gas chambers.’

    People of very short memories that we Nigerians are, I have heard and read many blaming the pro-Amaechi governors of edging him on in confronting his party. But nothing can be further from the truth as they have so easily forgotten that President Jonathan road was smoothened by these very persons, acting in unison with the National Assembly. Or can anybody show Nigerians the PDP membership cards of the likes of Professor Wole Soyinka, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Femi Falana, Festus Keyamo, to mention only a few of those who risked limbs and lives so Jonathan could become acting President?

    It is in this regard that I feel rather uncomfortable with the views of my very good friend, Sen. Seye Ogunlewe when, on television, he alleged that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is behind the crisis. Without a doubt, I know that the Southwest PDP people see Tinubu in their dreams. Also, having been brutally maginalised in a PDP they did the most to bring about, and nurtured, albeit, through outright chicanery, they are eager to be in the good books of Abuja. For this reason, they must make ‘politically correct’ statements lest Abuja forgets them. Add to that, the fact that Seye has just recently been begged to return fully to the party. He therefore has a duty to prove that he is still a loyal party man. Otherwise, what is Tinubu’s own in PDP’s all-year-round hallucinations and dirty politics in which might is right; where you can suspend a whole governor without as much as allowing him a right of hearing and where, having participated fully in an election, you can, after losing miserably, turn round like school children to say elections were not held or were rigged? I must, however, not forget to congratulate the Jagaban for having the power and the influence to make PDP governors disobey, if not disregard, their party leader, Mr. President. What remains for these people who are forever afraid of Tinubu is to lift their nemesis into the pantheon of the gods.

    Finally, the role of the Akwa Ibom governor, Godswill Akpabio, especially his no-holds barred exuberance in carrying out his instructions, is very analogous to that of Senator Ibrahim Mantu’s in the aborted Third Term Project of former President Obasanjo. Mantu was the generalissimo and threw his entire weight (no puns intended) into it. But he was smart. Once they were routed, he calmly returned to base, and ate the humble pie. I think rather than all these sabre rattling in which Governor Jang is being paraded on television, Governor Akpabio and his pro-Jang governors should take the only decent option here. The video of that election, with gubernatorial banters here and there and which, by now, must have been watched by millions in every corner of the world, has done them in irretrievably. If they love Nigeria as they never cease to claim from the roof tops, they should stop their bellicosity, quietly apologise to Amaechi and his supporters, embrace their returned chairman and try their damn best to restore Nigeria’s integrity.

  • Mr. President, when is corruption in Nigeria enough?

    Mr. President, when is corruption in Nigeria enough?

    Our battalion of presidential spokespersons are ever so eager to exculpate the President from responsibility for the broken down anti-corruption war 

     

    In the First Republic, the Prime Minister earned five thousand pounds, the minister, three thousand, same as that of a permanent secretary and a university professor. The legislator earned eight hundred pounds and his job was not full time. They came for two months to debate the appropriation, recess and came back four or five months later for another two months. Today in the National Assembly, there is obviously nothing to keep them engaged full time, all the year round. You only have to watch their scanty numbers at the plenary on television. In the First Republic there was decency and discipline. When the first post independent national development plan was introduced in 1962, despite the political differences between the NPC, NCNC and the Action Group, Prime Minister Balewa, the regional premiers and their ministers all took a ten percent cut from their salaries to trigger the need for domestic savings to finance our plans. Now, what do we have? You suddenly see somebody who did not own even an ordinary bicycle before becoming a Local Government Chairman but who after two years will now have a string of houses and exotic cars without a single agency of government, either of internal revenue or anti-corruption, asking questions. You will see somebody who was not known to be a millionaire but who, after three years in the House or at the National Assembly, will now invite people to come and see him donate two hundred motorcycles and a hundred cars or buses as ‘dividends of democracy. Or, you wake up to see forty pages of a newspaper advertisement, congratulating somebody, because he is forty or fifty as governor or senator. It is nothing short of a national disaster. And I keep asking, have you ever seen a page of the London Times, the Independent, the Telegraph or the Times of India, to name only a few, in which a minister is congratulating the president or the governor? What model of government is Nigeria practicing for God’s sake?

    The above is the slightly edited, recent jeremiad of Chief Philip Asiodu, a distinguished former Nigerian Permanent Secretary, who is no doubt extremely tortured at what nonsense today passes muster as governance in a country which he served to the best of his abilities.

    You will not but pity Nigeria, and, of course, ordinary Nigerians, when you now read that the country ranks with the likes of Nepal, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan on the global corruption perception index. That was as at the Transparency International’s last report in December, 2012, and could, in fact, now be far worse when you factor in other incidences of public service corruption, especially the humongous oil subsidy racket at the lead of which you find mostly, scions of the topmost chieftains of the ruling party who, on the long run, are far beyond the long arms of the law, whatever the make-belief antics of the EFCC. Or won’t their cases also go before Nigerian courts?

    For moving up a measly four places on the Transparency list, scoring 27 out of a possible 100 and placing 139th out of the 176 countries surveyed, officials of the Jonathan administration are yet to stop gloating, attributing the pitiable upward movement to President Jonathan’s fierce anti- corruption efforts when the world knows better. Those who advised the President to have a Face book account should also have told him that employing the new media is like walking naked into a cocktail party. The entire world now daily reads us like a book.

    In spite of the fact that there is no more a hiding place, Mr President has gone on a self-congratulation binge regarding how intangible corruption is in Nigeria. He has even pointedly told the U.S to mind her many problems, man- made and natural, and stop getting unnecessarily exuberant about the minuscule corruption in his dear country.

    If Mr President, for very understandable reasons, cannot be persuaded to see Alamiesiagha’s state pardon as a corruption of the process by the mere fact of grafting totally inappropriate names to the list in order to fake a semblance of an even-handed ‘pan-Nigeriana’, then let us quickly remind him of other acts of putrefaction which have no other name besides corruption. Indeed, it needs be mentioned that Alamiesiagha’s pardon was so badly received by the outside world that the U.S could not hold back from issuing the following statement: ‘The US views this development as a setback for the fight against corruption, and also for our ability to play the strong role we’ve played in supporting rule of law and legal institution-building in Nigeria, which is very important for the future of the country’.

    Not only did Britain come out to say Alamiesiagha has a pending criminal case in the U.K, Mr Bill Gates was so pissed off, he cancelled a scheduled visit to Nigeria even when he was already in Ghana, citing the same issue.

    Earlier in this self-propelling blitzkrieg, the President had, at General Owoye Azazi’s obsequies in Yenegoa on December 30, 2012, said the following: “Corruption is not the cause of our problems. Nigeria has more institutions that fight corruption. Most of the issues we talk about are not corruption. If we do things properly, if we change our attitude of doing things, most of the things we think are caused by corruption are not’.

    In one respect, that is what decent Nigerians are saying: ‘change our attitude of doing things’: banish impunity, follow the due process and allow both the anti-corruption agencies, the police and the courts, do their work without trying to hamstring them because of the next election.

    A case in issue, eloquently showing that under this administration anti-corruption war has gone down the drain, is the issue involving the Minister of Communications Technology and a certain Dr. Gwandu who was, December last year, fired by President Goodluck Jonathan allegedly over controversial secret spectrum allocations to some favoured companies at some ridiculous prices.

    Since issues relating to the matter are already before a court, we would merely sketch the story here.

    As the story goes, Dr Gwandu did nothing more than expose corruption but rather than be commended, he had to go because he had, in the process, roughened some feathers. He was said to have exposed the lopsidedness in federal government’s sale of a 450 MHz Spectrum to an unlicensed company – reportedly owned by a close friend of a very senior government official – in which they paid a ridiculous $6 million for a license that should have fetched the nation over $50 million. Second is the waiver granted to a company linked to a top official at the NCC at the expense of other companies operating in the industry, while the third revolves around his expose of the selling of 800 MHz spectrum to a company for about 13 million Euros when equivalent spectrum sells in Germany, Italy and France for 1.153 billion, 992 million and 891 million Euros respectively.

    Therefore, for allegedly ‘undermining the interest of the country in relation to the operations of a UN body’, the minister in a letter with ref no: MC/ST.01631T4, dated April 12, 2013, and addressed to the Secretary General of the ITU, wants the union to sack Dr Gwandu, not only as the chairman or vice-chair of the two organs but also as a representative of Nigeria.

    The above is symptomatic of the anti-corruption battle under President Jonathan. For ages, top officials of the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation sat on billions, in their homes, of pension funds, monies belonging to old men and women who had served the country in their prime and some of who are now dying wretched deaths on queues for their pension peanuts which remain unpaid for years. When, for once, the National Assembly acted pro-actively and ordered that the prime pension fraud suspect be presented before it, the police, which provided the man with 24-hour guard, claimed it did not know his whereabouts until he reportedly bolted out of the country.

    Only this past week, a former EFCC Chairman was heard complaining about the useless laws with which the anti corruption agency operates. But since updating these will involve serious work, you can trust the National Assembly not to touch that much needed review with the longest spoon.

    And in all these, our battalion of presidential spokespersons are ever so eager to exculpate the President from responsibility for this broken down anti- corruption war hiding under the distinction between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, and, forgetting that there is something called moral leadership and that the buck stops at the President’s table.

  • Oga Dele Falegan: The colossus at 80

    ‘The thorough man knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends’.

    – Andrew Carnegie

     

    Chief Dele Falegan’s life has been divinely choreographed

     

    Not a few would wonder as to how this toddler can address Baba Falegan, 80 years plus two days today, as oga, an appellation normally applicable to those older only by some light years .The reason is simple: I am privileged to have shared Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti – UP SCHOOL! -with the baffday ‘boy’, and it so happens that THE SCHOOL has patented that appellation for all those older, whether ancient or modern, and Baba happens to be ancient while I am modern.

    Encomiums would pour ceaselessly at the formal celebration on Friday, 10 May, 2013, as Baba turns 80 and all will gather to celebrate a man whose entire life has been dedicated to service to humanity. In recognition of this, the Ekiti state governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, ever so appreciative of integrity, has requested his party leaders and brother governors to please join him in celebrating Baba, who continues to avail the state of his prodigious expertise and experience in Economics and Banking. He is, incidentally, the Chairman of the State Sure-P Committee.

    Chief Dele Falegan may be thorough, he may have deployed unremitting attention to all he ever did and he just might have programmed his life the best he can but without a scintilla of doubt, his life has been divinely choreographed. Witness the following, for instance, and see the uniqueness of figure 3: Born in 1933, baptized in ’43 and confirmed in ’53 he attended the IMF Training School, Washington D.C, in ’63 and was with the World Bank IFC in ’83. In 1993, he authored his second book on the Nigerian Foreign Exchange mechanism and in 2003, mooted the idea of a group buying an organ for the Emmanuel Church, Ado-Ekiti. Two days ago, on Friday, 10 May 2013, as he turned 80, the Holy Spirit led him to singlehandedly donate, a N20 Million Pipe Organ to the Cathedral Church of Emmanuel, Ado-Ekiti thus fulfilling that which he had proposed to a group ten years earlier

    That he is this passionate about a pipe organ cannot surprise anybody who knows Baba well. Born and raised in an Anglican home, it was compulsory for him, as a young boy, to attend all church events which in those days bore strict adherence to the church calendar. His greatest interest was, however, in singing having been picked to join the choir in 1944 by Baba E. S. Ajibade, a very powerful soloist. He has never looked back since.

    I have been spectacularly blessed to be mentored by some of the most illustrious of Ado-Ekiti sons, both as teachers and as life- long mentors. They include Chief Fajana, my primary school teacher, Professor Banji Akintoye who taught me both at Christ’s School and at the University, Chief Alex Olu Ajayi and Chief (Dr) JGO Adegbite under who, with late Chief S.J Okudu, I learnt all I ever knew about Higher Education Administration and the Prince, Juli Adelusi Faluyi who remains my constant source of encouragement and admonition.

    Add the celebrant to this list and you would have captured about half the men and women the good Lord has used in shaping me. But Chief Falegan caught me darn early; he, the tall, elegant and sartorial top Economist at the Central Bank of Nigeria in the mid-60’s, and I , the young, dashing bank clerk at the Bank of West Africa Ltd.

    But boy, didn’t he send me errands on Apapa Road!

    I have thus been privileged, for nearly half a century, to learn at Baba’s feet and both he and Mummy, his graceful better half, have taken my wife and I so passionately that he, in fact, calls me – to my shame – more than I call him and the first thing he will say in Ekiti is: oni ayiye ni si ko? – The good one is who I want to greet o.

    Another of the highlights of the celebrations will be the unveiling of his magnum opus –MY YESTER YEARS – his Autobiography. An author of no mean repute, Chief Falegan had to be prevailed upon, especially by Mummy and I , to put pen to paper. Why, the reader may ask? Baba’s most distinguishing characteristic is candour –the ability to say it exactly as it is – whether at work or in communal affairs. Knowing how wicked the ‘soul of man’ is, he was being careful not to recall some sensitive issues where his seemingly hard views, most often the road finally taken, were always first met with serious altercations. We prevailed because he agreed with us that truth will always thump falsity. And let me claim some bragging rights here: I was privileged to be one of the three persons who edited the book. We had to be that number because he will simply tolerate no mistakes; whether of spelling or syntax. He is that meticulous.

    Chief Falegan was born, the 6th of 20 siblings into the Fatufede warrior family of Ado –Ekiti on 10 May 1933. His father, Chief Daniel Falegan, a big time yam farmer, was a disciplinarian and a lover of Education. He attended Emmanuel School, and Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, which he says was so named on 10th September, 1936, by Sir Bourdilion, then Nigeria’s Governor-General, on a visit to Ondo Province. Baba would later obtain his first degree in Economics at the Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and a Master’s in the same discipline from the University of Oregon U.S.A.

    He joined the Central Bank of Nigeria on July 1, 1961 and by sheer hard work, quickly distinguished himself so much that to his pleasant surprise, he became, in February 1963, the first staff of the Bank to be sent to the IMF Institute in Washington DC to train on monetary policy.

    He will be twice lucky as he was, in 1965, again sponsored to the University of Oregon, USA, for a two-year Master’s programme in Economics. He was, this time around, accompanied by his wife, Olufunke, and his one-year old son, Oludare. It was there he had his near fatal operation for pneumonia which cost him the lower lobe of his right lung and to the glory of God he has survived on one and a half lungs since 1967.

    At the Central Bank he saw bare faced ethnicity at play. However, the attempt, by Dr Clement Isong, to make his kinsman supersede Chief Falegan as Director of Research was thwarted only an hour before the deed when the Finance Minister, his former boss, Mr A. E Ekukinam, came in to inform Dr Isong of his removal from office as CBN governor once more confirming God’s benevolence on the life of the celebrant. He would later be seconded to the Nigerian Mortgage Bank as its pioneer Managing Director. Again it was by the grace of God that he overcame the ethnic-motivated intrigues in this new place that he had no qualms, whatever, in describing his time there, in his autobiography, as MY THREE WASTED YEARS.

    Baba has always, and continues to touch life. Suffice it to mention the case of three of his junior staff who all had grade 1 in their school certificate examination. Because he was a tough act to follow, many of his department’s staff usually seek transfer to others but he just would not approve of these three whom he insisted would not leave the department until they got admission to universities. The three are today, Professor Bode Leigh, former Vice Chancellor, Lagos State University, Dr. Aderungboye, former General Manager, Okitipupa Oil Palm Company and Mrs. Ajoke Oluwasanmi, a retired Permanent Secretary of the Ekiti Public Service commission.

    Chief Falegan has served on various boards and consulted for various national and international agencies. Amongst these are: Standard, now First Bank, NISER and the Ondo State Economic Advisory Council, 1976-1979. He served on the Working Party on the establishment of the West African Clearing House and that on the establishment of African Centre for Monetary Studies, Dakar, among many others.

    A prolific writer and commentator on national affairs, Chief Falegan is the Atoye of Ado-Ekiti.

  • Southwest: Resurrectionists, co-consiprators need to learn from our history

    Southwest: Resurrectionists, co-consiprators need to learn from our history

    For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, (or the Yoruba Nation) but their own belly; and by fair words and good speeches deceive the hearts of the simple”- Romans 16: 18

    Unlike those years of the locust when the Southwest found itself, wily nilly, under the yoke of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, a new vision for progress and development is emerging in Yorubaland. Our homeland strategy is being properly-structured and coordinated. Our development process is being institutionalised and an economic governance model is already in the works to accompany a well-defined political system. We have now clearly defined our goals, our priorities and our timelines. We are in the process of building the critical stakeholder inclusion and inclusiveness that is required for all these hard work to succeed. And to ensure that all these efforts are not aborted by the mandarins of a clueless PDP, we must ensure that a fit and proper leadership character prevails, as now, to direct the affairs of our land. I have quoted above, mutatis mutandis, the invigorating speech by Dipo Famakinwa on Regional Integration at the Oodua Foundation conference which held, April 26-27, 2013, in Delaware, U.S.A.

    With the negativity of the PDP years of decrepit infrastructure, run down school system and general insecurity in the Southwest already etched in our medullar oblongata, the Yoruba must give their all to fight back these revisionists so we can say again in one voice: never again!.

    And my teacher came handy again at the Delaware Conference. My teacher, Professor Banji Akintoye, the evergreen griot, at whose feet I studied in two different institutions of learning, was there to remind the race, and tell the world, from where the Yoruba is coming from and one can only hope that on reading his masterly address, the resurrectionists and revisionists amongst us will rethink their slavish assignments and permit a continuation of the present regime of peace and development in Yoruba land.

    In reminding us of our enviable pedigree, the author of the must- read 452 page ‘A History Of The Yoruba People’, must have had in mind the conspirators: these modern day ‘troublers of Israel’ who think nothing of once again railroading the Yoruba nation into another era of servitude like they did in 2003 with dire consequences to our well-being.

    We quote at some length from the address:

    ‘The responsibilities of today’s leaders of the Yoruba Nation are truly heavy. The Yoruba Nation that we were born into, and that we are called to guide, is one of the most important nationalities on the African continent. At 40 million in population, we are one of the three largest nationalities in Nigeria and in Black Africa. In population, we are about 24% of the population of Nigeria, a country of about 300 nationalities, with a total population of 165 million. But our importance in Nigeria does not end with our population weight. We stand in the forefront of Nigeria, and even of Africa, in educational development and literacy.

    According to some unofficial estimates, the Yoruba, though only 24% of Nigeria’s population, account for about 52% of all Nigerians who hold university degrees. By the 1860s, many Yoruba parents were already sending their children for higher education in Europe. By the 1870s, a considerable literate professional class had emerged – of doctors, lawyers, engineers, surveyors, journalists, etc. No other people in what later became British-ruled Nigeria produced a university graduate until the middle of the 1930s. By the 1950s, we became the first people in Africa to establish a Free Primary Education Programme.

    In comparison with the countries of the world, the Yoruba Nation is, in population, bigger than many of the richest and most influential countries of the Western world – a little bigger than Canada, about as big as Spain and about four times as big as Sweden. In Africa, besides Nigeria, only three countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, and Congo (Kinshasa) have bigger population.

    At about 105,000 square miles (168 square kilometers), it is bigger than the United Kingdom and over nine times the size of Belgium just as there are sizeble populations of the Yoruba in Benin Republic, Togo ,Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Bahamas, Suriname and the United States.

    Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Yoruba Nation has consistently belonged in the front line of modernisation on the African continent – in education, scholarship, literature, art, commerce, industries, entertainments, etc. Some gems of indigenous Yoruba thought and philosophy have been classified by UNESCO as significant parts of the “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” and it has made impressive contributions to scholarship in the sciences, the humanities and the arts, and produced the first African recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature’.

    Now, that is the huge Yoruba nation some otherwise respected elders and their over ambitious young acolytes are now working assiduously to turn over to a party in which even a Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, statesman, Yoruba’s foremost politician alive, former President and one time Alpha and Omega of the same party, is being routinely turned inside out with his group being daily decapitated by Chairman Tukur and ‘the Ogas at the top’ even as ‘Mr Fix it’ is being unerringly promoted and celebrated. And to imagine that these ‘elders’ would have to subsume both their resurrected party and the one anachronistically being called a mega party would have to subsume their identities under fringe parties like Labour or Accord simply because they are too ashamed to actually join PDP.

    Now under the lead of a good friend of mine, a party organisation freak, Jonathan is being assisted to encircle Yoruba land in a pincer-like arrangement, recruiting old men we once relied upon to hoist the chequered race in its historic place. Now they are having in Afenifere individuals Chief Awolowo would not have touched with the longest pole just like a caricature of the Avatar’s party is supposedly being resurrected by those without Awo’ rigour or honesty.

    The other, a man of integrity no doubt, but who had abandoned his loyal troops some twelve or so years ago now claims to be at the head of a so-called mega party none of which amalgamating party has a single Councillor anywhere in the country. How more anachronistic can a party name get! Interestingly, the big man took about his most loyal supporter to a serving governor for a contract over a year ago. My friend is still waiting. Such relevance!

    Happily, the Yoruba know their leaders just as they know those who are angling over nothing but security contracts and, probably oil blocks. They know only too well those who are no longer capable of winning their own wards. With all due respect, they have since become what my dear aburo perspicaciously calls yesterday men. But their recruiters and patrons are well aware of these facts since all they need are muscle men to destabilize the Southwest. Their primary assignment is to ‘uproot the tree and its branches’, recreate a Boko-Haram -like situation in the West, and make the 2015 election impossible. That, they believe, will be enough to take the wind out of the sail of the APC, among whose leaders is the man they love to hate -Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    It still would have been tolerable if that were all. But the conspiratorial, clueless party, through sundry surrogates, old and young, is now aggressively recruiting some of our respected young men from the progressive camp, who apparently cannot see the irrationality of their being gubernatorial candidates on a platform as odious in the Southwest as the PDP. It will be nice to remind them again of the current trials of the Obasanjo group and what a state governor, Rotimi Amaechi is being made to go through in that party. The Yoruba, in their collective wisdom say when the front man runs into a ditch, those coming behind should learn appropriate lessons. They wont say we did not warn them when the chickens come home to roost, as they sure would.

    It can be restated again, in conclusion, that what is heartening is the fact that the Yoruba, unlike many others, can very easily differentiate between the ongoing massive, multi-sectoral developmental strides in the region and the developmental aridity of the PDP years when even the road leading to Ota could not be completed in eight years.

    Our people have said, and will surely vote: Never again to governmental cretinism.