The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    Perspectives in goverance: The Southwest as case study

    ‘Those who aspire to political leadership must on no account be sheltered from the hard knocks which a political career in a democracy inevitably entails’ –AWO. 

     

    While linguists are thematic in explaining phenomena and the scientist advances knowledge by formulating a question, collecting data and then testing a hypothesis, a historian, like me, prefers the use of epochs in analysing historical events.
    We therefore proceed to address today’s topic from epoch to epoch in the hope that it will serve as a guide in making our choices in the series of elections that will commence in the region, come 2014, long before the general elections of 2015, God keeping Nigeria intact. I begin then with what I call:
    AWO’s GOLDEN ERA
    Awo’s golden era in Yoruba land did not come on a platter. And to prove this, we need not re-invent the wheel. Rather, we take sanctuary in AWO -THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHIEF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO, from which we shall quote at some length. He wrote: ‘I fully recognise that the healthy growth of a democratic way of life requires the existence of an enlightened community led by a group of people who are imbued with the all-consuming urge to defend, uphold and protect the human dignity. At the very beginning, wrote the Avatar, ‘ in the region, outside Lagos, democratic practices were unknown. At the local government level, many Obas and Chiefs were autocrats with legislative backing. Native courts, where justice were expected to be administered, were dens of corruption and instruments of tyranny and oppression. ‘As things stood, we knew on which side we should be: the poplar side, the peoples’ side’. But we wanted to try to carry the Obas and Chiefs with us though, for them, it was going to be a sudden transformation from the ancient to the modern. Awo, through tact and great seriousness of purpose, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in doing precisely that.
    ‘But,’ he continues: ‘there were the other freedoms –freedom from ignorance, freedom from disease and freedom from want which would, doubtless, encounter towering problems of an intractable character’. But he did not flinch. The government promised to introduce the following people-friendly policies before the end of its five-year term. 1. Free, universal primary education for all children of school age; 2. Free medical treatment for all children up to the age of 18; 3. One hospital each for each of the 24 administrative Divisions in the Region which did not yet possess one; 4. Improvements in agricultural technique and higher returns for farmers; 5. Better wages for the working class; 6. Improvement of existing roads and bridges and the construction of new ones; 7. Water supply to urban and rural areas.’
    To accomplish these, Awo and his colleagues were determined to blast their way through whatever problems, and compel the force of any adverse circumstance to serve their will’. This was because, in his words, they ‘had put in long and hard preparations to meet the challenges and they had evolved elaborate plans which they were ready to launch at a moment’s notice. What is more –I quote Awo again –‘we had an abiding, flaming faith in the soundness and practicable-ness of our plans. We regarded ourselves as crusaders in a new cause, and as eminently qualified for the pioneering role which we had imposed on ourselves’. All these, if nothing else, demonstrate that Awo saw governance as serious business; not the same way some gold-chain adorning, skin bleaching governors did in their time.
    With such preparations, many times going far into the nights when some of his political opponents were busy carousing with women of easy virtue, his millennial achievements which have continued to make the SouthWest a primus inter pares, should not be a surprise. The fact that, in addition to free and universal primary education, the region had colour television long before some European countries, that the Liberty Stadium was built or that Cocoa House, then arguably Nigeria’s tallest building, erupted, not out of oil, but cocoa money, could only have been expected from such single-mindedness.
    THE MILITARY YEARS
    The least said of those years of the locust the better. It was a long period during which soldiers, total strangers who had probably never heard of an Awo and what economic miracles he wrought in the region , were foisted on us and did with us as they deemed. As for the few of them, Yoruba, today’s parlous state of Cocoa Industries, Ikeja, remains an unforgettable testimony to their stewardship.
    PDP’s STERILE 8 YEARS
    One of Obasanjo’s main reasons for railroading the Southwest into the PDP was to compete with, or probably, overshadow Awo, the man he had earlier derided as never achieving the Nigerian presidency which he, in turn, got on a platter of gold. But that chimera fizzled out only after eight years as the people soon banished the pretenders to political Siberia. It was even short-circuited in Ekiti via an inchoate impeachment and declaration of a pre-meditated emergency rule. When I write about the PDP the way I do, it is not out of disrespect. Rather it is because of the laisser-faire, and thoroughly unserious manner in which they take governance. They want power solely for its perquisites but never for its huge responsibilities. While I know, for instance, that both Rauf Aregbesola and Kayode Fayemi are students of Awo and I am aware, on good authority, that Fashola carries Awo’s books he is reading even into his rest room, barring perhaps Gbenga Daniel, which of the then Southwest PDP governors ever opened a rigorous book by Awo? How then could they have been motivated by the man they all love to claim as their own too? How could they have learnt from the many problems which confronted him both from within and without? How could they have realised, like Awo knew then, that the people must be the focus of government policies, indeed, its raison d’être, such that they would not indulge in those things in government which they could not afford through their own personal means? Obviously without reading Awo’s thoughts and getting to know the philosophical underpinning of his socio-economic policies, Regional Integration would never have meant a thing to those gentlemen even if they served as governors for their entire lifetime. I have conscientiously sought, but in vain, for one single mention of Regional Economic Integration during those 8 years.
    It never surprises me that all we remember of PDP years in control of the Southwest are decayed infrastructure, run-down education, mayhem, total neglect of the elderly among us and a complete absence of pan-Yoruba peace which the present regime of peace daily brings into bold relief.
    THE A C N YEARS OF HEALTHY COMPETITION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
    At first glance the above looks like a contradiction in terms. But it is not. While the I’s of Regional Integration are being dotted and the serious work required for its proper formulation are being undertaken by the DAWN Commission under the absolutely patriotic and determined leadership of its chairperson, Hon Wale Oshun, the governors, in turn, are learning from one another and assiduously replicating the good plans they have for the people.
    In Education, the governors are equipping pupils and teachers with computer hardware and paraphernalia; schools are being rehabilitated as Ekiti has done for all its 183 schools; Osun is more than doubling up on agriculture, urban renewal and roads are progressing admirably in Oyo and Ogun states respectively while Lagos remains simply unbeatable. I recently listened to Dr Femi Hamzat, Lagos state commissioner for Works, on the Opeyemi Agbaje T.V Programme, and I was completely stupefied at what the Fashola government has done in the area of transportation infrastructure in the state and its plans even for the next 25 years. Such brain work you never found in the PDP which is really what pains any serious observer of our polity and the very reason I always argue that our politicians are not all the same. There is, indeed, a world of difference because, after all, the governor currently making waves in Akwa Ibom is of the PDP. But in the Southest, we never one day saw them rule for the well being of our people. It was all about self. Granted that the tenure of A C N governors is still largely a work in progress, I haven’t a scintilla of doubt that they will all leave their names in gold, since morning, as they say, shows the day.

  • A resurgent southwest

    A resurgent southwest

    Microsoft Encarta defines the word resurgent as: ‘rising or becoming stronger again’. One reason the Yoruba will never forget Chief Obafemi Awolowo, apart from his trail-blazing policies which were far ahead of his time was that people were the focal point, the very epicentre, of all his government’s policies. Rich or poor, but especially those at the lower rungs of the social ladder, were the primary focus of all the programmes and policies of the Action Group. For that reason, and never for propaganda purposes, literally every household in Yoruba land had the redifusion box through which the entire citizenry was kept abreast of every government action.

    While it is understandable why the military had no use for such people friendly policies, the absence of such policies in the sterile four years of PDP ascendancy in the region must reckon as the primary reason the party was never loved by the Yoruba people as evidenced by the fact that their leading lights were routinely losing elections right within their homestead.

    Commenting recently on ekitipanupo, Wale Adeoye, a brilliant journalist, activist and Senior Special Assistant to governor Fayemi of Ekiti wrote as follows: ‘The new bridge commissioned recently in Ogun state, the about-to be-ready Mokola bridge, the Ikogosi warm water project, the Ire Burnt Brick industry, the new Ijebu-Igbo-Lagos highway being dualised by the Osun state government, the Lagos tram project (first of its kind in Nigeria), the complete rebuilding of Benin city …’ are all targeted at making the various communities more conducive to the peoples’ various occupations as a way of enhancing their well-being. Factor in then the great strides being made by the First Ladies as in Erelu Bisi Fayemi’s multi-sectoral programmes geared towards youth and women empowerment, the Ogun State First Lady’s highly imaginative ‘UPLIFTing the aged’ project by which thousands of very old people are being provided succor and Mrs Ajumobi’s ‘Ajumose Food Bank’ initiative targeted at drastically reducing hunger amongst widows and the elderly. Add to these programmes, Fayemi’s first in Nigeria social security monthly payments to the elderly as well as Aregbesola’s equally heart-warming monthly payment to the same category of people and what you see are leaders who are determined, as Mrs Ajumobi succinctly put it, ‘to ensure the complete restoration of pristine Yoruba values long bastardised by the activities of some unfeeling, past governments. For the current governors the agenda is one of compassion, probity and accountability. If in doubt, then mentally go back some light years and recall, not just the killer gangs habitually over running the entire region; an octogenarian putting the entire Ibadan to the sword with the city emerging the dirtiest and most dangerous city in the country as rival motor park gangs, allegedly under some police protection, spilled blood at will. Interestingly today, the same Ibadan, which Sam Omatseye once dubbed ‘the city of grime and crime’, that city of Baba Adedibu, Tokyo, Auxiliary etc, is being tastefully restored and renewed by the Ajumobi government thereby enhancing the city’s environmental health status.

    All over the South-West, the people had to rise to put their traducers to shame, and flight, but nowhere in the geo-political zone would this people power equal what happened in Ekiti, an odyssey which has been brilliantly captured in THE LONG WALK – a book authored by some Aides of the Chief Protagonist, Dr Kayode Fayemi.

    All these put together, in the words of Wale Adeoye, is the testimony of our history and as if it required legitimisation, the clear electoral supremacy of the progressives reaffirmed that during the 2011 general elections when the people doused the vapours of hate and the afflictions induced by our yesterday men . That soul-renching defeat of the oppressor party has given the entire Southwest a new lease of life made distinct throughout the country by an unprecedented, pan-regional peace except, occasionally, when the rump of their hatchet men attempt to re-enact a recrudescence of their old mayhem.

    Most reviews of development in the geo-political zone have concentrated on infrastructural development: roads built to last decades and giant strides in healthcare delivery as exemplified by Lagos, Ekiti , Osun and Ogun States, complete overhaul and revival of dead industries as in Ekiti, giant strides in agriculture as in Osun State; the urban renewal projects that are unerringly transforming Ibadan, Osogbo and Ado-Ekiti, and the single-minded determination of each of these state governments to revive the decrepit educational infrastructure left behind by the departing PDP governments among others. Important as all these are, with Lagos state emerging as the incomparable lodestar even in the entire country, our governors are acutely aware that development is not all about brick and mortar. They know that peace, is a sine qua non for development and the overall well-being of the citizenry which should be the raison d’être of any good government.

    Although the federal government has failed dismally in the task of ensuring the safety of lives and properties in the country, governments in the Southwest do put considerable premium on securing the lives and properties of the citizenry.

    For the respective governors, therefore, kidnapping, armed robbery and other criminalities like those being daily spewed by the Boko Haram can certainly not be an option though, it must be acknowledged that armed robbery, mostly transborder, is still around and about albeit, on a diminishing scale since the states give maximum support to their police commands which remain curiously underfunded by the federal government as Nigerians saw recently in our decrepit Police Training Colleges.

    But it must be said that peace has not come cheap as it has been the result of deep thinking and appropriate, proactive actions on the part of these state governments as a means of driving their commitment to securing the citizenry. This is in the knowledge that only a peaceful atmosphere can guarantee their developmental efforts, even governance itself. A clear example is what we currently see in some states up North where it has been alleged that some governors now run the affairs of government from outside the state capitals though the suggestion has been strenuously denied..

    The overwhelming peace in the Southwest owed its genesis to Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola who, in 2007 established a Lagos State Security Trust Fund which was passed into Law by the state House of Assembly. This was the outcome of a high- powered committee he set up under the chairmanship of Alhaji Musiliu Smith, about the only Inspector-General of Police to have come out of service with his integrity intact, in recent times. The committee identified logistics, mobility, communications, kitting, and appropriate hardware, in sufficient quantities, as the major challenges inhibiting the police in its determined effort to checkmate violent crimes. To successfully navigate these challenges, it was discovered that huge sums of money would be needed on a recurring basis. The state government therefore rightly decided on a Public/Private partnership which has since generated billions of naira to the great fortune of the Lagos state police command and the state’s overall security. The Lagos example has since gone viral in the entire Southwest and each of the states has poured huge sums of money, in materiel and logistics, into their respective police commands with Osun state actually launching its own security trust fund.

    The result is that even transborder gangs, whether from neighbouring countries or from other geo-political zones for which the Southwest was at a time a regular hunting ground have learnt the hard way and had since migrated back to where they came from.

    The resultant peace has gelled rather flawlessly with the traditional peaceful nature of the people which has in turn been helped significantly by the fact that no matter in which state you are in the region, you have a government that is earnestly putting its all into the service of the people. The synergy between the state governors in their determined effort to ensure peace and security in the region is a clear evidence of regional integration whose fundamental objective, in the words of the Ogbeni is ‘to harness, effectively and efficiently, the abundant resources of the region and to unleash its collective enterprise towards promoting the well being and quality of lives of the people living in the region’. .

  • Steal the Central Bank of Nigeria, plead guilty, go home free

    Steal the Central Bank of Nigeria, plead guilty, go home free

    I had intended to commence, this Sunday, a series of articles on the refreshing re-engineering presently afoot in the South-West courtesy of the A C N governors in the region, a pan-regional renewal of infrastructure, education, agriculture and ground-breaking social security programmes for the elderly so heartwarming Chief Obafemi Awolowo would give the architects a thumbs up from his grave since they are earnestly working towards the happiness and well-being of the greater majority of the people which the Avatar unequivocally prescribed as the raison d’être of a good government. That, however, was before the news broke of an insensitive Abuja High Court judge sentencing one John Yusufu, a self-confessed thief of N32.8billion Police Pension fund, to two years imprisonment with an option of a measly N750, 000 fine which the convict promptly paid. Interestingly, less than 24 hours after that judgment, an Ikare Magistrate Court in Ondo State sentenced an accused to three years imprisonment for stealing a telephone handset worth N17, 000.

    More nauseating than Mr Justice Talba Mohammed’s unthinking judgment is the fact that the EFCC, with all its effete posturing about corruption, was privy to this unconscionable arrangement. This is obvious from the following statement by the agency: ‘The Commission is of the view that the option of fine runs contrary to the understanding between the prosecution and the defence wherein the convict consented to a custodial sentence with the forfeiture of all assets and money that are proceeds of crime’. Little wonder the convict knew well ahead, exactly how much he was going to be fined. With things as they stand in the country today, the EFCC must reckon as the greatest motivator of corruption. Where in the civilised world, other than Nigeria, would such a rogue walk away with a slap on the wrist? Did Mardof get a plea bargain in the U.S? Is whatever money or property seized more important than the immoralities EFCC is inculcating in the citizenry through these brazen compromises? Where is the money paid by the likes of former governor Lucky Igbinedion and co in past plea bargains or where are the houses forfeited to government in all these ludicrous paddy paddy bargains? Were they not all sold within their cabal? If a man could literally walk free from such humongous heist, why would unemployed graduates not go into armed robbery and some jobless miscreants into kidnapping? As it stands today, EFCC deserves to be completely scrapped. It was no surprise that another government agency, the Code of Conduct, was reported to have summarily quashed the case of one of the co- accused persons in whose account at the United Bank of Africa a whooping N500 million was found, freed allegedly on the intervention of the wife of a very senior government official.

    Since the news broke, I have heard lawyers of all hue rationalising plea bargaining. I make bold to say that while this may be provided for in our law books, it is absolutely unhelpful in a Nigerian society where corruption has become, not only endemic but, systemic. Whichever way you turn, all you hear are public servants stealing, no longer millions but, billions of naira given the certainty that no punishment awaits them. Impunity has taken over the land and when anti-corruption agencies make a sham of going to court, all you get is what the Abuja judge dispensed here as punishment -a huge joke and the same reason Ibori was treated here in Nigeria as a paragon of honesty only to be shamefully jailed in the U.K.

    What a rudderless government we have and what a spineless people we are turning out to be? What a country? Why will the world not call us thieves? Coming so soon after a British court described one-time governor Ibori as a common thief in state house, who in the world should respect any Nigerian? Are these judicial officers, supposedly operating in the temple of justice, so uncaring they can vomit any judgment, however inane? Granted that this judge cannot single-highhandedly re-write the law, (but) was he obligated to offer the criminal an option of fine knowing full well that a cow thief in a part of this country could have a limb chopped off? What impunity, and, again, is there a single reason young Nigerians should not go into armed robbery or kidnapping when men and women constitutionally empowered to moderate our values through the instrumentality of law are so unthinking? Going by the level of listlessness routinely displayed by the judiciary, shouldn’t every Nigerian be a criminal of sorts since criminality pays so handsomely? And by the way, hasn’t it been suggested this same judge it was who ruled that Kenny Martins had no case to answer in another police-related case where sleaze was strongly alleged? Doesn’t he realise that hundreds of thousands of poor retired old men who had served this nation to the best of their abilities are victims of this heist and that some of them actually die, queuing for this same pension? God, give us judges: men and women in their dignified robes, who will know that they are chosen by you, though appointed by man, to perform what essentially is a solemn function to the edification of your name, rather than simply see it as working for a meal ticket.

    Lord, give us responsible judges.

    Questions ad infinitum, but let us get to the nitty gritty of this thoroughly revolting case. We have in this country, a party which, as I often describe it, has held this country under its stranglehold for close on 14 years and always with about three quarters of members of the National Assembly. For these many years, has the National Assembly been so irresponsible it did not know that even if you steal the entire Central Bank of Nigeria, all you get is a 2-year jail term? Did they consider this equitable to the offence? What then is the responsibility of the Committees on Judiciary in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or does it stop with the squandering of funds and allocation of state of the art cars for so-called committee work? Of course Nigerians will not be surprised their representatives are too blinded by graft and greed to notice such inequities.

    This case is so nauseating you want to puke.

    Where now is PDP’s so-called Ethical Revolution, that shibboleth, like Vision 20 20 20, and its cousin, Rebranding, through which they once ate the nation raw. PDP is never short of such grandstanding rhetoric. Trending now is their Centenary anniversary and Senator Ayim Pius Ayim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, is throwing his entire weight into it. By the time the dust settles on this too, Nigeria would have been short-changed to the tune of billions of naira. Didn’t former minister Ezekwezili, only last week, ask them questions as to how they squandered a colossal $67 billion; an amount no West African country, beside Ghana, can boast of in a given financial year?

    That is PDP with its ideology of ‘share the money’.

    And what manner of people are we? Are we so consumed with the challenges of life and living that we have become so spineless? Must we take just about anything when, as you read this, Egyptians, in spite of an emergency declared by government, are still out there on the streets protesting against some draconian decrees by the Morsi government?

    .And as somebody has asked, why are the two major religions silent on this evil plaguing our country? What are the moral and ethical tenets driving these religions that they cannot lead their adherents out on a massive anti-corruption demonstration as is routinely done in other countries? And concerning the Bible and the Quran which these rogues, counting on the mercy of God, do not take seriously, shouldn’t our constitution now prescribe that public officials should swear on Ogun – the god of iron – and such like gods which show no mercy to criminals? Shouldn’t our traditional religionists place a curse on those rabidly raping this hapless country? At least one remembers General Obasanjo once suggesting we fight purveyors of the apartheid system with African juju.

    If these nation wreckers are so unrelenting, l will suggest it is time unforgiving African gods are unleashed on them for the sake of fatherland.

     

  • Constitution review: Time this national assembly got serious

    Constitution review: Time this national assembly got serious

    Whether at the corporate level, as in when the Chairman of its Publicity Committee speaks, or individually as in Senator Smart Adeyemi haranguing us, reminding us he remains a journalist and would think nothing of leading a demonstration, it has been sabre rattling galore, threats and more threats, against any sensible voice that asks the National Assembly to drop, like hot potato, this their diversionary and, ill-advised, pre-occupation with wanting to make local governments an unprecedented, third federating unit to the Nigerian federation. What remains to be heard from these supposedly grassroots- loving National Assembly members is their readiness to abandon their stupendous, out of this world, quarterly forays into the national treasury which the Central Bank Governor once calculated to be in the region of 25 percent of the annual national budget. No, their love of country does not extend that far but it is our hope and prayer that somebody, somewhere, will have the presence of mind to demonstrate the political will to let them know it is evil to continue a waste which even the United States cannot afford, and which Nigerians know only too well is arbitrary, as it does not have the approval of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission whose primary responsibility is to fix salaries and allowances. It is also hoped that they will climb down their high horse, eat the humble pie and be gracious enough to accept that there is nowhere under the sun you have three federating units in a federation.

    Rather, what the civilised world has come to know is a federation of the centre and the composite states and this principle and practice had long been cast in stone.

    This is the simple truth governors like Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti and Musa Kwankaso have this past week, and for the umpteenth time, tried to drill into them. But this has cut no ice with them since their primary intention is to divert our attention, and rather than accede to the popular demand of reducing their unearned, completely immoral allowances that eat up billions every three months, they want to replicate additional centres of ‘independence’ at both the state House of Assemblies and Local Governments by providing the two with constitutional provenance to ravage the treasury as they will be answerable to no higher authority. That way, they would have succeeded in muting the peoples’ opposition to their own financial recklessness at the federal level.

    In order to perfectly understand this looming travesty of a constitutional review, we would need to quote, at some length, the views of governor Rabiu Musa Kwankaso who described this plot against the people most poignantly in a recent newspaper interview.

    Dismissing the entire constitution review as a charade which will add no value to the lives of Nigerians whose needs are potable water, good roads, improved agriculture and other life-changing amenities, the governor said:

     

    “You see, what we have in the National Assembly is what they want to transfer to the 36 state houses of assembly. Only the Almighty Allah can moderate what is happening in the National Assembly today, nobody else.

    “We hear that some get N45 million or N50 million per quarter. This amounts to N15 million per month and half a million naira per day for every member, whether you are speaking, whether you are in the beer parlour enjoying yourself, you are getting that every day. What sort of business will you do in this country to get half a million naira every day?”

    ’Were these honourable members alive to their responsibilities and not keen merely to further create centres of unnecessary waste of national resources, they should need no lectures in realising that state governors are in a much better position to understand the needs of the people more than the most astute Local Government Chairman. They would also have known, without being told, that local governments exist solely as an arm of state governments for the propagation and execution of state programmes and policies at that level. All these chest-beating and sabre rattling by the National Assembly amount to nothing more than a sterile fishing expedition which is bound to fail at the end of the day.

    Everything about local governments, its creation, its numbers and administration, should completely be under the purview of state governments which can much more meaningfully arrive at the appropriate number of local governments required for its needs. It will, therefore, be a mere waste of time for the National Assembly to attempt to formalise its many threats by granting autonomy to local governments because, we the people, more than the governors, will prevail on the state Houses of Assembly to ensure that fails.

    Finally on constituency projects, what exactly should, in a corruption-free society, be the concern of the legislature with executive functions beyond its oversight function? What their colleagues in the U.S do- and they should be happy to be so compared – is to request that packs be approved for specific projects in their respective states and these, unlike here, are never executed by individual legislators but go straight to the approved projects. For Christ’s sake these people are there to make laws and conduct oversight functions; not become emergency contractors for projects that get mostly abandoned halfway as such funds are most often misapplied – apologies, Late Augustus Aikhomu.

    This misnomer, if we remember, is a direct result of a succession of PDP rigged-in, weak and unsure presidents who subsequently had to do everything to crave the support of the National Assembly especially in passing their heavily compromised budg

    ets. Should the practice continue, however, then our emergency honourable contractors should go learn from their colleagues from Ekiti –all A C N members – who pulled together most of their constituency allowances totalling millions of naira and have put it at the behest of the state government for the execution of a gigantic agricultural project which will fundamentally and positively impact the lives of their people back home rather than using Abuja to launch their miserable wars against their state governors as we are beginning to see in convoys running into convoys.

    For once, the National Assembly should get serious and do something tangible for the poor Nigerian masses its members milk ever so easily and unscrupulously before its next coup against the Revenue and Fiscal Mobilisation Commission, as always happens; even if they have to borrow illegally from banks to meet their greed.

     

    Happy birthday ebino topsy

    Had I not so suddenly lost an uncle who impacted my youth so much, I should have , this past weekend, been ‘jollificating’ with my friend of 48 years; the one and only Chief Ebenezer Babatope, aka Ebino Topsy, who turned 70 to the glory of God.

    Awe, what did we not do together, what risks didn’t we take as young, budding radical intellectuals who, albeit, decided to make University Administration our forte; and actually founded its Association where, with the likes of Talib Umar,later Federal Permanent Secretary, Pat Adaba, later Deputy Governor of Kogi State and our dearly departed Charles Balogun, who would later serve as Executive Secretary NISER, we were all ranking officers? Tinu and I send you and Biola our fraternal greetings and pray the Almighty God to continue to keep you and all yours safe. Amen.

     

  • PDP: United only by the illicit, not manifesto

    PDP: United only by the illicit, not manifesto

    …Bowing to the wishes of Nigerians, General Abubakar unveiled an eleven-month transition programme, which will terminate on May 29, 1999. The “five fingers of the leprous hand”, which operated as “political parties”, namely, the UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM were dissolved. Nigerians were now free to form genuine political parties to compete for political space without the suffocating tailoring by agents of the state. The G-34, which was now established as an embodiment of the hope and democratic aspirations of Nigerians having demonstrated courage when it was convenient to show docile acquiescence became the rallying point of a blossoming trans-ideological movement willing to offer leadership to Nigerians.According to Chief Solomon Lar, the first elected chairman of PDP, the G-34 captured the excitement of Nigerians “because of the quality and integrity of its members”. To him, Nigerians were no longer willing to gamble away their future to fortune seekers who dominated the failed politics of the Abacha era. As a consequence of sustaining the momentum of democratic struggle, the G-34 attracted several political associations that shared the vision of a truly formidable national political platform.On August 19, 1998, several political associations including the All Nigerian Congress (ANC), Peoples Consultative Forum (PCF), Social Political Party (SPP) Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), Peoples National Forum (PNF) and twenty-five other associations resolved to form a political party known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The overriding goal of the new party was to bring together all patriotic and like-minded Nigerians into a single formidable political party capable of organising and making productive the energy of the people.’

    Obviously not many of them, members of the largest ‘rally’ in Africa, would ever know that the above extract came from the official website of their party, the Peoples Democratic Party. And this is so for many reasons. For one, the venerated ‘quality and integrity’ Chief Solomon Lar spoke so glowingly about are long gone with the winds but much more importantly, the party and its original raison d’être have changed so fundamentally since former President Obasanjo’s entry into it that were the likes of Abubakar Rimi and Okadigbo to suddenly resurrect today, they would not as much as recognise the party they risked all to form.

    Readers will remember that to mould the party in Obasanjo’s image, and, almost unprecedented in the annals of political party evolution, the maximum civilian ruler and leader of the party, as he then was, caused all members to be de-registered and decreed a fresh registration. So mystifying, but self-serving was it, that even Atiku Abubakar, his Vice President and, technically, the No. 2 in the party, was casually humiliated in his own village when he was refused registration only for the entire party leadership to later beat a retreat and head to his office, tails behind their backs, to present him with a membership card at Abuja, the federal capital.

    All this history becomes relevant now that leaders of the leading opposition political parties in the country are, for the very first time ever, working seriously towards ending the reign of impunity by a political party that has, far more than the military, pulverised the country beyond the widest imagination of its enemies in its 13-year strangle-hold. It is heartening that for the same first time, these opposition party leaders have all verbalised their readiness to subsume all narrow interests, personal, regional, political or economic, in the larger service of the country we call our own.

    Nothing confirms this seriousness more than the recent launch of the manifesto of the incubating merger, an event which witnessed the presence of nearly all the relevant leaders of the agenda. Those who could not make the occasion physically, were specifically represented. To understand the import of that event is to appreciate that without a manifesto, a political party is nothing more than a rally –read PDP- the clueless party that continues, unabated, the ruination of Nigeria with each of its leaders, as President, coming with either a 7-point Agenda which the current CBN governor, at his confirmation hearing advised should be reduced to one, or one nebulously called a Transformation Agenda but singularly devoid of any positive transformation.

    Beginning from Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel’s address to his Tamworth constituents in preparation for the 1835 British general election, a political party manifesto has come to be known as the public declaration of the aims, objectives and policies of that political party, especially where issued ahead of a coming election and to which the electorate can hold it, in or out of power.

    It will be recalled that all we can remember of PDP’s manifesto or that of the late Yar Adua’s campaign at which Nigerians could not quote him on one single subject was: PDP: Power!, as then President Obasanjo played the role of campaign spokesperson.

    In my recent 3-part article on corruption, I drew attention to the fact that salvaging Nigeria was the duty of all and that the worst we could do is leave the country to continue its present path of retrogression under the lead of the PDP.As you read this, the party is again in the news for the wrong reasons; for jejune reasons completely unexpected of a ruling party in a country like ours. Whether at the Wadada Plaza, where the falcon can no longer hear the falconer, or in Adamawa State as in sundry other states, especially in the South West, where its one-time poster boys have since been banished to political Siberia, it is war; total and unremitting war, the very end of which none can predict with any measure of certainty as the countdown to the presidential roforofo unfolds. It needs be said, however, that the ‘casus belli’, this time around, is tied to Obasanjo’s unedifying marriage to impunity. Time and again, he has indulged in these thoroughly illegal and indecent ‘fehingbe pons’ –acts of impunity- until now that Kashamu, who though a party financier, is young enough to answer thrice to a single Obasanjo call, has decided that enough was enough and decided to fight him eye ball to eye ball. Unlike what happened elsewhere, Obasanjo had merely decreed who should be what, at the South West PDP zonal congress, but as is usual in his home state of Ogun, he is being told again that there is a limit to one- ups-man ship. The silly things he rammed through PDP governors then in Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti, he never dared try with governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State, and where he did, he failed signally.

    Nothing any longer unfazes a PDP member, whatever his level in the party; not thieving of billions of pension funds, not stealing billion dollars voted for modernisation of roads or the power sector nor are they collectively averse to creaming Nigerians off billions of naira claiming that ships which never visited any port on the African continent, indeed, actually delivered petroleum products at Apapa.

    But it gets far worse when a President, elected on the platform of such a party, looks askance, with such rogues left free to go about their illegitimate businesses and presidential aides eagerly trying to exculpate him with the spurious claim that the presidency is not the judiciary; conveniently forgetting the aphorism that the buck stops at the president’s table. Of course, it must be conceded that ours is now a poor caricature of the American president who knows that he occupies, not the coziest but the hottest, part of the kitchen.

    In the weeks and months ahead the 2015 elections, indeed from now on, given the vacuity and the all-round negativity of the Peoples Democratic Party on Nigeria and its peoples, I intend, God willing, to do my utmost best in promoting the manifesto of the emerging merger in the full knowledge that it will provide the much- needed elixir for the hapless citizens of an abundantly resource -rich country which has, unfortunately, been more than blighted by a succession of rigged-in, soporific and inane, PDP governments at the federal level.

    That much I promise.

  • 2013: A year of infinite possibilities (2)

    2013: A year of infinite possibilities (2)

    Courtesy Dele Babatunde, a highly regarded former President of then University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Students’ Union and Victor Oladokun’s friend and contemporary at the university, I have been able to exchange pleasantries with the latter since last week’s article in this column. Victor must, however, be disappointed that Fola Aiyegbusi’s reaction to the article, far beyond my earnest hopes, had been archetypical, though certainly not enough to vitiate our high hopes for the country in 2013 and beyond.

    Wrote Fola: ‘Sir, without prejudice to the concluding part of your article, and while your comments are in line with my own thoughts, I would rather say Victor’s messages are a ‘mirage’. For the Southwest, it could look more like it; but at the federal government level, with President Jonathan at the helms, it is impossible. It is absolutely clear that he lacks the will: political, moral, or religious, to make a difference. Like I always say, Buhari/idiagbon exhibited these qualities in ‘84/85 and Nigerians followed. Let the attitudinal change campaign start this time again from the very top, and then we can be hopeful’’.

    On the basis of Oladokun’s very inspiring article, I had concluded my comments in the first part as follows: ‘Nigeria can be transformed. It depends upon you and I and it is attitudinal and therefore less dependent on President Jonathan though his personal life of sacrifice will facilitate and enhance the processes.

    Given President Jonathan’s well known inadequacies, I have sought, in that conclusion, to apportion to him only a miniscule part of all we would have to do as a people to re-jig our country and make it count among respected countries of the world. You do not have to hate Mr President personally to score him poorly on the following essentials of leadership if it intended to achieve outstanding results, especially, in a country like ours: Setting and achieving goals, identifying priorities, decisiveness in policy formulation and articulation; inspiring and motivating others, setting standards, and leading by personal example; the last being the only thing I asked of the President in the first part of the article.

    I still wonder what led President Jonathan to flying the kite of a 7-year single term, ‘from which he will personally not benefit’, as at the time he did. And only God knows how corrosive of his integrity as a trustworthy leader that single mis-step was as not a few Nigerians interpreted that move as absolutely self-serving given that nothing in our constitution stops a one-term president from contesting again. All he would have done, again, was make the judiciary a fall guy as was done in the case of Justice Salami where an outgoing Chief Judge thought nothing of being used.

    Since I do not believe that Mr President could be enough reason to delay our progress as a nation, especially in the business and technological arena, I remain persuaded in the following other parts of the Oladokun piece:

    OLADOKUN: PERSONAL GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT.

    In 2013 we saw hundreds of thousands of Nigerians breaking the barriers of cost, distance, and time by taking advantage of online educational portals such as Coursera, Minerva and edXJ that offer access to free online courses, lectures and events at Ivy League Universities including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Princeton and a host of other colleges in fields as diverse as Mathematical Thinking, Operational Management, Fundamentals of Computer Programming, Computer Architecture, Leadership, History, Fundamentals of Personal Finance, Sustainability, Healthcare Delivery, Global History, and Artificial Intelligence, to mention but a few. In 2013, millions of Nigerians engaged in continual self-improvement without having to leave the shores of Nigeria or having to break the bank in the process.

    COMMENT: Nigerians, especially the younger and more educated ones, are becoming increasingly aware that they cannot tie their future to politicians, especially those belonging to the party that for over a decade has had their country in a stranglehold. Not that members of the opposition parties, especially in the National Assembly, have demonstrated any better traits other than together, as Professor Jide Osuntokun wrote in his last week column in The Nation, ‘paying themselves salaries and perquisites of office of over N25 Million a month; a sum that is unthinkable even in the United States, the richest country in the world’. What resources could have been used in making our universities world class are simply eaten up by this parasitic elite and their conniving future wreckers.

    I take together, the following from Oladokun’s inspirational article because, together, they answer to the complete absence of any sustainable youth empowerment programme by this PDP government just as they could , collectively, mitigate the totally irresponsible level of unemployment which is bound , very soon, to mushroom into an economic Boko Haram:

    OLADOKUN. YOUTH ORIENTED BUSINESS INCUBATORS.

    ‘2013 was the year that technology innovation made explosive strides from the high street to the backstreets of Nigeria. Creative entrepreneurs and NGOs planted visible IT & Business Incubators across the country with the goal of developing the ideas and concepts of thousands of creative young entrepreneurs. IT and digital media businesses led to the development of countless indigenous mobile and software applications for smart phones and computers, allowing young entrepreneurs to make generous profits in the process.’

    THE EMERGENCE OF ‘SOLOPRENEURS.’

    ‘In 2013, Nigeria saw the emergence of hundreds of thousands of Solopreneurs in IT, media, sales & marketing, computer graphics, audio and video post-production, professional proposal writing, and mobile app designs. Bucking a decades-old trend, hundreds of thousands of graduates and professionals began hiring out their skills, rather than seeking traditional employment.

    THE YEAR OF MERGERS: In business, professional sports teams, media companies, hospitals, NGOs, political parties, and even churches, mergers became the norm in 2013. In the process, wasteful duplication of resources was greatly reduced; strengths, skills and talents of the best minds were harnessed for greater efficiency; numerous newly merged entities began expanding the presence of their brands nationwide; while ‘excellence’ and ‘value’ began to take on new meaning’.

    COMMUNITY BASED CROWD SOURCING:

    ‘2013 was the year that funding networks collaborated in win-win joint ventures between creative business types and investors, with the goal of moving large numbers into gainful business ownership. Funding Networks of like-minded venture philanthropists came together to fund small and medium sized businesses that otherwise would not have been able to access traditional lending funds.

    VIRTUAL OFFICES MUSHROOMED. Instead of renting office space for a year or two in advance, many upwardly mobile entrepreneurs who do business on the go via computers or smart phones, began to lease Virtual Office space and facilities per block of hours or days for important meetings and teleconferences’

    I was delighted to hear Mr Gbanite, a Channels T.V Security commentator, allude to unemployment in a programme on security last week. Now, the Jonathan administration is overwhelmed by just one Boko Haram, but wait until Greek-like urban dislocations hit Nigeria’s major cities of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano. And see what incendiary it will serve in Maiduguri and Yobe. Then those who make progress and development impossible in Nigeria would have to begin their self-deportation.

    Concluded

  • 2013: A year of infinite possibilities

    2013: A year of infinite possibilities

    Cleaning the nation’s Augean stables is a million times more rewarding than being a 2-term president

    Welcome to 2013. It shall be well with us all. Amen

    In a recent article he captioned ‘The Year That ‘Was’ 2013″, the author, Victor Oladokun, indicated that he is neither a prognosticator nor a prophet; rather that he is only an observer of future trends, and do believe that ‘beyond the realm of ‘impossibility’ is infinite possibility and that it is possible to create the future by working backwards’.

    From here he proceeded to itemise 20 things he believed ‘happen’ in the country in 2013; which ‘happenings’ some have described as either quixotic or utopian, but which I personally found inspirational enough to lead me to comment on the article as follows on a web portal:

    ‘I must say am humbled by the gentle man’s thought process. That it is inspirational is not a surprise as Victor Oladokun had more than paid his dues, producing/presenting Turning Point, a programme devoted to life-changing experiences, especially, the spiritual. In sane societies, while individuals will read this and use it to moderate their own life style and see it as a PUSH for great things that can happen, especially amongst the youth, but more particularly, in the group of the upwardly mobile and the middle class which do create businesses, the government could use it to inspire totally unforeseen, yet very impactful, set of actions that can change peoples’ perception of it as being a laggard. The amount of importance we give the document could also enable us accord ideas its rightful place in development. The federal government can find the document useful beyond our wildest imagination given that it is at that level that a country’s macro-economic plans and programmes are incubated’

    A word then about the author and some of his prognosis as, given our space constraint, we would have to deal with those affecting the entire country first and, in the concluding part, touch on those that can significantly reduce unemployment in Nigeria by facilitating the emergence of IT as a driver of business. A graduate of the Great University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Dr Victor Oladokun, the versatile, long-running, erstwhile producer/presenter of TURNING POINT is a broadcaster, writer, media & leadership consultant, and a public speaker, all rolled into one. It is the totality of his expertise in these various callings he puts together as his New Year message to Nigerians. See http://www.ynaija.com/victor-oladokun-the-year-that-was-2013.

    What then are the basic ingredient of his message?

    OLADOKUN: ‘THE YEAR of ME:

    ‘2013 was the year when millions of Nigerians engaged in Meaningful life and work. It was a year when we all owned, dealt with, and cleaned up our Meanness and our MEsses. In our families, at work, in our communities, and as a nation, we set aside the incessant negativity that comes from pointing the finger, blaming and shaming others. Instead, we let change begin with ‘ME’.

    COMMENT: At the burial of the late National Security Adviser, the President said: “If Nigerians would change their attitude, you will realise that most of these issues being attributed to corruption are not caused by corruption,” I agree with him but rather than his example of most accidents happening on good roads, I would merely say that in my childhood, growing up in Ekiti, a passerby would not as much as touch the banana laid by the roadside without paying for it. Today, put a battalion of soldiers, Nigerians would still try to cheat the owner. The earlier is an example of our peoples’ attitude then before the contamination brought about by today’s penchant for fast living.

    Therefore, like the President said, an attitudinal change is key to getting us out of our national morass.

    OLADOKUN: THE END OF PROFLIGATE GOVERNMENT SPENDING:

    ‘Positioning himself for 2015, … the President banned lavish banquets and luxurious cars; showed that he is irreversibly committed to stamping out wanton waste by thieving politicians and civil servants’.

    COMMENT: Again, this is attitudinal and the president must lead the way by personal example. No multi- billion banquet halls and asinine Vice-Presidential lodges are jettisoned just as he no longer appoints tainted politicians to important public offices or be their cheer leader to acquire higher national or political party posts, all with an eye on 2015.

    OLADOKUN: THERE WAS ‘LIGHT

    ‘In 2013, we found the magic switch and exclaimed in unison “we have seen the light!” Refurbished thermal generating plants in Egbin; hydroelectric power stations in Kainji, Shiroro, and Jebba; Gas turbines in Afam and Sapele in the Niger Delta; and solar power farms scattered across Nigeria’s northern belt, together churned out 15,000 uninterrupted mega watts of power that more than met domestic, commercial, and export needs. As we go into 2014, millions of Nigerians are saying their stress levels have gone down; business boomed, industrial output quadrupled, electronic media consumption broke all records, and street lighting on all major roads increased overall security.

    COMMENT: This is self-evident. The President should, rather than the next election, concentrate his mind on bringing these about. He does this, the Nigerian leadership cabal will no longer turn to Obasanjo but will merely ask him to ‘carry go’. But can he; does he dream those dreams a leader, to be successful, must?

    OLADOKUN:TRANSPARENT ACCOUNTABILITY:

    ‘Instead of being branded the 35th most corrupt nation in the world, and placing 139th out of 176 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s 2012 global Anti-Corruption Index, in 2013 Nigeria jumped 39 notches to place 100 on the Index, ushering in a new era of accountability and transparency at all levels of Federal and State Governance in budgeting, spending, audits, project performance, and the activities of the military, judiciary, the House and Senate, NNPC, EFCC, NPF, Customs, Immigration, institutions of higher learning, and a host of public institutions; as well as a more aggressive prosecution of those engaged in fraud and corrupt practices’.

    COMMENT: At first, looks like a chimera but certainly not impossible. We once saw Saakashvili sack 16000 Georgian police men for corruption in one day and the heavens did not fall. If Jonathan’s hands are not clean, let him make restitution, but if they are, let him go after all the known thieves in the land. Cleaning the nation’s Augean stable is a million times more rewarding than being a 2-term president.

    OLADOKUN: TRANSFORM NIGERIA

    ‘became a popular slogan in 2013 as Government leaders and proven private sector stakeholders had a meeting of the minds. The tremendous value of a maintenance culture finally dawned on our collective consciousness. Following the public outcry that came on the heels of the scandalous amounts of Naira mentioned in the construction of an Aso Rock Banquet Hall and a new Vice Presidential Mansion in 2012, a nation-wide list of strategic projects in roads, schools, hospitals, stadiums, airports and buildings were identified, evaluated, and contracted out for complete overhauls. The end result was that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians became gainfully employed; monumental eyesores became shimmering landmarks of excellence; community-wide pride of ownership became the norm; and since like tends to beget like, the rehabilitation and maintenance culture had a domino effect throughout Nigeria’

    COMMENT: Again, Nigeria can be transformed. It depends upon you and I and it is attitudinal and therefore less depending on President Jonathan though his personal life of sacrifice will facilitate and enhance the process.

    TO BE CONCLUDED

  • The horrible year 2012 (3)

    The horrible year 2012 (3)

    Speaking the other day at the year- end Christmas Carol Service in Ado-Ekiti, Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Ekiti State governor, gave it all to God. It couldn’t have been otherwise. Looking back at what difference the good Lord has used his hands to make in the life of his people, as a function of the lean funds at his disposal, whether from federal allocations, IGR or even the bond, he could only have given it to the Almighty God.

    Our job in this concluding part is pretty simple. It is to take a cursory look at the South-West where there obviously has been demonstrable leadership in governance culminating in a quantum of verifiable, measurable and sustainable multi-sectoral development.

    But I must quickly enter a caveat.

    I am from that part of the country and for the reasons I stated in part 2 of this trilogy, I am one of the many Nigerians who have given up on travelling, especially, for pleasure. I now neither fly locally – the young, brilliant co-pilot we lost to impunity in that crashed naval helicopter will always be in my memory. I knew Yemi as a toddler and my very distraught family is very close to both his parents and the wife’s. So much for travels within Nigeria, even though my decision predates that unfortunate incident. It arose out of the stinking failure of those who ruled us for 8 straight years to improve on our road infrastructure even after burning N300 billion voted for that purpose. As a result of our decrepit road infrastructure, coupled with the other well known demons: accidents, armed robbers, kidnappers and evil police men, I also no longer venture by road beyond the South West. Forgive me then if, as we read in newspapers, some things are happening in places like Akwa Ibom, Rivers or Cross River where, besides the A C N states, there is some modicum of good governance. I am, therefore, unable to talk categorically on happenings in these states because I testify only to that which I see.

    On the contrary, however,, I have travelled widely in the South-West since the current governors took over the Augean stable left everywhere by the then departing PDP governors. .

    The A C N governors, without exception, are inheritors of a tradition of good governance having been weaned on the Awo heritage of transparency and accountability, effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness, consensus, empathy and equity. Of course, being Yoruba, those PDP governors were also inheritors of these Awo traits but their place on the political spectrum was such that they meant nothing. Otherwise, show me one single example of their social welfare programmes comparable to Fayemi’s twin programmes for the elderly and the new one on orphans or to that of Aregbesola on the elderly not to mention the multi-pronged Erelu Fayemi EDF’s initiatives on women, the girl child and the youth of Ekiti in general.

    You obviously cannot give what you do not have.

    The starting point for the governors had been the recognition that the West, being an economic block, has to develop on the basis of regional integration which was certain to be both viable and cost-effective in infrastructure procurement, industrialisation, commerce and agriculture in particular. This is an economic development paradigm that was never once mentioned, even in passing, during the PDP’s six-year stranglehold on the region. The synergy thus created has helped tremendously in bonding within political leadership in the geo-political zone to the advantage of the citizenry. Today, you see many development efforts being replicated all over with minor local variations as a precursor to major partnerships in the areas of power, transportation systems, especially roads and railways, education, industrialisation and agriculture, areas on which comprehensive studies are presently on-going.

    Concerning education which was completely in the doldrums at the inception of their administration, both Fayemi and Aregbesola took about the same route in trying to re-invent this critical sector. Where Ogbeni preferred to have a direct stakeholders conference, Dr Fayemi empanelled a technical committee of experts whose recommendations formed the basis of the resolutions at the subsequent stakeholders conference which have, in turn, underpinned his government’s education policy.

    Arising from these efforts, both governments have invested huge amounts of money on e-education and had spared no effort in empowering both students and teachers in programmes which are destined to facilitate the emergence of a strong knowledge-based economy in the region in the very near future. Where Fayemi had given students and teachers solar powered laptops, Aregbesola had equipped students and teachers with computer tablets with appropriate subjects already imputed.

    The misunderstood TDNA in Ekiti was one of the key recommendations of the stakeholders conference at which the highly regarded Professor Sam Aluko, of blessed memory, presided. The body had resolved that teachers must be tested to ascertain their areas of weakness in order to enable the state develop appropriate remedial training programmes. But no thanks to the political opposition and deliberate misunderstanding by some unionists, what had become routine in many other states of the federation was completely demonised.

    Of all the states in the federation, Lagos State, whose governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, his A C N colleagues affectionately call their class captain, stands out. It is an exemplar and could only have been an A C N state.

    It is not by any means the richest state in the country as what it receives as federal allocation pails into insignificance compared to what some oil bearing states get. It’s IGR, about which many are inordinately jealous, is the product of ingenuity; dispute that, and go double or triple your state’s IGR.

    The Tinubu government, precursor of all A C N governments in the South-West, laid solid examples. It was, for instance, the first to initiate, even ahead of the federal government, an Independent Power Project. The state has towered over and above other states in infrastructure, and procurement of transportation facilities -roads, waterways, and now, rail. Governor Fashola has demonstrated so much all-round competence he has become a source of embarrassment to the Jonathan administration which now strenuously stands in its way of sourcing additional development funds even when it has the capacity to borrow much more.

    At a time the country’s entire road infrastructure has more than collapsed, each South-West state is aggressively improving its road infrastructure. For instance in Ekiti, many of the road contracts awarded by the Fayemi administration were commissioned during his second year anniversary. Township roads in Ado-Ekiti together with the massive on-going works on the Ado-Ifaki road, have turned the entire state capital to a huge construction site. Writing recently on what he saw in Ekiti, Tunde Fagbenle, the highly regarded Punch columnist, wrote as follows: ‘For hours and hours, we drove with our mouths drooping in amazement at what we saw. The renewal of the urbanity of Ado-Ekiti as the state capital was clearly evident, arterial roads that have been half-hardheartedly begun in preceding governments have been widened and dualised with street lights installed all along the median. As old roads are being reconstructed and re-tarred to high stands, new ones are surfacing everywhere…’

    One can only conclude by saying that operating under a highly focussed, people- loving political party, the ACN, with leaders -Bisi Akande, Bola Tinubu, Segun Osoba and Niyi Adebayo, who had themselves served the region to the best of their abilities, – South-West governors have demonstrated, beyond doubt, that with single-minded commitment and determination, horrors can be wiped off the faces of Nigerians.

    And without a doubt, their best is yet to come.

    Here is wishing my worthy readers Merry Xmas and a blessed New Year.

    CONCLUDED

  • The horrible year 2012 (2)

    The horrible year 2012 (2)

    We sowed the wind long ago and now, the whirlwind is here with a vengeance

    As captured in part 1, this trilogy which commenced with an analysis of the horrible events that shaped Nigeria in 2012, will today interrogate the roads, which if taken would have, most probably, turned things around significantly. When a newspaper columnist who, like yours truly, has not personally been tested in higher public office, sets out to interrogate issues of this nature, even apportioning blames here and there, all he is saying is that with the benefit of hindsight, some actions, other than those taken, would have redounded better to the country’s well-being and that the polity should have been a lot better than what it is today. We need not delay ourselves here by again enumerating things like insecurity, terror, corruption or the all-pervading fear in the land as some of the demons voraciously tearing at the very heart of Nigerians during the year. They have been too much of an everyday danger to forget, even momentarily. They have become so real they cumulatively succeeded in changing those things we have, for a very long time, come to regard as our unalterable lifestyles. For some, to now travel by air or by road has become a real problem. One now has to put his/her house in order, not knowing whether that journey would be the last since other real life-threatening demons are alive and kicking; waiting there in the wings: accidents, armed robbers –an army General was killed by some Hausa-Fulani urchins few kilometres to Lagos – and the fear of the ubiquitous kidnapper is real and present. Our already overwhelmed security people look on helpless, except where the kidnapped is the father or mother of a serving minister. That the spouse of the kidnapped is a former envoy, or legislator, now counts for nothing.

    Plato’s theory of the Philosopher king, formulated in the REPUBLIC, in which formal laws would have been unnecessary because of the presumed rationality and virtue of the ruler, has been shown for what it is – a mere wishful thinking – since no man is God.

    Leaders are therefore not immune to mistakes. What is, however, unforgivable, is a do-nothing leadership when horrors assail the citizenry at will as we have seen time and again in the course of the year. A leadership that shows no discernment, which knows not that infringements of the law should be handsomely punished, therefore merely increases the agony of a people. A leader has to lead by directing intelligently and effectively, or how did Professor Gana put it?One of the many problems Nigerians have had to endure this year has been mostly psychological and has to do with how corruption has simply ballooned. You no longer hear them steal in millions or even billions–though small ones like the pension woman in whose house stolen billions were found still do – they now basically do it in trillions. Listening to the National Assembly Committee on Pensions and Alhaji Maina bandy the many trillions that have been stolen from the pension funds of old people who now queue and die on pension lines had been thoroughly mind bogging. And the presidency looks on, happy and content, telling all that care that it has set up this committee or that since governance has since been concessioned to committees. Then, like Herod, the presidency simply washes off its hands from any responsibility, claiming that Jonathan is not the judiciary. And you begin to wonder whether the buck no longer stops at the president’s table.

    The year 2012 has been something of a harvesting time for us as a people. We sowed the wind long ago and now, the whirlwind is here with a vengeance. While we cared less as a people, our rulers – not leaders – in the real sense of the word messed us up beyond repairs. General Obasanjo had left office handing over to persons who possessed none of his dare- devilry and so to deal with the demons he created, and left behind, had since become the problem.

    Once his succession plan of self-perpetuation failed, he should have quickly re-ordered things and ensure that transparency became the order of the day, even, if only in the election process. Unfortunately, he elected to make our burden bigger by inflicting on us, as his immediate successor, a man who was ill and had n’t the wherewithal to shoulder the responsibilities of state. Were that limited to Yar Adua, may be, just maybe, we still could have put our house in order. But with President Jonathan’s own vaulting ambition, fuelled by the hate- induced politics of some PDP elders, our problems escalated. Edged on by the movers and shakers of the Southern wing of the PDP, with assurances that the North could do nothing, Jonathan threw his hat into the ring and the consequences have since bedeviled the country. The North, even if not as a conscious design, and by a very small portion of it, has since shown it can do a lot to make life real difficult for the average Nigerian but much more for its ruling class which today can no longer sleep with its two eyes closed. A little known, even beggarly Boko Haram, which was largely a helpmate to some insecure ANPP politicians in the North-East at the time, has since transmuted to a pan-regional, man-consuming terror gang with all the potentials to further transform to a regional army for those who lost power and want power back. Doubt this: look no further than President Jonathan shouting from the roof tops that Boko Haram has infiltrated his government. It has gotten far worse as Christians now go to church in the North, every Sunday, not knowing if they will not meet their maker therein.

    And now to the pertinent questions as to roads not taken: Why did it not occur to President Jonathan that he would have had no option to remaining Yar Adua’s loyal deputy for four more years if the late President did not die? Why would the PDP, at both the individual and corporate levels, display such indiscipline that it could so easily jettison its zoning formula? What was it that drove the southern protagonists of Jonathan against their Northern counterparts who rightly believed there was more than a gentleman’s agreement on the issue of rotational presidency? Were a Northerner the president today, would Boko Haram have become this deadly? And, finally, with the reported collaboration between Boko Haram and other international terror organisations, is n’t Nigeria destined to be branded a terrorist country with all the attendant consequences?

    Only the unappreciative would say that the South South, off which the country lives, does not deserve the presidency. But what would it have cost it to wait four more years?That faux pas, of Jonathan being pressured into contesting the last presidential election, is the very reason corruption has ballooned in the country. Candidate Jonathan had to outspend a very rich Abubakar Atiku, the ‘candidate’ of the North and a high net worth individual with an equally massive network. Funds subsequently came from sources known and unknown recouping which has seen the Jonathan government giving not a little helping hand to some of those who have subsequently fleeced the country. It is interesting, for instance, to note that before the Ribadu Report was messed up, it was already raking in billions of the monies owed the NNPC but that had to stop when the government panicked. Apparently some sacred cows must have been at work. A less compromised government would have been able to give the fight to those outright rogues who fraudulently claimed billions of naira on vessels that never as much as visited the West African coast, not to talk of bringing fuel to Nigeria. Now they are talking of plea bargaining; a route this government will ultimately support as it cannot bear to see its friends go to jail.

    To be concluded; as the final part takes a look at the South-West – the solitary oasis in the country.

  • The horrible year 2012 (1)

    The horrible year 2012 (1)

    President Jonathan woke up the first day of this annus horribilis to give Nigerians a gift from the very pit of hell

    So horrible has the current year been for Nigeria and its hapless citizens that even  though my distinguished senior at The School –read Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, Emeritus Professor Jide Osuntokun, had his last two columns devoted to  the  morbidity aspect of this subject,  I still could not shy away from the subject. All I succeeded in doing, therefore, is translate ‘Annus Horribilis’, my original title, into its anglicised form.

    Happily too, we are looking at the subject from different perspectives.

     Without the slightest doubt, my readers know that neither  Professor Osuntokun  nor I  own the patent to the cryptic epigram, Annus Horribilis’. Rather, it belongs to Her Majesty, Queen  Elizabeth 11, of England who, on the 40th anniversary of her coronation at Guildhall, London, on 24 November, 1992, decided to bring to the public space, the views of one of her  trusted correspondents who had described the year as  such.

    ‘Thank you’, intoned Her Majesty,  the Queen, ‘this great hall has provided me with some of the most memorable events of my life. The hospitality of the City of London is famous around the world, but nowhere is it more appreciated than among the members of my family. However, 1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis’. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so. Indeed, I suspect that there are very few people or institutions unaffected by these last months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty,’ concluded her incandescent Majesty.

    This 3- part article which should round off  the column for the year will commence with something of  an analysis of  the horrible events that  shaped  the world, but especially our own corner of it, during the year,  the second  will interrogate the roads, which if taken would have, most probably,  turned things around significantly while the third, and final part, will showcase those few areas  of  the country where we have seen  courageous examples of  leadership  demonstrated.

    Not even the first part will attempt to limit the horrible happenings to our unfortunate country. As you read this, Syria is burying its own innocent  children, needlessly despatched to the great beyond in a most unreasonable internecine war; the young Afghan girl,  Malala Yusufzai, a 14-year-old education rights activist, shot by a Taliban gun man  on her way home from school in the Swat Valley region of that blighted country, is still in a London hospital being treated for head injuries; just as Hurricane Sandy showed Americans that there is  more than elections, even in democracies, the way it mowed down everything on its way in a deluge that so easily reminds one of  Hurricane Katrina; that demon which, but for God,  would have swallowed up our own Niyi Osundare. We thank God for little mercies.

    Meanwhile, Greece is in a shambles, humbled by a protracted debt crisis that has thrashed the reputation of  some leading world economists and politicians the West believed they could rely onif push came to shove, economically speaking, that is. Nearer home in Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo lies flat on its belly. The list goes on, but our emphasis today is on the only country we can legitimately call our own –the ruined and heavily violated, modern day ‘Garden of Eden’, given the resources it  pleased God to endow it with.

    As if propelled by some evil spirit, President Jonathan woke up the first day of this ‘annus horribilis’ to give Nigerians a gift from the very pit of hell –withdrew a so-called oil subsidy, which has since turned out to be nothing more than the colossal sums of money the well-connected  – election financiers, families of  PDP top men and sundry hirelings – had  fraudulently fleeced from our common purse. The whole country went into a tailspin with extra-judicial killings by trigger-happy police men as the icing on the cake. A convulsion erupted with conscientious men and women, leading lights of the Nigerian civil society, the trade unions,  renowned artists, musicians and the hoi polloi, thrown into the mix, all leading to a truly horrendous melt down. Happily, and for once, the National Assembly, especially the lower House, rose in defence of the powerless. The reverberations are still here with us as the federal government continues to use decoys to mess up every attempt to get to the bottom of the rot in the oil sector. Without a doubt, that cesspool will not dry up soon since government is adept at rubbishing every committee report aimed at sanitising the industry;  just so, their behind can be protected.

    To further demonstrate how horrible the year has been, Nigerians only fortuitously got to know through a foreign medium – the Wall Street Journal to be precise – that the Jonathan government had entered into a whooping N5.6 Billion contract  with militants to guard oil pipelines. Since lies have a short life span, it soon transpired that never in our history has oil theft in the country reached its current levels in spite of that humongous contract and the rumoured employment of some 5000 militants. Meanwhile, nobody in government has told Nigerians that the Navy, whose primary  duty it  is, has been annulled from our books.  And while Dr Doyin Okupe could talk animatedly about a jump from 1.8mbpd to 2.6mbpd, he has not volunteered a word about the high level oil thefts and the consequent plummeting of daily production to  levels achieved before the contracts.. This way, it will be reasonable to suggest that loyalties are already being surreptitiously bought and caressed, ahead the next set of elections knowing full well that Boko Haram will not stay idle when the jockeying begins for political supremacy between the North and the South-South.

    This therefore takes us to the issue of security of life and property, failure in which respect, we should be able to conclude that this president has failed; no matter what else he got right. The three menacing threats here in order of  their seriousness are the Boko Haram menace, kidnapping and armed robbery. Beginning from the last, one can conveniently say now that nowhere is safe in this country, irrespective of what time of day you are out there or even when attempting to sleep in your own house at night. All our roads are infested with the menace and whole streets are ransacked by hordes of armed robbers who may, in fact, have written ahead that they will visit since they are fully aware of the state of preparedness of our under-funded police force. In the Ijebu area of Ogun state, nay, in any part of the South-West, God forbid a bank open for business when the ‘boys’ have announced their coming. This has gone on for years now without the police having an answer. Without a doubt, the yuletide period will most probably be .worse.

    For some areas of the country, kidnapping has become an industry –real big business- and it has been suggested that in the South-East, as much as N750 Million is made per month from this horrendous evil. One interesting development had been that in the South-South where kidnapping started, deaths of victims are a rarity.  This was because they were satisfied once their sponsors, which at a time allegedly included serving state governors, told them to simply hold on to their victim in the sure knowledge  that money was coming.

    To be continued.