The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Orebe

  • Before Nigeria is gifted another Obasanjo

    Before Nigeria is gifted another Obasanjo

    We must tell OBJ: Not again

    General Olusegun Obasanjo, the two-time Nigerian President, is a patriot; a queer one I must say, who remains so only if Nigeria is ruled in his image. In order to ensure he dominates the Nigerian environment, therefore, he first gave us Yar Adua as Obasanjo 11 and not even that gentleman’s cluelessness would deter him from subsequently inflicting reigning Goodluck Jonathan, as Obasanjo 111, having himself held us spellbound the previous eight years, rampaging. Rampaging, yes, that was it. No thanks to the EFCC, which he created and had under his jackboots, state governors like Alamiasiegha of Bayelsa, Dariye of Plateau, Ladoja of Oyo were sent packing via impeachment spuriously using , by far fewer legislators than were constitutionally prescribed. It mattered nothing to him that the courts subsequently reversed some of these constitutional aberrations. But those were the lucky ones as in Ekiti , he not only rambunctiously sent packing, his own adopted son, Ayo Fayose, who was governor, but flagrantly and needlessly imposed his kinsman, General Olurin, on the hapless state as Military Administrator, even as there was a sitting Deputy Governor.

    Nor was that the limit of his impunity in a curious regime of ‘Le ‘tat, cest moi’ – I am the state. Today, Nigerians talk to no end about the monstrous oil subsidy scam easily forgetting that the impunity in that industry started way back when Obasanjo personally took charge of the Ministry of Petroleum and ensured that not even the National Assembly could conduct oversight functions there to guarantee accountability.

    At least we have the words of Speaker Ghali Na’aba to that effect.

    General Obasanjo was not done. He is, after all, a soldier. Therefore, for him, the appropriation laws were nothing but mere intentions of the National Assembly. For him, no institution should effect changes in his draft budgets whatever the constitution says and when it appeared to him that was not going to happen, he personally went on national television to allege that key officials of the Assembly had padded the budget.

    The above is the essential Obasanjo.

    But neither those nor the signal failure of Yar Adua and Jonathan as leaders, not even the fact that these two soon became their own men would dissuade him from again wanting to be thrice lucky, inflicting totally unprepared persons on Nigerians as president.

    If news currently going the rounds are to be believed, his latest scheme is to divine on Nigeria, the pair of the Jigawa State governor, the dour Sule Lamido who ran, unarguably, the worst phase of Nigeria’s foreign policy in history as Foreign Affairs Minister, and his River’s State counterpart, Rotimi Amaechi, the same man Obasanjo said his gubernatorial ticket had what he called ‘K’ leg and who had to be rescued, to OBJ’s chagrin, by the Supreme Court. To make a success of this new scheme, and in his usual serpentine manner, Obasanjo is known to have stopped at nothing to so damage Jonathan he won’t even be able to count on a wholesome support of his South-South constituency in his comeback bid. It is for that sole reason Obasanjo did not cast a mere glance at the South-East but went to the heart of the South -South –Rivers State –to zero in on Amaechi.

    It should, however, not be our problem if the duo of Obasanjo and Jonathan should fight to the death, politically speaking. Indeed, Nigeria has a lot to gain from that eventuality as it has the distinct possibility of sparing us all the electoral malfeasance for which Nigeria has become world famous these past many years since the PDP has held the country captive with nothing tangible to show for it. What we have had, instead, to quote Dr Kayode Fayemi, the Ekiti State governor, mutatis mutandis, is ‘a paucity of leadership and apposite planning; deficits of vision, holistic strategy and service delivery accentuated by poor infrastructure stock and a level of corruption which today places Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt country in the world.’

    It would have been tolerable if that were all the negativities.

    Rather, PDP’s last two years in government has witnessed the theft, still to be officially denied, of a humongous N5 trillion, just as its other crowning glory is a rampaging Boko Haram that not only attacks at will, but chooses its mode of inflicting maximum damage, whether by suicide bombing, by outgunning security personnel or simply slaughtering, ram-like, poor villagers, as happened this past week in Borno state.

    Long suffering Nigerians must wake up to the reality of what it means for an individual, however seemingly powerful, to continually, single-highhandedly, inflict leaders on the country.

    Opposition politicians must lead the way by subsuming their individual political ambitions to the greater good of the country. They must realise they cannot all be President. PDP has done enough damage that its defeat should ordinarily be a foregone conclusion. But here, things are different, and we are talking here about past masters in election rigging.

    Under the PDP, Nigeria has been taken to the very nadir not even the National Assembly can be trusted to deal honestly on behalf of the people they claim elected them. Its investigating committees are now routinely being caught in corrupt practices. Committees that are conducting otherwise solemn duties on behalf of the people have turned such opportunities to avenues for amassing filthy lucre simply because of our ineffective leadership at the centre. Yet Nigerians are pining for things other countries now take for granted: electricity, water, good roads, security, reasonable health services, but get, instead, misplaced priorities and stolen billions in oil subsidy.

    Opposition parties already have their jobs cut out just as Civil Society must not be tired rallying the masses of this otherwise great country to ensure that we achieve our own ‘Rose Revolution’, the type that produced Georgia’s Saakashvili who completely changed the direction and history of that country by turning it to a respectable nation in which corruption is reduced to the barest minimum

    It can be done. All we need is to be angry enough as a people to vote out those rampaging over us. We must tell OBJ: not again. From now on, Nigerians must hold his feet to the fire and tell him enough of this monkey business. We must let him know he is only one man, not three. We have had enough of this jolly ride over a country he could have taken to the ‘stratosphere’ in his eight years and which, today, should rank among the leading countries of the world given its God-given endowments, but is simply nowhere.

  • The story of Georgia

    The story of Georgia

    Today, Georgia ranks alongside Finland as having the least corrupt police force in the world

    Although corruption has since become analogous to a directive principle of state policy in Nigeria, it is a self-evident truth that President Goodluck Jonathan did not introduce it to the country. It is also untrue, whatever he might have done in that wise, that IBB socialized corruption in the country. It is my view that the honour belongs to the late Major-General Yar’ Adua who, from his Katsina redoubt, but operating principally from Lagos, corrupted the political process by sending huge sums of money as political expenses towards his presidential ambition in the early ‘90’s whereas the practice before then was for party members, of all classes, to make monthly contributions for party funding. In the Awo days, nothing made an Action Group party member, more proud than showing his party monthly contribution card. At that point in Nigerian history, members truly owned their political parties.

    I am not making this allegation lightly as I was personally present, in ‘91/92, when a former Secretary to the government of Nigeria handed a Ghana Must Go bag to the late university Professor who took us there for purposes of going to register members into the late General’s party in Ondo state. And that, I reliably learnt, was by no means a lone event. The other person present, a Lawyer, can confirm that, because that party was different from Papa Ajasin’s PSP group to which I belonged, I did not even as much as permit myself to be present wherever it was, that bag was opened. I excused myself.

    What is true, however, is that under the current presidency, corruption has multiplied a hundred fold largely because of President Jonathan’s audacity in defying PDP’s zoning policy in 2011 and the concomitant necessity of having to then outspend the Atiku campaign which, in itself, was not cheap. That humongous funding would come mostly from sources known and unknown and the misguided, attempted removal of oil subsidy in January this year was a direct consequence of that. The need to recoup has contributed, in no small measure, to what a recent PUNCH newspaper investigation showed as a total of N5 Trillion in stolen funds under this barely 18 month-old government.

    That publication is yet to be controverted by the government.

    The above notwithstanding, I am positive that President Goodluck Jonathan can still translate to a statesman, even, Father of the Nation. But he must be ready to damn the consequences of a rather simple process which is guaranteed to enjoy mass support. He must first relinquish every intent to contest the v2015 election and then, GO AFTER THE ROGUES, big and small. The President is not here being invited to re-invent the wheel. Rather, he is being called upon to emulate his one-time GEORGIAN counterpart, Mikhail Saakashvili as much as possible, in what has become known worldwide as: THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA. The fact that Saakashvili was defeated in last month’s general election by Ivanishvili of the Georgian Dream Coalition, after nine years, does not vitiate this miracle that holds so much for Nigeria.

    Happy reading.

    This is a story of possibility from Georgia that should strengthen our hope in changing Nigeria in spite of its circumstances. It was told by Plamen Monovski, the CIO of Renaissance Asset Managers:

    “When the Prime Minister comes to sell you an IPO, you, the investor, take the meeting. When that Prime Minister turns up with no bodyguards and shows remarkable knowledge of the company he is promoting, you, the investor, take notice.

    When Nika Gilauri, the Premier of Georgia, tells you that the prosperity of his country has been achieved because it has become one of the “least corrupt” countries in the world, you, the investor must take note.

    But it was not always like that.

    After the demise of the USSR, Georgia was not only one of the most corrupt of the former-Soviet republics, it was one of the most corrupt countries in the entire world. Bribe-to-drive was the norm; police stopped cars at least twice an hour to extort some good money. The then Interior Minister infamously quipped: “Give me petrol only; my people will take care of their own salaries.”

    Being a traffic cop was so lucrative that you had to pay a bribe of between $2,000 and $20,000 to get the job in the first place. Graft was endemic. Georgians passed more envelopes to bent officials than the post office does letters. Meanwhile the economy crumbled and the state was left bankrupt and powerless.

    The election of Mikhail Saakashvili changed everything. A bold reformer, he was swept to power in the “Rose Revolution” at the end of 2003 by the overwhelming desire for radical change. His closely-knit team is unified by a common vision and supported by both the parliament and judiciary.

    The new government was not just radical – it shocked and awed. Ministers, oligarchs and officials were sacked or arrested. Those who resisted were dealt with decisively, sometimes brutally. The state confiscated $1bn worth of property. Custom officials bore collective responsibility; an entire shift would be punished if one officer was caught accepting bribes. Corrupt university professors were kicked out with a lifetime ban from academia. But the piece de la resistance was Saakashvili’s order to sack the entire 16,000-strong police force on a single day, to replace them with some of the best and brightest university graduates. Today, Georgia ranks alongside Finland as having the least corrupt police force in the world and their standout uniforms are rumoured to have been designed by Armani.

    The campaign expanded irresistibly. Tax offices were equipped with CCTV; university examination papers were printed in the UK and held in bank vaults until needed; and officials were constantly tested in sting operations. The proactive assault on graft was accompanied by a PR campaign to undermine respect for criminal groups and introduce respect for the law. The campaign then turned to the sectors. First up was the power sector that was widely used as a cash cow, as it is here in Nigeria, for well-connected oligarchs. In less than a year, Georgia went from net importer to exporter of electricity and the sector became the target of long-term foreign investment.

    Tax collection followed. Georgia’s tax base consisted of just 80,000 companies in 2003 and tax collection was a mere 12% of GDP. Saakashvili slashed red tape and introduced flat personal and corporate taxes. Eight years later over 250,000 companies are on the register, and pay the equivalent of 25% of GDP. Georgia now boasts one of the most liberal tax regimes in the world, at par with the Gulf States and Hong Kong.

    Lastly came deregulation, with many rules and agencies simply abolished, removing channels of corruption in the process. Among other things, car registration became so easy that used cars became the largest export item in 2011. Georgia moved swiftly from the bottom of the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking (112) into the top 20 (16) by 2012. Foreign investment followed and fuelled a multi-year surge.

    But perhaps, the most lucrative Georgian export would be the fight against corruption itself – from which many states mired in graft could benefit. The Georgians patented a process whose steps are replicable: establish early reform credibility by radical action, launch a frontal assault excluding no sacred cows, attract new blood, limit the role of the state via privatization and deregulation, use technology and communication to maximum effect, and above all, be bold and purposeful. Georgia’s close and distant neighbours should take heed. Their prime ministers and presidents have got their job cut out for them.”

    Without a doubt, time has come for Nigeria to embrace the spirit and letter of such radical reformation to avoid the needless, prevalent and sickening bloodshed that now characterizes our national life.

    I am not that naïve not to know that corruption, which is now the name of every Nigerian sector will fight back ferociously. So did it in Singapore when Lee Kuan Yew and a group of Singaporean leaders bonded together, frontally confronted corruption in its most virulent form and transformed a poor, multi-racial city state into an astonishingly successful and corruption-free nation. Interested readers should go grab a copy of : FROM THIRD WORLD TO FIRST: The Singapore Story, 1965-2000 by L.K Yew.

    What is essential here is for Jonathan to know that he occupies, as yet unknown to him, the hottest part of the Nigerian kitchen. He must wake up and be counted as he could also kill off the dreaded Boko Haram with a successful crackdown on corruption. He needs to do this if he would like to see his name on the good side of history. Those currently misleading him will not even appear on the footnotes of that history.

  • Re: Azikiwe and the unifying question

    Re: Azikiwe and the unifying question

    Bode George should stop his spurious tales

    Chief Olabode George, Atona Odua of Ile-Ife and one time PDP poster boy in the South West, is a colourful politician any day not minding that he has lost something of his erstwhile bravura. He has, since his return from abroad about a fortnight ago, a non event but which witnessed the usual uniform wearing ensemble, massed again at the Lagos International Airport to welcome home, the man whose generosity to the party’s womenfolk as Chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority was legendary.

    He has since taken off where he left; keen this time on winning back some lost ground in a party which Chief Obasanjo has predicted may soon be history in Lagos State.

    I digress.

    Bode’s starting point this time around was his authorship of an article entitled ‘Azikiwe and the unifying question’, which was, essentially, a coy critique of the A C N government in the state.

    Bode George and I have a few things in common. We were contemporaries in the Nigerian university system, he in Lagos, and I at Ile-Ife at a time when it was trendy to be involved in student activism and we both were to some degree. But more germane to this discuss, we had a particular teacher in common, he while at Ijebu Ode, and I, at the University of Ife. And that happens to be my most admired university teacher ever: Dr Segun Osoba, the clear-headed socialist scholar per excellence, who taught my Philosophy of History as well as Diplomatic History, and would later pair with Dr Bala Usman, another equally hard-headed radical historian now of blessed memory, to author a minority report on the 1975-76 Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC). I imagine that till today, Dr Osoba sees Bode George as a witheringly brilliant person. Unfortunately, beyond the beauty and fluidity of the article under reference, I searched in vain for Bode’s brilliance or the cold logic you would have ordinarily expected in a critique of that nature.

    You read the article, especially his suggestions and all you find is a Bode George desperately running away from his shadows; from the essential Bode George Nigerians have come to know ever so well whether way back as Ondo State governor – remember ‘a Lagos boy passed through here’, and yes, he did; or as the top PDP chieftain who must occupy the pride of place as the actualiser of Obasanjo’s convoluted, swashbuckling, military-like, vice- grip on South-West Nigeria, not to talk of his emperor-ship of the Nigerian Ports Authority; a tenure which would later earn him an indictment.

    For instance where is the Bode George we all know, the one whose party must capture all opposition states in the following extract from his homily ?

    ‘Let us eschew the politics of hate. Let us embrace the selfless credo of our founding fathers who insisted on unity in diversity. Let us move forward with common purpose and common vision of raising the Nigerian ideal beyond the transient predication of the moment. Let us look beyond the crass advantages of personal gains. Let us all resolve that the ultimate essence of governance is to serve the interest of the people. The wise political leadership must listen and learn. Leadership cannot and must not impose itself in odious hubristic indifference’

    For Bode to be taken seriously, he must first apologise to my dear friend, Senator Seye Ogunlewe, the party mate he attempted serially to trample over , and then go back to the Source, where happily he holds a title, to apologise publicly to the entire Yoruba race for all the evil he visited on a peace loving people serving as nothing more a political actualiser.

    To properly grasp the true meaning of actualiser, just remember Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as FINDER, and, Governor FASHOLA as the ACTUALISER of the massive, multi-sectoral infrastructural development we see today in Lagos State and which without a doubt owes its very beginnings to Tinubu’s far-sighted government. In contradistinction, is the complete putrefaction of every facet of our road infrastructure, education, health care services etc, in Yoruba land during their decade old strangle hold. As you read this, Ekiti has not completely outlived the duo’s patented conspiracy to make the state a colony on which they could inflict military administrators if they so elect. That was their plan since they never believed the day would ever come when their man would ever cease being the suzerain over the entire country. Nor are they done yet, as their government in Abuja recently withdrew the police orderlies of key functionaries of the state government in tandem with their latest conspiracies against Ekiti. But they can be sure they will labour in vain because, for once, Ekiti people can see peace and development unlike what was their lot in the past decade of complete mayhem.

    Just like the PDP has done fruitlessly over the years, demonising every effort of successive Lagos State government, including over the Lekki – Etiosa- Epe Toll Road, which today ranks, even under construction, as one of the best of its type anywhere, Bode’s primary aim in his Azikiwe treatise was to make political capital out of the new Lagos State Traffic Law.

    So, let us hear his jeremiad: ‘The hounding and savaging of the poor Okada riders should be of interest to all of us regardless of our position in society. The elites who shrug their shoulders amid the pains and sufferings of the helpless Okada riders will eventually be consumed by the end result of this primitive policy. Sooner than later, these hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men will invariably stray into some illegal activities in their desperation to make ends meet. And who will blame them when their livelihoods had been taken away from them by Fashola?’

    It is nothing short of shameful if this is all a man who had for over a decade tried to be king maker in the state could see in the new law. It is beyond him to see its sanitising effect just as young men, from all over Nigeria, will no longer be carried in body bags to their villages, victims of horrendous Okada accidents.

    In his article, Bode tried to exploit ethnic cleavages hoping thereby, to increase the stock of a party that is dying out of self-immolation, among the non- Yoruba demographics in Lagos. But the people he wants to scare and scam are by no means fools.

    Where else in Nigeria do the Igbo have better acceptance and reception than in Lagos in the entire country today? He probably needs be reminded that whereas Igbos lost property in nearby Port Harcourt during the civil war they, the very rich father of Chief Emeka Ojukwu inclusive, had their property protected and where rents were earned, were promptly handed back to them on return. The number of northerners, of all classes in Lagos today, says something of the friendly and accommodating nature of the state government and the people.

    Unfortunately, however, for attention seekers like Bode George – he praised Zik to high heavens- it is difficult to see that for a humongous city like Lagos, okada cannot in any sense be regarded as a reasonable or sustainable means of transport especially with young Hausa riders, barely 18 years old, paying more attention to their ubiquitous radios than to other road signs or other road users. And they are in their thousands in Lagos. Nor could he bring to bear on his analysis the fact that the Lagos State government is offering better alternatives to genuine Okada operators. Among such opportunities are skills acquisition for those with the capability since the state has about 16 skills’ acquisition centres. Also available are openings in the state’s farm programme which is spread even farther afield into places like Ogun, Abuja, Osun while the government is seeking to extend it to Benue which could, in fact, bring some of these individuals nearer their states of origin. Additionally, all the 57 Local Governments and Local Council Development Areas, LCDAs, which Lagos PDP and their Abuja minders did everything to kill then, under the aegis of The Conference of Chairmen of LGAs and LCDAs, have offered to provide soft loans to the affected operators to enable them key into the transport master plan of the state government..

    Given the facts of the matter, Bode’s scare tactics is DOA -Dead On Arrival. He should, therefore, look for other tales to weave.

  • Budget 2013: An opportunity for the national assembly to atone for its many shortcomings

    Budget 2013: An opportunity for the national assembly to atone for its many shortcomings

    The National Assembly must become the ears and eyes of the Nigerian people

    It is a self-evident fact that there is a millstone around the neck of the National Assembly as far as corruption or fighting it is concerned. What with instances of chairmen of some of its investigating committees being caught dead in acts of corruption? The following readily come to mind – The Power Probe in which the hunters became the hunted, the Probe into the Capital Market collapse and the notorious Lawan probe of the Oil Subsidy saga. There have also been several allegations of budget padding right within those otherwise hallowed chambers. This is not to forget the outlandish and scandalous salaries and allowances members have awarded themselves at the expense of poor Nigerians. Not even one of those among them previously touted as progressives has been courageous enough to denounce their unconscionable pay packet as anti-people. Yet, as unprepossessing as the National Assembly is, it looks like the only institution that can save this country from the President’s obvious inability to confront corruption head-on. So embarrassing is this government’s highly flawed approach to the subject that not even former President Obasanjo who is largely regarded as the godfather of the Jonathan administration can hold back any longer. Therefore at a recent event in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, he launched a scathing attack on the government for its glaring failure in the anti-corruption battle as well as its uncoordinated approach to reining in Boko Haram which is either appeasement today or an effete sabre rattling the following day with Nigerians being regularly told that the government is ‘on top of the matter.’ I have had others argue, however, that Obasanjo has to considerably damage Jonathan to succeed in inflicting his next candidate on Nigeria, the third in a row, and whoever that is; but even this insinuation can hardly detract from his justified rage against Jonathan this time around.

    Nothing that I know has rattled the President more than the recent threat by the National Assembly to start drawing up grounds of impeachment against him for his very poor implementation of the 1212 budget; a failure which both the House and the Senate categorised as an act of gross misconduct. That effort had the momentary, salutary effect of putting both the president and his Finance minister on some overdrive but they have since gone back to the status quo ante with reported delays in the release of, especially, capital votes which is done in fits and starts even in this final quarter of the year. In one word, the Jonathan administration is simply overwhelmed in more ways than one but corruption leads the pack.

    The scenario playing out right now in the course of the National Assembly considering the 2013 draft budget for approval is not only alarming but extremely dangerous for the polity. Of all that we have seen since the sundry, shadowy NNPC accounts of the Babangida era or what we all experienced in the Obasanjo years during which there was a preference for implementing his draft budget proposals rather than the Appropriation Laws, in a classical show of impunity and disregard for both the National Assembly and the laws of the land, I do not think anything compares with the current government’s in-your –face illegal attempt to rig the budget against itself by ensuring that total national revenue is deliberately under-captured as in the proposed 2013 budget.

    So distraught was a citizen the other day on reading that revenue from gas was not accounted for, or included, in the draft 2013 budget presented to the National Assembly that he vehemently bemoaned the probable consequences of such an illegal act. In a letter to the editor of this newspaper, he wrote: Sir, let us imagine a situation where crude oil prices do not exceed 40 US dollars per barrel and the demand for Nigeria’s oil drops drastically because the U.S which imports about 40 percent of our crude oil, cuts down significantly on her imports; let us contemplate a situation where the revenue of Nigeria can no longer support the huge allowances and remunerations that our rulers award themselves. Would it not be interesting to see the scavengers of Abuja scamper away because the honey pot has been wiped clean? Board members of many redundant and unprofitable government corporations shall find nothing again to satisfy their lust. State governors will be hard pressed for their lack of ingenuity and creativity as they would not be able to cope with riots in their states caused by their inability to pay salaries of their generally unproductive workers. The centre, he concluded, will no longer hold again and the attraction of this union shall rapidly wither away.’ In that case secession or attempts at it would become superfluous as those holding us captive would have to rush back to their villages for survival..

    Nor is that, by any means, the worst case of this government’s lack of transparency. It has now been brought to the public space that a major subsidiary of the NNPC simply just do not pay its revenue earnings into the federation account but rather goes ahead to spend such huge funds even when not appropriated. If this turns out to be correct; that under the watch of a world reputed Finance Minister this illegal act is the practice, it may simply mean that Nigeria is far beyond redemption because nothing in our constitution permits it and state officials having anything to do with this illegality will deserve due disciplinary measures, however high or untouchable they consider themselves.

    Ensuring that probity underpins as well as under gird our national budgets have thus become a sacred duty the National Assembly owes this country. Both in this regard, as in the constitutional amendment exercise it is currently undertaking, it will be in the best interest of the members to know that Nigerians do not trust them. However, since it is far worse, as we have seen, time and again, and extremely dangerous and unrealistic to count on the serially professed good intentions of the executive arm of this government, Nigerians are prepared to give the National Assembly a second chance to redeem itself.

    We are, for instance, currently thousands of megawatts shot of the power we have been routinely promised by Abuja and the controversy that accompanied the ongoing attempt to unbundle PHCN has not done much to rekindle hope in the citizenry that things will be better. The current leadership of the National Assembly has shown that it can jettison partisan politics to legislate for good governance and, ipso facto, for the good health of the country but the citizenry, courtesy civil society, and the press must ensure that it is kept on the leach. The National Assembly is far too big, too constitutionally empowered and critical to our national survival to fall prey to the scare tactics and the phony antics of the executive branch whose spokespersons, in spite of all our best hopes, have proved singularly disappointing the way they think every opposite message and the messenger must be thrashed.

    Nigerians are acutely aware of the shortcomings of the National Assembly itself but being the only institution with its type of constitutional powers, it must rise to the occasion and become the ears and the eyes of the Nigerian people in this titanic battle against a government that routinely romances corruption, treats insecurity of life and property as given and regards Boko Haram madness as nothing but Nigeria’s turn to have a taste of its own terrorism as Mr President once described it.

  • This government cannot fight corruption

    This government cannot fight corruption

    NNPC is a cesspool of corruption

    Contrary to the thinking in some places, it is greed, not poverty, which leads to corruption; corruption, in turn, then produces poverty that proves intractable if we try to address it through the distortions caused by corruption itself. Corruption causes its apostles to place self interest above the interest of the whole community, state or country and to become totally confused about the priorities that they should be pursuing in their positions of responsibility and influence.’ Those were the exact words of Ambassador (Dr) Christopher Kolade in his lecture on: POSSESSORS AT THE GATE’ which he gave as Guest Lecturer at the Golden Jubilee anniversary of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile –Ife, on Thursday, 8 November, 2012.

    I had actually completed my week’s article a day earlier knowing I had to honour my invitation to that august occasion holding at Ile-Ife but a considerable part of all that had to change after listening to the world acclaimed Management guru and Diplomat. Having finished listening to him, I decided that this article should be more pedagogical than excoriatry. This is not to suggest that corrupt elements in our country do not deserve being thoroughly denounced for the horrors they put us through. It is rather my hope that bringing Dr Kolade’s lecture to the public space will make them see the futlity of their acts and spur some Pauline conversion into probity in them..

    Said Dr Kolade: ‘In Nigeria, we possess a land that has been created by Almighty God, and, into which He has poured endowments of such superior quality that its human occupants should have no difficulty accessing the basic requirements for living a reasonably good life. The resources of this nation, he wrote, to which human beings have added very insignificant value, are more than enough to take good care of our true needs and that we can earn the respect of others through our performance rather than by how much wealth we display.’ In his view, ‘as soon as man begins to look for ways of feeding his greed, he enters a territory of discomfort. Whenever man tries to eat more than his system requires; whenever man puts on more clothes than are appropriate for the prevailing weather conditions; if he tries to ride two horses –or drive two vehicles at the same time, his situation becomes unsustainable. Concluding he said: ‘By the same token, trying to acquire more material wealth than one needs merely adds to ones troubles’.

    These are the very things our rapacious political elite, especially of the PDP clan, and those they use to perpetrate and safeguard corruption in this country do not seem to appreciate.

    Those trying to rubbish the Ribadu committee report, and who egregiously insulted the President to his face, confident they are above official rebuke, are to that Task Force, exactly what the one before them is to the House Report on the oil subsidy scam. They are nothing but mere quislings and lackeys of the Jonathan government but it still must come as a great surprise that otherwise respectable persons, who have chalked up truly distinguished service to the nation, could permit their integrity to be so easily roasted. Nothing confirms their slave assignment more than the claim by Dr Doyin Okupe, the President’s spokesperson, that the report required full assent of all members –confirming that subterranean reports of goings on in the committee were being passed on to the presidency. His statement to the effect ‘that the committee needed to have some clarifications and due process from the originating ministry’ and the minister’s confirmation that she has set up a committee to reconcile the committee’s perspectives with that of a guy who did not attend the committee meetings for any length of time, merely confirms A C N’s early fears that the government was only shopping for men of integrity to leverage on in their so-called anti-corruption efforts. But one should have thought they knew Ribadu better.

    Given how effectively the Ribadu report shriveled the integrity of both the government and that of PDP as a party, the co-ordinated attempt to rubbish the report should not come as a surprise. Nigerians have come to know that under their watch, i.e, since 2001 up to 2011, the country has lost about N16 trillion and that the Petroleum Minister,at her whim and caprice, but like some before her, awards oil blocks without due process. No wonder the U.S Council on Foreign Relations says the PDP lives and thrives solely on rentiering from the oil and gas sector. With the country’s entire security apparatti fully under its authority, and, plus additional muscle from erstwhile militants, daily oil theft, says the report, has now reached an alarming rate. This must be the height of any government’s incompetence. Without a doubt, if the forever smart Petroleum Minister was so keen on appointing those two members to the highly lucrative membership of the NNPC board, why was it so hard for her and the President to insist that they both resign their membership of the Ribadu Committee? After all, this is a committee they both tout as important, even strategic, to reforming the oil and gas industry. At the rate this government recruits otherwise well regarded individuals to their ineffectual, anti-corruption feints, only to attempt to mess them up, there will come a time soon when fewer numbers of men and women of integrity will be available for use in these their serpentine schemes

    Truth be told, and Ledum Mitee, Chairman of the NIETI has since confirmed this, President Jonathan actually did not need a Ribadu Task Force to tell him he sits atop the most corrupt phase in the entire life of the NNPC. And without a doubt, I make bold to say that it is a consequence of his contesting the 2011 Presidential election which he ought not to have dared given that he participated in the discussions/ meetings at which his party, the PDP, approved rotational presidency. That precisely is the juncture at which corruption took over in the country. I am not by this suggesting that he introduced corruption; far from it, but given the enormous cost at which his victory was secured, it became obvious there must be a pay back time. And the election financiers have remained totally unrelenting. After all, nothing goes for nothing. They will not stop until they bankrupt this government or liquidate the nation itself. They are behind the oil subsidy scam just as they will be ready to do anything to vitiate any Jonathan attempt to sanitise the oil industry, in particular. There is currently the notorious case of a company, presumably not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, but which allegedly got paid oil subsidy in two tranches with its name conspicuously left unannounced to the Nigerian public. It was also the same reason the President gave Nigerians the ungodly, 2012, New Year gift of removing the so-called oil subsidy with all the attendant consequences on the citizenry.

    Report after report has shown that the NNPC is nothing but a cesspool of corruption and long before the Ribadu report, NEITI, a statutory body authorized to conduct forensic audits of the Nigerian oil and gas industry, has laid bare the stinking organisation that goes by that name. For instance, between 1999-2008, it conducted three cycles of forensic audits each of which showed gross debauchery but because PDP is all about rub my back, I rub yours, nothing came out of those reports to conduct which so much money must have been expended. NEITI has reported a loss of $9.8 billion or N1.373 Trillion during that period in recoverable funds which should have been paid into the federation account; yet states are languishing for lack of much needed funds. Or to what extent can a state tax its impoverished citizenry in search of enhanced IGR?

    To conclude in the words of Dr Kolade,’ if these leaders will see themselves as gatekeepers –custodians, not only of our material fortunes, but, more importantly, as guardians of our values and standards’, it should be possible for them to rethink their predatory and acquisitive nature which includes storing riches for their unborn generations, like the biblical fool, not knowing who, in the end, will inherit it. And in the words of Pastor E.A. Adeboye, they should better know that all these – their wealth and possessions – are worth nothing to God and should therefore change unless they want to head to eternal fire..

  • Fighting corruption in an unserious, horrendously corrupt country

    Nigeria now holds the record of the country with the highest number of private jets in Africa

    In the article, Nigeria: Corruption is thy name, 1 July, 2012, I wrote as follows: ‘Under this government corruption mushrooms by the day and the national assembly daily compounds it with disclosures of worse instances of corruption like we see in every of its probes, the Power and oil subsidy probes being the worst cases. Nigeria is daily being ripped apart by its elected officials, by party men and their over pampered children that it will not be a surprise if we woke up one day soon to learn that the country has, in fact, been auctioned by these predators and all we see is a government clue-lessly wringing its hands’, totally unable to confront the very phenomenon that ensured its victory at the polls in the first instance’’. Corruption in Nigeria is not only endemic, it is systemic. It has become the very oxygen on which the country survives. Election campaigns are run mostly on sleaze money and, at the Federal level where you could spend a million times the amount you need to succeed at state elections, appointment to key offices of state is determined by who gave the highest. An appointee’s immediate concern in office, therefore, is to make tenfold or more, the amount of money he ploughed in, even though originally from proceeds of corruption.

    Nigerians shouted hurray when in ’99, Obasanjo’s very first bill was an anti-corruption bill but only the uninitiated could have been taken in by that joke knowing full well that the President had come out of Abacha’s dungeon broke and broken but yet ran a campaign which was not cheap by Nigerian standards. Money had come from sources known and unknown and a retired general and friend of the candidate, must have committed so much money to the project that he had no qualms in declaring publicly he would have to go on exile should Obasanjo lose the election.

    Obasanjo had himself succeeded an administration which holds the record of depleting the country’s foreign reserve the most and, if evidence given at the Oputa panel by a one-time Abacha security chief were to be believed and acted upon, there will at least be one more person in Nigerian prisons today. Nor can Nigerians easily forget the 12.4 billion dollar oil scam of the Babangida era. This is to say corruption has come a long way in Nigeria.

    But if elements within the Nigerian military have so unabashedly dealt with the country , their civilian counterparts have taken corruption to higher levels because those who should have dealt with them are themselves products of corruption. So unremitting has been the unbridled looting by political office holders since ’99, that Nigeria, a thoroughly wretched country with most of its citizens surviving on nothing more than a dollar a day, now holds the record as the country with the highest number of private jets in Africa. From the church, to the podium, from bank vaults to even direct budgetary allocations which are now routinely padded by both the National Assembly and its state counterparts, unexplainable tithes that pastors encourage with copious biblical quotations, continue to swell the number of private jets in a blighted country like Nigeria.

    I laughed to my heart’s content this past week when I read the President promising that there will be no sacred cows in his government’s handling of the latest scam about to be made public from the Ribadu committee. Nigerians should ask Jonathan where he got his new voice and verve. What happened to past scams -Halliburton, Siemens etc – concerning which foreign countries have already jailed their citizens who were mere fringe accomplices? Or could it be that he has now forsaken his 2015 presidential ambition for which cause corruption and corrupt elements have to be romanced rather than punished? Or from which sources would the outlandishly expensive 2011 campaign which effortlessly dwarfed the U.S super pacs be replicated in 2015? Since corruption breeds corruption, Nigerians were not surprised that children of the political high and mighty and their business partners dominated the list of those who ate the nation raw through the fake oil subsidies which shot up more than tenfold what was budgeted for the current financial year. So what exactly will now make the President fight corruption seriously?

    Nor can anything be more nauseating than the thoroughly embarrassing manner the highly compromised Nigerian judiciary has continued to collude with former governors and several politicians standing charges of corruption in courts all over the country needlessly vitiating and rendering useless, all the efforts by the anti-corruption agencies even now that it appears they are no longer deployed after political opponents as was the case during the Obasanjo administration. Mrs Waziri, a former EFCC Chairman, literally shouted herself hoarse bemoaning the role the courts played in the trial of those hauled before them. It actually got so bad Dr Odili, one time River’s state governor, has now for over 5 years, been shielded from court trials even when the charges against him are extremely weighty.

    While corruption in Nigeria used to be essentially within the Police and the old NEPA today, the mother of all corruption is to be found in the NNPC which NEITI Chairman, Professor Assisi Asobie, confirmed as lacking in transparency and due process, and Pension Funds. In the case of the latter, the Chairman of the committee charged with auditing it recently reported that a minimum of N300 Million is stolen weekly from the Police pension fund whilst, not too long ago, sums running into billions of naira were discovered in the homes of government officials. So humongous has corruption become in Nigeria that the outside world has taken notice.

    Recently, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which established the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership with a $5 million initial payment and a $200,000 annual payment for life to African presidents who deliver security, health, education and economic development to their nations, and publishes the Ibrahim Index of African Governance ranking the performance of all 53 African countries released its 2012 results.

    . For the first time since its inception, Nigeria was ranked amongst its lowest 10 sharing that oddity with African countries that have been declared serially as failed states, among them Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Chad and Equatorial Guinea, a country generally known as the most corrupt country in the world. That is where the largest and, unarguably, the most corrupt political rally in Africa. has taken a country as blessed as Nigeria.

    In the utmost hope that the consciences of these predators, these dealers inappropriately called leaders, can still be pricked, let me conclude this week’s article by recalling .Opeyemi Agbaje’s dirge on the consequences of corruption in Nigeria. Wrote Agbaje recently: ‘‘Corruption means that at least 100 million Nigerians live on less than a dollar per day; it means that thousands of infants die before their first birthday due to poverty. It means that life expectancy for the average adult Nigerian is less than 50 years; that millions of destinies are ruined as lack of educational facilities ensures that individuals who have the intellectual potential to be university professors end up only as primary school teachers! I am convinced that corruption has reached a stage at which, if not drastically curtailed, it will destroy Nigeria’.

    You can only pity these fools who stock most of their loot in faraway countries where , should they die suddenly, it is uncertain if members of their family can access it.

  • Nigeria: if constitutional amendment is for political and economic sustainability…

    If the  current effort at constitutional amendment achieves nothing more, it must, at least,  legislate for fiscal federalism

    First and foremost, it is a misnomer, a thoroughly unfortunate one at that, that for a country the size and strategic importance of Nigeria, it comes down to an assembly of some men and women with various shades of electoral legitimacy, and credibility, that will have to fashion out its grundnorm, one on which resides its very continued existence as an aspiring sovereign nation. For ease of reference, let me bring in , mutatis mutandis, the views of elder statesman, Ahmed Joda, in his STATE OF THE NIGERIAN NATION article. He wrote: ‘Both the Executive and the Legislative branches of our Government maintain that Nigeria is a Sovereign Nation governed by an elected President and bicameral legislature in whose hands all decisions lie and who, therefore are the bodies entrusted by the people to take all decisions including those affecting their existence and their fate. While that may be the legalistic position, there are issues of credibility, and therefore, moral recognition and acceptability, to contend with. What many Nigerians say is that the elections that brought these people into office were not credible? The court verdicts, that maintain them there are equally questionable’.

    Unfortunately, since members of the National Assembly never fight one another on issues that are mutually, financially beneficial, they have taken upon themselves a task which ideally should have gone to a Constituent Assembly, with a full mandate to comprehensively review the Nigerian Constitution. Too bad but that exactly is where we are today and it would appear that the Joint Committee of the two chambers has already commenced work and, as confirmed in a newspaper interview by Ike Ekweremadu, Chairman of the appropriate Senate Committee they already held a retreat in April, a public hearing in October with another slated for November.

    How Nigerians hope every business before the National Assembly will be held as expeditiously as this!

    Having then had the National Assembly inflict itself on Nigerians so egregiously, how does the country emerge a much better polity, constitutionally, politically and economically, post the exercise? To date, nothing suggests we will. And in this viewpoint , I have respectable, and highly knowledgeable voices in my support, one being that of my colleague-columnist on this newspaper, Professor Ropo Sekoni who, only on Sunday, 14 October, 2012, concluded a 4-part series on ‘Revisiting Our Unification Policies’.

    Sekoni’s well-argued thesis is that most of the policies handed down by military regimes, and which subsist till today like centralized police force, unity schools, National Youth Service Corps to mention a few, have become totally anachronistic with no evidence as to their usefulness or desirability except, as in cases like the National Youth Service, where some people are simply desirous of having annual cheap labour.

    He went further to demonstrate that given the expressed views of both the Presidency and the National Assembly, Nigerians have no basis to expect fundamental changes, amendment or not. For instance both entities have said it, loud and clear, that any attempt to change these military diktats will be tantamount to destroying Nigerian unity; a unity that at best remains a chimera and continues to validate Awo’s half a century old seminal conclusion that Nigeria is, at best, a geographical expression. We have also heard in this country, views to the effect that a call for a people’s constitution is nothing but a vote of no confidence in the country, as if hegemony is an antidote to a break up. The president, without a shred of empirical evidence, has told us all that State Police is an anathema even when he now routinely contracts out what essentially is police and naval duties to, hopefully successfully, redeemed militants like ‘General’ Tompolo. It is also on this basis that many have equated Regional Economic Integration to the junior brother of secession whereas those preaching and working hard at it have the very opposite objective in mind. Behind all these insinuations, however, is the desire to continue to live and loom large on the largesse from the Niger-Delta even when all areas of this country are richly blessed. This is why our oil boom has increasingly turned an oil doom with some individuals, among them children of the political high and mighty, fraudulently fleecing the country of billions of naira without batting an eyelid.

    What then should be the focus of the National Assembly if it truly intends to make the country a better place for its citizenry? Put differently what are the critical challenges facing Nigeria today and standing between it and the attainment of a genuine nationhood?

    I am engrossed with a good part of the admonitions of IFEANYI Udibe, PhD, on the subject under consideration. According to him, in today’s Nigeria, there is no responsible leadership able to purposefully manage its democratic processes or to effectively handle its continually disenchanted ethnic groupings. Nothing, in his view, propels Nigerians towards real patriotic actions, like being ready to die to defend a worthy national belief system and superstructure, or to redeem the man-made worthlessness or the all – pervading poverty in spite of the numerous poverty alleviation programmes funded with huge international funds and its equally stupendous internally budgeted counterpart. There is no leadership prepared to transcend posturing and ethnic bigotry to propel Nigeria towards practical realization of the 2020 – 20 Vision being driven largely by propagandists who end up receiving National Merit Awards for doing nothing. Office holders, he says, should understand that political catastrophe when unleashed, consumes both the helpless and the untouchable, even those who attempt to play God. Nigeria, he says, has come to that level where opposing forces must either generate a political catastrophe or honest dialogue, concluding that those who sow seeds of discord will reap violence, even death. And the survivors, he concluded, will rebuild’.

    I have quoted Udibe at length to forcefully show to the National Assembly members what awaits each and every one of them unless they take the present exercise, unlike the one muddled through by then President Obasanjo, as a call to patriotic duty; an exercise whose outcome can either guarantee Nigeria’s sustainability as an emerging world power or one that can , quite easily, incinerate it with the hopes and aspirations of millions yet unborn as well as those of Nigeria’s friends, spread far and wide who continue to invest a quantum of hope and optimism in its resurgence.

    Since space constraint will not permit my listing what issues should have the attention of the Committee, it is pertinent to suggest that devolution of power from the federal government must be key. Whereas in the First Republic only about 22 items were on the exclusive legislative list, today, they are not less than 66 leaving the states almost completely comatose in many areas. As things stand today, no state or group of states can better the lot of its citizenry or attempt to improve its economy by unilaterally building new railway lines even when that would have been exceedingly impactful. The federal government continues to fight turf wars with states even on agriculture.

    If the current effort at constitutional amendment achieves nothing more, it must, at least, legislate for fiscal federalism and ensure that the federal government no longer has a stranglehold on the federating units. To achieve that, the federal government responsibility should be limited to: Defence, External Affairs, Immigration, Customs and Excise, Central banking and Aviation. Responsibility for creating, and administering Local governments, subsisting, as they do, in states where the constitution specifically prescribes the election of, and rule by state governors as the overall suzerain, should inhere, unhindered, in states. The federal government, in our emerging constitution which Nigerians hope will enhance federalism, should be seen as nothing less than a busy body, if it attempts to ram anything down the throat of state governments as far as the administration of Local governments, their creation and sustenance, is concerned.

  • The North: No to secession try regional integration

    The North: No to secession try regional integration

    ‘As much as every ethnic race and their affiliates deserve an independent country, there is only one solution – we must return to the previous system of governance before the tragic civil war. This time, ethnic groups must be allowed to choose whatever region they sincerely want to tag along with. No ethnic group MUST be forced or lumped together in the name of some fuzzy history. In this way, any region can develop at its own pace with little or no external interference. The mutual feeling of distrust and ill-feeling will disappear to some extent. – A commentator.

    Alhaji Bello Kirfi is a distinguished man of honour whose services to the country spanned over 28 years and still counting, that is, if he does not succeed in truncating Nigeria. For ease of reference, and to let my readers know that Alhaji Bello Kirfi’s call was not a flash in the pan or made by some inconsequential personality, here’s a snapshot of the technocrat. He was Permanent Secretary for four ministries, Health, Land and Survey, Education and Finance and retired as Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Bauchi state. A former Minister of State, he also served as director, Bank of the North, Equity Bank and Steyr (Nig).Ltd. He is currently the Chairman of Giwo Holdings Limited. A truly lucky and privileged man, and he is certainly not alone as Northern civil servants go, Alhaji Kirfi attended the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and graduated with a diploma in Accountancy in 1971.

    With a background as illustrious as this, it should not surprise that Alhaji Kirfi was able to assemble the eminence grise .of Nigeria’s North-Eastern geo-political zone amongst who were highly regarded Malam Adamu Ciroma, Ex-Defence Minister, Gen T.Y Danjuma,

    former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, Ex-Petroleum Minister and Senator, Professor Jubril Aminu, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Alhaji Adamu Maina Waiziri, Gen Timothy Shelpidi (rtd), Alhaji Bunu Sheriff, and Alhaji Aliyu B. Modibbo.

    Also in attendance were: General Yakubu Usman; Deputy Senate Leader, Sen. Abdul Ningi; Senator Aisha Alhassan; former Minister of Women Affairs, Hajia Inna Ciroma; and former Education Minister, Alhaji Dauda Brima. And nobody could have been surprised to see the distinguished Professor Ango Abdullahi, former University Vice-Chancellor and foremost Northern irredentist.

    The fact that Alhaji Kirfi invited General Danjuma to the summit must be proof positive of his belief that there is a groundswell of reasons why the North must now ‘secede and take its destiny in its own hands’. I say this because he cannot claim to be unaware of what would be the disposition of a man who has serially asserted that another civil war will practically kill off Nigeria. He must have felt that there are some commonality between him and those invited as to the disadvantages the North currently suffers from the status quo. But it did not surprise, either, that the General was one of those who, at least, temporarily squelched the call to secession.

    What then are the conjecturable reasons for the call?

    Without a doubt, since the Southern friend the North inflicted on us all turned against them by neutralising, if not completely eliminating, the sources of easy money and arrogance of power, it has been jeremiad upon jeremiad amongst the hitherto extremely powerful Northern politicians/soldiers. Obasanjo has completed his denouement of this class of Northerners when he went ahead, without as much as asking their permission, to make the late Yar Adua the choice of the North to succeed him. For purposes of clarity, Obasanjo did not do that for altruistic reasons but just to be the voice behind the throne, a throne he knew had been weakened, ab initio, by the incoming President’s state of health. This neatly eliminated the Northern influence to the point that by the time Hajia Turai came unto her own, not a single Northern politician , or any of the erstwhile swashbuckling generals, could any longer rein in her excesses. Not a whimper was heard from Minna where two former presidents of Northern extraction reside nor from Kaduna where power had formerly oozed from. Indeed, Obasanjo had gone further to defoliate some sources of unconscionable personal wealth further driving in the bitter sword.

    And he was not done.

    Even though rotational presidency as party policy had been formally ratified by the Peoples Democratic Party which, ipso facto, meant that a Northerner should succeed to the presidency at the end of Yar Adua’s first term, given that he was no longer available to continue in office, Obasanjo did much more than Chief Edwin Clark in edging on former Vice-President, Goodluck Jonathan, to throw in his hat into the presidential ring. Things have never been the same ever since.

    It is not unknown that some Northerners have since promised to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan and the consequences have been absolutely ferocious. Boko Haram, even though did not come at the instance of these disgruntled politicians –since they were originally the roughnecks of the ANPP government in a particular state in the North-East – have since found justification for their extreme excesses in the angst the PDP politicians have against the President.

    I, however, believe that the immediate precursor for the secession call is Jonathan’s decision to no longer treat Boko Haram with kid gloves. Rather than the hoped-for intervention funds, ala those government has put in place in the Niger-Delta area, humongous funds some Northern leaders would think they would again latch on to further pauperise their people as has habitually become the norm, the President has chosen to treat Boko Haram as urban terrorists who deserve nothing but strong hands. No longer do we hear of negotiations with some faceless bloodhounds which North-East elders continue to make their demand.

    I agree completely that the Federal government must intervene appropriately in taking the North out of its economic miasma which, without a doubt, has been self-inflicted because its elite has, over these many years, been very selfish and completely unsympathetic to the agony of its hoi polloi. Northern leaders should, however, start a process of replacing their sundry sterile summits with serious discussions on how to economically empower their people. In this regard I strongly recommend that they interrogate, very seriously, Regional Economic Integration as panacea to the lingering economic incubus in that part of the country.

    The DAWN Document which copiously documents South-West’s DEVELOPMENT AGENDA FOR WESTERN NIGERIA, but which many have demonised as the document to underpin Yoruba secession fromNigeria, is a serious document put together by the Yoruba intelligentsia and Professionals and to which the legislative houses in the region have since bought into and is being assiduously driven by its governors who have since set up Ministries of Regional Integration..

    The North, it must be said, cannot always rely on the federal government. It may bear relevance to mention here that during the Obasanjo years, with an Alhaji Muktar Shagari as the Water Resources Minister, and to the near total exclusion of the South-West, billions of naira were being voted for irrigation projects in the North that AGBAJO, a Pan-Yoruba Socio-Cultural Association, had to set up a 3-Man Rapid Response team, to react to the almost weekly announcement of these humongous awards at the end of every Executive Council meeting. That then was a function of how much hold the North had on Obasanjo until he was able to break loose.

    That preferential treatment for the North is no longer possible is one of the reasons predisposing any group of Northern leaders to suggest ‘Araba’. Without a doubt Alhaji Kirfi must have confided in very many of the confreres before the summit and the fact that the Ciroma’s and the Danjuma’s were able to shut it down now does not mean it is dead as a cause.

  • Fayemi : How the past molded a peoples’ governor

    Fayemi : How the past molded a peoples’ governor

    Fayemi is fundamentally changing the face of Ekiti

    Time was about 11.45 pm in the sprawling Ekiti state governor’s office, which he derisively calls a football field, which he does not require to function effectively or efficiently, and quipped his friend of many years, the witheringly brilliant political scientist, Dr Abubakar Momoh: “Kayode, little did we know that God was preparing you for these days when we would, during our activist days in London , work until the wee hours of the following morning, quaffing coffee like it was going out of fashion.” I remembered Abubakar’s words sometime later after observing at close range, Dr Fayemi’s methodical and focused approach to governance, electing completely, not to be bothered with what the Yoruba would call the suffocating ‘ariwo oja’ –the market place noise, that the political opposition was spewing.

    How miraculously God restored his Ekiti peoples’ mandate back to him, whilst the Obasanjos of this world were breathing down on all institutions of state, elicited indescribable joy, not only in the state, but across the length and breadth of Nigeria. But without a doubt, it equally brewed bitterness among the little colony of poll robbers who never thought the day would ever come when his mandate would be restored. Thus began a massive campaign of calumny, not much initiated by his main opponent at that election, but by a coterie of hangers-on, who, for reasons singularly unconnected with the welfare of our people, but their belly, embarked upon a proxy war to which the governor, characteristically, refused to invest even the minutest notice. The war has become largely muted today even though there was a time it looked like the demagogues were going to have it their way, given their cacophony and dexterity at concocting and weaving all manner of lies, even going as far as master-minding workers’ union revolts as we recently saw in the arrest of a lout who doubles as Press Secretary. Thanks largely to the incomparable, multi-sectoral achievements that have earned Dr Fayemi the prestigious ‘Leadership Governor of the Year’ award, an award for which many a state governor would have declared a state holiday to celebrate.

    And they have not seen anything yet.

    Back then to how his past, his multi-dimensional experiences, have served as the linchpin, the furnace and the crucible through which the peoples’ governor, was prepared for today. And there is no better place to go than OUT OF THE SHADOW’S, Dr Kayode Fayemi’s own book; his testimony and elegant historical capture of the events which shaped him at various stages of life up until he threw his cap into the political ring in his native Ekiti state. The intention here is not to re-write a book in which you have the author ‘writ large’ by our one and only Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. Rather, it is to showcase how very small, almost insignificant events, a nice word here from a father when merited, a flagellation by mum when necessary and the whole idea of not sparing the rod, if that is what the moment deserved, as happened when his father gave him 12 strokes of the cane for not meeting him doing his home work, all cumulatively molding the total person; one who from the unsparing but loving hands of Pa and Mama Fayemi of Isan –Ekiti, would later be divinely thrown into public service to make life meaningful and better for the greater majority of Ekiti people. Had I, indeed, been minded, to re-write the book, this entire newspaper would hardly provide the space.

    OUT OF THE SHADOWS, a book which in the hands of Bishop Felix Ajakaiye, the Catholic Bishop of Ekiti, has since become, besides the bible, a standard reference book for sermons about sacrifice, hard work, the value of education, perseverance, the role of parents and calls to service, among many other lessons, is replete with examples of how the governor’s home training, in a committed Christian family, – his own father had barely missed being a Catholic priest – his education and background in general, taught Dr Fayemi great lessons on how to be prepared to stand up, stand firm and control his own destiny.

    I recall for instance an occasion well ahead of the serially rigged Ekiti gubernatorial elections, when three of us, in company of Dr Fayemi visited a distinguished Lagos-based Medical doctor of Ijesha extraction who truly loves the candidate and was willing to be part of his preparations. The host decided to first treat his visitors to dinner at a high end Chinese Restaurant. In the course of dinner, and knowing the PDP as I do, I chipped in by predicting that they would rig the election and ask us to go to court as the ‘one-minute heroine and next-minute villain’ of a onetime Ekiti INEC Commissioner, would later contemptuously advise. The candidate’s short response was: “Then they will come to know that I am a long distance runner.” I soon got confirmation of how the governor’s past must have informed this response when, in his Foreword to OUT OF THE SHADOWS, Professor Wole Soyinka wrote as follows about the monumental struggle in which he had Fayemi as one of his most trusted young intellectual combatants, I quote him: “It is my hope that this –the book –has opened the way to the records of infamy that internal democratic movement had to overcome in its pivotal struggle –the betrayals, repeated and repeated betrayals (note the repetitions by the master), campaigns of discouragement and so on – by some of those who supposedly occupy leadership positions in society, be they crowned heads, prelates, business moguls, professionals, politicians, intellectuals or whatever.” Fayemi’s own list of caterwaulers will include even a head of state and judges who were bought for nothing more than mere pittance. But he was completely unfazed, and from court to court, from one tribunal to another and from there to the Appeal Court, he went serially and when ignoramuses sang songs to the effect that he should be going to court while they govern, he still treated them with benign disdain, paying them no attention, whatever.

    For the umpteenth time, many have had running bellies over my writings on Dr Kayode Fayemi but not only has he justified my implicit confidence in his ability to run an efficient government, I can say proudly that in all that I write, I testify only to the evidences of my very eyes. The entire Ekiti road network may not have all been paved yet –he has done two years of only a first four – and you may actually not be picking money on Ekiti streets, but for a fact, Fayemi is fundamentally changing the face of Ekiti. No longer do you have T V pictures of a hungry-looking people at state events, surrounded every inch of the way by gun-totting police and soldiers in defence of a stolen mandate, nor do you any longer have un-cared for elderly citizens who haven’t the slightest idea where help will come from since Fayemi’s monthly social security money will come as certainly as morning follows the night.

    Today, work is going on at a frenetic pace on the Rehabilitate All Ekiti Schools Project which saw 100 schools rehabilitated in the first phase as well as on roads – both by state and local governments, water projects, re-industialisation i.e resuscitating dead and moribund industries and enterprises like the Ire Burnt Bricks industry,  ROMACO which is about being concessioned and the Farm Settlement at Orin which is now a beehive of activity after decades of total abandonment. The educated youth are aggressively being introduced into commercial agriculture through the Y-CAD programme which combines training with financial mobilization through the provision of seed money, farm implements and agro-chemicals. Even with all the opposition-induced teachers’ intransigence, revitalizing the state education system remains a core area of Dr Fayemi’s programmes. Only this past week, the SUBEB Model Nursery and Primary School, Ado-Ekiti was rated as the best school nationwide in the year’s 2012 President Teachers and Schools’ Excellence Awards just as Mrs Oluwafemi Olusola of St John’s Primary School, Erinmope-Ekiti won the 3rd best teacher in the country.

    His love of education and single minded determination to leave it better than he met it in Ekiti derives from his home background where his parents taught him the value of education and sent him to the best schools. That will subsequently influence his own choice of higher institutions to attend.

    At his present duty post, this arduous, work-in-progress of taking Ekiti out of the shadows, his past has been a constant companion. He had, in fact, been born during the tumultuous NNDP’s short-lived ascendancy in the Western Region, a period which so presaged the PDP days that the governor has very readily acknowledged a causality between the events leading to and during the year of his birth – 1965 -and the subsequent trajectory of Nigerian politics which has since been dominated by those the Nobel Laureate describes as ‘brigands, parasites and unworthy custodians of power and authority.’

    At age 5, the young Olukayode made his first ‘political outing’, joining in welcoming General Yakubu Gowon to Ibadan and the fact of his father being an Information officer in government soon exposed him at a very early stage in life to newspapers, many of which he read daily, thus imperceptibly learning and internalizing lessons in current and public affairs, especially politics that today stand him in good stead as they all combined to shape his career choices.

    Parental guidance and early public awareness together with sound religious upbringing combined to inculcate in him discipline ,steadfastness ,compassion, vision, and focus. However, while the place of home training may have been totally incomparable in this discuss, the role of education peerless, and his entirely risky RADIO KUDIRAT exertions occupy a pride of place, what seems to me to have best prepared the governor for today was his matchless experiences in the UK, especially as a young, newly married man, studying and working; a period that left him with multiple life experiences not available in white collar jobs or acquired through reading books. This period saw him exposed to the variegated danger workers, especially blacks, got exposed to in what he describes as ‘the London underground job market, as typified by his two robbery attacks at dagger point by purported passengers and to one of which he lost, not only money but his wedding ring.

    In terms of developing empathy, love and compassion for the other person, indeed for humanity, the leitmotif for his social security policy to cater for elderly citizens in the state, I do not think that anything, apart from his wife’s towering and ever constant positive influence, would compare in the governor’s past to the experience he garnered in the course of his active engagement, during this period, in local political organisation and, particularly, his involvement in the regeneration of the then completely run down Milton Court Estate and the entire Deptford area in South-East, London.

    Of the people living in the area, wrote Dr Fayemi in OUT OF THE SHADOWS, ’ close to 60 percent were on housing benefits from the government and over 50npercent of school age kids were on meal subsidy in schools. Drug abuse was rife and crime among the idle youth was commonplace; deprivation, he wrote, was simply staggering. So touched, and concerned was he that he immediately joined a minority of individuals working towards ameliorating these extant conditions and ended up serving as Chair of the neighbourhood tenants and residents’ association whose duty it was to tackle the social, economic, environmental and physical problems through not just improving physical conditions but also ensuring improving housing management, diversifying tenure, attracting private investment and creating opportunities for training and enterprise.

    Without a doubt, all the experiences gained in that project must have coalesced in all we see today in his midterm report card as governor of Ekiti.

    Not just in Ekiti, but all those who followed from far and wide on television networks, online and through newspapers, must have marveled all this past week, watching governor Fayemi commission one project after the other. He inaugurated ten major roads spread all over the state as well as five water treatment plants just as he laid the foundations of truly millennial projects such as the Samsung I C T Centre, the new Government House and governor’s office, the State Pavilion amongst many others. He also did not only sign the Memorandum of Understanding with the Grand Towers Group of Companies but presented to its Chairman, the company’s Certificate of Occupancy at the signing ceremony. Among the enterprises the company will bring into Ekiti is the popular Shoprite Shopping Mall. He exuded such unbelievable vigor that all Chief Dele Falegan, a distinguished Ekiti elder and Chair of the state’s SURE-P Committee could do was pray that the good Lord ill continue to renew him. I simply crumbled, the only day I was on his all-week frenetic tour and that was when he visited my 2-part Local Government Area, having to address an appreciative and hugely turned out crowd at both Igede and Igbemo. As should be expected, both sides of the Local Government Area pleaded with the governor to split us into two local government areas.

    This profile is, at best, a miniscule part of how Dr Fayemi’s past has shaped his persona; a decent, disciplined, caring, calm, focused and highly organized personality that Ekiti state could not have asked for more.

    It is the reason he has aptly been named ‘THE ILUFEMILOYE 1’ -the chosen one -of Ekiti.

     

     

  • The increasing call for true federalism

    The increasing call for true federalism

    We have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement

    I have had this running dialogue with my very good friend, Antony A. Sani, Publicity Secretary of the Arewa Consultative Forum (A C F) who sees any talk of regional economic integration or any effort at canvassing true federalism as nothing but a façade for ethnic nationalism that I could not but shout hurray when in recent times equally significant voices from the North have come out loudly in support of both. In an article: The State Of The Nigerian Nation, by Alhaji Ahmed Joda, and, also, by former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as recently as at the ceremony of the award of the Leadership Governor of the Year by the LEADERSHIP newspapers at Abuja this past week, a ringing support was lent the drive towards true federalism which remains about the only panacea to our lingering problems as a country.

    Wrote Ahmed Joda: ‘Our country has passed through difficult times, including a civil war and has survived. We must not mistake the fact of our survival to anything such as military might. The truth is that we have survived because the ordinary Nigerian overwhelmingly desires to live together in one united country under some commonly acceptable arrangement. It is quite clear from all we are passing through and from all the political debates in which we have been engaged, that there is a sufficient body of opinion around the country that the present arrangements are not adequate and need to be discussed further.’ And in his opening remarks as Chairman of the 2012 Leadership Conference and Awards Ceremony at Abuja on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, not only called for the overhauling of Nigeria’s political structure in order to pave way for true federalism, he publicly regretted not supporting former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme’s call for the creation of six semi-autonomous regions. Said he: “Now, I realize that I should have supported him because our current federal structure is clearly not working. Dr Ekwueme obviously saw what some of us, with our civil war mindset, could not see at the time. There is indeed too much concentration of power and resources at the centre. And it is stifling our march to true greatness as a nation and threatening our unity because of all the abuses, inefficiencies, corruption and reactive tensions that it has been generating.”

    Without a doubt, the modus operandi towards achieving the desired goal has been as varied as there are calls for true federalism. While many have called for a Sovereign National Conference Alhaji Ahmed Joda apparently fears this model, believing it could be a recipe for disintegration. He was winsome enough, however, to concede that though such an outcome cannot be ruled out, the problems we face will not permit us to ignore the fact that we need to, and must, address these problems in order to safeguard our future either as one unit or under some other form of arrangement; concluding that it is much better to face the issues frontally, and to discuss them frankly in an open forum to come up with solutions that can ensure a peaceful existence for Nigeria. His preferred route is via a Constituent Assembly which he presents as follows:’ It appears that a likely more acceptable arrangement will be the establishment of a Constituent Assembly, with a full mandate to comprehensively review the Constitution. The Constituent Assembly should be composed of an entirely elected membership. No representation should be permitted for special interests. The election should be on zero political party bases. Serving Members of any legislative body should not be eligible. Public Servants, who wish to serve, must resign from their offices. And it should be brought into being by an Act of the National Assembly.’

    With this well reasoned position, and more, in support of true federalism, it will be apposite for opponents of true federalism to go back and re-learn their history of Nigeria in order to understand how in the First Republic of 3 regions, regional autonomy galvanized overall national development through positive inter-regional competition.

    This, incidentally, was a theme that featured prominently in the Keynote Address by the Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, at the recent National Convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba (National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America, held in Baltimore, Maryland.

    Happily, many of the things he recalled for the Western region, if not most, are replicated in the other regions of North and East. During that period, he said, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as Premier, established the first TV and Radio Station in Sub-Saharan Africa, Cocoa House, Ibadan, he said, was built from revenues generated from cocoa and coffee just as the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, was established from same sources. Under the auspices of one of the best organized political parties in Africa, the Action Group, he continued, the government inaugurated the free primary education programme which, till today, has put the South-West in good stead politically, educationally and economically. It was in that era too, he reminisced, that such great institutions as the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, were established in the North and the East, respectively.

    However, on the contrary, the military with its command structure mindset came in 1966 and imposed a suffocating unitary system that had remained the bane of the country even where sustained struggle had rid Nigeria of military autocracy.

    His address then continued: ‘At independence in 1960, there was regional autonomy and each region had its own constitution. There were only about 26 items on the exclusive list of the Federal Government but today, there are 66 thereby nearly completely suffocating the states. Suddenly our unity in diversity was trampled upon by the military with far reaching consequences. For instance, he said, the totalitarian imposition and horrendous decimation of the Yoruba educational system, its economy and commerce let to many of the Yoruba intelligentsia leaving in doves to Europe and America; people who, today, cannot guarantee that their own children will ever return to Motherland, thus culturally, and otherwise, depleting the Yoruba’. If the above is true of the Yoruba, so also is it true of the 250 other ethnic groups in Nigeria.

    But there remains a window of opportunity which is restructuring towards true federalism which will, once again, engender positive inter-regional competition and co-operation instead of our unedifying atavistic politics of who controls the unitarist federal government which, as Vice-President Atiku says, has proved thoroughly inefficient.

    Not surprising though, the opposition is totally unrelenting. Indeed, so enervating has opposition to regional integration and true federalism got that I once responded to Tony Sani as follows: ‘These things, Tony, are about perspectives, and a pointer o each group’s preferred developmental paradigm for the nation. For the status quoists, what is on ground is simply the best. But for majority Yoruba, stronger regional groupings will make for a much stronger, more peaceful and equitable country. I then said: ‘consider, for instance, that both the North-East and the North-West had each synergized earlier via integration and economic cooperation, both would probably have chalked up developments that would have made Boko Haram a most unlikely phenomenon. I intend, one day soon, to consider doing an article on your strongly held opposition to regional integration which I see as a fall out of the North’s fear of the unknown. Whilst not only Europe or the Americas are synergizing, I am perpetually astonished at your angst against mere regional economic cooperation as a way of maximizing development and catalyzing national development and cohesion’.

    Today, I feel certain that my friend will sooner than later bow to a development whose time has come and for which leading lights in the North are beginning to lend their support.