The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Still on Fashola’s quinine

    Still on Fashola’s quinine

    Again, my case against the bitter pill

    As at Friday when I was putting finishing touches to this piece, we have not had electricity in my area for about seven consecutive days.  In fact, the light did not blink during the period. Yet, I am sure this would not reflect in my bill when the bill finally comes. This is because the bill, as I always say, is already ‘gazetted’ in the computer of the electricity firm, in this instance, the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC), as inherited from the former Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which also inherited it from its predecessor, the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

    In case you are wondering where I am talking about, it is the Pleasure area of Oke-Odo, Agege in Lagos. I guess we share the same transformer with the General Hospital in Agege, which, ordinarily, should have been an advantage. It is almost always like that. As a matter of fact, we are getting ready for the usual experience in the rainy season when something must go wrong with the transformer and take days to resolve. Yet, behind my house are some other buildings enjoying by far more constant supply of electricity. People there are on a different transformer.

    Whenever I write on this topic, I always cite personal experiences, particularly the 21 consecutive days when our light did not blink and another nine days of similar experience. Yet, I was slammed the usual bill of N11,000 plus, several years ago. I was not operating a bakery in the house and I had no special electrical gadget or equipment that guzzled current. Again, between December last year and January, this year, I had been billed N12,000 and N13,000, plus, respectively. Yet, they say my meter is not working. Yet, the power czars appear to usually defend such system by saying that there are approved  amounts as bill for people without meters or those with faulty ones, depending on the kind of apartment they live in. What logic! As if it is not known that some people in face-me-I-face-you apartments have more electrical appliances that gulp power than some people living in so-called flats! The ideal thing should be for the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) to change faulty meters, especially now that we are doing away with the old ones.

    Now that the government has given the DISCOs the nod to hike tariff (which I hope Nigerians should keep rejecting until the needful is done), would IKEDC base my new bill on the same estimate that I had been contesting for more than three years? As a matter of fact, I even think they had somehow increased my bill because I was slammed N13,000 plus for January (wherever they got the figure from) well in advance of the February approved date by the government. Could that be a ploy to hoodwink me into coughing up more money when the February bill comes? Haba! No prophet has seen a vision for me to offer sacrifice, because that is what paying the reviewed tariff on the existing bill would tantamount to.

    I am not opposed to tariff hike in the power sector, per se. Moreover, having improved power supply is good, but that, frankly speaking, is also not my main bother. As I have always argued, I am more particular about Nigerians paying for what they consume. If, as in the case I cited about my area where we have not had light for about seven consecutive days I will only pay for what I consume, I can live with that. I can always make up with my private supply of electricity. We are used to that kind of self-help in Nigeria: we provide our own water; our own roads in some cases, and so on. It is the DISCOs that should worry that some areas have been without light for so long because that should have implications for their revenue. But that is, other things being equal. The way things are, however, the DISCOs may not have to lose sleep over that with the distorted billing arrangement that allows them to allocate figures to people as bill, instead of bill based on actual consumption. Many Nigerians are of the opinion that this is the main reason why the DISCOs are foot-dragging on provision of prepaid meters.

    This is why I support the protest organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) against the tariff hike. Those who say Labour should not arrogate to itself the right to champion the cause of the masses as it has done in this case have no point. The protest was a refreshing intervention. In any society, someone has to bell the cat. We used to have a vibrant civil society, especially in the military era and the groups did a lot in the struggle to send soldiers away from the country’s political scene. Unfortunately, many of them simply went to sleep the moment the soldiers left, thinking we have had democracy. But here we are today (not as that governor said during his thanksgiving service o), still having to battle with the fundamentals of democratic culture, after more than 16 unbroken years of civil rule. We should not pretend that we do not know that in our kind of situation, about 10 persons are clinging to one worker’s salary. If this is so, why can’t labour be at the vanguard of the protest?

    The accusation is therefore diversionary. It is the usual excuse of the elite when things are not going their way. As they say, “there are no permanent friends or permanent foes, but permanent interest”. On this issue, Labour happens to be on the same page with majority of Nigerians. If we have had genuine democracy these past 16 years, we would not be where we are today. Indeed, if that was the case, no one would be justifying why electricity tariff must go up at this point in time, given our experiences with the sector these past years.

    When the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, said Nigerians should trust him that the power firms will perform after the tariff hike, he must have forgotten that we have had similar promises in the past from the electricity firms. He must also have forgotten that prices hardly come down in Nigeria; so his expectation of a drop in tariff in four years’ time may be correct but Nigerians are not prepared to be that gullible without interrogating the assertion simply because it is coming from Mr Fashola. Once upon a time, the DISCOs asked people who were in a hurry to have prepaid meters to pay some money which would then be credited to their account. Many of those who paid are yet to get the meters years after. And there is nothing anybody can do about it beyond urging the DISCOs to roll out the meters.

    Mr Fashola should understand that governance in Nigeria today, especially as it concerns the all-important power sector, has transcended his own antecedents or President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal integrity. That is why Nigerians want to take their destiny in their own hands. If, as Mr Fashola said, even his own relatives are asking him questions about this quinine that he wants us to swallow, that should tell him that something is not right somewhere. And what is not good is not good; there cannot be any other name for it. By going ahead with the tariff hike in spite of opposition from the National Assembly and even the court, the minister succeeded in doing what the typical government officials do:  thinking that they are more patriotic than the rest of us, which is not so.

    So, the earlier the minister understood Nigerians’ frustrations with the power firms, the better. Nigerians have come a long way with regards to promises by government officials that were never fulfilled. As a matter of fact, if many of the past promises had been fulfilled and past assurances had come to fruition, the minister himself would not have inherited the mess he inherited in the power sector.

    For genuine investors interested in earning (emphasis on EARNING) their revenue, provision of prepaid meters should have been one of the first things the new players in the power sector, particularly the DISCOs, should have accorded top priority. If the Goodluck Jonathan’s government did not insist on that, Buhari’s government should. If they were truly serious about collecting money only for service rendered, two years is more than enough for them to carry out an enumeration of their customers with a view to ascertaining their number, meter and other requirements. I do not know of any paradigm in the world that would allow people to be billed based on rule of thumb for any type of service.

    It bears restating that I would not have been this passionate about this matter if, as it is in the telecoms sector, I can simply migrate from a DISCO which I am dissatisfied with its beats and lyrics and go to dance my disco somewhere else. But this is not possible; the DISCOs are still essentially monopolies in their areas of influence, and, to that extent, the comparison of the power sector with the telecoms is baseless.

    It is on this note that I humbly submit that no one should be worried about the threat by the players in the power sector that about 50,000 Nigerians would lose their jobs if they did not have their way. Let no one give the impression that the power firms are doing Nigerians a favour. That is the impression one gets when government officials say the tariff hike is still cheaper than fuelling our generators. The point is, many of us are not necessarily saying they should not increase tariff, what we are saying is that they should give us meters that would gauge what we consume, before anything else. Thereafter, we can begin to talk about tariff increase. Is that asking for too much?

  • Re-this budget: Heads must just roll

    Re-this budget: Heads must just roll

    If the president is, understandably, too busy, a document as important  as his first ever budget  should have been supervised by either  his deputy or the chairman of  his economic  team?

    “Why on earth are Jonathan’s appointees sitting pretty as head of critical agencies of state when he (President Buhari) knew that their track record during the campaigns and presumed voting pattern during the election point unerringly to the fact that they neither believe in his candidacy nor his policies. No, as bona fide Nigerians, nobody is suggesting that they should be made to lose their jobs but for Christ’s sake why were many of these people not moved to less sensitive posts?”

    So wrote this column last week and our listening president did not delay: in under 24 hours, most of the Jonathanian rodents were gone. As I wrote, elsewhere, even if their sack owed nothing, at all, to what we wrote, it is still good riddance to bad rubbish.  And when I heard that an errand girl of the former First Lady was complaining, my reaction was: she should first tell Nigerians how she could have transmogrified from her appalling supercilious closeness to that First Lady to become a loyal member of the Buhari administration.

    I have never had as many reactions to any of the articles on this column.  Here are two.

    Happy  reading.

    “Yours was a very good article but it would not sway me from appraising the president to see if he could be promoted ‘on trial’, to the next class. This is the same politician we ‘rejected’ three times at the polls but finally embraced when we felt that anything will be better than GEJ. He sold to us the change brand and we are not going to take anything less than the original from him. That should tell the fragility of the relationship between PMB and the rest of us now. Like millions of other Nigerians, I stuck out my neck to work and vote PMB, I have, however, since recoiled to my pre-Buhari mold of ‘not-yet-uhuru’ to, at least, avoid disappointment. I no longer expect a miracle since facts on ground do not show the expected change; at least not in scope. I did not show up at rallies but joined the vanguard of those who employed ‘word of mouth’ to convince bewildered Nigerians – friends and relations to work for a meaningful change. This made me to run on a collision course with my principal and pastors which nearly ruined long standing relationship with family and friends. I desired, voted and expected real CHANGE from black to white and not grey because I, like other Nigerians, knew the extent of the rot and thought candidate Buhari will be tough and strong enough to pull through, having shown that he knows how virulent corruption could be. So far, the president and his party have overpromised and under-delivered. I still remember his popular quote that if we fail to stop corruption, then corruption will kill us. Why then treat such monster with kid gloves? If he is busy cleaning the past, must he tolerate another spill under his very watch? A million excuses will not erase the pains of disappointment. Can we say that the president, his erudite VP and the star studded cabinet lack basic understanding of the depth of corruption in Nigeria where churches and other religious organisations have become breeding grounds for corruption? I regard the budget as the most important document and a tool to bring about CHANGE, but see how this important tool has been ruined.

    The argument that the past was bad is no good lyric for a change agent. That is the very basis for the  CHANGE mantra.  Nigerians, just like the president, know that the past is horrible, undesirable and should be avoided. That is why he should have watched  out for every single  manifestation of the vices of  endemic corruption everywhere in his administration and at all times, until he can deliver  the final blow to it in partnership with ordinary Nigerians, not the elite, especially the  lawyers we see daily, doing everything to make corruption prosper and luxuriate in Nigeria. It would have been soothing if the discrepancies in the budget were discovered at the compilation stage by the President and his men, not by an unfriendly National Assembly. Could it be true that such would have gone unnoticed if Lawan’s establishment – preferred Senate leadership was in place, or if Saraki’s like- minds has harmonised fully with the Presidency? That is a big sentiment in the public domain: that the country would most probably have been shortchanged, as usual, and made to bleed from its sick bed even under a trusted President Buhari since the budget mafia remains alive, and kicking.

    The president and his men, both inside and outside of government, will fare much better by accepting responsibility for this fatal flaw rather than indulge in any blame game. The buck must stop at the president’s desk. We voted for execution and not excuses. Unfortunately, the president’s constitutional powers have not been fully invoked to deal with corruption and that is why we see it fighting back ferociously. For instance, the power to hire and fire should since have been used to remove the CBN Governor who became a mere paymaster; an errand boy of sorts, for illegal disbursement of unappropriated funds  to politicians  and all kind of persons during the last administration, a position  totally against his job description. For instance, why did it take the CBN so long to appreciate the fact that BDC should not be funded through the official forex?

    If the Director of Budget is removed, what of the Minister, and the Permanent Secretary? The budget should have been read and carefully studied by a cabinet rank officer. He is equally guilty. If the president is, understandably, too busy, a document as important  as his first ever budget  should have been supervised by either  his deputy or the chairman of  his economic  team? It was all round negligence of duty.

    If the Budget Director is liable so is our president, his deputy, the minister and others who have been elected to serve us competently. The absolute minimum is for them to own up and learn the appropriate lessons. Such lessons must not be lost, ever, or they come back more tragic. The real tragedy will be to move on as if nothing happened. That will be better than merely  holding the conductor responsible for an accident caused by the driver. In an era of change, we will do  a lot better by changing the way we do the business of government, if only to get disillusioned Nigerians properly connected to a government they elected and can truly call their own; unlike the usual impositions. The president should pay more attention to these things so that we can, once again in unison, joyously shout: FEBUHARI again, when in February we will be approaching the midterm of his administration.

    Time waits for nobody! ” -Kunle Oladele

    Femi, do you really think we need bother those deservedly retired technocrats? We  also don’t  need the Head Of Service  or  Secretary to Government   to persuade  the  president but direct our appeal straight to him to put in place, a team  of patriotic young  Nigerians with the  expertise, as  Special Assistants, working directly under  his  or the VP’s supervision,  to initiate budgets  and policies,  where necessary,  but primarily,  to  monitor, evaluate  and report  on all capital projects  and  the monster recurrent expenditure with emphasis on detailed pre-fund release documentations  and  auditing. Between us, I am sure we know a few honest and dependable young Nigerians, both here at home, and in the Diaspora, who can do this  job.  The civil service is far too gone in debauchery; it requires a complete overhaul – Patrick, Abuja.

    COMMENTS ON: WANTED BY THE U.S: THE STOLEN MILLIONS OF DESPOTS AND CROOKED ELITES

    To have heard what Mike Igini, unarguably our best ever INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, said on Channels TV, to wit:  that a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, accused him on a flight from Abuja to Lagos that by the introduction of card readers, INEC was stopping them from making money, is to confirm Olu Aluko’s views that some of these senior lawyers and judges, are kissing cousins. It is, therefore, no surprise that by one single stroke the Supreme Court nullified  all of  Professor Atahiru Jega’s robust achievements in office, thereby setting Nigeria back many decades.

    How unfortunate!

  • Kogi’s many absurdities

    Kogi’s many absurdities

    Today, for the second time in about nine years, Palladium is donating his column to an ardent reader who feels distraught about the desecration of the fine arts of politics in Kogi State. The youthful Governor Yahaya Bello is busy upending common sense in the state, lawmakers are divided in two, with one part, the majority, fleeing to Abuja with the mace, and another, just five of them, turning arithmetic on its head. The ordinary Kogite watches in great perplexity, unable to comprehend how the simple act of voting peacefully for the late Abubakar Audu/Abiodun ticket has turned into a farce orchestrated by both the ruling APC and INEC

    Kogi State has been in the news for the wrong reasons of late. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) dealt a devastating blow to the state when on 22nd November 2015, it announced the result of the governorship election held on 21st November 2015 as inconclusive. On Sunday, 22nd November 2015, Kogites had stayed glued to their televisions to watch how the elections results from the local government areas were trickling in one after the other. Many Christians amongst them missed Sunday church services as they stayed back home to monitor the results of the election. The Returning Officer of the election, Professor Emmanuel Kucha, Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, finally announced the scores of the candidates in all the 21 local government areas of the state after the collation of the figures. Kogites became agitated when Professor Kucha announced that the collation officers were proceeding on a short break. Little did anyone know then that something miserable was afoot.

    On his return from break, the professor announced that Prince Abubakar Audu (now deceased) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 240,514 votes, while Capt. Idris Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) garnered 199,514 votes. He said that the margin of votes between Messrs Audu and Wada was 41,353. He, therefore, further announced that the election was inconclusive because the total number of registered voters in 91 polling units in 19 local government areas where election was cancelled was 49,953, which according to him was higher than 41,353 votes with which Audu led Wada. The returning officer added that, by INEC guidelines, no return could be made for the election until a supplementary election was held. The supplementary election held on 5th December 2015 at the end of which Alhaji Yahaya Bello, who never participated in the main election, was declared the winner by “supplementary votes” of 6,000. It was not until 24th November 2015 that INEC owned up to the demise of Prince Audu.

    The conduct and announcements of INEC on Kogi polls have since set Kogi State on the path of absurdities, legal and political. The Kogi state Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, now sitting in Abuja, is being called upon to resolve the legal absurdities. These include:  (a) The declaration by INEC that the election of 21st November 2015 was inconclusive after it had announced the results of all the local government areas; (b) The choice of INEC to use its guidelines as against applying the provisions of the Electoral Act and the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to declare the election inconclusive; (c) The propriety or otherwise of INEC conducting a supplementary election on an election that had been won and lost going by the figures INEC itself announced; (d) The constitutional basis or otherwise of INEC allowing Alhaji Yahaya Bello to contest an election without a running mate; (e) The propriety or otherwise of INEC merging the votes scored by the late Abubakar Audu/Hon. James Abiodun Faleke with the supplementary votes of Alhaji Yahaya Bello and the law that permits such a merger.

    There are many other issues that the Tribunal will be called upon to determine. All Kogites and the whole world are anxiously waiting for the decision of the learned Tribunal.

    Alhaji Bello was inaugurated as the fourth civilian governor of Kogi State on 27th January 2016. He was sworn in without a deputy. This act is unprecedented in Nigeria. Kogi State is fast becoming notorious for earning the first position in every bad political occurrence in Nigeria. In 2007, it became the first state to have the election of its governor upturned by an election tribunal. In 2011, it became the first state to have three governors in one day: the then outgoing governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris; Capt. Idris Wada sworn-in by the President of the State Customary Court of Appeal; and the Speaker of the then State House of Assembly, sworn in by the Chief Judge of the State. The state is also now on record as the first state in which the candidate who won an election died before being sworn in, calling for the application of section 181 of the Constitution.

    Alhaji Bello has spent three weeks as the governor of Kogi State. A period of three weeks may be considered too short to assess the performance of a governor. It is, however, sufficient to come to a decision on what type of governor he would make. A careful study of the actions and utterances of Alhaji Bello, as governor of Kogi State, clearly shows that he is an intemperate and sometimes unpredictable person, imbued with extraordinary energy and youthful exuberance, almost bordering on the bizarre. He has sufficiently demonstrated that he is someone who would take an action first before thinking over it. The consequence of this is that he has had to reverse himself on several issues relating to the policies he announced within the first few days of his tenure. He lacks the experience, maturity, insight, shrewdness and astuteness required to govern a state like Kogi or any state for that matter. He is naturally self-conceited and not reflective.

    Upon his inauguration, the first thing he did was to abandon Kogites and proceed to attend the meeting of the Northern Governor’s Forum. The meeting was more important to him than the plight of his people, particularly the workers of the state civil service who had been on strike for non-payment of salaries that had accumulated for four months. Alhaji Yahaya Bello returned from the meeting and announced that the hungry workers would have to undertake an elaborate screening exercise before they were paid October 2015 salaries. The exercise would have taken another one month or more to conclude. Kogi State chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress rose up to the occasion and alleged that he acted mala fide and betrayed the trust reposed in him. The Congress reminded him that it was to honour him that they agreed to call off the strike. It threatened to resume the strike within seven days if the governor failed to reverse his decision on the screening exercise. The Congress had wondered how the workers would cope with hunger for another one month. The governor immediately reversed his decision.

    Alhaji Bello promised to pay one month salary arrears to the workers. As at the time he announced this decision, he did not know the amount of money in the coffers of the government to determine whether or not the money would be sufficient to cover the wage bill. He was not even sure what the wage bill was when he made the announcement. It was a whimsical decision to score political points.  He was later faced with the stark reality as he met only N2.5 billion in the government’s account, whereas the wage bill was N3.5 billion. But he went ahead to deplete the N2.5 billion he met by first taking care of his security vote and awarding a contract of N100million for the renovation of his office, amongst other huge sums of money he had withdrawn for some other so-called state reasons. The resultant effect of all this was that almost half of the number of the workers have yet to receive their October 2015 salaries as at the time of writing this piece. And, there is no hope of them receiving their pay as no arrangements are being made in that regard. Meanwhile, he is said to have incurred some huge hotel bills at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, and another whopping sum at Reverton Hotel, Lokoja.

    Alhaji Bello knew that he needed the cooperation of the members of the State House of Assembly. He, however, approached the matter in an arrogant manner. He demonstrated his lack of skill, finesse and diplomacy on the issue. After securing the approval of the lawmakers for his nominee for the office of the Deputy Governor, Hon. Simon Achuba,  in a subterranean manner, he invited them into his private residence and addressed them roughly. He did not leave any of them in doubt that he had become the Governor of Kogi State and would remain so for the next eight years. His coarse language angered the members, majority of whom are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His immodesty made him lose control over the Kogi State House of Assembly, notwithstanding the unlawful manner he wooed them.  By the time he attempted to impose his stooge as the Speaker, the exercise ended in fiasco as only five of the twenty members were available to do his bidding. They, nevertheless, went ahead with their unconstitutional acts with the strong backing of the military and police who were deployed that day to give the five members protection. One really wonders the business of soldiers from the Army Records in Lokoja over a legislative matter that is purely civil. Perhaps the commander of the unit or the Chief of Army Staff would be in a better position to explain this. Meanwhile the governor is yet to explain to Kogites why he had to conduct the swearing-in ceremony of the Deputy Governor under a secret cover in his sitting room rather than the Confluence Stadium or any other open place. The arrogance of Alhaji Bello has also been visibly demonstrated by his decision to block the road that passes by his personal residence beside the Government House, Lokoja, thereby causing  pains and inconveniences and logjam for road users.

    The governor has exhibited ignorance of the clear provisions of the constitution. This has led him to commit unconstitutional acts and impeachable offences. He does not appear to have knowledge of the limits of his powers as a governor. He imagines that he has absolute and unfettered powers to do anything he wants. He has dissolved the Local Government commission without regard to the fact that it is unconstitutional to do so except at the expiration of its stated term. He abrogated the joint account of Local Government Councils and the State without repealing the law establishing it. He has issued directives to Universal Basic Education and Pension Bureau contrary to the extant laws and rules guiding them.

    Alhaji Bello also announced that he had granted autonomy to the local government councils, apparently, without any understanding of the implications of such a fundamental policy decision. He places no structure on the ground either by legislation or guidelines upon which such autonomy can operate. It is a blanket power conferred on the local government council chairmen to conduct the affairs of their councils as they desire. Finances and the staff salaries and welfare of the local government councils are now at the whims of the council chairmen. Indeed, the crucial question agitating the minds of right-thinking Kogites is whether or not local government autonomy can be granted by mere irrational verbal pronouncement of a governor without any legislative or constitutional backing. Given the penchant of the governor at reversing himself, it will not be surprising to hear, in the next few days, that he has reversed the decision again. One interesting aspect of the autonomy granted the council chairman is the fact that few days after the announcement of the granting of the so-called autonomy, the Governor himself proceeded to suspend all the Directors of Local Governments (DLGS) and cashiers for one month without consulting the chairmen. Right now, all permanent secretaries in the state civil service, directors of finance, deputy accountant-general and staff of accounts sections of all ministries and parastatals are being placed on one-month compulsory leave.

    His hatred for the Okuns is brewing and manifesting. He ensured that his cronies who impeached the Speaker did not give the slot to an Okun man even when it was zoned to the western Senatorial District. He also ensured that a Lokoja man got it. Furthermore, he ensured that an Okun man who was the deputy accountant general did not act for the accountant-general when the latter was sacked. He is said to be planning to bring an Ebira from Lagos to be the accountant-general of the state, a civil service position.

    Right now, Kogi State is in the hands of two amateurs and inexperienced administrators. Yahaya Bello, the Governor, and Edward Onoja, the Chief of Staff, who have demonstrated lack of capacity in governance and administration. Both of them have no political or administrative pedigree and acumen. Alhaji Bello served as civil servant at the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission for only twelve years. He never became a director to direct any affair. He is today a multi-billionaire. Edward Onoja worked in the banking system for few years before he was eased out. Both of them, regrettably, are calling the shots in Kogi courtesy of INEC’s manipulations against the will of the people of Kogi State, freely expressed at a peacefully conducted election of 21st November 2015 where nobody complained of any malpractice. Until the Tribunal rules, the absurdities in Kogi are bound to continue. Hopefully, this won’t be long.

     

    • Adeola writes from Lokoja
  • On heroism and the exceptional leader

    On heroism and the exceptional leader

    This past week, Nigerians across ethnic, regional, and religious divides having been commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the tragic assassination of their favourite Nigerian leader, General Ramat Murtala Mohammed. It has been an unprecedented outpouring of admiration mixed with profound regret.

    Of course, there have been a few dissenters. This is as it should be. A nation of homogeneous group-think is a dangerous nation. But what is not in question, whatever his antecedents, is that for the few months that he ruled the nation, the abrasive and impatient Kano-born General came close to approximating the ideal of a national hero and exceptional Nigerian leader.

    Aeschylus, the great Greek philosopher, noted that the land that has no hero is a very unhappy land. To this the historic quip was added that it is the land that needs a hero that is unhappy indeed. Judging by the national outpouring of grief and regret about the plight of Nigeria in the hands of most of Mohammed’s successors, it is clear that Nigeria has suffered a double jeopardy. It is a land without heroes and a land critically in need of heroes. Nigeria remains structurally rigged against throwing up its best and brightest.

    To be sure, Mohammed, affectionately known as Muri to millions of fawning and adulating Nigerian masses, was no saint. But here was an epic individual who made heroic efforts to overcome his personal and idiosyncratic limitations and to make amends for his past infractions. Just as he was implacable and ferocious in settling scores on the field of battle, he was also judicious and humble in appeasing those he thought he had wronged. When cornered with hard facts, his petulant sulking often gave way to a boyish grin of regret and restitution.

    Snooper monitored his coup day national broadcast. Despite the thunder and tantrums, Mohammed was gracious enough to acknowledge the contributions of his military senior and superior, General Yakubu Gowon, who was retired with full benefits “in appreciation of his past services to the nation”. So solicitous was Mohammed of Gowon’s wellbeing that he was known to have sent General Danjuma to the humble general in Warwick to advise him to dispense with the informality of conducting himself like a regular undergraduate. He was a full general of the Nigerian army.

    This morning, and by popular demand once again, we bring you a fictional encounter with the late Nigerian hero. It is a fitting way of bringing to a close the moving memories of one of the greatest Nigerians of all time.

  • Change, change, change! – top-down vintage and/or bottom-up model? (1)

    Change, change, change! – top-down vintage and/or bottom-up model? (1)

    I very strongly emphasize it: though change can be either positive or negative, prospective or retrogressive, the change that I have in mind in the series of reflections that begin in this column this week is change from very bleak circumstances to intimations of more hopeful portents ahead of us. This is consistent with the spirit of the times in our post-PDP Nigeria and many other parts of our world. True enough, Boko Haram has not faded away and other secessionist insurrections in potential or virtual states of mass mobilization dot the national horizon with threats of massive and fatal disruption of the unity of the country and its peoples. But overwhelmingly, Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country are united in their demand for and expectation of positive change from the hardship, suffering, insecurity and hopelessness that were the lot of the vast majority of Nigerians during the PDP years. And as a corollary to this, Nigerians also demand and expect profound change in the country’s new political rulers. This particular point leads directly to the central issue that I wish to explore in these reflections, an issue that can be posed in the form of a portentous question: can meaningful change in the new administration and the new ruling party take place exclusively or even primarily within the ranks of the new rulers without the intervention of powerful currents of mass action in words and deeds from below?

    Anyone reading this piece who is a regular visitor to this column would immediately know that the answer that I would personally give to this question is a resounding no: without the Nigerian masses intervening in the demand for and expectation of change, nothing much or significant will start from the top and percolate down to the masses of our peoples. This is a point I have been making unrelentingly in the last five or six weeks in this column, regardless of the particular issue that each column in the period has engaged. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because I have been harping relentlessly on this point that I now wish to reflect more carefully on its implications in the series of three essays that begins in the column this week. And as a first step in this exercise, I now wish to make a declaration that may startle many readers of this piece. What is this declaration? It is this: meaningful, significant and long lasting change can come from – and sometimes does come from – the top of the social and political order and from there percolate to the rest of the society; however, we have enough evidence now to come to the conclusion that this sort of change will almost certainly not come from the new ruling party, the APC. In other words, only if the groundswell for change comes powerfully from below, only to that extent will change of a reformative and beneficial kind take root and grow among the new rulers, the new ruling party. That is the conclusion that I have reached in carefully observing both the rulers and the ruled in post-PDP, APC-ruled Nigeria.

    Since time and space in the present series that begins today will not permit me to dwell exhaustively on this conclusion that will certainly strike many ardent supporters of the new ruling party as premature or unhelpful, in the present context, I will only briefly and in a rather summative manner give my reasons for coming to this conclusion. Thus, the main reason is none other than the tremendously consequential fact that the new ruling party is yet to forge an ideological and moral identity that is consistent with and conducive to meaningful reform of the state of affairs that the APC inherited from the defeated ruling party, the PDP. Let me put this in plain, unvarnished language: there are some genuine reformers within the leadership of the new ruling party at the federal and state levels, but their weight, their influence within the effective organs and institutions of governance is pretty insignificant. A few items highlighting the performance of the new ruling party in office might help to illustrate this claim.

    Item: in broad daylight and absolutely without any pretense to reform or “change”, Bukola Saraki seized the leadership of the Senate on the basis of a cynically opportunistic alliance with the defeated ruling party, the PDP; moreover, the APC was completely powerless to undo or reverse the coup. Item: the same arrant display of a blatant struggle for the spoils of office and power rather than a forthright prosecution of an agenda of reform marked theintra-party implosion of the APC in Kogi State in the recent governorship election in that state; significantly,this came after the APC had in fact become the national ruling party.In other words, the APC was not fighting the PDP in the Kogi State governorship elections; it was fighting itself. More appropriately, the APC was waging the fight within and againstitself in a war in which no principles or manifestations of reform or “change” were remotely in sight.

    There are many other items pertaining to the performance of the APC in power to which one could point to buttress the claim, the assertion that I have been exploring in the present discussion. Permit me repeat the assertion: we have enough evidence now to come to the conclusion that though there are some reform-minded leaders within the APC, change – if and when it comes – will not come from the top and percolate to the masses but will be sparked and fueled from below to strengthen the few genuine but isolated, confused and marginalized reform-minded leaders of the party. One item in this regard is the perpetuation of the extravagant greed of the APC members of the National Assembly in their completely unashamed dedication to receiving and consolidating the jumbo salaries, allowances and remunerations of the PDP years. In those years of the reign of the former ruling party, the non-PDP members of the National Assembly could claim – indeed, they did claim – that they were merely following the protocols established by the PDP. That excuse, that subterfuge is gone now and the APC lawmakers and lawgivers are glad-happy to continue to eat and drink from the same gravy train, as Americans like to call what we know as ilabe in the idiom of Naija decadence.

    If there is any aspect of the performance or behavior of the APC in office as a ruling party from which the winds of much needed change will blow from the rooftops of political governance to the rest of the society down below, surely it is the widely debated war on corruption, isn’t it? After all, the energy, the drive for the prosecution of the war has come mostly from the Presidency itself. Moreover, there is the far more significant fact that for the most part, the Nigerian masses have seemed to be content to be mere ringside onlookers in the war as it has been joined by a judiciary that, so far at least, has not been notably on the side of change, of justice.In drawing attention to this point, I do not ignore the fact that as ringside onlookers in the war on corruption, the Nigerian masses have been extremely agitated and voluble; they have lionized Buhari to the high heavens just as they have cast the looters and the lawyers and judges seemingly on their side to the darkest regions of hell. However, these factors notwithstanding, it is very doubtful whether even in this particular area of the APC’s performance in office meaningful and effective change will come primarily from the administration itself, that is to say from the top to the bottom.On what basis am I making this highly debatable claim, this highly contentious assertion?

    It is not my wish to embarrass him, but it was from a widely published statement credited to my comrade and former colleague at the University of Ife, Professor Itse Sagay, that it finally dawned on me that even in the war against corruption, we must not expect a one-sided flow of the winds of change from the government to the rest of the society. As everyone knows, Professor Sagay is the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Corruption that Buhari set up very early in his assumption of power. Moreover, apart from being a celebrated legal luminary, Sagay has for long been an outspoken foe of the looters and their defenders within the top echelon of the legal profession.Imagine then the surprise and – I admit it, the sadness – with which I read the statement credited to Sagay last week in which he bitterly and rather helplessly denounced very senior and distinguished members of the legal profession and – yes! – the Supreme Court of the land itself as willful and unrepentant accomplices of the looters. Please dear reader, don’t get me wrong: Sagay’s patriotism and his fighting spirit were both indisputably present in his statement of last week. But alas, present also in the statement was a sense of desperation, a sense of perplexity as to what to do next in the war against corruption in the face of such powerful adversaries of change and justice as the Supreme Court and SANs galore.

    And indeed, where do we go from here, from this declared space of impasse and perplexity, not only in the specific warfront of the battle against corruption in the law courts but more generally in the universal yearning for meaningful and significant change in our country at the present time? Where will the momentum, the impetus for meaningful change come from? This will be our starting point in next week’s resumption of the series.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • A freezing evening with Murtala Mohammed

    It has been unseasonably cold in England.  An icy fog lays a brutal siege on the entire country from Inverness to Portsmouth. The ambience in Birmingham is grey and dreary as country and people are frozen into a vast mass of drooping icicles. It is the worst winter in thirty years, and February is the cruelest of months. Even this late in the year rather than retreating, General Winter has been advancing.

    Trapped inside the house by a ferocious sleet storm and wrapped up like a Siberian wayfarer, snooper has hit the bottle on the rebound. Our comforter is a vicious Austrian liqueur known as Stroh”80″. Known otherwise as the spirit of Austria, It is eighty per cent alcohol and a sip could take a bull out in a second. I often wonder why the immensely cultured but imperious Austrians are allowed to do this to the civilized world. But then, there are many things the Austrians will want the world to forget.

    The generous provider of this heady spirit is an Aeronautical Engineer friend of Kogi extraction who is based in Birmingham. A hilarious and witty fellow, our man once told snooper of how he took a bottle of the strong stuff home as a Christmas present to the Oba of his town who happens to be his cousin. Kabiyesi often boasts of his drinking prowess. A few hours later when the engineer returned to the palace to retrieve a document, his royal majesty had passed out on the bare floor with his staff of office lying on top of him.

    For intellectual comfort, snooper has been reading excerpts from the interesting memoirs of Engineer Akindele, the first Director General of the Nigerian Telecommunication. It is riveting read which shows how things used to be with the civil servants and civil service of yore. But by far the most interesting revelations in the memoirs concern Akindele’s memorable encounter  with the tempestuous and unpredictable Murtala Mohammed both as Head of State and as Akindele’s supervising commissioner at the Ministry of Communication. At a point,  Akindele was so exasperated by Murtala’s  bullying antics that he blurted out in Yoruba that his own child was three years’ older than the menacing Mohammed.

    The straight-laced bureaucrat thought he was making an uncomplimentary comment beyond Mohammed’s linguistic ken. Little did he realize that the mysterious warlord spoke and understood Yoruba perfectly well.  A few years later, in fact on the eve of Mohammed’s assassination, Akindele almost took to his heels when Obasanjo asked him in Yoruba language whether he had forgiven them for the shabby manner the government treated him, only for Mohammed to retort in Yoruba: A si nbe. (We are still pleading with him)

    Although still very controversial with regards to many aspects of his distinguished career, particularly the pogrom in Asaba and the infamous burglary of the exchequer in Benin, Mohammed has long been canonized as the nation’s most iconic leader. It is also arguable that had he lived longer, Mohammed would have unraveled as deliberate and painstaking statesmanship became unamenable to his short-fused hell-raising and impetuous grandstanding. But give a man his dues. Mohammed was kind, humane, charitable and ever ready to make amends when and where his conduct or the policies of his government might have caused harm or grievous damage. Here was a noble ruler.

    From a very unflattering background reeking of supremacist arrogance, Murtala made a dramatic transition to a bold and visionary conception of the nation as an organic community of equal stakeholders. From a sectarian warmonger dripping with religious and regional prejudices, he became a Pan-Nigerian patriot of unusual mettle. It was an apostolic conversion of Pauline proportions. At a very grave time when Nigeria is once again in danger of fracturing along regional and religious lines as a result of the antics of a visionless and greedy cartel, Mohammed’s dynamic and visionary leadership commends itself to an endangered nation.

    These were the sober thoughts that engaged one’s attention as the ferocious sleet storm raged outside and one took a hard swig of the spirit of Austria. Suddenly, the last sentence of an e-mail one had been reading on the computer screen shattered the icy complacency. “Sir, at this moment, President Yar’Adua is flying back home and is due back in the early hours”.

    “Coming back to where and to what?” snooper screamed at the computer screen in towering rage.  The source of the news being too authentic and impeccable, one was left to impotent fury and implacable disgust. Forgetting how scantily dressed one had become in the intervening hours, one rushed out of the house and into the receding snow storm.

    It was bitterly cold outside. Snooper swept past the adjoining streets not knowing where one was going. As the fury slowly subsided, the icy frost began to bury its chilly fangs deep in the body. It was as if one was beginning to have an out of body experience as outlandish creatures from outer space started crowding the vision. Out of nowhere, a middle-aged man appeared, smartly dressed in a navy blue French conductor suit. The military swagger and the swashbuckling gait was unmistakable. It was the old general. It was Murtala Mohammed.

    “Talk of the devil”, snooper mumbled in muted excitement as the teeth clattered away. In edgy contempt, the general ignored his new-found companion and then launched into a bitter tirade about the weather.

    “Kai, kai, it is bloody cold. Shege. Doualla, bani taba. Akoi Benson and Hedges?”, the general growled demanding for a stick of cigarette. Snooper quickly pointed at a huge neon sign prohibiting smoking.

    “Walahi, I will soon prohibit that your useless mouth for you”, the general cursed. “:No, no no, it’s not me, it is the whiteman. They have their strict rules and regulations”, snooper protested.

    “Listen, I hate these stupid Oyinbo people. They are bloody hypocrites. They brought corruption and cheating to us and they keep calling us crooks. May Allah forgive them”, the general fumed. “Is that why you only took bribes from them?” snooper demanded.

    “My brother, one bad turn deserves another,” the general began with a crooked, much endearing smile. “By the way how did you bloody rogue come by that? You have been reading classified material, eh?  Yaro barawo ne?”

    “No, no no. I have been reading Akindele’s memoirs”, snooper corrected.  “Ah that old bugger, is he still around? He is a good man but I almost shot him.  I overheard him cursing my mother in Yoruba”, the general growled.

    “I never knew you spoke Yoruba language”, snooper marveled.     “Ajoke, my wife is half Yoruba”, the great warlord noted wistfully.   “General, how about a drink at Old Orleans at Broad Street?” snooper offered.     “Drink ke? I am a devout Muslim, you know,” the general protested.

    “I also know something else. There was a famous restaurant in Lagos which was your watering hole. For years after your departure they use to take adverts to celebrate your patronage”, snooper noted with a sly wink.

    “You are a real sonobabitch, you know. Okay, we’ll have a drink, but the Stout here is not as stout as the one back home. The one here is totally useless, like the people. I’ll have Johnnie Walker instead”, the General crowed with boyish enthusiasm.

    “By the way, General, Umaru is back”, snooper said more like a complaint than anything else. “Who is Umaru?” Murtala replied in genuine ignorance. “Umaru Yar’Adua”, snooper replied. “What does he do for a living, and is he related to Shehu?”, the general queried.

    “He is our president, and he is Shehu’s brother. Obasanjo left him there after returning to power two decades later.” I replied.

    “Hmmmmm. That must be the boy calling himself 007”, the general began with a sardonic smirk on his face. “I don’t want to be uncharitable but has Nigeria now become a James Bond film? I know Shehu as a noble and first-class officer, loyal to the core. If he were to be around, I would not have been killed. Your yeye brother ran away. But this Umaru???”, the general brooded uneasily.

    “He is being supported by some northern elements who claim that the presidency is the north’s birthright till 2015 and that nothing should be done to disturb the arrangement”, snooper noted without much passion.

    “Those lot again!!! I never allowed them near the seat of government when I was in power. They are an idle lot, forever seeking for relevance and power. If I have my way, I will put them on the farm settlement near Bagauda Lake”, the general growled.

    “They are led by a man called Inua Wada”, snooper observed.

    “Kai mana, but that is my own uncle”, Mohammed blurted out.

    “I was wondering, too”, snooper croaked with some mischief.

    “You see, the problem is more fundamental. By the way, what did Obasanjo himself forget at the State house that he was looking for?” Mohammed snarled.

    “He forgot to mess things up properly. Now for the first time in the history of the country, we have three presidents at the same time: An Acting President; an inactive President and an active President”, snooper noted with muted relish.

    “I see. What is Theophilus Danjuma doing about the nonsense?”

    “Danjuma and Obasanjo are no longer on speaking terms”, snooper replied.

    “What ? You know sometimes it may be better to die young. Longevity is a curse in Africa”, Mohammed reflected with misty eyes.

    “What the colonial Army put together, post-colonial oil blocs have torn asunder”, snooper cynically pressed on even as a sad Mohammed ignored him.

    “And where is Akinrinade in all this?” Murtala growled.

    “He is out in the street protesting against all of them”, snooper replied.

    “I see. It is a total disaster then. It is Abagana all over again. I must thank Sub-Lieutenant William Sheri for not missing his target. A country where Alani is a protester on the street is not worth living in”, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed noted and began moving away.

    “General, what about the drink?” snooper protested.

    “To celebrate what?” Mohammed snapped. “But let me tell you this. Those of us who have killed for Nigeria and have been killed for Nigeria hold all of you responsible for this mess, this disgrace of the blackman”.

    The ferocious sleet storm was still raging in Birmingham. Luckily, the automatic heating system had come on unfailingly, rousing snooper from his catatonic stupor. The computer screen was still flashing with the lone apocalyptic message: Umaru Yar’Adua is on his way home.

  • Love Trumps All

    Love Trumps All

    Someone says his valentine is his dog: it never disappoints him, never empties his pocket and never asks for dates, flowers or divorce. And I say, that cheap dog!

    Its February again, the month of love or as my friend calls it, rrrooooove. This is the season when we once again remember love, sorry, rrrooooove. To show love, we remember flowers (ugh?), chocolates (come again?!), romance (mmmm!), etc., and that most memorable dinner (rapid eye blink, blink, blink!) when the man takes the girl out and spends his hard-earned money to impress the girl of his starry eyes! It is the season for celebrating romantic love, crushes, gushes, and all the flip-flops of our inconstant hearts.

    Do you know that there are some people who have a different valentine every year? Imagine that now; having to take a different girl out to dinner every year or as a girl, being taken to dinner every year by a different man. Some people have no hobby or what?! It sounds like a good way to fight monotony though. It is also a good way to get to know the whole town. Anyway, I am here to wish you a happy valentine period; and also to let you know that I know a very good restaurant…

    It’s not as if valentine has not been there all along. After all, you have the children to show for it; and if you are not a parent yet, why then, you have your good self to show that sometime, somewhere, something closely resembling love pretended to course through the veins of your progenitors. You also have your errant heart to remind you of it.

    Errant heart or not though, this is the season the love bug bites; for normal people that is. It is the season for falling in love, out of love and back in love again with all kinds of people, animals or things. Someone says his valentine is his dog: it never disappoints him, never empties his pocket and never asks for dates, flowers or divorce. And I say, that cheap dog!

    Unfortunately, the country is at the moment filled with abnormal people who love for different reasons. Sometimes, the love can be self-propelled; sometimes, the naira, pound or dollar sign propels it. Like someone said, whether the love is pocket-impelled or stomach-attracted, love is love.

    There are too many examples around us of self-propelled love. Let’s take a few samples from recent newspaper reports. Can you imagine someone being so abnormal that he takes one look at his beloved parent and decides that that parent’s life could be put to better use if he kills him for ritual purposes so that he can bring in more money for him, the child? Unfortunately, if it happened just once or twice in a few years, we would come to the conclusion that the young fella is a psychiatric patient walking abroad. But it is replicated again and again in so many sane individuals whose souls have been taken over by great gain for little labour.

    I attended a church service once where the pastor prayed that the congregation should have the opportunity to come into a lot of money with very little labour attached. Reader, you should have heard the thunderous ‘AMEN’ that answered that prayer from the congregation. I actually believe I was the only one who refused to say amen to that prayer. I asked a friend later who also attended if s/he said amen and that one replied, ‘yes now; who does not want cheap money?’ Scandalous! I believe anyone who says amen to that kind of prayer would readily sell their parent.

    I guess I have bought too much into Tai Solarin’s School of Rough Roads philosophy. This, reader, is why I slave for hours to bring this to your table every Sunday. I think my editor is another member of that elite group of rough roaders.

    Anyway, there are also people so abnormal that they decide that the wee, little bodies of their wards or house helps or even their own children must be riddled with witchcraft or light fingers which can only be treated by hot water or severe beating. These ones are so blinkered they do not see the witchcraft lurking in their own adult bodies that can better take the hot water and severe beatings. No sir; they love themselves too much. Such rrrrooooove!

    Should I continue to talk about our abnormal fellow inmates in this huge prison of ours that we call country? What about the ones who constantly have forced carnal knowledge of wee, little children either for satisfaction or as a ritual in the belief it can help them gain quick access to magical monetary or power kingdoms. Or even the ones who rape unwilling, non-consenting and uncooperative females, eh? Now, how abnormal are those? There is more, but let’s wait a while.

    So, clearly self-love seems to propel a great number of Nigerians. It manifests in so many ways. For instance, I have heard but I have not been able to confirm, that a single individual in the land has enough money to sponsor the country’s budget, yet there aren’t too many records showing either his work or business experience. The guy loves himself so much that everyone else can jolly well perish for his sake.

    By far the stronger love in the eyes of the average Nigerian now is the love of money. Oh my! You should see the glint in people’s eyes. Anything and everything is now money in Nigeria. It’s got so bad now that if you wish some people good morning, it may cost you some money for them to reply. Give someone some water, and you may find yourself parting with some money. Money is definitely not just the root of evil in Nigeria, I believe it is the evil. Why, all you have to do is listen to the mind-boggling revelations coming from the armsgate investigations.

    Listen, it appears we have all forgotten the message of valentine, occasioned by the life of St. Valentine, a Roman priest. I believe I have told the story once but let’s recap the history of that legendary martyr once again. It is said that the poor man had the temerity to secretly marry off soldiers and their sweethearts, which was against the roman laws of his era. For this act, the emperor imprisoned him, to be later punished by caning and execution.

    The most important thing about St. Valentine is the fact that his heart was in the right place. He loved his charges; he loved people and had great compassion for them. As a leader in the church, he was concerned about spreading Christianity but more importantly, he was concerned about meeting people’s needs. He not only put all he had into his work, he eventually laid down his life for his folks, work and conviction. How many Nigerian leaders can do that?

    In St. Valentine we come across self-abnegation for the common good. Nigerian leaders, as we stated above, believe in live and let die – let others die that they might live. This so easily explains why someone can have billions and billions and billions of the country’s money in their own private pockets, bank accounts and soak-away without feeling a pinch of guilt while the people go hungry. Self first is the credo. Obviously, St. Valentine they are not.

    In this season of love, we remember this remarkable legend, if indeed he did live, because he did not care about himself but about showing love to others, if we believe the story. In the process, he did not mind that he had to suffer because he was committed to loving. Let our leaders be as committed to loving the people and they will be remembered by time. Let them persist in defrauding the people and they will be stoned by time. In St. Valentine, love trumps all.

  • Okon propounds the theory of two Sheriffs

    It was a sultry and misty morning in Lagos, but so far the rains had refused to oblige, leaving humanity in a listless torpor. As the airwaves filled with the news of the election of a new PDP chairman, Okon has roused snooper from the utter discomfort of early morning baking temperature singing: “I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot the deputy”. It was a most profane and amateurish rendering brimming with savage humour.

    “Okon, what is the meaning of all this stupid nonsense?” snooper snarled.

    “ Oga, as you never hear dem news, dem Pindipi don elect dem leader”, the crazy boy chortled with sinister relish.

    “And who is it?” snooper demanded as he jumped out of bed.

    “Na dem Boko Haram man dem dey call Moody Sheriff abi na Mugu sef?” Okon retorted.

    “Oh my God, this is the end of the PDP as an effective fighting force. There is a plot to kill opposition in this country. This is a sting operation by the APC. The lion of Bourdillion has struck again”, snooper noted with awe and wonderment.

    “Oga, all dat na yeye grammar. Di thin I sabi be say we get am for two Sheriff for obodo now. One Sheriff go dey Abuja and dem other Sheriff go dey Maiduguri. When dem two sheriff come jam, obodo don scatter be dat. Dem American people go dey laugh say de come don come to become. Monkey don see man, before man see monkey. Make man go start work again for dem Yoruba Airforce General soak away but Yoruba shit no be better shit at all. Ewedu and gbegiri no be better food at all at all”, the mad boy drooled on.

    “Okon get lost!!” snooper screamed as he drove away the boy with a broom stick.

  • The Olajumokes among us

    Her middle name could well be Lucky. Former bread seller-turned ‘super’ model, Olajumoke Orisaguna, will forever be grateful for the day she hawked her way to fame and fortune by unknowingly appearing in a picture taken by celebrity photographer TY Bello during a photo-shoot.

    Following Olajumoke’s appearance on the cover of a Fashion magazine as a model, thanks to Bello, she has become a celebrity with all manners of offers coming her way along with the husband and children.

    I rejoice with Olajumoke and thank Bello for going out of her way to change the story of the bread hawker for good.  I also commend individuals and organisations that have come up to celebrate the lucky lady and reward her abundantly beyond what she can ever imagine she will ever have from being a mere bread seller.

    Before the euphoria of Olajumoke’s luck dies out, there is an important lesson from Bello’s act of kindness which must not be lost on everyone. This incident should be a challenge for many more people to make lasting impact on the lives of ordinary people around us.

    Bello is definitely not the first person to look out for a poor Nigerian like Olajumoke to support. Thanks to the social media, this case has gone viral, unlike many others done without any media mention.

    More than ever before, notwithstanding the economic situation in the country, we all should be determined to be the ‘angel’ for many faceless Nigerians who are not sure of the next meal or how to pay for some other essential needs.

    We live in a country where the economic conditions have made it impossible for many to live above poverty level. The likes of Olajumoke, mother of two children, who has to hawk bread to sustain her family, is a typical case of the standard of living of a majority of Nigerians.

    For Nigerians who are fortunate and don’t belong to the category of the Olajumokes, they don’t have to look far to find people in need of assistance.

    Downtrodden Nigerians are in our extended families, neigbourhoods, communities, workplaces, worship centres and many more.

    If we are to wait for the government to implement necessary policies to cater for poor Nigerians, we may have to wait forever. It is not in all cases that poor people don’t want to do something to earn some income, however little, but the basic social structures to keep them going are just not available.

    Part of the help we need to offer is to keep advocating for good governance that can ensure that more people are rescued from poverty which keeps growing by the day.

    Empowerment programmes either by government or organisations should really be empowering to ensure that people are taught marketable skills and provided tools.

    Those involved in helping Olajumoke to manage her new status should ensure that she and her husband get help to set up sustainable business or careers.

    Her case should not be like people who win lotteries and in later years found themselves back in poverty due to mismanagement of the money they made or opportunities they got.

  • The lost children of Banking Zuwo

    The lost children of Banking Zuwo

    As the interrogation and frisking of economic predators get under way, Nigeria is awash in dark comedies. There are unconfirmed and unconfirmable reports of money hidden away in the most unlikely of places and in the most delicate parts of the human anatomy.  As Ibrahim Magu and his people close in, cemeteries, forsaken graveyards, solitary grain silos, soak-away and abandoned water reservoirs are reported to be brimming with various currencies.

    A notorious female socialite has let it be known that she is carrying an eight month pregnancy which will not terminate until the return of the great prophet. The Yoruba call such monster children, “Omopeninu”, (The one that tarries in the womb). It was also said that an infamous carpetbagger in one of the provincial capitals recently celebrated the “turning of the grave” of his parents by summarily exhuming and expelling the remains and reburying them in gold caskets filled with Nigeria’s looted patrimony.

    Thereafter, the sepulchre Bureau de Change was walled round and electrified. Another was known to have hurriedly constructed a modern Plaza with a secret underground floor filled with cash. Another dug up the soak-away and replaced the human waste with more expensive inhuman waste. It doesn’t get more ghoulish and it all reminds one of the last days of the Roman Empire. If retired General Buhari is looking for a way of balancing the budget deficit, it is obvious that he doesn’t need to look farther afield. It can be internally sourced.

    The Nigerian grave yard is an El Dorado brimming with filthy lucre. This is the way of Black people. Mother Nature has gifted them with prodigal resources. After clumsily extracting, they return to bury the proceeds alive. The grave yard cries, and so do the living dead. This is the sacred ritual of the eternal hunter-gatherer. With Nigeria in the last stages of a regression to the Stone Age, who will save the Black person from himself?

    But how will the founding patron of private state banking in Nigeria view this development? Very dismally indeed. Barkin Zuwo would have dismissed these unworthy descendants as cowardly banza who could not make an economic kill and stand by it, waiting for any impudent state interloper to dare query them. These are not valiant repositories of state funds but ordinary garden variety robbers who could not hold a candle to their illustrious forebears.

    So, God bless good old Barkin Zuwo, and may Allah grant his commodious frame a fitting repose. It was said of the late King Farouk of Egypt that he was a man of much weight but little substance. Farouk, it will be recalled, developed an enormous, Pavarotti-like girth and phenomenal bulk from polishing off a whole lamb at a single sitting. When Nasser finally overthrew him, the obese hulk had to be wheel-barrowed into a waiting ship.

    Our own Barkin Zuwo cannot be accused of such gastronomic impunity. Although rumours had it that the late beloved governor of Kano was partial to a huge bowl of Tuwo Shikanfi which he munched with an agrarian relish, he could not be accused of gluttony. The second executive governor of old Kano might have been educationally challenged in the western sense, but he was nobody’s fool. He was as sharp and shrewd as a political marksman, and keen –witted to boot.

    For the three months he governed good old tempestuous Kano, there was no shortage of drama, and of the electrifying stuff, too. With his furry Fez cap, the former NEPU stalwart of Nupe extraction could have been mistaken for a Black actor impersonating a pre-Gorbachev era Communist Party supremo, or a royal extra hand in the film, Trading Places.

    It was however in the department of creative misprision that Barkin Zuwo courted real immortality.   It will be recalled that when good old Barkin was asked about which mineral resources his state could boast of, he growled: “ We get am for Phanta, Coca cola, Sphrite and Miranda”.

    Please recall that around the same time, another colleague of Barkin from the old wild, wild west, a dedicated strongman who could prise open an iron fortress gate with bare fists, was asked what he thought was behind the whole phenomenon of students unrest. Infamously, the celebrated stalwart from Erunmu agrarian community near Ibadan was said to have retorted: “How can they rest when they are always fighting?”—or words to that effect.

    When the soldiers eventually struck putting an end to the shenanigans of the Second Republic, Barkin Zuwo marched to military detention camp with plenty of aplomb and pizzazz to spare. (Please note that snooper did not say pizza). Zuwo was not going to be fazed or cowed by some boy scouts pretending to be generals. He had after all known the dreaded and ferocious Abacha as a mere boy playing football in Kano, a feat that earned the future infantry general the appellation of “Obe the Pele”.

    It was in brief detention that Zuwo finally earned his deserved place in the Guinness Book of records, and in the most bizarre of circumstances. It was put out to the world at large that a huge some of money was found under his bed. Zuwo could not understand what the fuss was all about. “It is govmen money in govmen house, shikena”, the old NEPU hell-raiser tersely noted.

    The churlish press boys quickly nicknamed him “Banking Zuwo” to reflect his new status as the banker of the bankrupt. But Zuwo was not done yet. When it was let out what a staggering sum of money that was found in his house, Zuwo cried blue murder. “Barawo ne” (Thief!), he screamed at the NSO boys. According to Zuwo, there had been some creative accounting somewhere because the money he hid was far in excess of what had been declared.

    Ibrahim Magu and the new firebrand no-nonsense EFCC should note this. Till date nobody has bothered to reconcile the differing accounts or the accountants for that matter. The man of the people chopped until the redeemer of the people came, oil flowed and blood flowed, but If anything, Nigerians had merely exchanged monkeys for baboons——apologies to Sad Sam.

    Twenty five years later, in the year of our Lord 2008 the “Banking Zuwo”  drama  replayed itself, which shows that in Nigeria, the more things change the more they remain the same. Enter Joshua Chibi Dariye, the former governor of Plateau state and a celebrated modern-day Croesus and fugitive from Metropolitan justice.

    Ousted twice from office by forces loyal to the implacable General Obasanjo, the dapper Dariye survived by the skin of his teeth, with his elegant French suit dripping with the dewy mush and manure of the remote plateau. The old EFCC under Malam Nuhu Ribadu, like a vicious rottweiler, went beyond the call of duty to nail him. Disobliging the tenets of democracy and the rule of law, it finally assembled six members of the assembly to commit executive regicide.

    It is understandable, then, if there was no love lost between the EFCC and the then embattled Dariye. In the heat of battle, and in a gory turn of metaphor, Dariye likened the EFCC to dogs which he said constituted a mouth watering delicacy among his people. It will be recalled that Dariye’s sturdy tribesmen once made a mince meat of the invading caliphate forces in a memorable massacre which turned the entire plateau into a grisly fountain of blood. In the event, wiser counsel prevailed and a bloody show down was averted.

    But that was only an inconclusive battle in an unending war. The gladiators eventually returned to the ring. This time it was an embattled Dariye who moved rapidly to the offensive against his tormentors. In an allegation all too reminiscent of the late Barkin Zuwo, Dariye claimed that there was a shortfall of 741 million naira between money actually impounded from him and money actually declared. Phew!!!. Zuwo would have been barking mad.

    Now, in international gossip circuits, as snooper noted at that material point in time, the British journalist is often the butt of cruel jokes for congenitally fiddling with expense accounts. The rich Americans are openly and brutally scornful of this hand wringing petty thievery. Snooper was not sure whether this vice has also caught up with the metropolitan cops. The British High Commission  actually confirmed that only part of the money has been returned even as the Federal government of that period chose to hide under empty technicalities.

    This did not assuage Joshua Dariye, and neither would  Barkin Zuwo ,his patron saint, have been too pleased. With or without metropolitan reassurance, Dariye cried blue murder. That seems like ages ago, but we are again at a similar conjuncture in this endlessly gory tale of the gang-raping of a nation by its own privileged children. The tribe of economic rapists has multiplied. With so many notorious Nigerian economic predators taking refuge in Britain, let the Metropolitan Police beware of Africa as the new ethical graveyard of the white man. There is an evil spirit abroad.