The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Oyedepo: Facts are sacred, comments are free

The origin of the controversial statement credited to Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel in which he allegedly threatened to open the gate of hell for anti-Jonathan supporters is one of the wonders of social- media.

An activist who was nowhere near Cannanland, Otta where President Goodluck Jonathan worshipped last Sunday sent out a tweet claiming that a source told him Bishop Oyedepo made the statement.

A popular blogger simply shared the shocking tweet on her platform and asked “Can this be true?”.

What followed was the typical frenzy of re -publishing of the quote and comments of all kinds, majority of which were not only unjustifiably critical but abusive.

For those who have been angry about the alleged preference of the Bishop for President Jonathan in the presidential election, they found the statement a good excuse to lash out at him as hard as they could irrespective of his revered position.

As a journalist, though also a member of the Church, who witnessed the visit and shared live tweets on statements by both President Jonathan and Bishop, I was shocked by the slant of reporting of the visit.

I found it difficult to understand how such a quote could be fabricated and attributed to the Bishop when he said nothing close to it at all. I concede to those who do not think it is right to allow the President or any other politician mount the pulpit for any reason, but attributing a statement the Bishop did not make to him was the height of mischief.

What those who originated the falsehood did for reasons known to them was an abuse of the freedom offered by the social media. While anybody should be free to share information and comment on the social media, it is wrong to deliberately mislead others on the platforms.

What I find more disturbing is that, even when every evidence has shown that the Bishop did not make the statement, the originators and many promoters of the falsehood have refused to admit their error and apologise for engaging in what has been rightly described as social media terrorism.

I salute some facebook commentators who have withdrawn their comments on the matter and regretted being misled.

One of the lessons of this unfortunate incident is that more than ever before, social media users have to be more careful about the information they get online. In a situation where some people can choose to spread falsehood as truth, there is need for more restraint before commenting on what is attributed to people.

As the campaign for the general election continues, supporters of candidates should refrain from heating up the polity through social media postings that make it seems that the February 14 presidential election is a do-or- die battle.

Everybody should be free to support whichever candidate he or she prefers. The acrimony generated over choice of candidate is unnecessary.

Democracy is about freedom of choice and nothing should be done to deny that freedom.

February 1, 2015
From politics of promise to blackmail?

Let us stop using the ritual time set up for making promises to citizens

The propensity for violence in the country during the season of political campaign has reached a height that cannot be ignored by civilized people. This must have been one of the reasons behind the recent unusual emissary of President Obama to Lagos. Secretary of State John Kerry’s unequivocal advice to the two leading presidential candidates to prepare their supporters for a violence-free election fits into the paradigm of early sensitivity to the ‘night cough’ of neighbors. But despite assurances from the two leading contestants for the country’s highest office, there is no evidence that communities and individuals that threatened war before the coming of Kerry have had a re-think. Instead, new and more subtle forms of terrorization of voters have taken over the space of public communication in the country.

Just 48 hours before the arrival of President Obama’s chief diplomat, leaders of Nigeria’s fourth largest ethnic nationality assured the nation of the preparedness of Ijaw militants to declare war on Nigeria, should voters choose to vote for presidential candidates other than their kinsman, President Goodluck Jonathan. One of the leaders of ex-militants, Boy Loaf, has been reported to have said: “We are Nigerians but not one Nigeria; what brings us together is oil. The North wants to use insecurity to push out our own….If they take power back from us, we will take back our oil. Let us fight this last fight and I tell you the Devil is a liar.”

As some pundits have already argued, the threat by Boy Loaf, Tompolo, Dokubo and others is not to declare war on Nigeria but to take the oil that they all believe holds the constituent parts of the country together away. In other words, leaders of the Ijaw nation plan to secede from Nigeria, an act that has the likelihood to lead to war in a country sutured essentially by oil. As the present moment is too significant for hair-splitting argument, it is necessary for citizens to recognize clearly that Ijaw militants have given notice of their intention to break the country, should majority of the electorate vote for candidates other than Jonathan.

Again, just a few days before the visit of Kerry, the National Security Adviser suggested that the election be postponed in order to allow the election agency distribute permanent voter cards to all registered voters: 68.8 million. This must also have informed the advice by Kerry that the election should hold as scheduled and in a manner devoid of violence and replete with fairness and credibility. Fanatics of Nigeria’s national pride with a bent for partisanship have since the departure of Kerry used the social media to argue that no country has the right to dictate to other countries in the modern free world on how it chooses to run its affairs, more so an independent country like Nigeria. The time is also too short for hair-splitting academic arguments. President Obama must have sent Kerry to warn Nigerian leaders and their citizens of the danger of taking the wrong course of action. This warning is similar to the warning usually given to neighbours in many African communities when they set out to do the wrong thing. Such neighbours are generally told in image-laden language ” not to eat vermin, in order to guard against stretching cough infection to neighbours.” Should there be any serious post-election violence in the country on account of any tampering with the election, it is certain that it is the United States, more than the other countries including our former colonizer, the United Kingdom, which would be called upon by the international community to provide the greatest assistance for damage control. It is better for the U.S. to warn Nigeria against knowingly ‘eating vermin.’

The report from a recent (after Kerry’s departure) INEC meeting with stakeholders is that the ruling party and many other mushroom political associations are also threatening to boycott the election, should INEC go ahead to conduct elections as originally scheduled, despite the preference of these parties for postponement. The argument is that voters who are unable to receive their PVCs are going to be disenfranchised and that the integrity of the election will diminish unless all the 68.8 million voters receive their permanent voter cards before the February 14 presidential election. Since there is no law on the books that insists that voters cannot vote with temporary voter cards, is it not more peace-enhancing for all the political parties to urge INEC to stop wasting otherwise valuable time on distributing PVCs and just allow voters with temporary voter cards to vote with them on the dates scheduled for election?

Even, the few remaining members of the Afenifere, once chaired by late Chief Adekunle Ajasin and Chief Abraham Adesanya, two leading members of the organization that led the struggle for restoration of democracy after the annulment of MKO Abiola’s presidential election, have added their frail or enfeebled voices to what looks like well orchestrated blackmails in different parts of the country. In a recent communiqué issued at the end of a meeting of Afenifere (Traditional not Renewal) in Akure during President Jonathan’s campaign visit to Chief Rueben Fasoranti, Afenifere also called for shift of the elections. The group stated pointedly: “We (Afenifere leaders) want to warn that any election conducted on the basis of disenfranchising almost half of the electorate, the outcome will not be credible or acceptable.” Another threat, despite the fact that Afenifere members no longer have the capacity to fight wars, like Ijaw ex-militants. In response to the threat, many people would argue that in the days of Ajasin, Adesanya, and Bola Ige, elders of the socio-cultural group would have called on INEC to stop wasting the nation’s time with PVCs and allow voters to use the cards with which they elected President Jonathan in 2011, instead of calling for postponement or boycott of elections.

There are many inferences that can be made from the division of the electorate into two groups: 1) Those who want the election to take place as originally scheduled while wanting citizens to choose whichever candidate they believe in; and 2) Those who want the election postponed and to lead automatically when it finally takes place to re-enthronement of the incumbent president. We may be guilty of over-simplification if we conclude that the two groups only stand for pro-Jonathan and anti-Jonathan forces or voters. What is at issue is the depth of commitment of many Nigerians and organizations with military prowess (like Ijaw militants) or historical prestige (like Afenifere) to democracy and the ethics and deliberative imagination that sustain this form of government. So far, the most frank of those putting pressure on the electorate is the Ijaw militant group. The organization’s members are straightforward in their demand about democracy in Nigeria: it must result in Jonathan’s election or nothing. It is Jonathan’s way or the highway.

With the Ijaw militants’ mindset, there should be no reason for any election. We should just decide how to rotate power among ethnic war lords and enthrone as president whomever ethnic war lords choose on behalf of their nationality. There seems to be nothing that INEC can do about the demand of Ijaw ex-militants. Elections are not designed to achieve what Ijaw militants prefer; they are designed to enable citizens choose with their votes any of the alternatives thrown up for office by their parties. The non-negotiable aspect of electoral democracy is Citizens’ Choice. Once citizens are terrorized to vote for any candidate, such exercise is no longer democratic.

On the Afenifere side, the argument is premised on protecting the right of every citizen to vote, even if doing so has to lead to preventing all citizens from voting as and when due. One good part of Afenifere’s threat is that there is no promise of violence against Nigeria or of secession of Afenifere people from Nigeria with or without their oil. More reassuring is the fact that unlike the Ijaw, Afenifere does not have any space that it can threaten to take out of Nigeria. Another good part of the group’s demand is that Afenifere’s love for democracy, manifested in the association’s pre-occupation with the right of each citizen to vote, can still be achieved without calling for change of dates and disruption of four-year old arrangements for the 2015 elections. Nigerians (including Yoruba voters being claimed to be Afenifere’s own constituency) voted Goodluck Jonathan into power in 2011 with their temporary voter cards. There is nothing sacrosanct about the use of permanent voter cards by every voter. Citizens without PVCs should be allowed to bring their TVCs to the polling stations to cast their votes for candidates of their choice.

Let us stop using the ritual time set up for making promises to citizens about the future to mount blackmails on voters.

February 1, 2015
Is Ekiti not embarrassed by Fayose?

Last week, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State authored perhaps the most offensive newspaper front page advert ever, wherein he asserted with all the sham religiosity his dark heart could muster that Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), would die in office if elected. Three former Nigerian leaders, all from the Northwest, had died in office, he wrote ominously. And because Gen Buhari is from the same Northwest, and is 72 years old, he could not avoid the same fate, reasoned Mr Fayose in the advert published by two newspapers. Nigerians were tired of state burials, he indicated with feigned altruism. Though the uproar the advert generated was intense, Mr Fayose has predictably stuck to his guns, insisting he would never apologise for his hysteria.

Given the kind of leadership the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been saddled with in the past few years, the party is unlikely to show any serious remorse over the advert. In fact, President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign organisation spokesman, the capricious Femi Fani-Kayode, merely distanced the PDP presidential candidate from the advert, suggesting that the content was strictly Mr Fayose’s, and that neither the PDP nor Dr Jonathan was responsible for the advert. The Ekiti governor, he volunteered, was a man he and the PDP had great regard for, lest anyone should think Mr Fayose had become hated in the party for his strident views.

If the PDP, Jonathan Campaign Organisation and Dr Jonathan himself refuse to clearly and openly denounce the advert, and have in many ways produced tonnes of equally distasteful adverts against their main opponent in the February presidential poll, what of Ekiti itself? Are they not embarrassed by Mr Fayose’s sulphuric language and odious logic? They voted him into office, and have consistently resisted any suggestion, especially by the APC, that they acknowledge their mistake. But are they still sure they acted sensibly? They were almost of one accord in last June’s governorship poll when they wilfully threw away the baby with the bathwater, in effect asking for the biblical Barabbas to be released unto them and Jesus to be crucified. Are they sure they got their theology right? They wanted to punish former governor Kayode Fayemi for errors they could not forgive, even though their copious education should have led them to the Spartan forbearance necessary to withstand the blandishments and the engaging rusticity, populism and superficial egalitarianism that a Fayose governorship deceptively foreshadows. Do Ekiti voters still trust their sociology principles?

No one knows how Ekiti people now feel about their governor, his provincial appeal, brashness, foul language, errant logic and wholesale subversion of the law and constitution. Perhaps, having taken the spontaneous decision to enthrone a man so opposed to civilized living and so crudely enamoured of tyrannical politics, Ekiti feels compelled to live with their choice. Perhaps they resent being told ‘We told you so,’ or being ridiculed for marching backwards on a bad road. Until they come out in large numbers to denounce the dangerous atavism of their governor, we may never know exactly what they think of their governor as a person, and what they think of his statements and policies. But as for the rest of Nigeria, and in particular, the Southwest, everyone is embarrassed on behalf of Ekiti.

Ekiti, it must be reiterated, reserves the right to elect any party and any man of their choice into any elective office available. They have the right to cavort among a wide range of political parties, and to even denounce progressivism and embrace conservatism. The choice may seem disagreeable to many people, but the beauty of democracy is the right to be serious or sentimental, wise or foolish, and rash or temperate, as long as the choices are made lawfully. Pursuant to the freedom to choose, perhaps, is also the right of a people to build and elevate their civilization in faithfulness to their history, or to destroy their civilization because of one provocation or the other and in contempt of their proud history. One choice, sometimes, is all it takes for a people to perish — one careless war; one careless policy; one careless turn down the road. A society has a responsibility to keep its wits, for the decisions of today must take cognisance of the past, the present and the future. It is not clear that last June Ekiti made its choice carefully. The reasons are many.

Apart from the distasteful advert wishing a President Buhari dead, Mr Fayose had right from inauguration exposed himself to the rest of Nigeria as lawless and foolish. Ekiti may have resented many of Dr Fayemi’s policies and style, but they at least squirmed and groaned under a sensible governor they could introduce to the rest of Nigeria and the world. Under Mr Fayose, they are living their fantasies of frolicking in Government House swimming pool, resting momentarily and dreamily on exotic government beds, and savouring Fayose’s gourmet handouts. But whether style or substance, only the hardiest of Ekiti proletariat would proudly introduce Mr Fayose as his governor, let alone his leader and embodiment of Ekiti values and worldview.

Ekiti has no excuse not to understand whom they were voting for in last year’s poll. He never hid his ribaldries, nor tried even faintly to disguise his caustic tongue. His language is coarse and offensive, and his manners, which hark back to the Stone Age, underscore his indulgent medieval theology that constantly seeks to justify and explain his every action in divine terms. Thus the muscling of the judiciary, which he exposed to a systematic and orchestrated brutalisation and intimidation shortly after his inauguration, was justifiable because he feared the APC wanted to subvert the people’s will. He was not uncomfortable with getting seven lawmakers to approve his cabinet list, pass state budget, and give hasty assent to half-baked and disingenuous bills.

Many analysts have suggested that Mr Fayose is keener than anyone else, including Dr Jonathan’s most ardent aides, in getting the president re-elected since his stay in Ekiti Government House, which still rests on shaky judicial ground, could become even more tenuous under a Buhari presidency. The analysts are right. But what fully explains Mr Fayose’s lack of restraint and effortless resort to inanities is his natural and abiding inclination to wallow in the cesspool. His style is his life, and his life is not the modern kind Nigerians and Ekiti are used to. There is no reflection in him, and in him all the vices often on display in beer parlours and street fights cohere exquisitely. Such a man does not need reasons to be offensive; he is naturally and instinctively offensive.

If Ekiti is embarrassed by their governor’s atrocious behaviour, they have not quite shown it. The rest of Nigeria, except diehard PDP supporters, groan in pain at his excessive and constant execrableness. Ekiti, it seems to the judicious, will vote Gen Buhari, for they, like their kinsmen in the Southwest, are tired of PDP’s tomfooleries in Aso Villa. It is indeed inconceivable that any scaremongering could stop them from repudiating Dr Jonathan, or dissuade them from voting their kinsman, Yemi Osinbajo, who is on the Buhari ticket. Mr Fayose’s desperation is thus unlikely to bear any fruit. But his excesses will continue until they reach a crescendo, where the quietly mortified Ekiti, hitherto anxious to justify their rash electoral behaviour of last June, will rise in fiery indignation, damn the consequences of being ridiculed by their regional and national compatriots, and throw out a man whose political monstrosities all of literature is incapable of depicting even in fiction.

January 25, 2015
Buhari momentum surges towards coronation

There is not one unbiased analyst who does not expect that as things stand in the 2015 electioneering, the APC candidate, Gen Buhari, would be crowned on February 14. The tide began to turn in favour of the general when the opposition managed a flawless presidential primary last December; and the tide became a mighty wave when, against all expectations, they again managed to select as running mate Prof Osinbajo, a law teacher of great repute, in a political masterstroke seldom seen in these parts. In rally after rally, the APC presidential candidate has attracted waves and waves of crowds on fire for a ticket that has somehow inexplicably become chic and sexy. Few people, except perhaps elitist critics, are interested in what Buhari and his running mate have to say, whether their programmes and manifestos promise the right things, or whether what they promise even angels would not struggle to implement.

But the phenomenon is not quite as inscrutable as circumstances make it. The PDP has tried to sully Gen Buhari’s reputation by alleging perjury against him, suggesting he did not have a school certificate as he claimed. It has attempted to whip up emotions against him using some of his policies and actions as head of state in the 1980s. And it has tried to draw a wedge between him and the Yoruba using the animosities, prejudices and bigotries of the past, and projecting upon his idiosyncrasies a dismal future for Nigerians under his presidency. None has worked for the simple reason that the PDP misjudges the mood of the moment, the spirit of the time.

First, the PDP and Jonathan sympathisers are unable to appreciate that the leitmotif of this election is the incompetence of Dr Jonathan, his failure as a leader, his weakness in tackling the grave security challenges facing the country. The election is thus not really about Buhari, what he can do or won’t do, what certificates he brandishes or does not hold, what acts of cruelty he performed in the past or acts of kindness . The election is strictly speaking about Dr Jonathan, by what margin to repudiate him, and about how to punish him for the humiliation and disgrace he has brought upon the country locally and internationally.

The PDP is already distressed. The more they abuse Gen Buhari and paint him as a monster, the more the crowds at his rallies swell. Though unfortunately the northern yokels have begun to stone Dr Jonathan, perhaps in anger, it is obvious that the president will be extremely lucky to get any sizable vote anywhere in the North, notwithstanding Governor Sule Lamido’s wailing last week that the president’s northern supporters were being stigmatised and intimidated. Nor is it likely that the even more discerning Southwest would leave a ticket on which their erudite son, Prof Osinbajo, is perched to vote for a president who in fact and by his own admission is a woeful failure. Increasingly too, parts of the South-South, a significantly larger part of the North-Central, and parts of the Southeast have begun to swing towards the Buhari column.

It is doubtful whether there is any magic by which the coronation of Buhari could be avoided next month. It will happen not because the voters happily trust Gen Buhari, but because they heartily distrust and loath Dr Jonathan. The elections, I think, are already lost and won. It would indeed be risky to try to procure a different outcome by the shenanigans the ruling party is accustomed to.

January 25, 2015
The lineage of political failure

After sixteen years of unbroken and uninterrupted respite during which it operated the longest stretch of civil rule in the country, the Nigerian political class has reverted to its default crisis mode; its nation-threatening and polity-disabling habitus. The fire this time is so huge in its prospects, so damning in its incendiary possibilities that care must be taken lest it consumes the entire nation.

Like the French “pompier pyromane”, the Nigerian political class often take a perverted delight in setting fire to the house and then seeing to how best to put it out. They arrange for fire and then organize a ceasefire. While donning the toga of statesmen, they propose anticipatory truces even when they are furtively complicit with the shameless status quo. But then there are certain conflagrations which surpass the expectations and modest talents of their originators. Such fires tend to consume innocent victims as well as perverted pyromaniacs.

To be sure, crises and conflicts are the motors that power societies as humankind evolve away from the state of nature. Even if it is not a product of some profound crisis which fractured the old arrangement, a nation must encounter crises as it faces fresh and novel political possibilities. To overcome the crippling conflicts, it is then left to human ingenuity to adapt to novel situations and unforeseen circumstances.

But there are crises and there are crises. In many modern societies, periodic conflicts often erupt as a result of the inevitable struggle for power among factions of a political class whose worldview and notions of the nation are not essentially dissimilar. In such circumstances, an organic community requires only minor adjustments, minor compromises and elementary statecraft before such crises are resolved in the greater national interest.

However in inorganic nations where disparate pre-colonial nationalities still habour and nurture fundamentally incompatible notions of the nation and indeed of the societies, crises of political succession often tend to degenerate into nation-threatening conflicts with the capacity to throw the entire nation back into a state of nature. In a situation such as obtains in contemporary Nigeria, a fundamental organogram of the nation which stringently stipulates national destiny and charter is imperative and inevitable. Something cannot be built on nothing.

The inability of Nigeria to evolve into an organic nation is at the root of the violent struggles for political succession that we have witnessed since independence and even before it. Such has been the fate of the Nigerian state in its pre-military, military and neo-military incarnations. In the current conjuncture, the inability of the traditional hegemonic blocs to impose a solution -however transient–on the crisis such as has been the case in the first, second and military Third republic suggests the lurking presence of a third hegemonic force which is still inchoate and incoherent.

However that may be, what remains to be seen is whether this third force, a chaotic combination of the dominant, residual and emergent tendencies, will come into rampart hegemony through elections, a future national conference, elite pacts or even revolutionary upheavals which may unfortunately eventuate in the chaotic dismemberment of the country. It is morning yet on creation day.

What is not in doubt is the fact that as the presidential election shapes up and enters the last four weeks, Nigeria itself has entered uncharted waters. Never in the recent history of the nation have we witnessed such a violent political distemper, such a foul, no-hold barred campaign, such volcanic presidential eruptions on the hustings and such apocalyptic muckraking. Even by the dismal standards of Nigerian electoral process, this is quite a new low.

To search for a passable comparison, we must reach back to the unedifying last days of the First and Second Republics. In the certificate controversy, the military have intervened in a way and manner that suggests a deep fracture in that surviving national institution. In raiding the offices of the opposition, the security services have also weighed in in such an unprofessional manner that suggests the thorough tarnishing of reputation reminiscent of the old NSO. The judiciary is probably waiting in the wing to deliver the coup de grace.

These unusual palpitations suggest that Nigeria is on the cusp of momentous change. Such changes are usually presaged by titanic eruptions of passions and by radical and revolutionary convulsions that obliterate old fault lines of ethnicity, religion and region even as they substitute new ones. Old habits may die hard, but there is a fat lady already singing in the distance.

We ought to remind ourselves that this national passion play is being enacted against a background of outlandish and unprecedented corruption, vile looting of the national treasury, political anomie, religious disorientation in which the nation has come under the spiritual hegemony of spiritually damaged people, and a virtual balkanization of the nation by an insurgency which eternally taunts and humiliates our once proud military machine.

This is where comparison might be dangerous. It was certainly not this bad during the First Republic. Nzeogwu’s war cry was against ten-percenters. Now, we have ninety-percenters. But that was also a very different country. There has been a huge demographic shift in favour of young people. The old population of Nigeria has been purged and culled both by natural adversity and by the man-made calamity of evil governance. Change is being driven by explosion in human consciousness and technological innovations which have revolutionized communication and the radical interface of the global community.

How did we then get into this sorry pass in which the aggregate consciousness of the political class seems to lag behind the aggregate consciousness of the national multitude in its seething resentment and sullen animosity waiting for a spark to explode in our collective face? In order to get out of the Byzantine maze of horror and the continuing wastage of our people on an industrial scale, we must go back to where the rains started beating us. To trace this lineage of political failure is to go back to the origins of the Fourth Republic and even farther beyond.

January 25, 2015
Need we over celebrate?

I wrote this piece on Friday while trapped in traffic on my way to the University of Lagos to drop my son who was resuming his second year in the institution. Although we left home in Abule Egba on what I like to call the ‘outland’ of Lagos about 10.30 am and I had hoped to return to my office in Mushin by at most 1.00pm, we were still in the traffic within the campus by 3.30pm.

The cause of the gridlock was the matriculation for fresh students.

All roads leading to and out of the institution were jammed, no thanks to the students, parents and well wishers who thronged the campus for the celebration.

At a point, I had to park somewhere, while my son and his colleague took his luggage to the hostel.

Considering how though it is to get admission into high institutions in the country, especially UNILAG, reputed to be the University of first choice, I can understand the joy of new students and their parents. What I can’t comprehend is the kind of elaborate celebrations to mark the occasion.

As I sat in the car feeling very frustrated by the ‘owambe’ celebration playing out on the campus to mark the matriculation, I could not but wonder why we love to over celebrate at the slightest opportunity.

Why should a matriculation which is just the beginning of the academic sojourn for new students turn out to be a nightmare for other road users in and around the campus? Why should not only few people, parents and immediate family members at most, come to wish the fresh students well and leave as soon as possible?

Matriculation should not be turned into yet another carnival, the kind I witnessed last Friday. I did not make it out of the campus until about 6.00pm. Maybe the “University should have made better parking and restricted guests like during convocation. But the truth is that the matriculation should not have resulted in the type of chaos it did last Friday.

I have no problem with celebrating major events, but more than ever before, we need to be more modest about them. The kind of elaborate celebrations one sees around these days does not indicate the economic reality of the times we live in.

Simple ceremonies that should not cost much have become very expensive with many trying hard to live up to unrealistic public expectations.

Money that should be utilised for more important needs are wasted in wild celebrations that leave the majority poorer.

In some cases, people have to borrow to pay for the celebration. Long after the events, they are stuck with debts which they should not have incurred in the first place but for our culture of ‘over celebration’.

I don’t understand why almost every occasion requires that one buys the celebration uniform the Yorubas call Asoebi , caps for men and headgears for ladies, which most times are not useful after the events.

When celebrants don’t force asoebi on invited guests, they come up with colour codes for dresses to wear to such events.

We seem to have perfected the art of inflicting unnecessary financial burden on ourselves all in the name of celebrations. It is time to begin to take a second look at the things we do in the name of celebration and maximise our resources.

January 25, 2015
Not violence, just free and fair elections 2

Allowing millions of uncollected PVCs to be in limbo by the day of election is dangerous, as doing so can lead to fabrication, distortion, and manipulation of election results

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country directly or through freely chosen representatives… The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. — Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

On this page last week, we promised to examine today advantages of free, fair, and credible election for a country, its citizens, its government, individuals engaged in electoral contest, and the international community, especially adjoining countries. But before we go to benefits of free and fair elections, let us briefly remind those in charge of conduct of elections of actions that can derogate from fairness and credibility of elections.

Reports and eye-witness accounts by eligible voters regarding increasing frustration of citizens in acquiring their PVCs suggest additional alertness and responsiveness on the part of INEC officials and even political party leaders. It is not enough for INEC chair to assure citizens that PVCs can be collected at the ward level or for party leaders to complain about the importance of PVCs. My own personal assistant had gone to his ward in Ojodu Local Development Council in Okeira in Ogba two times: Monday January 19 and Thursday, 22. On the first day, he did not meet anybody at the ward at 9:30 am and was told by passers-by to return at 11am. He did and nobody showed up on that day. He took time off work again on Thursday to go back to Okeira at 12 noon. He met some staff there but none of them was able to locate his PVC even after he had presented his temporary voter card with Vin: 90F5B2180A296384625 90F5 issued on January 30, 2011 and with which he voted in 2011. The most dispiriting part of the young man’s experience is that the staff that attended to him told him they did not know of anything he could do to get a card before February 14.

A female cousin of mine who registered at Yaya Abatan ward experienced a similar frustration at Africa Church Primary School, Idiagbon under Ifako local authority. She went to Idiagbon on two days to collect her PVC. After presenting her temporary card with PU: 24/10/03/42 and Vin: 90F5B167EA295617104, she was told that any card with PU that ends in 42 was not at the centre and nobody at the centre could tell her where else to go and what else to do, to be able to vote in February. In addition, a childhood friend of mine and an accomplished author of children’s literature and a widow of a former general in the Nigerian Armed Forces is still experiencing frustrations similar to those of my non-graduate relations. She registered to vote in Bode Onifade and had been told by INEC to go and collect her permanent card at the ward where she registered. Upon getting there, she was told that the cards being given out at Bode Onifade were cards from Shogunle. Nobody has been able to tell her and many of her neighbours, all of them upper middle-class Nigerians, where to go and collect their cards.

If a regular citizen like me can identify three family members with difficulty collecting their PVCs in the country’s cultural and commercial capital less than four weeks to the first election in February, INEC and political party leaders should be worried about the threat of disenfranchisement of voters against which President Jonathan has warned sternly. The danger is that less educated and less materially endowed citizens in Yaya Abatan, Okeira, and many other remote areas of Lagos, who have to take rickety public transport to move from one ward to the other in search of PVCs than the average middle-class voter in Ewutuntun area of Ikeja, are likely to get angry faster than members of the elite class in Ikeja. When citizens under social and economic pressure get angry over PVCs, this increases the danger of avoidable violence. INEC needs to get more serious about ensuring that right cards are sent to each ward or allow voters with permanent or temporary cards to vote on scheduled election days. Time is rather too short for inordinate release of PVCs, which is what the latest suggestion by the National Secruty Advisor implies: move the time for distribution of PVCs forward in order to justify disrupting the election calendar.

It may not be enough for citizens to assume that once the president had spoken and INEC boss had given directives to his staff all problems regarding acquiring their PVCs are solvable. The experiences of the three persons mentioned in this piece is a clear illustration that there are still challenges that INEC has to address urgently and about which the commission needs to make public announcements about how citizens can obtain their PVCs before it is too late. In addition, political party leaders need to join more aggressively in political education of the masses. Indeed, they need to provide assistance in terms of logistics to citizens who are being made to go from pillar to post in their efforts to obtain what belongs to them: permanent voter cards. In other countries, political parties facilitate collection of voter cards where electoral commissions are unable to mail them to registered voters. Disenfranchisement, no matter the cause, is a recipe for de-legitimisation of any government arising from badly conducted elections, apart from being a cause of post-election violence.

With the mountain of PVCs that I saw at Idiagbon and Okeira, the chances that millions of voters are yet to collect their voter cards across the country are very high, thus putting INEC at risk of being seen as knowingly or unknowingly discouraging citizens from collecting the instrument for voting. Just as political parties have good reasons to meet with INEC on whether internally displaced persons should vote, so do they have the duty to discuss with INEC what should be done to PVCs which are not collected by the deadline for collection. Allowing millions of uncollected PVCs to be in limbo by the day of election is dangerous, as doing so can lead to fabrication, distortion, and manipulation of election results. Citizens need to be assured of the numbers of cards that cannot be presented at polling stations and the exact number of voters with PVCs in their possession. Such announcements by INEC can help to make a free and fair election also look so to citizens.

But the breaking news regarding the suggestion in London of the NSA about postponing the election is like trying to cure headache by cutting off the head that aches. His argument about INEC needing more time to distribute PVCs does not answer the question: Why bother about getting additional one month to distribute PVCs that INEC has not been able to distribute effectively in the last three months? The easiest way to ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised is to allow those with permanent cards to use them and those without to present their temporary voter cards at the polling station. Fortunately, temporary cards also carry the pictures of owners. Postponing an election for which citizens have mobilised since INEC announced election dates about one year ago smacks of the lack of respect for citizens displayed by those who annulled the 1993 election and then encouraged citizens to prepare for another round of elections. The neatest way to ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised is to allow those without permanent cards to use their temporary cards on February 14 and 28. Once the election is postponed, the disruptions in election-related logistics may make it impossible to conduct re-scheduled election on time to avoid breaching provisions of the constitution and the electoral law.

There are ample benefits that can come to the country by way of free, fair, and credible elections. Candidates in the election are more likely (than not) to feel satisfied with their victory or defeat, to the extent that they all can hold their heads up and push their chests out that they have contributed to consolidation of democracy in the country. Whatever government is in place after a free and fair election is bound to have legitimacy, without which any government cannot function properly. Similarly, governance is likely to be facilitated by citizens’ trust in the government that results from a credible electoral process. Nigeria’s neighbours are also likely to be put at ease by free and fair elections to comfortable in seeking opinions of the country’s leaders on similar matters in their countries. Finally, the international community is more likely to be at peace that Africa’s most populous nation is not pushed into a post-election crisis that is capable of throwing the West African region into chaos and regional instability arising from displaced persons seeking asylum.. Like justice, election delayed is credibility compromised.

January 25, 2015
The Fourth Republic in Crisis

The Fourth Republic, or what we have somewhere else proposed as the Obasanjo Settlement, was tailor-made for a military strongman in civilian garb. It ought to be remembered that the military was never really conquered or subjugated by the NADECO rebellion. But it was clear that that the military had also exhausted their political and historical possibilities. Staying on would have been too costly and prohibitive and might have resulted in the eventual disintegration of the country.

In order to withdraw from the scene with some dignity and with a semblance of honour and integrity, the military needed one of their own who would not allow the profession to be disgraced and hounded out of power, just like that. Better still if such a person had the political and moral authority of personal suffering and was a pan-Nigerian nationalist who was not sold on the political whimsies of his ethnic constituency.

Obasanjo, the old Owu-born General who had been freshly sprung from Abacha’s humiliating dungeon, fitted the bill perfectly. He was one of their own who was not one of their own. As for the military ploy of looking for a compliant Yoruba who could pass, it exploded in their face as the Yoruba people saw through the gambit and roundly rejected their own.

But to the extent that they also gave peace a chance and did not immediately commence another round of customary aluta or resort to their legendary war of legal nerves and attrition, the military gambit could be said to have succeeded in a circuitous manner. Whatever its worth, this was some elite pacting and consensus at work.

However that may be, there was still a major problem. What made an Obasanjo, with his autocratic temperament and authoritarian outlook, a brilliant and sure bet for the project of demilitarization also made him particularly unsuitable for deepening the democratization process, more so in a nation emerging from the trauma of military despotism. Whether he likes to acknowledge it or not, Obasanjo’s self-succession and succession plots were a classic study in vengeance as statecraft. It has landed Nigeria in hot water.

The Fourth Republic has become a nightmare of lost opportunities. Obasanjo’s policy of vengeful exclusion and the narrow social base of leadership recruitment in the country have led to the denial of public space to vibrant and visionary people who could have made sterling contribution to the rapid development and transformation of Nigeria. The result is the dramatic decline in the quality of leadership and poor governance that we are witnessing at the federal level and in most states of the federation.

In order to sustain the illusion of order, ruling classes need an order of illusions. The disillusioned Nigerian populace appears to have seen through the grand chicanery, the illusionist fantasia, the buffooning pantomime, the mystifying fog of incompetence and brutish insensitivity. As a result of this, the government has come under severe pressure from the margins, from below and from the aggrieved factions of the factionalized and fractured elite. Government has lost its magic.

Elites mediate between the state and direct mob control. In the traditional bastions of liberal democracy, elections are elite-driven mechanisms for effecting changes in leadership if and at when due. The elites retain the initiative to supervise the election and to superintend the outcome, based on elite consensus and cohesion. But where the angry multitude take direct charge of their destiny based on their perception of the moral and political collapse of the ruling class, the elite lose the power and capacity to superintend the outcome of elections.

Hence, the foul and nasty atmosphere of rancor and disaffection currently subsisting in the country as elections approach. Hence, the imminent unraveling of the Fourth Republic. Hence, the looming apocalyptic meltdown of a nation that has consistently flirted with suicide ever since its emergence as a test tube baby of the colonial laboratory. The veil has been torn off and the aura of authority, power and prestige badly eroded. The Nigerian masses have sniffed blood.

The calls for a shift or postponement of the elections such as credited to Sambo Dasuki in faraway Chatham House in London will not do. It is nothing but an imaginary resolution of a concrete political conundrum. Even if the elections are postponed for a year, the current foul atmosphere will still prevail as long as there is no demobilization of an already embedded and actively engaged mob. To do this, you need a degree of elite consensus and cohesion—- a circuitous no-brainer in the current circumstances.

When you are faced with an impossible political conundrum, you reach for a paradox as a way out. As conceived by its military progenitors, the Fourth Republic has reached the end of its tethers. Only a massive transfusion of fresh blood and an injection of a new vision of the nation such as can come from counter-hegemonic forces and bearers of an antagonistic logic fundamentally at variance with the current status quo can rescue the tottering republic.

Whether the ascendant faction of the Nigerian ruling class will allow constitutional change through peaceful election remains to be seen. The stiff and ever stiffening local body language and the stalling and stonewalling from Chatham House do not indicate a willingness to submit to the supreme will of the electorate.

Yet when all is said, it is clear that a drastic change in governance paradigm in this much abused country cannot be postponed for much longer. It will be a typically Nigerian irony if the man who will clear the cobwebs and lay the foundation of genuine democracy, who will retrieve our lost girls and territory while institutionalizing accountable governance through devolution of power from the centre turns out to be another retired military strongman waiting in the wings for electoral clearance.

No sane man has been known to argue with an earthquake. With the benefit of hindsight and in the absence of a strong, united, unified and countervailing nationalist political class which is the evil legacy colonial rule, the Fourth Republic is a military transition in progress from full military rule through some neo-military hybrid to a possible culmination in true civil rule, after the epoch of hybridization. This is the bane of all authoritarian societies in a state of traumatic transition to some form of modernity.

The nearest examples of this kind of transition that come to mind are the far eastern countries, particularly South Korea which for a period was also under the spell and scourge of retired generals. But then, South Korea is a racially, culturally and religiously homogeneous country. Its ancient ruling caste stoutly withstood the ravages of Japanese colonization.

Pity then the poor young man from Otuoke who was plucked as a callow apprentice by a deluded past master of political intrigues and thrown into a seething cauldron of ethnic, religious and regional animosities without a compass or a road map. So far, Jonathan has shown neither the granite strength of character, the psychological stamina and the gaming cosmopolitanism to rein in the fierce centrifugal forces nor the stirring helmsmanship to navigate a turbulent ocean brimming with sharks and piranhas.

The events in his own imploding party show how far President Goodluck Jonathan has lost the plot. What remains is for him to negotiate a safe passage out of power with some honour but certainly not through the postponement of election or some other constitutional and extra-constitutional mischief which may well backfire. The omens are dire indeed.

January 25, 2015
2015: Railways ‘transformation’ as a mirror into President Jonathan’s transformation agenda

Whereas in places like China, high speed trains do about 300 kilometres per hour it takes Nigeria’s modern railway two whole hours to arrive Agbado from Lagos -a journey of less than 50km

Since the campaign season started, Buhari has been PDP’s perfidious recurring decimal. He is their daytime nightmare and night-time wrath. They have practically abandoned the marketing of their own candidate for the reactionary task of discrediting Buhari. Ask them what their manifesto is because you want to assess their plans for Nigeria, or inquire about the content of the “continuity” agenda they proclaim on roof tops, you can be sure they will go to sleep only for them to awaken to another Buhari chant”. – Abimbola Adelakun.

The over-hyped transformation of the Nigerian Railway Corporation meant nothing to me until I saw everybody that is anybody on the PDP Presidential campaign team, at every stop, touting the transformation they claim President Jonathan has chalked up in the sector. By the time I read Idowu Akinlotan, in Palladium, dismiss it, saying that the task before Nigeria next month is to put a man in office that best approximates the archetypal leader with character and not one who cites antediluvian projects like narrow gauge railway as trophy, I knew it was time to go read the eye witness account of The Nation’s Adeyinka Aderibigbe, whose intended 3-day, eye witness trip from Lagos to Kano on the ‘new’ train, became a totally unexpected 5-day odyssey. It was after reading the well written piece I discovered that like the ‘statistical agricultural revolution’ Nigerians have been inundated with these past four years, the one in the railway sector is also nothing but a chimera. That the over-blown agricultural revolution is only a make-belief is indicated, not only by the high prices Nigerians still pay for food items or by the fact of licences still being given for rice importation, it is rather, much more poignantly, illustrated by the fact that the beneficiaries are so uncertain about the Jonathan rice project that they flagrantly overshot their approved limits. It must be mentioned too, that as has become routine with the Jonathan government, the import quota were allegedly skewed in favour of some people who have no demonstrable interest in rice production.

With that, there hardly needs be any further evidence of the emptiness of TAN’s sundry claims of a Jonathan transformation; a transformation that leaves large swathes of the country in darkness with residents asking electricity companies to withdraw their services because of their ineffectiveness, as we saw in Benin-city and Egbe-Idimu LCDA in Lagos, massive insecurity, not to talk of life itself becoming short and brutish.

Back then to Aderibigbe’s narration of his hellish Lagos-Kano journey on NRC’s ‘new’ trains.

After indicating that the take off was unfortunately delayed for hours as a result of an accident somewhere on the rail line which had to be fixed, he went into a description of the facilities: ‘the entire space in the arrival/departure hall was filled up with all manner of luggage, with people fighting for a leg room. What went for ticket was a small piece of letter press printed on cardboard indicating that the corporation is far behind in modern rail system comparable to what obtains the world over. Also baffling was that those tickets still bore old rates despite the fact that fares have been revised twice since the arrival of the modern coaches’. You can only imagine how corrupt that would be giving the number of persons that will be out to take advantage of such lapses.

He then discussed a passable First Class compartment but the Second Class compartment should be of greater interest to readers. Wrote our reporter: “The more popular second class zone, already nicknamed ‘Ajegunle Molue’, is a 90-seater specified contraption with six overhead orbit fans and slit windows in each cabin. Here, there is no limit to the number of passengers. Indeed, while the manufacturers specified 90 passengers, no trip has taken less than 180 passengers on the Lagos -Kano journey since the service started.” The class, he said, was likened by an official of the corporation to a ‘lizard sliding through an opening on the wall’, and at many of the stations, you find passengers entering the coaches through windows when access through the doors proved impossible as a result of the sheer number of people fighting to enter”. He actually had the great fortune of seeing a woman, a passenger, who had prepared a pot of stew for the long journey, empty it all on the heads of other passengers as she struggled to board to Kano.

He was not done on this otherwise good project which, if done right, could have been a blessing to Nigerians as it is much safer and cheaper than most other means of transport. He therefore continued: “Because the second class cabin windows are permanently open, it is usually heavily dusty. Here you find all manner of people – beggars, in different degrees of tattered clothes, with their bowls, the poor, the aged, babies with different sizes of rotund stomachs, students, low income workers, frail looking males and females co-habiting etc. One thing associated with the second class is the putrid smell, oozing not only from the body odours, but as a result of the absence of functioning lavatories. Ideally, he wrote, the coaches should have two toilets and two bathrooms at each wing. The toilets have, indeed, been converted to luggage rooms.

Pray, what manner of transformation, to be celebrated on political campaigns, is this?

The reporter was told that in the last 10 years, none of the drivers in the corporation has gone on leave nor are they paid leave bonus nor travel allowance. These are the people in charge of these trains to far flung places who, but for meals in the kitchen, and music blaring from what the reporter described as a creaky, speaker box juxtaposed with the din of all night long noise emanating from the train would have seen their workplace no better than a prison.

And what manner of transformation is this that PDP’s exuberant campaigners must burst our ear drums just to listen to them rehash? As I read through the report, I couldn’t help thanking God that the Liberian, Mr Sawyer, did not have to head straight to any of our train stations to make even the shortest journey during his ill-fated visit to Nigeria. May his soul and those of others we lost to Ebola, by the mercy of God, rest in perfect peace. Amen. Can Nigerians therefore be surprised at the level of panel beating our economy and over all well-being have been subjected to this last six years, but which some jokers -the keepers of whatever they call themselves – use as template to dress our president in borrowed robes, comparing him to world leaders?.

It becomes totally befuddling that billions of Sure-P funds have gone into a project which is beginning to look more like a sink hole. It is clearly indicative of the level of seriousness the PDP government attaches to this extremely important sector that it considered the corporation the equivalent of a political Siberia to banish a floundering party chairman to when he was yanked off his giddy seat. Whereas in places like China, high speed trains do about 300 kilometres per hour it takes Nigeria’s modern railway two whole hours to arrive Agbado from Lagos -a journey of less than 50km.

I urge Nigerians to ponder all these as they vote on 14 February, 2015.

FEMI FANI -KAYODE SPEAKS

The level of discontentment for this government of the PDP in this country is unprecedented. Not only do I know that, I also know that in terms of the quality of leadership …, if you compare the leadership of today’s PDP to APC leadership, there is absolutely no comparison. It is time for change in this country … as far as I am concerned they present a far more credible leadership than we have in the PDP today. What Nigerians need now is to join hands with the APC leaders, Major General Muhammadu Buhari and Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu to move the nation forward – Mr Femi Fani-Kayode, Director of Media and Publicity, PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation

January 25, 2015
The truth about political posts

It is only in Nigeria that a politician can campaign for a position with the word ‘serve’ to mean ‘occupy’ the position or to serve the people up to the god of his palates

Indeed, true is the aphorism that change is the only permanent thing in this life. I remember clearly that as recently as the 1970s, if you had a government job, you could not be considered to have been gainfully employed. You were there ‘just for the time being… until you could find your feet’. A job with any government agency was not expected to enrich anyone who had just graduated from school. So, job seekers preferred to direct their feet towards manufacturing companies all around the country. That was where the real work was then, and the realer money. Government jobs only taught people to push papers; for that, you did not need to be paid much. Did I mention that unemployment was also low?

Then something changed. From the eighties through to the nineties, I guess the government began to get so big it thought it could turn all powers to itself and still have a country. So, it broke the back of manufacturing companies, turned the job-seeking boys’ feet in the direction of the government agencies and parastatals, thinking to … I don’t know. What was it thinking?

Alas! Many years down that lane of thoughtlessness, what do we have? We now have a people conditioned to believe that unless you are employed by the government, you do not have a job yet. This is why a fresh graduate employed in a privately funded school to nurture young minds does not consider himself employed until he can struggle to be absorbed in some local government where he goes to push papers and be paid much. How times change. I remember Lyte’s song of 1847 — change and decay in all around I see. Now, how many nurses are working in private hospitals? Few: most prefer to be paid by the government for sitting down and doing … well, not much. How many certified teachers are not in local, state or national schools? Again, few.

Yes indeed o. Every Nigerian knows that government is the biggest employer now, and also the least fussy about making sure its job is done well. As a matter of fact, many government workers do not have to report daily at work to be paid. Just look at your MGAs – they scream job abuse to the heavens.

Talking of job abusers, no group is guiltier than politicians. We have been told that the Nigerian assembly parades the highest paid group of politicians in the world. The Nigerian populace has screamed enough blue murder over that fact till we are all hoarse. Yet the group concerned has not flinched from continuing to collect their illicit gains. But, it is even more illicit when we remember that many of the members are not regular at work and even less regular in the country. We now know where they go: they go to Dubai to read newspapers.

Government politics, like government jobs, obviously pays the highest and no one asks you for results, except godfathers who only ask for returns. This is why it is possible for people to be desperate about government positions. Sadly, the many stories of politicians killing off their political rivals stem from no other cause but the excessively lucrative nature of those positions. Yet, we all look on.

In a small town somewhere in a foreign country, someone won an election into the mayoral seat. As he walked to his car on the road the next day, someone called out a congratulatory greeting to him, and hoped that he would have a good term. He graciously accepted the greeting but took pains to point out that the mayoral seat of the town is not won so much as taken in turns to serve their little town.

Sadly again, that word ‘serve’ has been given various connotations in Nigerian politics. It is only in Nigeria that a politician can campaign for a position with the word ‘serve’ to mean ‘occupy’ the position or to serve the people up to the god of his palates. Perhaps indeed, the said politicians mean to go and serve the public. Who is to say what someone’s real intention is? Perhaps, somewhere along the line, this plentiful government money becomes a distraction. Who is to say?

I have often asked myself this question: why are so many people struggling to get into politics, and be elected into some position or the other? I have some answers but I seek a better one of you, dear reader, if you are minded to give it. Basically, it appears to be on account of the ‘free money’ being doled out by the government as so-called allowances and emoluments. Now, everybody wants their share.

But how did it come to this? I think one of the reasons appears to be the rather lazy disposition of the Nigerian mentality: as a people, they just love the line of least resistance – to wealth-making, educational pursuit or keeping the law. Nigerians have been known to offer up as sacrifices their mothers, fathers, spouses, children or relatives (in short, their nearests and dearests) as sacrifices at the altar of wealth creation. The relatives are not only cheaper, they do not need to be searched for from far east, far west and far indies. They are ready made by the creator, sometimes just for that purpose, if you get what I mean. Worse, on account of this national malaise of slothfulness, it appears even the country’s earlier vaunted quality education is in great peril. And the law? The less said about the people’s attitude, the better. Let’s just say it’s easier for Nigerians to break the law than to keep it.

Anyway, quite another reason for how all these came to be is that the government has effectively killed private enterprise and made itself the only worthwhile venture for any serious mind in the land. Many factories are closed down; many are working at half or less capacity; many more are groaning under the weight of the costs of doing business in a hostile environment such as this. The only ones not groaning in the land are the government-employed, and it’s theirs not to reason why. But then, some of them have begun to moan under salary failure. So, when you get a situation where a government pays higher emoluments than the private sector of a country, that country is effectively dead. Sooner than later, it is bound to come crashing down under the weight of its own excessive kindness: it finds itself too expensive to run.

Right now, the people have stopped struggling for themselves, only waiting to get into political posts. Like someone said just today, a political jobber who sets out with nothing begins to construct gargantuan edifices within three months of assuming duty. Only in Nigeria. Why should that be? Naturally, people are ready to maim, gorge or kill anyone who gets in the way of their edifices. Can you blame them? I blame the conditions that breed their actions.

It is important to act now; we can begin by having a charter. The government must, as a matter of urgency, re-empower the private sector again. In a capitalist economy, the government can only act in a regulatory capacity, a sort of controller, not the one doling out, except in defence, internal affairs and education.

It is also important to find a way to truly discourage people from going into politics to rip the nation off. For a start, we can begin to insist that anyone seeking political office must be gainfully employed and must show it. Let us chew the fat on these ones for a while.

January 25, 2015