The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Oduahgate: Beyond sophistry

Given the combativeness with which the House of Representatives Committee on Aviation began its probe of the overpriced bulletproof cars bought by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) early last week and other ancillary matters, the conclusion of the sitting, during which the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, gave her presentation turned out to be an anti-climax. Not only was nothing virtually said about the inflated prices of the cars, the last day of the sitting was so anticlimactic that the panel even began to harry the other top witnesses from the NCAA for misleading the minister – almost as if the buck no longer stopped on the table of the minister. I do not of course expect the committee’s conclusions to be weakened by their seemingly contrived inability to smoke the truth out of the witnesses, nor do I expect them to be swayed by the minister’s obvious insolence when she was riled, flattery when the spirit seized her, and tendentiousness when she launched into clear mendacity. The country expects the committee to do a good job, and we’ll just have to wait and see.

For those who have followed the so-called reforms Ms Oduah undertakes in the ministry, the scandal that oozed out of NCAA even took too long in coming. The scandal is open enough, undisguised in substance, clear in ramifications, and shocking in its brazenness. But in long and winding prefatory statements, the minister kept harping on enemies trying to unhorse her, media attempting to try the scandal on the pages of newspapers, and other nameless villains she swore were after President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformation agenda. She treated the responses made by aviation officials who tried to clarify issues before her intervention with extreme condescension. The coordinating spokesman (an imprecise, nugatory and annoying role) for the agencies under her ministry, she said with self-righteous dismissiveness, didn’t quite do right by suggesting the scandal was just a rumour. Then she excused her own media aide who should know, and who virtually confirmed the minister needed the cars for her safety, on grounds that he suffered from honest and innocent misapprehension. And she gave a slap on the wrist to the new Director-General of NCAA for throwing a red herring before the baying and inquisitive public.

After inundating the committee and the public with these excuses, probably the only and last time her responses would be civil, she simply launched into abuses, condemnatory analyses of her critics’ motives, and other uncivil extrapolation. Her critics were either detractors, she said proudly, or they were “entrenched, corrupt or profligate.” Even the “false accusations and trial in the media,” she added petulantly, might have affected the committee’s sense of outrage. It is a tribute to the tolerance and resilience of the committee members that they sat glumly through the withering attacks on their bona fides.

It is not certain whether the committee asked for a background briefing on the running of the agencies under Ms Oduah, or on how she put only people she could trust in positions of authority, and on how she ran the supposedly autonomous agencies with dictatorial insouciance only a special or highly connected minister could attempt. If they did, they would understand why in spite of the obvious infractions of the law in the NCAA, and other malfeasances, she rose to the agency’s defence, describing it as being “conscious of its obligations” under the Appropriation Act. And in spite of having committed the NCAA to extra-budgetary spending, Ms Oduah could still say hyperbolically that “The NCAA is therefore conscious of its obligations relating in particular to appropriation and will never spend monies that have not been appropriated by the National Assembly.”

The minister’s view of financial commitment is strangely out of this world. She seeks to persuade the committee that as long as the amount due on the loan facility taken from the First Bank to buy 54 cars does not exceed what the minister had powers to approve, no law had been broken. Indeed, she even tried to bamboozle the public with the concept of the “Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF),” which she argued incredulously justified the humongous amount for which she gave anticipatory approval to finance the cars, bulletproof and ordinary. She was of course silent on why she approved the purchase of 54 cars instead of 25 appropriated by the National Assembly. Perhaps the same MTEF would explain the arithmetical wizardry. And while the financing bank insisted that the facility granted NCAA was a loan, and which was documented, Ms Oduah kept insisting it was a lease, and that in any case the dynamics of the transaction made a lease equivalent to a loan. For a minister who strived to distance herself from the scandal, it is not certain whether the point was lost on the committee that her spirited defence of NCAA amounted to guilt by association. After all, would she ever defend what she abhorred?

Then, of course, too, she tried to rewrite the principles of finance by describing the N643m loan granted the NCAA by First Bank as a mere understanding that could be revoked anytime. For many of us who had at one time or another taken a bank loan, we know that banks do not trifle with their money. They are often brutal and merciless. Ms Oduah gave the impression the deal between the NCAA and First Bank was a mere understanding, not an obligation. If so, let her prepare for lawsuits. In reality, we know she is merely evading the truth. She and her agents in the NCAA and other aviation agencies know the true transactions that had been concluded, and how those transactions undermined the law. Whether the House of Representatives committee got to the bottom of the case remains to be seen. We’ll also have to await the report of the president’s administrative panel, and then see what the rather distant EFCC is capable of doing to end the rot in the ministry and its agencies, which rot she has repeatedly tried to dignify as reform and transformation unequalled in the history of aviation.

Ms Oduah reiterated that the NCAA and the ministry had not spent money not appropriated. Yet the NCAA wrote First Bank to pay the vendors of the cars. She tried to put emphasis on the fact that the bank had retained a copy of vehicle documents and spare keys. Could it have been otherwise? Or does that vitiate the commitment to the deal, the weight of the loan, or the import of the extra-legal spending entered into by NCAA? No matter how semantically clever the minister tried to be, it is clear 54 cars were bought, among which were two bulletproof cars; and money not appropriated was spent, whether it had translated into cash for the creditor or not.

As to the biggest issue surrounding the unlawful spending by NCAA, that is, the person for whom the bulletproof cars were bought, Ms Oduah gloatingly announced that the cars were neither registered in her name nor yet allocated to her office. Next time whistleblowers want to go public, let them wait for the murder to be committed, not the murderer to aim the gun. But more seriously, does anyone expect an official car to be registered in the name of the person to whom it is allocated? Would a cash-strapped agency like NCAA commit itself to nearly a billion naira in spending, let alone buy two bulletproof cars, without the express approval, if not instigation of the minister?

But by asking these questions, by doubting her fidelity to facts, by questioning her spending habits, and by denouncing the excesses of her ministry and its agencies, Ms Oduah dares to call us names in return, describing us as “purveyors of rot and corruption fighting back every inch of the way,” and dismissing us as a people perversely dedicated to fighting progress. In other words, we the victims are to blame for everything just so that Ms Oduah could continue to indulge her fancies and recreate a national carrier against common sense and every economic objection. Worse, she now has an army of tribal defenders who, like Niger Delta militants and Ms Oduah herself, are too blinded by sentiments to see the truth and pursue the cause of justice. If in the end, among the myriad agencies probing the scandal, we can’t find one to convict her and the offending officers in the agencies under the Aviation ministry; and if we can’t find a president scandalised enough by the rot to give Ms Oduah the treatment Julius Caesar gave his wife suspected of unfaithfulness, then it will be firmly time to give up on the country.

November 3, 2013
When will ASUU strike end?

Worried by the continuing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU)that is now in its fourth month, I decided last week to devote my column to the issue until it is resolved.

Having written about my own position on the matter recently, my decision is that I will publish divergent views by other concerned Nigerians.

It’s the least I can do to keep this issue in focus considering the deadlock in negotiations between the federal government and the union leaders.

Just when it seems that the issue will be resolved to save the country from the embarrassment of having its public universities shut for months, there is no indication of any resolution in sight.

Unlike those who can afford to send their children to private universities in the country or abroad, three of my children are caught in the web of the crisis.

One is in the final year and would have graduated by now but for the strike. Another is waiting to resume the second year, while the third is also waiting to be admitted into the same public university.

They have become very restless waiting endlessly to return to the campus and my wife has had to insist that we include the resolution of the strike in our prayer list.

We have been praying like I trust many others are doing in the hope that reasons will prevail soon and we will put this unfortunate development behind us.

Last week, I published a view by one Temisan Jackson titled Much Ado about agreement with ASUU which many readers understandably because of the logo of my column thought was mine.

The thrust of Jackson’s controversial piece which earned me some angry text messages are captured in the three paragraphs below:

“As it is, the government claimed to have met almost all the provisions in the 2009 agreement, but ASUU has a different narrative. However, in the midst of this chaos, we need to consider the students. The longer ASUU strikes, the more our economy suffers, and the greater the spell of idleness of our youths; and we know what that means…

“Does it make any sense to shut everything down and destroy the very system

ASUU is claiming to want to fix? Must industrial action always be the bargaining tool for ASUU? Isn’t it a betrayal of depth that our so-called intellectuals only use the force of brawn to drive home their point? Can’t negotiation be ongoing without destabilising the education system and sending the children packing out of school?

“For the sake of our children idling away at home, let each of the warring parties shift ground. Let’s not politicise the strike any further. ASUU should go back to the classroom and government should release the money it has promised to give.”

One of the texts I got said: “It’s strange that a man of your status is writing in this manner. Have you lost your conscience?”

Another reader, who, however, noted the attribution of the article to Temisan in the last paragraph, wrote: “Temisan’s article started very well with a historical background but ended woefully just trying not to pass blame on government. How is ASUU to blame for government’s irresponsibility?

“Call a spade a spade. It is a question of implementation and not negotiation. Let the government implement and pay the arrears, ASUU will then call off the strike.”

We don’t all have to agree on who is wrong and who is right on this issue.

What is not in doubt is that the nation’s educational sector has been messed up and the government has to wake up to its responsibility before it is too late.

For those who think the lecturers have their share of the blame in the university education rot, that is an issue that can be addressed later when the government does the “needful,” apologies to Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah.

November 3, 2013
Salami: Injustice carved in stone

On October 15, Justice Isa Ayo Salami retired from the Appeal Court as its fifth president, thus finally bringing to a close what many describe as the most infamous case of injustice perpetrated by the government and the society against a judicial officer. During a valedictory court session held in his honour last Thursday, the Justice recounted the torment he underwent in the hands of a scheming government and a conniving National Judicial Council (NJC) for refusing to compromise justice in the Sokoto Election Tribunal.

He didn’t need to say a word, though it was good he reminded us once again how the NJC turned coward and the Goodluck Jonathan presidency enacted what could easily pass as the most enduring wickedness ever in Nigeria’s judicial history. The injustice against Justice Salami is now etched in stone, not with hand, but by iconoclastic posterity which is certain to remember him for his judicial valour, and the Jonathan presidency and the NJC for their judicial infamy.

November 3, 2013
In Search of… good health

When heads come together in a well-meaning, genuine, round-table knocking, I believe that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

As I am writing this, there are many people in this country who are right now traversing Nigerian roads to attend the burial ceremony of one close relative or another, most of whom have died prematurely. Whenever I have heard that someone who had died and have asked what killed the fellow, I have often been told ‘Death’. How is it, I ask, that death can kill so… so… so… irrevocably when it has no hands? Turn left or right and you see your fellow Nigerians of all ages dropping off like… like… flies from all kinds of diseases! Just the other day, someone mentioned how she had been to an office one day in search of a contract and had chatted with everyone at each desk only to have gone back the week after and been told that one of them had died. Talk of a surprise.

No, I am not talking about life expectancy today; I am talking about how Nigerians are allowed to eat and die in ignorance with very little intervention from the body that should be needling them into long life. It’s often been said that ignorance is bliss, but no one has ever tried to sit down to calculate whether the level of bliss is commensurate with the ignorance that spurns it or even calculate the very high cost of blissful ignorance. When someone eats him/herself to death in ignorance, the costs are borne by the survivors who have to carry on in his/her absence. Sadly, some of them never recover.

Ultimately, everyone holds his health in his hands, with complete responsibility devolving on him or his family. However, when an individual takes decisions from a vantage point of blissful ignorance, then we are dealing with weighty matters indeed. Worse, he may even find himself not taking any decision because he cannot. So, leaving all issues concerning health in our hands is downright dangerous I say.

Look, there are two matters compounding this problem. The first is that what we know as the Nigerian diet is seriously in need of divine intervention. It is a given that the larger part of the nation’s population is rural based with little or no education; therefore, the likelihood is high that they would mostly be the victims of the diet situation. Now, you and I agree that what constitutes our diet on this hemmed-in island is mostly what you would call the sugars with little relief. What I mean by relief is this. In this here parts, when a child is given his dish, his face breaks out in grins larger than that of the Cheshire cat at the sight of what he believes will fill his stomach. That is the main concern; what will fill his stomach. So he, least of all, notices that the contents of his dish are designed to satisfy only one aspect of his ravenous hunger. He hardly notices that there are other parts of his body also badly in need of satiation; those parts in need of protein, vitamins and minerals. Too often, these are absent. On a steady stream of that starchy diet therefore, your young Nigerian child grows into an adult who is more developed in physical terms than in mental ones. Either way, officer, we are being cheated by our consummations. Now, I wonder indeed if I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, one notable result from this skewed consumption pattern is the rise in diseases. Now, doctors tell us that diabetes and hypertension are almost in epidemic proportions. Nearly every one of two people you meet in the city is swallowing something to fight something else. On the other hand, nearly every rustic you meet in the hinterlands does not even know he/she has anything to fight until that something comes to punch them in the face, belly, arm, leg, blood, head or any other susceptible part. That is when the doctor’s questions or admonitions concerning the badness of the culinary habits handed down from ancestors without end really sound like Greek. Then you don’t know who to pity more: the poor man who is obviously sick and does not understand why it is not his neighbour ‘doing him’, or the doctor who is vainly trying to marry two incompatible people – modern medicine and traditional man. Me, I stay in their middle: firmly on the fence.

The second matter is that there are just too many folk beliefs firmly ranged as arsenals against the doctor’s doctrines. Our rural folks do not believe that taking things like milk and eggs, etc., is morally good. One, they spoil the teeth and they encourage children to steal. Two, those things spoil children rotten. I have visited a number of villages having large, lush lands for growing things to take to the market while their children have skins that look like crocodile’s scales. The villagers just do not believe in feeding milk and eggs and chicken meat to their children. Come to think of it, neither do many chicken farmers. After raising their chickens, do they not cart the whole lot off to the economic market to sell, leaving the neighbours with only the scented whiffs of chicken droppings?

Interestingly, even many parents living in the city are not much different. Their credos revolve around preserving the children’s honour rather than their lives. Then people find that in the face of ill-health, honour is not as valuable a premium as good eating sense. Oh wait, there is this health insurance scheme that is as incomprehensible to me as I think it appears to many. The reason is that there are still many questions not yet answered. Many civil servants do not know the limit that can be spent on their health; many of us do not know what happens when big illnesses strike; who takes care of the rural folks who succumb to these big illnesses; etc. Right now, health insurance or not, most people are bearing their health expenses out of their pockets and the health care providers are smiling to the bank.

Doctors have sounded some warning bells on the rising phenomena called cancer, diabetes and hypertension, which, together are killing people off silently. Sadly, most people put such deaths down to ‘spiritual attacks’ or ‘wicked home people’. I am not here to argue with them though because everyone is entitled to a second opinion, so I am consulting my own crystal glass again. Yep, it tells me such people are suffering from severe cases of ‘deep, debilitating ignorance’.

Honestly, this country can help itself preserve the lives of its citizens. Even in advanced countries, the government still sponsors advertisements which advise citizens on the proper diet to follow, the consequences of wrong diets, as well as admonitions on taking the right stuff such as milk, eggs and greens. This country can borrow a leaf from that. There must be a way of letting us the uninformed people know why we should keep a wary eye on the calorie contents of our steaming, mouth-watering plates of well-rounded eba, amala, pounded yam and rice, and why we should also keep the other eye on the meat to be sure it does not walk off the plate in indignation about its tiny size.

How about we try radio jingles? They are catchy, cheap to produce and are definitely more far-reaching. Yeah, I know, in many cases it’s not the knowledge that is lacking, it’s the financial will. Even with that, there must be a way. All that this country – government, corporate world, people, etc. – needs is for heads to come together in a well-meaning, genuine round-table knocking. That is where we will find that doctors, jingles and pounded yam can indeed mix to translate to more health.

November 3, 2013
Akpabio’s prayers

Fresh from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and still overwhelmed by what he saw in the Holy Land, Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State has called for a day to be set aside as the National Day of Prayer. He probably means this in the symbolic sense. But whether a day or week of prayer, it is hard not to support such a call, for in a country so engrossed in religiosity, everyone truly needs prayers. Chief Akpabio’s effusive religiosity is, however, difficult to place in view of the scriptures he is very familiar with.

First is the fact that any prayer not preceded by deep contrition is completely sterile. And second is the plain fact that God would rather have obedience than sacrifice. The reason prayer in Nigeria remains sterile, and the country is in such a huge mess, is simply because leaders have either managed to draw a thick line between their wicked actions and God’s laws or inoculated their faith against propriety. What prayer, for instance, could a governor who rejected and subverted a small election among fellow governors offer to God without repentance?

Europe hardly prays, and many churches are empty, but their countries are so well run that life expectancy keeps rising. Let Nigeria’s pilgrims and praying governors take a cue from Europe rather than present us the atheistic dilemma of choosing between faith and works. Indeed, it is hard to understand why the enthusiastic profession of religiosity by governors and other elected officials has never for once lured them into the decency and propriety that many who do not fear God or man have long had the common sense and judiciousness to embrace.

November 3, 2013
This is no scare mongering

Nigerians know from history that PDP has no two means of winning elections other than by rigging.

In his electoral Beatitude in Jerusalem, President Jonathan promised a better electoral system saying, with glee, that ‘though we have challenges in our electoral system, at least, it is better than what it was yesterday.’ With due respect, Mr. President, I beg to disagree. A pattern of election rigging ahead of 2015 is emerging as any keen observer of recent elections in the country would readily affirm. And it is certainly not by happenstance; rather, it is a well choreographed test run of what will be put into play in the 2014 elections in both Ekiti and Osun, as well as, at least, the presidential election, come 2015. Of course, they will attempt to deploy the ‘Ondo template’ in Anambra where they will do everything to assist the president’s friend, Governor Peter Obi, to engineer the APGA candidate’s ‘victory’. Other candidates in that election, especially APC’s Senator Ngige, should, therefore, learn from Ondo and properly scutinise the voter’s register into which may have been imported hundreds of thousands of spurious names. They must insist on a public verification of the voters’ list which INEC tries its utmost to avoid whenever it is up to some dubious game. Examples of these recently compromised elections will further elucidate the point being made.

Commenting on the Delta Central Senatorial bye election which held recently as a result of the unfortunate death of Senator Pius Ewherido, Ede Dafinone , the DPP candidate in the election, has the following to say of the electoral process : ‘there was no election, as defined by our laws. The scale of impunity, assault, molestations and violence by the PDP, thugs/cultists and the supposed security agents was just unimaginable. The lopsided and partisan involvement of state security apparatuses in supporting the PDP and the brazen use of thugs to unleash violence and mayhem on our party members and the electorate is unprecedented. Thus there is now very serious concern for the progress of our nascent democracy and a diminishing hope for peace, unity and good governance in Nigeria, both now and in the immediate future’. The APC interim Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, corroborated this and named specific areas where all these were most pronounced, citing reports from APC agents on the field, who he said indicated that armed soldiers and policemen were deployed strategically to intimidate voters, while trailers and tankers were used to block the roads leading to opposition strongholds. A particularly dangerous dimension to PDP’s rigging methods was to suborn Youth Corps members to refrain from doing their legitimate electoral duties on the day, a fact which, in future, could expose these young persons to extreme danger or why would they take that particular day to protest non-payment of their allowances if they were not being instigated by those who have the most to lose?

On the heels of that and within two weeks of each other, a whole state governor, Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, also known to be the President’s friend , at least up until the last gubernatorial election in the state, had this to say of a local government election that was being held, unsuccessfully, for the third time simply because the PDP’s ‘Ogas at the top’ thought they could, as of old, rail road victory, in spite of the huge development the local government has enjoyed under the incumbent governor unlike when they were in charge: ‘As a Nigerian, I am embarrassed that the police are involved in carrying electoral materials, arresting EDSIEC returning officers and coercing them into a police station and converting it into a collation centre supervised by policemen imported from Abuja and Lagos in order to subvert the will of the people of Esan North East. As a civilised man, I felt ashamed that men in uniform at rather very senior levels supervised this criminal act of the police in yesterday’s (Tuesday) election. A federal minister and other federal functionaries, including Assembly men used their exalted positions, taking unfair advantage of the police assigned to protect them and deployed them for election purposes, detaining returning officers and treating them as if they were prisoners of war and, under duress, compelling them to sign fake results and police becoming Returning Officers writing result sheets.’

A comparison of the above quotes copiously corroborates the latest devilish devices of the PDP. But the question Nigerians must ask is this: if all these are happening in a state or local government election, what will they not do at the presidential? And that is not to forget the icing of the cake, the ‘Offa abracadabra’, where, in broad day light, the APC was robbed of its chairmanship victory even where everybody knows that the PDP could never have won.

Nothing worries me more than the fact that even if INEC, the electoral umpire, was not complicit, ab initio; it is completely acquiescent of the illegalities. The Delta Resident Electoral Commissioner, a woman who nearly reminds one of the Ekiti experience, could therefore say, without a hint of shame, that “there can never be 100 per cent perfection in any election conducted anywhere in the world’. Does that remind you of plane crashes as an act of God? Wonders, they say, will never cease. This was followed in the well-rehearsed choreography by the state Commissioner of Police, Ikechukwu Aduba, who said the bye-election was peaceful because his men were at all the voting centres to maintain law and order; the same policemen that stories abound were guarding ballot box snatchers.

Nigerians know from history that PDP has no two means of winning elections other than by rigging. They rig even those elections they should ordinarily have won. It is also well known that the much celebrated 2011 presidential election was massively rigged in the North as well as in the South-East where jumbo figures tumbled in.

In Ekiti where the first of the 2014 elections will hold, not a whimper has been heard from the colony of about 16 wannabe PDP candidates since they, minus former Governor Ayo Fayose, met on or about 30 July, 2013, to jointly sign a communiqué supporting a consensus candidate. It would appear the party has now located its consensus candidate and what remains to be done is find the ‘official’ PDP candidate, the caricature candidate, that is, who will be utterly dumped by the party as happened to Sola Oke in Ondo State. As in the Ondo case, Abuja would spare nothing; not money, tonnes of it, not the entire Nigerian security apparati, for the Labour candidate while, like Oke, their own caricature candidate, will be left hard and dry. The poor gentleman, Sola Oke, in case you had forgotten, even had to carry his own can at the tribunal as PDP treated him like a wet rag. That is what they are perfecting for Ekiti, and it will not matter whoever that candidate is, even if it is Oga’s former boss. But somebody should tell them they are mistaken. In the first place, they will have more than 70 percent of Ekiti people to contend with whatever their nearby South-West Coordinator-General may be telling them in Abuja. They should be told too, in case they cannot see, the tremendous developmental achievements the incumbent governor will, on campaign carnivals, take to the Ekiti people who are already very appreciative of his accomplishments, even in just three years. They should know that while the PDP has no record of achievement in the state, except you reckon that six governors in seven years is one, their real candidate on the Labour Party platform would have a hell of a time explaining off moral turpitude; at least, that of biting the fingers that fed him so generously and the very party that gave him an unmerited political leverage, even gifting him a House of Representatives’ ticket he never contested for, not to talk of winning, as well as explain why he thinks Iyin-Ekiti, the beautiful town of decent people, rich history and culture where he comes from, deserves to produce three governors for Ekiti State, having produced our revered father and the Omoluabi first Executive Governor of the state, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, even when an entire senatorial district in the state is yet to produce a single one and is crying marginalisation to high heavens. He will now officially be invited by us, his constituents, to personally identify those phantom constituency projects he has so elegantly claimed in publications but which the most due diligent search has not succeeded in locating; not bore holes, nor internet cafes, nothing. We, in Ekiti Central are certainly waiting for that 8th wonder of the world.

November 3, 2013
ASUU: A most irresponsible Fed Govt argument

UNTIL a few days ago, the federal government had done fairly well sustaining its unthinking indifference to the plight of tertiary education in the country and the ongoing Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike. It believed it had reached the end of its tethers in the negotiation with ASUU; it felt it had honourably discharged its obligations to tertiary education and could do no more; and it believed if anybody should be pressured, it ought to be the teachers whom it concluded had become heartless in their disregard of the pains the strike was causing everyone. In fact, the public, feckless and gullible as always, had started to feel dismayed that the wronged parties in the struggle to rebuild tertiary education were the government, which it believed had conceded so much by offering N140bn to the teachers, and the grounded students who are predictably torn between embracing the strike in their honest pursuit of quality education and enduring the frustrations of idling at home.

However, speaking at a press conference last Tuesday, the Information minister, Labaran Maku, suggested that those who negotiated the 2009 FG/ASUU agreement did not take into cognisance its cost implication before signing it. This is probably the concealed heresy some ministers and presidential aides had refused to voice out until Mr Maku daringly shouted it from the rooftops. The agreement, totalling some N1.5trn, has been peremptorily described by the co-ordinating minister of the economy as totally unrealistic; and even the Senate President, David Mark, has described those who negotiated and signed it as ignorant. Some members of the team that negotiated the agreement are still alive; I expect they will answer for themselves. At any rate, ASUU will not allow Messrs Mark and Maku to have the last word on an issue that is promising to become very controversial as the strike drags on.

If the acerbic Senator Mark, who has implausibly been mandated by the Senate to wade into the strike but appears to have made up his mind on what opinion to hold, was scurrilous and unsparing, Mr Maku was even more gratuitous. If, as he said, the federal government delegation didn’t work out the cost implication of the agreement, a fact hard to defend, who was Mr Maku, seeing that he is not a member of ASUU, to suggest that ASUU was also ignorant of the implications?

More importantly, after the federal government’s negotiating team reported back to the government the details of the agreement, why did the government not scrutinise the agreement before approving it, on the basis of which the 2009 strike was called off? The slothfulness now referred to in egregious terms by Messrs Mark and Maku is a distressing and worrisome indication of the incompetence that suffuses the Nigerian corridors of power, and explains why the country is comprehensively misgoverned. How many more agreements, policies and decisions have been taken with heedless indulgence and jauntiness by an inept federal government? And why is the government not discomfited by how easily and imperturbably it breaks and dishonours agreements?

Rather than be beguiled by the government’s argument and the misapplication of logic by Messrs Mark and Maku, the public should focus on the carefree refusal of the government to fulfil key parts of the agreement since 2009, not on the scarifying N1.5trn said to have been agreed between the government and ASUU to fund education over five years. Crucially, too, Nigerians should ask the Goodluck Jonathan government what great vision he has for education, a vision capable of motivating him into calling for both a huge national sacrifice and revolutionary efforts to remedy years of decline and decay over which he has self-righteously and repeatedly claimed exoneration.

October 27, 2013
Much ado about agreement with ASUU

Have you read the much talked about 2009 Federal Government’s agreement with ASUU? That sounds like the Holy Grail in the muddled public discourse on the ongoing strike by Nigerian varsity lecturers. It’s interesting to note that not many of those whose pro-ASUU noise rings louder than the rest of us have the faintest idea about what is contained in the contentious agreement. Not long ago, a popular online news portal published the 51-page long October 2009 agreement between the perennial warring parties. And I had to read through so as to have firsthand information on the vexing issues that have kept our children at home this long.

The birthing of the agreement started on Thursday, December 14, 2006, when the then Honourable Minister of Education, Dr. (Mrs.) Obiageli Ezekwesili, on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria inaugurated the FGN/ASUU Re-negotiation Committee comprising the FGN Re-negotiation Team led by the then Pro-Chancellor, University of Ibadan, Deacon Gamaliel O. Onosode (OFR), and the ASUU Re-negotiation Team led by the then President of ASUU, Dr. Abdullahi Sule-Kano.

At the meeting, the ASUU Team submitted a position paper titled “Proposals for the Re-negotiation of the 2001 Agreement between the Federal Government of Nigeria/Governments of States that own universities and the Academic Staff Union of Universities” which reflected the views of ASUU on various issues in the 2001 FGN/ASUU Agreement.

The single Term of Reference of the Committee was to re-negotiate the 2001 FGN/ASUU Agreement and enter into a workable Agreement. Both teams agreed that the following issues would form the agenda and focus for the Re-Negotiation: (a) Conditions of Service, (b) Funding, (c) University Autonomy and Academic Freedom, (d) Other Matters.

The Agreement was directed towards ensuring that there is a viable university system with one, rather than a multiple, set of academic standards; and whereas it is recognised by the Negotiating Teams that education is on the Concurrent List and by the Agreement, the Federal Government does not intend to and shall not compel the State Governments to implement the provisions of the Agreement in respect of their universities.

It was, however, recognised that the State Governments shall be encouraged to adopt the Agreement, as benchmarks, if they are to operate within the goals of achieving the same sets of academic standards for their institutions within Nigeria’s University System. The agreement included details such as the breakdown of lecturers’ salary structure, staff loans, pension, overtime, and moderation of examinations.

It was agreed that entitled academic staff shall be paid earned allowances at the rates undertaking in the listed assignments. It was also agreed that Decree 11 of 1993 and the Pension Reform Act (2004) should be amended. The above negotiation was done in a saner manner and an atmosphere devoid of rancour, politicking, and blackmailing in the name of enforcing contractual provisions. What we see now is a bloody duel between two elephants that leaves the grasses – our children – bleeding nonstop, and is further sending our already comatose education sector further down the abyss of primitiveness. As it is, the government claimed to have met almost all the provisions in the 2009 agreement, but ASUU has a different narrative. However, in the midst of this chaos, we need to consider the students. The longer ASUU strikes, the more our economy suffers, and the greater the spell of idleness of our youths; and we know what that means…

Does it make any sense to shut everything down and destroy the very system ASUU is claiming to want to fix? Must industrial action always be the bargaining tool for ASUU? Isn’t it a betrayal of depth that our so-called intellectuals only use the force of brawn to drive home their point? Can’t negotiation be ongoing without destabilising the education system and sending the children packing out of school? For the sake of our children idling away at home, let each of the warring parties shift ground. Let’s not politicise the strike any further. ASUU should go back to the classroom and government should release the money it has promised to give. Temisan is based in and writes from Warri, Delta State

October 27, 2013
Progressivism, between revolution and evolution: For Baba Omojola, 1938-2013

The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in several ways; the point however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach” [11th thesis]

The news of his death came to me from Eddie Madunagu through a terse text message that got to me at about 4 a.m. in the morning: “BJ, Baba Omojola is dead.” Incidentally, I had just gone to bed having been at work most of the night. I was tired, I was sleepy, but the news made me sit bolt upright. I had a mind to call Eddie right away, but the thoughts, the images of encounters with Baba over the decades and years flooded my mind, my psyche and I willingly submitted myself to them. For this reason, instead of calling Eddie I sent him a brief text message saying “A terrible loss. He never looked his age. He seemed deathless, he seemed indestructible!” Having sent this message to Eddie, I resumed my sad, brooding and introspective thoughts about Baba and what his life, thoughts and deeds had meant to the revolutionary struggles against injustice and inequality in our country, our continent and our world. After about an hour, I drifted to sleep and for this reason, it wasn’t until about five hours later that I was finally able to call Eddie and share with him the deep sense of loss and mourning that I think each of us felt both personally and as members of a generation of which Baba Omojola was both a beacon, a pathfinder and an organizer-extraordinaire.

Before ideology, doctrine, principle and organisation all of which mattered a great deal to him, Baba was a person who it was a privilege and a delight to meet and to know. For one thing, nature and/or genetics were very kind to him in that for almost all of his adult years, he looked considerably younger than his real age. I used to tease him and joke with him to reveal to me the secret of the “ajidewe” (magical potion or elixir of eternal youthfulness) that made him always look so much younger than his age. At a deeper level, the perpetual youthfulness that he exuded in body and spirit never left him. Indeed, it took some time for me and members of my generation who entered the movement of leftist, socialist activist politics in our country in the late 1960s to appreciate the fact that Baba was older than us, both in age and in the movement!

While we were yet to figuratively cut our milk teeth in Marxism and the workers’ and farmers’ struggles, Baba had been there with legendary figures like Pa Imoudou, Tunji Otegbeye, Eskor Toyo, Mokwugo Okoye and Raj Abdalla. He had personally and directly participated in international currents of the worldwide anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutions that we had only read about in books. And yet in spite of this rich background of experience and education, Baba was a profoundly humble, unassuming and approachable man. He was hospitableness and generosity personified. He hosted, often at his own expense, innumerable public and private, open and secret, legal and extra-legal meetings of the Left. He was one of a few, if indeed not the only one, who could call a meeting of all the factions and tendencies of the Nigerian Left in the 70s and 80s and every group would respond positively to the call.

And yet, Baba was ardent and passionate in ideology, doctrine and organisation. Anyone who knows anything at all about Marxism and socialism in their incarnations as revolutionary movements and organizations knows that this means factionalism and divisiveness often on an extraordinarily bitter and self-defeating scale. Perhaps unknown to the Nigerian state and unknown also to the generality of Nigerians, Marxists and socialists in the country in the 60s, 70s and 80s were divided and spilt along the fault lines of this constant and perpetual factionalism of the Left in nearly all countries of the world. Baba taught all of us in the Left in Nigeria an invaluable lesson in the necessity of overcoming this historic and normative organizational disease of the Left. What do I mean by this?

Baba Omojola was a member of the Third International, the controlling formation of all Trotskyite-Marxist movements and comrades in the world. He was the Editor of a publication known as “Mass Line”, the most prominent Marxist journal in the country at the time. In the journal, Baba and his comrades stuck to the Trotskyite line and everyone on the Left knew this. But beyond mandatorily holding on to the official doctrinal line, Baba opened the pages of the journal to debates with other factions, other tendencies of the Left in the country, something to which Trotskyites in other parts of the world are not usually predisposed. The upshot of this was the fact that while ideology and doctrine definitely meant a great deal to Baba, it meant a great deal more to him to bring living, breathing, suffering and struggling human beings together whatever ideas they profess as long as they were willing to contribute to the great struggles for the betterment of society in general and the lot of the most oppressed in particular. The three major All Socialist Meetings of the 70s at which virtually all the groups and individuals on the Left in the country were represented were convened by him. [It was while I was driving back from Kano at the second of these meetings that I had an accident at Kontangora that nearly took my life in 1976] Nobody, absolutely nobody was more dedicated than Baba to creating a viable and strong political party of the Left that would contain all factions and tendencies. Look into every single attempt to found such a party in our country and you will find that Baba was there as a moving spirit. He never tired, he never relented, he never gave up on the attempt. And when that effort failed, he went into parties and organizations that were bourgeois in social location but liberal and egalitarian in ideology and orientation. If revolution did not seem to be coming as passionately as he wanted it to, he looked to evolution, to gradual, incremental steps by which the same goals could be achieved. He was a radical and progressive humanist for all seasons.

It is against this background that we must assess the popular view on the Left that in his last decades and years and especially after the nullification of the June 12, 1993 electoral victory of M.K.O. Abiola and the Social Democratic Party, Baba subordinated the class struggle to the national question. What this means is, simply, that he became an “ethno-nationalist” for whom the fate of the Yoruba “nation” within Nigeria was of more importance than the common fate of the oppressed of all the ethnic, regional and religious communities in the country. The fact that he was such a prominent figure in PRONACO definitely added much fuel to this view for among all the major progressive groups in the country, PRONACO it is which is totally and unapologetically committed to the “national question”, to the cause of parity and true federalism among all the federating ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Beyond PRONACO, even Leftists and socialists of his generation like the late Ola Oni and Bala Usman, among so many others, are also said to have taken this route of the primacy of the national question over class struggle.

In my humble opinion, I think that the matter is a little more complicated in the case of Baba Omojola. I think to the very end, he kept all possible avenues to progress, justice and equality in our country and our continent open. We know, for instance, that in recent years PRONACO was not the only organization and forum in which he was active. He was a member of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) and contributed to debates that informed its periodic bulletins on the state of the country and its working peoples across the length and breadth of the land.

Baba Omojola was born into and came of age in the colonial age of imperialism. He saw with great clarity that not everyone, not every group in colonial Nigeria and Africa suffered under foreign rule; he saw in fact that some of the colonized benefited from it. He saw that colonialism drew much of its force and hegemonic authority from capitalism, just as slavery had also been closely aligned to capitalism in its mercantilist phase. That’s what led him to Marxism and socialism. In the postcolonial and neocolonial Nigeria and Africa of his middle-aged years, he saw that capitalism in his homeland had evolved worldwide to a different stage and had regressed in his country and continent into a new form of cannibalistic predatoriness. Correspondingly, his Trotskyite Marxism and socialism became more heterodox, more flexible. In his last years and decades under neoliberal global capitalism in its rise and fall, he saw his country and continent taking one step forward and two or three steps backward. On the very last day of his time with us here, he was still struggling, still trying to work out how best to proceed with head unbowed and spirit undaunted. We will miss him dearly but we take great comfort in the knowledge that he was here.

October 27, 2013
The N255m cars Stella may still ride

For the embattled aviation minister, Israel trip may turn the tide

Of all the government officials that have commented on what some people are beginning to call Oduahgate, even when no court of competent authority has pronounced that there is any such gate properly so called, it is Captain Fola Akinkuotu, the director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) that seems to me to be addressing the real issue; that is why government is shaking on the matter. Whilst many of us are upset about the fact that N255million of our money was spent to buy two bullet-proof BMW cars for the powerful Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, Capt Akinkuotu is worried about how the information got to the press. Not even the alleged inflation of the cost of the cars, the true market value of which was put at about N72million, is of any significance to him.

Indeed, he is not alone in this concern about leakage of what seems to him an official secret. If his press conference at the Ministry of Aviation headquarters in Abuja on October 18 was anything to go by, even the Federal Government is worried about it. Hear him: “So we are in the process of trying to find the source of this leakage and I am very concerned about it. Because this information may look trivial but there are other information that we have that are confidential and it is only fair for us to respect the confidentiality of information. I am not saying that they broke into our office, but they obtained the information illegally.”

It is difficult to fault Capt Akinkuotu’s claim. When, the other time Channels Television broke the story of how about 50 police trainees share one fish head, President Goodluck Jonathan’s initial shock was not about the scandalous happenings in the Police College; he was more particular about how the information got to the media. Talk of different folks, different strokes.

I can only imagine the stress Capt Akinkuotu has been going through since this jealously guarded secret leaked. His confusion is palpable. This was a man who said he was ‘not saying that this particular information should not be put in the public domain’. For sure, those we refer to as ‘too knows’ in the country would want to ask why Capt Akinkuotu never made the matter public in the first place if he and his agency or boss had nothing to hide about the transaction. That is a major disadvantage of being a public official in Nigeria.

You can imagine a big man like Akinkuotu having to take his time to explain to ordinary Nigerians the A-Z of the transaction. I can imagine how the (poor?) man would have felt speaking to common newshounds just because his agency splashed N255m on bullet-proof cars to protect the honourable minister overseeing his agency. And people who know next-to-nothing about how government works here and how hardworking government functionaries like Ms Oduah have become an endangered species have been running their mouth. Now, what do they expect the man to do in the face of imminent danger to the honourable minister? Fold his arms and pretend not to know such threats exist? Haba! Even the scriptures tell us to be our brother’s keeper.

Honestly, I feel pained about the issue because I have observed a pattern with some Nigerians who seem to have sworn never to want to see beautiful women making waves in government. But thank God, President Jonathan is not disturbed by such beer parlour condemnations. He has blessed his government with quite a few amazons, and has at least three of them with whom he is well pleased. I won’t name them in any particular order, first because I am not competent to do that; but more importantly because they are all powerful in their own rights. We have the finance minister, Prof Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who doubles as coordinating minister of the economy. She was ‘donated’ to us by the World Bank. We also have the Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke; and of course, Ms Oduah. Of the ‘triumvirate’, Okonjo-Iweala appears the least blemished.

Mrs Alison-Madueke, is the most talked-about; she seems to have more than nine lives as she has survived criticisms that would have sent less influential ministers packing long ago. Talk about the fuel subsidy scandal. Or, the report that she spent N2billion travelling in private jets in two years? No minister with one life can get away with any of these. Then, Ms Oduah that many Nigerians have been calling for her sack over the parlous state of our aviation sector. None of such criticisms moved President Jonathan to get them the boot.

Isn’t it a rare privilege, therefore, for the NCAA boss to have such a woman as his boss? Now, if you are in Capt Akinkuotu’s shoes, won’t you feel highly honoured appending your signature to documents requesting for bullet-proof cars for such an influential woman in the land?

And, to leave no one in doubt about the bile in the Oduahgate, some people are already helping Ms Oduah to calculate how many years she may have to spend in prison alongside those involved in the purchase of the cars, for allegedly violating the federal budget and procurement laws. They say she is entitled to between three to 10 years in prison! Haba! Why not wait until she is adjudged guilty of a crime? Now, it is these same people who want the honourable minister jailed that are accusing the government of not appreciating the value of human resource. Those who designed our prisons couldn’t have made them for such a paragon of beauty. There cannot be a worse way to waste ‘woman’ resource.

But, when did we become such sadists in the country? Are those calling for the minister’s crucifixion saying because the bullet-proof cars were not included in the budget, they should not have been bought, even when there are threats to the minister’s life as a result of the good works she is doing? Should they wait for the minister’s enemies to kill her and the government will then be compelled to issue the usual obituary, ‘the enemies have done their worst’, or ‘gone too soon’? And the Police the usual threat: ‘we’ll fish out the killers’? When did we become such sadists as to want people who had already smiled to the bank to go back there weeping and wailing?

This may not be the best of times for Ms Oduah. But, in spite of what seems an encircling gloom, I still see hope for the minister; it is Capt Akinkuotu I fear for. There are many good things working for Ms Oduah. The one I have not mentioned was her role in the Neighbour-to-Neighbour campaign for the president when he was seeking our votes in 2011. Since a neighbour in need is a neighbour indeed, she can as well invoke this, too.

When all else fails, and it seems President Jonathan wants to play to the gallery, the minister should play the joker: she should seek audience with her boss, kneel down before him and ensure that there is eye contact between them. That is the only ‘incantation’ needed. Her eyes should carry both the remorsefulness of a penitent sinner as well as the awe of all that she is carrying. Such eye contact works wonders. It is thicker than blood. It is only the ordinary folks that would not understand. And that is why they remain what they are: ordinary folks. Since both the minister and the President and others are still in Israel praying for Nigeria, the President is still fresh with anointing that may go bad if he does not learn to forgive and forget.

October 27, 2013