The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

  • Bago’s windfall

    Bago’s windfall

    Corps members posted to Niger State are in for a rewarding experience with N200,00 bonus each offered them by the governor.

    Batch B, Stream 1 corps members posted to Niger State who reported for orientation on July 2 have every cause to be happy. This is because the state governor, Mohammed Bago, has showered each of them with a N200,000 bonus.

    He also promised to provide water and toilet facilities in the temporary NYSC Camp in the state adding that he would kick-start the building of a new NYSC Camp with N5 billion.

    “I have given orders to build more toilets, drill five boreholes in this temporary camp. I will donate 20 cows and one trailer load of rice for the welfare of the corps members in camp”, the governor announced.

    Despite the present state of the Naira, N200,000 bonus is a windfall in the hands of youths, some of whom may never have received the alert of such an amount in their personal accounts before.

    “I was told there are 1,600 corps members in this batch. I am crediting each of your accounts with N200,000. This will enable you get comfortable to stay in Niger State. This is to show you that there is prosperity in Niger State. I will do my best to ensure that corps members enjoy serving here”, the governor said.

    Expectedly, the announcement was greeted with loud cheers by the corps members. Two hundred thousand naira will cover the N33,000 that the Federal Government pays them monthly for a whole six months! So, who is paying the corps members?

    Bago said the money was to encourage any of the corps members willing to stay back in the state after the compulsory one year national service. Who knows?He might have succeeded in winning some converts. This is not only because of the money but also because of other goodies that came in his package.

    The governor said any corps member who ventures into agriculture in the state can earn as much as N500,000 monthly. He also announced automatic employment for corps members in the medical and health field.

    Of course, some other state governments might have done greater or similar things for individual corps members in the past. I commend such state governments even as I urge them not to rest on their oars. I also urge those that are yet to put smiles on the faces of corps members that are unlucky to be posted to their states to have a change of heart.

    The truth of the matter is that some state governments, just like some establishments, don’t have any regard for corps members. They see them at

    best as persona non grata who imposed themselves on the states or establishments, and treat them as such. Even if they must reject them, they should do so courteously.

    I have had cause to call for the cancellation of the scheme because of the terrible experiences that some corps members underwent in some states, especially as regards insecurity. The fact is; I easily get emotional when lives are lost. I become the more so when many of us tend to see the deaths as mere statistics. It becomes particularly touching for me when such casualties are corps members serving their fatherland in places that are far from their own, without adequate preparation for them by governments at all levels. Like asking them to go participate in elections in places where they do not know how to escape in times of trouble, knowing full well that elections are do-or-die battles in this part of the world.

    Granted that death can come wherever, whenever. But when it is avoidable, it becomes the more painful to me. It is parents who lose their children in the course of such experiences that can better describe their situation.

    Even the Federal Government that set up the scheme is not doing much by way of encouragement, to make the service year memorable. Take for instance the N33,000 that it is paying the corps members per month. How does anyone live on that in our economy? And to think that that is the only money that it owes them monthly apart from the bicycle allowance of N6,400 and another pittance at the end of the service that it pays one-off!

    If the Federal Government itself treats the corps members with such disdain, how does it get better deal for them from their places of primary assignment? When the owner of a dress tramples on it; it is telling other persons that they can tear such dress without compunction. Yoruba people say you don’t sell your people cheap and expect others to buy them at reasonable price.

    Without doubt, the Yakubu Gowon administration that founded the NYSC in 1973 had very good intentions. The main aim was to unite Nigerians who were just coming out from a two-and-a half-year bitter civil war (July 6, 1967- January 15, 1970). So, there was need to bring together the various ethnic groups again. Corps members are supposed to be posted to places other than their own to enable them live with other Nigerians and, in the process, get to understand them better. If, again, as the Yoruba people say, we don’t return from court and remain the best of friends, we can imagine how much efforts we need to put into making people just emerging from our kind of fatricidal war friends, once again.

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    But the Gowon administration put resources to work for the corps members, to enable them enjoy the national service. Of course we can say there was so much money then. So, corps members were also pampered.

    But attention on the youth corps members is now dwindling. Otherwise, how do some government officials feel comfortable that children of fellow Nigerians can survive on N33,000? We keep hearing that the money would be reviewed upwards. When will that be? Can our public officials say the N33,000 is all their own children get while going on national service? If this is not so, how do they expect other children to survive on this meagre allowance? I know how much I spent to transport my daughter posted to Cross River State last year. The so-called bicycle allowance could not have ‘bicycled’ her to anywhere. In other words, it is parents that are subsidising the corps members. And this after going through hell to see them through tertiary education. Yet, it is government that sends them on national service. How do we reconcile that?

    The load on the poor is too much. Someone needs to lighten it. Unfortunately, people hardly remember this aspect while listing the woes of the poor in Nigeria. If government pays someone who has finished tertiary education N33,000 monthly in this economy and posts that person to far-flung places, how does it expect them to cope, without the males joining bad gangs and the females turning to prostitution to survive, if there is no parental support?

    I know the argument would now be that there are some bureaucratic bottlenecks delaying the upward review. Or there is no money. With due respect; this is unfair. No bureaucracy should delay such reviews because our leaders don’t allow such delays in the path of their own comfort. Youth corps members who began the service year as relative saints shouldn’t be allowed to become something else in the course of the service due to government’s uncaring attitude to their welfare. When that happens, it is the parents that suffer the consequences because it is the same government that would hold the corps members responsible for crimes they never knew until they began youth service.

    There is no doubt that the allure of national service is gone. And I don’t know if it can ever be retrieved. I know the way we looked forward to the service year when we graduated in the mid-1980s. We met the remnant of the enjoyment in the country, and, by extension, that of the national service, we never experienced a quarter of the challenges that youth corps members go through today. I remember as a youth corps member I was among the elite class that the vendor would reserve a copy of ‘Newswatch’ magazine for in the entire Yola town then.

    I remember too that myself and another youth corps member who was among five of us sharing a five-bedroom flat provided by the state government would jointly buy a carton of Peak Milk, and share into two. How many corps members can buy a dozen tins of milk today?

    I served in the then Gongola State at a time Maitatsine was causing havoc in tbe state and some parts of the north, but my parents didn’t bother because it wasn’t as serious and pervasive as today’s Boko Haram and banditry ravaging several parts of the north.

    It is against this background that gestures like those of Governor Bago become commendable. They bring back fond memories of those things that made graduates look forward with excitement to the national service.

    Well, some people may wonder how well Governor Bago treats the state’s civil servants if he is ready to pamper youth corps members as he has promised. Some even say he is not a particularly nice man, citing as recent example his alleged order to his security details to assault an Islamic cleric at a public function.

    The governor has to compliment his gestures to the corps members with an equally robust relations with the civil servants for industrial harmony in the state. Otherwise, the regular workforce would see the corps members as rivals and this would not augur well for the state. It would also send a signal to the corps members who intend to stay behind that the present princely treatment is not likely to continue when they join the civil service.

    Several states in the north used to retain some specialists like doctors, nurses, even good teachers after youth service, in line with their needs. If this is the governor’s intention, fine. But he must be seen to be good to those in service now to make the carrot he is dangling before youth corps members who intend to stay behind after the national service truly alluring.

    He also needs to work on his human relations. He needs to be careful about the uses to which he deploys his powers because power is transient.

    Still, it is kudos to him for the ‘naira rain’ he is showering on the corps members in his state.

  • Land (VII)

    Land (VII)

    The situation in respect of land in South Africa is so complex that it almost defies journalistic treatment. Indeed it does but it should still be interrogated, if only because it exists. A good look at it will expose one to the possibility of a mental breakdown in most people, especially those who are overburdened with conscience or empathy. The story of the black people of South Africa is the story, the continuing story of ruthless exploitation of the majority of the owners of land but who have not only been dispossessed of the land in which their ancestors back to several generations are buried but have been enslaved in situ by strangers who form a minority.

    Not only have the omo onílè been deprived of their land, they have been robbed of their spirituality, the property that connects them to the land which they have lost. Dispossessed of everything conferred on them by the land of their birth, they have thus become rootless in that land on which they cannot now make any demand, reasonable or not.

    The Boer war, marked as it was by prodigious bloodletting was long and uncommonly bitter especially among the  Boers who lost wives, children, property and a great deal of self-esteem but retained the colour of their skin and that has turned out to be the most important aspect of this complex equation. When the fighting stopped and the former combatants got together for peace talks, it turned out to be a conclave of hyenas which tore the absent original owners of the land to pieces which were small enough to be comfortably swallowed. The Boer Republics were incorporated into a contraption which together with the Cape colonies became known as the Union of South Africa which was absorbed into the British Empire as a self governing territory which like Canada, Australia and New Zealand were said to have Dominion status within the British Empire. What they had in common was the whiteness of the outer covering of their rulers. The Boers, because of the superiority in number among the accredited voters within the Union retained political relevance, whilst the British were hoisted to the top of the extremely lucrative commanding heights of the economy, controlling banking and mining sectors. This made it possible for them to seize control of the modern industrial sector responsible for wealth creation within the Union. The blacks, who were terrorised in the conduct of the war and suffered a great deal of hardship were denied any form of acknowledgement as a human presence even though they could not have been absent in the consciousness of their tormentors. After all, capitalism must have it’s labourers, those whose productivity is needed to drive the machinery of exploitable production. In the end, they were only recognised as units of labour on the farms, down the mines and in their domestic establishments as care givers and cleaners. They were grudgingly allowed to be seen but never heard. Whatever potential they had for anything else was not recognised let alone allowed to develop to any significant extent. Whatever talent they had was allowed to wither and die because they were not even recognised as being human.

    My primary school contemporaries will no doubt remember that one of the most eminent historical figures we were introduced to all those many years ago was Cecil Rhodes. We were told of his exploits in the field of commerce and politics and those qualities were backed up by the incontrovertible fact of having not one but two African countries named after him. The truth however is that he was a rapacious robber baron who wilfully stole African lands in his capacity as the controller of a commercial enterprise which ruthlessly built up a monopoly in the trading of gold and diamonds. His company, the British South African Company, had influence beyond South Africa. Early on in its career, the company took its search for precious metals across the Limpopo River into Matebeleland, signing spurious treaties with local chieftains all throughout what became known as Southern Rhodesia and further on into the copper belt which became Northern Rhodesia.

    The main difference between North and South Rhodesia was that white colonisation was minimal in the North, whereas a gang of adventurers calling themselves the Pioneers who moved up from South Africa in those internal occupied drawn wagons moved into and occupied Southern Rhodesia, seized land from the indigenous people and proceeded to enslave them on the commercial farms which they had set up. It is the descendants of these notorious land grabbers that were invited a while ago by some historically ignorant governor to set up farms in Kwara State. For all I know they are still on their farms but I have no news of their exploits in Nigeria.

    The land available to those interlopers in Rhodesia was very rich, labour cost very little and profits were high, so high that by the sixties, the whites in Southern Rhodesia enjoyed the highest standard of living of any group of people anywhere in the whole wide world. In their intoxicated state of satiation, the whites, determined to hang on to their criminal perquisites for ever, announced what they called a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain because the agitation for majority rule was getting too loud to be ignored. They had come to the conclusion that they had to consolidate their hold on the country that that had stolen. Only a few years before, the British Prime Minister on an African tour had warned of a wind of change which was blowing through Africa and threatening to blow the whites off the continent. The leader of that rebellion in Rhodesia, Ian Smith, at the height of the war of black liberation which followed the declaration of independence stated matter of factly that he did not believe in majority rule, that as far as he was concerned there would no majority rule in Southern Rhodesia for another thousand years which can be interpreted as no majority rule forever. Even as he spoke however, African freedom fighters were waging a bitter war against his lilly white government, the result of which led to the independence of Zimbabwe from white minority rule, much earlier than a thousand years, indeed, very much within his lifetime.

    As a monopoly capitalist and founder of the British African company as well as De Beers, the largest diamond trading company in the world, Cecil Rhodes took very vast tracts of African land and swallowed them whole. As the leader of government of the Cape colony for six years until 1902, Cecil Rhodes systematically disenfranchised Africans depriving them of any rights to vote, a right which some of them had been exploring for some fifty years. By 1902 when the Boer War ended, there were no black voters in the newly formed Union of South Africa. From that point on the country was ruled exclusively by the white minority and the blacks lost not only their vote but also their voice. They were not even ascribed any fraction as was the case when the American constitution was written more than a hundred years before when the consensus was that Africans were three-fifths of their white counterparts. The Africans however did not relent in their effort to participate in the government of their nation but without access to land and other forms of power, their efforts were doomed to failure and they duly failed. This is why they founded the African National Congress as long ago as 1912 to be the vehicle of their fight for political relevance. They made little or no headway in this direction for close to one hundred years but undaunted they fought on until they formed the government of a new South Africa as that wind of change which Macmillan warned the whites about finally swept them away in 1994.

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    The political situation in South Africa worsened for the blacks over the next fifty years or so until 1948 when the heavens collapsed on them and buried them completely. That year the National Party, the political arm of the Boer nation, won the general election and formed a new government. One which was determined to push through what they described as a system of apartheid. Conceived by professors in the Department of Philosophy of Stellenbosch University and enthusiastically endorsed by the elders of the Dutch Reformed Church, apartheid was designed to pull all the constituent races apart in every sense and force the black majority into less than ten percent of available land in sterile areas which they called Bantustans. Black people were only allowed in white areas as workers who were working in white establishments and had to carry a pass on them at all times to testify to their identity as well as their place of work. The pass laws applied to males but they were soon extended to women who protested vehemently and publicly. In the township of Sharpville in March 1960, a demonstration against the pass laws which started peacefully got out of hand and the inexperienced policemen present fired into the crowd killing 69 people on the spot, some of them were shot in the back as they ran away from the scene. This incident opened the eyes of the world to the evil of apartheid but it took another thirty-four years for this evil to be exorcised. Even though Sharpville drew sharp and unfavourable attention to South Africa, it did not deter the Boers from driving on relentlessly with their agenda. It was at this time that Mandela was put on trial for treason and locked up in the notorious Robben island prison. He did not breathe the air of freedom for more than twenty-seven years.

    The real issue in South Africa was land and the use of it for economic purposes. It was even more so when the land was found to yield large quantities of gold and diamonds. These minerals helped to turn a slow, agricultural society into a searing hot industrial society in need of large numbers of compliant workers who have no share in the wealth that they were creating for a minority within the society. In South Africa as it was or actually it still is in the United States, the people who tend to get locked out have a dark skin, more as a means of identification than anything else. It has been argued that before Africans became trade goods to be bought and sold like chattel and owned body and soul, the issue of racial inferiority was not taken seriously. As soon as blacks came on the market as slaves, everything changed and men began to look for ways and means of explaining why other men can and should be used as slaves. The white people desperately looked around for the justification for African slavery and claimed to have found it in their Bible. First, the so called God’s people were slaves in Egypt so, it should be alright if black people are made to go through the same ordeal to improve the race. Then of course, there is that contorted story of Ham, the progenitor of all black people who was cursed by God to serve others. It is even claimed that it is the wish of God that some people are born for the sole purpose of being slaves. The reason why this should be taken as true is not clear but such issues are never clear. They have to be accepted as articles of faith.

    Looking for and putting on my science cap for once, I can say with all confidence that those reasons given are all spurious nonsense. There is only one human race and anyone who says otherwise is not only ignorant but is also a fool and a liar. After all, their beliefs are based on a lie. All those Stellenbosch professors were windbags whose sole purpose on earth was to mislead their fellow men and goad them into committing awful crimes against humanity. As for those stuffed up priests of the Dutch Reformed Church, they spread a doctrine of greed and earthly comforts which gave comfort to their flock; the nervous policeman who opens fire on crowds of black people, the mine owner who denied his worker a living wage, the stern judge who passed the death sentence on people without sin against man or God, the politicians who wilfully withheld education from generations of competent black people, the hangman who pulled the lever which sent men into execution pits dangling from a long piece of oiled hemp rope and even those who stood by and enjoyed unearned privileges just because they have a white skin and precious little else. Under the National Party, the whole of South Africa was a giant crime scene and an affront to humanity in the country and everywhere else. And so, the struggle continues.

  • Atiku, the Minna and Daura visits and 2027

    Atiku, the Minna and Daura visits and 2027

    Whatever anyone thinks of the Minna and Daura trips of former vice president Atiku Abubakar, he is unmoved. On June 19, according to his own post on X (Twitter), he merely paid Sallah visits to former military rulers Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar in Minna, and on June 22 to ex-president Muhammadu Buhari in Daura. Expatiating a little further, Alhaji Atiku’s aide, Paul Ibe, described the Daura, Katsina State, trip as a condolence visit to the family of former governor Lawan Kaita, with a detour to ex-president Buhari’s residence. There is no consensus on what the visits were all about, especially in light of the high-powered retinue that accompanied him on the three trips, the Daura visit being the most notable. However, consensus, if not common sense, is gradually growing that the visits were chiefly political, with an eye on Presidential poll 2027.

    Alhaji Atiku‘s Daura visit was in company with former Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal and former Adamawa State governor Jibrilla Bindow. A few newspapers quoted some unnamed sources close to the former vice president as suggesting that the visits were strategic political moves towards Poll 2027. The former vice president would scoff at anyone describing the visits as strategic. But realpolitik? Perhaps. For the former presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it was really an open, unapologetic, in-your-face visit. He is unbothered by however the visit is canonised or draped in conspiracy. He was not really a fan of ex-president Buhari with whom he fell out in 2017, making scathing remarks about his first term and leadership competence. And he had once brutally outplayed Gen. Babangida in a 2010 PDP shadow primary to pick a consensus aspirant for the North towards the 2011 presidential election. Despite the controversy and misgivings about what Alhaji Atiku’s 2024 Sallah visits were all about, it can be safely assumed that they have political undertones.

    The former vice president is all about ambition without tactics. He does not pick his fights well, burns his bridges without reflection, and lacks both the guile and strategy to upstage his opponents in national polls. He has contested the presidency many times without success. In 2003, while still vice president, he scorched the snake but didn’t kill it, and he paid dearly for his vacillations. His best chance was last year’s poll, but he was pigheaded about his choices, and again paid a huge price. No candidate ever snatched defeat from the jaws of victory as brilliantly as he did in the 2023 presidential poll. It was clear he had no great footing in the PDP before the poll, having earlier traipsed around other parties before retracing his steps in the nick of time. Now, he has seemed to master the art of conducting opposition politics without doing anything to heal the rifts in his party or even repair the party’s conservative platform, or imbue it with a coherent ideology consistent with his own eclectic ideas of running organisations, sustaining personal relationships, and ruling a country.

    It is his right to run for the presidency at any age, even after crossing the nonagenarian mark. But if he ever hopes to win, there are a few basics he must respect. One is loyalty to party and respect for its platform. Two is cobbling together a network of contacts and allies in nearly all of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. And three is developing the intuition for victory. Alhaji Atiku has so far been unable to remedy his failings in these three significant areas, and now he has embarked on junkets to former leaders’ houses in the hope of securing their endorsements or at least acknowledgements. It is unlikely the three former leaders he visited a week and more ago will endorse him. One or two may okay his ambition privately, but they won’t risk it openly because it would be impolitic. Two years ago, Gen Babangida, waxing lyrical as they say, wrote off Alhaji Atiku as too old to run or win. The aspirant will be 80 at the next poll, and is already languid and shuffling. Who will endorse him?

    Read Also: Atiku’s plan to unseat Tinubu in 2027, mere wishful thinking – DOJ

    Gen Abubakar, having secured an uncanny reputation for making the right leadership choices, especially following his smart and rapid transition programme culminating in the 1999 elections, has patented the art of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Now ensconced in a national committee for peace, he is unlikely to be of any significant help to the former vice president, preferring to stay above the fray where he will keep nurturing his dignity as a sage. Ex-president Buhari has long memory; he rarely forgets slights, not to say wholehearted insults and attacks, nor does he easily forgive. He has learnt to be accommodating, even playing politics and associating with former enemies, as his presidency showed; but if it rests on him alone, he will heartily withhold his support for a traducer as remorseless and Machiavellian as Alhaji Atiku. Besides, despite enormous pressure, and regardless of his considerable waffling, the former president managed to resist the temptation to side with one aspirant or the other before the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary in 2022. He was unsure of everything and anything, and would not commit himself. Worse, he ended up being apathetic before and during the 2023 presidential race, occasionally letting himself be beguiled by some other candidates, including, surprisingly and secretly, Alhaji Atiku. He will be a worse ditherer now. Having got his fingers burnt once, he won’t let it happen a second time. He has only one lifetime.

    Overall, Alhaji Atiku is letting his primordial politics show up early in all its ugly details again. He made recourse to ethnic politics in the last presidential poll, in company with Senator Tambuwal, and in deep antipathy towards party chieftains like former Rivers State governor Nyesom Wike. Incredibly, he is again courting northern leaders in a display of regional politicking that illustrates the leitmotif of his politics, not to say his ethnic exceptionalism which made him bitterly resentful of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu victory in the last polls. He is rumoured to be inclined to running for the presidency in 2027 with ex-governor Peter Obi, the former Labour Party presidential candidate who emblematised religious politics. There are many errors Alhaji Atiku should correct before the next poll, assuming his ambition is not thwarted before then. But he won’t pay attention. Instead, he will scour the hottest part of hell to cobble together what he thinks will be a winning formula or coalition. As far as he is concerned, however, every such formula or coalition is a chimera.

  • Kenyan tax revolts and Nigeria

    Kenyan tax revolts and Nigeria

    It is not surprising that the lingering bitterness that still trail Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election has led some sympathisers of those who lost out to suggest the replication of the Kenyan tax hike revolts in Nigeria. Last week, Kenyan youths, self-characterised as Generation Z, took to the streets to confront President William Ruto‘s proposed 2024 Finance Bill. For a financial year that runs from July to June, the bill was planned to structure the East African country’s 2024-2025 revenue and expenditure projections. In one intense and riotous week of violent protests involving some 35 of the country’s 47 counties, the youths battled security forces, suffered casualties, and finally compelled President Ruto to completely disavow the bill, instead of tinkering with it as he initially promised when the protests broke out. Comparisons are said to be odious, but Nigerian instigators inspired by the effectiveness of the Kenyan revolt long for a similar revolt to break out in the country. Could they determine how far the revolt would go, given the vagaries of Nigerian history?

    Kenya, like Tanzania, has never witnessed a coup d’etat. The closest they got to that tragic option was the 1982 coup attempt against the Daniel Arap Moi administration. It is not clear whether Kenya’s insulation from coups had anything to do with the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952-1960 against British colonial administration, or whether the country was just plain lucky. It is, however, instructive that while last week’s Kenyan youths’ revolt lasted, they only went as far as calling for the resignation of President Ruto. Of course the protests have not been completely smothered, and it may still recrudesce, but Kenyan elites, probably aware of the unique position their country occupies in the global scheme of things and its status in East Africa, have been lackadaisical in pushing for reforms, narrowing inequality, and responding effectively to deepening poverty. The Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is the biggest telecommunications and financial hub in the region. Much more, the country has been an oasis of relative peace in a region wracked by war and state failures, the consequences of which are not lost on the country. It has tried to broker peace in Ethiopia, Sudan, eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and has deployed peacekeeping troops in Somalia. Its port city of Mombasa handles cargoes for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and eastern DRC. But whether in these protests Kenyan Gen Z are capable of cutting their nose to spite their face, thus jeopardising their unique regional status, is not certain. At the moment, they are in a quandary how to proceed.

    A few days after the protests began, President Ruto halted his bluffing and promised not to sign the finance bill. His promise came on the heels of the storming of the overindulgent parliament and the killing of dozens of protesters. Everyone, except perhaps the youths themselves, feared that any escalation could lead the country down a disastrous and unpredictable path. The youths, mainly under 34 years old, and who constitute about 70 percent of the country’s estimated 56m people, had tasted blood and liked it. They were thus no longer satisfied with only checkmating the finance bill; they had also begun to call for the resignation of the president, in a move that closely resembled Nigeria’s October 2020 EndSARS protesters who shifted their protests’ goalpost until they lost the gains of the revolt and nearly lost the country itself. The Kenyan protests are not about crime, but about poverty, corruption and debt peonage. The finance bill, adjudged burdensome and insensitive, was designed to raise the country’s revenue by an extra $2.7bn in order to qualify for IMF loan. It would have led to the imposition of levy on sundry consumables like bread on which a duty of 16 percent was projected, cooking oil with a duty proposal of about 25 percent, and sugar etc.

    Read Also: Ruto agrees ‘for conversation’ with Kenyan protesters over tax hikes

    This, unfortunately, is a country in the throes of devastating flooding which killed over 200 people, and food shortages, among other setbacks. With about four out of every 10 people of working age unemployed, a debt figure of about $80bn or about 70 percent of GDP, and one-quarter of revenue spent on interest payments, the country was sinking deeper into poverty and hardship. Compounding the crisis is the fact that some 30 percent of the people live below poverty line. And while growth stays at some five percent, about half of annual budget is still spent on debt repayment. The country was, in short, heading for default. If the protests are not brought under control and President Ruto’s promise of government austerity measures to curb spending not faithfully executed, it is not certain that the country would not go into a tailspin. The Gen Z may be justified in their protests, but they also must learn from other countries’ experiences and moderate both their anger and expectations. In the late 18th Century, France overthrew their monarch after bread riots. And after much bloodshed, in which even the children of the revolution were consumed, they found themselves under Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship and military expansionism that cost more than 3.5 million lives. In 2014, Ukraine fought tooth and nail to overthrow the pro-Russia administration of President Viktor Yanukovych. But while Ukrainians bickered, Russia annexed Crimea, advanced on Eastern Ukraine, and then about two years ago, citing security and cultural concerns, invaded the entire country. Yet, former Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev (born near Ukraine), Leonid Brezhnev (born in central Ukraine), Mikhail Gorbachev (Ukrainian on the maternal side) all ruled the Soviet Union as if they were Ukrainians. Konstantin Chernenko was, however, Ukrainian. Josef Stalin, on the other hand, was not even ethnically Russian, but Georgian. In fact, ‘Ukrainian-origin’ leaders presided over the Soviet Union for about half of its 70 years existence. Draw the inference.

    Two more examples of immoderate and excessive demands and expectations leading to tragic outcomes should suffice. The Arab Spring of 2010 begun in Tunisia was a revolt by youths dissatisfied with corruption, economic hardship and dictatorship. But while a few governments were overthrown in the Maghreb, the revolt left in its wake worse dictatorships, bitter and still continuing civil wars, massive disruptions by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other non-state actors, and forced migration, state failure, uncertain future, and consequences still reverberating through coups in the Sahel region. The Arab Spring mirrored Europe’s Revolutions of 1848 (Spring of Nations), and the Prague Spring of 1968 in which Czech student Jan Palach, like Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi, immolated himself. Indeed, the major slogan of the Arab Spring was that ‘the people want to bring down the regime’. Alarmingly, Gen Z everywhere, including in Nigeria, do not acquaint themselves with the lessons of history. They want to assume leadership quickly, and would as soon commit regicide to displace the older generations as turn on one another through cancel culture and the distortion and weaponisation of wokeism. In Nigeria as in Kenya, through protests brutally repressed or indulged, societies and leaders must begin to find ways of narrowing the dichotomy between the younger and the older generations. Their destinies are too interwoven to be extricable; and if a country must survive it must learn to miscegenate the vigour of youths with the wisdom of elders. 

    There is indeed a sense in which Nigeria’s labour unions, election losers, and other agitators are eager to trigger mass, leaderless revolt. Unable to reconcile themselves to their losses, they have seized upon the legitimate anger of the poor who protest against the profligacy of the National Assembly, corruption in high places, contradictory government policies and programmes, wasteful spending, and the restriction of belt tightening to the poor and underpaid workers and the unemployed. Kenya has just discovered the dangers of taking the people for granted. It is suspected that Nigerian authorities are trying to take the wind out of the sail of agitators and their champions, assuming they have not switched on the panic button already with a plethora of hastily considered financial giveaways. How successfully proactive that measure will be will depend on the depth and integrity of the advice they are getting and implementing. Contrary to the expectations of the Gen Z, Kenya may have forestalled the possibility of a coup or revolution by its peculiar demographics in which the three largest ethnic groups in the country are almost evenly spread between the Kikuyu (17.13%), Luhya (14.35%), Kalenjin (13.37%), Luo (10.65%), and Kamba (9.81%). Mr Ruto is Kalenjin. But before getting giddy over Kenya, Nigerians should take another look at their country, relearn their history, particularly of the 1966 coup and countercoup as well as the 1967-1970 civil war. There should be safe and democratic ways to advocate good and prudent governance instead of whooping for war and revolution on social media or promoting ethnic and religious exceptionalism simply because of political setbacks. There is nothing to indicate that should Nigeria again sail near the wind, it won’t shipwreck altogether.

  • Oil block licensing and domestic investors: Nigeria has a lot of catching – up to do

    Oil block licensing and domestic investors: Nigeria has a lot of catching – up to do

    Femi Dada to whom I am yielding the column today is a consulting project development and energy geologist whose time in the  public service was, at a point, coterminus   with that of the rambunctious President Olusegun Obasanjo who literally swore not to listen to any adviser.

    Doubt that? Then listen to inimitable Chief Phillip Asiodu, an exemplar Nigerian public servant, in

     interview titled ‘Where Nigeria Went Wrong’: “After the 1999 presidential election, I became Economic Adviser under President Obasanjo who did not satisfy the requirements to be the  PDP candidate in 1999 because to become a candidate you must win your ward,  local government and state which he did not. After his election as President, he appointed me his Chief Economic Adviser together with three deputies of the rank of Ministers- of- State.

    I urged him to let us implement Vision 2010″. The country was literally at his feet.

    But he refused.

    If he had agreed, and started, by the time he was leaving  office in 2007, Nigerian economy would have attained a growth rate of no less than 10% per annum and the government would have  become so popular National Assembly members would not have had the temerity to vote enormous perquisites for themselves; emoluments far above the recommendations of the Revenue Mobilisation And Fiscal Commission ( RMAFC), all because of his second term ambition for which he needed their support”.

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    The same fate befell the recommendations of the Femi Dada – led ‘Team Bitumen Project’ which his government would not touch even after key officials of government had accompanied him (the President) to Venezuela for Bilateral Discussions on Bitumen, Petroleum and Palm oil research on the side-lines of an OPEC-Meeting.

    Dada’s relevance here today derives from the ugly scenario in our oil ecosystem which has not improved much in ages. Indeed, as you read this, NNPCL is being probed by a committee of the  National Assembly in respect of some curious oil subsidy claim.

    Dada has some advice which should, hopefully,  prove useful now that another round of bidding for oil blocs is  ongoing.

    It is for that purpose he authored the piece below on the above topic.

    Happy reading.

    A major bane of oil administration in this country is the belief in government circles that Nigeria can always run major policy issues the Nigerian way.

    No way.

    There is an international template which, if Nigeria wants to succesfully compete in the international market, it must, willy nilly, embrace and adhere to.

    Time there was when Nigerian oil bidding rounds were so opaque, oil blocks were awarded to people, if not in their bedrooms, then in their wife’s hair saloons from where the allotees now go shopping around the  globe, hawking their prized bonanza, in search of buyers.  They then collect their commision, ready to ‘chop life’ to their heart’s content.

    That became the story of the Nigerian oil business and it got reported all over the world, thoroughly messing up the country’s reputation.

    This is not to suggest that this opacity was unique to Nigeria.  For instance there was the Guinean Minister  who was reported to have taken a $10 million bribe from a Chinese company on an iron-ore bid. He was alleged to have  moved it, first to some Far-East banks, and finally to a US bank where he was promptly arrested for money laundering.

    As long as these corrupt practices continue, Nigerian or even African oil and mineral assets will not be competitive on the international market.

    It is hoped that by now the relevant Nigerian policy makers would have turned a new leaf and that in her ongoing oil bloc bidding rounds, especially as it concerns domestic investors, openness and transparency will be the guiding principles.

    With the benefit of hindsight, it is a  pity that Nigeria lost the opportunity, especially in those hey-days of oil development, to use her oil resources to meaningfully diversify its economy like her contemporaries in the Gulf states.

    Indeed, when recently Saudi Aramco was re – engineered, what followed was that it was ‘floated on the stock market’ where its shares were heavily subscribed. Nigeria has never done anything close to that; not even after the passage of the much hyped Petroluem Industry (PIA) Bill which was held up in the National Assembly for years. There is an informed opinion out there now that the PIA must be given a fresh look to have it   cleaned up to international standards, and have the NNPCL listed on the Nigerian stock market where Nigerians, in their millions, can invest  rather than let it be captive to some rapacious nigerian politicians.

    Had Nigeria taken advantage of her ‘sweet crude oil assets’ in the past, even if only to train for its manpower needs in oil technology,  Nigeria would today, most probably be a leader in the production of clean end products. And in a world now very conscious of the consequences of climate change, her products in gas, and condensates would by now have tremendous market advantage.

    Rather than that, her highly hyphed LNG market is  barely pulling its weight, especially as a result of incessant political interference. Only this past  the National Assembly was trying its damnest to apply  pressure on such a critical, and strategic economic sector, which is currently battling with its trains 7-8, whereas its contemporaries – those which started at about the same time – are already on trains 14-15.

    Also, let us imagine, for instance, a situation where Nigeria becomes a hub for Aviation fuel, even if only in the West African sub region, won’t that have made a huge difference in our present, extremely parlous economic circumstances?

    Unfortunately, policy flip flops in the Nigerian oil industry will never permit that.

    All am saying here is that Nigeria cannot continue to manage her oil resources as of old and expect any positive returns. People are now even asking questions as to what portion, if any, of the Nigerian crude now truly belongs to her. This question came up  recently after the authorities of Dangote Refinery alerted Nigerians to the bad politics of the IOC’s. Or how come such a huge local investment is being spurned, not only by the oil oligarchs but also by the federal government which, according to Dangote Refinery sources, continues to issue licences for the importation of products they now produce locally?

    The time has come for our oil policy makers to change as what happens in the oil industry has huge implications for both our security, and survival, as a nation going forward. Nor is time, any longer, on our side – not with the current climate change awareness permeating the entire world.

    I say all  these  conscious of the new extension of Nigeria’s continental shelf assets. To derive maximum benefit from this new asset, Nigeria must clean up and be totally committed to upholding  international standards, especially now that domestic investors are boldly venturing into  the Nigeria oil sector.

  • Tinubu’s statesmanlike call to govs at NEC: Help save Nigeria

    Tinubu’s statesmanlike call to govs at NEC: Help save Nigeria

    Describing Nigeria in its current state will not be difficult for very skilful wordsmiths, but for those not looking for anything out of the ordinary, beleaguered should suffice. Looking around you and taking all the miry circumstances into consideration, Nigeria, not just the people in it, feels the heat coming from all the unease. Now imagine the state of mind of the man set at the centre, charged with the responsibility of steering the wheel of state at the moment. It should be easy for you to think up how he fares managing it all.

    President Bola Tinubu has indeed braved the heat with dignity and candour all along; while trying his utmost best, sacrificing both his natural and, sometimes, material resources to fulfil his campaign promises and all that God has laid in his mind to do for Nigeria, genuinely and honestly, for some reasons, the feedback from those he is staking it all for have not really been as positive as, even among those demanding the impracticable from him, would have expected, speaking candidly now.

    In times past in others climes, what President Tinubu is focused on achieving with Nigeria now, talking about his various reforms, are the same sort of things that those world leaders, whom histories have virtually deified, did back then that have elevated them as the best from humanity. British Winston Churchill, American Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Chinese Mao Zedong, Russian Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, the World War 2 German leaders and many others from one wing of the globe to the other, leaders who saw their people heading the wrong direction and decided to brave the odds to force a redirection of progress, took steps similar to what our President is doing now; bring reforms that should alter a negative trajectory.

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    It was most certain that while those great men were re-engineering their nations, they faced similar resistances and opposition as Tinubu is facing now. However, they have become icons that are referenced for socioeconomic re-engineering. In the same manner, by the time the Nigerian President is done with this task of restoring the country to its pride of place among the comity of nations, history would have certainly reserved a kind space for him.

    That retrospect became necessary because of a significant event that occurred in the week that just ended. The Chief of Staff to the President, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, made a revelation on Wednesday when he led a team of the President’s representatives to pay condolence visit on Vice President Kashim Shettima in Kano. Shettima was in Kano, mourning his mother-in-law, Hajiya Maryam Albishir, and while delivering the President’s message, Gbajabiamila revealed a plan by his boss to make an unusual appearance at the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting that had been scheduled for the next day at the Villa in Abuja.

    Although the NEC is a major interface between the federal and the sub-national governments, it is statutorily the Vice President’s arena, he is the chairman of the Council. However for one reason or the other, Honourable Gbajabiamila, who is also statutorily in charge of the President’s itinerary, revealed Mr President would be a visitor to the meeting. So it made sense for many who heard about it, especially journalists, that Tinubu, who is known for making unique manoeuvres when he intends to break the ice in difficult situations, was visiting the NEC to get one or some of the challenges currently facing the nation out of the way. The most likely issue was guessed to be the new minimum wage discuss.

    The NEC commenced at about noon with most of the governors in attendance, Vice President Shettima took the chairman’s seat and started executing the business of the day. President Tinubu was nowhere within or around the Council Chambers where the meeting was holding. Then journalists who had anticipated the President’s presence at the meeting started wondering if what the Chief of Staff said the day before was meant to be a joke or some sort of ‘political statement’.

    However, about an hour or so into the meeting, signals buzzed, announcing the visitor’s approach and immediately he entered the chambers, the atmosphere reportedly changed. True to the expectations, he was there to discuss serious national issues with those regarded as the step-two stakeholders of the federation. To ensure an atmosphere of seriousness, those who needed not be part of the meeting were excused out and the meeting went covert.

    Much of what was discussed between him and the governors still remains ‘classified’, they are serious state matters that can only be accessed by authorised officials. However, the little that managed to sneak to the media through the President’s spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, though there was still that feeling that what sneaked out was only a tip of the iceberg, like someone sarcastically put it when the statement was issued. There was the feeling that the most anticipated issue, the minimum wage matter, was discussed but outcomes were designed to be reserved. Minimum wage discussion or not, the wakeup call to the governors by the President, at least from the tone of what was quoted from what he was reported to have said, was poignant. 

    “Our states must work together to deliver on the critical reforms required of us to meet the needs of our people. Time is humanity’s most precious asset. You can never have enough of it. It is getting late. We are ready and able to support you in the form of the mechanization of your agricultural processes and the provision of high-quality seedlings. We are prepared to provide solar powered irrigation facilities to support our farmers across seasons, but we must now produce. We must produce the food our people eat, and it will require coordination and intentionality between members of the National Economic Council (NEC).

    “There is nothing we are doing that is more important than producing high-quality food for our people to consume, buy, and sell. We create jobs in the production of it. And that is before we generate wealth by exporting the excess. It is not beyond us to achieve this for Nigerians. How much support do you need from me and in what form? I am prepared to provide it. But we must achieve the result. We must deliver on our targets at all levels. Please report back following your consultations and submit to my office within seven days”, President Tinubu said.

    Those were the words of a man on a mission, but who has discovered that his co-travelers, those who ought to pull and till with him, are not interested in the same task with him. Of course the federal government is at the centre, but that arm alone cannot execute all tasks by itself. Yes, Tinubu has introduced reforms and had since been deploying resources, but are the people managing the step two, which are the states, doing their part? Are they allowing the reforms and the resources cascade to the parts, to the smallest units, which are the families?

    There are no federal or state farmers, farmers are just groups, like we have in cooperatives, they are individuals doing either subsistent or mechanized practices and if the federal government needs to effectively impact on farmers, the federating units ought to be part of that process because they are the ones closer to the farmers at their different levels. The President is a practical man, if he says he is committed to doing something, he wants you to see it is done as he promised.

    He came with a plan to re-order Nigeria, which can only be done through hard work from all quarters, when he is not achieving the result he intends, due to the fault of a weak link, he does not just fold his arms expecting a miracle, he takes a step to either strengthen the link or get a new link forged. When he felt like some people in the federal civil service were slowing the pace of progress down, despite all that had been invested, he called the leadership, led by the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation and the Body of Permanent Secretaries, that was on February 22, this year, bore his mind and demanded a change from them. From then on then knew they are being watched.

    Reforms and re-engineering attempts are only successful when the people participate, they will participate when their basic needs are not a concern for them, however, Nigerians are hungry now, not much result will be realized in such state, hence the wakeup call at the NEC.

    For starters, dealing the some of the concerns hurting citizens, right at the meeting, he approved the immediate rollout of the National Construction and Household Support Programme to cover all geo-political zones in the country. The programme is targeted at achieving a couple of goals. Some of the items under the programme include a one-off allocation to states and the Federal Capital Territory of N10 billion for the procurement of buses and CNG uplift programme. Delivery of N50,000 uplift grant each to 100,000 families per state for three (3) months. There is also a provision for Labour unions and civil society organizations and the deployment of N155 billion for the purchase and sale of assorted foodstuff to be distributed across the nation.

    By the way, the week was more than just last Thursday and there were other events that littered the week. For instance, on Monday he received a delegation from Standard Chartered Bank, led by its Group Chief Executive, Bill Winters. He also appointed a new Chief Executive Officer for the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), in the person of Tunji Bello. On Tuesday he presided over one of the most exhaustive FEC meetings, where almost forty memoranda were tended and very far reaching decisions reached. There were, as usual, reasons to rejoice with some Nigerians and well as to mourn with others. He appointed eight new permanent secretaries for the civil service.

    This week will come with its own narration, which we must all wait to see.

  • ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’

    ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’

    Culprits and their collaborators deserve to be prosecuted: you either eat your cake or have it

    I have no qualms about people who feel the country is not conducive for them and decide to leave for greener pastures abroad. I am not one of those who would like to say things are easy when they are not. As Sonala Olumhense wrote sometime in 1983, ‘Things is hard’. ‘Things is really hard’!  So, I won’t advice Nigerians who have the opportunity of ‘checking out’ not to ‘check out’, after all, how many of our leaders have their own children at home?

    As one of the contestants for the students union presidency in one of our federal universities said during the campaign sometime in the 1980s, ‘what is good for the goose is good for the others’! Do not ask me who the candidate was and which university he attended. He knows himself. We, the then stakeholders too know him.

    But that is not where I am going today.

    So, because ‘what is good for the goose is good for the others’, I can never grudge anyone going out,  particularly the youths, if they feel that is where their salvation is.

    For me, however, let those who want to stay, stay; and those who cannot endure what is at home be free to vote with their feet or their visa.

    But I have everything against such people when, even as they are leaving us, they would not take their eyes off our common patrimony. Instead of leaving that for the rest of us who have chosen to stay where our heads put us. ‘Ibi ori da ni si laagbe’, they want to eat their cake and at the same time, have it.

    Otherwise, how can we explain it; that some people in the Federal Civil Service would still remain on the Federal Government’s payroll even though they have since left our shores for other countries? I take serious exception to that.

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    It is normal for living things to follow the food; that is flood towards wherever their bread can be buttered. Thus, we find some birds gravitating towards some parts of the world at certain times.

    It is against this background that one should condemn the Nigerians who were hitherto civil servants and are still collecting salaries after relocating abroad in search of a better life.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has directed that such former civil servants be made to refund the money and that their supervisors and department heads be punished for aiding and abetting the fraud.

    The president gave the directive on Saturday, last week, at the award night organised by the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCSF), to commemorate the 2024 Civil Service Week, and also to honour some outstanding civil servants in core ministries.

    President Tinubu, who was represented at the occasion by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, was visibly worried over the ghost workers’ attitude.

    “During my recent visit to South Africa, I kept abreast of the week’s activities.

    “I was particularly struck by the revelations shared by the Head of the Civil Service, regarding employees who had relocated abroad while drawing salaries without formally resigning”, he said.

    He added that “it is heartening to hear that measures have been taken to address this issue, but we must ensure those responsible are held accountable and restitution is made.

    “The culprits must be made to refund the money they have fraudulently collected”, he said, adding, to boot, that “their supervisors and department heads must also be punished for aiding and abetting the fraud under their watch.”

    This is the way it should be. As a matter of fact, the issue is beyond punishing both the culprits and those who made it possible for such fraud to occur, using only the civil service rules and regulations. They must be prosecuted for fraud.

    Ghost workers’ syndrome is an age long syndrome in Nigeria. And it manifests in several ways. People apparently continue to engage in such fraudulent acts either because those caught are not punished or because the punishment is too light. Indeed, where ghost workers is the issue, Nigeria ought to be among countries that should make ‘Guinness World Records’, given the decades that successive governments at all levels have been uncovering the phenomenon and its various dimensions in the country.

    At a time even in cosmopolitan Lagos, precisely after the return to civil rule in 1999, ghost schools, with whole compliments of workers, from head to toe, were uncovered. That is part of the ‘cognate experience’ the country has in the ghost workers’ fraud. It was not just a question of ghosts collecting salaries in existing government establishments, it got to the point where even ghost schools were established and funded by the state government. Mercifully, the state government would seem to have overcome this, using technology.

    But if the Lagos case can be regarded as too old and from which Nigeria ought to have learned sufficient lesson, having occurred over 20 years ago, what of the Nasarawa State incident of 2022, whereby it was discovered, in what a report described as another sad chapter in the history of Nigeria, that the Federal Government uncovered 349 ghost schools? The discovery was reportedly made by the Enumeration Committee of the Federal Government Homegrown Feeding Programme for Public Primary Schools. As usual, two key officials of the programme in the state were promptly suspended and replaced. It is doubtful if anything happened to them beyond the suspension.

    Also, in as recently as 2016, a significant number of ghost schools were discovered in Kogi State. Similar cases had been reported in many other states, including Delta.

    In all of these cases, it should be expected that there would be school inspectors and supervisors who should be going round to see how schools are faring. So, what happened to all the layers of inspection and supervision?

    What happened to the relevant accounts departments in the ministries, departments and agencies of the governments where these salary frauds are perpetuated? What happened to their audit units?

    Obviously some unscrupulous civil servants are behind these frauds.

    Civil servants! Civil servants! They had killed some very best dreams of government because they are the ones that handle the implementation of those dreams. And they do so without qualms. Their propensity to ‘chop and clean mouth’ can hardly be matched by any other group of persons or workers. And they can never steal enough. They steal as if stealing is going out of fashion. So primitively. Before the ink on their last fraud dries up, they are already salivating in anticipation of the next.

    Indeed, it is incidents like this that make not a few Nigerians see the civil service across the country as dens of robbers. Does that ring a bell? Ask many Nigerians of their general opinion on the civil service and they will tell you they don’t know what many of them are doing beyond gossipping, merchandising during official hours and plotting to see loopholes in government programmes and policies from where they could siphon funds.

    As a matter of fact, a friend of mine usually refers to civil servants as ‘evil servants’. And, can you really blame him? Yes, we know that there are some decent people of integrity in governments across board. But, when you mix only one spoilt egg with a dozen good ones, the taste of that spoilt one would still be felt, perhaps more than the others.

    But it is sad that an incident like the ‘Japa ‘ salary fraud had to be unveiled at what should be a solemn ceremony in honour of civil servants who have put in years of meritorious service to their fatherland.

    Successive governments at the centre had carried out various reforms in the civil service. Even then, from the general look of things, many of the workers would seem untrainable. They are too steeped in their iniquities. But, as I said earlier, that is not to say that we do not have dedicated ones among them. It should therefore not be surprising that some of them are trying their best in the noble tradition of their calling. Such people deserve to be appreciated and amply rewarded.

    It is also good that the Tinubu administration has singled out some of such people for recognition. It should not be about sticks and sticks all the time. The government needs to dangle the carrots where and when necessary too.

    I am therefore happy to join the government in celebrating such Nigerians of honour who have decided to hold their heads in establishments where several others have lost theirs. Indeed, it is just that things are tough in the country; that is why many Nigerians are supporting Labour in the minimum wage struggle. As far as many of them are concerned, the issue should not be about pleasing an insignificant percentage of the populace whose productivity is even suspect, leaving the majority in limbo. But then, if minimum wage is an avenue to get at the government over the insensitivity of many public officials, particularly those in the National Assembly who are producing nothing and yet creaming off the public till, so be it. Otherwise, Labour’s voice on the issue would have been like that of John the Baptist in the wilderness. Many people would just be aloof and watching developments on the matter from a reasonable distance.

    I can feel you itching to say that those involved in the ‘Japa’ fraud ‘scheme’ and other acts of corruption by civil servants and other Nigerians, just regard their actions as their own way of getting their share of the national cake. What of those stealing the cake legally? I only hope you don’t have the National Assembly members in mind here? Well, to some extent, you are right. Indeed, if former President Olusegun Obasanjo could call the National Assembly what he called it a few years back, I wonder what he would call it today. Still, that should not be an excuse for ‘ordinary’ Nigerians to steal illegally. For, while it is the law that catches up with the poor thieves in Africa, it is karma itself that arrests the big ones. And it will strike when it will strike unless there is a change of attitude. What is on ground is simply not sustainable.

    But this is yet another opportunity to call on the government to make the country conducive. Nigerians only travelled abroad for studies and leisure in the past. Not to go and stay there permanently. Although this trend predates this government, it now has the responsibility of reversing it. It is still possible. It is doable.

  • In memories and in memoriam

    In memories and in memoriam

    For Femi Esho and Oba Femi Ogunleye

    Last week, Nigeria lost two of its most illustrious sons ever.  First to depart for higher glory was Femi Esho, aka Esh Baba, musician, raconteur and indefatigable cultural entrepreneur who together with a few die-hard aficionados pioneered the revival of Highlife music as a national brand and the signature tune of Nigeria’s sophisticated, upwardly mobile post-independence middle class. Following quickly on his heels was Oba Femi Ogunleye, former PR impresario and frontline journalist, who made a seamless transition to revered royalty as the Towulade of Akinale in Ogun State.

    It was said that his royal eminence joined his ancestors in faraway London. Among the Yoruba people, retribution for the breach of traditional protocol particularly where the rites and right of passage of a notable ruler are concerned can be very severe indeed.  Not knowing how to handle an unfolding royal transition without inviting heavy traditional reprisals, yours sincerely can only wish the late Oba a happy ascent to the royal continuum at this point in time.

       By a strange coincidence, the last time this columnist met Oba Ogunleye was also at a funeral some years back at the Orile Wasinmi ancestral homestead of the Odegbami clan. As we committed the remains of Dele Odegbami, aka Bad Meat, Segun Odegbami’s older brother, to mother earth, the late Oba suddenly materialized from an adjoining bush path: no car, no convoy, no horse-drawn carriage, no appurtenances of royalty, only a solitary companion and a heavy hint of Yoruba supersonic sorcery. The mist and mystery partially lifted when the Oba explained that his domain was actually next door and he just decided to take a walk to be with us. 

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      Meanwhile, the grim reaper continues its relentless devastations among a particular generation of Nigerians who can be said to have seen it all. It is harsh and unsparing, recognizing neither past achievements nor current distinctions. Our old teacher at the then University of Ife, Lasisi Olusola Soile, put it with haunting lucidity: “At least the Roman Empire lasted a thousand years. But in my lifetime I have witnessed the rise and fall of Nigeria”.

      That was in 1984, exactly forty years ago during General Buhari’s first coming. Soile, a first class brain and a finer gentleman with the milk of human kindness flowing through him, had trudged into the office we both briefly shared completely deflated after fruitlessly hunting for what was then known as essential commodities. It was a novel humiliation of the Nigerian middle class, particularly its salaried professoriate.

     Soile passed on a few years after. If he were to be alive, what would he be thinking of the current circumstance of the nation, poignantly presaged by the second coming of the selfsame General Buhari now that the real thing seems to have arrived? Or could it be we still haven’t seen nothing yet? The limits we always thought was the ultimate limit often turn out not to be the limit at all but remarkable milestones in the saga of human endurance.

       But while the tragic turns and twists continue, the clock of history also ticks away with cruel and merciless precision, like the ornate contraption in Gregor Samsa’s morbidly tidy bedroom. Just because a person has woken up to discover that he has been transformed into a giant beetle doesn’t mean that the clock must stop, or that life must not continue. The evening of life must come. Night hovers like an unrelenting vulture circling its prey and waiting for the appointed hour to pounce. This is the fate that has overtaken the two illustrious Nigerians, cultural entrepreneur and respected Yoruba royalty.

       The news of Femi Esho’s death was broken to me by another Femi, this time Olufemi Macaulay, a versatile columnist on the daily edition of this newspaper and former student of yours sincerely at the old University of Ife in the early eighties. As readers of this column would have gleaned on one or two occasions, Femi is the archetypal former student from hell. Totally irreverent, he would sometimes barge into the office of his former teacher cracking outlandish jokes.

      An earlier obsession was his insistence that there were more than enough similarities of facial features between the columnist and Kylian Mbappe to suggest a furtive sowing of wild oats, despite the fact that it is well-known that the outstanding footballer is the product of a union between a Cameroonian father and a mother of Algerian extraction. Luckily, it has so far escaped Macaulay that there is a young Black player in the current Spanish squad at the European Cup who goes by the same surname as the writer with the tag junior ominously appended.

       Yours sincerely had introduced Femi Esho and Femi Macaulay to each other and one was soon left completely out of the equation. Both are free spirits and can be regarded as artists without border. There was a sublime disdain for arid conventionality and robotic regulation about the two of them which made them sworn enemies of formal sartorial compliance and the hankering after bourgeois respectability so beloved of Nigeria’s educated classes. As sworn enemies of uniformity each went ahead to create his own peculiar and unique uniform.

       In the case of Esho, it was a free-flowing often snow white garment which looked like a cross between the Senagalese dungaree and the Islamic jalamia. He often donned this while performing on stage his endless repertoire of ancient highlife tunes with relish and boyish enthusiasm. With his lavish, luxuriant white beard giving him a unique persona, Esh Baba was indeed an enigmatic wonder, a saxophone-blowing highlife guru.

      Ijesha-born, Samuel Babafemi Esho, despite his modish distaste for convention, was a quintessential gentleman and an omoluwabi to boot in the Yoruba sense of that word. Courteous, unflappable, unfailingly polite to both young and old, he was also generous to a fault and with a deep streak of humanity which made him compulsively solicitous of other people’s wellbeing ahead of his own paltry needs and meager requirements. In his later years, the only luxury he permitted himself was an endless supply of groundnut and the occasional bottle of Stout.

       It was many years ago on a pleasant Muslim holiday that Femi Macaulay and spouse dropped by the house only to meet Esho and one of his aides already ensconced. As usual, the grandfather of highlife revival in Nigeria was dishing out anecdotes after anecdotes about Nigeria’s musical history and behind the scene subterfuges. My favourite was when Baba Esh once went on air to enumerate the influence and indeed the origin of Nigerian highlife in the Ghanaian medley of the same name.

       Esho thought he was doing a yeoman’s job clarifying musical history for posterity. He did not reckon with an old hero of highlife music in Nigeria and one of its most adulated and garlanded icons who had been testily listening in on the programme. When his patience was exhausted by the iconoclast, the old man charged furiously at both producer and guest berating Esho for trying to disrobe a sacred and bi-centennial egungun. Esho duly apologized but not out of conviction.

        That was Femi Esho, the pacifist who could not hurt a fly and was always ready to let go in the interest of peace even when he was in the right. He was as sweet-tempered and as amiable as they come which made him such an excellent company. One now remembers that as the morning of that Muslim holiday glided into afternoon with Fela’s classic humming in the background and after freezing bottles of Stout had dissolved the customary reserve and polite reticence, the whole place erupted into much dancing and revelry which suggested protracted immersions at the old Shrine. The Macaulay spouse was quite a revelation.

       Anybody familiar with Esho’s musical gallery first when it was located in Somolu and later at the tail end of Adeniran Ogunsanya in Surulere would have witnessed the same scene. They were both Meccas of musical wayfarers, brimming with ancient tapes, arcane gramophones and rare archival musical renditions often captured on strange gadgets and superannuated equipment with Esho himself darting from one room to the other like a moving museum.

      Esho was an encyclopedia of Africa music. No notable musical career escaped his keen attention. It was from him that one learnt that Theophilus Iwalokun,aka Theo Baba, the late much beloved Ilaje crooner,  was actually a fisherman who spent his spare time entertaining friends with a box guitar and his sonorous voice until he was persuaded to go professional. If you also want to know what became of who or what happened to who in the fractious and ever combustible Nigeria’s entertainment industry,  Esho was the go to person. To the best of our knowledge, nobody has ever contradicted his postulations.

      The late entrepreneur was an important bridge in the technological transformation of the Nigerian musical scene from the age of cassettes and spooling tapes to the age of chips and microchips that could deliver music for hours on end without any cumbersome gadgets or ponderous contraptions. Towards the end, these disruptive innovations almost proved fatal to Esho rendering his modest empire very vulnerable to the ferocious backlash of advances in the field. Despite the obvious setback and the reality of failing health combining with advancing years, the great man remained his cheery and polite self.                                                                         

     Music was Babafemi Esho’s first love and lasting obsession. This must not be forgotten because Esho had ample opportunities to pursue other interests. Not many people would believe that he was a principal private secretary to the first military governor of Lagos State, Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson. But he chose music above everything else. It was as if he was being guided by a divine path seeker. His invaluable contributions to the industry will not be forgotten. May his noble soul rest in peace.

  • Tomboloku the master-parrot squares up to Okon

    Tomboloku the master-parrot squares up to Okon

    As the price of foodstuff escalates beyond human endurance, domestic wards have gone completely haywire, making life impossible for owners as they cheat and crunch way through whatever remains of human gastronomy before people resort to open grazing or what is known as botanical buzzing. After all it is famously observed that when what we have learnt to eat is exhausted, it is the turn of what we have not learnt to eat.

       If anybody can be regarded as the poster boy of this vile and loutish behavior among domestic servants, it is the inevitable Okon. Like a famished hyena, Okon savages everything in the house. Nothing can restrain him. No amount of surveillance can catch him out. Yours sincerely has tried all kinds of electronic devices including eavesdropping, phone-tapping, maize-tagging, yam-wiring and putting electronic bugs in bags of beans. On the advice of a friend one had even rented a domestic drone, a monstrous relic of the civil war which dangled over the roof and made horrible noise whenever a dog passed.

      But not to worry. You can trust countervailing intelligence to come up with the final solution. One morning, Lamidi, the equally loutish driver and old veteran of the wetie insurrection that one had inherited, came up with the suggestion that one should enlist the services of a Methuselah parrot from Oke Ogun. Gifted with phenomenal memory and capacity for retributive vengeance, he could reel off the names and aliases of twenty Oyo kings in a row without missing the succession order as well as the family tree of those who had crossed his path in fifty years and what became of them.

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       “Oga na Tomboloku go pieces dem gbarodugu boy like dem Agric fowl. You go pity am when job don finish”, Lamidi affirmed through missing incisors which gave him a fiendish visage.  After a day’s long journey into the Yoruba interior, we finally managed to locate Tomboloku and its current owner perched atop a scraggy escarpment that had served as the ancestral domain since slave raiders sacked the main town in the nineteenth century. To one’s surprise and utter amazement, the owner gave the ancient one away on a free lease hinting ominously that senile dementia had overtaken Tonboloku. “Baba Agba ti nsinwin”, the ancient traditional weaver warned.

    True enough, Tomboloku spent the next week in Lagos in a half-trance, occasionally mumbling some nonsense about some ancient Lagos notable who went bankrupt and was auctioned along with his earthly possessions. After that he lapsed into some incoherent babbling about ancient feuds and political hostilities in the old west which invited a sharp reprimand and rebuke from Lamidi who was a prominent NNDP thug. It was like flagging red flag in front of a bull.

      “ Wo , Tonboloku, jek’o rie pe. Abi your head no correct again? Is that why we brought you here? That Adelabu  hawked stock fish for Agbeni market dat one na history”, Lamidi  chided the strange one.

    “Ah thank you. Lamidi, Oba awon janduku. O tu olope ka nibi ti won ti ndana iro. Arapaja bi esu odara”, the old bird sang in ancient praise of the former stalwart which elicited a grumpy grunt.

    As it turned out later, the ageless and flightless parrot was actually embroiled in a make or mar war of nerves with Okon, pretending to be totally unaware of his existence not to talk of his pranks while dropping heavy hints that he was on the verge of a great discovery. On the fifteenth day of Tomboloku’s sojourn in Lagos, the early morning bliss was blown apart by the rich throaty clucking of the ancient crank.

       Omo ole Ifo

       To lo jeun l’arigbabu

        K’oto fi papa Lantoro  bora bi aso

       Okon afinju  ole tin le tiro

       Ogboju olosa ti nlo molubi

      Odaju gbewiri ti gun yan loko oloko

    Ogbe obe waja, koto mu Fausa wole

      Fausa nkigbe, Okon nfagi

    Even before the wingless wonder could finish its chanting about Okon’s multi-purpose stealing, the crazy fellow took to his heels and did not approach the vicinity for another fortnight. That same evening, Tomboloku, the great bird, poet, raconteur, philosopher, historian and custodian of the secrets of great kings, received its final service call and headed northward to the abode of its royal masters in a homing device guided by laser precision, never to be seen this side of the abyss again.

  • Fubara, Kwankwaso and leadership crisis

    Fubara, Kwankwaso and leadership crisis

    In both Kano and Rivers States, the causes of their political and administrative unrest are still being unravelled and litigated. It is unlikely the litigations will last more than a few more months, or even weeks. But the governors of the two states, Abba Kabir Yusuf and Siminalayi Fubara respectively, and their backers are unwilling to wait much longer. Despite enjoying the fruit of democracy, they have nevertheless indicated their preference for strong-arm tactics. Both governors are enraged by the audacity of the opposition. In Kano, Mallam Yusuf and his main backer, Kwankwasiyya Movement leader and ex-governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who hovers over the governor like an apparition, are determined much more than anything else to efface the memory of Abdullahi Ganduje, former governor and current All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman. The governor and Mallam Kwankwaso are driven by and obsessed with vengeance.

    The conflict in Rivers State is only a little different from Kano. While Kano is prepossessed with vengeance, Rivers is haunted by what Governor Fubara and his supporters have described as their emancipation struggle. They wish to be rid of the pernicious influence of former governor and FCT minister Nyesom Wike. In the case of Kano, ex-governor Ganduje was unable to foist his party’s candidate, Nasir Gawuna, on the state. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Kwankwasiyya Movement appears determined to obliterate his memory from the state. Kano is probably the closest approximation to a civic culture in Nigeria. Had Mallam Gawuna won, the state would not be in the throes of conflict as it is currently experiencing. But the struggle in Rivers has left many people truly bewildered. Mr Wike rammed the heedless Mr Fubara down the throats of both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the state’s longsuffering electorate, clearly without knowing who he really was. Nothing qualified him for both the post and the job, except that he sounded, looked and acted loyal and apolitical. That he fooled Mr Wike so effectively and comprehensively is a testament to the former governor’s lack of depth and capacity in judging character.

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    Kano’s Kwankwasiyya were combative from the outset. Once the governorship crown settled around Mallam Yusuf’s ears, the movement embarked on a demolition spree, instigated a legislative amendment to reclaim the Kano Emirate from the quarters where Mallam Ganduje sequestered it, and appointed verbal pugilists who gave the APC chairman as much as he dared to voice. Rivers’ case began with a few tremors here and there; but soon, the reticent Mr Fubara began to convulse and consternate his foes, determined to be his own man sooner rather than later. He took his benefactor by surprise. Believing him to be as tame as he looked, the Wike crowd hurled a few disdainful and bellicose words at him. Unsure whether the governor’s initial unflappability was out of fear or his stoical disposition, they soon threatened him with impeachment. The sum of all the happenings in the state is that the parliament building was torched and then demolished, and the legislature balkanised. Worse, the state is now ethnically divided in such a manner that healing would take ages, if at all. On top of these, the consequent litigations launched to resolve the crisis have been snarled in the courts. If Kwankwasiyya are unprepared to give Mallam Ganduje any quarter, Mr Fubara and his supporters are even more prepared to move mountains to hang Mr Wike literally and figuratively.

    The conflicts and litigations in Kano and Rivers sadly indicate the poverty of leadership in Nigeria, and the decades of inattention paid the important subject of leadership recruitment and succession. Not one of the combatants in the troubled states exemplifies sound leadership. Governors Fubara and Yusuf show contempt for the rule of law, with both of them not only eager to demolish anything that irritates them, including buildings that stand in their way, they would not mind even instigating a revolution to wipe out their enemies or put the whole country at risk. It is alarming. Kano has been a little more wary of instigating street protests and actions; but Rivers’ Mr Fubara has recklessly procured the services of local toughs, whether they are militants or trade unions. Apart from speaking violence and defiance, he has harboured suspects wanted by the police. His chief-of-staff and former factional speaker of the state legislature, Edison Ehie, was even on the streets marshalling agitation and whipping up bitterness and resentment against Mr Wike and the Martin Amaewhule-led House of Assembly. Meanwhile the suits filed to resolve the impasse are only days or weeks away from final resolution. But they cannot wait. Kano’s Mallam Yusuf has not been as abrasive and extreme, but he has equally been provocative. On Thursday, Kano’s Justice commissioner, Haruna Dederi, took the liberty of interpreting the Federal High Court ruling on the case in a way that suited the liberal postulations of the state government, insisting that since the court refused to pronounce on the merit of last month’s Emirate repeal law which restored the Kano Emirate to one unified whole instead of five, it underscored and validated the government’s position. It was time to demolish the Nasarawa palace occupied by the deposed emir Ado Bayero, he added grimly and apocalyptically.

    Farther down South, Mr Fubara is impatient to let the law take its course. He embraces a three-man legislature that vets his budget and screens his cabinet and local government caretaker chairmen. His men, led by Victor Oko-Jumbo, also went to court to get the seats of Hon. Amaewhule and 24 other lawmakers declared vacant. The State High Court obliged them, but the Court of Appeal, to which the 25 lawmakers have made recourse, is yet to pronounce on the case, having reserved judgement until sometime later. Meanwhile, Mr Fubara has disregarded the tenure extension granted elected LGA chairmen by the legislature and has appointed new caretaker chairmen, whom he swore in last Wednesday, giving rise to a totally new set of crisis on top of the existing crises in the state. All the cases seem destined to end up in the Supreme Court, but they are unlikely to take long in resolution. It would be a hallmark of democracy and rule of law, were the governor to exercise a little more patience until the courts exhaust themselves. But having framed the Rivers imbroglio wholly and exclusively in terms of Mr Wike’s intransigence and desire to run the state from behind the curtain, Mr Fubara has rallied a vocal and vehement group of Riverians behind his banner willing to use strong-arm tactics to force the former governor’s capitulation and humiliation.  

    It is not certain that Kano State’s Mallam Yusuf and Mallam Kwankwaso will have their way. If they do, it will be because their animus against Mallam Ganduje, not to say the reunification of Kano Emirate, is popular. This column has no interest in validating the positions of the two contesting groups in the Kano conflict. It is also not clear that Mr Fubara will have his way in unseating the Amaewhule-led House of Assembly. But if he does, it may be because the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have aligned their interpretation of the law with his position. Whatever the courts decide for both riotous states will be the position of the law, and should settle the crises. But one thing is without controversy: both Kano and Rivers governors have demonstrated inept leadership, and those who sponsored their enthronement, including Mr Wike and Mallam Kwankwaso, are poor judges of character. Worse, all of them have demonstrated a lack of altruism without the redeeming virtue of knowing the littlest thing about leadership. Kano and Rivers are of course not isolated cases in Nigeria. It will take more than democracy and elections to produce the kind of leaders the country needs, if Nigeria is not to be continually assailed by the tomfooleries of Mr Fubara and Mallam Yusuf. The problem is not whether Mallam Kwankwaso or Mallam Ganduje is right or wrong, or whether Mr Fubara is humble and Mr Wike proud and meddlesome. The tragedy is that these gentlemen have no business in leadership, let alone governing states and becoming custodians of democracy.