The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

The crucifixion of truth

With Sanusi’s sack through the back door by President Jonathan, like Justice Salami’s, who is next?

Do not get carried away by the title of this piece. Nothing in it suggests that the immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who was suspended (actually sacked) by President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday, is a saint. In Nigeria, who is a saint?

A statement signed by Reuben Abati, the president’s spokesman, said inter alia: “ Having taken special notice of reports of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria and other investigating bodies, which indicate clearly that Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi ‘s tenure has been characterised by various acts of financial recklessness and misconduct which are inconsistent with the administration’s vision of a Central Bank propelled by the core values of focused economic management, prudence, transparency and financial discipline …” the Federal Government had no choice but to suspend the CBN governor.

One thing that is not funny about the so-called suspension is that it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The Jonathan administration is deficient in all the qualities it has outlined as constituting Mallam Sanusi’s sins. Which financial recklessness is greater than the one in which our foreign reserves and even the excess crude account are being depleted voraciously without any tangible thing to explain the depletion? And this in spite of the fact that crude prices have been soaring far beyond budgetary projections! If the government is talking of core values, what constitutes its own core values? Does transparency exist in the government’s lexicon?

As a matter of fact, this is the main reason why Mallam Sanusi incurred the wrath of President Jonathan. The CBN boss, had raised certain fundamental issues about the way billions of dollars are missing from the government’s coffers and, instead of the government thanking him (even if that is not his duty), he was asked to resign. As someone who knows his right, he refused. It was clear at that point that the President would take his pound of flesh.

A predictable President Jonathan did last Wednesday. But we need to be worried, especially when dangerous precedents become a predictable pattern. I must confess that some of us heard something akin to what eventually happened to the CBN governor more than three weeks ago. What was in the air then was that the CBN governor would just get to his office and be barred from going in by security agents, and without any explanation, perhaps beyond the usual ‘order from above’. May be those who were to hatch the plot figured that might not go without incidents and so decided to wait for a more auspicious time. That came Wednesday when the former governor was in Niamey to attend the conference of the West African Currency Zone with other governors of the Central Banks in West Africa. Sanusi was reported to have hurriedly left the venue of the meeting shortly after the Nigerian Ambassador to Niger confirmed to him the directive suspending him by the presidency.

When, the other time Justice Ayo Salami was the victim of presidential recklessness, we thought it was his (Salami’s) business. All we offered then was a feeble resistance. Even when the judiciary that took the matter to the President (apparently in error) said it had found nothing against the former President of the Court of Appeal and that he should be recalled from suspension, President Jonathan looked the other way and ensured that Justice Salami retired from his so-called suspension.

The danger in our docility or nonchalance on matters like these is that impunity will continue to beget impunity. It is already happening. This paper’s editorial on Mallam Sanusi’s sack on Friday took us down the memory lane when it said that Alhaji Shehu Shagari took time out to address the nation when, during his time, N2.8billion oil money was said to be missing. This was the result of the outrage in the entire country. These days, worse allegations of corruption involving billions of dollars are treated as if they are not unusual. Indeed, Nigerians are no longer shocked by public officials stealing in millions, the vogue now is to steal in billions since hell would not be let loose.

But these are too dangerous precedents that should not be encouraged in a democratic setting. The stark reality is that fascism is fast creeping in. President Jonathan does not need to tell us that he is neither Pharaoh nor Herod; his actions have spoken louder than his voice to give us an idea of his true personality. And the situation can only get worse with the 2015 elections getting closer because most things happening in the country, particularly on the political and economic plains, including the removal of Mallam Sanusi, are all about the 2015 elections. Nigerians who felt the 2011 elections gulped money would see that the next general elections would gulp even more. What was spent in 2011 would be chicken feed to what would be spent next year. And that money must come from somewhere. All kinds of books would be cooked because there won’t be any heading for such expenditure anywhere in the budget. We may start to feel the negative impact of such unearned income on the economy by the third or fourth quarter of the year. Now that Mallam Sanusi has been fired, the allegations may die naturally because not many people would want to suffer the same fate. In all these, Nigeria is the loser.

Be that as it may, by saying that he suspended Mallam Sanusi, President Jonathan has merely fooled Nigerians. He is only being clever by a quarter, not even by half. It is a slap on our faces because what has happened means that the President knows that he has no power to sack the CBN governor by virtue of section 11, subsection 2(f) of the CBN Act, without at least two-thirds of the Senate members concurring. Yet, he does not like his (Sanusi’s) face (or is it his guts?) and so decided to throw him out with impunity. If all he did was suspend the former CBN governor, why the unholy haste in announcing an acting CBN governor only to follow it up with the nomination of his replacement?

This kind of decisiveness in not vintage President Jonathan, except when the matter concerns people whose faces he does not like. We know how long it took us to get him remove his former Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, despite the weighty allegations against her. The other, his petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, whose case is even worse than Oduah’s remains on the beat years after Nigerians have come to see her ministry as an epitome of corruption.

The truth of the matter is that whatever arbitrariness the CBN Act sought to prevent by insulating the apex bank’s governor from an overbearing executive would have been defeated if the bank boss can be suspended the way President Jonathan has done. People get away with these things because they are hardly challenged. It is on this score that I support Mallam Sanusi’s decision to challenge his suspension in court. Even a baby lawyer would know that if you lack the power to remove or sack, you cannot have the power to suspend in this situation, and especially in our kind of clime where government specialises in satanic subterfuge even as it lacks the capacity to deliver good governance. Obviously, the President too might be aware of this point but decided to go ahead with his plan in the hope that Mallam Sanusi would challenge him in court. Given the snail speed at which justice travels in the country, his (Sanusi’s) term would have elapsed by the time the case is decided. In which case, the President would still have had his way.

It is high time Nigerians rose against this reign of impunity. With two vital parts of our lives – the judiciary and now the CBN – being gradually subdued as it were, we may find it difficult to differentiate between good and bad, or morality and immorality, at the rate this government is perverting the system. Ideally, one would have hinged hope on the Senate but the Upper legislative house as presently constituted cannot be trusted to stop the rampaging government. Otherwise, the starting point would have been to ask it not to confirm the appointment of Zenith Bank boss, Godwin Emefiele as Mallam Sanusi’s successor. Whatever sins Mallam Sanusi might have committed, due process ought to be followed in addressing his case. We should not leave our fate in the hands of any overbearing executive. At the rate we are going under this government, truth would soon join the long list of essential but scarce commodities.

February 23, 2014
Good riddance

At last, the President sums up courage; fires controversial Stella Oduah

Whether President Goodluck Jonathan finally got his mind made up for him, or he made it up by himself; or whether the President asked the embattled former Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, to resign or he gave her the boot, what is important is that Ms Oduah is no more a minister of the Federal Republic. If the President studied the newspapers on Thursday when the news made the headlines, he must have seen that the other ministers that also lost their jobs: Police Affairs Minister Caleb Olubolade, Minister of Niger Delta, Godsday Orubebe and Minister of State for Finance, Yerima Ngama, were more or less footnotes in the matter. The issue was Stella Oduah.

And this is understandable. It is true that the present government had been rocked by many scandals: the fuel subsidy scandal, pension scandal, etc, Oduahgate is simply in a class of its own. It was one that recommended itself for instant judgment, yet, for over four months, President Jonathan’s courage failed him to show the minister the door. A minister who approved the purchase of two bullet-proof cars at a staggering cost of N255million without authorisation over four months ago ought to have had her case decided since, if not for the fact that the government loves wasting time on irrelevancies.

Quite interestingly, just as President Jonathan was still thinking about how to handle the scandal, a lesser incident occurred in Ghana in which the deputy minister of communications, Victoria Hammah, was sacked for saying that she would not quit politics until she had made $1million. It was a God-sent example that should have shown President Jonathan the light; but he chose not to see it. The House of Representatives set up a committee to probe the matter and the committee found her guilty, making the full house to recommend to the President a review of Oduah’s appointment. Again, the President ignored the representatives. He then set up his own committee. Months after, mum was the word from him on what the recommendation of the committee was. But it was obvious the report was not what the President expected, otherwise he would have hid under it to exculpate Ms Oduah.

What is particularly annoying is that while it took this long for President Jonathan to get Ms Oduah out of his cabinet, he did not waste time in throwing away Barth Nnaji, the former Minister of Power, over conflict of interest. This selective approach to the anti-corruption war (is there any war?) does his government no good. Some have contended that Oduah was doing well in the aviation sector; but Nnaji too was making slow but steady progress on power supply until he was given the boot. In Oduah’s case, her so-called good performance in the Ministry of Aviation was questionable. Even as at the time she was said to be doing well, the arrival hall of the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos was a sorry sight whenever it rained, as buckets and other items had to be brought in to collect rain water from the leaking roofs. Those who say the President dilly-dallied for this long on Oduah’s case because he wanted to be thorough, or because he did not want to be stampeded into taking actions would do well to ponder the Oduah saga vis-à-vis other cases that he almost summarily disposed of.

Without doubt, the Oduah saga made many Nigerians wonder what it was that made President Jonathan adamant on retaining her. I cannot think of anyone in recent Nigerian history that has survived such an onslaught. But that the President eventually bowed to public pressure has convinced me that it is true that when a child gets to a place of fear, it is natural for him to be afraid. But it is not only a child that frets when he gets to the home of fear; elders too do. That was why Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, hitherto thought to be a strong man, became lily-livered and had to pull the brakes at a point when he discovered that his insistence on having a third term by all means was going to backfire. In Nigeria, few people live to regret toying with handover dates. The docility that Nigerians are usually accused of, and which their leaders often exploit, does not extend to toying with transition schedules!

Anyway, now that President Jonathan has fired Oduah and thus relieved himself of the moral burden, he still has to decide what to do with his petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke. If the Jonathan government was embroiled in any scandal, the fuel subsidy scandal which became public knowledge barely seven months after the government was sworn in, is the most talked-about. Since then, there have been sundry other allegations of fraud rocking some parastatals under her ministry, particularly the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), whose books are in a mess. No one can say for sure how many billions of dollars could be missing from its record. Yet, the minister under whose nose these unfortunate developments are happening sits pretty in office, years after. We never had it so bad.

It bears restating that no matter what the Jonathan government does, it won’t go far if it does not tackle corruption. Yet, it does not seem the President has the nerve for this task. His self-inflicted distractions on which he wastes precious time and scarce resources cannot permit him to do any tangible thing. Imagine the man-hours lost to the war to dislodge Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State! Whereas if the President had led well, he would not have to lose sleep over whether his party’s lawmakers and governors are defecting; all he would lay bare for Nigerians is his score card which should be speaking for him now, about three years after his assumption of office.

This excludes the period he spent to conclude the tenure of his former boss, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua. If the President’s kernel is cracked for him by some benevolent spirits (because if it is in terms of performance, his government is a monumental disaster) and he manages to get a second term, the story cannot be different. If care is not taken, this is how we would continue to be adrift, and by the time he realises time is no longer on his side, it would have been late and he, like his political godfather, Chief Obasanjo, would start looking for third term. Yet, his government does not seem to have answer to any of the country’s challenges, no matter the number of terms it is given. To worsen matters, it cannot even arrest corruption. So, that is double jeopardy for Nigerians. This is why many Nigerians feel that it is immaterial if President Jonathan sacks his entire cabinet and decides not to work with ministers again, more than enough damage has been done to his government. Now, he would have not just to claim to be fighting corruption but must be seen to be doing so.

Well, now that Oduah is gone, that is one down. But she is not the only clog in the wheel of the country’s progress. In terms of performance, most of the present ministers are not just there, that is why we are making progress in reverse; although the government boasts a surfeit of attack dogs, sycophants and mischief experts. The truth is, Nigerians had expected a near clean sweep of the cabinet because if a government is as inept as the one we have now, throwing only four ministers into the unemployment market cannot make much difference.

February 16, 2014
Mandela’s $4.1m estate

Again, our politicians have another lesson to learn from this man who shaped the world

If ever a man fought for his country, it was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela; if ever a man lived for his country, it was Nelson Mandela; if ever a man dreamt for his country, it was Nelson Mandela; if ever a man brought fame to his country, it was Nelson Mandela; if ever a man died for his country, it was Nelson Mandela. If ever there was anything called struggle, Mandela personified that thing. Indeed, the struggle was his life. He was in and out of jail for his country; harassed and humiliated by the apartheid overlords. The highpoint of his sacrifice was his 28-year tenure in prison, which was characterised by the cruelty of Afrikaner guards, backbreaking labour, and sleeping in minuscule cells which were nearly uninhabitable.

Yet, this great man that many other great men could not unlace his shoes did not amass the kind of mindboggling wealth that many politicians who have had the privilege of becoming president on the African continent are wont to amass. It is another plus for Nelson Mandela that when his will was read last Monday, all he could boast of was $4.13million (£2.53m) in estate, with a substantial part of this coming from royalties on his books.

The estate includes an upmarket house in Johannesburg, a modest dwelling in his rural Eastern Cape home province and royalties from book sales, including his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, first published in 1995. Signed copies of this autobiography have been collectible for many years. Indeed, a signed Easton Press edition of it sold for $7,000 on AbeBooks.com. This deluxe edition was published in 2000. Another signed Easton Press edition of the title also sold for $6,475 immediately the great leader died. Millions of the book had been sold worldwide and this translates to a lot by way of royalties.

Of course one should not be surprised that Mandela was probably not worth more than this; (probably because, according to Executor Justice Dikgang Moseneke who spoke at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg, the 46m rand ($4.13million) estate was based on “rough and ready estimates” and the final amount could be very different.”We are yet to get down to the business of finding the asset, listing them and valuing them and accurately reflecting them. We have a duty to file a provisional inventory.”

By African standards, this is a record low. African leaders are usually stupendously rich after a few years in government, without producing anything except poverty and squalor. Take Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasongo for example. Mbasongo, according to reports by the U.S Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, personally siphoned as much as 700 million (USD) in state funds deposited at Riggs Bank in Washington D.C. We also have historic looters like Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese Sekou and Nigerian Gen. Sani Abacha, both late, who funnelled billions of dollars into Swiss accounts before their demise. The only ‘commodity’ Abacha peddled was his military uniform.

However, if all Mandela left was this modest estate (even if it could be slightly higher), it is understandable. Not for him the kind of ostentatious lifestyle that many of his colleagues on the continent are known for. And this is the irony; for, one would have expected a man who spent about 28 years in prison to want to make up for all he could not enjoy while in jail, be it in terms of wealth, wine or women. And no one could have denied him these because we all knew that he was imprisoned not for a personal cause but in the course of his struggle to free his people from apartheid. So, it would not be a bad idea for him to ask the South African taxpayer to foot the bill of such lascivious wassails.

We would be ridiculing Mandela and South Africans generally if we say that Nigeria is yet to produce a man who could lay claim to having sacrificed 30 per cent of what Mandela sacrificed for South Africa, for Nigeria. Yet, we see all manner of characters making spurious claims concerning their contributions to the country’s development, whereas what they could, in all honesty, lay undisputed claim to is its underdevelopment. Standards have been falling in the past three decades, with things only getting worse by the day, leading to where we are today.

In Nigeria, someone would enter government house barefooted or in bathroom slippers today and come out in golden shoes (that their salaries that we know can never buy) the next day. Many Nigerians will tell you that they do not have to spend eternity in power to hit their goldmine. They will ask for only six months and thereafter, their lives will never remain the same again. It is worse these days, when it seems, stealing has been liberalised and primitive accumulation pervades the land. People now steal without blinking an eyelid. Unlike in the Second Republic, those who steal now no longer steal in millions, they steal in billions. At the rate we are going, it is not unlikely that some people would hit (that is if they have not) the trillion naira mark of public funds that they have stolen or hope to steal.

A typical ‘Nigerian Mandela’ would have insisted on life presidency after his release from prison. Mandela never did such a thing, despite his sacrifice for his country. As a matter of fact, after finishing his first term in office in 1999, there were pressures on him to seek a second. If he had wanted it, it would have been his with the snap of a finger. But Mandela refused to be led into that temptation; rather, he insisted on serving only one term. Some may say this should surprise no one because he was born into royalty; but many others in his shoes would have despised the revolution that he donated himself to for the easy life, after the prison experience. In Nigeria, people want to try third term even when the law says the maximum at a stretch is two.

Mandela must have been led by the aphorism that it is good to leave the stage when the ovation is loudest. But in Nigeria, you find people who were unknown quantities before entering into politics wanting to stay put in power, even if they have to be carried on stretchers, with oxygen masks keeping them alive. I guess they won’t mind staying in office even after their demise; that is if ever death is in their reckoning!

February 9, 2014
Amaechi wins again!

There is this saying in Yoruba land that if you pursue someone and you are unable to catch up with him, you beat a retreat. Unless you want to be like the tortoise that said in response to a question as to when he hoped to return from a journey, that he would return when he had been disgraced. The person asking the question could not believe his ears and repeated the question: “tortoise, I say when will you return from this trip”? And the tortoise replied again that he would return only when he had been thoroughly disgraced. Those of us who know the stories of tortoise know that that is its way. It is always clever by half.

Those watching the unfolding scenario in Rivers State must have known that those who want to remove the governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi are only wasting their time. When God installs, no man can remove. Where they should have seen this handwriting clearly except that they believe in wars and chariots, was in the very way Amaechi emerged as governor. Where were the entire Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) top shots, including the incumbent president, when the then President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted to deny Amaechi his right of being the party’s flag-bearer in the state in 2007? Obasanjo had said then that Amaechi’s candidature had ‘K-Leg’? They all sheepishly agreed with the then president, the same way they are blindly following President Goodluck Jonathan in the ‘Amaechi must go project’.

Amaechi single-handedly took up his case and eventually got justice from the Supreme Court. Not satisfied, Amaechi’s enemies went back to the apex court, all in their desperate bid to remove him, but the court affirmed again on Friday that Amaechi is the duly elected governor of the state, thus throwing the camp of those who think today’s world is all about naked power into confusion. It is just the beginning. It is the same way that any non-performing government that is hoping to win the 2015 election by wars and chariots will be greatly disappointed.

February 9, 2014
The ‘Suntai video’

Those behind the ‘video’ have succeeded in reviving the issue

Any discerning person would have known that the purported video that made the round last week showing Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State as having acknowledged that he cannot take over the affairs of state yet, must have known that it was a phantom video. It is not that those managing the governor could not have done such, but at least not again. What is involved is more than bread and butter, and this calls for more caution after initial failed attempts to properly position their principal.

Appearing in a video recording which was posted on YouTube, Suntai, who was surrounded by some of his aides was, in the purported interview which lasted two minutes and 20 seconds so incoherent in his response to the questions posed to him. For instance, when asked whether he was fit enough to resume his job as governor of the state, Suntai in a shaking and low tone replied, “I can tell you that it is well with me to return to my office simply because I want you to support me. You know the truth; I am not well at all to return to office as I am now”, etc.

I guess those behind the video knew that their antics might be detected after all, but what they have succeeded in doing is to revive the Suntai matter and bring it back to our consciousness. They know that Nigerians have short memories and that we often move on after making storm of some issues. So, if the aim of those behind the video was to remind us about the ailing governor, whatever the motive, they succeeded. At least, we now remember that there is one governor who was touted as being able to function when he is probably still nowhere near being well for that office.

It is really unfortunate that Nigerian politicians don’t learn. After the late Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua experience, one would have thought we would never again be treated to shenanigans, especially when public officials fall sick, for whatever reason. In Yar’Adua’s case, all kinds of tricks were played by those who were profiting from his sickness. They concocted all sorts of lies; used all forms of tricks until God himself brought the entire nonsense to a denouement.

More than three years after Yar’Adua’s death, we are back to square one with the sickness of Governor Suntai. Suntai who was involved in an air mishap in October 2012 spent about 10 months in hospitals in Germany and United States of America, where he was treated for the injuries he sustained from the crash.

After much pressure from home, he was flown back to Nigeria in August 2013, with the intent of assuming the governance of the state. However, his state of fitness soon became a contentious issue. And this became clear, with all kinds of interest groups resorting to the same old tricks to sustain their personal interests at the expense of the state.

When Governor Suntai returned into the country last August, one of his associates said he was mentally alert, contrary to speculations that he had lost his memory. The proof for this, according to the associate, is that the governor recognised everyone by name. So, that was all that was required to proof that the governor was not an invalid! The same governor who was said to be ready to take over then could not even talk on arrival at the airport. Anyone with eyes knew that the picture of the returning governor in the media then was not that of someone who was ready to take over anytime soon.

Before now, we had been shown Governor Suntai when he reportedly went fishing. I had cause to ask if such a ridiculous show was necessary because, rather than enhance the governor’s case, it worsened it. The picture we saw was like a caricature; even a robot would have fared better. The question on the lips of many people then was: must people go to this extent to be in power?

As I have always said, if only Nigeria’s politicians could devote 30 per cent of the time they spend pursuing power to purposeful governance, this country would be a far better place. But what we have are people who want power for the sake of it; and when handed the power, they keep abusing it because they don’t know what else to do with it for the general good.

The question we need to be asking ourselves now is: for how long can an elected official – governor, president or whatever be out of office on health ground? That is a fundamental question that the constitutional amendment must answer. This is necessary not because one is callous but more due to the fact that in situations like this, it is actually not the person that is sick that is benefiting; it is the hangers-on who do not want the honeymoon to end. At a point, Alhaji Yar’Adua could not even recognise anything, yet, some people benefiting from his illness said he was performing official functions; some even argued that he could do that even from the moon.

Those who say Governor Suntai is responding to treatment (he has been doing that even before he returned from abroad in August) should bring him out again and let Nigerians see his state of health. If Governor Suntai was too weak and tired to talk on arrival in August due to the stress of his journey, what is he weak and tired of now? As governor, Suntai is no longer his private self; he is now a public figure and we need to be updated on his state of health periodically if he must remain governor in Taraba.

February 2, 2014
IBB’s phantom letter

But last week was not all about phantom video; it was also a week of phantom letter. Of course Nigerians are familiar with the word ‘phantom’. It was very popular during the military era, when military officers could be executed or put in life jail over phantom coup. Interestingly, the man purported to have written the phantom letter was also an active participant in that era when ‘phantom’ became a household name in the country. I am talking about no other person than General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, better known as IBB. Some say he is a self-styled president; others yet call him ‘the evil genius’. The gap-toothed general was said to have dispatched a bombshell to President Goodluck Jonathan, on the worrisome state-of-the-nation, last week.

Coming barely a few months after former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote a stinker to President Jonathan, one would have started wondering what the retired generals wanted. When Obasanjo wrote his own letter, they said he did because President Jonathan has sidelined him in the scheme of things. So, what would have been the motivation for IBB to write such a short but sharp letter to the President? Could it be that he too wants to be remembered for one favour or the other? But, just as I was wondering why the new service chiefs could not begin their assignment by taking their retired boss to task for writing a letter he is not supposed to write (or, put in official jargon, for inciting Nigerians against the hard-working government), the general denied ever writing such a letter.

General Babangida might not have known the import of his denial; but I put it to him that it has denied the media huge revenue. Imagine the headlines: IBB to Jonathan: do something now’; or even at simply ‘IBB writes Jonathan’, there would have been no unsold for many newspapers that day. As a matter of fact, till today, newspaper owners would still have been smiling to the banks while editors would be jubilating that they at least have a respite from sweating to get good stories to sell their papers. Honestly, this denial spoilt the day for some people. You may not get what I mean now; maybe you will when ‘the column that never was’ is eventually released.

Well, denial or no denial, the new National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Adamu Muazu met with IBB on Friday. If it was a coincidence, it must be an exceptional one indeed. Perhaps it pays to be an ‘evil genius’!

February 2, 2014
Flag-girls and unemployment in Nigeria

Who will rescue our ladies from Romeo employers?

Being a Sunday column, I normally submit my write-up for publication on Fridays. Usually, I must have started writing it as soon as I find any topic of interest. Sometimes, I even start on Mondays when I find something that catches my fancy, because writing depends on many factors; this moment you are in the mood, the next moment you are not. Sometimes it is the topic I start on Monday that I eventually conclude and submit. Sometimes too, I have had cause to change, even at the last minute, when stories of greater significance break. As a rule, whatever I write on must be topical. As writers know too, the pen flows better when one is writing on a topic of interest rather than on something one is writing on just to fill space.

Whilst I sometimes have a glut of what to focus on, depending on stories that break during the week, on a few occasions I have had to ‘scrap bottom pot’ (as we say) to find something worth commenting on. This past week was one such ‘dry’ week. It was not as if there were no significant stories, the problem was that there is nothing new to say on most of them. Take the Rivers State crisis, for example, over which there was rumpus in the Senate last week. Take also the story of the new Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu begging its governors that defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to return to the ruling party. Does any of them need to be told that that would amount to political suicide if they hearkened to such plea? Much as I would have loved to say something on this today in details, a comment by someone to the effect that Nigerian politicians are unpredictable made me change my mind and wait for the time they will commit such political hara-kiri before writing on the issue.

Or is it the story that President Goodluck Jonathan has said that corruption is not the main problem of Africa, but political instability and insecurity? Are you wondering where the President is getting some of these weird ideas from? Now, tell me, what new thing would one be saying that we have not said on corruption? On Stella Oduah alone, we have written the A-Z of corruption.

However, it was while flipping through the newspapers in search of what to write on that I stumbled on the story titled “Pathetic world of flag-girls on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”. The rider to that headline, “Where graduates work for 11 hours daily, earn N30,000 monthly” encapsulates the sorry pass that has been the lot of Nigerian graduates. In recent times, I have been plying that expressway somehow regularly and I have been seeing some of these ladies on the road controlling traffic. I never knew they were this underpaid, even though I have always known that such tendency is ever present in our society.

It is so sad that our graduates’ suffering is not only about not knowing when they will be graduating from the university, despite the fact that they signed a four-year contract when they were admitted. Only a few lucky ones make it within the four years; those who spend five years must be thanking their stars for being lucky.

Now, after going through these harrowing experiences, one should expect that the graduates would consider their suffering over. But the suffering proper begins after graduating. You see the apprehension on the faces of the youth corps members during their passing out parade, with many of them staring blank into space, and wondering what the future holds in stock for them.

It was when the reality of that gloomy future dawned on the flag-girls that they accepted the ridiculous offer in the construction company that they are presently serving. But the practice is pervasive in many other sectors of our economy. Go to some of these Indian as well as Lebanese companies, you find many of our young girls employed as casual workers. Yet, these companies make fortunes as profits from our economy. The sad aspect is that most of these companies regard these casual job offers given these girls as a favour. Some of their bosses even regard the girls as part of their unofficial ‘emoluments’ that they can turn to whenever they feel like.

What they do is to make the recruitment process look tedious for the girls and ladies such that those who eventually made it (sometimes after playing ball) will forever be thankful to whoever they thought was instrumental to their recruitment. Some were ‘duped’ in the process as they are still not given jobs after the girls had fulfilled all unrighteousness with some of the bosses, who sometimes happen to be Nigerians. Mind you, when we talk about ladies being duped, it is not about money. It will interest you to note that many of our banks and telecommunication firms that are reaping mouth-watering profits do same, with the supervising authorities pretending not to know, or accepting that there is nothing unusual about it.

A friend’s son was in these shoes until sometime last year when he was saved from that ‘Egypt’. The young man has a master’s from a university in London, but on returning home, the first job he got fetched him N10,000 a month; and N20,000 on a good month. After some time, he got another job from which he earned about N50,000 per month. He was still celebrating this when he got yet another for about double that amount. That is the extent to which exploitation has reached in the country.

What these girls have done is commendable; at least it is better, as some of them said in the newspaper report, than engaging in prostitution. But what of the attendant risks, with many inconsiderate drivers on our roads? Mind you, graduates employed as casual workers can never be entitled to any form of insurance. So, should anything happen to them even while on ‘active service’, they are on their own. Death will only be seen in the context of the company losing a ‘hand’ (hands is a derogatory term for workers).

There are many other examples of such demeaning jobs offered many Nigerian girls, with no one rising to fight for them. The politicians who should be doing that are part of the racket. They engage many of these girls who can find their way to Abuja as prostitutes, and while away their time and the time of Nigeria in-between the laps of these unfortunate ladies,their hearts humming and pounding like an over-flogged generator. That is when they (politicians) are not engaging in petty politicking, fighting political battles that have no bearing on the lives of the people, such that one cannot but wonder what these people have done with the power in their hands in years past, and why like Oliver Twist, they always want more. But we have to be careful to ask President Jonathan to solve the problem of unemployment. We first have to ascertain if he believes it is a problem. I said this with due respect, and especially against the background of his assertion that corruption is not an issue in Africa. Unemployment as a problem too, in the President’s eye, could only be in the imagination of those who are saying it is a problem here.

A reader’s musing

Did you hear Jonathan yesterday (Thursday, January 23)? He said the problem of Africa is not corruption but political instability and insecurity. Pray, what is the source of political instability and insecurity if not corruption? Why then are we expecting Jonathan to solve a problem he does not even understand? It is glaring we have employed a … to solve an electrical problem. The President is at home with corruption. God have mercy on Nigeria! From Simon Oladapo, Ogbomoso.

January 26, 2014
Bamanga taku

The PDP chair might have been kicked out; his ‘resignation’ now won’t amount to much

Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the erstwhile Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took the rug off my feet when, after behaving like a drowning man that would not hesitate to cling, even to a serpent for help, for months, finally bowed to pressures to resign on January 15. Alhaji Tukur had been in search of a saviour for months. But genuine saviours don’t come cheap. And when they do, they come to the rescue of people in genuine need of help. At some point, the PDP chair leaned on President Goodluck Jonathan; at some other time, he found succour on the shoulders of his wife, Patience Jonathan. That he was still forced out of office showed that he was all the while building (his salvation) on shifting sand. Those he looked forward to for help might themselves be in need of help.

I am pained though that Alhaji Tukur beat me to it. I had already concluded, as early as the beginning of last week, to write on him because I was baffled that in spite of the fact that the PDP had been crumbling on his head, he never deemed it fit to resign, at least as honourable men would have done. The headline that I initially chose: Tukur taku! (Tukur adamant!) was provided by a colleague. That is why, despite the fact that Alhaji Tukur has resigned, I still found the headline (which I later modified to ‘Bamanga taku’) irresistible and appropriate, if only to stress the fact that his resignation came far too late.

People should be able to read the handwriting on the wall. Alhaji Tukur was humiliated out of office; he only did not wait for the formalisation of the humiliation process. So, what has all his stone-walling and filibustering amounted to, after all? At his age, Alhaji Tukur ought to know when it is time to go; he ought to have known that it is best to leave when the ovation is loudest. It was because he failed to know this that he stayed longer than necessary in the toilet, and eventually ended up being assailed by all manner of maggots. The shame and disgrace that he was running away from in the twilight of his life and political career, which made him to stay put as party chair, even when it was obvious that he was no longer wanted, eventually became his lot just because he refused to face realities.

Rumours had started making the rounds the day before he finally threw in the towel that he had resigned, but this was refuted with everything within Tukur’s arsenal. He said the purported resignation was a ruse and that it was the handiwork of his political detractors. I don’t know why people like deceiving themselves like this. A woman who has only one child was told that her child was misbehaving somewhere, and she asked: which of them? Was it not clear, even to the blind, that Alhaji Tukur had lost the battle to retain his job a long time ago? He was probably the only one that did not see that his end as PDP chair was nigh. The crisis in Rivers State is enough to finish him as party chairman.

And, at a time he should be asking Allah for forgiveness of sins, he, in desperation to keep his job, even lied in faraway London when he told a gathering that for every five members who left the PDP, the party records about 500 new entrants. “The PDP remains a party with the largest spread and tested strength to win elections any day any time …” Tukur told the visiting Nigerian professionals. He added: “The good thing is that if five people move out of PDP into the other party, even by a dint of propaganda, the party takes in more than 500 at a time as replacement. The electorate in Nigeria trusts the PDP more than many people are aware,” a boastful Tukur further stated. He was trying to impress his audience that the defection of five of the party’s governors to the All Progressives Congress (APC) was inconsequential. He had forgotten that in this era of internet, such lies cannot endure. The greatest fool knows this is a lie. But that is how they have been running the country. In the PDP, lying is politics.

It is shocking, however, that, at 78, Alhaji Tukur made himself available to be used as a virtual puppet. What did he want again? It is not that he is poor. Anyway, since he was not man enough to do what he should have done when it was most honourable, he should at least return home to do what he originally should be doing now that it is all over: tend to his grandchildren and great grandchildren (if any).

Let no one shed tears for him. He was not born a party chair; he was not the first PDP chair. Has he forgotten that that is the way things are in the ruling party? Has he forgotten how former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited the then chairman of the PDP, Chief Audu Ogbeh, ate pounded yam with him at his family house and, a few hours later, backed Ogbeh’s removal from office? Has Alhaji Tukur forgotten that the PDP chair seat is a musical chair? He ought to have been more circumspect knowing that people who were by far better party chairmen than him had gone. If people who were able to keep the party together and elevate the status of party chair could lose their job so ignominiously, what gave Alhaji Tukur the confidence that he would be able to keep his, even as the party was crumbling under his watch?

It is sad that a septuagenarian who should be thinking more about celestial matters is still hankering after terrestrial things. But just a rhetorical question: Will Alhaji Tukur, in all conscience, be proud to hand this kind of job over to his children?

With speculation that the President’s wife was already scheming to install his successor, after delicately backing him through his long, troubled moments, Nigerians should pray that the First Lady should continue to bring her influence to bear in the PDP because we need more of such negative influence from her to completely tear the party apart.

But no one should harbour the illusion that Alhaji Tukur is alone in this stay-put syndrome. He is only emblematic of the disease afflicting them in the PDP, nay, Africa generally. And that is one of the dangers of keeping the party in power for longer than necessary; its men will never go without a fight. A friend of mine has always warned that we need to be wary of people who eat stockfish without picking their teeth because such people will never pay their debt. I do not know how Alhaji Tukur’s resignation at this point in time will amount to much in the course of events. As a commentator said online, his resignation is ‘probably too little and too late!’ Not only that, Alhaji Tukur is only but a puppet, he is not the issue in the PDP. The real issue is the puppeteer himself. Is he seeking reelection in 2015, or is he not? This is the bone of contention in the ruling party. And it will remain so until the ruling party wobbles and fumbles out of the 2015 election.

January 19, 2014
2014: Agenda for Jonathan

‘Fight corruption and other things shall be added unto you’

President Goodluck Jonathan does not need any long list of what to do this year. For me, that will only make him the usual Jack of all trades, master of none. And that is not the expectation of Nigerians from their President at this ‘injury time’ of his administration. Moreover, there is little dividend from the items on his Transformation Agenda. So far, it has been all motion and no movement. The President should be familiar with the saying that you cannot have a different result when you keep doing something the same way. With only about 17 months for President Jonathan to go, it is time to change tack. Time is not on his side.

Therefore, as far as I am concerned, there is only one commandment for the President: ‘fight corruption, and other things shall be added unto you’. As I have always said, if the only problem of a government is incompetence, it is probably a shade better provided public funds are not stolen or lost in addition to the incompetence. But when money is being stolen as if stealing is going out of fashion, such money cannot be retrieved again. What we have lost to corruption in the last 14 years of our return to democracy in 1999, and especially since 2011, is mindboggling. This is excluding the years of the locust when soldiers held sway.

Corruption is at the root of all the ills plaguing Nigeria. It is responsible for pensioners slumping on verification queues. Corruption is responsible for the incessant power problem we are facing. If people who never imported fuel get subsidy payments, it is corruption. When contract costs are inflated, corruption is responsible. When a judge sells his judgment, it is corruption. When lecturers teach what they are not paid to teach or demand what they are not supposed to demand from their students in exchange for marks, it is corruption. When a journalist demands money in order to kill or use a story, it is corruption.

And when we talk about corruption, it is not just about money. There are other forms of corruption that have the same terrible effects as that involving money. For instance, the last Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election in which the President’s governors lost. Yet, President Jonathan hosted the 16 losers who ‘represented’ him at the election, even when the world knew that he and his men lost in that election. Now, who would believe such a President if he denies rigging election sometime in the future? The point is that President Jonathan does not realise the effect of some of his actions on the Presidency. That is why I don’t pity those who feel the Presidency is being debased. The office can only be as exalted as the occupier wants it to be.

The world’s mirror on corruption matters; Transparency International’s (TI) rating of Nigeria in the last seven years is instructive. In 2006, Nigeria ranked 153 out of 180 countries; in 2007 it ranked 147 out of 180; in 2008, 121 of 180 and 2009, 130 out of 180. In 2010, the country ranked 134 of 178 countries; in 2011 it was 143 of 183 and 2012, 139 out of 177. These are clearly poor ranks. But they reflect the country’s realities. At the last count, we are the 35th most corrupt nation in the world, according to TI’s statistics. As BusinessDay rightly observed, “Management of public funds and resources in this country has been bedevilled by massive fraud and embezzlement which largely goes on with outright impunity. Nigeria’s rank on the corruption perception index reaffirms government indifference to corruption, particularly in the public sector”. And, to show how unserious we are, the government said in its reaction to the 2012 ranking that the marginal improvement recorded in that year was an indication that the Jonathan presidency had taken on corruption headlong. This is fallacious.

While democracy is not entrenched as it should be in the country, with all kinds of anti-democratic behaviours in high places, corruption appears democratised under the Jonathan presidency. It is so bad that Nigerians are wondering if any other country could be more corrupt than their own. Unfortunately, while the cankerworm stares us all in the face, the President says it is not as serious as it is portrayed; and that it is only a question of perception. Maybe the rest of us would need binoculars or microscopes to see what the President is seeing that we are not seeing, or vice versa.

Perhaps it is this ‘perception problem’ that is responsible for the President’s dilly-dally on the Stella Oduah bullet-proof cars scandal. When our own President was still thinking about how to handle the scandal, Providence provided an example which he should have followed, with the Ghanaian President firing that country’s deputy minister for communication, Victoria Hammah, for merely contemplating corruption. The Ghanaian leader did not need to travel to Israel to receive divine direction before sacking the minister. Our own President went to Israel at about that time. They even flew a kite then that he kept a reasonable distance from the embattled aviation minister in the holy land. Yet, months after returning, Minister Oduah still sits pretty in her office. And the President keeps talking to himself that he is fighting corruption. Unlike Governor Rotimi Amaechi who is not versed in reading body language, the rest of us who can have seen, even if only from the Oduah case, Nigeria’s official position on corruption. Someday, we will find out what is so special about this minister that makes the President prefer to receive harsh criticisms on her case rather than show her the door.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo might have caught thieves selectively. No doubt this is not the best, but if he was catching thieves that did not belong to his camp, it was still better. At least those thieves caught would reduce the number of thieves in the country. I think our only concern should be that he was not catching innocent persons for thieves simply because he did not like their faces. The thieves that Obasanjo refused to catch would be caught by another king that would not know those ‘Obasanjo boys’. Jonathan too should have been catching his own thieves by now. Even the ones we strongly suspected and handed over to him, he is not doing anything about them. I do not know of anywhere in the world where they wait until they catch all the thieves before moving against them.

Of course Nigeria is not the only country where we have people with an insatiable appetite for primitive accumulation. There are thieves even in high places all over the world. The difference is that Nigeria appears to be a haven for corrupt persons. In other places, they are dealt with once caught. Imagine the Halliburton and Siemens cases in which those involved had been punished abroad. Nigeria’s punishment problem has made it impossible for us to do same to our own officials involved in the scandals. James Ibori would still have been walking the streets a free man if he had been tried in Nigeria. At worst, he might have received a light sentence and consequently granted presidential pardon. Just about two weeks ago, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told us that it would need over N200million to prosecute 17 former governors suspected to have enriched themselves illegally. That is how we have to spend unnecessarily when we don’t tackle corruption early enough.

With the high rate of corruption in the country, even a hardworking President would only be pouring water inside a basket. Corruption, when not checked, is like an untrained child; he will end up selling the house that his parents built. If President Jonathan thinks he can go far with this high rate of corruption, he is wasting his time. He should act fast now that Omoye has not yet entered the market naked. Indeed, I don’t want to say the President should do something about corruption before it is too late because I don’t want whatever I say to be used against me in the court of the human rights commission.

January 12, 2014
Missing link in Okoh’s homily

Anglican leader’s one-sided sermon

Deliberately, I have almost always refrained from taking on our religious leaders. But something stirred in me when, on Christmas Day, I watched the Archbishop of Abuja, The Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, talk about some people who want to cause trouble in the country, only to travel out when there is a crisis. “Nigerians ought to be grateful to God and live responsibly. Do not join anybody to cause trouble. If we follow life diligently, Nigeria will blossom, your lives will blossom. Refugees are not the happiest of people, don’t make yourself a refugee”, he had said. President Goodluck Jonathan also delivered his own ‘sermon’, when one would have thought the only thing he should have been allowed to do was read the lesson at the service; that is even if he must. Are there no more Lay Readers in the church?

Be that as it may, the President turned the rare privilege of speaking at the service into a political soapbox. He ranted about the country belonging to some people and not to some other people. One did not need to be discerning to know who the tirades were aimed at. And the question that naturally arose from that was at what point did those people the President was referring to stop being the country’s true statesmen and patriots? Why did he not reject it when these same people were throwing him forward for the presidency, since he did not know them to be the owners of Nigeria?

Be that as it may, I revere the Anglican Communion and that is why I made up my mind to write now. Perhaps if the leadership of some of the ‘penterascal’ churches had said what Primate Okoh said, I would have ignored them because some of those ones have redefined the essence of the church, especially with the emphasis on prosperity, to the detriment of the ultimate, salvation.

But it is important to tell our religious leaders the home truth. The Most Rev Okoh, who is also the Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, said the right thing when he talked about peace and the need for Nigerians to emulate Jesus Christ. But, whether knowingly or unintentionally he eventually entered into the realm of politics when he made the statement about people wanting to cause trouble in the country, only to fly out when the country begins to burn. I waited anxiously to see whether the Primate would balance his sermon by also cautioning the leadership on the need to govern responsibly. He never did; which was a big minus to whatever good intentions he might have had with the sermon. The crisis that the Most Rev Okoh was afraid of would always come, no matter the amount of sermonising. It is inevitable the way the country is drifting; one of the things that can avert it is for the religious leaders to also tell these political leaders nothing but the truth.

Even when the Primate asked the congregation how many of them had International Passport, I laughed because I am almost sure many of them do. That church is not one of those churches for the ‘wretched of the earth’. If the Primate comes down to some of the backwater Anglican churches, even his own followers would not say ‘Amen’ to whatever prayers he might have said when the emphasis is only on trouble makers, without saying a word about avoiding what could have triggered the trouble. Can there ever be peace when there is no justice? Thank God this is no longer the era when the priest would ask the congregation to ‘say after me’. That was the way of the catechists of old that only had the authority to speak authoritatively on the Bible then. Nowadays, the priest would say his own while the congregation would also say theirs because all, including the priest, have different ailments that they have brought before Christ. So, the question of saying after the priest does not arise.

My Lord Spiritual should ask people back in the village what life is like with them. Indeed, our religious leaders should do well to find time to visit the unknown quantities in their churches. Otherwise, they themselves will be blindfolded by the grandeur of power if they restrict themselves to the cocktail circuits of the high and mighty.

Primate Okoh must be familiar with some of the ugly developments in the country. The most recent being the case of the aviation minister, Stella Oduah, who is enmeshed in a N255million bullet-proof cars’ scandal. In which decent society does such a thing happen without the government taking a firm action against the culprit? Is the Primate aware too of the many promises the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Federal Government has made concerning power supply in the last 14 years? How far has the government kept to its promises? Now, the same President Jonathan who told us that this year, we would be throwing our generators away because we won’t have any need for them again has shifted the goal post. He has therefore budgeted close to one billion on generator-related matters for Aso Rock and federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). It is good that Nigerians have learnt not to trust the government again; so, they have refused to act like the people who only saw the gathering storm and poured away the water in the house. Moreover, has the Primate bothered to ask why our economy is improving only on paper? Has he bothered to find out the cause of the Rivers State crisis, etc.? In saner climes, heads would have rolled over any of these sad developments, that is if the country itself is not on fire now.

I know many members of the Anglican Communion who are very displeased with the state of affairs in the country today. As a matter of fact, I also know of an Old Citizen of the church who says he dare not go to church any Sunday unless he has at least N30,000 handout to give to young and able-bodied men and ladies of the church who are roaming the streets years after graduation. In those days, it was the young ones who assisted the old financially. The person I am talking about is over 70 years old and he is the one who now has to fend for people that the country should have provided jobs for if there is a government properly so-called.

Our religious leaders should not shy away from speaking truth to power. These are the kinds of things they should be telling them, instead of delivering homilies that would give the leaders the impression that God is behind them, even when they are stealing the country blue. The contradictions in Nigeria, and especially under this administration, are mindboggling. It is true they did not start under the present government but then it has been the same PDP government all these years. But again, we would have been seeing signs of assurance if the present government has any clues to the country’s problems; but the changing is only getting worse.

It is gratifying to note, however, that Primate Okoh’s position contrasts sharply with that of the immediate past Prelate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, The Most Rev Peter Akinola. Akinola, in his sermon at the interdenominational church service at the National Ecumenical Centre, Abuja, to commemorate the 2012 National Democracy Day, accused governments at all levels of allowing corruption to eat into the country’s socio-economic and political fabric, by paying lip service to the fight against the cankerworm.

That was only last year. Corruption has worsened in the country with the Jonathan government looking perpetually helpless as if it has covenanted with the affliction. The only people whose lives can blossom the way Nigeria is being run today are the crooks and treasury looters. Poverty and hunger have already made many Nigerians refugees even though we are not at war.

My Lord Spiritual, this is the home truth.

January 5, 2014