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Category: Tunji Adegboyega

The President’s pets

If we say N34m is too much for two animals, we should pray they don’t die because we will spend more to bury them

Poverty has always been and will indeed always be a disease. This was the impression I had on December 24 when I saw the lead headline in one of the national dailies titled “Villa zoo: Jonathan budgets millions of naira for animals”. According to the report, the Presidency is to spend N34million on two wild animals in the State House Zoo, and car trackers for presidential ground fleet and utility vehicles, next year. What a mouthful! Of the sum, N14.5million is the cost of the two animals. The paper even wanted to know the names of the two animals. Can you imagine!

I know the question on the lips of many is: how many workers that amount of money will cover at a minimum pay of N18,000 per month? Managers that are poorly remunerated too will, instead of fighting for enhanced salaries, begin to query the sense in spending such stupendous amount on animals. But that is where the problem is. How on earth can anyone make such comparison? Compare minimum wage earners with animals that are privileged to be in the State House? Or managers who are poorly paid? Come off it!

There is nothing unusual in what the President has done. In my primary school days, we were taught something about prevention of cruelty to animals. That was when the country still had its soul intact, though. We have since forgotten the agency charged with that responsibility. I do not blame people who feel we should not spend much on animals because of what is happening around us, even among human beings. With Boko Haram, we cannot be talking about cruelty to animals because Boko Haram is probably the height of man’s cruelty to man. As is usual with my people in Yoruba land, we have a saying or proverb for virtually anything under the sun. In this instance, they will tell you something translated to mean that a dog cannot be snoring when a human being is yet to find a place to sleep. I beg to disagree.

Moreover, critics who may want to take on the president for splashing so much on beasts must have forgotten that he is a zoologist. He has a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in Zoology. He also holds an M.Sc. in Hydrobiology/Fisheries biology, and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Zoology from the University of Port Harcourt. So, it is natural that he must feel for pets. As a matter of fact, we should not be surprised if the president sends a supplementary budget to the National Assembly for money to give some fishes a similar treat. The legislators should not hesitate to approve such supplementary budget proposal when it comes. After all, good life is not an exclusive preserve of the beasts of England, or beasts of Ireland, but for beasts of every land and clime; not forgetting those in Nigeria’s seat of power.

A few months back when I wrote on one of the greatest table tennis stars of our era, Lekan Fenuyi, I mentioned how he was pampered by the authorities of Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, Ijebu-Ode, where he was at the time. I talked about how the principal called him out for special recognition in the assembly hall after one of his exploits and pronounced him ‘the king’s goat’. Thereafter, his life in the school was no longer the same. I cannot remember the details of the privileges he enjoyed after that proclamation (as it were), but they were not the usual privileges. If a man far from the seat of power could be so privileged, and only on account of a proclamation by a school principal, why should animals that have the rare opportunity of living in a place like the Aso Rock Villa not be more than pampered? Many Nigerians will never be privileged to visit Aso rock in their lifetime; yet, some animals have the rare opportunity of being raised there. And some of us are complaining, instead of thanking God for the lives of the lucky pets and pray that God should also take us there someday.

Mind you, these are not the kind of animals anyone can harass, and they are conscious of this fact themselves. Take the case of what we call agric fowls, for instance. They are different from the fowls raised in the village. When an agric fowl sees you, it ignores you, but not the fowl raised in the village which has known even before it was hatched that there can be nothing like true love between man and fowl; that when a man keeps feeding a fowl well, it is in anticipation of the day he would kill it for food. The fowls raised in the village know that the hearts of man towards fowls are full of evil. So, even if you pretend as if you want to give the village fowl food, it keeps a reasonable distance from you. You run and sweat before you can catch it. But not the agric fowl, which literally throws itself at you and offers a little resistance even when being led to the slaughter slab.

The President’s pets enjoy better privileges, or should I say rights! President Jonathan’s fascination for the animals might also be due to the non-appreciative nature of man. This is a President that has done so much for Nigeria and Nigerians; yet, all he gets are abuses and criticisms, with people writing all kinds of unnecessary letters warning him before it is too late. Perhaps if the President showers a little of the affection he has been wasting on human beings on animals, the animals will be much more grateful. As a zoologist, he understands the language of the pets which not even the dreaded Boko Haram can have access to. Indeed, it is a privilege to get to them. They are like the agric fowl that I talked about. The difference between them and ordinary agric fowls is that you mess up with them at your own risk. Even dignitaries who visit where they are kept in Aso Rock must smile or laugh heartily if the President is the one taking them round the zoo. Those complaining about how costly it is to maintain the animals had better pray that none of them should die anytime soon. It is then they will know that their burial expenses are far more than the cost to keep them alive. Flags may be ordered hoisted at half-mast, with the President declaring some days of national mourning . Some of the country’s ‘who’s who’ may turn professional criers, weeping not necessarily for the dead pet/s but because they want to be identified with the President in such moments. As for the paper that is asking for the pets’ names, it would be shocked if they are the baptismal names of some of their editors.

For these pets, like most other privileged pets, that ‘golden future time’ that George Orwell talked about in Animal Farm is here today. We should bless God for their lives rather than be envious of them; that is if our own time must come.

Happy New Year in advance

n this note, I have to say a wonderful thank you to people who have stayed with this column over the years, especially this outgoing year. Above all, however, I give glory to the almighty God for the inspiration He has been giving me in the course of writing my articles.

By the time you are reading this column next week, we would have been five days into the supposed New Year (2014); which tells us that the year will no longer be that brand new by then. This also means that time waits for no one. If this year has been interesting, the next promises to be much more interesting, given the political and other alignments and realignments (going on) in the country. These, no doubt, are good. But the gladiators must bear one thing in mind: they are not the end in themselves. The alignments and realignments are only the means to an end.

Be more expectant in the New Year. Stay blessed. It is well.

December 29, 2013
Nigeria’s many managers

Impatience of some Nigerians over the ASUU strike shows the incurable minimalist in us

Nigeria is blessed with managers, many managers. Indeed, she has a surfeit of them that she can even export to other nations that are not so blessed. The only issue is that such nations must be ready to look for solution to the problem associated with too many managers. Too many managers are like too many cooks: they spoil the broth. As a matter of fact, Nigeria is the way she is as a result of the problem of the too many managers.

It is so serious that almost everyone in the country has perfected the art of ‘managing’, such that you start wondering whether companies need the services of managing directors. If you greet some people and ask them: ‘how are things’, they will simply tell you: ‘we are managing’. There are numerous other examples that space would not permit me to cite. Another common one is when the husband gives money for the family’s upkeep to the wife and she complains as women are won’t to do that it is not enough, he tells her to ‘manage’. Meanwhile, the same husband who is asking madam in the house to manage is busy spoiling the concubine/s with money.

Sadly, this is the story of our dear country, Nigeria. We see and smell affluence all over the people who were asking the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to go and ‘manage’ at a point during their just ended strike. The same people who are adding to our yoke by raising tariffs on cars and rice are the same people buying bullet-proof cars for themselves at highly inflated costs. Yet, they say there is no money to fund education adequately. In other words, ASUU should go and ‘manage’. What a bundle of contradictions!

This is my first piece since the ASUU members began their strike on July 1, and deliberately so. The strike ended on Tuesday. Indeed, inspiration for this write-up came from the discussion between a colleague of mine and one of the people who read his piece on the ASUU strike about three weeks ago. The reader had told my colleague that now that the Federal Government had offered the university teachers something, they should at least ‘go and manage’ that. Needless to say that my colleague was visibly angry. Indeed, every rational person who knows the value of education and who also knows that it is not that the government does not have the means to make the education sector better but is hampered by several leakages which bother essentially on corruption, should.

Almost immediately, I remembered also the story of Major Adewale Ademoyega, who was detained after the Civil War. At a point, the food in the prison got exhausted or something, and when he approached the prison warder for what to eat, the warder told him to ‘manage’. The answer became so monotonous and meaningless to Ademoyega who got irritated at a point and told the warder that he was ready to ‘manage’ whatever was available, but at least there must be something on offer. But in a situation where nothing was available, ‘what would I manage’? The warder replied in the usual manner, ‘oga, just go and manage’! That was in the 1970s. The fact that some people were asking ASUU to ‘go and manage’ in the midst of plenty, and in this age, shows that many of us are incurable minimalists.

When the lecturers began the strike, it was clear that it was going to be a long one. The issues could not be expected to be resolved immediately, given the antecedents. But hardly did anyone know that it would last for more than five months. But that was good because whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

There must have been some hidden costs of the strike, no doubt, because when students who are supposed to be in school are not, and for so long, without being on holiday, anything could have happened. As the saying goes, ‘an idle hand is the Devil’s workshop’. Aside from these hidden costs, social and otherwise, we know that the strike led to the sack of the minister of education who was in charge when the strike started, as if she was the issue. Perhaps the greatest cost we know of is the death of that erudite scholar, Prof Festus Iyayi, who died on the way to Kano for a meeting related to the struggle.

Sad as this was, we may be killing several other Iyayis silently if nothing is done to change the face of university education in Nigeria. A situation where some people, simply because they are politicians, would flaunt ill-gotten wealth and be living in the midst of plenty whereas universities are underfunded should not be allowed to continue forever. Otherwise, we would be inculcating the wrong values in our youths. So much money is being stolen in this country because many people are not asking for their rights. If every Nigerian keeps asking for what his due to him or her, politicians and their friends who are making the country bleed profusely would have little to steal.

One may pity those who talk of ASUU ‘managing’ whatever the government has given it if only they belong to the new generation of Nigerians who were not privileged to know what some of our universities looked like years back, but not those who knew the citadels of learning when they were universities properly so-called. I recall with nostalgia, the Department of Mass Communication of the University of Lagos where I had my first degree; how we used to see the glass windows and doors in the department ‘sweat’, as it were, from the effects of the ultra-cold air conditioners in the department. I recall the same of the law faculty in the university and a few other departments and faculties there, most of which are today a shadow of what they used to be. It was like that all over the place; and, instead of the government addressing the serious issue of infrastructural deficit on the campuses, it kept on establishing more glorified secondary schools that it calls universities.

Shouldn’t we be bothered that we can only know when our children gain admission into the universities; we have no idea of when they will finish even though we know the duration of their programmes? Shouldn’t we be bothered that none of our universities is among the first 1,000 in the world? Shouldn’t we be bothered that we keep churning out graduates, many of them unemployable? Yet, people are talking of ‘managing’.

Now, the same Federal Government that keeps saying there is no money has coughed up something. It may not solve all the problems; at least it is a good beginning. What it means is that if ASUU had not insisted on having it right, the N1.1trn that the government promised to commit to public universities over a five-year period might have ended up in some private pockets or spent on white elephant projects. Your guess is as good as mine, especially with general elections only one year away. People must learn to insist on having their dues. It is when they don’t that some people in government see the money they should have spent for our collective good as free funds that they can steal or spend anyhow. As we jocularly say in my place, ‘ko s’obo mo ni Idanre’ (there are no more fools in Idanre); the last fool there, when last I checked, was using an exotic jeep.

It is gratifying that ASUU, unlike Major Ademoyega, finally got something to ‘manage’. The union has fought a good fight; its members should however manage what they got well.

December 22, 2013
PDP’s ‘Mandelas’

Ruling party has further ridiculed Nigeria by comparing its ‘founding fathers’ with Mandela

We all like to associate with good things; but it is insulting for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to compare any of its founding fathers with the former South African President, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The difference between Mandela and the PDP’s founding fathers is like that between heaven and earth. You don’t compare sleep with death.

Since the passage of this great African and world icon on December 5, tributes have expectedly come in torrents from all over the world. Mandela deserved all the accolades; his type is rare in most generations. I do not know if there is anything new to say by way of eulogising the man, but there have been issues that arose since his death which make localising the passage compelling in a way that it will have meaning to us here beyond just praising the Madiba.

Hear the PDP: “While Nelson Mandela, the greatest African of the living memory, ended the inhumanity of apartheid, bringing freedom to South Africans, the founding fathers of PDP liberated Nigeria from the vicious clutches of military tyranny and ushered the nation into democracy”. That was the ruling party’s own way of eulogising Mandela. Yet, nothing could be more fallacious than these claims. How can anyone who wants to be truthful to himself say this kind of thing? But when last has the PDP been truthful, even to itself? We know however that in Nigeria, such claims can be made, especially by our politicians because, as I have always argued, everything to them is politics. The truth is that Nigeria’s ruling parties have this uncanny way of attempting to rewrite history. The defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in its bid to ridicule Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Second Republic (at least so it thought), also claimed that the first television station in Africa was established somewhere in Libya, instead of Ibadan in the then Western Region of Nigeria. Needless to say that the campaign failed.

But shouldn’t we know the limits of expensive jokes or politics? How can anyone compare Mandela with any of the PDP founding fathers, living or dead? Trust Nigerians, they have since descended on the ruling party as vultures would a rotten corpse. It is unfortunate that the party does not know that the international community has had more than enough to laugh about us; we should therefore not further ridicule our country with such comments. It is even the more fallacious to claim that “the founding fathers of PDP liberated Nigeria from the vicious clutches of military tyranny and ushered the nation into democracy”. Even if this was ever true, has the ruling party not thrown Nigerians that they have been ruling for the past 14 years into the ‘vicious clutches of civilian tyranny’? And, contrary to the PDP’s claim that it has liberated Nigerians, are they (Nigerians) not still in manacles; in which they are likely to remain until the day they know how to insist on one man, one vote?

What we know as a fact, and which is sad about democracy in the country, is that most of those now enjoying high political offices did little or nothing to bring democracy about. Whenever the history of the struggle is being written, Nigerians know those who fought the democracy fight. How many PDP top shots were in the trenches during the struggle? We still remember those who stood on June 12; we remember those who sat on it; those who knelt on it, those who trampled on it; those who slept on it; those who spat on it, those who danced on it, etc. Even the soldiers who beat a retreat in 1999 know those who made them run; their tails behind their legs. As a matter of fact, it can be argued that the PDP is mismanaging the country because it did not know how we came about democracy. Those who really fought the military to a standstill might not have misruled the country this way. Hardly can people appreciate what they never worked for.

Mandela, who fought alongside other patriots to end apartheid in South Africa, and despite the awe with which he was held by people, not only in South Africa but globally, despite his acclaimed qualities, was never interested in second term. Here was a man who spent most of his 27 years serving hard labour in Robben Island prison, off Cape Town. Although jailed for life, he was released in 1990 and received a Nobel Prize. He was later elected South Africa’s president in the country’s first multi-racial elections held in 1994. Even the white supremacists that he fought appreciated his essence.

If he had wanted a second term, perhaps life presidency, he probably would have got it on a platter of gold. Here, people, mostly non-performers cling to political offices as if their lives depend on them. It is in the PDP that an obviously sick governor would go fishing even while it is clear from motion and still pictures that the man is not in a position to catch an ant. It is in the PDP that an ailing president would not want to vacate office even while it is glaring that his health could no longer carry the weight of the enormous responsibility of office. Mandela did not belong to this category of sit-tight leaders.

Right now, second term is at the core of the crisis that has torn the ruling party apart. In some cases, even second term would not do as we witnessed in the Obasanjo presidency: baba wanted a third term! Today, people are busy arguing over whether the president signed a one-term pact and the presidency is on the defensive. What is particularly painful is that the people clamouring for more than one term in office do not have any tangible thing to point to as their achievements beyond their usual deceitful backslapping in their political party. Mandela gave his all, including his life, in the struggle to emancipate his people from the shackles of apartheid.

The PDP should stop disgracing our country in the comity of nations. It has had 14 years to etch its name in gold but has failed so far; but all hope is not lost if only it can redeem itself before 2015. As William Shakespeare observed, “some are born great; some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”. Unlike ‘PDP’s Mandelas’, despite the fact that Nelson Mandela was born great (born to the Thembu royal family), he also worked hard to sustain his greatness, rather than have greatness thrust upon him. How many people that the PDP is placing in his class can we say the same of? Mandela went to jail for political reasons, the few persons in the PDP that had gone to jail did so for corruption. Majority of them who should be cooling their heels in jailhouses are still walking the streets free.

It would have been better for the PDP not to eulogise Mandela than ridicule the man the way it did. By the ruling party’s standards, it could talk of its own Mandelas, that is ‘PDP’s Mandelas’. After all, ‘in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’. I have always argued that there is nothing on earth that does not have a fake. Remember the advert of that analgesic? So, if it is not Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, it cannot be the same as Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela; the Madiba of whom the world sings.

Adieu Mandela, the ‘troublemaker’ with a cause.

December 15, 2013
No Junaid Mohammed, no

Jonathan can run again; what we should insist on is free and fair election

Even many people who do not like the Goodluck Jonathan administration will not agree with Dr Junaid Mohammed’s threat that blood will flow on the streets of Nigeria should President Jonathan insist on running for president in 2015. Although I share Dr Mohammed’s views about the Jonathan presidency, I would have been satisfied if he had stopped at his statement that “… if there is going to be a free and credible election, I don’t mind if Jonathan runs, because I know he would be roundly rejected by Nigerians”. But to say blood will flow on account of the president running again is to me superfluous.

The truth, though, is that Nigerian leaders have a way of speaking in tongues when the issue is staying put in office. President Jonathan’s godfather said he was waiting on God for direction when asked if he was going for second term or not. This was a man who was born again only in the upper part of the body! The essential area is however still steeped in iniquity. Now, according to Dr. Mohammed, President Jonathan has said he is under pressure to run; and that that, so far, is the only clue we have as to whether the President wants to run again or not.

Like Governor Rotimi Amaechi, Dr Mohammed may not be a good body language reader, so, at least for now, we should rely on his claim that the president is ‘under pressure’ to run again; a thing that does not go down well with the medical doctor: “Quote me, if Jonathan insists on running, there will be bloodshed and those who feel short-changed may take the warpath and the country may not be the same again. His running will amount to taking about 85 million northerners for a ride and that is half of the country’s total population”. I have issues with some of these claims, but that is not important today.

The 1999 Constitution stipulates conditions for people who aspire to our presidency. President Jonathan has more than the minimum requirements. If he hadn’t, he would not have been president in the first place. For me, therefore, the next question to ask is whether the president has done well to merit reelection. Permit me to refer to Mohammed’s criteria:

“…On the three criteria globally used to measure preference for a leader, this man (Jonathan) has got none of them. They are competence, integrity and acceptability. On competence, you journalists know this better. President Jonathan is incompetent. He has got no integrity … On acceptability, apart from his few ethnic and tribal advisers, who are urging him to contest, Jonathan today (please note my emphasis on TODAY) is not acceptable to the generality of Nigerians. So on all these three counts he is nowhere, so on what basis is he going to run again?”

This is a pertinent question. But on what basis has the president’s party been winning some of the elections it claimed to have won in the past? I agree with Dr Mohammed that the Jonathan administration is an administrative fiasco. I may not know of the president personally, but I agree too that his government is corrupt. These being the case, the answer to the third question (that of acceptability by voters), is already settled. So, if it is indeed true that some people are putting pressure on President Jonathan to run again, this must be the handiwork of ethnic advisers as Dr Mohammed said. And, if I may add, those other people whose bread is being buttered for every minute that President Jonathan is in office.

But this should not surprise anyone because it has always been like that; Nigeria has never been in short supply of such characters. These sycophants are sans borders, it has nothing to do with the part of the country the leader comes from. They were there in the Second Republic and they did not leave the Shehu Shagari government until the president had the knock of soldiers on the door, telling him the game was up. They were also there in the Gen. Sani Abacha years when they told the general (who was disliked at home and distrusted abroad) that Nigeria would collapse if Abacha did not transmute to civilian president. They eventually saw Abacha to his grave.

These are the people who are now preventing President Jonathan from knowing that things have changed since the 2011 elections and that if free and fair elections are held today, the president will perhaps lose his deposit. This reminds me of a question I asked President Jonathan’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, Dr Doyin Okupe, when he visited this newspaper sometime ago: “since when did the Jonathan administration begin to be loathed by Nigerians? Was it not the same Nigerians that gave the president an overwhelming support during the 2011 presidential election”? Okupe replied that it was probably since the fuel subsidy withdrawal issue. That could jolly well be true; but what effort has the Jonathan presidency made to reverse the trend? The government has only gone progressively worse on all indices of good governance.

I am not sure any other government since the Babangida era caressed corruption the way the Jonathan administration is doing. And what this does is to reinforce the impression by not a few persons that the president does not give a damn about his legacy but only sees his time as the turn of the Niger Delta region to rule Nigeria. People from other geo-political zones have done it before and they had second term. So, it is immaterial if he too does it well or not; the Niger Delta is entitled to two terms and other Nigerians must understand and accept this notorious fact, and return him (Jonathan) possibly unopposed.

Perhaps another reason that many people have been silent on concerning their frustration with the Jonathan government is that this is the first time Nigeria is having graduates not just as Number One citizen but also as Number Two. All the while we have been lamenting that while the country is blessed with numerous erudite scholars, it had not been privileged to have a graduate as president. Now that both the president and his deputy are graduates, with the president having a PhD, there is still no difference. Isn’t this enough reason to be aggrieved, when great expectations turn to great frustrations?

By 2015, President Jonathan would have been in power for five years (his four years plus one year he inherited from the late President Umaru Yar’Adua); this is only two years short of the seven-year tenure he has championed for president and governors. What value is the president going to add to governance that he could not have added in five years? If morning shows the day, we can see clearly there is none.

All said, what we should be fighting for now is not that President Jonathan should not run again, because he has the backing of the constitution to run. Rather, we should be preparing ourselves for free and fair elections. That should be the sing-song of the opposition parties to their supporters. Now, perhaps more than ever before, it is becoming clearer that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has completely outlived its usefulness. The party has ruled for over 14 years and, going by its fantasy, it wants to rule for 60. When an ant sends its apologies about its inability to attend a social function, saying it has been having diarrhea in the last three days to that function, the natural question to ask is: whether there would be any trace of such an ant after three days of continual running of the stomach? What is the size of the ant even while enjoying good health?

If the sorry pass that our country has become today is what the PDP could post after 14 out of their projected 60 years in power, then Nigeria would become history if that party stays in power longer than necessary.

December 8, 2013
Dumping the Humpty Dumpty

Five PDP governors’ defection to APC calls for celebration, but …

At last, the expected implosion in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) began on November 26, when five of the party’s governors (G5) decamped to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The five governors: Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Musa Kwankwaso (Kano), Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), alongside members of the Abubakar Baraje faction of the PDP, defected to the APC on Tuesday. More are expected to follow suit. But it was an implosion foretold; the only surprise, if any, was that the party was able to hold itself together this far. For the better part of the PDP years, it had been a marriage of convenience or, at best, a coalition of strange bedfellows.

Only a compound fool would not have seen what happened coming. It was obvious, as I noted a few months back, that reconciliation was almost impossible when a crisis has degenerated to the level the PDP crisis was, even then. There cannot be genuine reconciliation after the gladiators have thoroughly abused themselves in the media, or after washing some of their dirty linen in public.

One of the things the implosion tells us is that the PDP is not a good manager. Its leaders have never demonstrated that they have the capacity to manage. And we should not be surprised because the party has not succeeded in managing success, legit or otherwise, that it has claimed at the polls over the years. If it had, Tuesday’s event would have been averted. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the party’s chairman, has remained what I called him in one of my write-ups a few months back: a ‘village headmaster’ who thinks his duty is to whip people, including governors, into line; to shape up or ship out.

Without doubt the governors’ defection is good for democracy; it is good for Nigerians. There is no way any party can defeat the PDP as formerly constituted; not necessarily because it is a good political party or that it has done so much for Nigerians, but because it has a superb rigging machinery that it has been deploying in some states without serious challenge. That machinery must have been badly eroded now. Nigerians must therefore be ready to take the gauntlet, come 2015. I have said times without number that the 2015 elections would be a completely different ball game. That was long before the G5 left the party. I stand by that prediction. But where we as a people have to be vigilant is that by now, we should be able to predict the way the Jonathan presidency will react to the situation.

Like a bad football player whose team is losing on the field, the ruling party has been abandoning the ball and going for the legs, instead, at the polls. It will do more of that now; it will soon start behaving like the wounded lion that it is. I said it just last week that the way this country is run, there cannot be any free and fair election, as long as the PDP is in power, irrespective of who heads the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). If the overall boss is incorruptible, desperate politicians, especially those with the backing of the ruling party will simply look for the incorrigible cheats in the commission to do their hatchet job. I guess that was what happened in the November 16 governorship election in Anambra State that made the commission declare the election inconclusive. We should expect more of such in the coming elections. The PDP will be more ruthless and more daring: People that were saints when they remained in the party will become sinners overnight for having the temerity to dump the Humpty Dumpty.

Perhaps unknown to it, the PDP is full of itself, and that is why it continues to have the erroneous impression that no one can quit the party. In one breath, the party initially said it was not perturbed by the defection of the five governors. In another, its chairman, said to be on a visit to China, was blowing hot and cold simultaneously. First he was quoted as saying: “We cannot ask anyone not to leave the party if he so decided. After all, soldiers go, soldiers come. If anyone leaves the PDP, many more people will join. It happens every time”. In the same news report he said that “What we are saying is; let us come together as a party to promote the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan who we elected to lead us in Nigeria. Let us put behind us crises and bickering so that the President and leaders of the party could concentrate on governance and delivery of the dividends of democracy to all.” Pray, what dividends of democracy have Nigerians benefitted for the 14 years that the party has remained the ‘largest ruling party in Africa’?

Tukur’s recurring mistake is that he keeps living in the past, or in self denial, or both; thinking that the PDP has such an alluring and irresistible appeal. Nigerians should pray he does not retrace his steps in this delusion of grandeur and that God should continue to harden his heart until he has performed the noble role of the ruling party’s undertaker.

All over the democratic world, performance is a major determinant of whether a political party remains in power or is voted out. What has the PDP delivered in its over 14 years of ruling Nigeria? We are in deficit in virtually all sectors – education, health, economy, infrastructure development, transportation, etc. We cannot even sleep with our two eyes closed. To crown it all, we see and feel corruption around us daily, with the government forever helpless as if corruption is now the in-thing or is about going out of fashion. And nothing demonstrates this more vividly than the purchase of two-bullet-proof cars just to keep one minister safe.

Meanwhile, there is no money to kit the security agencies to protect the rest of us. Isn’t it curious that the same President Jonathan that could not even wait for the file of the former President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), Justice Ayo Salami, to get to his desk before suspending him has not been able to act on the file of Ms Stella Oduah, the embattled minister of aviation, who is at the centre of the purchase of the controversial bullet-proof cars for a staggering N255million? The President admitted that the file on the recommendation of his committee on the scandal got to his desk more than a week ago. So, what is he waiting for?

It is only people who want to continue to live in fool’s paradise that won’t see that the ruling party is adrift and lost, and is about sinking, not necessarily under the burden of its incompetence but under the yoke of corruption. It is therefore only proper that those with foresight, especially people that have not been feeling too comfortable with the way things are done in the party and the country at large will vote with their legs. That was simply what the five governors have done.

This is however not to suggest that everyone in the PDP is bad or that everyone in the APC is good. Of course there are cases of some progressive elements who found themselves in the PDP not necessarily out of choice but due to irreconcilable differences over one issue or the other. The point must also be made that among every 12 disciples; there will always be a Judas. The APC should take cognisance of this. If the scales could fall from the eyes of the romantic lovers that once got wedded in the ruling PDP, there is nothing to suggest that the scales won’t fall from the eyes of those now joining the APC sooner or later. However, the important thing for now is that Papa has deceived pikin too long for pikin to notice.

Above all, the APC must know that it is easier to marry than it is to stay married; the consummation of the historic defection of November 26 for the betterment of the country is what should be paramount, not defection for the sake of it. A word is enough for the wise.

December 1, 2013
Anambra as 2015 rehearsal

We should expect more of such in Osun and Ekiti before the ‘Tsunami’ in the general elections

Nigerians leapt for joy when Prof Maurice Iwu, the immediate past chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was removed in April 2010 and the incumbent, Prof Attahiru Jega, nominated by President Goodluck Jonathan to replace him on June 8, 2010. The only record we have of Iwu is that he was a bad electoral umpire. Indeed, if ever there was any election he conducted well, it must have been by mistake. Attahiru Jega, on the other hand, has (or is it now had?) a better track record. His activism and integrity as President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and also as an opponent of the Ibrahim Babangida regime stood him out as a dependable fellow for the INEC job. Most stakeholders readily supported President Jonathan when he nominated the professor of political science as INEC boss.

So, unlike Iwu, millions of Nigerians placed much hope on the Jega-led INEC. But what happened in Anambra State last Saturday must have been making many of them wonder whether such hope is not misplaced. The Anambra governorship election has thrown up the question of whether we can ever get elections right; it is not just about whether Jega can get it right. Indeed, we would be making a big mistake if we want to narrow whatever happened that made the election inconclusive, to Jega alone. Everything was wrong with the poll. It brought out, once again, the worst in us. There was so much security presence; at least 21 INEC commissioners shifted base to the state for the election even as Prof Jega himself temporarily relocated to Anambra, to underscore the importance of the election.

Yet, no one who wants to be honest can say that the exercise was free or fair. We are yet to know the successor to Peter Obi, the state governor, who also allegedly played a questionable role in the poll as he did in the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election in May, which will be disappointing, if true, especially as Obi himself is a beneficiary of the rule of law and due process. It would be disappointing therefore if he sold his conscience for a pot of porridge; or, as some will say, for filthy lucre. It had long been speculated that the ruling party in the state, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) is in some unholy alliance with the Presidency which had assured that APGA would be allowed to win the governorship in return for the governor, Mr Obi’s support for the President. And, in fairness to Mr Obi, he has remained an obedient servant to the core, and demonstrated this partly with his support for the President’s candidate in the last May Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, Governor Jonah Jang, who eventually lost the election to the incumbent NGF chair and Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, in spite of the massive backing he (Jang) had from the Presidency and the PDP. It is being projected that the south west states where some of the governorship elections would be held between now and next year are the ultimate targets. Anambra was only by the way.

Now that INEC is saying total cancellation of the poll is beyond it despite its unpardonable defects, to the courts we must turn. We should not be slaves to laws we made supposedly in our own interest. We should refuse to be stuck with an election that was badly flawed as the governorship poll in Anambra.

Unfortunately, failure to get it right in Anambra has grave consequences for our political process. There are governorship elections in at least two other states – Ekiti and Osun — for instance, before the next general elections in 2015. One does not need a soothsayer to know that it can only get worse in those states, given the desperation of those who think they can do and undo in the ruling party. As a matter of fact, but for their desperation, arising partly because of the crises in the party, that seem intractable, there would not have been the kind of embarrassment we had in Anambra that the national Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wants us to pass for credible election. Nigerians may not know the colour of credible election because it has almost not happened in the country since the June 12, 1993 presidential election, but they know what flawed elections look like. It is what they see whenever we have elections here.

But what makes the coming elections particularly frightening is that whereas Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, as president in his time declared that the 2007 elections would be a ‘do-or-die affair’, the incumbent has not said any such thing. But we do not need a body language reader to tell us that his body language points in the direction of desperation to ‘capture’ the south west states. In the Obasanjo years, the PDP was not as fractured as it is today. Yet, when Obasanjo met a brick wall in Lagos, for instance, he as a soldier knew what to do: he quickly beat a retreat because he knew the implications of pursuing such blind ambition in the state. The Jonathan administration is not likely to beat such retreat; it is not within its ken to even understand the implications. Moreover, the government has gone away with many imponderable crimes that it can safely presume that it can always get away with anything; anything, including blue murder.

It is true that the ruling party now seems to have realised that people will easily suspect if it imposed its candidates as winners in many of the states where elections are being held or would be held, its new style is to sponsor candidates of other parties considered fairly strong in those states to contest against the party the ruling PDP does not want. That was the strategy in Anambra. And it was borne out of mischief not large heart on the part of the PDP. Many people, including the candidate of the PDP in the election, Tony Nwoye and his father could not vote because their names were missing on the voter register, yet, the party’s national working committee curiously said the election was credible and peaceful. Nwoye had barely two weeks to campaign, yet he was given the second position. The PDP, characteristically, could not even be truthful over little things as it claimed the irregularities identified by everyone else were mere ‘perceived hitches’. This was the same election that INEC which conducted it condemned as a farce.

The summary of my piece is that the Jonathan presidency is no respecter of public opinion once it has made up its mind, and this is where I have my worst fears for this democracy. Nothing happened in Anambra that had not been predicted as the PDP game plan; is it not astonishing that this did not make the people behind the mess in the state to retrace their steps? But they were emboldened because, with the ruling party, you can commit any crime, provided it is for the sake of the party, nothing will happen; no one will call you to order. Indeed, this is why I said having credible election in the country is not something for Jega alone, Nigerians must be prepared to insist on their votes counting; they must be prepared to resist impostors. Above all, we need structures that will endure. Jega can only try; but where those who think he is the problem could be right is that he has a choice; he should know what to do if people without credibility want to tar his with mud. The way things are going, he will be demystified sooner than later.

November 24, 2013
Bad news from Ghana

President Mahama’s hammer on Minister Hammah for merely contemplating corruption is bad judgement.

It would appear the Ghanaian president, John Mahama, took anti-corruption war to a ridiculous level when he hammered the country’s deputy minister of communications, Victoria Hammah, not for committing any crime, but for merely contemplating one. I am sure our own President Goodluck Jonathan and many other African leaders must be wondering what is going on in Ghana because that is something novel in this part of the world. A public official being dismissed for allegedly making a statement suggesting she could be corrupt? And what is the source of the information? A taped conversation that the minister had with someone which quoted her as saying she would not quit politics until she had made $1million, that leaked on November 7, and the next day, the minister got the boot. Just like that! Even baby lawyers know that intention is not a crime. Shouldn’t President Mahama have waited for his minister to commit the crime before moving against her?

The most disgusting thing is that some people have been commending him for this inhuman action. This runs against the grain of what obtains in this part of the world; which is that even when it is crystal clear that crimes have been committed and the public till tampered with, we still need to set up committees to look into the issue. In Nigeria, for instance, our president is so fastidious he would not want someone punished for sins they haven’t committed. Look at the recent case of the aviation minister, Ms Stella Oduah, the matter is still being looked into by several committees. The House of Representatives had looked into it and said the poor woman had a case to answer. But thank God for our President who understands that such a beautiful woman doesn’t come easy; so he is not one to be goaded to act by such conclusion from a House that seems to have a phobia for beautiful women. We shouldn’t forget this same House passed a similar ‘vote of no confidence’ on Ms Arunma Oteh, the Securities and Exchange Commission boss, and asked President Jonathan to starve her of oxygen (money). If the President had answered their prayer, the woman, a paragon of beauty that God created her, would have been ‘recreated’in the image of the House of Representatives.

We should wonder what kind of unsustainable template the Ghanaian president is trying to set for Africa? How can you render a minister jobless for merely dreaming of setting a goal for herself while in public service? Don’t ministers have performance bonds or targets? If the government demands that of them, why would a minister not set his or her personal target of how fat his or her bank account should be by the time he or she is quitting the public service? What is the big deal in that?

Obviously President Mahama’s action has given him away as a nincompoop in matters of corruption. When the issue is corruption, we are champions; and this is acknowledged worldwide. How many awards has Ghana won on corruption? If thus we have such comparative advantage over Ghana in the matter, it follows that Ghana must turn to us for solutions to corruption-related matters. As far as Ghana is concerned, the cankerworm fled their shores when Jerry Rawlings killed three former heads of state, among others, as sacrificial lambs. Corruption, it seemed, then relocated its castle to Nigeria.

Imagine also the ridiculous amount for which a honourable minister was fired! A mere $1million that she had not even made! Imagine, this is one other thing that annoyed me in this matter. If the minister had wanted to eat a toad, shouldn’t she have gone for a fat and juicy one? That a minister was contemplating quitting government after hitting the $1million mark shows that Ghana’s public officials don’t have taste. What would a Nigerian public official do with such peanuts that could only buy one bullet-proof car? That apart, didn’t the honourable minister grease some palms to get the job? President Mahama should have asked his Nigerian counterpart who would have lectured him that the poor woman needed to recoup money she spent greasing those palms before being approved minister. In Nigeria, such things have become a part and parcel of us. A lawmaker once told us why people must steal after winning elections. He said they must recoup their investments. Yes, here politics is investment, and, like all investments, the investors must make profit. We might not have clapped for him then, but we hailed him for saying the truth. Was Minister Hammah not entitled to such return on investment?

Honestly, it is the Ghanaians that I blame for giving their president this kind of sweeping powers. Are there no traditional rulers from the minister’s place who can protest on her behalf? Has she not got some ardent youth supporters? Where are they? By now, they should have protested that the minister’s sack was the handiwork of her political detractors who are unhappy with the good works she is doing? Or, don’t they have political detractors in Ghana? And the senior advocates? Where are they? Should they not educate their ‘unlearned’ president that you don’t punish people for merely contemplating to empty government treasury into private pockets?

What I am saying is that the Ghanaian president should have caused his government to set up a committee to find out whether the voice in the alleged tape was that of the minister. Even as that is busy doing its work, he should pretend to be angry with the minister by setting up his own committee tagged presidential fact-finding task-force on the matter. At the end of the day, committee reports will jam committee reports such that he will have no option than to set up another committee to harmonise the reports of all the committees. Then, another committee of eminent bureaucrats would be set up to prepare what we know as Government White Paper (that is if the matter is so serious as to ever get to that stage). Before the White Paper is ready, the people would have become weary and put the matter behind them, until another scandal breaks. That is what Fela called ‘government magic’. Why then would President Mahama want to demystify government the way he has done?

The Ghanaian President should not infest us with his kind of anti-corruption war. We don’t fight corruption that way. I wonder what African presidents review at their so-called peer review sessions, when Ghana’s president would take decisions on a matter that he is least competent to act on when he simply should have referred the matter to his Nigerian counterpart. He is lucky Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is no longer our president; otherwise, he would have taken offence at such insult. Nigeria is not only big, we are also rich. Our ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party is the ‘largest in Africa’; so, what the hell is wrong with President Mahama?

Not to forget that the woman in question reportedly contributed significantly to President Mahama’s electoral success. How can such a neighbour in need become a bloody nuisance for merely dreaming to make $1million off the government? Obviously, President Mahama has not heard of such things as Neighbour to Neighbour. We need to tell him, in fact, educate him on how to handle such sensitive matters. Obviously too, the Ghanaian leader has not heard of ‘soft landing’. These Ghanaians actually need to be tutored about a lot of things. Apparently what they do not know is by far more than what they know, or think that they know. If a president can single-handedly dismiss a minister, then, who says our own president is about the most powerful in the world? Haven’t we a lot to teach the Ghanaians about zero tolerance for corruption?

Ghanaian ministers who might want to resign in protest and solidarity with their sacked colleague should hop into the next plane to Nigeria. They have my assurance: none of them will in no wise be cast out. But they must be prepared to up the ante. In Nigeria, one million dollars will only get them a bullet-proof car or spent on official furniture!

November 17, 2013
Mr. President, be bothered

Not to be bothered today is to be when it is too late to make amends

But for President Goodluck Jonathan’s antecedents, one could easily have accepted his statement to the effect that he is not bothered about criticisms as a Freudian slip. Speaking at the funeral of his mother-in-law, Late Mrs. Charity Oba, in Okrika Local Government Area of Rivers State, on November 1, the President said, “To me as a political leader and most of my friends here who are politicians, politics or holding political offices is almost like death. While you are there, you are on the stage. The day you leave, what would people remember you for? That has always been my guiding principle”. He added: “No matter the comments; whether the comments are to the left or the comments are to the right or at the centre, what challenges me everyday is what the present and future generations of Nigerians will remember me for the day I step out of the State House”.

Ordinarily, one would have taken this to mean that all President Jonathan was saying is that he would not be deterred by negative comments people make about him, but would rather forge ahead with whatever he considers the good works he is doing. Even on this score, the President cannot be entirely right. To juxtapose this against his antecedents makes matters worse; it gives, straightaway, the impression that the President does not “give a damn”, to use his own words when justifying why he is not declaring his asset publicly. The President’s handling of the Rivers State crisis too does not portray him as one who is bothered.

President Jonathan needs to take tutorials from former President Shehu Shagari of our Second Republic. During the Shagari era, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was leader of the opposition Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). His newspaper, Nigerian Tribune, was therefore more or less the opposition’s voice. I remember Alhaji Shagari saying his day was never complete until he had read Tribune, a far more credible paper then than it is today. The essence of my reference to the Tribune and Alhaji Shagari’s ‘love’ for it is to make the point that sometimes, it is from the criticisms that leadership is able to learn one or two things. Before you ask what happened to that government in spite of the fact that Shagari said he read Tribune daily, let me answer that the issue is not in knowing what the criticisms are alone but to what use they are put.

After all, what is criticism? According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, “it is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something or someone in an intelligible (or articulate) way”. Unless President Jonathan is saying he is God, then, he cannot be right not to be bothered by criticisms because no man can ever be perfect. Only God is infallible. Even then, people criticise God, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. King Sunny Ade sang some years ago that when a poor man gets to the house of the rich, he would be cursing God even as he becomes so disrespectful to Him; indeed, he won’t even know when he would start asking God rhetorical questions. He would ask how come some people are stinking rich and others are strikingly poor; how come some are pigmies and others are giants, etc. Sunny Ade’s friend and contemporary, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey gave an equivalent expression in Ketekete. In it, he said no matter how hard you try; no matter what you do, you can never please the world.

Therefore, what I would have expected the President to say was that he would take constructive criticisms in good faith and even thank critics who see nothing good in what he is doing, because people must say one thing or the other about other people, especially those in leadership positions. People complain even about mad men. Sir Shina Peters prayed against what would make people stop talking about him. No matter what, there must be some message in some of the criticisms coming from even some of your worst enemies. This is why the President should not ignore criticisms; this is why he should be bothered about them now that it matters because a time would come when even if he is bothered, he won’t be in a position to do anything about them. President Jonathan should ask his predecessors; he should read the biographies and autobiographies of great men. General Ibrahim Babangida might have ignored some criticisms to his eternal peril. Maybe it was in an attempt to right some of the wrongs he did while in power that he so desperately wanted to return to the seat of power to make amends; but there is no such second chance for him.

This is however not to say that leadership must always be led by criticisms. No, because there are some decisions leaders take today that would seem to be poor judgement but which in future will be far more appreciated. There are numerous examples of such all over the world. But this is not an excuse for the leadership to be deaf to criticism because shutting one’s ears to criticisms is like someone who says he would close his eyes because he does not want to see a bad person; such a person will not know when a good person would pass by.

If criticisms are not useful, the two dominant types of democratic government that we have in the world today would not make room for the opposition. Opposition parties are there to keep the ruling parties on their toes by criticising them. It would seem to me that only the President and those benefiting from his government believe, like the President does, that he would live worthy legacies by the time he is leaving office at the rate he is going. Nigerians see the President and the ruling party that he belongs to as incapable of making a dent on our national challenges. And they have a point; the party has been in government at the centre for over 14 years, yet, it has not been able to tackle any of our challenges appreciably. We live more on promises than the party delivering solutions to our problems.

All said, it is not enough for President Jonathan to be conscious of the fact that he would not be in the State House forever; it is even not enough that he is concerned about what the present and future generations of Nigerians would remember him for. What is paramount is what sense he makes of some of the senseless criticisms of today because what he does with them is part of the ingredients that would shape people’s perception of him and his government, not only today, but tomorrow. Criticisms allow for cross-fertilisation of ideas, a concept President Jonathan must have been familiar with, at least as an academic. There cannot be cross-fertilisation of ideas when all the President listens to are sycophants milling around him looking for something or even someone to devour.

From my mailbox

Dear Tunji, I just read your article on Page 13 of The Nation for Nov. 3, 2013 and all I can say is God bless you. I have never done this before because I always feel all you guys are doing is your job. But this article was not just that of a man doing his job, it came from a soul crying out loud for how the youths of this country have sold their conscience right from birth.

Yet, some noble personalities in this country will condemn you just at the mention of an idea that the country may divide, all I can say is that they are blind and they need to pray for your kind of perspective. These days, youths only show displeasure to things that are not working in favour of their tribe or religion. I will stop now because I don’t want to give you another article in appreciation of another. Please you have a medium due to the nature of your job, kindly make Nigerian youth a priority.

osagiejatto@yahoo.com

November 10, 2013
That pro-Oduah rally

We should be worried that our youths are fighting for negative values

Little did I realise, last week, that I would return to the Stella Oduah issue this soon. But there have been some disturbing developments since I wrote my column on it last Sunday. One of them was the pro-Oduah protest by some Igbo youths in Enugu penultimate Saturday. No doubt, protests are an integral part of governance. Even in autocratic societies where the ruler holds somewhat unquestionable powers, people have always protested, oftentimes at great risks to their lives. Thousands of South Africans were killed in all kinds of protests staged in the days of apartheid, to end white minority rule in South Africa. If people in undemocratic settings can express displeasure with government, it should be a given that those in democratic settings have much greater latitude to disagree with governments through protests. Protests should therefore be seen as an integral part of democracy if indeed democracy is the ‘government of the people for the people by the people’.

The point being made is that governments are run by people, in which case the public officials can make mistakes in policy formulation or programme implementation. People have the right to express their displeasure about such mistakes, whether they (mistakes) are of the head or the heart. As a matter of fact, students in this country have had to demonstrate for very noble causes in the past. All said, there are some protests that are senseless because of their dysfunctional nature and should therefore be condemned by any right-thinking member of the society. The protest by some (apparently) misguided Igbo Youths in Enugu, under the aegis of Igbo Progressives Union, against calls for the sacking of the aviation minister, Stella Oduah, falls under this category. Hear their leader, Emeka Agbo, a student of the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu: “Before she came to office, we were hearing about international airport, but today, it has become a reality in Igboland. We are ready to swim and sink with her.” I have no quarrel with this because it is a matter of choice; people have a right to swim or sink with whoever they like. But my concern is that this was a major plank why the minister should be spared. And to think that it is coming from students in a higher institution?

Yet, the issues in the Oduah case are simple and would even appear clear enough. She was alleged to have approved the purchase of two BMW armoured cars at a cost of N255million, whereas the market value of the vehicles should not be more than N75million. Worse still, the expenditure, according to reports, was not provided for in the budget, which is a serious offence. As at the time of the protest, the minister was yet to respond to the invitation of the House Committee on Aviation to shed more light on the issue. What was then in the public domain was the fact that the vehicles were bought to protect the minister whose life has been in danger from people who are not happy with the good works she has been doing and the changes she has brought to bear on the aviation sector, that have affected these people who would have preferred business as usual. Ms Oduah told a different story when she finally appeared before the House committee on Thursday. The impression she gave was that her aides who spoke earlier did not know what they were saying. Anyway, I do not want to jump to conclusion before the committee is through with its assignment, so I would rather stop here on her appearance before it. But, how does this matter become something which some youths would take upon themselves to defend simply because she is one of their own? Were the protesters instrumental in any way to her appointment as minister?

Although in the Oduah case, the protesters were her Igbo kindred, it should not be taken to mean that the behaviour is only found among the Igbo or in the eastern part of the country. It is a behaviour sans borders, so to say. What, therefore, could be responsible for this? Illiteracy is a sure banker; poverty is another while a third could be ignorance. Perhaps the fourth reason, which is as deadly as the other three is the loss of values in the country. The situation has been deteriorating at an alarming rate. Otherwise, why would some secondary school students rise in defence of a monarch who was on trial for alleged rape? Yet, that was what happened last year, when about 35 pupils of Ifelodun Grammar School, Kiloru, Osun State, protested against the trial of the Alowa of Ilowa, Oba Adebukola Alli, for alleged rape. It was heartwarming that the state government which had keen interest in the matter promptly suspended the students and indeed asked them to produce their parents in school, in addition to the students signing an undertaking that they would not do such a thing again.

The irony of it all is that in many instances, most of the protesters hardly understand the reason for the protests they are participating in. I remember in the Abacha years, some protesters who were part of the Nigerians earnestly asking Abacha to transmute to civilian president carried their placards upside down, an indication that they did not even understand the content. When reporters noticed this and asked them why they were part of the march, many of them had no answer. Some even said they were given some ridiculous amount to be part of the train. The same thing is being insinuated in the pro-Oduah protest by the so-called Igbo youths. Some reports said they were offered N4,000 each.

In the Osun instance, those involved were children who should not have been involved in such protest. As at the time they protested, their Oba was still on rape charge. Yet, they stormed the court premises to protest the trial. Now, judgment has been given, and the court, even despite its convoluted judgment, did not say Oba Alli did not have sex with the youth corps member that he was alleged to have raped; it merely agreed with the Oba that the two of them were lovers. Now, in retrospect, can those students vouch that their Oba was right to have slept with the youth corps member, even if it was a case of two consenting adults? Does that not desecrate the throne? And, is that the kind of thing that well-brought-up pupils or students should be defending? Has it ever dawned on them that they too are not safe in the hands of an Oba that would not bait an eyelid to have an affair with a youth corps member?

It is this type of protests that has made many Nigerians to conclude that there can never be a revolution in the country. They have carefully studied the tendency of the elite to appeal to parochial sentiments when they are in trouble. That is when they (the elite) remember that they are being persecuted because of the tribe they come from, or the religion they belong to, or whatever. I do not know how far this can be sustained; the fact that it has worked this far does not mean it will always work because, when the chips are down, poverty does not know tribe or religion; it is about the stomach. Most times when a baby cries, it wants food in its mouth. What we are familiar with is the saying that ‘a hungry man is an angry man’. Hunger does not know tribe or religion, when it comes, it wants to be assuaged, and it will get to a stage where hunger cannot be assuaged the way some people are plundering our common patrimony.

These protests are depressing because they are carried out by youths who are the leaders of tomorrow. Apparently, we are not inculcating in them the right values that would empower them for that future that they are supposed to play leadership roles in. This is as bad, if not worse, than sitting on a keg of gunpowder.

November 3, 2013
The N255m cars Stella may still ride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 27, 2013