The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Living in denial at 57

    Our 57th independence anniversary  which came up for celebration  on Sunday ordinarily ought to have provided another opportunity for sober reflection on where we are coming from, where we are, and the direction we wish to follow in our tortuous journey towards nationhood. Unfortunately what we got from President Buhari’s APC government of change was not dissimilar to what we got from his two immediate predecessors, ex-Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan who swore never to allow Nigeria disintegrate under them.  Of course, no one was expecting President Buhari, a product of a military institution that owns the society and who as an officer saw the horrors of war to be patient with those threatening to plunge the country into another civil war. But insisting he would not allow Nigeria to disintegrate under him is no substitute for his own vision of a just society, his strategy for attaining it, or for tactical withdrawal to where we started if he has none.

    If we cannot reach a consensus on where we are going after 57 years, I think it is time we seek help instead of living in denial. After all, sovereignty by which most nations once swore died long before the age of globalization. Seeking help and support have become imperative because a journey  through memory, clearly shows  the giant strides the nation made up to 1960 was as a result of overweening influence  and periodic intervention of Britain, our colonial overlords. Riven by greed and opportunism, our dominant ethnic groups were unable to agree on any issue including the self-evident truth of our heterogeneity in the run up to independence. We sold ourselves a fraudulent thesis that ‘our differences have been amplified by the accident of colonial rule’. Our British colonial overlords had to call our attention to sociological and anthropological studies that define us a multi-ethnic society of groups ranging from the social, anti-social to some naked groups occupying some hills in the savannah and mangroves of the tropics, all, at different levels of cultural development .They did not forget to also remind us that there are ‘differences between the Bantus tribesmen of Benue valley and the Hausa of Zaria’.

    There was similarly no consensus on  Nigeria’s structure which ranged from Zik’s eight arbitrary  regions to Awolowo’s 10 dominant ethnic groups and Ahmadu Bello confederal until the British embraced Bode Thomas’ ‘suggestion of regionalism as the structure that best approximate  British policy thrust of “a national self-government that secure for each separate people, the right to maintain its identity, its individuality and nationality; its own chosen form of government  which have been evolved for it  by the wisdom and experiences of generation of its forbearers”.

    Similarly, the credit for the 1958 London Independence Constitution – a product of mischief and opportunism, went to the colonial overlords, the master of ‘divide and rule’ tactics. It would be recalled that it was while Awo and his group staged a tactical walk out over the deadlock on creation of states for the restive minorities and the status of Lagos which some members wanted detached from the West that the British, an interested umpire, stampeded Zik and Ahmadu Bello to overlook their differences and agree on other disputed issues arguing that the two leaders, after all, represented majority of Nigerians. Although Zik  was to later congratulate himself for ensuring the unity of the country  by preventing disintegration,  but that opportunism  is the reason a segment of the country  today pretends not to understand  a British policy enunciated by Governor Hugh Clifford on December 29 1920; it was the reason for Isaac Boro’s popular uprising for the emancipation of his Ijaw people, and  the Tiv popular uprising both of which were suppressed with the use of the military immediately after independence.

    As if to validate the British thesis that it was their presence that had ensured stability and that their departure would lead to a disastrous descent into turmoil of warring groups, we have for 57 years demonstrated our inability to govern ourselves. After the Ijaw and Tiv popular uprising, we have had sectional inspired military coups, pogroms, civil war, ‘political sharia’, and Niger Delta militants’ quest for resource control, Boko Haram insurgency, the Avengers and IPOB’s attempts at dismembering the country. Two constitutional conferences have failed to produce a consensus as to how to address the causes of this restiveness.  In fact, the only consensus ever reached after the departure of the British overlords was the Aburi Agreement supervised by Ghana leaders. Its collapse is partly on account of failure of leadership led to the civil war.

    Greed was a vice that also thrived among the new emergent leaders long before independence. This was why Awo observed in the late forties that ‘given a choice between the emergent new educated elite, traditional rulers and the Europeans, the choice of Nigerians will be in reverse order starting with the Europeans’. What kept some of the new pre-independence leaders under check however the presence of the colonial powers. For instance, Trevor Clark, Tafawa Balewa’s biographer had observed that when Balewa moved from Bauchi to Lagos as a central minister in addition to being a member of the House of Representatives on a total package of #1,500 which was the equivalent of a First Class District Officers’ (DO) salary, some of his colleagues were agitating for more. Macpherson according to him simply ignored the agitators. It is however worth mentioning, for the benefit of our lawmakers, that Balewa as a minster took a personal salary advance to buy a Chevrolet car which he used as his official car. What he got was only monthly allowance to offset the cost of the car.

    With independence and  the departure of the colonial masters, the newly emerged leaders started by buying government properties which they sublet back to government  at a hundred fold.  By the fourth republic, a self-serving monetization policy was introduced which allowed our new leaders to confiscate the national patrimony inherited from the colonial masters and our founding fathers. Today our lawmakers who have been described by ex-President  Obasanjo as ‘corrupt’  and ‘worse than armed robbers’,  in addition to taking advance loans to buy personal cars maintained by the state, also deployed  taxpayers money to buy themselves exotic cars. They have become laws onto themselves as they openly defend budget padding and constituency projects which have been described as ploy for siphoning state funds.

    Some have suggested that our journey to nationhood must start with enthronement of justice which is best assured with restructuring of the country in line with the dreams of our founding fathers and British policy thrust on Nigeria stated as far back as 1920. In the face of this stalemate arising from opposition by those benefitting from the current system and bearing in mind that we have not on our own arrived at any consensus since our flag independence 57 years ago, I think we need an umpire like the United Nations (UN). This was first suggested by this columnist some four years back. Indeed, Chief Bisi Onabanjo, alias “Aiyekooto” a veteran journalist and former governor of Ogun State had suggested before his death that we should invite the British back to start from where they stopped in 1960. With the British, as Awo had argued long before independence, Nigerians are assured of justice and fair-play, attributes that are essential for nation building but in short supply among our past successive leaders.

  • PMB cannot escape his destiny

    I am proud to be Yoruba; I am happy to be a Christian.  But this was not by design but by accident of birth. If I had been born in the north, I would probably have been a Muslim or if in Middle East, a victim of sibling war between obstinate Arab and their equally obdurate half-brothers – the Jew non-believers who, upon killing their most illustrious son, Christ the saviour, invoked “His blood to be upon them and upon their children.

    I love Nigeria. I cherish being a Nigerian. My little contribution to society and my modest contribution to knowledge had been made possible by the interventions of other Nigerians notably of Edo, Urhobo and Igbo extractions despite obstacles put on my path by my own Yoruba compatriots. Nigerian unity, for many in my group, unlike those who repeatedly shout ‘Nigerian unity is not negotiable’ even as they exploit the imperfections in the present structure, is imperative.

    As it is often said, you only repeat the obvious when you are not persuaded. Those who therefore shout Nigerian unity is non-negotiable from the roof top perhaps constitute the greatest threat to Nigeria unity.

    Sociologists have traced sources of most social dislocations in the world to social injustice. We are no exception. Nigeria has been haunted by a spectre of injustice since 1962 when Tafawa Balewa, our otherwise harmless Prime Minister, was stampeded by self-serving Fulani and Igbo politicians to sow seed of injustice by destroying the structure agreed upon as the basis of our federal arrangement, shortly before independence in 1960.

    With victims of the 1962 injustice still languishing in prison, the January 1966 military intervention came as a result of perceived injustice by the NCNC junior partner in the NPC/NCNC coalition government.   Its execution led to greater injustice as only the leaders of senior coalition partners were killed and Ironsi who emerged as new leader went on to institutionalize a unitary system as a result of  manipulation by Igbo politicians and intellectuals according to Richard Akinjide , a witness and a participant.

    With the July 1966 vengeance coup, the mindless killing of Igbo in the north and the subsequent civil war, it became the case of one injustice begetting greater injustice.

    With the control of power at the end of the civil war by the north that had been violently opposed to a unitary system, it was like Hitler using democracy, the weapon of his opponents to fight his opponents by using it to first acquire, power before unleashing terror on Germans and the world. The north deployed the Igbo weapon –unitarism, advocated by Zik and Igbo political elite up to 1959 and by Ironsi in 1966, to fight the Igbo and to subjugate the rest of the country through creation of more states and LGAs that derive direct funding from the centre. With all powers concentrated in the centre through the exclusive and concurrent items with no residual list, what was designed as a federal state is today run as a unitary state as all the states and LGAs look up to Abuja for survival.

    What President Buhari is being called upon to address therefore is the issue of injustice arising from this unworkable arrangement. The National Assembly, a product of injustice, by design and by composition, to which he has tried to delegate by abdication of the responsibility fate has trusted on him, is ill-equipped to help. President Buhari can similarly not rely on veteran of northern politics of ‘if the north does not have it, no other person or group must have it’, who because they are beneficiaries of current injustice, now pretend not to understand the meaning of restructuring.

    Not too long ago, Ango Abdullahi, former vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) and now the spokesman for Northern Elders Forum,  after correctly tracing agitation for restructuring of the country to post independence power rivalry between the Igbo and the Hausa Fulani, a rivalry he admitted has defied solution for 50 years, he was advising, President Buhari to rely on the constitution which by ceding power to the centre controlled by northern majority has made any change including ordinary local policing impossible.

    Elder statesman Tanko Yakassai after describing Kanu and his supporters as irritants annoying government and other groups was on Channel Television last Monday to put the blame for agitation for restructuring of the country on the door steps of the Yoruba. He blames Yoruba for supporting self-actualization struggle by restive groups like the Tivs, Beroms, Katafs and others in the Middle Belt as well as the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers states of the South-east since 1953. With advisers like Ango Abdullahi and Yakassai, President Buhari needs no enemies.  Since they have nothing but disdain for him because of his ‘talakawa’ ideology, they will just be too happy to see him miss a historic opportunity to write his name in gold.

    But if President Buhari is ambitious, he will realize he is uniquely favoured to address the issue of injustice in the country. Since he is trusted by his northern masses who loathe other politicians from the area, all he needed to do, as Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, our former foreign affairs minister has argued last Sunday, is to convince those who have faith in him that restructuring is about redressing injustice in order to save the country and not about the north committing political suicide.

    Buhari also has a unique opportunity to save the country because he is generally regarded as a good Nigerian. Our late statesman, Maitama Sule said this much when he led a delegation of Northern Council of Elders to congratulate him after his election in 2015. He had then told him “You are a Nigerian with sense of justice and fair play; Do justice to us, do justice to them and do justice to everyone”. By doing that he told Buhari, he will be “a potential Nigerian greatest leader we can ever have’, adding, “with justice you can rule Nigeria well. Power remains in the hand of infidel if he is fair but not in the hand of a believer if he is unfair.”

    Restructuring is about justice. All the President needs to ask himself is if the current arrangement that allows a dysfunctional centre to mismanage over 50% of resources by leaders like ex-President Jonathan is just. A leader who boasted that  “within this period that the PDP has been ruling, we’ve actually created a number of millionaires and billionaires” – while Nigerians looked up to neighbouring countries like Republic of Benin and Togo for quality education for their children and  reliable healthcare services for loved ones.

    If a constitution that made no provision for residual list  thereby denying the states of  looking  after themselves is justice; if deploying  resources from oil-producing riverine states where bridges are needed, to build bridges over land in Abuja is justice.  If it is fair for the federal government to create about 80 LGAs for Kano and Jigawa with a lower population than Lagos which has only 20. If it is fair for the centre to undermine the states by dealing directly with LGAs that constitute the state. As Charles Soludo, a former Central Bank governor once observed, ours is the only known federation in the world where the centre allocates funds to LGAs that are not accountable to it.

    It is hoped Buhari will write his name in gold by preventing our beautiful country from collapsing under the weight of injustice as we saw it happen in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and neighboring Sudan

  • In defence of Operation Python Dance

    Many well-meaning Nigerians who are genuinely concerned about the survival of our nation are pained that President Muhammadu Buhari and his bungling APC, after mouthing restructuring and government of change to secure our votes   are set to fritter away an historic opportunity  to resolve  the national question that has haunted our nation since the derailment of our federal arrangement by the military following its infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians fighting for the soul of Nigeria shortly after independence.   But it will amount to intellectual deceit to equate this with the resolve of South-east’s defeated PDP politicians and their IPOB surrogates or those the Minister of Information calls “coalition of the politically disgruntled and the treasury looters” to make the nation ungovernable in order to protect the disproportionate share of our nation’s wealth, they illegally  confiscated.

    Were the current war about restructuring or marginalization, the disgruntled groups now fomenting  trouble had  had 14 years  to join hands with their Yoruba compatriots who have been at the vanguard of  restructuring since 1993 following the annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria mandate. A greater opportunity came six years before Buhari’s presidency during which time Igbo- dominated Jonathan Presidency ate with their 10 fingers. And even if it is agreed the current struggle is about restructuring, how is that advanced by a relentless attack on the person of President Buhari?

    Unfortunately, critics of Operation Python Dance, have by their own level of assault on the person President Buhari on the pages of newspapers and in the social media tried to outdo the misguided Igbo youths that Joe Igbokwe describes as “association of hate preachers and wailing bigots who see nothing good in Buhari”.

    First, they claim Operation Python Dance was antithetical to democracy  without pointing out that our own brand of democracy  already under a siege  by a self-serving legislature, a judiciary whose leadership is undergoing  inquisition for corruption and the two dominant political parties, PDP and APC, lacking in ideological distinction, is already on trial since  democracy cannot thrive with sick institutions.

    Some even said Operation Python Dance was motivated by Buhari’s hatred for the Igbos.  How can it be otherwise when President Buhari left out Igbo office seekers while ceding key positions in his cabinet to his Daura village school mates who many believe are now holding him hostage, they reasoned?  They however forgot that not long ago, there was  a President Azikiwe Jonathan  who ceded over 60% of key positions to his South-south and South-east supporters, 30% to the north and less than 10% to the South-west only to complain later that he was caged during his presidency. Hawkers of Buhari’s anti-Igbo sentiments also forgot to remind Nigerians that in his last two unsuccessful outings as presidential candidate, Buhari bypassed other ethnic groups to pick Igbo vice presidential candidates.

    With Fulani herdsmen’s mindless killings across the country, how has Operation Python Dance in the embattled South-east become a priority – others critics want to know?

    As a self-admitted absentee Fulani herdsman with 500 herds of cow, he could not but be sympathetic to the herdsmen’s plight, others explained. The problem is that if critics conveniently forgot Buhari’s order that Fulani herdsmen caught in action rampaging other people communities  be shot on sight, they are not likely going to remember how even an inattentive Governor Fayose of Ekiti found a final solution to  the Fulani nuisance and menace.

    And finally, critics, especially those who Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said hardly notice differences of ethnicity and religion when looting our resources, questioned the President’s motive for resorting to use of a military whose leadership is tilted towards the North and Islam. I think it can be said that while the military still carry the scar of infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians in the first republic and in the years they lord it over Nigeria, the military as custodian of our constitution, remains our only hope and the last place of refuge when our survival as a nation is threatened. The military, after all owns the state.

    President Buhari deserves commendation for Operation Python Dance.  It is a disservice to Nigerians that critics have not weighed the consequences of the last two years of relentless attack by Igbo misguided youths on someone who enjoys a cult-like following in the north. As Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, my former teacher and former foreign affairs minister put it last Sunday, ‘An average person on the northern streets believes in Buhari. He stands now in the kind of position that the late Sardauna stood in the sixties’. Tragically, Kanu’s madness and the intemperate language of his supporters can only be compared with the pre-coup years of 1963 and 64 when Zik’s West African Pilot and the Nigerian Citizen tried to outdo each other in name-calling and hate messages.

    Operation Python Dance, I believe has saved the South-east from itself. Sixty percent Igbo live in other peoples land far away from their ancestral home. Governor Okezie Ikpeazu who last week claimed “God averted the greatest bloodbath in history” put the figures of Igbo in the north as 12million. According to Nasir el Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, Igbo occupied a land area larger than all the south-eastern states put together. The Igbo put the figure of their investments in the north at N44 trillion.  Kanu and his group are knowledgeable; the problem is that they lack wisdom… As clear headed Joe Igbokwe put it even before Kanu became law on to himself, “ethnic bigotry and hate speeches our people both at home and abroad dish out every day endanger our people living in all parts of Nigeria”.

    But beyond hate speeches and the ranting of a demented mind, Kanu has gone beyond the cliff by threatening to plunge the nation into a second civil war.  It is on record that  Kanu at the 2015 world Igbo Congress  in Los Angeles, said  “we need gun and we need bullets to fight the Zoo government in Nigeria”. There are also clips of Kanu’s hosting of Abdulkadir Erkahraman , who was said to be a Turkish diplomat  in his home town  Isiama Afara  Umuahia  where he was reported to have said: “The Turkish citizen visit  was in line with IPOB plan to solidify the actualization of Biafra”.  Since that boasting, 22,000 pieces of pump action rifles in three consignments have been seized by customs in Tin Can Island Ports, Lagos, all shipped from Turkey – a case of the witch cried yesterday and the child died this morning.

    While critics of Operation Python Dance who seems to weep louder than the bereaved keep calling Buhari names, however, relieved elected representatives of the people of the South-east have found their voices. As soon as Kanu crawled into a hole at the approach of Operation Python Dance.

    Governor Umahi of Ebonyi State issued a statement saying: “All activities of IPOB are, hereby, proscribed. IPOB and all other aggrieved groups are advised to articulate their position on all national issues to be submitted to the committee of governors, Ohaneze Ndi Igbo and National Assembly members from the South East zone through the chairman of the South East Governors’ Forum,” adding that the forum believed in the unity and indivisibility of the country and reinforced their desire for the restructuring of the country.

    Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State followed with his own statement  urging the federal government and citizens to treat the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu  as an individual whose views do not represent those of the generality of Igbo, adding no reasonable Igbo man ‘would support secession or division of the country”.

  • Senate vs Sagay

    Our National Assembly members have demonstrated from the onset of the fourth republic that their loyalty was to their members rather than to the nation as some of them tactlessly announced that they were in a hurry to recoup their investments having sold their properties to contest the election. It was therefore obvious that a total package of about N20m for senators and N18m for members of the lower house approved by Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission was not going to be adequate for the needs, let alone the greed of our lawmakers

    It was not long before they went ahead to appropriate about N159b for themselves and in spite of public indignation refused to subject its disbursement to public scrutiny. Not satisfied, they openly demanded bribes from Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) or opted to hijack their projects as was the case with contracts for the rural electrification projects which were awarded to some fictitious companies owned by the lawmakers. Ministerial nominees were also forced to part with huge sums of money before confirmation. Haunted by financial scandals, The Punch in an editorial titled “Time to tame greedy and reckless National Assembly” in its edition of February 1, 2016, said: “By their greed, corruption, opaqueness, insensitivity and monumental incompetence, parliamentarians, since 1999, have stunted the entrenchment of democracy and atrophied development”.

    Our self-serving lawmakers have little regard for public opinion. Their collective response to critics of their financial recklessness until the latest call for restructuring as a possible solution, has always been the same – attack the messenger in order to divert attention from the message. Not even Obasanjo, whom they mischievously call their father, is spared whenever the issue of their financial recklessness is raised. He narrowly escaped impeachment in 2000 and 2005 for standing between his ‘children’ and their criminal padding of the budget sometimes with as much as N600b. Obasanjo has continued to refer to corrupt members of the National Assembly as ‘armed robbers’.

    Lamido Sanusi, the then CBN governor following his submission during a 2013 lecture he delivered at Igbinedion University where he had said cornering of N136.26b or 25.44% of government overhead by the National Assembly was unhealthy for the economy suffered the same fate. Ndoma –Egba, the then Deputy Senate Leader (now stalwart of APC) did not only dismiss Sanusis’s remarks as ‘a calculated attempt to bring the National Assembly to disrepute and a plot to incite the public against us”, he moved a motion that he along with his Minister of Finance, be summoned to defend themselves before the chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Iyiola Omisore, currently repaying about N1b he, according to EFCC, fraudulently received from Dazuki, ex-President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser(NSA), to fight the Osun 2014 gubernatorial election.

    But confronted last week with N14m and N8m as monthly take-home pay for senators and their lower house counterparts, figures Channels TV claimed it obtained exclusively, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi,  the chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, changed the narrative. He now says – “For us in the National Assembly, the question that needs to be asked is “what the cost of having democracy is and what is the cost of not having democracy?”

    Unfortunately, Senator Abdullahi and the insensitive lawmakers he speaks for, have sustained their war against our people especially the most vulnerable 112 million who live below poverty line because they rightly believe all of us suffer from collective amnesia. But nothing can be more humiliating than Abdulahi’s claim that the greed and financial recklessness of our lawmakers are in pursuit of democratic ethos.

    Realising that our legislators are beyond reproach, Sagay, who recently spoke at the Wole Soyinka Annual Public Lecture at the University of Benin, had called for urgent restructuring of the nation into regions and return to the 1963 Constitution, modified to suit our present circumstances as the only way to stop the bumper pay being received by the senators.  He insisted that from information at his disposal, “a Nigerian Senator earns about N29 million a month and over N3 billion a year”. He went on to state how he arrived at his figures:  “Basic salary N2,484,245.50; hardship allowance, N1,242, 122.70; constituency allowance N4, 968, 509.00; furniture allowance N7, 452, 736.50; newspaper allowance N1, 242, 122.70; N1,863,184.12; entertainment N828,081.83; personal assistant N621,061.37; vehicle maintenance allowance N1,863,184.12; leave allowance N248,424.55; severance gratuity N7, 425,736.50; and motor vehicle allowance N9, 936,982.00.”

    Sagay also added ”Wardrobe allowance N621, 061.37; recess allowance N248, 424.55″.  “These are besides budget padding, which is a stable means of drilling money from the poor people of this nation. If you have true federalism, that money will not be available for them to blow”, Sagay concluded.

    All that was needed to invalidate Sagay’s figures which the lawmakers claimed were based on beer parlour a rumour was to confirm or deny if those headings exist and if they do how much was allocated to each heading. But they substituted that simple procedure with attack on Sagay’s person. After falsely accusing him of employing ‘uncouth, unprintable words’ and of ’hate speech, they deployed ‘love’ words like “senile, jaded, rustic and out-dated” to describe noble Professor Sagay.

    Sagay should take solace. I can assure Professor Sagay that the inimitable Victor Olabisi Onabanjo of Aiyekoto fame who often laced his bitter truth with humour can even from his grave see the purity of his heart and the nobility of his intentions.

    And what would have been Onabanjo’s response to the Senate’s unwarranted virulent attack on Sagay’s person? He would have simply admonished those who live in glass houses not to throw stones by asking – Are we speaking of the same house who, Gabriel Suswan, recently governor of Benue and who as two terms member of the Lower House authoritatively declared that of the unwieldy 360 members of the house, only 20% that contribute to discussions at plenaries are literate?

    He would have in addition reminded our lawmakers that it was not Sagay but a distinguished and respectable member of the Senate that likened the behaviour of one of their cantankerous member to a dog, thug and tout. Was it not in one of these hallowed chambers turned-house of comedy where a member who a probe confirmed obtained a third class degree from our local university after falsely claiming to be an alumni of many prestigious universities across the world, celebrated his achievement by adorning himself with an academic gown reserved for only those who earned doctoral degrees?

    Aiyekoto would have also reminded us that we find those who “talks like a man who is constantly under the influence of some substance or who are constantly agitated” in a house that harbours alleged drug pushers or those facing EFCC charges for financial malfeasance or earning two salaries in the guise of pensions when the real pensioners are dying on the queue after a lifelong service to their father land.

    I am only guessing what Aiyekoto (the world hates the truth) would have said in the face of an unprovoked attack on a patriot by indecent people some of who should be behind bars.

  • Food security and S/West governors

    Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be servant of all” – Jesus Christ (Mark 10:43)

    Last week, tomatoes and vegetables disappeared from Lagos markets. This was attributed to disruption in the regular flow of some food items from the north to the south by the sallah holiday. Our inability to feed ourselves 17 years into the fourth republic is perhaps a clear manifestation of deficit of Christ’s defined attributes of servant-leadership among some of our clowning South-west ‘activists’, the ‘constituted authority and ‘Oshokomole – Ebora tin je jollof’ governors who behave and act as if they are beyond reproach or that leadership is about being hailed by sycophants, thugs and okada commercial motorcyclists.

    But it has not always been like this. We were once blessed selfless leaders and role models with templates for developmental strategies that did not only guarantee self-sufficiency in food production but promises of a more just, egalitarian society. We remember with nostalgia the selfless services of leaders like Obafemi Awolowo, S L Akintola, Anthony Enahoro, Oduola Osuntokun Abraham Adesanya, and their other colleagues who left a lasting legacy in education, health, housing and agriculture with judicious management of the little resources available to them. Their second republic successors such as Olabisi Victor Onabanjo, Lateef Jakande, Bola Ige, Ambrose Alli and Adekunle Ajasin who as governor refused to spend N50, 000 to fix a leaking government house claiming Ondo State could not afford the luxury at the time, followed the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors by providing quality service to their people. The fourth republic threw up Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Niyi Adebayo, Segun Osoba and Pa Bisi Akande who like Jakande used his personal car as official car until the state forced him to abandon it. Like their predecessors, they selflessly served the people and we today remember them with melancholy.

    The crisis of leadership in the West started in 2003 when Obasanjo under his dubious mainstreaming policy decided to impose leaders on the West. He was to become a godfather to the likes of Lucky Igbinedion, Segun Agagu, Ayo Fayose, Segun Oni, Gbenga Daniel and Olagunsoye Oyinlola as well as other ambitious individuals such as journalists, academics and other professionals who, following their losses in the primary elections of their parties, were seduced by Obasanjo federal government’s offer of funds, security and vehicles to destabilize south-west.

    Obasanjo’s hand-picked leaders as it turned out, unlike their predecessors, served none but themselves. Igbinedion left Benin City after eight years in office like a war-torn city. Fayose traded a College of Medicine for a fraudulent poulty farm during his first coming; Oni took Ekiti through three years of nightmare while fighting to keep a mandate the courts finally ruled he never won. His major legacy includes foisting three universities, including the one sited in his village on Ekiti that had no resources to effectively run one. Olagunsoye  Oyinlola who admitted to a judicial commission of inquiry of awarding and paying in advance contractors to build stadia around some towns in Osun State and Gbenga Daniel who went around Ogun State with ex-President Jonathan commissioning uncompleted  and yet to take off projects.

    With Obasanjo’s humiliating defeat by Tinubu, some of the immediate and current leadership which represents the mainstream south-west political orientation were expected to have taken after their first and second and republic forbearers. Unfortunately they seem to have found their shoes too big.

    Let us start with Ekiti, the land of honour.  Fayemi no doubt made some impact in education and social welfare. But with Ekiti State as the 35th  out of 36th on the nation’s revenue ladder, diverting N2.7b of the  N25 billion bond  his administration secured from the capital market to build a grandiose government house because the then ‘Osuntokun Lodge lacked many facilities befitting of the residence of a governor  and therefore very inferior’ to other government houses in the country was indefensible when his government could have rehabilitated the run-down  Ikun Dairy farm established by Ajasin in the second republic as part of solution to a geographical region that depends on other geographical zones for the 10,000 heads of cow  it consumes daily.

    Aregbesola, after retrieving his stolen mandate through the courts had enjoyed tremendous support and goodwill of the people, all of which he seems to have frittered away because of his leadership style. Although he swears by Awo’s name, he appears to be his own role model. His rather insensitive comment about the state of mind of Ademola Adeleke who recently defeated his APC candidate in the Osun south senatorial by-election after rightly reminding Ede people that the senatorial seat was not hereditary seem to confirm the fears of those who argue Aregbesola has been wearing a shoe bigger than his leg.

    Ajimobi during his first term, keyed into Buhari’s  green alternative initiative which focuses on commercial agriculture development programme, by allocating tractors, planters and harvesters to each of the 33 local government areas. Most of those equipment are however said to have either been sold off or mismanaged by past caretaker chairmen while he as ‘the constituted authority’ battles those who put him in power especially students of Oyo State tertiary institutions who have been out of schools for the greater part of the year and their civil servants and pensioners parents who have not been paid for several months.

    Ajimobi who started well is also today enmeshed in Ibadan traditional chieftaincy controversy as he apes ill-informed military men who unilaterally made kings out of ‘Baales’ as he creates, by fiat, kings with crowns and sceptres without kingdoms.

    While Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State on his part is striving to turn his state to number one industrial hub in Nigeria with plans to build airport before 2019, two years to the end of his second four years term, his plan towards agriculture that will lead to industrialisation remains a plan. In any case, since people have to eat before the transformation of agriculture from commercialization to industrialization, keying into the Buhari agriculture initiatives designed to achieve food security, alleviate rural poverty and end hunger ought to be the starting point.

    If leadership, as Sun Tzu, (Chinese General, and 544–496BC) has said “is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline”, a well-focused Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos who operates as a servant rather than a ‘constituted authority’ better appropriates the virtues of his forbearers. After insisting “there is no alternative to achieving food security other than tilling the land and embrace best practices that will improve efficiency in the agricultural value chain”, he has in practical terms sealed a landmark partnership with Kebbi State government for the development of agricultural commodities such as rice, wheat, groundnut, onion, maize and beef value chain. His government has also acquired 500 hectares of farm land for rice cultivation in Eggua, Ogun State, 84.7 hectares at Okinni in Osogbo for oil palm processing.

  • Danger of unshackled Trump

    I am your voice”, President Trump, intrigued by the level of his own success, has repeatedly bellowed following his unexpected victory over much favoured Hillary Clinton in the 2016 American Presidential election. An ill-equipped and ill-prepared President Trump has since moved on to proclaim himself the voice of the disgruntled white racist off springs of yesterday confederates. The deadly violence at the Charlottesville rally, which was organized by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, two weeks back presented an opportunity for President Donald Trump to reassure his constituency of fellow racists and white supremacist that ‘the godfather never sleeps’. His natural inclination was to first blame both white nationalists and counter-protesters for the deadly violence at the Charlottesville rally before he was forced by public opinion to live in denial by denouncing the activities of his natural allies- the white supremacists on whose back he rode to power. But from his body language and pronouncements, it was clear to everyone that President Trump did not see anything wrong in his supporters’ decision to parade the street of Charlottesville in their regalia  to prove they have finally ‘taken their country back’ from those Trump had labelled ‘Muslims who have training camps where they want to kill us’, ‘illegal ‘immigrants who illegally voted for Hillary Clinton,’ ‘Mexican rapists’ and the blacks and urban criminals vociferous supporters of President Obama whose citizenship he disputed even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

    Racism is the underlining impetus for slavery, the economic model through which Africans were first drawn into the globalised economy. The foundation of American prosperity can therefore be said to be built on racism and it was an attempt by the benefiting southern confederate state to protect and sustain the source of their economic prosperity that led to America civil war. Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the short-lived government of the seceding 11 southern states made this clear in his famous March 21, 1862 speech when he declared “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

    It follows therefore that Trump did not invent racism. He inherited it. As a product of his environment, racism is in his blood. What Trump who cannot help himself therefore needs when it comes to racism is sympathy and not ridicule from American ‘fake media’. The innuendo in “we will take our country back’ during the presidential contest between him and Clinton in 2016 was the product of this inner turmoil. It was this that has manifested as President Trump’s subtle encouragement of racial attacks on innocent citizens by racists, Islamophobia, uneducated college white on whose back he rode to power. It has also found expression in his first equivocation over the Charlottesville demonstration by ‘swastika-toting Nazis and hood-wearing KKK members who mindlessly and provocatively waved Confederate flags while chanting Nazi-era slogans’. And of course if his last week pardon of convicted former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in spite of criticism from members of his party was not a sufficient evidence that racism flows in his blood, those with racist inclinations such as Stephen Miller; Sebastian Gorka and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as well as Steve Bannon, the chief host of Breitbart, the platform for white supremacists he appointed as advisers provides supportive evidence.

    Unfortunately, the American ‘fake media’ ignored all these overwhelming self-evident facts to ‘fraudulently’ claim that Trump was unmasked by his  reaction to Charlottesville clash between the white supremacist and their opponents . These peddlers of ‘fake news’ conveniently forgot that long before Charlottesville tragedy, Barton Silverman of New York Times had reminded his readers how Donald Trump and his father, Fred, were sued in 1973 for systematically discriminating against black people in housing rentals which the Trumps eventually settled on terms that were regarded as a victory for the government; that long before Charlottesville, Trump, by embracing racism, has by default rejected the 13th amendment to the American constitution which, as a follow up to the Emancipation proclamation of 1863, permanently outlawed slavery and that by threatening to deport all children born in America by non-American citizens, Trump has rejected the 14th amendment to the American constitution which confers citizenship on all children born in America. When reminded of his constitutional limitations, as president, he had said he would explore other means to bypass the constitutional process which he said is too slow,

    For highlighting his disposition towards racism, the press has become target of attack by Trump and his raucous supporters. As against the famous declaration of  his illustrious predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father and the principal author of American Declaration of Independence (1776) that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”. Trump would rather run a government without the press, the only exception being the right wing press which shares some of his extreme right wing racist views.

    Finally, Trump believes neither in the democratic process nor in the party system. If Trump whose appeal to Russia for the release of Clinton’s private e-mail messages during election, a development that has the potential to undermine the American democratic system, has any faith in democracy, it is to the extent it helps him achieve power.

    And as for the Republican Party, Trump after hijacking its machinery to win a ticket and the presidential election, proceeded to assault the soul of the Republican Party as well as its core values, he has also continued to undermine the credibility of the leading lights of the party. Both leaders of the two houses which are controlled by the party have come under severe attack. Last week he took the battle to Arizona home of Republican, Senator Jeff Flake and Republican Senator John McCain who have been critical of his subtle encouragement of racism as evidenced by his response to the wild and unruly Charlottesville rally and his presidential pardon for convicted former Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

    With his victory in the civil war he ignited in the Republican Party, his unrestrained attack on the party’s elected leaders in the two houses, Trump is not likely going to deliver on most of his controversial policies. This is likely going to become source of frustration for his disgruntled, racist, Islamophobic, college uneducated white workers he has mobilised through his message of hate.

    An unrestrained unpredictable Trump may take a precipitate action which poses danger to not only America but to the rest of the world. Perhaps now is the time to revisit the recent warning by Ian Kershaw, a professor of modern history at Sheffield University on the need for international cooperation to restrain potential “mad dogs” that are adept at exploiting democratic structures before they bite.

  • IBB’s baleful legacies

    Babangida’s last week 75th birthday celebration was low- keyed. Apart from his immediate family members and Shiek Isah Fari, the Chief Imam of Minna, only a handful of people including Abubakar Sani Bello, the governor of Niger State and his executive council members plus General Abdulsalami Abubakar, former Head of State were in attendance. Conspicuously missing were the hordes of professional well-wishers

    This was the same Babangida who, at the height of his power, held more chieftaincy titles than any Nigerian leader living or dead. “He is Opu-Omatu; Alabo (chief warlord of Rivers; Oka Ome – a man of his words of Enugu; the Ukporo Uwana of Cross Rivers, the comforter” –  (Oluwajuyitan, Nigerian under the Generals, pp. 58-62).

    Back then, honours were endlessly bestowed and fellowship awards freely conferred by not only comedians, musician associations, and public relations practionners, universities were also chasing Babangida and his wife around with honorary degrees. The Nigerian Medical Association and the West African College of Physicians were not left out; they also donated their fellowships. To round up the festival of awards and fellowships, Nigerian Economic Society (NES), the most authoritative body of Nigerian scholars on Nigerian economy bequeathed its own fellowship awards claiming “Babangida has distinguished himself in the management of our economy”. It did not matter that it was coming shortly after Financial Times of London had  reported the mismanagement  of $5b Gulf oil windfall and  the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club had jointly described Babangida’s  generous donations to all types of courses, as ‘fiscal indiscipline and recklessness’.

    But I think for Babangida, the absence of professional well-wishers during his 75th birthday celebrations was a blessing in disguise. It was a somber period and a unique opportunity to reflect on the limit of power, the worth of opportunism and the cost of betrayal of a nation that has been forced to go through a purgatory of 30 years and with no light at the end of the tunnel.

    Driven by blind ambition and share opportunism, Babangida had exploited a military junta’s joint resolutions which had an historic opportunity to set Nigeria on the path of sustainable development.  The junta had rightly and roundly rejected IMF’s bitter liberalization pill and chose to look inwards through issuance of import license to ensure we eat what we produce or as Nehru once told his Indian compatriots, go naked until we can make our own dresses.

    Although President Buhari recently told us Babangida, Abacha and Gusau carried out a palace coup in order to avoid inquisition over corruption, Babangida back then insisted his own vision through Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was the only way to take Nigeria out of economic quagmire that the nation was thrown into by Shagari and Akinloye’s NPN.

    Babangida, Olu Falae, Kalu Idika Kalu and their Aso Villa professors were sworn to “change the course of history by making all essential commodities available and preventing the squandering of our scarce foreign exchange on primary products that were once the mainstay of foreign exchange earnings for the country”. They avowed: “Nigeria will never again be regarded and treated as a bankrupt nation incapable of meetings its international obligations; to remove the agony of Nigerian industrialists through the elimination of import licensing and promotion of non-oil exports in order to increase our non-oil earnings”.  And finally, “to prevent those who would squander our investments from attaining power through nurturing of new breed leaders that will detest the culture of deceit, election  as well as culture of violence and fraud”.

    They all turned out to be false promises and a forlorn hope.  The first set of ‘new breed’ graduates from Babangida’s school of democracy viz Ikimi and Kingibe, took after Babangida by celebrating opportunism. The next set was worse. They became shameless members of Abacha’s “five fingers of a leprous hand”. The next set was a tragedy. They, in the name of privatization sold to themselves the nation’s investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.6b. Besides padding of budget and shortchanging the country through unimplemented constituency projects, they have also engaged in outright stealing through fuel subsidy, import duty waivers and rural electrification scams.

    Babangida equally failed woefully on other scores. By the time Buhari came in 2015, our country had become a dumping ground for all manners of fake and substandard products from other parts of the world. Industrialists Babangida promised to protect had moved out of the country. Buhari had to start rationing scarce foreign exchange to the few left behind. And of course, before 2015, elections, contrary to Babangida’s pledge, had become war or “a do or die’ affair as ex-President Obasanjo put it.

    Babangida who has betrayed a nation that gave him so much opportunities is today at 75 a witness to his own baleful legacies. Unfortunately, having missed it 30 years ago, the task of nation-building has become more arduous. First, Buhari who picked up from where he left 30 years earlier is buffeted by old age and ill-health. And as he recently confessed, he is handicapped by the slow democratic process which he refers to as ‘due process’.

    More tragically, the military rule or outright dictatorship the world was prepared to live with 30 years ago have become an aberration. Yet there is no nation in history that has ever broken the underdevelopment yoke through democratic process for the simple reason that democracy which is just a method for attaining power does not guarantee economic development or good governance. History has shown that nations that have overcome crisis of underdevelopment have always done so through the intervention of a military junta, the owner of society or through dictatorship with a vision.

    Chairman Mao of China that is today contesting the world leadership looked inwards to resolve China’s crisis of underdevelopment.  It is on record that he at a period locked up his country and declared state of emergency in the health sector. He went on to decree three years training period for medical doctors who were thereafter deployed as ‘bared-foot doctors’ to the rural areas. Today, with millions denied of access to medical care, the West that once criticized Chairman Mao are sending their experts to understudy the Chinese health policies.

    Similar purpose could have been achieved by Buhari’s unorthodox economic approach widely criticized by the West in 1984. We unfortunately missed it with Babangida’s option of going to loan Kalu Idika Kalu from the World Bank the same way Obasanjo and Jonathan  fetched Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from World Bank whose agenda is to complicate our social problems  as part of strategy to solve their own social problems,

    Worse still, 1985 options are no more viable in 2017. The prospect of establishing new  industries in an age of globalization, the new god and cultural imperialism  have been foreclosed with cheaper manufactured goods or even farm products within reach in a matter of days through the internet.

    Our nightmare is likely going to be prolonged with the hijacking of the state and its resources by Babangida’s ‘new breed Abuja ruffians. But it is a victory for a nation betrayed that Babangida at 75 is alive along with Falae, Kalu Idika Kalu, his rain doctors, to take responsibility for the pains they inflicted on our nation with their fraudulent claim that there was no alternative to SAP despite the late Professor Aluko’s warning that there was alternative to even death which he said was life.

  • Charly Boy and his Our-mumu-don-do crusaders

    Last week, Charly Boy’s “our mumudondo’ group of entertainers and Buhari’s supporters clashed for the second time on the streets of Abuja. The former is insisting President Buhari, who is convalescing in a London hospital must “return or retire”.  The latter, taking a cue from the President’s Daura’s kinsmen, is insisting “it is not a crime to be sick” and that the president has not broken any law since he ceded power to his vice president as spelt out in the constitution. They went on to accuse Charly Boy and his group of being driven by other motives including politics rather than altruism. Charly Boy’s group then introduced a new dimension: Their crusade, they now claim, is not about legality but about morality. Buhari’s supporters on the streets of Abuja, shot back, insisting, Charly Boy is ill-equipped and the least qualified to speak on sickness or morality as a self-confessed President Jonathan’s  confidant who along with others egged him on as he ran the ship of state aground.  Charly Boy is yet to respond.

    What I have however found intriguing in the exchange between the two groups so far is the politicization of the President Buhari’s sickness. In case our fellow compatriots are unaware, it is not just that anyone can fall sick as argued by Buhari supporters, but the fact that social psychologists have in fact now said we are all sick with everyone at different levels of insanity. For artists who see what the ordinary people don’t see, it manifests in form of what society consider as their anti-social behaviours such as wearing tattoos over the body and overdependence on drug which recently led to the untimely death of Michael Jackson,  and Prince, two of the world most celebrated entertainers. For instance, like Charly Boy who cherishes being called a boy at over 60, Michael Jackson was locked inside the body of a boy, making it impossible for him to accept responsibilities of adulthood all through his life.

    Those of us who dance to their sometimes weird music without rhyme are not left out. Part of their findings is that it takes some form of insanity to start jumping around hysterically with our hands and legs up and down.  But more revealing is their findings about political leaders.  Students of political psychology in international relations have in fact confirmed leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin, Mussolini and Trump were outrightly insane. As for us and our leaders, no scientific work is needed to confirm our state of insanity. The irrational actions and pronouncements of our leaders and the absurd responses of the led are all that is required to gauge the level of our insanity.

    For instance, we couldn’t have suddenly forgotten the recklessness of PDP leaders who embarked on the assassination of their leading lights over spoils of office after assuming power in 1999. On his own part, Obasanjo’s declaration that he was not obliged to listen to advice of experts but to God who brought him out of Abacha’s gulag to solve Nigerian problems was sufficient proof his recklessness. And if it is remembered that one of his obsession was to have a peaceful transition from civilian to civilian, a feat he achieved through Maurice Iwu’s massively rigged 2007 election which forced the winner of the electoral contest to protest against his own victory, the strange voice that finally drove him to the third term fiasco couldn’t have come from God. Obasanjo was probably suffering from “selective perception”, or the image in our heads, an affliction which sometimes makes us deny reality. Goodluck Jonathan, his godson suffered the same affliction. In power he looked the other way as his appointees looted the nation’s resource claiming stealing government funds was not corruption. Now out of government and with billions being recovered from his associates and family members, he is still in self-denial that he ran the economy aground and that he fought corruption but for “some unplugged loopholes”. Our current leaders have been  humble  enough to have publicly owned up to their different afflictions: Saraki – treachery; Ekwerenmadu – opportunism, and Melaye –obsession with cars.  In the case of Dogara, his estranged friends says it is  “budget  padding”; Buhari – stiffness and religious fundamental beliefs and love of his Fulani race, afflictions he shares with Osinbajo, his deputy.

    Now let us return to corruption, the other serious challenge facing our nation. It is the greed of corrupt political elite that deprive Nigerian youths of education, drive less-privileged Nigerians with broken limbs and bones from collapsed federal roads to seek remedy not in  Igbobi Orthopaedic Hospital established after the Second World War but in the Republic of Togo while the privileged with collapsed kidney arising from usage of imported fake drugs find their way to India and not UCH, Ibadan, once regarded as one of the best three teaching hospitals in the Commonwealth of nations.

    Charly Boy says some of his people voted for Buhari because of their confidence in his ability to fight corruption. And that is exactly what Buhari in or out of town has been trying to do for two years. There is sufficient proof he is changing the narrative.  Those who collected amounts ranging between N1b and N4b from the federal government to rig the last gubernatorial elections in the South-west, those from Charly Boy’s South-east that collected N34b of N44b budgeted for the dredging of River Niger without any work done and those from the North who ferried billions in foreign currency with truck from the CBN vault allegedly on the order of President Jonathan, are having their dates in courts.

    Today the Treasury Single Account (TSA) is said to have fetched the nation about N4trillion. Those who collected N4.6b for spiritual consultation are repaying back or having their dates in the courts; $9.88m and 74,000 pounds had been seized from Andrew Yakubu former GMD of NNPC while his supervising minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke has forfeited billions in local and foreign currencies as well as choice properties in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt to government. Abdulahi Dikko former Comptroller General of Customs has forfeited $37.5m to government just as billions of naira and choice properties have been recovered from military officers. On his part, Magu, the EFCC boss has so far secured the conviction of about 200 swindlers of the nation’s resources.

    The nation has not only stopped the daily loss of about 500,000 barrels of oil but has more to show for the $52b oil revenue she earned in the last two years than the $445b accruing to the Jonathan administration between 2010 and January 2015.

    But Charly Boy remains unimpressed. He told Vanguard over the weekend that his “Return or Resign” crusade against recuperating Buhari will continue. With this type of mind-set, it is no more difficult to second guess whose battle Charly Boy and his group are out to wage. It couldn’t have been an accident that his crusade coincides with the regrouping of PDP and the chest- beating of ex-President Jonathan about his handling of the nation’s-economy and the war on corruption as president. But as Balarabe Musa, former Kaduna State governor said while reacting to Jonathan’s wild claims, last week: ‘Nigerians have short memories’.  Charly Boy who was said to be an unofficial adviser to ex-President Jonathan, like his principal, probably believe Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia.

  • Senate versus Umar

    It is times like this when the voices of reason is silenced  by the  infantile  blabbering  of the likes of Ayo Fayose and Fani-Kayode in the West, drowned by the delirious raving  and hate messages of Kanu of IPOB in the East and  muffled  by the ranting of Arewa rabble-rousers  in the North even as our errant elders play dumb. And this is just as the 8th Senate continues to assault our sensibilities while our nation is racing towards the precipice that invokes nostalgic craving for Awo’s voice of reason which his political adversaries who carouse while he studied to find solution to Nigerian problem ignored at their own peril in 1953, 1962 and 1966.

    But in the destruction of the noble line, as the saying goes, there is always a survivor. Since Col. Dangiwa Umar distanced himself from Babangida and his army of ‘anything is possible’s annulment of the commonweal of Nigerians in 1993 by resigning his commission, he has continued to demonstrate through his periodic intervention in the affairs of our country that, unlike many of the other members of the political, military and intellectual elite of his era, beguiled and enchanted by Babangida’s charm, his allegiance to the Nigerian state transcends his loyalty to a god-father.

    Last week, distancing himself from current members of the political class who have come to accept heinous crime such as treachery, opportunism and corruption which define the current 8th Senate as ‘real politic’, Umar, was brutal with the truth. The 8th Senate, he says are “on a mission to crash the federal government’s war against corruption using the power of ‘oversight’ as cover”. If we are in doubt because our vision is beclouded by those who freely deploy religion and ethnicity as weapon of war against Buhari while they are neck-deep in corruption, he admonishes Nigerians “to take more than a passing interest in the controversy generated by the actions of members of the Senate Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariffs and that of the Nigeria Ports Authority. He went on to confirm the 8th Senate is out to serve none but their members by revealing their ferocious war against the Customs Comptroller-General was on account of his refusal to support continued rape of the country by some members of the Senate.

    As proof, he cited the importation of 1,200 metric tons of rice in 30 40-foot containers, fraudulently declared as yeast to evade payment of appropriate duties by a company owned by an influential member of the Senate. Ali, the Customs Comptroller-General he says, refused to release the seized items based on the dubious alibi provided by “the leader of the Senate Committee on Customs, Excise & Tariff” to the effect that “his findings shows it was the clearing Agent not the importer that called the goods ‘yeast’ instead of ‘rice’.

    Umar was not done. He went on to also allege that the same senator involved in the rice importation scandal also owns a company that secured a contract to dredge the Calabar Channel which the Bureau of Public Procurement has condemned as violating all due processes. This and the fact that there was no evidence the contract was ever executed were not sufficient disincentive for the senator to “demand and get a whopping $12.5million upfront payment from the NPA or to ask for a purported balance of $22million”.

    The humiliation and persecution and inquisition of Ali and Ibrahim Magu and the numerous petitions against the Managing Director of NPA, Umar says are closely linked to the resolve of these patriotic public servants to do what they believe is the best for our country. This strategy, although Umar did not say it appears to be a rehash of what happened during Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration when some prominent actors in the current 8th Senate joined James Ibori and other tough guys as governors, to run Magu, who was at the time investigating prominent governors that mismanaged the resources of their states, out of EFCC into detention and Ribadu into exile.

    These are serious scandal except in the 8th Senate ‘house of scandal’ where it is regarded as a comedy  by those who after attributing the source of their stupendous wealth to God,  write a book on corruption and assemble those facing corruption charges in court as chief launchers. But then the inauguration of the 8th Senate itself was preceded by a monumental scandal unknown to democracy in this environment. The trading off of the victory of the party on whose back they rode into parliament was soon overshadowed by the police claim that the Senate rule used for the election of the principal officers of the 8th Senate was forged. This was soon followed by yet another scandalous claim that Nigerian senators are the highest paid lawmakers in the world. We however now know they earn only a little over N7m that their counterparts in the lower house collect monthly.

    It was not long before the next scandal broke out. Some former governors-turned-senators, in addition to scandalous severance packages they worked out for themselves before transiting were said to be earning double salaries. It was pensions – the Senate President corrected – adding that a letter had been dispatched to the Accountant General of his former state to stop the payment into his account. As for those who regarded Senate procurement of the state-of-the-art SUVs for themselves after taking personal car loans and at a period the states they represent had several months of unpaid workers salary arrears, they were reminded that the executive also bought cars for ministers. As for Dino Melaye’s scandalous claim of being alumni of some prestigious universities across the globe, a Senate internal probe at least confirmed he was a proud recipient of a third class degree from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU).

    The impounded SUV bullet proof – new addition to the Senate President fleet – cleared with forged papers to deprive government in which he is number three was blamed on the importer. The same template was adopted to explain off the imported rice fraudulently labelled yeast to evade payment of tariff. This time around however, the clearing agent and not the importer is the culprit.

    Now Umar, who claimed to have identified the culprits, has set the terms for armistice: “Senator Saraki must enforce discipline among his colleagues. No member of a committee, much less a chairman, should remain in his duty post once credible information about possible crime is received on the person”. This is an impossible task which we know is not going to happen. Let Saraki or whoever has not sinned in the 8th Senate either through criminal conspiracy or criminal silence, throw the first stone.

    The stage for a ferocious and imminent battle is therefore set between Umar and the 8th Senate, both claiming to fight on our behalf. The former is counting on his 23 years of standing on the side of truth and fairness while the latter is entering the battle arena with an overflowing baggage of scandals punctuated by treachery, opportunism and blackmail. It can also not be good news to the scandal-weary 8th Senate that Umar, is neither Itse Sagay, Ibrahim Magu, Ali or Raji Fashola who as government employees can be invited, browbeaten, humiliated and dismissed as incompetent.

    Umar is not leaving anything to chance. Knowing the 8th Senate is no respecter of its party leaders or of public opinion, he is appealing to our conscience. His final appeal: “Nigerians must not leave the likes of Hamid Ali, Ibrahim Magu, Hadiza Bala Usman,(former BPP -DG) Emeka Nzeh et al at the mercy of these strange lawmakers; politicians that have demonstrated time and again that they are in politics to serve themselves and themselves alone”.

  • Abuja tough guys and constitutional amendment

    I sympathise with Nigerians who had expected the attempt by the National Assembly to amend some key elements of our constitution as answer to our crisis of nationhood. The high expectation was understandable since we have become a nation of miracle seekers where people believe they can reap what they did not sow.  I for one never share the optimism of those who believe our current class of lawmakers can give what they do not have.

    A brief recourse to the past will show that such expectation was a forlorn hope. First, most of the current Abuja actors that constitute our new political class were those born after 1966. Their only form of political socialisation was a passage through   Babangida’s school of democracy.  And It is on record that the first set of ‘new breed” politicians, the  products of  that new orientation such as Tom Ikimi and Babagana Kingibe, chairmen of Babangida decreed two parties sided with the military against Nigeria at a critical period in our nation’s history in1993. We also have it on record that the set that followed in 1999 was no less anti-Nigeria. After first killing their leading light over sharing of spoils of  office (or war as Obasanjo called it), they  settled down  to share among  themselves, in the name of privatization, the nation’s investment of over $100b for a paltry $1.6b. When there was nothing left to sell, they shared   our national patrimony under a dubious government monetization policy. The 2010 group was represented by Goodluck Jonathan, described by one of his colleagues as “an ATM without secret pin number” – was no less vicious. Since for President Jonathan, stealing government money was not corruption, ministers and party stalwarts were given free hand to satisfy their greed. The current recession is the price the nation is paying for the greed of this set.

    The reigning group led by Saraki and Dogara has been the most daring. They have no apologies for placing the interest of their members before that of the nation. They went an extra mile by first executing a civilian coup against their party to earn their current positions.  By their outing last week, they have demonstrated they are not about to commit suicide after all the risk just to be regarded as patriots. That option is definitely not an option to those who are ready to impeach the acting President and pull down the whole edifice on their own heads for being reminded that diverting budgetary allocations from important national projects that touch on the lives of Nigerians to controversial constituency projects was unpatriotic.

    First, it must be remembered that the whimsical declaration of LGAs as third tier of government by Obasanjo following Ibrahim Dasuki Commission’s recommendation was not aimed at enhancing development at the grassroot level but at securing legitimacy for the military administration.  If there was any consideration for development at all, it was about individuals such as retired military officers who benefited most from Babangida’s Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) campaign which became an avenue for siphoning funds and traditional rulers who also receive 5%of LGAs allocations directly from Abuja for doing absolutely nothing. Local government was patterned after the command structure of the military and funded from the centre became a strategy for undermining the independence of the states and for institutionalization of corruption.

    The National Assembly understands that all politics are local. It was not by accident that Awo and Ahmadu Bello started their political careers as local government chieftains. But our current lawmakers as in character, granted autonomy to LGAs instead of correcting an abnormality as there is no federation in the world, as Soludo, the former CBN Governor observed a little while ago, where the federal government allocates funds to local governments that are not accountable to it.

    Similarly, the national assembly’s abrogation of States Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs) is a betrayal of the federal arrangement.  The challenge before the National Assembly was empowering SIEC to enhance its credibility just as we have done with INEC at the centre. INEC itself cannot be  said to be made up of angels with so many of their officials facing trials for receiving millions as bribe to rig the 2015 election on behalf of some candidates and political  parties. In any case, one of the reasons the United States from where we copied the federal arrangement advertises to support the credibility of their elections is that they are conducted by states irrespective of parties in power.

    That Saraki and Dogara presided over constitutional amendments to make themselves members of the Council of State should not surprise anyone. After all, they executed a civilian coup to secure their present positions and will be in good company as they join other coup plotters in the National Council of State.

    Passing a constitutional amendment to support state legislatures’ financial autonomy is also in bad taste. It means taking a cue from the upper houses, state assembly members can now pay themselves whatever they want. They don’t have to wait on governors to procure for themselves state-of-the-art SUV cars or add imported bullet proof SUVs, cleared with forged papers to their speakers’ fleet.

    Provision for immunity for speakers of state legislatures is nothing but corruption fighting back. Henceforth, EFCC cannot question the Speakers of Houses of Assemblies for financial infractions, false declaration of assets or be asked to defend their honour if per chance they are mentioned in the Panama scandals.

    If there is one decision that portrays the current Abuja “like-minds senators” as a pack of unserious lot, it is their rejection of devolution of power. They are in other words saying the current situation where we have  about 88 items in the exclusive  list, 33 items on the concurrent list  without a residual list which has rendered the states impotent  while a dysfunctional centre makes a mess of functions such as roads, agriculture ,health, education, and security that are best handled by states – is fine.

    With six months delay and eventual  padding of the current budget by Saraki and Dogara houses while the rest of the country including Abuja  suffer  from collapsed infrastructure, it should be obvious to Nigerians that without devolution of power, whoever  occupies seat of power in Abuja is a hostage to vicious tough guys in the National Assembly.

    There is so much at stake for those benefiting from our current crisis of nation-building. We cannot put our destiny in the hands of self-serving law makers whose salaries we do not know until recent disclosure by Senator Buruji Kashamu who declared during a quarrel with Ladi Adebutu  that “your monthly take home is N7m. When you multiply that by 48 months you would have earned a total of N336 million” in two years.

    We as a people must stop playing the ostrich and accept that we need an umpire probably the United Nations. We should remind ourselves that even with our founding fathers who were adjudged to be men of vision and character, the national question was resolved in London in 1954 with the support of Britain. Today we have a more vicious political class and a more determined Fulani hegemonic power that is resolved to hold on to their current advantages such as greater number of states and LGAs which make revisiting the national question long resolved before the intervention of an ill-equipped and ill-educated military in 1966 an arduous task.