The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Government inefficiency and pains of Nigerians

    Professor Ayo Olukotun in his last week column in the Punch newspapers titled ‘Consumer woes in austere times” narrated his experience while trying to renew his monthly subscription to Direct Satellite Television owned by Multichoice. At the end, he could not but ‘marvelled at how helpless consumers had become at the hands of these service providers’. Once again, I think this is one more evidence of failure of governance.

    The capitalist economic system, the reigning ‘god’ worshipped by most societies holds no apologies to life being the survival of the fittest. Consequently, it allows the affluent to further impoverish the poor. This was why men traded their freedom and liberty for government’s protection of life and properties. The primary role of government therefore is to put measures in place to checks man’s greed especially in our own environment where some of our sick political leaders who according to Chinua Achebe, ‘have been in the rain for so long and swore none of their generation would go back to the rain’, steal from the poor to build mansions in which they and their children will never live over many capital cities of the world.

    Our own tragedy is that not only has our government in the last 15 years totally abandoned the poor to the vagaries of economic forces and merchants of greed, government itself has been an accessory in the impoverishment of the most vulnerable. This found expressions in such self-serving government policy thrusts as PPPRA designed as an answer to a contrived fuel scarcity to pave way for the theft of N1.7trillion under fraudulent fuel subsidy deal,  World Bank inspired liberalization and privatisation which did not only turn our country into importer of labour of other societies but ended with the country recouping only about $1b from $100b investments made between 1960 and 1999 and the monetization policy which led to the sharing of our inherited national patrimony in form of choice properties by those in government and their friends.

    But in March 2015, Nigerians in spite of impediments put on their way by those who had levied war against them voted for change. Sadly more than one year of government of change, many are increasingly becoming disillusioned as change appears a forlorn hope. Government effort is not made any easier by the current economic reality which is partly the fallout of massive looting of the nation’s resources, sponsored sabotage of the economy by those called upon to account for their past. As if these were not enough problems, we also have an APC government where the executive seems to operate independently of the party that brought it to power, (I sometimes wonder if Tony Momoh and Segun Osoba are still in APC); a pathetic Senate passing resolution upon resolution to evade prosecution for alleged criminal offences including forgery by its leadership and a Lower House enmeshed in scandals over padding of the budget by as much as N40billion.

    Four months ago, this column called attention to the creeping dictatorship in Abuja where everything seemed to begin and end on President Buhari’s table in an age when government has become a science susceptible to scientific laws. Attention was called to the over 500 ‘small governments’ the President and his party needed  to effect change but controlled by those opposed to change because of huge benefits they reap from the prevailing economic anarchy.

    Last week Segun Adeniyi, a former colleague at The Guardian, now of ThisDay newspapers, called our attention to President Buhari and his APC’s inability to reconstitute the statutory boards of regulatory institutions that are critical to the economy, dissolved over a year ago. He cited the following as examples the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the Bank of Industry (BOI); the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC); the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC); the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC); the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Commission (NDIC); the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) among many others.

    Now using NCC as a base, let me add to Professor Olukotun’s anxiety about absence of consumer’s protection, my own personal experiences which I am sure is not markedly different from those of other Nigerian victims of rip-off by unrestrained service providers.  A few years back, I roamed my telephone line from one of the telecommunication giants outside the country. Four days after my departure from Nigeria, I was told I had exhausted my N50, 000 deposit. This was not so much from usage but because of endless repetition of any message sent to me from Nigeria. During the last two weeks of my trip, I dreaded even switching the phone on because the stream of endless repeated messages had become a nuisance. On my arrival, I was slammed with a non-negotiable N200, 000 bills. I finally migrated from post-paid to prepaid. But that did not end my nightmare. Bombarded daily by unsolicited messages, I decided to visit the service centre of this communication giant more than once where all I got was apologies. With a subscription base of about 214 million as at March this year, with one unsolicited message at a cost of N1.00, Nigerian subscribers are ripped off to the tune of over N200m.

    A rival telecommunication giant to which I also subscribe was not different. All I got from several visits to complain about frequent disappearance of post-paid credit even when the phone was not in use was ‘android phones have in- built devices that consume credits whether the phone is utilized for internet services or not’. I think this type of rip-off is only possible in Nigeria.

    A few years back, a particular service provider taking a cue from a government that in an effort to raise campaign funds for the then impending election taxed motorists N24, 000 to have their old vehicle plate numbers replaced levied its customers N19, 000 to replace their existing functioning equipment for a new equipment because it was upgrading its processes. While the battle for devaluation of naira was raging a few weeks back, I branched in their office to renew my subscription only to be told in a manner of ‘take it or leave it’ that my package had gone up from N8, 000 to N10, 000.

    I did not get much joy either from a rival internet services provider to which I migrated. For instance when I went to renew my subscription after a month, I was told that N5,000 of the N7, 000 I paid was yet to be utilized but must be forfeited because I exceeded my renewal date by one day.

    What became apparent from the above interactions was that my actual monthly consumption of data was probably about N2, 000 but like many helpless Nigerians, I have been consistently swindled by as much as N6, 000 monthly for the greater part of five years.

    By retaining men of yesterday in their positions in PPPRA which has given no explanation as to why the price of 12kg cylinder of domestic gas or four litres of lubricants Nigerians depended on to service their cheap Chinese generators, products without much foreign content have gone up by as much as 100 percent, is partly the reason why many believe President Buhari and his APC are furiously squandering away the goodwill of Nigerians. Nigerians cannot understand why a government of change has continued to multiply their pains due to indolence and inefficiency. Theresa May if they needed to be reminded constituted her full cabinet within 24 hours of becoming Prime Minister of Britain.

     

  • Melaye: Limit of reckless bravery

    Senator Dino Melaye likes to celebrate his audacity. His recent press conference arranged to deny his alleged verbal assault on Senator Oluremi Tinubu and put the encounter between the two distinguished senators during their executive session on 12 July 2016 in perspectives provided just another opportunity to once again celebrate his audaciousness. “I have never been a coward; I will never be. I fight my battles alone and I stand by it and there is nothing I say everywhere that I cannot repeat everywhere”, he boasted.

    But why repeat the obvious, if you believe yourself – some will ask? Nigerians, if Melaye wants to know, understand his reckless bravery finds expressions in acts such as abandoning the business of lawmaking to accompany Bukola Saraki’s wife to honour EFCC invitation, mobilizing 84 ‘like minds senators’ to intimidate the judge of the CCT before whom Saraki is facing charges for alleged false declaration of assets and raging and threatening the executive on the floor of the Senate over the arraignment of the senate leadership for alleged forgery. Of course, we also know his alleged unrestrained tirade against Senator Tinubu during the executive session of the Senate on July 12 was in pursuance of the same objective –celebration of audacity.

    From Melaye’s account, we now know the executive session was designed to cut deals. He admitted that  in spite of police investigation which confirmed that there was indeed a forgery of the senate rules, a development that has led to the arraignment of the leadership of the senate along with others,  he was trying to pacify  ‘all those who have gone to court should go and withdraw their names from court and that if  at the end of the day those who refused to withdraw their names from court, we should penalise them by suspending them”. He anchored his argument on the fact that there was already a Senate resolution saying its papers were not forged. But he did not tell the public whether the resolution was passed before the alleged crime or after the police investigation and arraignment of suspected culprits. If it was passed after the event, he did not say whether it has a retroactive effect.

    Similarly, from Melaye’s account, it doesn’t appear Senator Tinubu was initially opposed to the deal but only became irritated by Melaye’s threat to sanction those who do not support the planned cover up. She stood up not exactly to distance herself from the deal under discussion but to warn that while they were trying to find ‘solution’, Melaye had no right to intimidate any senator with suspension threat.  “I’m just wondering”, Tinubu was reported to have said, “whenever Senator Dino Melaye speaks in this chamber, he is always threatening people and behaving childishly. This thug must be tamed.” When Melaye reacted by saying she was stupid, she retorted by calling him a dog. And ‘when I stood up and I reacted…’ Melaye continuing the narrative, ‘she went on shouting ‘thug, dog, thug dog…” In the melee that followed, the deal as well as Melaye was undone.

    Now no one is listening to Melaye’s ‘It is fallacious, malicious and a lie that I said I will impregnate Remi Tinubu. Biologically it is even impossible to impregnate her because she has arrived menopause…’  ‘How can you say you want to beat somebody and at the same time you want to impregnate the person…does it make any logical sense?’ – the embattled Melaye seeking understanding of the reporters asked. No one seems to believe him. Then as an afterthought he added: ‘I will continue to uphold the culture the tradition, the values of the Kogi West Senatorial district and I will not abuse it.’ The closest response to that sober undertaking was Kogi West Youth Leaders Forum’s denunciation of his verbal assault which they described as “embarrassing, irresponsible, uncultured and unguarded utterances which have become utterly unbearable to the good people of Kogi West who he unfortunately represents in the Senate.”

    Osun women have joined the anti-Melaye crusade. All Progressives Congress (APC) women in Osun last week issued a statement to say “Senator Melaye’s attack and threat to beat up Senator Tinubu and impregnate her were uncouth, indecent, demeaning, humiliating, sexist and criminal.” They also say it is a violation of the provisions of the Violence against Persons Act of 2015. There was also a woman’s right advocacy group- Amazons for Change that described Melaye’s verbal assault as “the worst conduct in the history of the Nigerian Senate”. They did not forget to call the attention of the public to what they described as Melaye’s “recent uncouth remarks in reference to Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s wife.” There were protests from Ondo women and a group has come out to warn Melaye against stepping on any part of Yoruba land. There have been reactions by Nigerians from all parts of the world. They all agreed with Senator Tinubu that Senator Melaye must be caged.

    There are two lessons to be drawn from this tragedy. Our new insight into how the 8th Senate is run has now confirmed our worst fears. The Senate whose leadership by their own accounts emerged in an inelegant way has been sustained through self-help using strategies popularised by thugs or Lagos area boys. When Saraki’s wife was invited by EFCC for questioning, the Senate quickly passed a resolution protesting the harassment of wives of their senators.  When Saraki was dragged before the Code Of conduct Tribunal for false declaration of assets, the Senate’s response was a vote of confidence on their leaders. They followed that up by trading the senate chambers for the CCT ostensibly in solidarity with Saraki when in fact the action was meant to intimidate the judge. And when that failed, petitions emerged to show the judge was ‘corrupt’. The Senate then usurped the duty of EFCC and summoned him for a questioning, fixed on a day he was scheduled to preside over Saraki’s case.

    Senate’s response to the ongoing forgery case has not been different. A vote of confidence on those accused of alleged forgery, some theatrics on the floor of the Senate where brave Melaye argued that if the Senate rules were forged, it meant the confirmation of the AGF, the service chiefs and the passage of the budget stands invalidated. When that crooked logic did not impress anyone, they summoned the AGF to come and defend his actions. And when the July 12 executive session failed to seal a deal after a retroactive Senate resolution to cover an alleged crime, they threatened impeachment of the president.

    In other words, the leadership of the 8th Senate acquired through self-help strategies of area boys or what legendary Fela described as ‘Igboju pass power’- (reckless bravery) is managed through bully and blackmail. It is perhaps only in Saraki’s Eighth Senate that those accused of criminal activities, rather than clear their names would turn around to threaten those who do not want to commit perjury with suspension.

    The second take away on the lighter mood was how audacious Melaye was finally undone.  He forgot that man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man (Corinthians 11.9). He forgot that a woman is equipped with a complex analytical mind that enables her subdue any man no matter how audacious. All Senator Tinubu did to cut Melaye to size was launching from her bag of verbal arsenal an appropriate answer to Sigmund Fraud’s age long question of “what is on a man’s mind” at irrepressible Melaye and he was undone. Now am sure he knows no man ever wins a woman’s war.

  • PENGASSAN’s insensitivity

    Coming at the time ordinary Nigerians are going through a period of unprecedented hardship, the ongoing strike by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) is one strike too many. It is not only insensitive but inhuman. The absence of oil Petroleum Equalisation Fund workers  to certify all bridging vehicles at depots in Apapa will most likely create more hardship for consumers outside the South-west including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory where fuel queues were reported to have resurfaced last week. Of course for self-serving PENGASSAN and its members, that development called for nothing but celebration. And that was exactly what its spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojugbana did when he spoke of ‘total compliance with the strike by workers of government agencies such as ‘Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEFMB) headquarters’. He did not forget to add that ‘there was also compliance by PENGASSAN members in NNPC office, Shell, Total, Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) and Lagos where even those at the jetties and other critical sections where crude are lifted also abandoned their duty posts”.

    It wasn’t as if PENGASSAN and its men have ever been known to fight on the side of the people. Except for the brief period it stood by the people during the resistance against military tyranny following the annulment of MKO Abiola’s victory in 1993, a support greatly influenced by the personality of Kokori, the body has always fought to protect the narrow and selfish interest of its members. As it was in the past when they threatened or actually held the nation to ransom over mundane issues such as ‘non-creation of new jobs, delayed payment of ‘accrued deferred benefits’, discipline of erring branch chairman and casualisation, their current strike is all about PENGASAN and not Nigerians who are today paying for the consequences of massive corruption in the oil sector in which PENGASAN members cannot claim to be bystanders.

    And what are their grievances? They include: ‘Forceful co-option of government agencies in the industry into the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), loss of jobs by PENGASSAN members including “key union officers and national officer” due to downsizing by some employers such as Fugro, Universal Energy, Frontier Services and Petrostuff’.  This was followed by some strange demand to be met within seven days. They want government ‘to end anti-labour practices by employers’ at a time millions of Nigeria are without work while a few employed even by government, are owed  areas of salaries running to many months. They also want government to decree industrial harmony between their members and ‘H15, IEME Chevron, Universal Energy, Tecon and Avion Oil and Fugro by prevailing on these companies to reverse recent retrenchments”. And finally they want government to address the problem of ‘funding/cash call arrears, provide feasible guidelines to clear all outstanding payments and evolve a pragmatic system of funding the Joint Venture (JV) operations.”. They knew why government has not met those obligations but by choosing to embark on a strike which will further damage an already prostate economy, they made it clear they are not obliged to be government ally in its battle for economic recovery.

    And I think they are right. The buck stops on the President’s table. That PENGASSAN whose members played pivotal role in the monumental corruption that took place in the oil sector is still in a position to inflict further hardship on Nigerians is the fault of a President who perhaps haunted by his past has chosen vacillation over governance and politics. Under presidentialism, the president and his party are to populate the over 500 small governments that are needed to implement their party manifesto. But after a year of government of change, many of these small governments including those PENGASSAN is now using to inflict further injury on Nigerians are still manned by those who want to continue business as usual.  For instance not a few Nigerians are wondering what we are still doing with equalization fund policy and those who exploited the policy to perpetrate fraud long after the total deregulation of the oil sector.   Before deregulation, Nigerian knew the equalization fund was a fraud. Fuel was never at any time sold at the same rate in Ilesha, Enugu or Sokoto as in Lagos. It was a federal government policy designed not to remove the pains of ordinary people but to empower party loyalists.

    At a time the federal government was paying billions as equalization funds to some influential people where some individuals controlled as many as 500 trucks, some of which were allegedly deployed to smuggle subsidized fuel across the borders, farmers from  onion, beans and yam producing zones of the north transported their farm products to Lagos market without equalization subsidy. Oshogbo traders were in Maiduguri and beyond to procure items while northern traders could be found in the remote parts of the south-east to procure what their customers needed. This was the pattern of trade between Nigerians long before amalgamation and long after independence. Multinationals such as UAC, Cadbury, Liver Brothers, Nigeria breweries etc, have their distribution network for their goods. Equalisation fund in the oil sector was a political elite-inspired policy designed to defraud the people.

    The policy thrust behind the creation of PPPRA was not different. It was set up specifically by those who wanted to recoup their expenses after publicly claiming they sold their private houses to contest the 2003 election. The bill was passed within three months. And as expected,  ‘PPPRA with a staff of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22 man strong board, earning scandalously whopping salaries and allowance of N57.9billion per annum’, has  served only the interest of those who set it up. In 2011, under Dr.AhmaduAlli as its chairman and Alison-Madueke as supervising minister, the number of fuel importers moved from about half a dozen to 128. In 2011, the body put consumption of fuel by Nigerians at 60.25 million litres. But a House probe which confirmed that PPPRA presided over the theft of N1.7 trillion by PDP stalwarts, their siblings and their fronts in 2011 was to later put the actual 2012 consumption at 39.66 litres.

    As it turned out, the desperate men who created PPPRA in 2003 merely duplicated the functions of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) set up in 1988 to “profitably and efficiently market refined petroleum products in the domestic as well as export markets, especially in the ECOWAS sub-region, provide marine services and also maintain uninterrupted movement of refined petroleum products from the local refineries.” Even if President Buhari is not aware of the above, the deregulation of the oil market with kerosene selling at between N220 and N300 as against government post regulation fixed price of N83,without a whimper from PPPRA makes the scrapping of the body along with much abused equalization funds and others so recommended by the Oronsaye’s report more imperative.

    One of the reasons Nigeria voted President Buhari was their confidence in his ability to make our refineries work and stop the haemorrhage in the fuel sector. And if PENGASSAN men in Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEFMB) headquarters’ as well as NNPC and Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC), who want business to continue as usual are the reasons he will fail Nigerians, it is time he stops vacillation and got them off his back.

  • Ekweremadu, champion of democracy?

    Ike Ekweremadu, not too long ago, forwarded the court summons over alleged forgery by the Senate leadership and some others  to the United Nations, governments of the UK and USA, the European Union parliament and foreign missions, to call the world attention to an ‘attempt by Buharis’s government to rubbish the legislative arm of government’, ‘ clampdown on opposition’ and for what  he described as  continuation of ‘marginalization of the South-east and South-south geopolitical zones of Nigeria’. He however conveniently forgot to say by whom since the Igbo, according to General Alabi Isama, have been part of every government since independence and have played leading roles in every government since the return of democracy in 1999 with Ekweremadu (South-east) as Deputy Senate President in the last nine years and ex-President Jonathan (South-south) as Vice President and President for eight years. All the same, decked in Igbo traditional war attire to give a wrong impression his arraignment for alleged forgery was an assault on the Igbo nation, his travails, he claimed during his press conference ,was ‘an attempt to silence the highest ranking opposition leader’, a  move he said  was ‘capable of truncating Nigerian democracy’. His grieving supporters a few days later, followed with another distress call, this time on Nigerians. ‘Buhari’, they said, ‘was about to black out democracy’, citing as evidence ‘the alleged kill­ing of members of Inde­pendent People of Biafra (IPOB) in Onitsha as well  the continued detention of the Director of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu’. Others supporters also followed by lionizing and praising him for his courage. Finally, there were those who celebrated him for his letter which they claimed found only parallel in those letters the APC wrote as opposition party to warn the international community about Jonathan’s plan to prolong the nightmare of besieged people of north-west through corruption-ridden war chest if only that would guarantee his reelection .

    Except for those whom the end justifies the means, many believe Ekwerenmadu’s letter crafted to defend a position which he by his own admission was acquired inelegantly was childish, ill-advised and self-serving. There is no doubt that those to whom a letter in which Ekweremadu positioned himself  as the champion of democracy in Nigeria was addressed know he is the greatest threat to democracy. Those who have had long years of political socialization in the long established participatory democracies know there can be no greater threat to democracy than the betrayal of the spirit of democratic rules and conventions. They know that Ekwerenmadu’s self admission that he immorally usurped a position that by convention belongs to the ruling party with majority was a calculated attempt to derail the democratic process. Unlike Nigeria where many of our compatriots suffer from the crisis of ideas and crisis of poverty, any misguided politician who embarks on such political perfidy in the UK, USA or in the European Union parliament, would be digging his own political grave. None of his generation would ever smell elective offices.

    They know more. They know that Ekweremadu cannot be a champion of democracy. They witnessed the obscene scenes in states houses of assembly such as Ekiti, Rivers and Edo where five thugs as lawmakers supported by the federal might purportedly impeached speakers supported by as many as 20 state lawmakers while the 7th assembly presided over by Mark/Ekweremadu looked the other way. They also know that by the virtue of Ekweremadu’s position in the 7th assembly, he cannot pretend not to be privy to how $2.1b inclusive of $1b loan meant for procurement of arms for our embattled soldiers who at a point could not defend their barracks and their loved ones were shared by PDP stalwarts to buy support for Jonathan’s 2015 failed reelection bid.

    If there is anyone deceived by  Ekweremadu and his 7th Senate whose leadership publicly admitted spending a whole night scheming about how to steal what belongs to others, where those who handsomely rewarded themselves for being called upon to serve the people routinely abandoned the Senate chambers in solidarity with their leader facing charges at the Code of Conduct Tribunal,  and where elected senators are threatening to sabotage the federal government programmes instead of prevailing on their leaders facing alleged forgery charges to clear their names, it is certainly not United Nations, the governments of US  and Britain or the western society for that matter.

    Perhaps Ekweremadu and his supporters need to be reminded that unlike his self-serving letter, but for the APC letters which forced the US to reconsider the plan to sell arms to Nigeria upon discovering that Nigerian arms were finding their way to the insurgents, beyond the 29 LGA seized by Boko Haram, the whole of the besieged three north-eastern states would have been captured by Boko Haram. The US had accused Nigerian Generals of human rights abuses. What greater human right abuse than condemning your ill-equipped young soldiers to death. Revelations from the ongoing probe has vindicated APC. Dasuki, Jonathan’s NSA has since confessed the $2.1b funds meant for procurement of arms ferried in boxes to his office was authorized by President Jonathan. EFCC has since revealed how a minister of defence, using an aircraft personally ferried N4.7b of the amount to Akure airport from where it was allegedly shared between Fayose, Omisore and Obanikoro. PDP stalwarts and their sympathizers such as Dokpesi, Metuh, Fani Kayode, Olu Falae and many others have since admitted receiving money from the NSA office. With these facts before Nigerians, the motive of Ekweremadu’s letter to the international community is clear-preemption. It is a survival strategy.

    But using the name of the Igbo poor in vain by those who rode on their back to power whenever they are called on to face their demons is not uncommon. And not long ago some Igbo elites facing prosecution for evasion of payment of land rent on the palaces they erected in exclusive parts of Lagos claimed they were being persecuted by Fashola’s government for criticizing his repatriation of some destitute back to their home states. That was at a period similar exercise had just been carried out among the south-eastern states. That was a time Imo State government was trying to cope with crisis of Imo indigenes repatriated from Abia State civil service while thousands of Igbo were gainfully employed in Lagos civil service and parastatals.  But some Igbo ex-governors who led the crusade against ex-governor Fashola over the repatriated few destitute were silent on the fate of thousands of poor uneducated Igbo youths who can neither read nor write that roam the streets of our major cities hawking smuggled substandard goods. They are only relevant to Igbo political elite during season of personal travails or when they want to ride on their back to power as they did in 2015 when they were railroaded to vote Jonathan who twice promised to build the second Onitsha Bridge and twice failed.

  • Fayose: Of greed and indiscretion

    Ill-equipped and ill-mannered Ayo Fayose, the self-styled voice of the opposition is a man with the heart of steel. He without trepidation tramples on sacred areas where angels fear to tread. Like Ali Mazrui said of General Abacha, the late Nigerian maximum ruler, Fayose is too dim-witted to know fear. Unfortunately, this recklessness is what has made him easy prey to both the crafty and the devious politicians.  Just as he blamed his detractors including Obasanjo who took him from the street of Ibadan and foisted him on the people of land of honour, for his fall from grace to grass when EFCC hounded him from detention to court room, he has been blaming everyone else but his own recklessness for his current travails.

    Following EFCC’s freezing of two of his personal accounts and another one belonging to his company, Spotless Investments in the course of its investigations into N4.745billion allocated to a former Minister of State (Defence) Musiliu Obanikoro by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) as a war chest to win the governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states in 2014, he first attempted hiding under the immunity clause of the constitution instead of addressing the issue. When that failed, he falsely claimed the President’s wife had a link with Jefferson who was jailed in the US over the Halliburton scandal in Nigeria. And when that also failed, he tried intimidating Zenith Bank for a possible cover- up. And when he discovered helpless Zenith had already performed its corporate responsibility, he claimed the funds traced to his Zenith account was a donation by the bank towards his election bid. But that was not until he had sought the protection of the court where he was advised to go and face his own demons just the same way the courts told him he had no integrity worthy of protection when he sued The News magazine that reported his alleged theft of N1.2billion just before his impeachment in 2006.

    But as said, Fayose’s lack of depth makes him easy target for scheming politicians.  For instance, when Obasanjo, a prophet rejected in his own city, became President in defiance of Edmund Burke’s thesis which literarily postulates that one cannot climb the palm tree from the top, (he lost the whole of South-west including his own ward in Abeokuta in 1999), he found Ayo Fayose, fearless but bereft of prudence the ideal candidate for his ‘main-stream’ experiment which started with Ekiti and later extended to Ondo, Oyo, Osun and Ogun states. Months before the election, he took him to Ado Ekiti where he raised his hand and proclaimed him as the next governor of Ekiti.  He gave fillip to his pronouncement by luring some marketable commodities from AD to PDP with money, vehicles and other forms of security logistics.  With military tactics, Obasanjo rigged Niyi Adebayo out of office in 2003 just as he did in other Yoruba states short of Lagos.  But Fayose, a man without discretion started waging war against the people. Widespread insecurity and assassination of political adversaries including Tunde Omojolaand an alleged theft of N1.2b led to his impeachment

    Thereafter, Fayose,was for eight years in the political wilderness, chased around by EFCC sometimes from detention to courts until a new set of crafty  politicians who saw him as lacking in forethought, recommended him to drowning Jonathan as the fearless man capable of taking on his Ekiti people and leading the squad of Obanikoro, JeliliAdesiyan, and Omisore in the pacification of the Yoruba land.As it was in 2003 when the battle was Obasanjo’s, Fayose did not have to fight any battle in June 2014. He didn’t even need to campaign. He had no manifesto. Jonathan just improved on his estranged godfather’s 2003 strategy. According to Dr.TemitopeAluko, Fayose’sself-confessed partner in crime, at the Aso rock meeting presided over by Jonathan with Fayose, former PDP chairman, AdamuMu’azu, Obanikoro, Jelili, and Omisore where decision to capture Ekiti was held, apart from making N4.7b available for the battle, it was resolved ‘there would be a strike team, a mixture of the DSS, military, and the mobile police’. It was as if Ekiti was at war in June 2014.

    Aluko also claimed that the electoral materials were delivered through Akure Airport and taken to a hotel owned by Fayose’s Chief of Staff DipoAnisulowo in Are-Ekiti, where the alleged manipulation was carried out. According to him, the ballot papers were thumb-printed and result sheets filled by PDP members, which gave the party “undue advantage”. Aluko also disclosed that even when the Department of State Services (DSS) operatives, led by a woman officer, stormed Anisulowo’s hotel and arrested the PDP henchmen, they were released within three hours. EFCC has since confirmed.N4.7b was shipped by Obanikoro through Akure airport out of which Fayose allegedly got N2.2b, Omisore N1.7b and Obanikoro N800m. That was all they needed for the pacification of Yoruba land.

    As it turned out, all the battles were fought on behalf of Fayose in 2014 just as it was in 2003. Fayose’s undoing was his greed as well as his indiscretion. With no lesson learnt from his first tragedy, he again started by waging war against the people. Determined to reduce the state to his level, he, with the connivance of President Jonathan first chased out 19 elected lawmakers and relied on five PDP thugs as lawmakers to pass his budget and confirmed list of his commissioners. He also prevented the embattled lawmakers and new aspirants from entering the state in order to reconstitute the new house in his own image where in the place of the Havel; he could use a carpenter’s hammer to personally pass the state budget without a debate.

    As for greed, a leopard cannot change its skin. While he arranged that the electoral materials to be thumb-printed be taken to Ani’s hotel in Are, he allegedly took personal delivery of his own N2b portion of the N4.7B slush fund. N1.219b of the fund according to EFCC, has been traced to his three frozen accounts in Ado Ekiti. And part of the fund according to EFCC has also been linked to the purchase of three choice properties in Abuja and Lagos by those said to be fronting for Fayose.

    Fayose so far has not denied receiving the money. Besides a failed attempt to hide under the immunity clause in the constitution and blaming others, he has also gone spiritual. Quoting the Bible, he has asked ‘those who have never sinned to throw the first stone.’ Predictably, long discredited ‘PDP Governors Forum’, now headed by Mimiko of Ondo and the Senate caucus which has expressed its opposition to Buhari’s war on corruption have openly identified with his travails.

  • Senate’s resort to self-help

    Character today counts for very little among our leaders. Rather than feel diminished by the perfidy of the leadership of the Senate, some senators have continued to justify the curious sense of entitlement that for instance drove BukolaSaraki, the Senate President to sell the victory of his party and Ekweremadu,, his deputy, to so covet an office he had occupied for eight years that he didn’t see anything immoral in ‘stealing’ what by convention belongs to the ruling party with a majority in any participatory democracy anywhere in the world. Instead of remorse, the duo has been playing the victim. Earlier they regaled Nigerians with tails of their exploits. Saraki told bewildered Nigerians that he, in the wee hours in June last year, hid himself inside a small car parked in front of the Senate chambers for close to four hours until the coast was clear enough for him to sneak into the Senate chambers where he was adopted president mainly by opposition members while 51 senators elected on the platform of his party were having a meeting with the president. For Ekweremadu, he chose the venue of the party he packaged to celebrate the victory of perfidy to inform Nigerians how he, along with some PDP members kept a night vigil inside David Mark’s sitting room scheming the theft of a convention he had enjoyed for eight years.

    However, some outraged senators  who felt diminished  by the Senate leadership’s lack of character petitioned the police alleging  that the source of Senate Rule 3 (3) (i) in the 2015 Orders-(All Senator-elect are entitled to participate in the voting for Senate President and Deputy Senate President) used for the election was suspect since the existing Senate Rule 3 (3) (k) of the 2011-(All Senators-elect shall participate in the nomination and voting for President and Deputy President of the Senate)which makes it mandatory for all members to participate in the process of electing the Senate President and Deputy Senate President, was never known to have been amended. A year after police investigation, a forgery case was initiated by the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, against the leadership of the Senate, the immediate past Clerk of the National Assembly, Alhaji SalisuMaikasuwa, and the Clerk of the Senate, Ben Efeturi, at an Abuja Federal High Court,

    But rather than defend their honour by addressing serious issues of ‘fraud and forgery’ leveled against them, custodians of our laws have chosen to resort to self-help. The chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, SabiAbdullahiissued a statement, not to deny the charges but proffer reasons why the leadership of the Senate should not be prosecuted. This was followed by some theatrics on the floor of the Senate.Following a motion by Dino Melaye titled “Imminent threat to our democracy, alleged invitation of our principal officers by the court,” the AGF was summoned to come and explain why his action “does not constitute gross misconduct, incompetence, contempt of court and abuse of office”. Melaye insisted that “the Senate Rule 2015 is not forged and it is the authentic rule of the Senate”. His specious argument was that the same rule was used in screening the ministers including the AGF, service chiefs and in passing the budget. “If the rule is fake, then the budget we have received is also fake and illegal”.

    But how does asking the leadership to defend its honour translate to ‘a coup aimed at undermining the independence of the legislature’? Saraki and Ekweremadu, whether as self-confessed civilian coup plotters or as offshoot of David Mark/Ekweremadu’s 7th Senate, know too well that coups are not planned in open courtroom where they have been arraigned to defend their integrity. The inference that prosecution for alleged forgery is ‘capable of plunging the country into anarchy and constitutional crisis”, is troubling. This looks like a subtle threat to indicate that the Senate leadership is ready to pull down the whole edifice on its head if it goes down. We must not forget that shortly after the Deputy Senate President was reported to have said that ‘Buhari’s war on corruption was capable of leading to anarchy’, the Niger Delta Avengers and some South-south governors demanded that government slows down war on corruption. And if one may ask, even if ‘the prosecution of the Senate principal officers was aimed at forcing a leadership change in the chamber’, has the leadership of the Senate now become hereditary? It is also said that because ‘we are in a state of economic emergency’, what the Senate leadership expects are executive ‘bills and proposals aimed at resolving the crises of unemployment, currency depreciation, inflation, crime and insecurity,’ and not prosecution. And should the president fail to see reason with the Senate leadership and embarks on “criminal prosecution of freely elected legislators”,they reminded President Buhari that he “should not mistake the maturity and hand of cooperation being extended to the Presidency by the legislature as a sign of weakness’. There are infractions and incompetence, on the part of the executive which according to them were overlooked to “ensure that every Nigerian has food on his table and live comfortably in a secure environment”.

    Unfortunately Nigerians can see through the Senate’s subtle blackmail and hypocrisy. Nigerians know this Senate loves none but itself. This is a Senate that recently demonstrated its profligacy by spending N300m on toys called SUVs in a situation where 26 states cannot pay the minimum wage of N18,000; this is a Senate where many of its governors-turned senators are earning double salaries in the name of pension when millions of pensioners have not been paid for years, and this is a  Senate that recently made “ proposals for immunity and life pension for its principal officers’, many of who are according to Femi Fanana, a human right lawyer, have been ‘linked with criminal diversion of public funds, forgery and rape’. With friends like Saraki, Ekweremadu and their 83 ‘like mind senators’ therefore, Nigerians know they have no enemies.

    Perhaps it is also time to remind the Senate leadership that Nigerians who voted for change don’t want business as usual. They don’t want anyone including those with credibility problems to cover up infractions and incompetence of the government. It was the cover- up of infractions in Jonathan government by Mark/ Ekweremadu 7th Senate   that has now brought the nation to its knees.The7th Senate looked the other way as officials of the Jonathan administration ferried raw dollars from the CBN vault to the National Security Adviser’s office which served as a piggy bank for all manners of people. Mark/Ekweremadu kept their peace when concerned Nigerians raised alarm about the hijacking of politics and the economy by brigands. They did nothing about the rot in NNPC and in the ministry of finance where the nation lost billions inform of import duty waivers, and finally, they did nothing when Jonathan illegally removed Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the then CBN Governor for alerting Nigerians that $20billion was not transferred from NNPC to the federation account.

    Nigerians want nothing short of prosecution of the Senate leadership. It is also in its interest as advocate of ‘separation of powers’ to subject itself to prosecution instead of resorting to self-help. As students and offshoot of Mark/Ekweremadu, it will help it to first rid itself of the log in its own eyes if it is to properly recognize infractions in Buhari’s government. And finally, it will invalidate the thesis of those who on account of the Senate PDP caucus’ threat to withdraw support for Buhari’s government if the prosecution goes on, that ‘it is all about corruption fighting back’.

  • The road to June12, 1993

    June 12 1993 was the final nemesis of our military self-proclaiming messiahs and custodians our constitution. Although it lost its innocence when it first came in a trail of blood in 1966, murdering the most talented of its members on behalf of warring coalition partners –Zik’s NCNC and Ahmadu Bello’s NPC, it was June 12, 1993 that finally put an end to its fraudulent claim  that ‘it sacrificed its present for our future’.

    Massive looting of the nation’s resources started with the military. In 1975 when Murtala Mohammed sacked Gowon’s regime, only two of the 12 military administrators were found worthy of their uniform. By 1986, the military had become ‘an army of anything is possible’ with Generals ferrying money with boxes from CBN vault and military political office holders, leaders renovating government properties with government money before selling same to themselves at give away prices. It institutionalized corruption through its liberalization policy that allowed military officers and their fronts to buy off government interests in banks, hotels and other commercial enterprises at the centre and in the states.

    By 1993, the Nigerian military has been transformed in to a political party by military leaders in uniform. Lamenting the fate of the military, Obasanjo had observed that ‘prolong military rule was a declaration of war against the sovereign right of the people of Nigeria to chose their own leaders and conduct their own affairs’, adding that, under Babangida, “All the value we hold dear are under assault. The nation is racked by tension and despair. Hope has become a scarce commodity and fears a constant companion”.

    With the squandering away of the goodwill of the people, Nigerians on June 12, 1993 overwhelmingly voted for MKO Abiola, a southern Muslim and Babagana Kingibe a northern Muslim President and Vice President, to spite a military that had for 24 years exploited our religious, ethnic and other secret fears.

    Babangida’s ‘transition without end’ which  the Guardian newspapers described as ‘torturous’ and marked  by ‘false steps miss-steps, real, and contrived anxiety and doubt’, started  in 1986 with his inauguration of a19-member committee to search  for what he described as ‘a viable political future’. Fifteen months later, he decreed his two political parties – the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The decreed parties described as ‘all joiners without founder’ must have no affiliation with the past and thus denied the lessons of our long history of party formation which started with Herbert Macaulay in 1923. Babangida thereafter embarked on a reckless waste of public funds to build political party headquarters which were later taken over by serpents and rats. Against the better advice of those who knew political culture and political socialisation are not taught in schools, Babangida went on to establish his own ‘university’ of democracy to produce ‘new breed politicians’.

    His decreed two parties on February 6, 1992 presented a total of 215 presidential aspirants for primaries conducted in 6,927 wards through a newly introduced Option A4 voting method. But Babangida and his Armed Forces Ruling Council on November 18, 1992 cancelled the results, claiming, “Stability of the nation cannot be sacrificed on the altar of time”. The date for handing over earlier fixed for January 2, 1993 was again cancelled and a new date for presidential election fixed for June 12, 1993.

    Meanwhile, Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) despite having been restrained by the courts from canvassing for ‘four more years for Babangida’ went on to secure a 9 p.m interlocutory injunction from an Abuja High Court presided over by Justice Bassey Ikpeme to stop the exercise two days to the election. The chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Professor Humphrey Nwosu, however, appealed to Nigerians to ignore the ruling since there was a Decree 52 of 1993 that protects the election against such court injunctions.

    The election went on as scheduled on June 12. It was acclaimed by local and international observers as peaceful and credible. Celebrating the election, The Guardian in an editorial stated: ‘The presidential election was superbly conducted. Nigerians conducted themselves with unparalleled maturity. The verdict has been unanimously and universally accepted as the best election Nigeria ever had”. But Babangida and his miniosn saw only the pictures in their heads.

    To prepare the ground for what was to follow, Nduka Obaigbena, the Publisher of ThisDay newspapers was the first to appear on CNN, a day after the election, calling for the cancellation of its result. He alleged MKO Abiola breached the electoral law by wearing a dress with an emblem of his party to the polling booth. Okey Uzoho, the National Publicity Secretary of NRC immediately followed with a statement complaining of ‘intimidation of voters, falsification of results in most states and monetary inducement by the rival Social Democratic Party”. Tofa’s campaign Director of Organization, Dr. Walter Ofonagoro took off from where Usoho stopped. He issued a statement calling for “the disqualification of Chief Abiola, and Tofa declared duly elected or in the alternative, the June 12 election cancelled and a fresh poll conducted”, claiming the election was not free and fair.

    Babangida and his perfidious Generals that constituted the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) usurping the function of Electoral Tribunal, annulled the election claiming in addition to fabrications by their cronies that MKO Abiola who won in all military barracks and formations was not acceptable to the military.

    Commenting on the military treachery against our nation, Pat Utomi had observed “What is most tragic about all this is that General Babangida was handed a great place in history by the June 12 election, even if undeservedly so. He could have gone in blazing glory…What sense of history we have.”

    A totally discredited Babangida and his army of anything is possible’ handed over power to an interim contraption headed by a usurper called Ernest Shonekan, an Egba man like the President-elect who was himself deposed 83 days later by General Abacha, Babangida’s comrade-in-arms and crime. Following MKO Abiola’s self-declaration as President-elect in 1994, he was clamped into prison by Abacha who was believed to be behind state sponsored assassinations of prominent Nigerians that called for justice in the face of military tyranny including Kudirat Abiola, the President-elect’s wife.

    Abacha who usurped the commonweal of Nigerians died mysteriously inside his treasured Presidential Palace allegedly in the hands of Indian prostitutes according to his political detractors; and Abiola who spent the four years of his presidency in detention died a prisoner, a month later, a victim of military conspiracy according to his supporters who claimed Abdulsalami Abubakar had no excuse to have kept him in prison after Abacha’s death.

    An exhausted military looking for a face-saving exit from politics opted for one of their own, the jailed General Obasanjo, as its 1999 preferred candidate despite his rejection by his Yoruba compatriots. Probably as part of the military conspiracy, neither Obasanjo, nor his imposition-Jonathan one of the military ‘new breed’ creations in all their 14 years in the Presidential Villa acknowledged MKO Abiola’s supreme sacrifice in caging the military to allow democracy flourish.

    This piece is for the 23-25 post-graduate students we are currently grooming in our universities to manage without a sense of history, our tomorrow which is but a summation of yesterday and today. June 12 1993, has become part of our unresolved national question whose ghost will haunt us beyond its 23rd anniversary as long as we play the ostrich.

  • Atiku’s call for workable federalism

    Once again, ex Vice President AbubakarAtiku, two weeks back did what he does best – exploiting the weakness of his political adversaries. Atiku who has no apologies for his shifting party loyalty took advantage of President Buhari’s disdain for politics and politicians, forgetting he did not become President only on account of being ‘Mr Integrity’, a virtue that did not help him in his three previous outings until he learnt to play politics. Atiku deliberately chose to educate Buhari, whose government’s legitimacy is under serious threat by Boko Haram insurgency, Fulani herdsmen and Niger Delta militants that the overriding  objective of politics is the ‘protection of individual sovereignty against political coercers’ haddismissed off handedly the unresolved national question.

    Buhari’s attitude is in character with his predecessors’ in office. He has forgotten that he won election through the support of ethnic groups just as Obasanjo, an imposition of Fulani hegemonic class that distrusted MKO Abiola believed the national question was resolved once he became president, or Jonathan who was only allowed to rule in order to pacify the restive South-south warring groups or even MKO Abiola who on his way to winning election told a reporter  that with his election, there would be no need for a national conference to address the national question. Both Obasanjo and Jonathan resisted the discussion and resolution of the national question.

    Atiku’s call for restructuring has since been echoed by groups such asAfenifere, a Yoruba socio-political organisation, the pan-Igbo umbrella body, the OhanaezeNdigbo, as well as some other credible Nigerians likeChief EmekaAnyaoku, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and Maj. Gen. Ishola Williams (rtd.), an ex-chairman of the Nigerian chapter of Transparency International who understand a federal structure itself celebrates tribal identities.

    The truth is that patriotic Nigerians including the murdered SaroWiwa who advocated Nigeria’s 16,000 communities and about 350 ethnic groups be restructured into non-federal states are not the enemies of Nigeria but are driven by institutionalization of injustice by our successive leaders. The enemy of society, according to Ade Ajayi, a celebrated African historian and former Vice Chancellorof University of Lagos,‘is not tradition or ethnicity or nationalism but ….those for purely selfish reason and without love of community try to exploit ethnicity, religion or cultural differences to win popular votes, contracts or promotion’. When Obasanjo’s second term bid was threatened, a man who said he is not a Yoruba leader ran back to his Yoruba ethnic group and Jonathan another opponent of restructuring became an ethnic irredentist during his desperate bid for a second term in 2015.

    Injustice is the bane of Nigerian society. The 1954 census put the figure of the dominant ethnic group, the Yoruba in the western region at 76.4percent, Igbo dominant ethnic group in the east at 64.5 percent and Hausa Fulani in the north at 54 percent. The coalition partners ignored the aspirations of 35.5% and 45% of minorities in their region to create region for the 23.6 minority in the opposition region. Insurrection by the Tiv that demanded for self-actualization was violently and brutally suppressed by the coalition partners using the military.

    But with free flow of oil money from the Niger Delta, those who had resisted break up of their regions started scrambling for more states. Generals Babangida and Abacha went on to create more states and LGA funded from federal purse for the north, allegedly allocated 95%of of the oil blocks to northerners  with the support of a few Niger Delta ‘vultures’.  Babangida, Obasanjo and Jonathan sold $100b Nigerian investment for a paltry $1b. These leaders and beneficiaries of injustices visited on the nation are the only people who insist we are good the way we are

    Federalism as ‘a structured institutional approach to political participation, decision making and problem solving’ has been celebrated as the answer to inter-ethnic rivalry and mutual distrusts  by more than half of the world including the US (1787) and most part of Europe after two devastating world wars. In Nigeria, a vigorous debate and negotiation which started during the tenure of Cameron as Governor General of Nigeria (1931-1935) preceded our own federal arrangement designed to promote‘the unity of Nigeria and protect the interest of diverse elements that make up the country’.While Zik conceived it as an efficient method of administration in a multi-ethnic society,Awo saw it ‘as a philosophy of opportunity to enable various ethnic groups progress at their own pace’. And while Awo considered it best for us because‘Nigeria was a geographical expression (Awo, 1948) Balewa believed up to that time‘our unity was a British intention for our country (Balewa, 1947), and Arthur Richard persuaded the British House of Commons that it was  only the accident of British suzerainty which has made Nigeria one country’, (Arthur Richard 1948).The all Nigerian 1950 Ibadan conference recommended a federal system and in 1954 we had a truly federal arrangement. Our new inheritors of power because of greed betrayed the dreams of our founding fathers and returned us to pre 1954 Nigeria.The ongoing crisis of legitimacy and identification by restive groups which are results of injustice is therefore the challenge facing Buhari and his APC.

    And restructuring is by far cheaper than our current experiences or the uncertainties that lie ahead. It is the cheapest way to fight corruption because there would be no money to steal at the centre. It is the cheapest way to checkmate the menace of Fulani herdsmen because local communities are best at protecting their communities. Instead of some groups trying to impose their values on others, South-south, controlling its own resources will force its leaders to confront its own demons. It will allow zones threatened by desertification to deploy their youths currently condemned to spending nine months in the forest to planting trees while the food basket zone will be strong enough to protect its borders.

    The fears about the resistance of unviable parasitic new power centresto the dictatorship of old divisional centres are the fears of those benefitting from the current unworkable and wasteful system. They include traditional rulers collecting five percentfrom allocation made from Abuja, the local council councillor that built houses after two years in office, the commissioners,ministers and potential governors.

    Just as federal structure is a symbol of our pluralism at the centre, so it will be at the new geo-political zones. And just as Abuja will no more distribute resources itdoes not generate, the new centres will only provide broad policy outlines. They will similarly not carry the burden of wayward constituent units. Edo State in South-south with a resourceful leader payingN25,000 as against N18,000 minimum wage without default will not carry the burden of Bayelsa that is unable to pay its teachers despite earning in one month of what Edo earns in a year. Lagos, going outside to other states to lease land for agriculture, create jobs and guarantee food security for its citizens or Ogun State embarkingon investment drive that will lead to the building of two airports and three sea ports will not carry the burden of Ekiti whose governor’s idea of governance isto be accompanied to open market to buy imported fish and cow skin by hailing thugs and ‘okada’ riders who should be in farm, or an oil-producing state like Ondo thatcannot pay its workers.

    Restructuring and devolution of powers which are far cheaper than what we have experienced since the derailment of our federal structure by ill-informed military who still don’t understand that compromise rather than force is best in managing a multi-ethnic society will put an end to injustice by ensuring everyone sucks his mother’s breast.

  • Appeal to Ijaw youths

    Niger Delta Avengers, citing the unfair allocation of oil blocks as part of their major grievances blew up Nembe Brass to Bonny trunk line belonging to Agip and Shell about last Saturday. This is the latest in the economic war that has reduced Nigeria oil production from 2.5million to 1.5million barrels per day. Delta State Information Commissioner, Jonathan Obuebite said ‘the activities of the group were adversely affecting Ijaw people whose only source of livelihood is the environment’. The Ijaw boys are shooting themselves in the leg. The communities affected will suffer the effect of pollution for the next few years. Investors are already moving to safer environments like Cross River and Akwa Ibom at a critical period when the area needs to get ready for the challenges of post oil period which globalised economy searching for renewable energy sets at 2030. Already Warri has lost its shine with the entertainment industry taking the greatest hit. In 14 years, oil as source of energy consumption will be near zero.

    The Ijaw unfortunately are Ijaw’s worst enemies. They have on account of a culture of entitlement been unable to compete with other ethnic groups such as Ikwere, a minority Igbo ethnic group that has dominated the politics of Rivers State producing the likes of Peter Odili, Rotimi Amaechi and Nyesom Wike. And while the Kalabaris showcase their Tam David-West, the Tamunos, Douglases, the Ijaw advertise the likes of Asari Dokubo who vacant-mindedly and without a sense of history denies the collective contribution of the rest of the federation to the liberation of Ijaw during the civil war and ex-militant, Government Ekpemupolo alias ‘Tompolo” who according to Chief Edwin Clark, lacks enough education to secure government job.

    But the fault is not in neither in Dokubo or Ekpemupolo’s stars but in the conspiracy of their leaders who in the past traded in their name in order to satisfy their greed. Most of the Ijaw leaders were in alliance with the north when Awolowo and his AG embarked on free education in the old Western Region. They were in politics in the Second Republic when Ambrose Alli of the old Bendel, Olabisi Onabanjo of Ogun State, Michael Ajasin of old Ondo and Lateef Jakande of Lagos established public universities to accommodate products of their free primary and secondary school programmes. But the Ijaw political elite and traditional rulers described by Saro Wiwa as ‘vultures’ denied their youth good education so that no one questions them as they collude with multinational oil companies to feed on the blood of the poor.

    What ill-educated Ijaw youths are now doing is nothing but a misdirected aggression. Their enemies are not Hausa-Fulani owners of oil bocks but their corrupt leaders and politicians who instead of confronting their past recently claim ‘Buhari’s war against corruption will lead to anarchy’. Ijaw leaders were part of past governments including that of Abacha regime alleged to have traded oil blocks to buy legitimacy. President Jonathan was Vice President for two years and President for six years. He had an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past. But like many other Ijaw leaders, he merely empowered ill-educated Ijaw youths useful only for proxy war.

    Before him was Alfred Papapreye Diete-Spiff, a Naval Lieutenant Commander  who in 1967 at 25 years of age was appointed the first military Governor of Rivers State. His greatest legacy was the shaving of the head of Nigerian Observer newspaper’s reporter who had published a story about an impending teachers strike in Rivers on Spiff’s birthday. When Murtala Mohammed toppled Gowon government in 1975, Diete-Spiff who could not pay teachers in Rivers was cruising in the high seas in his private ship named ‘OginaBereton’ later seized by Murtala Mohammed who also allegedly stripped him of his rank. Spiff was later detailed to forfeit a total of 18 properties located in the Government Reserved Area, Trans-Amadi, Borikiri layout, Recreation Layout and Ogbunabali, all in Port Harcourt. He is today the Amanyanabo of Twon Brass in Bayeslsa State, a throne he ascended in 1996. When Umaru Dikko during the Oputa Truth Commission called attention to marginalization of Ijaws by their leaders,  Spiff before staging a walk out with Rivers delegates insisted no one would dictate to them on how to spend their own money.

    Melford Okilo who later became governor and senator served as Minister for Commerce and Tourism during Sani Abacha regime when most of the controversial oil blocks were allocated.

    Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, ‘Governor General’ of the Ijaw was said to be the mastermind of the then rampaging Niger Delta militants. His involvement in corruption and money laundering was exposed by governments of Britain, United States, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank under the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative’. They revealed his portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK and further accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, about £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. When Britain’s Metropolitan police charged him to court, he jumped bail and escaped to Nigeria. He was later convicted in Nigeria but granted amnesty by President Jonathan, another Ijaw leader.

    Rivers State under Peter Odili (1999-2007) saw a surge in attacks on the oil industry by militants demanding greater benefits, kidnappings by ransom seekers, political violence and deadly robberies by gangs armed with AK-47 rifles.  EFCC in a 2007 report accused his government of ‘fraud, conspiracy, conversion of public funds, foreign exchange malpractice, money laundering, stealing and abuse of oath of office’. Human Rights Watch also issued a report detailing pervasive patterns of corruption and mismanagement at the state and local levels under Odili’s administration. In March 2007, Justice Ibrahim Buba gave “a perpetual injunction restraining the EFCC from arresting, detaining and arraigning Odili on the basis of his tenure as governor based on the purported investigation”. Odili was alleged to be the brain behind the split in Asari Dokubo-led IYC which led to the formation of MEND headed by Ateke Tom, Dokubo’s deputy in order to settle scores with Chief Edwin Clark.

    James Ibori was alleged to have spent Delta State money to fund Yar’Adua’s presidential election. On December 17, 2009, a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State discharged and acquitted Ibori of all 170 charges of corruption brought against him by EFCC. Ibori was later found guilty of 10 counts of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud at Southwark Crown Court, London and on April 17, 2012, sentenced to 13 years. Some of his properties confiscated include a house in Hampstead, north London, a property in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and a mansion in Sandston, near Johannesburg, South Africa.

    Edwin Clark, 86, has been part of government since he was about 32. Kaita recently reminded him during one of his tirades against the north that he has always been a northern ally.  Clark shortly after a society wedding at age of 85 finally established Edwin Clark University in his village where students will pay about N400,000 per session. His response to critics of official looting by custodians of Niger Delta commonwealth was ‘‘who are they to tell us how we spend our money’?

    Ijaw youths, behold thy leaders.

  • Suicidal governing elite

    The governing elite according to, Wilfred Pareto, (1848-1923), an Italian social scientist, governs society. It is made up of ‘conservative lions’ and an ‘adventurous but unscrupulous foxes’, according to Nicollo Machiavelli, (1469-1527) another Italian writer and philosopher.   Membership in Nigeria is often through inheritance, the high military command or the trader-capitalist. Many of their members occupying elective positions today are offspring of NPN stalwarts that wrecked the Second Republic, (1979-1983), colluded with military adventurers to destroy our boarding industries (1985-1998) or Babangida’s ‘New breed’  PDP politicians who openly engaged in looting and confiscation of our national patrimony (1999-2015). Like its counterparts elsewhere in the world, the Nigerian governing elite remains the bane of our society.

    Criticising the governing elite in Greece and Spain for its periodic tax increases to satisfy IMF bailout conditions, Charles Kadlec, in a piece in a recent issue of the Forbes magazine, accused it of ‘self love, sense of noble entitlement and arrogant belief in their good intentions which has succeeded only in destroying jobs and businesses in the productive private sector, intensifying the government debt home and abroad”. It was as if he had Nigeria in mind. Because of its self love, greed and sense of entitlement, the Nigeria governing elite has continued to behave as if Nigerians owe it an appreciation for its miss-governance of the nation. Between 1999 and 2015, Policy formulation and implementation by the Nigerian governing elite were designed as instruments of corruption to serve the greed of its members.

    Last week on this page, we made reference to how cash-strapped members of the governing elite after openly claiming they sold personal houses to contest election went on to create PPPRA which in turn appointed its members as fuel importers. They embarked on systematic looting of the nation’s resources through a fraudulent subsidy regime. They sourced from the CBN about 30% of our foreign reserve to import fuel half of which never got to Nigeria. Some of them who never supplied a pint of fuel forged documents to collect subsidy. Nigerian government paid demurrage charges whenever there was a force majeure at the ports. Government also paid interests on loans importers obtained from their banks. Government with its control of awesome apparatus of power had no clues as to those who vandalized 4000 kilometres of oil pipelines and government  tanks farms and had to patronize Independent Marketers’ state-of-the-art tank farms and their fleet of trailers where some individuals were said to own as many as 700.

    Similarly, a probe of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) from 1999 to 2007 by ‘Senator Ahmed Lawan was told how Public Corporations were sold at rock bottom prices. For instance, the Aluminum Smelting Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) established at a cost of $3.2 billion was sold for $130 million. Similarly, the Delta Steel Company, which was set up in 2005 at the cost of $1.5 billion was given away for $30 million. At the end, from total investments of about $100b Nigeria made between 1960 and 2007, what accrued to the nation from the ill- implemented privatization programme was about $1billion. Individual members of the group and their families who bought the assets at next to nothing, instead of fulfilling terms of purchase which by the World Bank projection would have created 7m jobs, they embarked on assets stripping, with the proceeds deployed to massive importation of the labour of other societies.

    We now also know that there was a massive rip-off in the energy sector.  For instance ex- President Obasanjo had during the theatrics of the seventh National Assembly declared “when our administration came in 1999, we met seven power stations – we have added six new stations as with the seventh almost completed at Alaoji; In other words, in eight years of our administration, we have provided six new power generating units of almost 2000MW, with capital expenditure and running costs between 1999 to 2007 (of) about $6.5 including outstanding letters of credit:”. We have not been told of what came out of an estimated $8b sunk into the energy sector in the Yar’Adua and Jonathan years (2007-2015). The nation has not been told what was recouped from the members of the ruling elite who benefitted from the sales of PHCN. They approached government for bailout funds and also secured waivers on importation of equipment. What the people got in return is increase in tariff and estimated bills sometimes for energy never supplied.

    We have also seen how the members of the governing elite in the guise of monetization policy shared the national patrimony they were expected to keep in trust for our children. Outgoing senate presidents, Speakers of the Lower House as well as principal officers of the National Assembly bought off their mansions built by taxpayers at next to nothing.

    Unlike its counterparts in developed economies that realized a long time ago that it was in its enlightened self-interest to ensure the poor lives above poverty line and the middle class enjoys decent quality of life, our ruling elite doesn’t seem to realize that the well-being of their members can only be guaranteed by the well-being of the marginalized, the exploited including their cooks, cleaners and drivers.  It also doesn’t seem to understand that for its members to hold on to the disproportionate share of the national resources they have cornered, they need the middle class, the salt of life without whose intervention society decays.

    The Nigerian governing elite is the greatest threat to its own survival because it is at war with both groups. The lots of the poor and marginalized are worse today than it was in 1999. The middle class seems to have simply disappeared.

    And as if to demonstrate it is on a suicide mission, its members are at war with themselves over the sharing of looted resources. It was they that called our attention to what some of their members fraudulently acquired through the ill implemented privatization programme. It was one of their own who became the whistle-blower in the N1.7t fuel subsidy fraud and it was their members that identified some of its leading lights that allocated prime properties to their family members through the monetisation policy.

    Added to this internecine war over looted national resources, our governing elite equally awarded themselves not only scandalously high salaries and allowances but also accompanied that with what the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (GNPP) has described as  indefensible severance packages which Revenue Mobilisation allocation Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) put at  N200m for two-term governors and N3.24b for ex- President Jonathan, Sambo his vice and other non returning federal lawmakers. This is in a country where about 75% of the people live below a dollar a day.

    As if ‘those the gods want to destroy, they first made mad’, governors under probe or facing EFCC charges in court are drawing pensions. Governors turned senators are drawing double salaries or pensions as Senate President Saraki has described it. Lawmakers spent N300b on toys called state-of-the-art SUVS. Taxpayers that fuel their cars and pay for their energy consumption are today called upon to pay N145 for a litre of fuel to power their cheap Chinese generators without prejudice to estimated bills for energy never supplied by the new owners of the power sector who after negotiating bailout also got tax waivers on importation of machineries.