The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Beyond Falae’s ordeals

    Every government in a federation, it must be emphasized, is equal in status to and independent in its sphere of its activities from the other governments in the federation including the federal government. Each government is responsible for the peace, order and good governance of its area. It is a flagrant derogation from that function and advice devoid of sense or worthy of precedent to have a regional or state government without the physical organ essential and indispensable to the discharge of its primary functions”.

    The above was Awo’s presidential address at the 4th Annual Congress of Action Group at Calabar, April 28-May 2, 1958. Fifty-seven years after that historic clarification, we continue to live in denial, running a unitary system in the name of federal arrangement. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, infrastructural decay, collapse of the health and educational sectors are some of the baleful legacies of a ‘path to Nigerian freedom’ our leaders traded for today’s anarchy. A section of the political elite in the north, obsessed with power, and a section of the political elite from the east, driven by greed back in 1962, jointly rejected the Path to Nigeria Freedom. Dumping  Awo and his “Path to Nigeria Freedom’, a seminal work he published in 1947, where he had advocated a federal arrangement for a heterogeneous  and multi-cultural society like ours in Calabar prison, they swore if he ever came out alive, he would be too old to question how they governed Nigeria. Until the emergence of Buhari few months back, those  forces  have jointly ruled or ruined the nation since independence either as NPC/NCNC, NPN/ NPP or as PDP wheelers and dealers and in between along the line by ‘an army of anything is possible’.

    Today, we are all victims of a rejected Path to Nigeria Freedom, the armed Fulani herdsmen who lay waste the middle-belt regions, the defenseless subsistence impoverished crop farmers who are left to their fate by their states as targets of mindless killings , the illiterate and uninformed Igbo street traders forced out by hostile environment where no history of kingdom ever existed but hilariously crown themselves kings in their host communities where they are left as canon fodders during violent upheavals, and the rest of us witnesses and chroniclers of the tragedies brought on a people by self-serving leaders who know the Path to Freedom but chose path to servitude.

    Two weeks ago, 77-year old Olu Falae,  a former Finance Minister and a former Secretary to Government was abducted from his farm near  Akure, made to trek  several  kilometres barefooted through bush paths and swampy areas and set free  only after the payment of N5m ransom by his family.

    Many have condemned the treatment meted out to Chief Falae by criminals as Fulani herdsmen. Yinka Odumakin, the Afenifere spokesperson has warned if the federal government failed to stop the herdsmen from attacking the Yoruba people, the people of the South-west might have to defend themselves. He didn’t say with what or if he and our revered Afenifere elders are counting on the support of ex-President Jonathan, their buddy and his newly empowered and heavily armed Niger Delta militants. Femi Fani-Kayode, ex-President Jonathan’s campaign manager has also described the Fulani cattle herders as the ‘new pests of the nation’, accusing them of terror, intimidation, theft, murder, rape, abduction, mutilation etc.

    A week after Chief Falae’s humiliation, some ill-educated Igbo traders in Akure, openly challenged the authority of the paramount ruler of Akure, their host community.

    Chief Falae reacting to his own ordeal after regaining his freedom says – “I have not gone to farm in any other person’s territory. I have every right to farm here and live in peace here.” He therefore appealed to Commissioner of Police and the IG for protection. But the trouble with such appeal is that even from his own account of his ordeal, the chief ought to know by now that the only people guaranteed of protection by the state seem to be powerful criminals as senators, governors or their fronts in the private sector who after a stint in prison or EFCC detention, move around with police convoys while law-abiding Nigerians work out their own security arrangements privately or through residents associations, village vigilante groups or armed ethnic militias.

    The humiliation of Falae and the challenge to the authority of the Deji of Akure were not isolated cases. Violent clashes have occurred between Fulani herdsmen and their host communities in Benue, Plateau, Nassarawa, Kaduna and other parts of the north since independence. Violence only assumed new dimensions in the last five years when   heavily armed Fulani herdsmen laid waste the whole of middle-belt regions killing scores of innocent farmers.  Similarly, long before last week’s Akure confrontation between Igbo traders and the Deji of Akure, we have had the Oba of Lagos,  whose great grandfather, Chief Esugbayi, the then Eleko, had his  recognition and salary withdrawn in 1913 for championing the appeal against the colonial state’s forceful acquisition of Chief Oluwa’s Apapa land up to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which ruled in Chief Oluwa’s favour on the ground that even “treaty of cession had not annulled communal rights to land”, told by some Igbo traders that ‘Lagos is no man’s land’.

    I think the current development in the South-west once again underscores the need to return to Awo’s ‘Path to Nigeria Freedom’ which was abandoned because of selfishness of some Fulani power seekers, Igbo greedy elite and their Western House NCNC Yoruba sympathizers led by the late Remi Fani-Kayode who after decamping from AG, led the crusade for an illegal and immoral declaration of State Of Emergency in the West on May 29 1962.

    Since war is not an option despite the righteous indignation of Odumakin and Femi Fani-Kayode in the circumstances where it appears only Fulani herdsmen move around wielding AK47 assault rifles unchallenged by security forces, and  Igbo palm-oil, gari, yam flour, pepper, okra and vegetable sellers routinely closing their shops to punish Yoruba at the slightest provocation, a more creative response is needed as answer to the threat posed by the invasion of Yoruba nation by violent herdsmen and Igbo petty traders who want to be kings in strangers’ land which by Igbo culture is expected to be ‘abandoned and left for the owners of the land who know how to appease their own gods’ in case of any calamity.

    What Yoruba who ask only of good governance from Nigeria need for the survival of its people and culture and ultimately encourage enemies of “path to freedom” to see its virtues is regional integration. Within a federal set-up even with its imperfections, it is only the Yoruba people that can defend their culture. The current Yoruba political leaders must therefore find a way of bringing in Ayo Fayose minus his infantile fantasies and Olusegun Mimiko who has for the greater part of his stay in politics worked against the collective interest of the Yoruba people either as ex-President Jonathan ‘stomach infrastructure’ ambassador for the South-west or as the rallying point for errant Yoruba politicians already sent on forced retirement by their more creative sons.

    As a first step, an integrated South-west can set up ranches as commercial ventures to fill the vacuum created by northern state governments who are unable to appreciate that such ventures can open up a path to the freedom for their poor cattle herdsmen who enjoy no government support in a competitive, globalised world where a pastoral farmer in the West gets a government subsidy of $2 for a head of cow.

    The success of the South-west experiment has the potential of becoming a pathfinder for regional integration of the ‘yam belt’, cotton belt, grain belt and tomato belt’, all in the north where government support is needed to lift the poor Fulani herdsmen and crop farmers out of poverty.

  • Clark: Travails of ethnic irredentist

    It was as if ex-President Obasanjo did not dump the PDP with his characteristic theatrics, tearing his PDP membership card publicly not too long ago. It was as if some five PDP governors, some senators including Bukola Saraki along with scores of members of the Lower House did not dump PDP. We seem to have suddenly forgotten Abubakar Atiku, a former Vice President and a founding father of PDP has been moving in and out of PDP in pursuit of his dream of becoming Nigeria’s President one day. Audu Ogbe was a former PDP chairman just as Senator Gemade. They have long dumped PDP.

    We have no evidence that any of the above past pillars and leading lights of PDP was ever haunted. We can however not say the same of Pa Kiagbodo Clark who has known no peace since he told the nation two weeks ago that he ‘no longer belongs to PDP’. He has gone through severe stress and strain since the presentation of his testimonial on ex-President Jonathan, his beloved son, to Nigerians. As Jonathan’s father, it was his opinion that “Jonathan didn’t have the political will-power to fight corruption”; and complaining to no one in particular added, “Drivers of yesterday are living in palatial buildings now under his government”. As Comrade Joseph Evah, Coordinator of Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG), puts it: “Chief E.K Clark is the father of former President Jonathan and since no one can understand a child more than his father, no one should try to fault a father’s assessment of his son”. Unfortunately with the ongoing war against Clark, it is as if it is now a crime to dump one’s party or for a father to give a honest testimony about his son.

    In any case does, anyone who lives in Nigeria need to be told that ‘Jonathan was too weak to fight corruption’? Under Jonathan, corruption hit us on the face wherever we turned. Stealing – which was not corruption under Jonathan presidency – of billions of pensions fund was perpetrated right inside the Head of Service’ office.  The appointed hunters of the rats disappeared with substantial part of the recovered billions and declared ’wanted’ by police who often provided police escorts when they attended state functions sometimes with the president. $20b oil money was not accounted for by NNPC according to the CBN governor who subsequently lost his job for his indiscretion. N1.7 trillion was stolen by PDP leading lights and their children and their fronts through the fuel subsidy scam. A minister of aviation colluded with some car dealers to defraud the nation of N250million on armoured cars and shortly afterwards accompanied President Jonathan on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A minister allegedly spent N10b leasing aircrafts but was shielded by the courts and the executive from appearing before a House probe. Many former governors who are now serving senators are facing EFCC charges in various courts. Pa Clark now under attack by all manners of people hiding under the anonymity of the social media, had in my view, only stated the obvious, i.e. that corruption was another name for Jonathan government.

    And I don’t think Pa Clark committed any crime by choosing to defend his Ijaw son, right or wrong, following Obasanjos satanic letter to his estranged godson. He after all made it very clear he was speaking as an Ijaw ethnic irredentist adored by his people, unlike Obasanjo who was rejected by his Yoruba people. It should therefore not come as a surprise that where others saw corruption and a weak president, all Clark could see back then was an orchestrated conspiracy of the rest of the country led by Obasanjo and the northerners against an Ijaw man; where Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala talked of theft of about 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily, all he saw was Ijaw youths empowered by Jonathan through pipeline monitoring contracts secretly cornering parts a of what naturally belongs to them. It was no surprise therefore that when Clark was confronted with the impropriety of empowering known enemies of the state by Jonathan, he angrily shot back with an undisguised disdain whether anyone expected Jonathan to favour northerners above Niger Delta militants who live in the creeks.

    In a way, Obasanjo was the source of Clark’s current travails. Clark had in a letter described by Junaid Mohammed as ‘extremely irresponsible and unbecoming of an elder’s statesman, ‘not only tried to defend Jonathan but to question Obasanjo’s integrity. Instead of asking Jonathan to address free stealing going on under his nose, Clark wanted Obasanjo who had only N20, 000 in his account according to Code of Conduct Bureau record when his military boys brought him out of Gashua prison and imposed on us as president in 1999, to account for his affluence after eight years in office. Pa Clark was egged on by the likes of Afenifere’s spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, who was reported by newspapers to have given ‘kudos to Clark for his wonderful letter’, elder statesman and founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai who after describing Obasanjo’s letter to Jonathan as ‘an affront to Ijaw people’ had asked Obasanjo to defend himself on the allegations against him in Chief Clark’s letter. There was also the third Republic Governor of Anambra State, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, who praised Clark for his efforts saying “not replying Obasanjo will mean an insult to President Jonathan”.

    Today Pa Clark alone faces inquisition. Now many are saying he has no moral justification to condemn a son he had led astray. Indeed, one exasperated commentator in the social media rudely asked Clark “to keep quiet and allow other Nigerians to judge Jonathan’s stewardship,” Since he was part of the rot in Jonathan’s administration. Another commentator described Clark’s statement as the “height of betrayal and backstabbing to find favour with the current administration”. He went on to warn President Muhammadu Buhari not only ‘to distance himself from persons like Clark’, but also to ‘extend the searchlight to people like Clark’, who he claimed without proof, are fabulously rich.

    Another fellow strongly believes Jonathan’s association with Pa Clark brought him nothing but misfortune.  According to him, as Obasanjo’s godson in 2011, Jonathan secured a pan Nigeria mandate but as Clark’s adopted son, his threat and those of his militant children to pull down the nation except Jonathan was adopted for a second term forced the rest of the country to mobilize against him during the 2015 election.

    Unfortunately for Pa Clark, social commentators who cannot remember he was a federal commissioner back in the 70s with a widespread circle of influential friends – long before shoeless Jonathan found his bearing – now say he rode on the back of Jonathan to raise billions with which he set up  ‘Edwin Clark University in his village. Less restrained others even say 85 years old Pa Clark exploited his relationship with Jonathan to consummate his marriage to a bewitching beauty from the wealthy Sodipo family of Abeokuta back in 2013. Attack on a statesman, albeit self proclaimed, cannot get any more bizarre. And finally one cheeky fellow says if Jonathan was too weak to fight corruption, it was precisely he was weakened by elders like Clark who encouraged him to surround himself with governors and politicians without character.

    In all this, my sympathy lies with Chief Edwin Clark. No one in my view should begrudge self-confessed ethnic irredentists the right to protect the interest of his people. Clark’s only disservice to our nation however was his insistence, 60 years after Bode Thomas and some of our founding fathers settled for regionalism within a federal frame work, to protect the country from the rule of one-eyed king, that Jonathan despite his known disabilities must continue in office just because he is an Ijaw man.

  • Senate’s self-serving confidence vote

    Dr Bukola Saraki, long before becoming the Senate President, was undoubtedly one of the most powerful Nigerian leaders. In 1990, with just about one year post NYSC experience, he became a director of ‘Societe Generale’, a bank owned by his father. The billions he allegedly borrowed within the same year without collateral was said to have hastened the collapse of the bank.  Following the pressure mounted by Societe Generale Paris, which owned a majority stake in Societe Generale Nigeria on the Inspector General of Police to question Saraki about illegal and “unauthorized withdrawals of money,” he was soon after slammed with felony theft and felony conspiracy charges. (Police file no. AR-1360/X/F/Vol.12 on December 7, 1990, as quoted by Sahara Reporters). But Nothing came out of it despite a 30-count indictment against the Sarakis just as nothing came out of his alleged involvement in the Intercontinental Bank’s debt rip-off and the ‘case of alleged conspiracy, forgery and stealing of the sum of N21 billion belonging to Joy Petroleum’ probably because laws in Nigeria, as some have argued, are made to protect the powerful.

    In 2003, Saraki’s father promoted him governor of Kwara, a fiefdom he had impoverished for over 50 years. He was there until 2011 when he moved on to become a senator.  When the PDP turned the heat on him for assuming the role of a whistle blower in the fuel subsidy scam by claiming that Joy Petroleum which he allegedly had interest benefitted from the N1.7 trillion fuel subsidy scam, he traded PDP off for APC.

    Similarly when APC, his new party in its wisdom believed he did not have the moral strength to drive the change mantra upon which the party defeated a sitting government, Saraki who does not believe there is  anything money, influence and ‘politricks’ cannot buy, traded off the victory of his party with the opposition. While his 51 other elected party members were having a meeting at another venue,  he, by his own account, hid inside a small car in front of the senate chambers for three hours after which he sneaked in to be adopted Senate President by 48 opposition senators and about eight of his supporters.

    When his wife was invited by EFCC following PDP’s (Kwara) petition, over some contracts linked to her while he was the governor, Saraki who has never been associated with failure in his various battles with the judiciary and his different parties, saw only a ‘witch-hunt’.

    That was soon followed by his arraignment  before the Code of Conduct Tribunal by the office of the Attorney General which slammed him with the following charges: Making anticipatory declaration of House 15A&15B McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos; Failure to declare property on Plot 2A, Glover road, Ikoyi; Failure to declare property on No 1, Tagus Street, Maitama, Abuja (Plot 2482, Cadastral Zone A06, Abuja; Failure to declare property No. 3 Tagus Street, Maitama, Abuja (plot 2481, Cadastral Properties Limited); Claiming to own property on no 42 Gerald Road, Ikoyi and earning N110,000,000,00) per annum at a time the property was under construction; Failure to declare N375m GTB loan converted to 1.5m pounds sterling and used to purchase property in London; Operating a foreign bank account; Transfer of $3.4m from GTB to foreign bank account during tenure as governor and failure to declare leasehold interest in no 42, Remi Fani-Kayode Street, Ikeja among others.

    Saraki ran to a high court in Abuja with all the SANs money could buy in order to stop his appearance before CCT. Leaving nothing to chance, he also approached the Appeal Court. Meanwhile some SANs like Agbakoba   who had earlier warned APC against sanctioning Saraki for trading off the victory of his party was on Channels Television.  First he said, by virtue of his status as SAN and former President of NBA, he was sure the High Court was superior to the Code of Conduct Tribunal. Then he wanted the CJN to make an urgent public pronouncement to clear the air. If Agbakoba appeared confused, no one was deceived.

    Saraki was to tell reporters after his arraignment that ‘most of them (charges) are frivolous, mischievous and not current’ while his Chief Press Secretary, Sanni Onogu, issued a statement admitting  ‘some of the issues contained in the sheet are subjects of issues earlier decided on or on-going in courts’. Saraki also speaking to his colleagues during plenary says, “I wish to reiterate my remarks before the tribunal, that I have no iota of doubt that I am on trial today because I am President of the Nigerian Senate, against the wishes of some powerful individuals outside this chambers.’

    Two conclusions can be deduced from the above. First, that some of the allegations against Saraki are true after all. This however has not stopped 83 senators (48 PDP and 35 APC) from passing what Senator Kabir Marafa, the Senate Unity Forum’s spokesman described as ‘worthless self-serving motion brought to abuse the collective sensibilities of Nigerians and supported by some overzealous neophytes that see the Senate President as a Divisional Police Officer and the committees as roadblocks.’  Second, if it takes immoral usurpation of the senate presidency seat for Saraki who has been engulfed in endless judicial battles since 1990 to finally clear his name by establishing ownership and explaining the sources of funding for all the properties his detractors attributed to him, I think it will be victory for him and for Nigeria.

    Marafa has given what appears a plausible explanation for the disgraceful role of his 35 APC senators in the senate’s assault on the sensibilities of our people. He says they are probably after juicy committee chairmanships. The role of the 48 PDP senators who have never broken rank however is understandable. They all share a common world-view with their leading light, David Mark, and Ike Ekweremadu, who jointly presided over the 7th Senate, celebrated as the most expensive legislature in the world where members smiled to their banks while PDP wheelers and dealers almost wrecked the nation’s economy through monumental stealing.

    There is also a lesson to be drawn from the betrayal of our nation by the 83 senators who chose to bury their heads like ostrich in the sand instead of confronting the issues of morality and ethics before them. Their hypocrisy is in the character of our self-serving political class who after identifying our derailed federal arrangement  as the source of corruption, crisis of indigenship, infrastructural decay, collapse of the educational and the health sectors, chose to apply as palliatives  what has often been described as ‘social engineering efforts of the military’ viz NYSC, Government colleges, federal universities, quota system of admission into the tertiary institutions and bureaucracy, senseless funding of LGAs by federal government to which they are not accountable.

    However, the public is not deceived by self serving vote of confidence on Saraki by powerful senators such as Andy Uba, Buruji Kashamu, Mohammed Goje, Theodore Orji , Joshua Dariye, Jeremiah Useni, Biodun Olujimi, Godswil Akpabio, and Stella Oduah who like him believe the law is only for the protection of the most powerful.

  • Pope Francis’ America crusade and Nigeria

    It was the humble submission of this column last week that if slavery, through which Africa was first integrated into the world economy succeeded in its set objectives of ‘controlling  life, liberty and fortunes’ of conquered territories,  globalization which confers legitimacy on European neo-liberals political leaders’ use of instrumentalities of multinational corporations, international economic organisations  and International Financial institutions to increase  the gap between the rich and poor nations of the world from 9-1 at the end of slavery in the 1870s  to 60-1 today, is a worse form of slavery.

    Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General not too long ago described this development as ‘an affront to our common humanity’. Unable to fulfil his campaign promises to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor as a result of resistance by his republican neo-liberal apostles of globalization, frustrated President Obama reminded his political opponents that he was sure the war of independence by American founding fathers was not fought to replace the tyranny of kings with that of a few wealthy Republicans who have cornered more than their own share of America’s resources.

    Last week, Pope Francis seized the opportunity of his official visit to the US to add his moral voice to this debate by pointing out the evils of globalization.  He started the crusade in the American Congress, known for serving only interest groups. There, he told the politicians that ‘the chief aim of politics is to defend and preserve the dignity of (their) fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good’. He pointed out to them the evil of ‘plundering of the natural resources of poor countries who have no legal means to fight back’. He condemned the “all-powerful elite” whose ‘selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged,”

    He carried the crusade, on behalf of the poor and the deprived, from Washington seat of power, to the Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where he reminded American neo-liberals of the American founding fathers’ assertion “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”, and that governments exist to protect and defend those rights. He reminded temporary custodians of power in America that most Americans are immigrants who at one point or the other faced resistance from the earlier settlers. While admonishing the 30million plus Latin American immigrants, ‘never to be ashamed of (their) traditions’, he reminded them of their obligations to their host community.

    And finally, Pope Francis says religious freedom is ‘the right to worship God, individually and in community, as our consciences dictate.’ This according to him is a ‘fundamental right which shapes the way we interact socially and personally with our neighbours whose religious views differ from our own’.

    Although Pope Francis’ Eclicical Laudate Si”, on climate change and his crusade against globalization are directed against the US, the greatest abuser of the environment  and major beneficiary of the enslavement of the less developed nations through globalization, his message as the leader of a universal church has a universal appeal. For instance, it was as if his crusade during the visit was about Nigeria’s national question or our crisis of nationhood.

    Let us start from the last. Nigeria political leaders, more than American leaders, need lessons in religion tolerance. Whether it was the failed attempt by some selfish Yoruba leaders to create social disharmony by exploiting religious differences during the last Osun gubernatorial election or some self-serving Igbo leaders who fraudulently claimed Buhari was going to islamise Nigeria, politicians who had nothing to offer the underprivileged who look up to them for direction, were at the background. In the north, self-serving politicians have since the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966 exploited religious sentiments to further impoverish the northern poor. Suddenly an area celebrated as ‘one north, one people’ degenerated into a turmoil of religious conflicts with Muslims torching churches and killing their Christians brothers in Kano, Kaduna and other parts of the north.

    The current battle against Boko Haram insurgency was not totally unconnected with the ‘political sharia’ introduced by northern governors who also between 1999 and 2003 sponsored scores of northern youths to Sudan for spiritual development. Many of them became radicalized after encounter with Osama Laden who at the period had his Al-Qaeda headquarters in Sudan.

    When Pope Pius sermonised about an ‘all-powerful elite that hoards wealth and resources’ and whose ‘selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged’, it was as if he had PDP leaders, dealers and wheelers that have held the nation down for 16 years in mind.

    When Pope Francis reminded American lawmakers of the reasons why they are in politics, one cannot resist the temptation to assume he had Nigerian political leaders like Dr Bukola Saraki who traded off the victory of his party because he wanted to be senate president or Ekweremadu who after being a two-term deputy senate president could not resist the temptation to usurp the position that by convention belongs to the ruling party.

    Of course there are many others who will benefit from Pope Francis’ counselling on politics as a noble calling. Some of such political leaders include personalities like Lucky Igbinedion who was accused by EFCC of embezzling N19billion, Dr. Bukola Saraki who was before his current travails dragged to court for alleged embezzlement of N90billion, Orji Uzor Kalu, former Governor of Abia State, accused by EFCC of diverting N5billion state funds to his Slok Airlines, Rev Jolly Nyame accused back in 2007 of embezzling N1.3billion, Samiu Turaki, former Jigawa State Governor docked over allegation of a theft of N36billion. Others include Boni Haruna, a former Adamawa State governor accused of a theft of  N16million and Gbenga Daniel, Ayo Fayose, Princess Oduah and others who still have pending cases in various courts. (Joseph Jibueze, The Nation, September 25.) . While some have been acquitted, some discharged after a pat on the wrist and some still having dates in courts, nearly all of them are however back in politics either as governors, senators or party leaders.

    And finally besides Pope Francis’ sermon on the ‘pursuit of the common good’ and  the evil of ‘plundering of the natural resources of the poor, Nigerians will also benefit from his sermon about the commitment of immigrants to their host communities. This is one problem that has not been properly articulated by our successive political leaders.  Our crisis of nationhood is compounded  when a bunch of criminals as cattle farmers engage in mindless killings of members of their host communities as we have in the Middle-belt states or the kidnapping of respected local leader and an elder statesman  from his farm as experienced by Chief Olu Falae in Ondo last week.

  • Immigrants and Europe’s hypocrisy

    Overwhelmed by unprecedented number of immigrants from Syria Afghanistan,  Eritrea, Darfur, Iraq, Somalia and Nigeria, fleeing dictatorship, religious extremism and poverty, Europe, the wealthiest continent which made her fortunes through the sweat and blood of others across borders is now fighting to protect its own borders. Europe seems to have suddenly forgotten, the world was told sovereignty was dead a long time ago, that it is perfectly normal for the political and economic policies of new colonial states to be controlled offshore by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World trade Organisation (WTO) and that the world has become a globalised stage where globalization their new god ‘guarantees free trade, (albeit of unequal partners) mobility of capital, technology, information and people. And now, all immigrants asylum seekers ask of European leader is that, in tandem with the tenets of the new god, they are allowed into Europe to sell their labour in a world we are told is borderless.

    Unfortunately, unable to face up with their demons, European leaders have suddenly become incoherent. With the exception of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel who recently warned that “if Europe fails in the question of refugees, its close connection  with universal civil rights will be destroyed”, others have been busy building border wall, barbed -wire fences, and dispersing migrants with tear-gas in total disregard of what globalization preaches. The authoritative Financial Times of London, an advocate of a borderless globalised world announced with undisguised regret the collapse of European borders. Britain, the greatest imperial power of our age which sadly falls behind all European countries including impoverished Greece in her response to the immigrant crisis, finding no more excuses for her ambivalence now says her problem is with African economic migrants, who according to Philip Hammond, the British foreign Secretary are “marauders who would soon hasten the collapse of European civilization”. She forgets European civilization is a product of the exploiter, the exploited, Africans, Asians, and Judaism, Ifa, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. If Cameron and Hammond are in doubt, they should consult Prince Charles who in a recent interview admitted Islam contributed immensely to the European civilization.

    The past also seems to have been lost on European leaders. They forget their forebears outwitted the rest of the world preaching Christian virtues of ‘being our brothers keepers’ through Roman Catholic and protestant priests. Of close to a million asylum seekers in 2014, Europe accepted only 626,000. And with all the antics, the United Nations projection for Europe, the richest continent in 2016 is one million migrants. With the scale of human tragedy we daily witness on television, Amnesty International’s condemnation of European governments for “negligence towards the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean” and its warning that EU must not “turn its back on its responsibilities”, European leaders have continued to look for justification to preserve the fortunes immorally appropriated for themselves and their children.

    European fortune seekers hardly trade in morality. ‘What heart could be so hard, as not to be pierced by piteous feeling to see the other company?’ wrote Zurara, in ‘Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea’, during the slave raids of 15th century. But I think we can at least remind the prosperous western nations, their right wing parties  and some of their over-pampered children, described as ‘a disgrace to humanity’ by the German iron lady, of the source of ill-acquired wealth of Europe whose leaders in character today remain indifferent as 2,500 lives including the 1,200 deaths recorded from the boats which sank in the Mediterranean, the 71 migrants found dead in an unventilated food truck near Vienna on August 27, and the hundreds of  women and children drowned while making desperate efforts for new life in Europe.  Anti-immigrant Europeans hardly know that the wars and misery currently forcing people to flee European-created nation states of  Nigeria, Sudan, Kosovo, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and  Bangladesh are direct consequences of colonization and Europe’s self-serving policies in these ex-colonies.

    But how did we get to where we are? Basil Davidson has shown in some of his works that most parts of the world were at the same level of development until Europeans, forced out of their hostile environment where life was the survival of the fittest, in ‘Search for gold, God and Glory’ struck fortune through the exploitation of the wealth of other nations. Walter Rodney, killed by a bomb in his car at 38 has shown in his 1972 classic ‘How Europe underdeveloped Africa”, by building fortunes on the misfortunes of other nations.

    Before 1300 AD, it was almost inconceivable that Europe could conquer the world. But taking advantage of their discovery of gunpowder, military weapon and improvement on shipping, they effortlessly enslaved most parts of the world including Africa from where Europe between 1492 and 1870, shipped 10 million blacks to their plantations in America. Slavery which was the source of Europe’s wealth was later replaced with colonial rule, an ideology which presupposes ‘a superior, civilized and smarter group ruling a devious, lazy and immoral tribes’, with the help of Roman Catholic and protestant priests and Islamic clerics.  At the Berlin Conference of 1884, driven by economic and military interests, they divided Africa among European member states, by drawing ‘borders without consideration for pre-colonial ancient tribal boundaries and social history’, merging different cultural groups at different levels of cultural development. Spain took over the Philippines and Cuba; France: Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia while Britain took over most part of Asia, Burma, India, and Africa. Just as it was in slavery, the colonised new states produced cash crops and mined minerals as raw materials for European industries. Europeans determine the price to be paid for labour as well as the price the laborers paid for Europe’s processed goods.

    Following agitation for independence, they forced different groups at different levels of cultural development together even after admitting it was their presence alone that had ‘prevented a disastrous descent into turmoil of warring sects’. Nigeria with about 16,000 communities and about 350 distinct language groups shares similar fate with other colonized nations. Congo, the most endowed nation on earth in terms of mineral resources after centuries of Belgian rule had at independence about five university graduates and about 600 Roman Catholic priests. Patrick Lumumba, Congo’s independent Prime Minister who was later murdered in the presence of Belgian soldiers over Katanga mineral deposits had only four years of formal education. Mobutu through whom Europe pillaged the resources of Congo or Zaire for over 30 years was a cook in the Congo army. Today Congo remains one of the poorest nations of the world. European over pampered children must be told the prosperity of Belgium and the rest of Europe was piled up at the expense of those they now claim are coming to ‘destroy their civilization’

    Then Europe and its allies in America decreed globalization is the new god we must all worship. Globalisation, we now know is another name for slavery. It has continued to increase the gap between the rich and the poor nations. What an average Ethiopian ‘earns in a year is what an average Swiss citizen earns every 24 hours’. A pastoral cattle farmer in Europe gets a government subsidy of $2 per head of cow while about 1.5billion people in the rest of the world live below $1 a day. By the logic of globalization, Europe’s unjust god, the life of a cow in Europe is worth two human lives in the impoverished and pillaged third world nations.

    Now children of impoverished nations are opting to worship the same god in Europe and America, risking their lives through precarious voyage through the desert and seas, guaranteed with nothing beyond clearing sewages and working in old peoples’ homes.

    What crimes, if one may ask the European leaders, have immigrants, worshippers of Europe’s unjust god committed by opting to sell their labour in a world we are told is borderless? Europe sows the wind. Europe must reap the whirlwind.

  • Boost for proposed national carrier

    In spite of the notoriety and lack of character often exhibited by a few of our governors, it is still hard to believe that some would divert part of the bailout meant for clearing arrears of unpaid salaries of their workers towards maintaining private aircrafts as was reported by some newspapers last Sunday. If this were true, the planned national carrier has got a boost. A few of the states listed as having either aircrafts or helicopters include Rivers, Taraba, Akwa Ibom, Osun and Lagos. Altogether, the states are proud owners of eight aircrafts and three helicopters with a net worth of about $200m. If we however add the potentials of other states the newspaper did not mention to that of the federal government which has a presidential fleet of about 10 aircrafts including two Falcon 7X jets, two Falcon 900 jets Gulfstream 550and and a Gulfstream iVSP, Boeing 737 BBJ (Nigerian Air Force 001 or Eagle One), Cessna Citation 2 and a Hawker Siddley 125-800 at a total cost of over $350m, the nucleus of the proposed national carrier is already in place.

    It is an open secret that cruising around in private jets by wealthy Nigerians including governors, and prosperity prophets became a fad in the Yar’Adua and Jonathan years. Nigeria, according to Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer ranks behind the United States, United Kingdom, and China among countries that top their orders for the supply of its aircrafts. The figure of privately owned jets according to a Forbes publication some two years back, jumped from 20 in 2007 to 150 in 2012. The Guardian on its part, quoting a top official of the NCAA claims that the ‘ownership of the state-of-the-art jets in Nigeria had grown to over 200 in 2012 from 50 in 2008’.

    Of course I don’t think anyone should begrudge Nigerians whether politicians or prosperity prophets who are wealthy enough to regard aircrafts as toys. What should agitate our minds is the source of the wealth of some of the names on the list of private jet owners published by the authoritative Forbes. By strange coincidence, it also happened that some of the proud owners of these private jets are also those indicted by the House of Representatives committee probe on privatization which recommended some privatized firms they fraudulently bought be returned to the state. Also on the list  are some of those involved in the theft of N1.7 trillion through the fuel subsidy fuel scam who have been shielded from prosecution by government in the last three years on the excuse that ‘the wheel of justice grinds slowly in our country’. Similarly featured are prosperity prophets and ‘merchants of grace for sale’ who claim their private jets were gifts from unidentified benefactors.

    In the Jonathan era when ‘stealing was not corruption’ and when implementation of court ruling and House probe recommendations were routinely ignored, government saw nothing abnormal with elected governors and appointed public officials clogging our air space with their shining private jets. Not even the near fisticuff between Governor Mimiko of Ondo and Jimoh Ibrahim, a PDP stalwart at the Akure airport tarmac over who was flying the most expensive private aircraft attracted more than a passing attention from Jonathan government whose only worry was compliance with flight regulations. Thus during the grounding of Amaechi’s jet due to his disagreement with President Jonathan, Ahmed Gulak, his adviser on political matters issued a statement saying “If you are a governor and you are flying a private jet, you must do it within the extant laws…because you are a governor does not give you the license to flout the laws governing your country”. Obviously Jonathan who sometimes moved out for party mobilization along with his vice, the senate president and other PDP stalwarts using four presidential jets did not see anything wrong in governors attending burial or marriage ceremonies using state-funded aircrafts.

    Now, we have been told there is a new sheriff in town who believes ‘stealing is corruption’, declares his readiness to step on toes if that is the only way to implement House probe recommendation that those who confiscated our common patrimony give them up, and who also says keeping a presidential fleet of 10 aircrafts even when leaders of advanced economies fly commercial flights like the rest of those they are elected to serve is an economic crime against the people.

    Part of his campaign promise was to sell off the presidential fleet. That will no more be necessary with the inauguration of a 12-member Ministerial Committee on the establishment of a National Carrier which according to government is justified not just by “economic considerations, but also strategic national interest, national pride and job creation potential”. Since the proposed national carrier will be based on the Public Private Partnership, nine of the 10 aircrafts can be converted to equity in the proposed national carrier. Some of the states that recently took a bailout to pay salaries at 9% interest repayable over 20 years should also be forced to convert their jets to equity on behalf of the taxpayers of their states that currently bear the burden of maintaining them.

    The proposed national carrier will also benefit from a possible confiscation of the shining private aircrafts of those who after benefiting from government bailout of N300b went on to pile up toxic debt of $700m currently being held in trust for our children by AMCON. Governance is all about justice and fairness. And since the new sheriff has said he is answerable to Nigerians and not wheelers and dealers, retrieving parts of our national patrimony confiscated by those elected to keep them in trust for our children through the exploitation of our weak institutions is the reason we have government in place. The alternative will be the law of the jungle which is ‘the survival of the fittest’, which Jonathan and PDP applied in the last six years without ‘giving a damn’.

    Of course, the new sheriff in town must expect vicious attack from apologists of privatization who have for 16 years engaged in wars of attrition among themselves over how to keep what they have immorally confiscated. Kema Chikwe in an effort to outwit Atiku Ababakar who was alleged to be interested in buying off the  Nigerian Airways established in 1958, came up with ‘Air Nigeria’ using two Pakistanis who according to Chris Aligbe, an aviation consultant and an insider, came ‘without even an Air Transport License, let alone an aircraft’ as fronts.  Her “Nigerian Global” alternative failed just as Yuguda’s attempt to bring in South Africa Airline collapsed. Branson of Virgin Atlantic was frustrated out leaving a debt of $260m for Nigerian taxpayers by those who fraudulently claimed to be fighting our battle. Then Jimoh Ibrahim bought Nigeria Airways after claiming liquidation of the N35b owed UBA only for his Air Nigeria to collapse shortly after taking his N35b share of the government N300b aviation sector bailout. PDP hawks did not even allow Princess Oduah’s Air Nigeria One to take off.

    In the weeks ahead they are going to deploy resources towards discrediting the new sheriff’s efforts. They don’t want a national carrier but their own private airlines which will be declared bankrupt after partaking in government bail-out, leaving their toxic loans for AMCON who will keep same in trust for Nigerian taxpayers and their children. What they want is buying off the energy sector after government investment of taxpayers’ money only for them to go back requesting for government bailout and appealing to government for equity participation in companies freshly unbundled by government based on their recommendation. But since Buhari has made a choice to stand by the Nigerian people, he should remain steadfast as the people according to Abraham Lincoln are always right.

  • Akpabio, South-south ‘star’ governor

    Senator Godswill Akpabio, Akwa Ibom’s immediate past governor had a close shave with death a little over a week back. He was said to be in a rush to catch an international flight to visit his wife and children abroad when his SUV Mercedes ran into a convoy of some US embassy officials while trying to beat the traffic light. He left the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja aboard a regular private jet that he usually travels with the following day to receive medical attention abroad. From his London hospital came good tidings six days later. He thanked Nigerians for their prayers while appreciating “President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President, Bukola Saraki and others for their calls.” For his detractors and political foes, he equally had a message: “I will rise again; though down but not out”.

    Senator Akpabio, perhaps besides ex-President Jonathan has been the face of South-south politics in the last eight years. He was perhaps the greatest influence on Jonathan presidency. As a dyed in the wool PDP stalwart, he knows how to cut deals and how to acquire friendship. As a cheerful giver, those whose lives he has touched love him with passion. With Akpabio, the media can find no fault. From Thisday newspapers came an award for what the paper described as “Emerging Tiger”; to the Daily Times, he is ‘the Uncommon Transformer’. The Sun newspapers named him its “2011 Man of the Year,” while the Abuja based Leadership newspapers named him the ‘2012 Leadership Governor of the Year’.

    Outside the media also came a deluge of awards. The African Church named Akpabio “Nehemiah of our time”, for “rebuilding Nigeria”.  The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) named him “the Best Governor in Nigeria”. Honours also came from such institutions as the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, the Nigerian Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE). The most valuable, I suspect must have been the one from Ekaette, his wife who gave him an award for making Akwa Ibom “a state with limitless opportunities, and for delivering over 3,000 projects’.

    This deluge of awards and honours did not come cheap. Apart from the Ekaette’s 3000 projects, Akpabio was said to have commissioned over 165 projects during his last week in office. Some of his mega projects include the 15-floor 250-room 5-Star Hotel with Galleria with 10,000 seater-dome, multiple cinema halls and shopping malls; and the Akwa Ibom International airport with maintenance, ‘first of its kind in West and Central Africa”. His star project however was the N30 billion world-class specialist hospital. The 308-bed international specialist hospital, ‘with an ultra-modern medical facility such as six fully integrated modular theatres, 640 slides CT scan, digital mammography, endoscopy surgery, highly sophisticated intensive care units and medical gas plants, paperless and fully automated laboratories’, all hooked up to a global system for best practice. It also has a helipad to facilitate easy emergency movements. The hospital, according to Akpabio, is the answer to “the billions of dollars, we lose every year to medical trips abroad.” “We are starting with 150 expatriates all at once and, we are in agreement with a Swiss hospital group and an Arab healthcare group in partnership with Cardio Care in Lagos, which is a group of cardiologists”, he added. The commissioning of the ultra modern hospital was wildly celebrated by the media only in May this year.

    Having to be flown abroad to seek medical attention following his last week accident seemed to have now emboldened his detractors to raise fresh questions about the deluge of awards and newspaper celebration of achievements they claim did not reflect the quantum of naira accruing to a governor who earns in one month what many non oil-producing states earn in one year.

    Jetting abroad in a private aircraft to seek medical help instead of taking advantage  of the N30b specialist hospital with its celebrated state of the art facilities, Akpabio seems to have played into the hands of political opponents, who hitherto could only tackle him over his alleged profligacy such as donating  two Prado SUVs valued at  N30m as wedding gift,  alleged acquisition for self an exotic multimillion dollar bullet-proof sprinter luxury vans from US-based Texas Armoring Corporation (TAC), N230 million donation on behalf of PDP Governors’ Forum towards ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s Otuoke church, N50 million to Nollywood, and alleged multimillion donations  to journalists and unscrupulous party and government officials.

    Following his failure to live by his own precepts, his detractors are in fact now asking what value the sitting of ‘a 15-floor 250-room 5-Star Hotel’, an International airport that is the ‘first of its kind in West and Central Africa’ in Uyo will add to the lives of the ordinary people. Would it not have made a more economic sense to invest in 5-star hotels in Abuja and repatriate dividends home to address social problems of the people?  If Akpabio has no faith in his state of the art hospital, who will?

    What, they ask is the family of a governor with a double award for “uncommon transformation of his state with quality infrastructure” and for ‘transforming his state from an unknown rural area to one of the most beautiful cities in Africa.” looking for in an atomized society like Britain and the US with their hostile environment? And now they openly ask if the African Church wrongly credited Akpabio, for ‘building Nigeria’ and named him the “Nehemiah of our time”; would that not amount to an affront to ex-President Jonathan and his transformation ambassadors who  claimed to have solved the nation’s energy crisis, modernized railways and making the second Onitsha bridge a reality?

    The questions are endless. Should a governor who has acquired a double award as “the Best Governor in Nigeria for “the institutionalization of free and compulsory education” not lead by example by keeping his children in the government celebrated schools instead of sending them abroad? I do not pretend to have answers to this and other concerns expressed by Akwa Ibom stakeholders about the wisdom of some of Akpabio’s policies or his compatriots who alleged most of the honours were purchased from newspapers in the habit of hawking honours which stopped only after the kidnapping of their chieftains, their car and undisclosed transport fare collected from Akpabio during their visit to Uyo some two years back.

    But what cannot take away from Akpabio is the fact that he has distinguished himself as proud and adequate representative of the South-south in the Fourth Republic.  Unlike ex-President Jonathan who claimed ‘stealing is not corruption’, his benefactor, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, Governor General of the Ijaws, charged to court by  Britain Metropolitan police over his portfolio of foreign assets with five banks in the UK, 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, assets in the United States, almost £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties, etc; James Ibori who had his 170-EFCC-count charge of money laundering struck out by Justice Marcel Awokulehin of Asaba High Court, only to be prosecuted and sentenced to 13 years jail term by Britain Metropolitan Police and Lucky Igbinedion who has since been indicted and others who are still in court battling to clear their names, Akpabio’s only weakness is being generous to friends. He remains the only shining star in the midst of ‘vultures’, (apology to Saro Wiwa).

  • Why Buhari must ignore, Nwabueze, Clark, Okunronmu

    I think President Buhari should worry more about how to keep his own side of the social contract with Nigerian voters. Elders who claim to speak for Ohaneze and old Afenifere, associations of less than ten veteran politicians, saw no evil and heard no evil. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, elders who behaved as if they didn’t have stakes in Nigeria are using their control and influence of the media to jam our earlobes with howling newspaper headlines such as  ‘outrage grows across Nigeria’, ‘more outrage over Buhari appointments’, ‘Buhari’s lopsided appointments’ split the north’, ‘Buhari’s war against the south’etc

    And why is the country being heated up? The APC spokesman Lai Mohammed and Governor Adam Oshiomhole made some disturbing disclosures. They claimed  N3.8 trillion of the N8.1 trillion  earned from crude oil between 2012 and 2015 was not accounted for  by NNPC; they spoke of $2.1b unauthorised withdrawal from the excess crude account; missing N109.7b royalty from oil firms;N6b allegedly looted by ministers, 160b barrels of crude worth $13.9b lost between 2009 and 2012.; $15m from botched arms deal with South Africa and N183b yet to be accounted for in NNDC, $700m taken from the Sovereign Wealth Account for the second Onitsha Bridge without any bridge and the money-gobbling Onitsha-Owerri-Enugu dual carriage that is leading nowhere. Added to all these are ‘a mind-shattering $2.2billion-arms scandal and an alleged $6.9 million fraud by chief of security (CS)) to ex-president Jonathan committed under the guise of buying three mobile stages for Jonathan’s campaign

    But these are all mere allegations which according to Olisa Mentuh, PDP spokesman are ‘irresponsible, reckless and provocative ‘bandied imaginary figures’. But while one would have expected our respected Nwabueze to wait for the judicial process to start, he chose to issue a statement titled ‘Corrupt Practices: “Igbo leaders position on probe of past governments’, where he argued against limiting the probe to the administration of Jonathan which according to him ‘would be ‘selective, unjust and unfair’. He speculated that such a probe will be used to humiliate political opponents of government. The question to ask is why Prof. Nwabueze has chosen to fight for those who have neither been accused nor charged. As for Chief Edwin Clark, ex-president Obasanjo who he alleged is corrupt must first be probed.  But for many, that Chief Clark is only just discovering that Obasanjo is corrupt after he had single handedly promoted Jonathan from deputy governor to governor, vice-president, and President with grateful Jonathan describing Obasanjo as the third most important influence on his life after God and his parents is a measure of the quality of his advice to Jonathan who ended up describing Obasanjo as a ‘motor park tout’.

    And those who have taken up arms over appointment forget we run a presidential system where the buck ends on the presidents table. As soon as  Buhari  named  Dr  Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu as the Group MD of NNPC, an institution that controls over 75% of the nations earning, Dr. Ezeife, who had openly expressed lack of faith in Buhari, said the position was not enough for the Igbo. But with the filling of some 30 positions, ranging from his chief of staff, national security adviser and SGF, a post he gave to a pastor from one of the minority ethnic groups in the north, perhaps as an answer to Dr Eziefe and others who said they mobilised against Buhari for fear of Islamisation of the country, these permanent Igbo office seekers have decided to heat up the polity. They now say the SGF position recently vacated by Anyim Pius Anyim ought to have been ceded to Igbo by a president they said they don’t trust. Didn’t he say he “belongs to all and he belongs to no one”? –  they reasoned. And suddenly Kachikwu ceased being an Igbo man but a Delta Igbo. And those who have suddenly forgotten South-South and South-East cornered 30 out of the forty most important parastatals in the country only yesterday, ostensibly on behalf of the Igbo poor are now set to wage war against Buhari for appointing those he trusted. The thousands of offices yet to be filled, they openly argue, is not as important as being a member of the kitchen cabinet of a president they said they would mobilise against if another opportunity comes up tomorrow.

    Self serving Igbo leaders who fraudulently swear in the name of their people to secure positions have their counterparts in the Yoruba country. The self-styled Southern Nigeria Peoples Assembly (SNPA) hosted by Mimiko  in Akure last week where President Buhari was criticised for what was described as “his lopsided appointments and selective war against corruption”, was the same group which in January this year endorsed Jonathan for reelection in Enugu. Unfortunately at the Akure gathering, Mimiko and his relevance-seeking group spoke not for the Yoruba but for themselves. Yoruba are often more concerned about a leadership that will guarantee fairness and justice for all. As Bode Thomas argued during the constitutional debate leading to independence, Yoruba quest for regionalism was to prevent the country from being subjected to the rule of a one-eyed-king. During the 1959 elections, Awo offered to serve as Zik’s deputy. He voluntarily resigned as Finance Secretary and de facto Prime Minister under Gowon after the civil war.  If Yoruba supported MKO Abiola in 1993, it was because he was the best material in that election, a fact confirmed by his landslide victory all over the country including military barracks and in Kano where Tofa was floored in his constituency. Yoruba rejected Ernest Shonekan the impostor and was literally chased out of power through the judicial process. It was for the same reason Yoruba rejected Obasanjo who lost his Abeokuta ward election in 1999 when the military and those who constituted themselves into the hegemonic power bloc in Nigeria graciously decided to allow a Yoruba man become president. In the not too distant past, the Yoruba supported Tambuwal to become the Speaker of the seventh assembly against a Yoruba candidate. It is therefore a disservice to the Yoruba nation for Mimiko to give a wrong impression that the Yoruba are fighting Buhari’s government they helped to put in place over appointments.

    The mood of the nation today allows Buhari to ignore the noises of errant elders, and if he so desires, seek from his Daura village a minister for Abuja Territory who would not cede prime Abuja land to a sitting president, his wife and a Secretary to government, Ministers of Petroleum and Finance who will not jointly preside over the theft and disbursement of N1,7triilion to fuel fraudsters, a Minister of Defence who will be loyal to Nigeria instead of fighting the president’s dirty political  wars in the colours of ‘Ekitigate’, pacification of Oshun and disruption of public work with soldiers in Lagos, a Minster of Education who will not be too engrossed mobilising militants for the president’s reelection bid while universities and polytechnics  shut down for close to a year and a Minister of Internal Affairs who will not fleece young job seekers of over N1b and end up supervising state murder of some of them through sloppy arrangement. And if it is from Daura he can find a replica of ‘Kashikwu’, said to be a round peg in a round hole for NNPC, to clean up other stinking parastatals, he has the support of Nigerians.

  • In defence of my Archbishop

    Archbishop Mathew Hassan Kukah has been under severe stress and strain these past weeks.  His role, agenda as well as the motive of the peace group he empanelled have come under deep scrutiny. His view as a cleric who daily seeks forgiveness of sins, no matter how grave, that Jonathan’s act of conceding defeat must be appreciated even if he stole all the monies in the world has been described as ‘dishonest’ by thePunch newspapers because  it ‘raises larger questions about our moral values’. Osita Okechukwu of CNPP has described Kukah’s argument as ‘subtle blackmail’.

    A prominent member of his peace group, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar has distanced himself from Kukah’s call for remission of punishment. The Congregation of Catholic Bishops has pitched its tent with Buhari. His other platform that was expected to be more sympathetic has turned itself into an intellectual lynch mob. Yet the only weakness of this Nigerian patriot is his passion for the country. This he has abundantly demonstrated in the last few years by serving selflessly in various ad hoc committees set up to address the ‘Nigerian question’, starting with the Oputa Panel .

    Kukah is a cleric greatly misunderstood.  Having taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, Kukah cannot be seen as supporting corrupt practices. For him, “We all must defeat the ogre of corruption which has consumed our past, destroyed our present and threatens our future.” He, however, believes ‘corruption is a symptom of our semi-primitive state of existence which can only be defeated by development and not by threats, moral exhortations or lachrymal denunciations but by adopting scientific skills; an understanding of the causative factors’. And here, he does not speak as a cleric. ”I consider myself a public intellectual”, he says, “My job is to stir the hornet’s nest, generating new ideas and pointing the way forward.  I make mistakes; my views are not gospel and people are free and welcome to nourish me with new ideas.”

    If he, therefore, says, “Nigerians must have heroes and heroines; people whose names will inspire some awe, not because they are saints but because of what they have done,” he is speaking as a stakeholder in the Nigeria project. And if for him, Jonathan, like all our surviving leaders who many have accused of betraying our nation, fits the bill, he is not asking anyone to swallow his prejudices which are likely going to be coloured by his accident of being a member of an oppressed minority ethnic group that has for years fought for self- actualization and membership of a persecuted minority religion. Above all, Kukah’s critics must be told he is protected by our federal system which as a social philosophy strives to liberate individual and groups from the tyranny of the state.

    With the above clarification, we can go back to Kukah’s thesis. First he says ‘corruption is a factor of underdevelopment in Africa’. But so is leadership. We cannot separate leadership from crisis of underdevelopment which manifests in various forms.  I am not sure if any of our leaders, including the incumbent President Buhari whose first policy statement is fighting corruption at the LGA when there is no known federation where the centre usurps the functions of states and local governments, has sincerely articulated our crisis of nationhood.

    We must ask ourselves why our past leaders behaved like foreign conquerors with little faith in our nation. In four years, 1979-1983, Shagari’s NPN administration frittered away all the foreign reserve left behind by Obasanjo in 1979. The economy collapsed while his NPN wheelers and dealers became intoxicated with specially branded imported “Akinloye Champagne’ to wash down their profligate consumption.

    Buhari came in on a rescue mission rejecting IMF liberalisation dose and insisted Nigerians will not eat grain until they produced their own grain. Babangida sent him to detention, embraced IMF liberalisation, paving the way for the collapse of our budding industries, today’s N1b daily importation of grains, and exchange rate of about N2 to $1 to today N212 to $1. And in an act of betrayal of our nation, he went on to annul the most credible election in our nation’s history. Abdulsalami Abubakar is tarred by the inexplicable death of MKO Abiola in his custody on the eve of his expected release after serving his expected four-year presidency in detention instead of presidential palace desecrated by Abacha. Shonekan who neither contested nor won an election was an impostor used by crafty Babangida to supplant MKO Abiola, his fellow Egba.

    Obasanjo has publicly admitted tampering with the democratic process in 1979, imposition of Yar Adua in 2007 and Jonathan in 2011. He has been accused of presiding over the worst-conducted presidential election in our nation’s history in 2007. Statesmen are not leaders who exploit ethnic and religious fears of citizens for personal gains but those who demonstrated their faith in their nations through selfless service.

    We similarly have no evidence to support Kukah’s unrestrained declaration that “Jonathan will be remembered as a great Nigerian statesman who put God and nation first”. Not many will see promoting religious intolerance by moving from church to synagogue in Nigeria, from Jerusalem to Nazareth and to Rome with indicted government officials and governors without character and using every opportunity to exploit our ethnic divisions for electoral victory, as evidence of putting the nation first.

    Kukah also wants the nation to treat Jonathan well so as not to “give excuse to those African leaders who want to go to their grave from the throne bringing shame to Africa and diminishing their people, breeding hatred and war by their greed.” Here also, Kukah seems to suffer from selective perception.  We find no evidence to show Jonathan conceded defeat out of altruism. What we know is that Jonathan who played Dr Okwelieze Nwodo against Vincent Ogbulafor to immorally secure the PDP ticket in 2010, outwitted the northern states’ governors as well as his godfather he later dismissed as ‘Motor Park tout’, is a very resourceful politician. He had undermined the credibility of the military by involving them in “Ekitigate’, Osun pacification and in shifting the date of the election to buy time. He had frittered away the goodwill of the people by allegedly funding TAM led by those EFCC had questioned over the N1.7t fuel subsidy scam to assault Nigerians with lies.

    Besides pressure from the international community, Obasanjo, Jonathan’s estranged godfather has become his nemesis. With Elder Orubebe’s theatrics after he had lost the election in four of the nation’s six geo-political zones, he was smart enough to concede defeat without first consulting PDP wheelers and dealers that he claimed had caged him. He sensed if he had done otherwise and violence broke out, he would have ended up in The Hague just like Gbagbo.

  • Power sector needs EFCC, not Senate probe

    Senate President, Dr, Bukola Saraki, is troubled. This has nothing to do with his ongoing crisis of legitimacy as Senate President. For now, the battle against his political party that has accused him of playing Brutus has been shifted to another day. His priority today is promoting solidarity with Nigerians that have been in darkness for 16 years. Bukola Saraki, an inheritor of Kwara fiefdom who often treats all as subjects, told Nigerians last week that he was troubled that they have not derived joy from both ‘the power Reform Act and the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.’

    Senator Godswill Akpabio, probably as part of the horse-trading that produced him Senate Minority Leader against Senate convention, was the first to echo the Senate President’s sentiments. He was followed by Senator Danjuma Goje who expressed his empathy for Nigerians because of ‘the untold suffering that lack of power supply had caused’ them. As for Senator Ndume, his righteous indignation stemmed not just from the fact that he spends  N10,000  daily to power his generator, but more from the failure of ‘government to show anything for the huge amount of money sunk into the power sector in the last 16 years.

    United by their passion for Nigeria, law makers that have for two months engaged in  competition over ‘materials and ideas’ which only ended with the sharing of about N13b for doing absolutely nothing, resolved to probe the power sector from Obasanjo to Jonathan. They have accordingly set up the Senator Abubakar Kyari‘s Ad Hoc Committee to ‘investigate the activities of the Discos and what is preventing Nigerians from benefitting from the unbundling of the PHCN’.

    However, for the exercise not to be seen as diversionary, many are saying the Senate should first solve its leadership crisis of legitimacy following the establishment by the police that the Senate rules used for the election of the Senate leadership were forged. But beyond this, many also believe Nigerians don’t really need a probe to identify those behind their continued darkness. All that is needed, in their view, since our leaders believe Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia, is a recall to memory.

    In 2008, Obasanjo in a long letter warned the Dimeji Bankole-led Lower House that probing his handling of the power sector will be noting but ‘a theatrical or circus show (which) will provide fun and maybe hurt some people’. He then went on to give an account of his stewardship to the Elumelu House Committee. He inherited in 1999 seven power stations in different states of disrepair, generating 1500MW; he added six with the seventh at finishing stage by 2007; introduced the pre-paid meter system and moved revenue generation from about N2b per month in year 2000 to about N7b per month in 2007 with$6.5b as capital expenditure and running costs between 1999 to 2007 including outstanding letters of credit as against the Dimeji Bankole’s $16b and Yar Adua’s $10b bandied figures. He capped all up with the inauguration of the Nigeria Integrated Power Project (NIPP), hoping ‘his successors would be driven with the same zeal and move the planned target up to 20,000 MW by 2015’.According to him, to kick-start, besides the Chinese loan facility, the National Council of State and the National Assembly also approved an initial $2.5b for NIPP from the “Excess Crude Oil Account” (ECOA) in August 2005.

    The late Dr. Agagu, his minister for power,  also revealed that ‘between June 2000 and December 2002, ‘our electricity generation capacity increased from 1425 to 4300 megawatts’; that the establishment of four power projects were completed within 24 months from contractors’ mobilisation, making them the fastest of deliveries in the history of Nigeria. ‘For all the four plants, a concessionary funding programme was negotiated with the Chinese Exim Bank through which the Nigerian government paid only 35 per cent of their cost for the plants to be delivered. The balance of 65 per cent, he explained, was to be paid over a seven-year period at six per cent interest rate and two years moratorium’. But Godwin Elumelu, as House of Representative chairman on power representing cash strapped lawmakers who claimed to have sold landed properties to fight the 2007 election, insisted there was indeed evidence of corruption in the process of awarding the contracts. On that account they delayed the Obasanjo scheme for two years.

    But all that was needed to prove our lawmakers were men with feet of clay was an opportunity to spend N7b of excess REA fund within two weeks to prevent the money from returning to government coffers. To beat the deadline,  Elumelu and his colleagues according to EFCC, ignored ‘due process’, nominated nine contractors by proxy, authorised the MD of REA to award them the contracts, and prevailed on the Permanent Secretary of the ministry who was also the acting minister to grant approval for the contracts and the payment of 15 per cent of the fee. The balance of 85 per cent was equally withdrawn from the REA account and lodged in the banks where those contractors had their accounts. On June 14 2010, EFCC further accused Godwin Elumelu, and Senator Nicholas Ugbane, his counterpart as Senate Committee Chairman on Power, of misappropriating over N10b public funds. EFCC therefore concluded that theexercise ”was used as conduit pipes with which funds of the Rural Electrification Agency were siphoned”.  EFCC added other offences – ‘misappropriation of N500million to buy houses; diversion of REA’s funds; flouting of government’s rules on award of contracts and award of fictitious and unnecessary contracts without following due process.’ But Justice M.G Umar of Abuja High Court on March 24, 2012, absolved them along with their fronts, claiming ‘he was unable to find a prima facie case or complaint disclosed in the proof of evidence against the respondent’. EFCC never appealed.

    Jonathan, after a two-year delay, went back to Obasanjo’s programme. His Roadmap for Power Sector Reform was a continuation of Obasanjo’s 2005 Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSR Act), which called for ‘unbundling the national power utility company into a series of 18 successor companies: six generation companies and 11 distribution companies. But the well-known forces behind our darkness once again overwhelmed a less self-assertive Jonathan. For instance, most of the 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs) were allegedly owned by some PDP leaders or their sympathisers. And as if to confirm this, Jerry Gana, a PDP leading light doubling as (IPPAN) chairman,  led the body to meet government over the demand of IPPS for waivers on ‘importation of gas-related machinery and equipment.’ The Jonathan government followed with a promise of more than half a billion bailout.

    As the saying goes, ‘the pests that feed on leaf live on leaves’. The Senate needs not waste our resources to know that those who have continued to feed on the blood and sweat of Nigerian tax payers are those prolonging our darkness. Dagogo Jack, the chairman of Jonathan presidential task force on power now says “ since government  has no control over private firms, the best government can do is to ensure they ‘sustain the current 4500MW level, if they cannot increase it.” With power generation sometimes falling below 2000MW and   consumers debited for energy never supplied, government says it is helpless. Prof Bath Nnaji who as minister for power claimed that ‘apart from transmission, the  (power)sector, ”with regard to generation,  was moving ahead by ‘leaps and bounds’, now as an investor, probably smiles to the bank following the commissioning of his transmission firm in Aba by then President Jonathan.  The lot of consumers remains the same. His successor, Prof. Nebo, who told us that ”the situation where only 25 per cent of Nigerians have access to electricity is a nightmare caused by human beings used by evil forces” has failed to identify the parasites that have continued to prolong our darkness. Of course, as for the well-known PDP stalwarts with links to the power sector who donated billions towards ex-president Jonathan’s failed reelection bid, what is needed is not Senate probe but EFCC inquisition.