The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Adebanjo Vs new Yoruba leaders

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo’s interview in The Punch last week confirms why whatever he says has an attentive audience among his Yoruba people whom he along with other revered elders have served creditably for upward of 50 years. As was in his character, he stated without ambiguity the unanimity of thought on the recurring issue of the national question by his Yoruba people. According to him, it is “only a mad man who will oppose dialogue”. Yoruba position has always been that the national question can be resolved only through a national sovereign conference.

    However, some of his admonitions: that his Yoruba people should trust President Jonathan; that Awo never went into coalition with strange bed fellows; that ACN ought not to associate with Tom Ikimi who served Abacha’s despicable regime as well as Muhammadu Buhari who although is incorruptible but a non-progressive religious fundamentalist; that the Yoruba will not vote APC because of APC leaders’ visitation to Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar who should be jointly held responsible for the killing and prevention of a Yoruba son from ruling the country.

    I think Pa Adebanjo’s above declarations did serious damage to the Yoruba cultural advancement and political consciousness.

    Adebanjo no doubt knows that trust is earned among the Yoruba. But here we have President Jonathan who seems to be at war against Nigerians since his election, who provides refuge to corrupt elements, whose open display of politics of ‘the end justifies the means’ is on display at both the national and state levels; this is a president who has tucked away inside his locker, the reports of past dialogues, the Uwais electoral reform report, the Ribadu report among piles of others from the National Assembly unattended to. I am sure Pa Adebanjo knows that as much as we hold our leaders in high esteem, they are incapable of influencing who the Yoruba people trust. Awo himself as far back as 1952 said that the Yoruba will not vote for you because you are Yoruba if they cannot see an added value you are going to add to their lives.

    But the Yoruba knew Abiola, who used the old western state scholarship to study accountancy in Britain, but was to later deploy his newspaper to mislead and wage war against Awo the leader of the progressives, was an enemy of the progressives. The Yoruba knew the difference between him, Babangida and Abacha, and other military apologists who made their fortunes through the state was that unlike others, Abiola ploughed back what he took to solve social problems across the country, a strategy that earned him a landslide victory in the 1993 election. Yoruba that contributed to that victory and fought to defend his mandate on principle can be trusted to make an informed judgment if and when confronted with making a choice between PDP and APC in 2015.

    Yes from hindsight we can say Awo was right to have resisted marriage of convenience in 1959. At least Pa Adebanjo accepted in the interview under focus that he along with our other respected elders (Afenifere) were misled by Babangida and Abdulsalami to support Obasanjo. As it turned out, Obasanjo and his self-serving mainstreamers only used Yoruba to build private empires and private universities while destroying the public institutions our revered leaders including Adebanjo put in place. The South-west mainstreamers used our people as stepping stone to join their counterparts in the east and the north who according to Alabi Isamah have jointly ruled our country since independence.

    But it is doubtful if Awo who applied a lot of intellectual rigour to finding solution to Nigeria’s problems will in 2013 still stick to a 1959 failed experiment as being canvassed by Adebanjo. Were he to be faced with similar choice of canvassing true federalism where each group can control her own destiny as against marriage of convenience as occurred between NPC and NNNC, he would most probably be compelled to embrace today’s Afenifere Renewal Group option, designed to achieve the same objective without danger to the health of the Yoruba people who can look up to a pan Nigerian national party that can serve as a balance of terror to desperate PDP hawks interested only in self preservation.

    And finally perhaps as a result of Pa Adebanjo’s unhidden war with the Afenifere Renewal Group that was accused of removing the carpet from under their feet, he would rather endure PDP than support any group ACN is linked with. For instance while insisting he “has no good word for the PDP,” which for him “are intolerable”; he also says he cannot ask PDP to be thrown away because like PDP, APC is an amalgam of strange bedfellows. Since according to him APC is a coalition designed only to uproot PDP from power, “he is not ready to move from frying pan to fire”. In other words, Pa Adebanjo is by inference saying we should allow PDP to continue its 14 years of mismanagement, of corruption and of national and international embarrassment. If this represents the view of the old Afenifere that Adebanjo speaks for, then it is clear there is a disconnect between our revered fathers and the over 40 million Yoruba whose today’s tenor, tune and tone they are unable to decipher.

    Now as it was in the first and second republics, the omen is potent. PDP is deploying state resources, logistics and security apparatuses to undermine the efforts of the governments of the Yoruba states that pose no threat to the party’s ongoing looting but only want to be left alone to manage their own affairs. PDP Abuja headquarters that has been busy suspending elected PDP governors for alleged anti-party activities have been fueling intra-party feuds in Yorubaland. They recently hailed Opeyemi Bamidele’s efforts at destabilising his party in Ekiti. In Ondo, Mimiko who was aided to retrieve his stolen mandate from PDP by Ahmed Tinubu has today become more PDP than PDP. Because of the strategic importance of Ondo State and its capacity to destabise South-west, Mimiko, a governor on the platform of Labour Party, had the singular honour of nominating PDP minister from Ondo. In line with PDP and the President’s perfidious brand of politics, in place of PDP candidate in the last Ondo State election, it was Mimiko that got massive Abuja support. Three days after his victory, Mimiko was in Abuja celebrating the birthday of the president’s wife. Dr. Frederick Fasehun who was recently engaged in public altercation over pipeline monitoring contracts with its other splinter Oodua group seems to be going ahead with state support to register his Unity Party of Nigeria in spite of existing decrees and laws banning use of names of banned political parties.

    Response to our unresolved national question requires new approach beyond hiding behind principles, philosophy ideology within a system where other actors behave like gangsters, guided by neither rules mores nor culture, and where even the judiciary has come under severe assault. Adebanjo has already expressed joy that PDP was uprooted from Yoruba land, without asking for the methodology the new generation of Yoruba political leaders like Chief Bisi Akande, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Wale Oshun, Niyi Adebayo, Segun Osoba and other young Yoruba intellectuals adopted to achieve the feat.

    Without resorting to “operation wet e” they have retrieved stolen mandates in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun from Obasanjo and his PDP Yoruba mainstreamers. They have gone ahead to mobilize, winning elections in Ogun, Oyo and Edo states. The young men at the helms of affairs in these states are said to be setting the pace of development for other states to follow. What more can our revered fathers ask for? If protecting this new achievement requires cohabitation of the new political leaders with our yesterday’s perceived enemies or those without the progressive badge, they have earned our trust to decide on our behalf. I am sure Awo in whose name the old and ‘renewal’ Afenifere fathers and sons swear will be happy in his grave that “in the destruction of the noble line, there is always a survivor”.

  • Opeyemi Bamidele and his PDP promoters

    It is hard to understand the ways of a Nigerian politician. That, he is a complex entity whose actions defy logic, we have the authority of a veteran politician, Ebenezer Babatope, once a fire-eating radical, now a PDP stalwart. He recently said something to the effect that ‘to us politicians, two plus two may not always be four’. He went on to assert that President Jonathan is not just the best Nigerian leader so far, but the one that embodied all the combined virtues of all our past heroes.

    I have consulted those who are close to Opeyemi Bamidele to get an insight into the complex character of this daring, self-assured and smart young Nigerian politician without success. But one thing that is not in doubt is that Opeyemi, with a degree in religious studies from our great Ife backed up with a law degree from a foreign university, is an extremely intelligent and smart politician. We need no further proof of this than his membership of the inner circle of young professionals working for Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a leader who worships intellect and surrounds himself with only the best brains available in his environment and reaches out when circumstances demand special experts as he did during his epic judicial battle to retrieve the stolen mandates of Mimiko of Ondo and Aregbesola of Osun from PDP interlopers.

    Honorable Bamidele, representing Irepodun-Ifelodun Constituency and until recently leader of Ekitit State caucus in the House of Representatives wants to contest the 2014 governorship election in Ekiti on the platform of his party. The party’s position is that the incumbent should be allowed to go for a second term because of his acknowledged performance in terms of infrastructural development and bringing peace to a state that was for three years, besieged by PDP gangs who settled intra-party feuds through assassinations. But Bamidele is said to be daring his party leaders insisting he would seek accommodation in another party.

    He has however assured his peace loving people that he is “a child of God who would never seek power like those who have sold their soul to the devil’ or ‘step on blood to rule’. “God sees my heart”, he recently declared, “the only reason I am involved in Ekiti politics is to serve and help the people; I do not have any reason to be desperate”. He claims he is responding to the pressure from his Ekiti people. He is however yet to say if those who earnestly want him to run include those in Ekiti currently celebrating Fayemi’s achievements or those referred to a few days ago with howling newspaper headlines “Opeyemi Bamidele gets the support of USA based Ekitis”

    Contained in his manifesto is his plan to provide water closets for houses that rely on the use of pit latrines and those who still rely on nearby bushes to defecate’, provide ‘Pipe borne water for houses that still rely on well and fetching water from nearby streams’, speed up ‘access to the use of gas and electric cookers for houses that still rely on the use of firewood to cook their meals’. He also intends to come to the rescue of the blind, the deaf and those with speaking defects as well as the disable who will be provided with mobility and the mentally sick who will be taken off the streets.

    Part of his argument has not been that Fayemi is not addressing these problems but that he made Fayemi a governor by literarily dragging him down from Abuja where he was busy writing speeches for the presidency to Lagos where he was introduced to Tinubu, his godfather. While we may not be privy to the secrets between him and his friend, there is no doubt that they have been close allies who were in the trenches together for three years fighting PDP mandate-snatchers. They were both victims of violence when the state was besieged during PDP’s illegal occupation of the seat of government by assassins and kidnappers who routinely ferried prominent Ekitis including Obas to adjoining states for ransom.

    But today, Bamidele says Fayemi is a man of violence who masterminded an attack on his person in Igede while visiting their common PDP friend whose son Fayemi recently appointed a local council caretaker. And he has found support from of all places, PDP, their erstwhile tormentor. Senator Ayo Arise has decried “spate of political violence in Ekiti state in recent times”, a development he said called for urgent attention”. From Abuja came a press release by PDP’s acting National Publicity Secretary, Barr. Tony Caesar Okeke attacking Tinubu: “it is extremely wicked and undemocratic for Tinubu to order Hon. Opeyemi Bamidele, to forget his governorship ambition”; such “smacks of tyranny and outright disdain for democracy”; “it is a display of despotic tendencies and utter disdain for democratic process”; and finally, PDP is urging the Ekitis “to rise up to the occasion and defend their rights by rejecting the usual practice of allowing godfathers to select their leaders for them”. And for a good measure, they reminded the people that Tinubu is not from Ekiti.

    I am not sure if labelling a kettle black by a pot, which is exactly what a fractionalized PDP is doing, will help Opeyemi in his current futile attempt to upstage a performing governor, who also happens to be his close ally. And I also think it is doubtful if the people of Ekiti, who according to Professor Akintoye, are the most educated and informed group in Nigeria and Africa need the help of PDP to identify who their true leaders are. If others have forgotten so soon, it is doubtful if the people of Ekiti will forget so easily how President Obasanjo imposed an Ayo Fayose whose role model was Adedibu the head of Ibadan thugs as replacement for a polished, cultured and well educated Niyi Adebayo, who was rigged out as governor of the state. Obasanjo who introduced the culture of “if a mouse cannot eat the beans, it pours them in the sand” into Ekiti, went on to supervise a flawed election that saw disgruntled members of AC emerge as senators and members of the Lower house.

    That is not to say Bola Tinubu is also perfect. Because he loves the bright and smart, Bamidele can do no wrong. When the Ekiti caucus of the lower house, who know those they represent expect them to call a spade by its name, removed Bamidele as their leader not too long ago, they were over ruled. As a very discerning group, the Ekitis don’t hold those who think they are smart in high esteem. The story is told of a professor who became a federal minister and in character with PDP, erected an imposing mansion in his village. The people who know the worth of their “omowe and ojogbon (Doctors and professors) beyond mansions gleefully show visitors a mansion built by a PDP smart professor.

    Ekiti is an enchanting land of undulating hills, meandering rivers and waterfalls, a land of honour inhabited by men of character. The Ikogosi spring where warn and cold spring water oozes out of the same source and flowing side by side symbolizes the peaceful coexistence of the people. Of course that does not signify absence of conflict. In fact after their 16 years ‘kiriji’ war of independence, the Ekiti ran a confederacy of 16 kingdoms presided over by the 16 first class Ekiti Obas who met once a month during ‘pelupelu’ to resolve conflicts. And once a consensus was reached, their word was their bond.

    Ekitis are known for loyalty to friends. Fajuyi demonstrated that by dying with Ironsi his guest. It is not in our character to be subversive. Ekitis have never been known to be active participants in coups in the country. Ekitis never deny their benefactors. Their love for Awolowo even in death is without measure. We never discountenance the advice of elders because we have been taught to appreciate that no matter the size of a young man’s wardrobe, he can never have as many rags as adorned an old man’s wardrobe.

  • PPPRA’s insensitivity

    The Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Products Price Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, Reginald Stanley says that the agency with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22-man strong board, earning a scandalously whopping salaries and allowances of N57.9 billion per annum is a blessing to Nigeria. For him the company’s monumental achievement in the last one year as a result of selfless service of the staff and the quality of leadership provided by the minister of petroleum calls for celebration. PPPRA, according to him has become so transparent in the last one year that only unpatriotic elements and enemies of progress will fail to see such self evident achievements. Indeed, for him, if there had been any criticism of PPPRA at all, it could only have been the work of “fifth columnists who are out to spread odium, hatred and campaigns of calumny” because of the body’s “resolve to support the minister of petroleum resources to make the difference’.

    Last week, during a Channel Television programme, he had in a tone soaked with patriotic fervour, declared: “No amount of intimidation or smear campaign can make us to derail in our resolve to serve our fatherland with integrity and honesty of purpose”. He then went on to remind Nigerians that “the minister of petroleum resources has put measures in place that consistently prevented corruption in the downstream sector of the oil industry in recent years”. He did not however tell us if “recent years” covered 2011 when through acts of omission of the minister and Ahmadu Alli, former chairman of PPPRA, a whopping N1.7 trillion was, according to House committee probe report, allegedly stolen by those with close links with PDP and government.

    But nonetheless, he went ahead to reel out what he considered unmatched achievements of PPPRA in the last one year: Bringing sanity to the downstream sector of the oil industry; reducing the level of fuel consumption by Nigerians from 60.25 million in 2011 to 39.66 litres in 2012 and pruning down of the number of fuel importers from unwieldy 128 in 2011, to 39 in 2012″

    He ignored the House Committee report that dismissed the level of consumption claimed by PPPRA as false and the fact that it was the reckless decision of the minister and the then chairman of PPPRA that saw the number of fuel importers moved from less than a dozen to 128 all in effort to spread patronage among PDP members and sympathizers.

    Stanley also wants Nigerians to congratulate PPPRA for reducing the N2.1 trillion the body fraudulently claimed it spent on phantom subsidy in 2011 to less than one trillion in 2012. He pretends as if we don’t have the ongoing court cases arising from National Assembly probe which recommended some leading light of PDP and their siblings for prosecution for allegedly forging documents to claim fuel subsidy when in truth they, to borrow a phrase used by Audu Ogbe, a former PDP chairman, “never imported a bottle of fuel”.

    And finally, in what amounts to an unprovoked assault on our sensibilities, the PPPRA Executive Secretary said we should all celebrate PPPRA and the minister of petroleum for “bringing integrity, creating system, processes and stability in product supply”. How much more can a people take from a group of self-proclaiming patriots who treat all of us as if we are all kindergarten pupils? It is incredible how some government officials who in other climes should be in court defending their integrity freely apply pepper into our eyes, and ask us to laugh instead of crying.

    Beyond puerile attempt by civil servants with no ambition beyond serving political office holders to hood wink us, a closer focus on the emergence of PPPRA itself will show it was like the monetization policy, an ingenious creation of PDP new breed politicians designed to confiscate our common wealth. In other words, policy formulation and policy implementation have become instruments of corruption to further impoverish our people.

    By strange coincidence, PDP assumption of power in 1999 was greeted with long queues at the filling stations, a development not brought about by market forces of demand and supply but mainly due to manipulation of the market to create artificial scarcity. Cynics say it was a strategy by cash-strapped PDP’s newly elected politicians to recoup their investments following their public confession that they sold private properties to fight the 1999 election.

    As parts of achieving this objective, contracts for the refurbishment of the refineries were awarded to politicians instead of multinationals that built them. The refurbishment exercise failed as was planned.

    As if working to answer, President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Petroleum Products Pricing Committee which in turn recommended PPPRA with a mandate to “liberalise the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, privatise the refineries, deregulate and liberalise the imports of petroleum products and, generally, make the products available at reasonable prices”. The Bill for the establishment of PPPRA was promptly passed into law in February 2003 and assented to by Obasanjo in May 2003 because PDP had vested interest. (PIB has been pending for over five years}

    But PPPRA’s assigned functions turned out to be mere duplications of functions of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) which was 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.”

    For those behind PPPRA, the end justifies the means. Not even the existence of the NNPC Act 1977 which saddled the minister of petroleum with the responsibilities of “regulating and fixing petroleum product prices and supervising the MPR/DPR that has sole regulatory authority over technical standards, refining, and logistics in the sector”, was going to stop them.

    Today, 10 years down the line, PPPRA has served only the interest of those who set it up. The lot of the poor is worse today than it was 10 years ago. They still cannot afford the cost of cooking gas while the so-called subsidized kerosene sells for about N140 naira outside NNPC filling stations.

    It has also turned out that the argument of both Sanusi Lamido, the CBN governor and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Minister of Finance, that it was only the middle class owners of two cars and diesel engine generators who were beneficiaries of government’s so-called subsidy has been proved to be more political than economic. As a result of their false prognosis, many industries that depend on diesel to run their factories have all folded up. Those managing to survive cannot compete with fake and substandard goods flooding the market due to import licenses selectively allocated to party members. It was on account of this Dangote Cement temporarily suspended production not too long ago.

    Unlike, PPMC, PPPRA has shown more commitments to importation of refined petroleum products than making our own refineries work. Instead of using NNPC facilities or rehabilitating the over 4,000 kilometres of petroleum pipeline commissioned by Obasanjo in 1979, PPPRA depends on the storage facilities of members of Depot Petroleum Products Marketers Association (DAPPMA) (Obat Petroleum is reputed to have the largest and most modern storage facilities in the world). It also patronises Independent Marketers Company (NIPCO) that has invested billions in storage facilities and a jetty in Apapa. It also relies to some degree on the services of Oando and Zenon petroleum companies that jointly control over 200 trucks and a jetty owned by Zenon.

    We now know without consulting the duo of Sanusi and Okonojo-Iweala, that a government that expends so much of our resources through PPPRA to patronize parasites instead of buildings refineries serves not our interest but those of the parasites.

    PPPRA that guzzles N57.9 billion every year serves only the interest of those who set it up to recoup money spent on election. With N600 billion, we will probably build two medium refineries that will end our dependency on imported fuel and provide job for a few of our 29 million unemployed youth. Of course, it will force current beneficiaries of the so-called deregulation presently falling over each other to erect the largest storage facility in the world and rent to government that can neither manage existing refineries nor NNPC tank farms, to stop feeding on our blood.

  • Ending the corruption scourge

    The scourge of corruption did not start with ‘Oduahgate’, Jonathan presidency or indeed PDP, a ‘new breed’ political party that emerged after 15 years of military social engineering. It started with the NPC/NCNC coalition partners’ declaration of state of emergency in the Western Region, invalidation of the unfavourable British Privy Council judgment through a retroactive amendment of the constitution of the West and rigging of the 1965 regional election, all in an attempt to impose their ‘chop I chop’ vision to replace that of ‘the greatest good for the greatest number of people’ espoused by the ruling elite of the West. But for that fraud, we would not have had an Obasanjo, a great Nigerian who celebrates his ‘Nigerianess’ by insisting he is a Nigerian leader and not a Yoruba leader, being imposed from outside as president of Nigeria to fill Yoruba slot in the presidency; and but for that destruction of the structure of Nigeria, as distinguished as President Jonathan is, I am not sure whether he would have emerged to fill the Ijaw slot in the presidency.

    Other symptoms of that initial fraud such as the ‘cement armada’ of Gowon era, when bureaucrats colluded with soldiers to clog the Apapa port with a capacity for 1million metric tons with 20 million metric tons of cement, Umaru Dikko’s rice scandal of Shagari era and NPN gluttonous consumption that wiped out our foreign reserve in four years, confiscation of the nation’s common wealth by Babangida and Abacha and their ‘army of anything is possible’. All happened before PDP emerged in 1998

    If PDP is guilty of anything, it is that of creativity and openness. For instance they came up with an ingenious policy of ‘monetisation’ to enable privileged members of the party buy freshly built government properties in Abuja and other GRAs around the country. Similarly, some of their members and fronts forged papers to share part of N1.7trillion fuel subsidy. And in their intra-class gang wars, no weapon is forbidden. Presidents, vice president, governors, senate president, Speakers of the Lower House, and lawmakers have openly exchanged brick bats. In fact, today the war between new PDP and the original PDP is an open sore.

    And to the credit of the party, members have been very frank and open about this national corruption, our national scourge. President Jonathan once ordered the arrest of the son of his party chairman for alleged fraud , a move Dr. Doyin Okupe , his special adviser, described as a ‘ courageous action of a politician still eyeing an elective office’ which Nigerians should applaud. Only two weeks back, before his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he had set up a panel to probe the ‘Oduahgate’. And as if to further confirm our rating, as the eight most corrupt nation in the world, our own minister of agriculture Dr Akinwunmi Adesina recently confirmed during “Agbeloba’ AgroBusiness forum 2013 organised by Ekiti State government that Nigerian leaders stole N776 billion out of N873 billion released for fertilizer subsidy between 1980 and 2010 (PDP was in government for 11 of those 30 years).

    The Task Team Leader of the World Bank in Nigeria, Dr. Tunde Adekola followed this up by confirming that Nigeria cannot benefit from World Bank financial assistance because of ‘profound level of corruption embedded within most of the institutions applying for aid in the country. To further drive the point home, Walter Omowale Carrington, our American adopted son recently reminded us that “corruption is the most terrible monster that confronts Nigeria, and that “virtually all the problems associated with governance would be removed if we can summon the courage to tackle corruption and banish it from our activities.” And From a man who should know better, the President of Nigerian Bar Association, Okey Wali came a sombre admission that “corruption is the number one problem of the country, whether by embezzlement of public funds, appointments in public and private sector or by selective justice (prosecution and conviction)”. His fear, he said is “not just the impunity with which corruption is practiced or that it is attaining the status of our way of life in the country, but that a “corrupt legislature may endure; a corrupt executive may thrive; but a corrupt judiciary will die”.

    Like Wali who recommended “a strong political will and commitment on the part of the executive”, Sanusi Lamido, the CBN governor in a BBC programme last Saturday also insisted what is needed to fight corruption is the political will of the executive claiming that of the 164 fraud cases arising from his own war against banking sector frauds, only one indictment has been secured two years down the line.

    But I think both Wali and Sanusi are wrong. They are not fair to the president. It will be expecting too much from a president who was not the source of corruption to demonstrate a political will that his godfather, President Obasanjo could not exhibit in the midst of vicious PDP hawks. I think if we are serious about fighting corruption, the first step is to change the structure that sustains corruption. This is because the forces in our society that insist they own society and must determine the fate of the less privileged are as desperate in Nigeria as they are in other nations. It was perhaps this reason, Awo who spent the greater part of his life studying Nigerian problems and proffering solution, came to the conclusion after a failed life-long struggle to sell his own vision of how Nigerian should be run, likened successive Nigeria governments since independence to “a cow held by some and milked by powerful, and ‘cunniest’ few”.

    It has become clear to all the conflicting forces in our nation, including those who want sovereign national dialogue through the back door, that the only way forward is to revert back to our old structure jettisoned by ‘chop I chop’ politicians and legitimised by bungling military, with some modifications to replace the current one that oils corruption. With 30 million unemployed graduates and symptoms of deformed structure like fuel subsidy fraud, pension scheme scam and the recent ‘Oduahgate’, we don’t need an impersonal, all powerful federal Leviathan in Abuja that confiscates over 50% of our resources, unilaterally decides the education our children receive, the road we pass to our farms, the airline we fly, the support our local farmers need, the water we drink and the God we worship.

    We don’t need a parasitic wasteful federal structure with 36 ministers, 105 senators and 360 lower house members earning, depending on whose figure we accept, Itse Sagay’s between N204 million and N250 million per annum, or the CBN governor’s 25% of the nation’s budget, or even the lawmakers’ N190 billion, in a situation where a US senator earns $174,000 and a British parliamentarian, $64,000.

    We don’t need unwieldy 36 states where governors operate like emperors, with state owned or leased aircrafts, fleet of armoured cars, 720 commissioners and an estimated 700 lawmakers for all the 36 states houses of assemblies.

    Of course it amounts to gross irresponsibility to sustain 774 Local Government Areas, whose creations were based on no known objective criteria, collecting handouts from Abuja every month to undermine the activities of the state governments with whom they have shared responsibilities to the people.

    I am sure changing the political architecture, will allay the fears of the CBN governor about importation of dollars by politicians to fight the 2013 election as he had averred during his BBC ‘Hard Talk’ last Saturday. There is no doubt our award -winning CBN governor, who claimed with his knowledge of what goes on in government , he will not survive a year in Abuja as president, knows that the sources of the money politicians are using to import dollars in preparation for 2015 ‘do or die’ contest can be traced to governors security votes, or proceeds of contract deals by ministers such as the current ‘Oduahgate’ in which the minister of aviation was alleged to have approved an expenditure of $800,000 for a BMW armoured car whose market going price is $200,000.

  • Nigeria as captive to prayer warriors

    As a nation of miracle seekers where people are desirous of reaping what they did not sow contrary to God’s injunction that we must live by our sweats, we have all become captives of prayer warriors and merchants of grace. Our children are misled to believe they could pass examinations through the power of prayers while our youths see nothing amiss becoming fortune-seekers as yahoo yahoo scammers. The churches that have become the biggest industry in our nation and their prayer warriors take credit as the source of the new fortunes. Prayers thus become elixir to all ailments – joblessness, poverty, barrenness, and inept leadership of the political class.

    Of course, our elected and selected leaders understandably are the weakest link. Once captured, they hardly have time to think creatively. Ex-President Obasanjo, fresh from Abacha’s incarceration, immersed himself in endless prayer sessions while the sharing of our national patrimony in the name of privatization, the wrecking of the banking sector, the collapse of the stock market and above all, the frittering away of about $30b foreign reserve in the name of repaying debt to Paris club went on. There has been no parallel to such recklessness, anywhere in the world, whether in the advanced or developing economies.

    President Jonathan, captured before he was elected, has spent the greater part of his presidency engaged in fervent prayers. Confronted with probe reports of massive looting going on in government, coupled with his own acknowledgement of infiltration of economic saboteurs and Boko Haram insurgents into his government, he resorted to prayers with little help from Nigerian prayer warriors, never in short supply in high places like the Abuja presidential palace.

    And still confronted by the unresolved ASUU strike now in its fourth month, increasing tempo of ‘kidnapping for ritual and kidnapping for ransom(apology to Gbenga Omotosho), the sheer ferociousness of Boko Haram insurgency, crisis in the aviation sector, fuel theft etc, all these despite the president’s recent 30 days of fasting and prayers with our Muslim brothers, he was persuaded that by the prayer warriors that what was needed was more prayers, and this time around in Israel, the Holy land.

    He was consequently, quietly conscripted by the prayer warriors to lead this year contingent of Nigerian pilgrims to Israel. John-Kennedy Opara, the Executive Secretary, Nigeria Christian Pilgrims Commission revealed this when he announced that the presidential visit was purely spiritual and not a state visit. He went ahead to also recruit the Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, “to lead other governors that will accompany the president to the Holy Land”. And accepting his new task, Jang had declared “It is a great honour and privilege for Plateau pilgrims to show example to others and for Mr. President to know that pilgrimage to Israel is not a wasteful venture.”

    The prayer warriors did not disappoint Nigerians. Those who closely monitored the tour of the Holy Land by our president and his entourage of governors and ministers cannot but acknowledge how fervent Nigerians are. President Goodluck Jonathan set the ball rolling in Jerusalem when on arrival he led other Nigerian pilgrims in a special prayer for the numerous challenges facing Nigeria. At the intercessory prayer session at the Chapel of Dominous Flevit (where Jesus wept), the President was reported to have specifically beseeched God to intervene in the current political and security challenges in Nigeria. He was ably supported by other powerful prayer warriors including Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau, Minister of Agriculture, Akin Adesina, FCT CAN President Rev. Israel Akanji and Ndudi Elumelu, a member of the Lower House.

    Jang’s session was remarkable for its theatrics. He crawled on his fours, occasionally touching the floor with his head, weeping, wailing crying murmuring “Christ, my God, my father, my father”, momentarily forgetting that Pope Francis recently reminded us that Christians don’t have a monopoly of Christ who is equally a saviour to those among his non-believing cantankerous anti-Christ Israelis and their querulous cousins-the Arabs who do good to others. For those who must have forgotten, Jang was the PDP governor who lost Nigeria Governors’ Forum chairmanship election by 16 votes to Amaechi’s 19, declared himself the winner, swiftly moved to the church to give a thanksgiving before racing to Abuja seat of government to receive the president’s embrace.

    In another scene, we saw the president on his knees in one of the most hallowed parts of the Holy land with our prayer warrior stretching forth their hands to bless him. In this hallowed chambers where Christ’s body was washed and perfumed before burial, a place where cardinals pray in studied silence and submission to God’s presence, only few visitors outside Nigerian Holy men have the temerity for such an audacious act.

    The spiritual journey climaxed with a church service tagged: “A Day with Jesus for Nigeria In Israel,” which was preceded by a fast observed by the President and over 3, 000 Nigerian pilgrims along with ministers, governors and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), officials led by its president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. It was here the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Christian Pilgrims Board (NCPC), Kennedy Okpara, revealed that the total number of pilgrims this year will exceed last year’s figure of 30,000. It was also there that Pastor Paul Eneche, founding overseer of Dunamis Church, who gave the word of exhortation during a church service prophesied that ‘God will replicate the successes Israel has witnessed after many years of wars and tribulations in Nigeria’.

    What Opara however did not tell his congregation was that more than half of the 30,000 figure he quoted were sponsored by either the federal or state governments using taxpayers’ money to support individuals and cronies who want to fulfill their religious obligations. Jang alone sponsored 1000 pilgrims for the 2012 edition. (In the just concluded Hajj exercise, of the 800 deported pilgrims that arrived at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, last Wednesday, about 171 of the young females returned for not having male companions were claimed to be underage students, undergraduates and youth corpers sponsored by governors with taxpayers money).

    And what Pastor Eneche, did not tell the president, his ministers, governors, law makers and the 3000 Nigerian pilgrims was the fact that the success witnessed by Israel after many tribulations was not just because of prayers. The Israelis, in spite of being the chosen people, added value to their prayers in order to transform their nation of desert, hills and gullies into a fertile agricultural land from where Nigeria today imports not only chicken but also arms and secret intelligence personnel.

    But since no one can mock God who has in His wisdom decreed we all must reap what we sow, the captive and the prayer warriors returned to Nigeria early in the week to confront the unresolved issues of ASUU strike, doctors strike, kidnapping for ransom and kidnapping for ritual, revealed dirty deals between NCAA and Coscharis allegedly supervised by the aviation minister, fuel theft that has reduced our current budget by a quarter, PDP’s vicious gang wars and many other issues which cannot be wished away by fasting and prayers whether in Nigeria, the land of prayer warriors or in Israel, the land of the unbelievers.

    Beyond prayerful leaders and self righteous prayer warriors whose activities make the much derided Pharisees that Christ condemned look like saints, our nation is in dire need of selfless leadership with ambition beyond political office, who can faithfully apply the lesson of the Jewish Torah “don’t do on to others what you don’t like” which is not dissimilar to Christ’s “do on to others as want done onto you”

  • In defence of Stella Oduah and Cosmas Maduka

    I sympathise with delectable Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, minister of Aviation at this hour of her tribulation. As a successful operator of fuel tank farm, Oduah was undoubtedly ill equipped for the highly technical ministry of aviation. But basking on her past glory as a wealthy trader, she arrogantly ignored informed advice that the cause of outrageous charges by foreign airlines was government and its elected officials who fritter away billions of taxpayers’ money on business and first class seats. She instead chose to fight symptoms by embarking on an unwinnable war against British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, KLM and Lufthansa. Having lost the war, she embarked on another ill-advised endeavour to float a new national carrier without first addressing the entrenched interests that killed Nigeria Airways and its successor, Virgin Nigeria. Her next gamble was a jamboree around the world in search of investors at the end of which she secured a $500m loan from China to build new airports.

    As for the inherited problem of some PDP stalwarts who also double as Airline operators and took interest-free bailout government loans that were diverted to other businesses, she was unable to do much. And now after two years of fruitless war against the symptoms of the decay in the aviation sector, Oduah with her alleged involvement in car deal with Maduka’s Choscharis, has become a metaphor for the pervasive corruption that has characterized PDP successive administrations in the last 14 years.

    As Oduah moves around alone soliciting the intervention of PDP godfathers to keep her highly rewarding job, she seems to have more detractors than friends among  the media that have dismissed her as self-conceited and lacking in grace, the civil society groups that often mistake symptoms for causes, the corrupt bureaucracy serving no one but itself, and of course, our highest paid legislators in the world who have chosen to look the other way in the face of massive looting going on in the executive for obvious reasons.

    Oduah’s other detractors that have now constituted themselves into a lynch mob, include the Air line Operators of Nigeria {AON) which has already recommended her for investigation by EFCC while remaining silent on its members that diverted huge government bailout to other businesses.

    We also have the Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN). Ben Okewu its national president said the “necessary government agencies’ should not hesitate to prosecute anyone found to have played a role in the purchase of the bullet-proof cars”. He was silent on their members who received Toyota Corolla cars as part of the deal.

    Not left out also is the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE). Its secretary General, Comrade Abdulkareem Motajo, claimed that his union had written several petitions on the alleged financial improprieties involving the Minister of Aviation to the Senate President, Deputy Senate President, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation.

    But what has Oduah done outside PDP predilection for confiscating what belongs to all? At a period when it has been widely speculated that it is not uncommon for a female minister to own a private jet, Oduah’s ordeal according to her media aide, started with her request for armoured car “in response to the clear imminent threat to her personal security and life”. This is not unusual within PDP where gang wars among men and women are often fought with might and with tragic consequences. Even ordinary PDP state party officials and their business associates move around with armed police escorts.

    Following what by PDP standard, was a modest request by a minister, the corrupt and parasitic entrenched interest in NCAA decided to buy the minister not only one but two armoured cars at princely price of $800,000(N127.5m each.) not forgetting to buy themselves 34 new cars (13 Toyota Prado SUVs and 21 Corolla saloons.)

    Then, Sahara Reporters, the whistle blower, an outfit that torments PDP from outside, insisted there was a rip-off. To prove this, pro forma invoices were obtained from Vista BMW in Florida, United States of America, for a fully armoured BMW 760 Li car for only $162,195 (about N26m); and from the armoured car ballistic division of the International Armouring Corporation in Utah, USA, for $200,000 (about

    N32m), shipping to Nigeria inclusive.

    But Nigeria newspapers almost spoiled Sahara Reporters resourceful investigative work by introducing comparison which can sometimes be odious. As if we are not aware our ministers are superior to a British Prime Minister, they claim princess Oduah armoured car is more expensive than the British Prime Minister, David Cameron’s armoured Jaguar XJ X351 car at a cost of £200,000 (about N52m). Nigerians know that British prime minister lives in a three bed-room apartment called 10 Downing Street, and owns only one official car which must be left behind at the end of his tenure as Gordon Brown who drove out of Downing Street in his old personal car did.

    But back to our embattled aviation minister: Except we are setting out to persecute the minister for self conceit, Oduah is just a symptom of a cankerworm that has eaten deep into our social fabric. As one angry Nigerian analyst put it “At an exchange rate of N155 to $1, Oduah’s vanity would establish eight cottage clinics of N30 million each, or fund the sinking of 50 boreholes in a country where only 17 per cent of its 160 million people have access to pipe-borne water, according to a UNDP report”. In fact that figure can be multiplied by 36 if our leaders decide to lead by example. We can triple that figure if for instance the presidency sells off six of the nine jets claimed to be in the presidential fleet and the senate president and other principal officers of the National Assembly decide to live in mansions they erected in Abuja. After all the Malawi president recently sold off her country’s only presidential jet while British parliamentarians who have houses in London live in their own houses. The removal of Oduah, a mere symptom, as a minister will not stop PDP treachery against our nation.

    And if you ask me, Cosmas Maduka that sold a 2008 model of the BMW armoured car for four times the actual cost in Europe has nothing to hide. He is a shrewd Nigerian trader/businessman. I was privileged to meet this great trader turn industrialist a few years back.  I had led a delegation of two other Guardian newspaper directors to his office to present a business proposal. The man took a look at our painstakingly packaged proposal and declared “I will pay 50%’. Shocked, I responded involuntarily by shouting ‘Guardian does not sell ‘tokunbo’ (second hand) goods’. That was the end of the business meeting. Maduka has no patience with non traders especially newspapermen!

    Although some of his unorthodox methods may be unacceptable in other climes, I think Maduka is a saint compared to many PDP businessmen and their children currently in court allegedly for forging documents to defraud government of N1.7 trillion. He engages in transparent trading transactions with anyone including government bodies that accept his terms.

    And even it if is finally established that Maduka’s Coscharis made a kill  in its current car deal with officials of NCAA, how many Nigerian businessmen will waste such an opportunity to help themselves if all it takes is supporting PDP game of perfidy? As Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, my teacher and a former external affairs minister said not too long ago, show me one Nigerian billionaire who did not ride to his good fortune on the back of the Nigerian state.

  • President’s admission and new challenges

    Speaking off the cuff during a pre-centenary national praise and thanksgiving service at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja  last Sunday, President Jonathan chose to part ways with some of his combative advisers and ministers who are also known to be confirmed government contractors. The tendency up to last Sunday was for the president and his advisers to blame everyone else except government for the state of insecurity in our nation and the inability of government with its awesome security apparatus which gobbles about N1trillion, a quarter of our annual budget, to crush the Boko Haram insurgency. Displaying an uncharacteristic deep sense of remorse, the president for the first time admitted our security forces were not just ill-prepared but merely idling away prior to the outbreak of hostilities. But for the challenge the insurgency poses, the nation’s security apparatus would have remained ‘obsolete and its security agents idle and static’. The internal insurrection according to him has exposed our lack of preparedness to contain external aggression. But now “Everyday, security chiefs now think of how to continue to improve on capacity building’ while his administration has been compelled ‘to boost the capacity and infrastructure of the security agencies, especially by enhancing adequate training of security operatives’.

    For the first time, the president in my view spoke like a statesman not through the jaundiced lenses of PDP. By his carriage and sober mien, he has demonstrated his deep commitment to the ongoing crusade to face our challenges which he said may be daunting but not insurmountable. And I also think by that single stroke, the president has succeeded in separating himself from PDP dirty politics of blaming others for their continued sabotage of the aspirations of Nigerians.

    But I think the new strategy of appealing to the resilience of Nigerians to overcome her challenges as distinct from a president with an image of buck passing through unpresidential utterances such as “I did not create all the problems bedevilling Nigeria’, ‘I am not Pharaoh, General or Nebuchadnezzar’, was a further admission that the president critics are no less committed to the well-being of Nigerians as himself.  It is therefore hoped this will encourage the president to also critically assess what is going on in other areas of our national life where we are currently facing serious challenges.

    He can start with the Ministry of Works where successive ministers  have shown more commitment to awarding new road contracts that were never implemented after mobilization had been paid, while paying scant attention to maintenance culture which is today responsible for the virtual collapse of the whole network of our road infrastructure, our embattled aviation sector  where our ill-equipped minister whose major selling point is said to be her capacity to raise presidential campaign funds  attribute frequent plane crashes to ‘an act of God’ and of course the agricultural  sector whose failure poses more danger to our survival than  Boko Haram insurgency or PDP  intra-party gang wars over sharing of our resources.

    Dr. Tony Marinho like many concerned Nigerians has continued to point to our lack of maintenance culture as the bane of our roads. He has in the last one year constituted himself into a one-man crusade to persuade government to mend pot holes infested federal roads spread across the country. Only last week he alerted Nigerians about the danger posed by what he described as ‘‘the imminent collapse and closure of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway with 15 kilometres of traffic five lane wide, 10,000 vehicles long with one million people, daily desperately struggling down that obstacle course… Nigerians are suffering maximally, stranded for seven hours daily in 2013 while RCC and Julius Berger warm up’. Marinho’s lamentation about the travails of motorists on Lagos-Ibadan collapsed express road can be said of other federal high ways all over the country.

    A few government interventions here and there were carried out in the typical PDP manner. A little over a year back, following incessant cries of agony of motorists who were spending hours because of the pot-holes located almost directly opposite the Redeemed Church, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) intervened. As at two weeks ago when I passed through that corridor of the express road, motorist were still subjected to about five hours of agony crawling through the same spot to Lagos. We can say the same of the perennial trouble spot opposite OPIC building on your way out of Lagos where many illustrious Nigerians including Dr. Ajayi of the famous Ajayi Memorial Hospital Apapa road, Ebute Metta and Rufus Giwa, a former Managing Director of Levers Brothers at different periods in the past

    lost their lives.  That big pot hole had been mended about three times this year with each attempt enduring for less than two weeks. Of course the bad portion out of Murtala Mohammed International Airport has been a source of nightmare to Nigerians motorists and a source of embarrassment to Nigerians and visiting foreign dignitaries since 1999 in spite of seasonal mending by National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA}.

    The president should also be interested in what goes on in the aviation sector. Beside her lost war against international airlines, her much criticised jamboree abroad ostensibly to woo investors, the borrowing of $500m to build new airports while existing ones are poorly maintained and underutilized, the minister has been accused of being more interested in revenue generation rather than safety of the nation’s airspace.

    And lastly, the president in spite of the agriculture minister‘s flawless English can subject the sector to the same security sector’s treatment because as the minister has himself averred, “a nation that does not feed itself becomes a threat to its own sovereign existence”.

    The public for instance  need to know the specific irrigations sites we were told consumed  N62 billion of the World Bank’s N139 billion loan, and the specific infrastructure staple crop processing zones in the country supported with the N77,5 billion African Development Bank (AfDB) loan, and possibly the gestation period.

    Besides, in spite of rosy pictures of the agricultural sector painted by the minister, non-government experts are raising vital questions that require answers.  For instance it has been said that the minister now often refer to by his critics as ‘minister for fertilizer and cassava’ has not adequately addressed the situation where the whole of Nigeria can boast of not more than 34 functional tractors, where Bombay, in Punjab, India that is not up to Zaria or Kaduna, has got 34,000 functional tractors’. That government still gives waivers to their cronies to import rice from Taiwan and Cambodia where agriculture is heavily subsidized resulting in Nigerian spending N4billion every day on importation of rice.

    And as Shedrack Madlion  of Kaduna-based Admiral Environmental Care Limited, asked : Did the minister’s farm census  of farmers  gulping billions cover  farmers from such places like  ‘Saminaka, in Kaduna, where 29,000 metric tons of maize are grown’ or  Giroro, Sokoto, where 37,000 metric tons of onion are grown and 60 percent do not get to the market place’ or  producers of Ose Nsukka,  the sweetest peppers in the world located  between Opi, Ihealumona and Udi ?

  • Sub-standard goods: Absence of consumer protection

    Oga, your two front tyres na China, if na the same you want for the back, na N8, 000.each”. This unsolicited advice was coming from one of the shop attendants that swooped on me as I drove into a tyre retail shop on Awolowo way last week. I had bought the two front tyres a week earlier from the Ladipo spare parts market at N15, 000 each with the shop owner swearing they were original. The two back tyres I was trying to replace cost about N24, 000 each from a once successful but now collapsed Nigerian tyre company that I was told imported them from South Africa.

    But noticing the doubts boldly written on my face, the young sales attendant who was trying to ensure a sale is made added “ But Oga instead of the ‘China’, buy ‘tokunbo’ for only N5,000, you will get better value because na from importers of tokunbo cars we buy from.”

    After the initial confusion, what came to mind was the last month’s acknowledgement by the Director General (DG) of Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Ikemefuna Odumodu that “20% of road accidents in Nigeria are due to sub-standard tyres”. Then the reality of how vulnerable and helpless Nigerians that have been left at the mercy of the merchants of death, the importers of sub-standard goods and their street agents, increased the turmoil going on in my mind.

    Odumodu painted a grimmer picture. “Due to paucity of data, SON cannot give the exact figure of how many Nigerians are dying on account of fake products”; What was not  not in dispute is “that the country has become a dumping ground for substandard goods”.

    Testifying before the National Assembly joint Committees on Trade and investment earlier, Odumodu had disclosed that “N1 trillion is spent annually on importation of fake products, 80% of which come from Asian countries”.

    He said items seized in 2012 include N2billion worth of cables, N200 million worth of iron rod and tyres worth N5m. After destroying N2.7b worth of fake goods this year, SON premises is still littered with several trailers loaded with imported sub-standard goods, as well as huge cache of other assorted confiscated goods ranging from gas cylinders, clippers, electrical cables ferried from raided warehouses. But these efforts according to him represent only a tip of the ice bag. In fact one of Odumodu’s staff, Mrs. Chritabel Okoye claimed that “95% of goods in Abuja markets SON visited were fakes”.  The same picture or possibly worse scenarios play out in other Nigerian major cities where apart from substandard goods,  every corner is littered with imported used baby dresses, used baby school bags, used women underwear and assorted second clothes while president Jonathan’s ministers shed crocodile tears over the failure of the N100billion textile sector bail-out.

    Sub-standard goods are global phenomena and a threat to the health and socio-economic development of developing nations. But while other nations including India that recently banned mobile phones without IMEI number that could help authorities track users, along with toys and milk from China, are leaving no stones unturned to address the menace, our own government has continued to demonstrate its ineptitude and insensitivity to the well-being of Nigerians.

    Nigerians already know that a government that is prepared to visit hardship on its own poor as well as its middle class car owners for the theft of about N1.7trillion by members of the governing elite, slam double taxation of about N30, 000 on vehicle owners in the guise of new plate numbers, and allocate a disproportionate share of the national resources to sustain the greed and scandalous life styles of members at the expense of the poor cannot be trusted. But if Nigerians have come to terms with a PDP government that is ideologically committed to the exploitation of the poor, what they did not bargain for is PDP government becoming an accomplice to crimes of a few greedy Nigerians and godless foreigners against helpless Nigerians.

    For instance, the government’s misguided 2011 policy that led to the eviction of SON from the ports in the name of decongesting the ports has resulted in SON chasing symptoms rather than the disease. All they have succeeded in doing is apprehending trailers filled with sub-standard goods and their drivers while the brains behind crimes against Nigerians who cynics believe are government officials or their

    fronts with access to state free funds are shielded. The question has been how many genuine Nigerian business men who laboured for their money will abandon trailer-laden sub-standard goods worth billions of naira at the premises of SON or remain indifferent when impounded goods worth billions of naira are burnt.

    If it has been difficult to unmask the brains behind importation of sub-standard products, critics believe it must be because PDP whose leading members have been fingered as playing ignoble roles in the fuel subsidy and  pensions scheme scams, crude oil theft, banking sector collapse, betrayal of the privatization dream as conceived by the World Bank, etc is involved. Importers of all goods are licensed by government. The CBN has records of money transferred for specific purposes and the goods come in through our ports and borders manned by the customs. And in any case, government has the capacity to trace all imported goods to their source.  Yet for 14 years it has been a game of government hypocrisy.

    It is the same story of hypocrisy with crude oil theft until the ‘new PDP’, came out to confirm what we have always suspected- that government knows those behind the crime while PDP contractors like Doyin Okupe and Ijaw ethnic irredentist like papa Edwin Clark have diverted attention by justifying award of multimillion dollar contracts to government new allies, the repentant Niger Delta militants. And we have no reason to disbelieve the new PDP. Not too long ago, one of the ships apprehended with stolen fuel was traced to a fuel dump allegedly owned by a former minister. Like other scams involving high profile PDP members, their siblings or fronts, the case seems to have died a natural death.

    Perhaps this explains why the British Deputy High Commissioner tongue in cheek, told our government last week on Channels Television Programme that it should  do its job of  securing our borders and waterways instead of chasing stolen crude oil to London market just as SON  now chases imported sub-standard goods to warehouses and markets.

     

    Rip- off and conmen

    Many of the communication service providers are swindling Nigerians and smiling to the banks. Subscribers are debited between N10 and N100 naira for services they never requested for through unsolicited test messages. At between 10 and 50 naira, a service provider with 14million subscribers can rake in between N140m and N740m from only one unsolicited service dumped on unsuspecting helpless subscribers.

    Predictably, government has chosen to look the other way. It is inconceivable that a company driven by profit motive will fritter away millions ostensibly to thank customers for patronage. The Yoruba say “owo Abu ni a nfi se Abu lalejo’ literarily meaning we use Abu’s money to entertain Abu.

     

    SPECTRANET

    As if to put a lie to the above antics, SPECTRANET has demonstrated it is in Nigeria only for profit. Aping government, it has shamelessly adopted the template used by government to extract N30, 000 from its citizens with existing valid vehicle plate numbers, SPECTRANET has even gone beyond merely forcing its subscribers to cough out N18, 000 and three months compulsory subscription for a new modem on the excuse that they have upgraded their equipments even when there was nothing

    wrong with existing subscribers modem obtained less than two years ago. Now subscribers who have been on Spectranet’s  N8,500 ‘unlimited package’ for about two years who complained they are not getting joy in spite of this new rip-off were told by the shop attendants that their unlimited status had been scaled down to 10.GB by fiat ‘because of’ too many subscribers’. Meanwhile, the Indian owners have gone into hiding, while subscribers only moan.

    The irony is that experts have confirmed that the SPECTRANET’s N8, 500 ‘unlimited package’ rip-off, is about 500 times slower than a N1, 500 monthly package subscribers enjoy in Europe. But here those making outrageous profits attribute exploitation of Nigerians to the Nigerian factor-a euphemism for government connivance or ineptitude.

  • PDP’s dirty wars

    Ordinary Nigerians bear the burden of PDP gang wars, viciously fought over the sharing of our common patrimony among its members through their ingenious creation – privatisation and commercialisation of public utilities built by Nigerian taxpayers. As it was during Obasanjo and his group including those who masterminded the failed third term agenda, and Atiku Abubakar’s group of loyal governors one of who is today serving jail terms, so it is today as President Jonathan, Tukur and their 16 governors that resorted to self-help after losing a governorship forum election and the self-proclaiming new-PDP’s gang of seven dig in for final battle. Having concluded that we all suffer from collective amnesia, both groups have continued to assault Nigerians by proclaiming their love for a nation they have jointly ravaged for 14 years.

    Following last week’s showdown of the two PDP’s on the floor of the National Assembly, the new PDP has donned a new cloak of a messiah, set to liberate the people from 14 years of PDP economic exploitation and impoverisation of our people. As if a part can be holier than the whole, chairman of new PDP Alhaji Baraje has ‘unequivocally condemned’ the rape of the country’s economy by Goodluck Jonathan administration insisting that with “the massive scale of officially-induced oil theft, the dwindling returns from oil and massive looting going on at the federal level, Nigeria is surely on the brink of economic collapse despite claim to the contrary by the administration, in futile bid to deceive Nigerians”.

    But our new liberators that today swear by their love for the poor have been active participants in the ravaging of our land since 1999. They were there when poor Nigerians were visited with a callous taxation following monumental stealing of about N1.7 trillion by some of the 140 oil importers appointed by Ahmadu Alli, then chairman of PDP as well as chairman of PPPRA and Diezani Alison-Maduekwe, Minister for Petroleum Resources. We did not hear a moan as the people groaned under the weight of taxation of over 200 percent in the guise of removing phantom fuel subsidy. They joined government apologists, Sanusi Lamido, the CBN governor and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister for Finance who falsely claimed it was only the middle class car owners that would be affected by the callous taxation.

    There has not been a murmur from our new lovers about the ongoing efforts of government to force vehicle owners cough out about N30,000 on an already registered vehicle. As our university students roam the street, there has been no condemnation of the insensitive declaration by the National Assembly members that N190bn which they dismissed as only three percent of the national budget is not too much for the lawmakers even when government says the economy cannot support the payment of N88bn, representing four years cumulative indebtedness, made up of miserable allowances ranging between N8, 000 and N15, 000 for university lecturers supervising Masters and PhD candidates.

    In the same vein, President Jonathan who has been accused by his PDP family members of imposing hardship on nation while protecting those he once personally identified as saboteurs of the economy, last week chose United Nations headquarters in New York to proclaim himself as the lover of the people. Hitting back with use of innuendos, he had told the world that “in the country’s past privatization, we know what happened there and yet those who sat over the exercise are the same people who are opening their mouth wide to attack this administration”. And awarding himself a pass mark in the ongoing privatization of public utilities including the energy sector which he said is very transparent, he claimed the nation has made a bounteous harvest of $3bn.

    But the president was silent on what it cost the taxpayers to build up those public utilities in the first place. What we have are conflicting figures from PDP leading lights. For instance, Umaru Yar’Adua, on assumption of office claimed $10b was spent on the power sector by President Obasanjo, with little to show for it. The then Speaker of the House Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, claimed the sum was over $16 billion, while the House power probe committee chairman, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu, gave a figure of $13 billion. But Suswan, on behalf  of the Presidential Review Panel on the NIPP set up by National Economic Council, NEC, said the panel found “that as at 2007, total project allocations/ estimates to NIPP was $10.231 billion inclusive of the $2 billion Federal Government counterpart funding for Mambilla Hydro Power project”. With the different figures being bandied around, the president’s celebration of a harvest of $3bn will appear too hasty.

    Of course the president on whose table the buck stops, more than anyone else is better placed to tell us all the under hand dealings that accompanied the privatization programme during the  Obasanjo presidency,  vice president Atiku Abubakar as chairman of the National Council on  Privatisation and Nasir El Rufai as BPE boss. The reports of some of the sordid deals about the privatization as revealed by his PDP warring family members are on his table.

    It was through aggrieved PDP members that Nigerians learnt that NITEL, a successful outfit that posted a profit of N53bn in 2002 before PDP government embarked on its fraudulent privatization recorded a loss of N19bn in 2003 when BPE sold it to unqualified Pentascope, an alleged proxy company hurriedly registered only three months earlier with staff strength of six. It was from them we learnt BPE could not find a buyer after trying both Investors International (London) Limited (IILL) and a more renowned TELNET to buy 51% of NITEL at $1.317b.

    It was also from the PDP warring members and their fronts we learnt Folio Communications, buyer of the Daily Times had to sell Daily Times asset including NSE House on Customs Street and some properties in London before it could pay BPE N1.2bn. It was from them we learnt that the entire Trade Fair Complex was sold to a company for as low as N10bn. There were more revelations. ALSCON, built with $3.2b dollars was sold to a Russian firm for $250m out of which it paid only $130m. NICON and Nigerian Reinsurance were alleged to have been bought through questionable deals by Global Fleet Oils and Gas Limited.

    From Christopher Anyawu, a former boss of Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, we learnt that sales proceeds were first kept in commercial banks before transfer to the CBN. Former deputy director of BPE, Charles Osuji who claimed OBJ and Atiku killed  the privatization dream’, admitted collecting a thank  you bribe of $100,000 from the successful bidder for the National Oil for El  Rufai who in turn claimed Osuji was directed to return the money. Ms Onagoruwa, former DG of BPE alleged Obasanjo concessioned the Ajaokuta Steel Company to Global Infrastructure without recourse to BPE.

    Musa Mohammed  Sada,  appointed minister of Mines and  Steel Development in April 2010 by the then acting President Jonathan  accused the firm which also acquired Delta Steel Company of asset stripping in Ajaokuta by moving out equipment from Ajaokuta to Delta, and cannibalising them as spares.  For this reason, Sada says ‘the steel sector is in a sorry state, we have not been able to move forward’.

    Instead of escaping to New York to point accusing fingers at some of his troubled PDP family members who had engaged in bare- faced stealing and sharing of our common patrimony, what Nigerians expected of President Jonathan who has sworn to an oath to protect the interest of the nation is to act on the above documented report of PDP’s handling of privatization programme up till 2010.

    And finally, I think it will be hard for President Jonathan to persuade cynical Nigerians that his privatization programme is more transparent. Some of the names behind the newly licensed independent operators have featured prominently in the past efforts of government. The segment of PDP that claimed Professor Barth Nnaji who was pushed out as a minister because he stepped on power toes and not because of divided interest as claimed by government, seem to have been vindicated when no eyebrows were raised with Professor Jerry Gana, a PDP stalwart, leading a delegation of registered Independent Power Producers (IPPs), to plead with government for import waivers and government participation in their private companies.

  • FRSC’s double taxation on vehicle owners

    Neglected by government, betrayed by a self-serving National Assembly and spurned by the judiciary whose leading lights have taken side with economic and political fraudsters with access to enough state funds to buy justice, ordinary Nigerians, have long come to terms with the absence of government in their lives. They provide their own water, generate their own electricity, and dispose off their refuse and those who can afford it, avoid government schools and hospitals.

    They are only remembered by government on those occasions when needed to make additional sacrifices such as during the president’s fuel pump price increase, or in recent times when called upon to appeal to striking university teachers whose earned allowances government claimed it has no funds to pay; and finally when needed as sporadic participants to give legitimacy to every four years’ rituals called elections where their votes hardly count. Nigerians have long given up the illusion of having anyone protecting their interest. PDP shameless elders only intervene to preside over how the party buccaneers settle quarrels over sharing of money and offices. Our internet services are the slowest yet the most expensive in the world. Our telephone service providers are declaring outrageous profits that will make their counterparts in Europe green with envy in spite of their shoddy services and PHCN charges consumers N50, 000 and above for meters they don’t own and on which they pay monthly service charges which are discountenanced when such metres require repair or replacement.

    ‘Suffering and smiling’ (apology to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) ordinary Nigerians have carried on their burden with philosophical strength of mind and will. In the last one year, many have engaged in daily rituals of going to queue up at the FRSC Ojudu headquarters to use the only available ‘capturing machine’  in an effort to obey without questioning, FRSC’s illegal imposition of double taxation  in the guise of registration of new plate numbers and securing the new drivers license.

    Interviewed on a Channel Television programme last week, Osita Chidoka, the Corps Marshall, was all in his elements as he laboured with little success trying to justify the new number plate and drivers licence scheme which he said was introduced “to harmonise, standardise and unify all modes of licensing of drivers and vehicles so as to involve a better road culture and efficient data management”.

    For the above stated objective, overburdened Nigerians with existing vehicle plate numbers are being called upon to part with about N15,000. If a man paid the prevailing  rate to register a plate number for his vehicle five years back, the least expected of any agency that has the interest of the people at heart is to replace the old number plate with the new one at no cost  to the citizen.

    If a car owner decides to sell his car, the Corps Marshal says such a person loses his old plate number to government without refund while the new buyer will now register a new plate number. Why not just change the ownership of the plate number at no cost to the new owner instead of rendering it useless to both the old and the new owner of the vehicle?

    Chidoka says there will be a linkage between the new car plate number and drivers licence and that we can use the new licence to validate national ID card. How about those who don’t have cars or those who don’t know the number of cars in their garages? Is it not a common knowledge that the last three attempts by PDP government to tackle the ID card issue were marred by corruption and scandals that led to the jailing of a minister? It appears Corps Marshal would hold on

    to any straw to justify a callous imposition of double taxation on helpless Nigerians.

    The Corps Marshal has other ambitions. The new license and vehicle plate registration, he said will help custom to improve on its revenue drive and prevent smuggled vehicles from being registered.  But it is common knowledge even if the Corps Marshal pretends not to know, that vehicles are smuggled in daily through our porous borders manned by the same custom he set out to aid. And we all know that for every smuggled car, there are forged custom papers purportedly emanating

    from Apapa /Tin Can Ports, duly signed and stamped, accompanied with stamped police report, all in one day, an exercise that would ordinarily take over a week. In his desperate bid to generate revenue, he forgot to tell us how this double taxation of Nigerians will checkmate this practice involving customs, police and sometimes road safety officials.

    There is also something in the scheme for the insurance firms. He now wants human beings who own the vehicles to be insured as against the current practice which is the other way round. His preference he says is comprehensive insurance. But he was silent on how he intends to ensure insurance firms fulfil their obligations to their clients which was what in the first place drove people to opt for a Third Party or simply put their fate in God. Many who are unable to afford cost of comprehensive insurance especially among the Pentecostals simply cover their cars with blood of Jesus, other Christians and their Muslim brothers, the rosary and tesbiu while the traditionalists wade off evil forces with ‘African juju’. If a man buys a N400, 000 used car and decides to do a Third Party insurance because that is what he could afford, why must it be the business of FRSC to direct otherwise? Whose interest is the Corps Marshal protecting, Nigerians or insurance firms?

    Chidoka, who has not told Nigerians how to bring down the 1,375 casualty figure recorded between February and September this year, who has not addressed the unwholesome activities of some of his men, including those involved in issuance of fake driving licenses in the past, hiding at obscured corners on Lagos roads to intimidate and negotiate  with motorists with minor offences, but who has

    demonstrated his passionate commitment to raising revenue profile of government through customs and insurance firms, says he is not engaged in revenue drive. But what other name do we assign to a scheme that is extracting about N15, 000 from millions of Nigerians who have existing registered plate numbers?

    If we assume Lagos with an estimated population of 16 million has five million registered vehicles, at an average of 15,000, the FRSC is set to extract about N75billion from Lagos vehicle owners who never bargained for double taxation. Even if FRSC turns out to be better than other government revenue generating agencies the Senate had accused of failing to transfer collected revenues to the federation account, or FRSC agrees to subject itself to auditing unlike the 194 MDAs the Auditor-General accused of not subjecting themselves to auditing last year, we will still not be able to guarantee judicious use of proceeds of this blood money. After all, ours is a nation where no one knows the specific projects the foreign loans taken on our behalf and which our children will have to pay back are used to execute.

    It is therefore difficult to fault the argument of cynical Nigerians who see FRSC’s cruel imposition of an illegal double taxation on helpless Nigerians, despite the initial misgivings expressed by a National Assembly known to give only a lip service to issues that concern the well-being of our people, as part of the MDAs’ desperate efforts to raise funds for the 2015 election, in the same manner phantom fuel subsidy was used to finance the 2011 election. The very ‘creative’ PDP ruling party and its spin doctors see nothing abnormal in reaping where they did not sow, or immoral in living and surviving on the sweat and blood of the poor and helpless.