The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • Challenge of unemployed youths

    Challenge of unemployed youths

    And suddenly the real architects of the current situation where majority of about four million annual graduates from our universities roam the streets without jobs, where PDP stalwarts, and their sympathizers who have access to free money import products of labour from other nations while over 60% of our 40 million youths remain jobless, and those whose policies have contributed to the misery of our youths (the National Bureau of Statistics placed the country’s misery index at 34 per cent), are warning us of the coming apocalypse if the problem of youth unemployment is not urgently addressed.

    Leading those who have been shedding crocodile tears about the misery of our unemployed youths is the father of PDP himself, ex-President Obasanjo who when challenged over his administration’s lack of a coherent policy on employment told bemused Nigerians that the recharge card and plantain chip hawkers on the streets of our major cities represented dividends of PDP policy on employment.

    And now the CBN governor, irrepressible Sanusi Lamido Sanusi whose policy led to the loss of about 50% of the banking sector workforce and who recently called for downsizing of the civil service by 50%, quoting data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put unemployment rate in 2011 is 29.3 per cent, Yobe and Kano at 60.6 and 67 per cent respectively. This according to him means ‘unemployment has not only doubled in the last five years’, but saw the development whereby ‘unemployment is widening at a time of economic growth’, as an aberration’

    Sanusi who has been the star of Jonathan PDP administration in the last four years accused government of failing to ‘create an enabling environment that can encourage industrialisation of a country that produces oil yet imports refined fuel, a country that is in the tomato belt yet import tomatoes’.

    He perhaps forgot to add that we are a nation with acres upon acres of rubber plantation and sixth oil producer in the world and yet import used and substandard tyres; that we abandoned our massive oil palm plantations to import palm oil from Malaysia that came to borrow palm nuts from us; that in spite of our over 1,200 kilometres of coast line, we have for the past 50 years imported fish and that with over 80 million hectares of arable land, two third of which is located within a geographical zone where Sanusi told us his grandfather once supervised ground nut pyramids, we import ground nut oil.

    Government officials are also not left out. They have been talking from both sides of the mouth. While the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Temi Kale put the figure of jobless and unemployed Nigerians at 20.3 million and praised President Jonathan for this feat, the Director General of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), the body statutorily charged with the responsibility to design and implement programs aimed at combating unemployment in the country, Mallam Abubakar Mohammed on his part put the number of unemployed youths at 50%.

    But although President Jonathan administration has continued to dig the hole making our escape more difficult with acts of executive profligacy, the president’s inability to fight corruption, and our legislators shameless involvement in constituency contracts, etc, but he cannot be held responsible for the situation in which we today find ourselves.

    That unenviable position is reserved for the past successive military regimes that mortgaged the present and the future of our youths. While Gowon and Murtala/Obasanjo regimes destroyed the academia and the bureaucracy, the two most important institutions in society, Babangida completed the cycle through structural economic derailment otherwise known as Structural Adjustment Program (SAP).

    Buhari lost his job because he was not prepared to do what Babangida, Kalu Idika Kalu, and Olu Falae eventually did. They accepted IMF loan, opened our market to importation which only increased employment for the youths of the exporting nations. Eskor Toyo and Sam Aluko warned that we would become a net importer of cheap goods, that local manufactured goods would become more expensive, that foreign capital would become more mobile while our labour also a factor of production would be immobile. Beko Ransome-Kuti, Gani Fawehinmi, Alao Aka-Bashorun and others took to the streets and were clamped into prison serving jail terms from Ikoyi to Gashua. Newspaper houses were closed down. Journalists were picked up in broad day light. Many simply escaped to Afghanistan.

    Babangida and his group devalued our naira which was almost at par with the pound sterling. And as our nation became a nation of immigrants, Margaret Thatcher in order to prevent economic immigrants from Nigeria slammed a visa requirement on Nigeria, a commonwealth country that was hitherto exempted from visa requirement.

    Of course, the PDP, peopled by military new breed that breed only corruption, messed up the privatization and commercialization exercise imposed by IMF as part of their conditionalities. Nasir El Rufai, the former BPE Director General confirmed blue chip companies on which the nation had invested over a hundred billion dollars were sold at give a way prices to PDP members and their cronies. World Bank projected the exercise would lead to the creation of seven million jobs. But our nation lost the enterprises, lost the job opportunities and lost our investments as a result of PDP greed.

    Today our ceramic industries, textile industries, automobile support industries, and pharmaceutical industries are all dead –their factories turned to ware houses for Italian tiles, imported guinea brocade or Taiwanese rice or fake substandard India and Chinese drugs.

    Poverty started by Babangida’s SAP is today manifesting in the activities of hungry and angry uneducated youths led by unemployed educated youths from the north, kidnapping for ransom and human trafficking and prostitution by jobless youths in the South-east and South-south.

    And now that those who mortgaged the present and future, of our youths have become apprehensive; now that our angry youths especially those below 30 years who have never known anything outside military dictatorship and corruption by military-created new breeds that populate our national and state assemblies know where they are coming from, they can take their future in their hands.

    After all, Chinua Achebe told us, if a people cannot remember where rain started beating them, they may not know where to dry their clothes. Now, our twitter savvy facebook friendly, miracle-seeking drenched youths, who earnestly supported President Jonathan on the basis of their interaction on the social media in the 2011 election, now know why they have remained drenched. They also can now see that the military is not an option.

    For their economic liberation, they must get their politics right. And to do this, they need a sense of history instead of saying the past has gone with the old people. This was the trick Babangida used to destroy our political culture and saddle us with new breed without values or role models.

    Their job is therefore simple. Mobilise and elect leaders that will be on the side of the people. Leaders who will not like the military and PDP buccaneers, behave like looters of conquered territories; leaders that can stop importation of textile, shoes, ceramics, tyres, fish, and rice. Leaders that can judiciously divert huge resources wasted on phantom fuel subsidy to massive subsidy of agriculture sector and the cotton belt of the north to keep restive youths busy. And above all leaders who have faith in Nigeria and ready to have a national conference to discuss our differences, unlike military and their PDP surrogate who are insisting Nigeria unity is not negotiable because they are beneficiaries of the current anarchy.

  • Nigeria’s descent into Hobbesian state

    Nigeria’s descent into Hobbesian state

    Economics and government are like two sides of a coin. The former, whether couched in flowery epithet as ‘law of demand and supply’, capitalism or globalization, is nothing but a label for the first law of the jungle, concerned in the main, with the survival of the fittest at the expense of the weak. The later as an impartial arbiter, strives to check the recklessness and greed of man by moving society away ‘from the jungle also known as the ‘state of liberty and license, of enmity and destruction’, to that of peace and safety’ where the privileged who have taken more than their disproportionate share of the national resources and the less privileged can jointly live in harmony. Whenever there is disharmony and anarchy in any society, such as we have had in the US, Europe, Argentina, and Brazil in recent years, it is often as a result of the failure of government.

    Our current descent into anarchy characterized by law of the jungle is the result of failure of our successive government and their economic policies dating back to the Babangida era.

    Babangida and his economic wizards -Kalu Idika Kalu, Olu Falae imposed the Structural Adjustment Program {SAP} which we were then told had no alternative. Its effects which include the collapse of our manufacturing sector and massive devaluation of our naira from about one naira to one pound in 1981 to today’s N260 to one pound sterling have been duly documented elsewhere to warrant repeating here. The common link between Obasanjo, his Okonjo-Iweala/Chukwuma Soludo team and President Goodluck Jonathan and his Okonjo-Iweala/Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.team is their disdain for contrary views and their insistence that our only pathway to economic growth and development is wholesale adoption of economic laws long discarded in most western countries where every government adopts a mixture of capitalism and socialism as an ideological orientation?

    Many well informed Nigerians as well as newspapers through editorials campaigned vigorously for a place for small banks in an economy many others insisted mega banks were no answer to inefficiency and corruption. Every contrary view to Soludo’s selective perception was treated with disdain. As Sanusi, Soludo’s successor has now pointed out, mega banks were avenue for mega corruption by players in the economy who obtained non performing loans and bank owners who fraudulently used depositor’s money to acquire private jets and properties all over the world.

    Sanusi, the new government economic wizard on his path expended N620b tax payers’ money to bail out the mismanaged banks. A few months later, the banks were sold at give away prices to those who were alleged to have contributed to the misfortune of the banks. Three years on Nigerians, are yet to be told by government the impartial arbiter how much of the tax payers’ N620 billion bailout had been paid back by the affected banks. And as part of the nation’s serial jeopardy, Sanusi’s policy led to the loss of close to 50% of the work force in the banking sector

    But elsewhere such as Europe and especially in the US where banks and manufacturing industries attracted government bail outs, they were in fact designed to enable people keep their jobs. And unlike here where our rulers have refused to talk about the status of the taxpayers money, it is common knowledge that some beneficiaries of bailout in the US including the City Group have paid back, while those that have started making profit are buying back government shares at a profit.

    Similarly, unlike in the US where automobile industries that benefited from government bailout are not only making giants steps in terms of growth but also in reducing unemployment, we chose to ignore our automobile support companies like Michelin and Dunlop that have today joined the importation train bringing tyres from China and South Africa. We are today the world biggest importer of used and substandard tyres. Our market is so big that it has been said used tyres manufactured as far back as 2004, are shipped into Nigeria from Ghana and South Africa. While the nation imports products of labour from other nations, our university trained engineers roam the streets.

    As part of our nations’ serial jeopardy, Sanusi’s policy of high interest rate in order to control inflation has driven the banks to embark on a mad rush for revenue mobilization. Our 19 and 20-year old girls are sent to the streets by the banks and directed to raise N200m monthly to keep their jobs. Scandalized by the callous act by the banks, David Mark the Senate President not too long ago called our attention the possible psychological, and emotional trauma these innocent young girls are subjected to so early in life.

    N200m deposit can only come as products of corruption from government agencies. The strategy therefore is that the young girls are let loose on government revenue agencies that have been alleged to sit on collected revenues for few months before transferring such funds to the Federation Account. The government in the interim is faced with cash flow problems. The House late last year raised queries as to why budgets were not being implemented despite the evidence that showed revenues in excess of the budget were raked in by government monthly.

    As part of our serial jeopardy, even when the banks got the deposit, the mobilized funds are still not given as loans to the manufacturing sector that are in a position to create jobs. They are instead diverted by the banks to buy government bonds at next to nothing interest rate. Of course this is a natural response to government policy of controlling inflation by keeping interest high.

    But except perhaps government economic wizards, who does not know that the main source of inflation is the more than 50% of the nation’s resources the federal government that lacks the capacity to fight its known corrupt PDP members controls? Of course we can add as source of inflation the governors’ security votes, the lawmakers out-of-this-world earnings, the unearned five percent allocation to traditional rulers who lose the moral right to checkmate the local council officials who share their councils’ allocations.

    An analysis of the current year budget will show at a glance, the bizarre appropriations to various bodies with duplicated functions. Why is it impossible for instance to insist that the EFCC survive on 20% of funds collected from indicted governors, bankers, oil fraudsters and PDP stalwarts?

    A government whose leading members share our national patrimony has been rendered impotent when the governed engaged themselves in a war of attrition – kidnapping, armed robbery, importation of fake products including drugs all in pursuit of of individual needs and greed. And these of course include such needs as security, electricity, water, comfort and a secured future for our children to protect them from being assaulted and debased by predators that abound in the jungle. In the absence of government that can act as impartial arbiter or as in our own case where President Jonathan’s PDP administration is in acquiescence with privileged few who do not give a damn about Nigeria, the law of the jungle reigns supreme.

  • Amnesty dialogue and compromise

    Amnesty dialogue and compromise

    The elite of Niger Delta (those described as vultures by Saro Wiwa) and those of the north are traditional allies. They know each other intimately. And what defines this intimate relationship is greed. Everything is therefore politics of mutual interest. And this explains why what appeared a patriotic call by the respected Sultan of Sokoto, for amnesty for Islamic insurgency that has defied solution for three years has turned into war over oil revenue sharing, or ownership of oil blocks all of which have no direct relevance to the lives of the poor in the scorched land of the Sahel north or those on polluted waters of the Delta creeks.

    We must not lose focus. President Jonathan who secured a landslide victory in the 2011 presidential election was soon to be confronted with crisis of legitimacy. Some states became no go area for the president. Literarily restricted to a fortified presidential palace for most official functions, the president appealed to the northern leaders including the traditional rulers for help. We the cynics also supported the president by insisting the northern leaders must be made to confront their nemesis- their angry hungry uneducated jobless youths using religion as a subterfuge to fight their oppressors.

    Thereafter, a committee on Reconciliation, Healing and Security, chaired by Ambassador Zakari Ibrahim, was set up by the Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF). The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, by canvassing for total amnesty for members of Boko Haram, to end their four-year reign of terror merely echoed the recommendation of that committee.

    The NSGF committee among other recommendations also requested the president to visit Borno, Yobe and Kano states, the epicenter of Boko Haram insurgency. It also urged the president to “order the immediate release of all detainees against whom there is no established case of criminal involvement, and the immediate prosecution of those against whom there is evidence of criminal involvement, before courts of competent jurisdictions.”

    The Sultan, who has admitted during the recent annual meeting of the Central Council of the Jama’atul Nasril Islam, JNI, in Kaduna that ‘We northerners have put ourselves in a quagmire, because whatever that is happening in the North is our own doing’ has as a demonstration of his commitment to finding solution to the problem within his Muslim fold, recommended that the Federal Government commence the process of licensing preachers in the country to reduce the incidence of wrong indoctrination of youths.

    But rejecting the Sultan’s recommendation at a Town Hall meeting in Damaturu, during his first visit to Yobe State, the president declared “We cannot declare amnesty for Boko Haram because we cannot declare amnesty for ghosts”. He has remained resolute even after it was pointed out that in 2012, we spent N1 trillion fighting the insurgency that has already led to the death of about 4,000 Nigerians and that some of those he described as ghosts are still in detention. Not even the Sultan’s logic that “even if it is only one that is identified, that one would provide a lead” impressed the president.

    But as if to make the government’s work easy, Muhammed Abdulaziz the Second-in-Command (southern and northern Borno) of Boko Haram, publicly declared a ceasefire which he said was the result of a dialogue with the Borno State government. “We are going to comply with the cease- fire order and by the time we are done with that, then government security agencies can go ahead to arrest whoever they find carrying arms or killing under our name,”

    If one thought that was all the lead a responsive government needed to act, one was wrong. Last Sunday several days after this press statement, the president’s spokesman issued a statement tasking the northern leaders canvassing for amnesty to identify Boko Haram members

    And now lined up behind the president are the Delta warlords, militants turned contractors, intellectuals and other opinion leaders from the zone who now claim Boko Haram is sponsored by their traditional allies from the north to discredit Jonathan presidency and also for a greater portion of oil revenue. We have in the group Prof Kimse Okoko, President of Conference of Ethnic Nationalities of the Niger Delta, Ms. Ann Kio Briggs of the Ijaw Republican Assembly, former MEND leader, Chief Government Ekpemupolo, the Izon-Ebe Oil Producing Communities Forum (IOPCF) and pioneer Chairman of Traditional Rulers of Oil Mineral Producing Communities of Nigeria, (TROMPCON) Pere Charles Ayemi Botu. Not left out is HRM, King Dodo II, Pere of Bilabiri Mien Kingdom, Bayelsa state”.

    Support is also coming for the president’s stand from unusual quarters – Femi Fani-Kayode who hitherto was a critic of Jonathan’s administration Understandably, the president’s hard line position is supported by Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) whose members have suffered more in the almost three years of mindless killing and burning of churches. Its National Secretary General Reverend Musa Asake, stated categorically that “the association rejects any offer of amnesty for members of the Boko Haram sect ‘“because the Sultan used the word injustice to the sect and not to the Christians”

    But in this unfolding war between Niger Delta oil owners and their traditional allies, my sympathy lies with the later. Unlike the president who controls an awesome apparatus of state power which he displayed during his visit to Yola and who also has a fortified Aso rock as shield, the northern leaders and the poor under daily assault by Boko Haram have nowhere to hide. There had been attempts on the lives of the Shehu of Borno, the Emir of Kano and the Emir of Fika. The emirs are safe neither in their palaces nor in the hallowed mosques. The governors operate from adjacent states. And those who failed to make a difference when they were in power like the celebrated oil block owners and the fuel subsidy fraudsters have migrated to Lagos or abroad. I take side with them because their individual members alone can tell where the shoe pinches.

    And this perhaps explains why Abdulsalami Abubakar, former military Head of state whose Niger State witnessed brutal murder of youth corpers not too long ago, chose far away New York to lend his voice to the call for amnesty for Boko Haram: “People are made homeless, people are made orphans, they are made widows, so if amnesty to this people will bring peace and bring succour to our country, why not?”, he had said in an answer to a reporter.

    Alhaji Abubakar Tsav former Commissioner of Police, Lagos State; Nuru Ribadu, Nasir El Rufai andnd Hafiz Rigim, the former IG who escaped death by the whiskers and who is now seeking asylum in Britain, are voices from outside the troubled area supporting amnesty for Boko Haram.

    National Assembly members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from the North-east have also appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan. The Deputy Senate Leader, Abdul Ningi, made the appeal saying “We want the president to make a u-turn, grant them amnesty, protect our lives and address the security challenges in the region”.

    Besides, the voiceless poor in the embattled north eastern Nigeria are also caught in between two deep seas. The Amnesty International Report entitled, “Nigeria: Trapped in the Cycle of Violence’’, was recently released. It documented the atrocities carried out by Boko Haram as well as the alleged human rights violations carried out by security forces in response. The report spoke of ‘disappearance, torture, extrajudicial executions, the torching of homes and detention without trial’.

    This column has canvassed for dialogue for two years. That is because the beauty of democracy is dialogue even when other option like coercion is available. And in a federal arrangement, compromise which comes only through dialogue without preconditions is a celebrated virtue. Those who committed crime deserve punishment. The president must however know that Boko Haram like any group in our multi ethnic society owes no one an apology for wanting to be different.

  • The APC acronym war

    It is not difficult to dismiss the claim by ACN that Attahiru Jega’s INEC has merged with PDP as an over exaggeration. Jega’s last Saturday’s outing and pronouncements while speaking on a live audience participation Radio Nigeria Hausa programme, Hanu Dayawa, on the then raging APC acronym war however seemed to give further credence to Muhammadu Buharis’s often repeated claim that there is only a thin line separating INEC and PDP. Curiously, Jega’s tone, choice of words and body language, seemed to be in tandem with both PDP and the phantom APC. As expected, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, also called attention to INEC seeming support for what it describes as ignoble and subversive role of PDP in an attempt to register a proxy “African People’s Congress “to forestall the registration of the authentic APC.

    Before Monday’s INEC announcement of the rejection of African People’s Congress’ application for breaching Section 222(a) of the 1999 Constitution (As amended), the only thing the proposed party, PDP and INEC seemed to have in abundance for the opposition was contempt. For instance, while Kingsley Nnadi, of the phantom APC spoke of “just one APC (African People’s Congress)”, insisting, “the other APC only did mere negotiation”, PDP claimed “the APC and its component parties—the ACN, CPC, ANPP and others—only advertised their boastful and deceitful…” which is not markedly different from Jega’s “only one group came… saying they want to form a political party with a particular name and while this was going on, some people started making noise saying that they wanted to merge with so, so name”.

    Neither can we find something more parallel than Nnadi’s “the unveiling of our party today has finally put to rest the contention over APC, which one is authentic or not” and the INEC chairman’s “Somebody first came with the name and …if you want your application to be considered, go and change your name because it is not possible to register three groups with the same name”.

    PDP’s description of the opposition as engaging “in leaping jamboree and propaganda , the hallmark of political naivety, painlessness” is not dissimilar to Jega’s “We only read in the newspapers that they have the intension of merging …If anybody wants to register a political party, you are expected to tell INEC of your intention”.

    But while Jega played the ostrich, Nigerians knew all along that Ugochinyere Ikenga, the secret promoter of the now rejected phantom APC, apart from being a card carrying member of the PDP, was known to have been involved in such hatchet jobs within the ruling party. It was reported he once tried to stop the emergence of a former national chairman of the party, Okwesiliezi Nwodo from assuming office, and in another instance, precisely on March 10, 2012, went to court in an attempt to stop Bamanga Tukur from vying for the position of PDP national chairman.

    And in spite of Jega’s body language, what was not lost on Nigerians, was the parallel between PDP/ presidency’s alleged sponsored proxy APC whose public face was Ikenga and Babangida’s secretly sponsored Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) that was used to truncate the Third Republic by desperate military politicians who ironically bred most of the current thieving members of the ruling class.

    But reading in between the lines, what should be of concern to Nigerians was Jega’s apparent indifference to, or acquiescence with PDP or any other group that may wish to employ immoral approach to secure special advantage in the 2015 election.

    This has been the bane of our politics dating back to the First Republic when ruling parties and electoral officers technically disqualified opposition candidates by not making application forms available until too late. We have since graduated from there to the fourth republic when elections which Obasanjo defined as a “do or die affair” are brazenly rigged while opposition candidates are told to go to court.

    Elections may have become a zero sum struggle for power here and elsewhere in Africa, but it is the responsibility of privileged individuals like Jega who swore to an oath of allegiance to Nigeria to prevent those determined to acquire power through immoral means. Our experience has shown one immoral step begets another or more immoral reactions.

    Babangida’s annulment of the most credible election in our nation’s history produced Sonekan’s short lived immoral interim government which in turn produced an equally immoral Abacha regime, the most brutal in the nation’s history

    We hailed Obasanjo who lost election in his ward in 1999 for his political brinkmanship when he outmaneuvered the Afenifere Yoruba elders in 2003. Obasanjo’s immoral acts of 2003, led to routine removal and replacement of governors, visitation of unprecedented level of violence and political assassinations in the whole of South-west including his Ogun State where the governor chased the state’s elected law makers out of town. Other Obasanjo’s immoral acts include forcing government contractors to make contributions towards the building of a private library and an attempt to manipulate constitutional amendment exercise to secure a third term in office, an exercise Ken Nnamani, the then Senate President claimed cost the nation over N10b.

    Today we reap the effect of our collective perfidy of supporting President Jonathan’s immoral upturning of his party’s zoning policy which first brought him into the limelight. We all, including men of God, hailed him as the scourge of the Hausa/Fulani hegemonic feudal lords. It was not too long when we started reaping what we sowed as he slapped the people with an increase in pump price of oil from N65 to N140. He has continued to keep those accused of corruption in his cabinet without giving a damn and only last week granted an amnesty to a convicted former Bayelsa State governor who is still facing charges in Britain.

    As the battle for 2015 unfolds, the power of the governor’s forum is undermined while the level of corruption has assumed new proportions as funds are needed for the battle ahead. And for this ‘do or die ‘electoral battle, no promises are too sacred to break. Early this week, Edwin Clark, President Jonathan’s godfather asserted that even if there was an agreement between the president and northern state governors to serve only one term, the president is not obliged to keep it. His justification: Niger state delegates voted for Abubakar Atiku in the 2011 PDP primary. And in any case, Clark who has nothing to teach the youths wondered if it is not on record that Niger State “voted overwhelmingly for Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) of the CPC who scored a total vote of 652,574 against President Jonathan’s 321,429 in the last Presidential election”.

    The executive cannot be trusted as they do not respect even their own laws and personal undertakings; the law makers are lawless as they struggle to usurp the functions of the executive, and our judiciary that shields the powerful and their children has become the sanctuary for the depraved. Less than 20% of our people have confidence in the fourth estate of the realm that has chosen to celebrate criminals and others whose activities they are to monitor instead of protecting the people.

    Our frustrated jobless youths ask us daily the way forward. The only answer we have for them is election of credible people who are ready to put the interest of the people before their own. The only group capable of rekindling hope in our youths is Jega and his privileged crew, beckoned upon by circumstances to perform an historic role at this point in our nation’s history. They will need more than legal provisions and its inherent loop holes in this arduous task.

  • The many enemies of ‘Ijaw Governor-General

    The many enemies of ‘Ijaw Governor-General

    Memories are very short and no condition is permanent. How sad jobless critics of the recent presidential amnesty to convicted former governor of Bayelsa, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, can hardly remember the man once once bestrode Nigeria like a colossus. As ‘Governor General’ of the Ijaws, he was even touted as a possible replacement for Chief Obasanjo as president of a nation where thieves, the indolent, oil/financial fraudsters, armed and pen robbers always steal the limelight.

    The travails of a man now claimed to be the brain behind the then rampaging Niger Delta militants, started with his offshore detractors that chased him around the world investigating his involvement in corruption and money laundering. The war was led by the governments of Britain, United States, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank under the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative’. It was the international community that told us of his accumulated properties, bank accounts, investments and cash exceeding £10m in value. It was his off-shore enemies that revealed his portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK and further accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, assets in the United States, since seized by the US government and almost £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. It was Britain Metropolitan police that charged him to court from where he jumped bail and escaped to Nigeria allegedly dressed like a woman.

    It was only after this, Ribadu, then the helmsman at EFCC, overstepped his bounds by securing the conviction of the ‘Governor General’ of Ijaw nation, an affront he paid dearly for. And now our president who has made a fetish of his piety through various public demonstrations including exhortation amidst his state house church congregation that “when God gives us power, we must use it for the glory of His creation”, has granted the Ijaw ‘governor general’ an amnesty.

    Those who are not stakeholders in the affairs of Balyelsa state have assailed us for over a week on the amnesty granted the convicted former governor. These busy bodies have forgotten that President Jonathan as everyone knows except mischief makers is a pious man Like late Tai Solarin who claimed he would accept gift from the devil if it would advance the course of education, he has in fact gone ahead to enthusiastically accept a gift of a church from a government contractor for his community Jonathan, a man of faith obviously to ensure the hard working fishing community of Otuoke need a place to commune with God , the only one who can lessen their burden after each day on the sea paddling canoes.

    Last week, he was in Lagos to rake in about N7b from government contractors, sitting PDP governors and the ruling PDP for the expansion of evangelization work in Otuoke. (Less inspiring critics claimed the fund should be diverted to purchasing fishing trawlers for those who operate on high sees with paddle canoes). But the president knows, ‘they that labour without putting God first do in vain’.

    Critics of the president’s granting of amnesty to a man he calls his god-father seem to have also forgotten that our humble president is a loyal and compassionate leader; whose sense of fairness and magnanimity is unparalleled in our nation’s history as long as there are no imaginary enemies that threaten his position and his control of PDP. If Ogbuluafor, the former PDP chairman, the disgraced former governor of Bayelsa and Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers, the chairman of now divided Governors Forum have different tales, it was because they misread the president’s mood.

    But what if one may ask, are the problems of critics who like professional undertakers that weep louder than the bereaved who have assaulted and libeled our humble president this past one week? First, a ‘coalition against corrupt leaders’ led by Debo Adeniran, its chairman, said the pardon of convicted ex-governor Alamieyeseigha who Okupe said had served his terms was another proof that the present administration was corrupt.

    I cannot see the logic. They also claim a man the president and his spokesmen claimed had suffered enough did not deserve a pardon because he bled his state’s covers during his tenure as governor’,

    But the fishing Ijaw communities, who by nature are God-fearing and submissive like their illustrious son(s), have never complained to anyone that their ex-governor used part of their funds to buy a few properties in Europe and America. Not even the revelation by Sahara Reporters that the president himself as governor of Balyelsa donated $1m of his state poverty alleviation funds to a resourceful media guru who has changed all the rules of journalism (apology to Uncle Sam Amuka) to bring Beyoncee from the US to sing for about two hours to an audience Otuoke people had no opportunity of attending attracted any reaction. Can’t these critics understand that for the Ijaws of Bayelsa, their children are their children, right or wrong?

    Another critic of the president action is Ribadu. Probably still nursing the wounds of having been rubbished as chairman of Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, whose report, Okupe said was inconclusive on the day of its presentation before he had time to read it. The report was finally thrown into the dustbin. And now a man whose views did not sell when consulted is without being asked for his views, claiming the ‘amnesty granted Alamieyeseigha and ex-Managing Director of Bank of the North, Alhaji Mohammed Bulama, is capable of stopping the war against corruption’. But we all know that war stopped a long time ago. Obasanjo, Jonathan’s and Ribadu’s godfather has even confirmed that. Will someone tell Ribadu, a failed presidential candidate to stop belly aching, keep his views to himself and allow our elected president to run his government?

    Ribadu, not done also said the pardon granted Alamieyeseigha and Bulama would send a negative message to the judiciary and law enforcement agencies. One will like to know which judiciary he is talking about. Is it the one that freed Ibori, a man called a thief in government house and jailed in Britain, or the one that freed Igbinedion and Yusuf with a slap on the arm after massive looting of our resources? Or could it by any chance include the judiciary that is busy shielding children of PDP stalwarts alleged to have committed barefaced robbery through ‘plea bargaining’ which my good friend, Felix Fagbohungbe (SAN) recently described as ‘commercialisation of our Criminal Code’? As for the police, I thought before the police authority chased him out of the force and the country, he passed his judgment on the police by putting his then IG in chains before securing his conviction for stealing billions of police welfare and equipment funds. (By the way, if ex-IG Balogun has the right connection, he is also due for amnesty).

    According to Okupe, a Yoruba adage says “you ask a thief to run and he runs, you ask a thief to drop what he is holding and he drops it, what are you chasing him for again?” In his view, the framers of the constitution envisaged the need for some ex-convicts to be re-integrated into the society, especially if they have shown penitence and willingness to contribute positively to societal growth. I agree with Okupe who is just a marvel when defending President Jonathan. Not too long ago he suffered the same fate, not as a convict but as an accused, when called upon to come and contribute positively to societal growth by President Jonathan.

  • Newswatch vs. Jimoh Ibrahim

    Recourse to memory will show it is not often you see Nigerian editors running a newspaper/magazine as a successful commercial enterprise. Newswatch and its editors therefore deserve some credit for running their newsmagazine as an ongoing successful business concern for an unbroken 28 years until they were finally outwitted by Jimoh Ibrahim, a veteran of Nigeria brand of crude capitalism.

    This feat is unmatched in the history of newspaper and magazine publication in Nigeria, The trend has always been either the collapse of editor-managed publications because of incompetence as business managers or as often the case, being outwitted by their more business savvy and ruthless partners.

    And when the end finally came on May 5, 2011 for Newswatch, started in 1984 by the late Dele Giwa and the trio of Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, and Yakubu Mohammed, it was as a victim of two factors: incompetence as business managers and the editors over-reliance on idealism as against pragmatism of their adversary whose sole objective as a ruthless capitalist is reducing the weak to servitude that the strong can continue to flourish.

    Jimoh Ibrahim in fact claimed during the signing of memorandum of understanding that based on the reports submitted by members of his acquisition team, “the principal problem of the magazine was that of finance and therefore his new team would concentrate on the managerial aspect of the company”. Under the new arrangement, the backlog of seven months staff salary owed by the old out-going management will be paid by the new management while all debts being owed by the old management will also be paid by the new owner.

    But Ibrahim failed to pay salaries as promised. He also did not show interest in expansion such as building of a new headquarters as recently claimed by Mohammed during the last court proceeding. But Ibrahim dared the ex-editors and rested the news magazine insisting it was “due for corporate surgery”.

    But the truth is as told by Jimoh Ibrahim who now has all the aces it is no more in dispute that he offered N1billion for the control of 52% of Newswatch. It is a fact the ex-Newswatch editors/directors resigned after collecting mouth watering severance packages. Ray Ekpu has at least admitted collecting N79m with an outstanding of N30m Jimoh Ibrahim still held on to.

    The law also seems to side with Jimoh Ibrahim. As Justice Okon Abang who dismissed the case of the Newswatch minority share holders has argued, “since the defendants who had resigned as directors are still claiming to have the right to declare a trade dispute, this is likely to affect the right of majority shareholders, and that gives the majority shareholders locus standi to bring the suit”.

    But besides Ibrahim’s moral and judicial victories, I think it is fruitless fighting against a man that is always ready to fight with might and means and sometimes in public when anything impinges on his rights.

    The other day when Sanusi, the CBN governor lumped his name together with those he claimed contributed to the collapse of many banks as a result of their non-performing’ loans, it would be recalled, Jimoh Ibrahim spent several millions of naira, close to the amount credited against his name on advertorial pages to tell the public that he was not indebted to Oceanic Bank or any bank for that matter.

    When the senate made uncomplimentary remarks about airline operators after the crash of DANA Airline that killed 153, Ibrahim alone hit back at senators he claimed “know next to nothing about aviation but chose to pontificate”. “Just because we elected them”, he thundered, “does not mean they can just talk any how…Let them come to the industry and see if they can successfully manage one aircraft”.

    I also expect my friend Ray Ekpu and his ex-editors to be wary of an adversary who admitted when he started secondary school, he was always the second last in his class. “There used to be 24 pupils in a class. I always got the 23rd position”, he recently told a reporter. Ibrahim today describes himself as a “corporate surgeon specializing in buying sick corporations”. But the available records indicate Ibrahim instead of surgery has often performed autopsy.

    Ray Ekpu also seems to have ignored Ibrahim’s subtle threat who upon being criticized for closing down the Newswatch said: “When God got angry with the Israelites, he unleashed fire on them. I should be praised not criticized. …. I’m not unleashing fire but simply suspending the magazine.” Surely there must be a more subtle way for Ray Ekpu to collect his outstanding N30m without inviting the wrath of Ibrahim.

    I cannot imagine how Ray Ekpu and his colleagues who were dazed by Jimoh Ibrahim’s N1billion will now see themselves as a match to a man who said “I am bigger than Richard Branson”, or who told the governor of his state after an encounter at the airport that “visiting a private aircraft without invitation, when he is not an airport official, is a security risk and amounts to conduct unbecoming of a governor.”

    Above all, Ibrahim has little to lose in terms of reputation in spite scurrilous attack by his political, business and now media adversaries. For doing exactly what he knows how to do best – buy distressed companies that “are assets rich, which he then uses as collateral to borrow more money from banks”, he has been described as “the proverbial business pirate who destroys and kills any business he gets his hands on, while enriching himself”.

    He has been libelled by enemies who alleged he diverted N35b aviation fund meant to support his now dead airlines to NICON Investment Limited claimed to be jointly owned 100% with his wife.

    Jimoh Ibrahim’s envious enemies are not done; they wickedly alleged he converted N10 billion paid by the Accountant-General of the Federation to NICON Insurance Plc for the payment of pensioners to buy himself a Bombardier Challenger 625 private jet.

    Ray Ekpu must note that with all the assaults from different directions, Ibrahim has continued to wax stronger.

    The Newswatch editors have nothing to be ashamed of. They have done well for themselves when one remembers that after being out-witted by British and Nigerian business men that owned the Daily Times, Ernest Ikoli, the editor that gave the paper a character, died in a hotel room with no severance package or a roof over his head. We cannot say the same of Newswatch multi-millionaire former editors.

    Uncle Sam Amuka Pemu aka ‘Sad Sam’ did not get much when he was outmanoeuvred out of The Punch by late business mogul- Aboderin after giving the paper a character. Dr Stanley Macebuh, my boss at The Guardian, gave the newspaper its character but got no severance package after late Alex Ibru, the paper’s financial backbone pushed him out accusing him of divided interest for allegedly selling sugar. Lade Bonuola, his successor did not fare any better; I’m aware he has no mansion in any of Lagos GRAs or anywhere in the country for that matter.

    The ex-editors were given a bloody nose by a veteran operator in Nigeria economic jungle where there are no rules, where those who contributed to the collapse of government owned thriving business concerns such as airlines, hotels, banks’ turned-around, under government’s fraudulent privatization and commercialization programme. They took control with state money, and where, to quote Professor Bolaji Akinyemi my teacher, most Nigerian billionaires cannot account for the source of their wealth.

  • What Nigerians demand of Jonathan and PDP

    PDP zero-sum struggle for power without responsibility has begun in earnest. The battle line as it was in 2010 is once again between President Goodluck Jonathan and the northern political class whose current public face is Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State. Jonathan who has now come of age has taken the battle directly to his political adversaries.

    The chairmanship of Nigerian Ports Authority and that of Board of Trustees of the PDP (BoT) considered critical for electoral funding and victory have both been ceded to 80 years old Tony Anenih, the celebrated ‘fixer’. The president has in his pocket, Bamanga Tukur, who is as ruthless as other past PDP chairmen such as Ahmadu Alli whose son like his was involved in alleged fuel importation scam, Prince Vincent Ogbuluafor, taken to court by Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for aiding three bogus companies who claimed to have executed jobs worth over N2.2billion’, and Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.

    Tukur has also effortlessly caged Jonathan political enemies in the South-west, neutralized the influence of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) headed by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and installed Godswill Akpabio of Akwan Ibom as the chairman of newly formed PDP Governors parallel forum.

    The president has ignored the claim by Governor Aliyu, the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum that he signed a document with the northern governors back in 2010, to the effect that he would do only one term. Dr Doyin Okupe the president’s spokesman has however dismissed Babangida’s claim as diversionary. He says the president considers such claim as “an invidious attempt to sway him from his chosen pursuit of the set out constituents of the transformation agenda which form the basis upon which Nigerians overwhelmingly elected him to steer the ship of the nation in 2011.” Whatever that means.

    But the president’s wife not known for any form of obfuscation has along with other PDP women of goodwill started to count the chicks before the eggs are hatched. For Patience Jonathan, ‘100 opposition cannot defeat PDP’. And as for the PDP Women Leader, Kema Chikwe, her group she says “is confident that when President Jonathan returns in 2015, women would be talking about 50 per cent, no longer 35 per cent affirmative action”.

    Indeed, other Jonathan strategists have moved beyond whether Jonathan would run or not .They have plotted how he would effortlessly capture 11 of the 19 states in the north and five of South-east and six of South-south.

    Now that we have been told our input may not count for much in President Jonathan’s return to Aso rock in 2015, we can at least remind him of other pending issues beside his uncompleted ‘transformation agenda’ Dr. Okupe so romantically talked about.

    May we remind the president that in spite of his chest-beating about achievement on electricity, 150m Nigerians still have to ration 4,600MW after PDP’s 13 years in power and frittering away of close to $20b compared to 150,000MW South Africa generates for her 35m population.

    That our roads are in worse state of disrepair than PDP met them 13 years ago. (Governor Fashola of Lagos only last week threw a challenge at the federal government to identify a 100 kilometre road they have completed anywhere in the country this past 13 years.)

    But far more than decay in infrastructure, the president is aware of the international community’s warning of possible collapse of the Nigerian economy in the next three years with the dwindling oil fortunes arising from US drive for self-sufficiency in energy coupled with the massive corruption of Nigerian ruling class. This was long before the recent ACN alert.

    We may also wish to remind the president that even if he and the PDP do not give a damn about Nigerians who they assume suffer from collective amnesia, they can on account of Nigerians having become the butt of expensive jokes by players in the international community such as David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain and Bill Clinton, former US President who literarily told Jonathan to his face that Nigerian ruling class are thieves, to revisit the following outstanding issues before his foreclosed return to Aso rock in 2015.

    On the Lawan Farouk House committee report of alleged theft of N1.7trillion by fuel importers, Okupe had said we should praise the president for insisting the son of his party chairman fingered in the scam faces the law. Today while he and his accomplices are flying around the world, Nigerian SANs and judges have told us they are busy discussing ‘plea bargaining’ on their behalf in absentia.

    We may need to remind the president that his Ribadu Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force discovered N10 trillion was lost to crude oil theft, from a yearly loss of 250,000 barrels per day or N1 trillion yearly. But Shell Nigeria’s Managing Director Mutiu Sunmonu said only on Monday that “The volume stolen, today, including over 60,000 barrels per day from Shell alone, is the highest in the last three years.” He did not forget to add the obvious: that government should confront the big men behind oil theft. In 2011, Nigeria lost $7b to oil theft.

    The same Ribadu Committee reported that N178 billion worth of refined petroleum products was stolen from the pipelines, through vandalism orchestrated by thieves. That has continued unabated even with the substitution of our ill-equipped naval men with companies owned by repentant militants that have secured mouth-watering contracts. Shell claims it spent $1.1m to repair damaged pipes in Nembe Creek in 2012.

    We have also only seen cosmetic changes in NNPC which the report claims incurred $5 billion (N785 billion) short-payment from sale of domestic crude and recorded a deficit of N298 billion from the accounts of its 16 subsidiaries. The report has more. $183 million (N28.7 billion) remained outstanding from signature bonuses.

    And still outstanding is Oby Ezekwesili’s recent claim that the regimes of late President Umaru Yar’Adua and that of President Jonathan squandered $67bn from the country’s foreign reserve. In spite of Okupe’s wild claim that it was an attempt to bring the Jonathan administration down, Nigerians believe Ezekwesili’s challenge for a debate is a step in the right direction.

    Nigerians are also interested in knowing the number of aircrafts and helicopters President Jonathan intend to add to his current fleet of 10 since 2015 is settled. Sahara Reporters had alleged in its edition of December 5, 2012 that while most major countries in Europe and Asia maintain mostly two aircraft in their presidential fleet, the Jonathan-led administration spends estimated N9.08bn annually on 10 Presidential jets.

    And finally, I also think Nigerians will also want the president and PDP to give account of all recovered loots from their indicted party members and sympathizers. This is in view of the claim of an Anti-Corruption Network that the N191bn assets seized from the Managing Director of the defunct Oceanic Bank Plc, Cecilia Ibru cannot be accounted for. According to them, their “investigation and physical visits to some of the properties in the United States and United Kingdom revealed that some of the properties claimed to have been forfeited are still in her custody directly or indirectly.”

    Perhaps our story would have been different if only President Jonathan and PDP had dedicated half of the energy currently deployed towards how to share spoils of office comes 2015 to serving Nigerians like Obafemi Awolowo and his AG party once did for the West and Ahmadu Bello and his NPCparty replicated in the North in the 1960s.

    The above few demands therefore, contrary to the conclusion Okupe will most predictably reach, are not designed to bring down PDP and Jonathan administration we are told is already destined to return to power in spite of 13 years dismal record, but to aid those who have started to question the sanity of Nigerians.

  • The new Fayemi challenge

    Lest we forget how Ekiti a ‘historically and culturally identical’ land of honor was desecrated. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in all his majesty surveyed our land and settled for an Ayo Fayose as a replacement for Niyi Adebayo as governor of Ekiti State. Following a contrived dispute between Abiodun Olujimi, impeached Fayose’s deputy and the Speaker of the state House of Assembly, a state of emergency was declared in October 2006. General Tunji Olurin, Obasanjo’s kinsman was installed as sole administrator. It was obvious his mandate was to do a hatchet job of preparing the ground for rigging Segun Oni into office in the same manner Dr Koye Majekodunmi did in Ibadan during the first republic when he reinstated Akintola who had been constitutionally removed from office as premier and prepared the ground for the rigging of the 1965 regional election in his favour.

    Two years of purposeful leadership has already eclipsed eight years of political upheaval, violence, uncertainty and anxiety that characterized Obasanjo’s self-serving intervention in Ekiti. Peace has gradually returned to Ekiti, and today, Kayode Fayemi is dedicated to the ‘the restoration of the core Ekiti values of passion, courage, integrity, meritocracy and honour.’

    He is building roads and renovating schools. He has already equipped students and teachers with about 30,000 laptops. He has put in place a social programme that caters for about 20,000 elderly citizens. His free health programme is said to capture about 60 per cent of the population.

    But we are left with permanent scars of Obasanjo’s assault on our people and our land of honour. The most visible scar of Obasanjo’s selfish intervention in our affairs is the army of school dropouts following the near collapse of the educational sector of the state during the PDP years of locust. Ayo Fayose, it would be recalled, preferred poultry farms to medical school while a better equipped Segun Oni enmeshed in PDP politics of ‘sharing’ ignored informed suggestions to expend his energies on secondary schools instead of establishing universities the state could not support financially.

    One very sad example as governor Fayemi recently pointed out is that Christ School, unarguably the best in the state, and one of the best (like my own St Joseph’s College Ondo) in the federation, was in recent years recording less than 10% success in the West African School Certificate examinations. Most of the dropouts, spread around the state in the last 10 years have since found new callings as Babalawo (traditional healers), political thugs and pastors.

    One manifestation of this development was what happened in Emure last week, when misguided youths took law into their hands, disrupted market, stoned their traditional ruler the Elemure of Emure, Oba Emmanuel Adebowale Adebayo, and chased the community chiefs out of the palace.

    Their grouses: harvests of deaths of young people in their community arising from accidents such as those involving “two undergraduates from the community who died in a motorcycle accident in far away Ado Ekiti on Valentine’s Day, and, three persons who also died in an accident on Ikere – Ise – Emure road when the vehicles they were travelling in had a head-on collision”. The youths wanted their traditional ruler and his chiefs to explain how the members of their community met their death in such ‘strange circumstances’

    But if the governor thought the misguided youths with wild views were all he had to deal with, he was wrong. He also has the traditional rulers whose bemusing response to what by all accounts was an idiotic demand was a plan to ‘organise an interdenominational religious prayer session’ to curb harvests of deaths through motor cycle and car accidents.

    In the circumstance, Governor Fayemi has an arduous task in a state where religion has become the most thriving industry, second only to political thuggery, where misguided miracle seeking youths, instead of working, depend on periodic handouts from politicians, and a state where the only value added to the lives of citizens by traditional rulers who share five per cent of local council allocation in addition to gifts of new cars from state government is prayers.

    The task we are giving to the governor will now include the enforcement of God’s injunction that we must all ‘live by our sweats’ and the labelling as 419ers all misguided youths and community leaders who try to swindle God through endless prayers even after He, our almighty Father has decreed ‘we must all reap what we sow’. Their accomplices-the fake pastors who are insisting our youths can reap where they have not sown, must be declared enemies of the people and handed over to EFCC.

    For those honest Ekiti youths who want to live by their sweat and reap what they sow, the governor can call their attention to the good news Senator Babafemi Ojudu brought back from his recent tour of Israel. Ojudu cited the case of three young graduate farmers he met in Israel during the tour who post an annual turnover of $12m by cultivating tomato for export through a new irrigation method.

    Our hard-working and creative governor who has a way of getting things done must find a way of convincing our fraudulent young prosperity gospel preachers and their gullible miracle seekers that a new wave of miracles currently coming out of Israel, a war-ravaged, desert, land of unbelievers, who killed Jesus the son of God and thereafter unrepentantly proclaimed ‘may his blood be on us and on our children’, are also possible here.

    Happily, Ekiti is not a barren land. Ojudu has said arrangements are being made to irrigate 40,000 hectares of land throughout the year and that this is to be parcelled out to youths who genuinely want miracle based on God’s injunction that we must live through our sweat. The overpaid traditional rulers who have been reaping from where they did not sow should be given responsibility to mobilise the misguided youths of their various communities towards productive endeavours. They have lived as parasites for far too long with powers without responsibilities. Fayemi must find a way of making them more relevant to their communities.

    The stakes are high but the governor cannot afford to fail in this arduous endeavour because of its far-reaching implications for the future of our state. In another 10 years, today’s youth on whom he is investing so much are going to become doctors, lawyers and other professionals. As a social scientist, he knows today’s fraudulent miracle seekers, if not liberated, will provide only an insecure environment for his dream new generation of proud Ekiti young professionals. We are today witnesses to such failures in some parts of our country where those on whom huge investment had been made with the hope of bringing development back to their communities have been driven out to seek refuge and fulfilment in other areas including foreign lands.

  • Yoruba marginalisation: OBJ and PDP greed

    Yoruba marginalisation: OBJ and PDP greed

    “In things that are not enough, when people sit down to share and take decisions, if there is nobody to speak for you, there is problem,’’  Dr Doyin Okupe

    Shame on to all those who have said PDP has neither a philosophical foundation nor an ideological orientation. There you have it at last from a PDP leading light who should know having seen it all. As Obasanjo media spokesman, he legally secured contracts from Imo and Benue states. It did not matter that EFCC had to be invited to resolve how the ‘sharing’ was done applying the usual PDP ‘family affair’ approach. The important thing was that both PDP governors involved and Dr. Doyin Okupe were happy and maintained their peace while their political enemies wasted so much energy on non-implementation or non-completion of the road contracts.

    Except for a few cynical Nigerians and other PDP detractors, ‘sharing’ has long been accepted as PDP prevailing ideology even beyond our shores. Long before Okupe’s testament, John Campbell, former US envoy had during proceedings at a hearing on the topic “Nigeria in Turmoil” in the British House of Commons on the 19 March 2010 presented PDP as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria’; ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils.’

    As if Okupe’s and Campbell’s thesis needed further validation, Audu Ogbe, a former chairman of PDP who claims ‘corruption is the only thriving sector in the country’, has further consolidated the views of Okupe, a PDP insider and Campbell, a detached political analyst. Hear Ogbe, “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil.”

    I also find myself for once supporting Okupe’s admonition that Yoruba Council of Elders, Afenifere (both old and renewal) absolve Jonathan from the war of attrition among South-west PDP greedy members. If they feel short-changed, they should look inward towards their greedy representatives in the PDP. Don’t our people say, the insect that feeds on yam lives as a parasite on the yam?

    Stripped of an attempt to rope in ACN whose ideology everyone knows is ‘Afenifere’, translated “prosperity for all through creation of an enabling environment for self actualization of each ethnic groups’ potentials”, Okupe a man who thrives in mischief and survives on exploitation of human frailty of leaders like Obasanjo and Jonathan will be right to say Yoruba members of PDP are the architects of the fortunes or misfortunes of the Yoruba nation.

    I think the Yoruba Council of Elders who has been trying to blame others for the sins of the wing of Yoruba political tendency that imbibes the PDP ideology of ‘sharing’, should listen more to Okupe. Our revered elders “fi ete sile, nwon npa lapalapa’ (leaving undone the pertinent while expending energy on the inconsequential). Instead of confronting Obasanjo the father of Yoruba PDP, who as president deprived the Yoruba of what rightly belong to them, imposed men without character even by PDP’s standard.

    After all it wasn’t ACN but PDP that masterminded the judicial indictment and imprisonment of Bode George and late Afolabi. It was PDP that took Adebayo Alao-Akala, Gbenga Daniel, Rashidi Ladoja, Ayo Fayose, and Dimeji Bankole to court for alleged, and in some cases, proven financial malfeasance. It was Yoruba PDP members that told a judge that both Obasanjo and Oyinlola have no respects for rules and judicial pronouncements, and the judge agreed with them.

    During the eight years of Obasanjo mainstreaming, Lagos- Ibadan and Sagamu Benin, the two most important roads in the country were abandoned because Obasanjo wanted to prove the point that he was president in spite of the Yoruba. Under his imposed state governors, there was virtual collapse of the educational sector.

    I think our leaders that have been paying solidarity visits to their troubled children who PDP acknowledged as having contributed to the eight years of criminal neglect of the West should ask Obasanjo, PDP legislators of both the upper and lower Houses during PDP years of locusts to account for their stewardship before taking on Jonathan.

    Senator Babafemi Ojudu, my younger colleague at The Guardian in whom I am very proud gave us an account of his two years stewardship as a senator during our last state association meeting in Lagos. He disclosed that he and his two other colleagues representing the state had decided to ensure N750m (N250m per senator) budgetary allocation for constituency projects is deposited with UNDP that has in turn promised to double the amount and invest same on a project that would provide jobs for the state youths.

    Ojudu further disclosed that while some states of the federation have as many as 10 federal roads slated for reconstruction or rehabilitation in the current budget, the only federal road listed against his state was a road in Nassarawa or somewhere. He also disclosed that while his state could boast only of one lonely driver or none at all in many of the federal parastatal, some states have between 12 and 20 in spite of the existing federal character principle. PDP sharing philosophy is based on neither existing law of the land, nor justice, fairness and equity. It is not surprising that Afe Babalola, Obasanjo’s friend and lawyer not too long ago claimed that the state of Ekiti roads all through PDP 12 years were in a worst state than what existed during the colonial days.

    Obasanjo in power was more interested in empowering non-Yoruba. Even Asari Dokubo, leader of a militant group in the Niger Delta recently told a newspaper reporter that he secured bigger contracts under Obasanjo than he got under Jonathan his kinsman. Nasir El Rufai, his former BPE Director General, has just told us he personally borrowed money to buy into state owned companies and used his position to attract donations from contractors towards the building of a private library. While this was going on, he presided over the sales of some Yoruba owned companies like Daily Times, National Bank, and choice properties in Ikoyi allegedly to his in laws and PDP cronies under the dubious privatization and commercialization policies.

    Okupe also lamented the loss of the office the speaker-ship zoned to Yoruba because of what he and Bamanga Tukur, the current PDP chairman described as internal squabbles among the Yoruba members of PDP. But apart from Dimeji Bankole’s possible enrichment of self and PDP members, the only legacy the Yoruba can point to was his shameless public fisticuffs with Gbenga Daniel over who would take credit for an uncompleted 10-year old Ota Bridge.

    Two years into the Jonathan presidency, it has become apparent that Jonathan does not give a damn about either the Yoruba, Fulani, Kanuri nor any group for that matter. Jonathan only cares about Jonathan. The shoeless boy, as president, does not see a difference between exploiting his Azikiwe Igbo middle name to secure votes in the East, disparaging the better focused Yoruba governors as ‘rascals’, or instigating the non-Yoruba residents in Lagos against high performing governor Fashola or sacrificing his party constitution after trade off with northern governors to secure the party’s ticket. Similarly President Jonathan did not see anything wrong in channelling his presidential campaign funds through a Labour governor of Ondo State or allowing him free hand to nominate ministers to fill the state slot. To Jonathan all is fair in war as in politics and the end justifies the means.

    Our elders may have no control over Jonathan policies, but they can at least remind Obasanjo and those who share the PDP ideology of ‘sharing’ that Awo whose legacies they have tried to obliterate built schools, universities, libraries, financial institutions, manufacturing companies housing estates and plantations, not for self but for the people.

  • Olanipekun’s rebranding of judiciary

    Olanipekun’s rebranding of judiciary

    Chief Wole Olanipekun, (SAN) is a veteran of many wars. As student leader, he fought against Gowon who at the end prayed for him. As NBA president he confronted Chief Obasanjo and came out unscathed. As a resourceful lawyer, he has secured victory after victory for his clients usually the high heeled in our society. For him water has no enemy. He approaches all cases with passion because according to him “We as lawyers must appreciate our calling as a covenant with God.”

    In this regard, On November 21, 2011, he defended Bola Tinubu, the ACN national leader before the Code of Conduct Tribunal. “I led his very formidable team to ask the Tribunal to discharge and acquit him. By 2.30 pm same day, I was in the courtroom of the Court of Appeal in the same Abuja to as part of defence team of the Jonathan election petition”. This did not stop him for also defending Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) governor in Nasarawa against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    It is therefore not surprising that Chief Wole Olanipekun has brought his usual passion to bear on his current defence of Ifeanyi Ubah against Access Bank. He is capitalising on Access Bank’s decision to file “documents before a London High Court, wherein the bank alleged that part of the reasons it avoided instituting an action against Capital Oil and its Managing Director, Ifeanyi Ubah in Nigeria was because the Nigerian judiciary was corrupt.”

    Such action, the chief insisted, amount to the denigration of Nigerian judiciary and dragging its image in the mud in the United Kingdom. Contrary to Access Bank’s deposition before the London court, no one person according to the chief can have “the judiciary in his pocket” in Nigeria.

    The judge, Justice Abang in a bid to uphold the integrity of the judiciary and the judicial process, agreed with him and ruled that “by supplying information which scandalised the Nigerian judiciary, the bank’s Corporate Counsel, Fatai Oladipo and Deji Awodein one of the bank’s Deputy General Managers were guilty of criminal contempt”. This may win a case but will unfortunately not win the battle over the minds of Nigerians who have come to see the judiciary as our major problem.

    Chief Olanipekun who has indicated he is uncomfortable with the situation of things in the country, whereby “we are running people’s affairs like a game of chess” however did not see anything wrong with the judiciary. If the third tier of government has any problem at all, it is because it has been overwhelmed by those created by the executive and the legislature.

    First, I am sure the outside world is amused by the chief’s attempt to exonerate the judiciary from the current problems bedevilling the nation, chief of which is corruption. In a globalised world and with the ascent of the new social media, everyone is a witness to history as it unfolds. The macabre dance between the senior members of our judiciary (SANs), some corrupt judges, thieving members of the political class, criminals as bank owners and oil fraudsters are daily documented for the world.

    Besides, UK of all places is a wrong choice for a rebranding effort of our judiciary. This is a nation that has just jailed James Ibori proclaiming him ‘a thief in the state house’ along with his counsel, long after the Nigerian judiciary had found him not culpable of the same set of charges. Besides, Britain is one place where some of our judges and SANs, would have been disrobed and banned from practice for life.

    A few sickening events that are currently playing out in the judiciary which make Nigeria feel like throwing up and unfortunately shared with the rest of the outside world will suffice.

    Recently, after a long deafening silence in spite of calls by Nigerians that erstwhile chairman and secretary of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on fuel subsidy probe, Farouk Lawal and Boniface Emenalo, be taken to court, their very resourceful SANs, to satisfy all righteousness brought them to court where they were detained. A week later, trial Justice Mudashiru Oniyangi okayed their release.

    This followed a ‘profound’ argument of the SANs that the’ ‘court should take cognizance of the fact that prior to his (Farouk) arraignment, he had ample opportunities to run away, having travelled outside the country four times since investigation into his alleged complicity in the bribery scandal began.’ Thus a man caught by video camera receiving bribe from Otedola in a sting operation master-minded by government will now attend trial from home and have the rights to attend to health issues abroad.

    The globalised world is also watching with keen interest how our resourceful SANs have effortlessly secured relief and shield their high profile clients such as Mahmud Tukur, son of the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Bamanga Tukur; Mamman Ali, son of the former national chairman of PDP, Ahmadu Ali; and Abdullahi Arisekola-Alao, the son of Ibadan based businessman, Abdulazeez Arisekola-Alao facing a ‘nine-count charge of conspiracy, fraud and forgery,’ of N1.8 billion from the Petroleum Support Fund.

    The suit first fixed by judge Onigbanjo for November 13 and 14, 2012, for trial has again been ‘fixed for the 6th and 7th of May 2013. The defense SAN, has already persuaded judge Onigbanjo to grant his clients bail while Abdulazeez Arisekola-Alao also got his impounded international passport back to enable him travel and take care of his sick son in the United States.

    The prosecution of Erastus Akingbola, the former owner and Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank for an alleged stealing of N47.1 billion has dragged on for three years. This is despite his indictment by a London court which directed him to refund about N164b back to the new owners of his former bank. The case against Akingbola who had earlier been discharged in another case at the Federal High Court for what the trial judge, Justice Clement Archibong, blamed on “lack of diligent prosecution.” has according to Human Rights lawyer, Femi Falana(SAN) now been ‘technically resolved in his favour’ because of the new appointment given Justice Abiru, the presiding judge.

    In 2010, Cecilia Ibru accused of a 25 count charge of money laundering and mismanagement of depositors funds totaling over N160 billion, was aided by her celebrated SANs to sign a plea bargain deal. Two years after she was sentenced on 25 counts of fraud and ordered to reimburse $1.29 billion in assets and cash, Anti-Corruption Network executive secretary Otunba Dino Melaye has alleged that many properties in the United States and United Kingdom claimed to have been forfeited are still in Ibru’s custody directly or indirectly.

    The SANs that negotiated on her behalf probably know where “these properties, monies and aircraft are since there was no evidence they were “deposited with the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Company (NDIC) and AMCON for onward transfer to the shareholders of Oceanic Bank”.

    Corruption may be another name for the executive and the legislature. The press might have been greatly compromised according to Sonala Olumhense whose views count for much in the media, but a failed state beckons when the judiciary is turned into the last bastion of the privileged scoundrels by its SANs and some corrupt judges while lonely petty thieves or vagrants arrested for wandering spend years in prison awaiting trials. These are facts not lost on Nigerians.