The Nation Newspaper

Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

  • The second coming of britain

    The second coming of britain

    The western nations have become apprehensive in recent years about their post colonial states degenerating to failed states characterised by weak ineffective and corrupt central government as a result of misrule by their new rulers. Thousands of hungry and jobless immigrants from ex-colonies are flooding the metropolitan nations in droves. At home the falcon can no more hear the falconer. The resources from their satellites states that once supported welfare services have been cornered by multi-nationals driven only by greed. To forestall the looming anarchy at home and abroad, the western nations seem to have started the new ‘scramble for Africa’.

    The new scramble has become more compelling because of globalization, the new god that proclaim all of us, the rich and the poor, equal participants in the globalised economy. The west also need to forestall the looming anarchy as a result of migration of frustrated, desperate jobless youths to Europe where the percentage of the unemployed is in some places is as high as 30%. Some two years back, France experienced first-hand, the anger of the hungry when frustrated homeless immigrants descended on the properties of their wealthy hosts. Last year, it was the turn of Britain as angry youths freely moved around London, looting and setting fire on malls.

    Anarchy is slowly creeping into Italy, Greece and Spain.

    Now, western leaders have decided to check the greed of their citizens and their collaborators in the poor African countries manned by incompetent thieving political class. Only last month, US President Barack Obama had during his second inauguration warned “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob”. The French, after the massive destruction of property by disgruntled immigrants two years back have become very active in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Tunisia and Mali. UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in Davos last week ahead of the G8 meeting scheduled for June 17 and 18 in Lough Erne, Northern Island, UK, had complained openly about squandered “Nigeria oil exports worth almost a hundred billion dollars”, an amount he said was “more than the total net aid to the whole of Sub Saharan Africa”.

    Also making reference to Nigeria where a few years back “a $800m discrepancy between what companies were paying and what the government was receiving for oil”, was discovered, Cameron had hinted “the western leaders and Japan are going to push for more transparency on who owns companies; on who’s buying up land and what purpose; on how governments spend their money, on how gas, oil and mining companies operate; and on who is hiding stolen assets and how we recover and return them.”

    Now that we all know sovereignty is dead and finally buried by globalization; if you ask me, I would suggest we formally invite the British to take over. Some two decades back, long before the current surreptitious move by Britain, late Olabisi Onabanjo, alias “Aiyekoto”, an accomplished newspaper columnist and a resourceful Second Republic governor of Ogun state had echoed the same sentiments.

    Today, there are more pressing reasons why Britain should come back. First we have been betrayed by our ill-equipped and ill-educated military adventurers starting with Gowon who said ‘money was not our problem’, (Of course the western companies provided wide range of consumer items to wipe out his ill-advised Udoji award) to General Ibrahim Babangida that fraudulently claimed there was no alternative to Structural Adjustment Program, (SAP). SAP which supported importation of Italian tiles, Italian shoes and Italian clothes and tyres sounded the death knell of our own budding industries. Today our exchange rate which was approximately one naira to one pound in 1982 is N260 to one pound sterling.

    Their military new breed politicians have not fared better. Infrastructural decay, unemployment and collapse of industries have come to characterize their war against Nigeria these past 13 years. To feed ourselves we depend on massive importation of rice, fish, chicken, palm oil, ground nut oil etc.

    There are other reasons we must support the return of Britain to Nigeria.

    Fifty two years after independence, no one can say precisely what the population of Nigeria is. We don’t even know who is and who is not a Nigerian. Since 1963 controversial census figure decided by the courts, we have not been able to have a credible exercise outside the 1953 colonial figure which defied all known demographic laws.

    Our judiciary lost its innocence when, under the guise of celebrating our sovereignty, we did away with the ‘Privy Council’ in order to cage the opposition Action Group (AG) party. We have since moved from “Coker’s My hand are tied” judgment, to twelve two-third ridiculous judicial pronouncement to install President Shehu Shagari in 1983, to plea bargaining where our judges and senior advocates have been claimed to smile to their banks while those who have stolen the nation blind escape with a slap on the wrist. Nigerians also earnestly yearn for a British Chief Justice to derail the ambitions of ’thieves in the state Houses’ currently preparing for a comeback as governors, senators or on the verge of installing their minions as governors with stolen money.

    Of course, if there is a survey of the police, they will probably opt for a British Inspector General (IG). First, many occupants of that position since the departure of the last British IG ended up as villains. Some have been paraded in chains like mere criminals for siphoning billions of naira meant for police welfare and police equipments. Some have demonstrated their prowess in election rigging. None has excelled in the task of protection of life and property, the only reason we traded our freedom for government protection.

    Unlike America, where President Obama only this last Tuesday insisted American street police will not be allowed to be outgunned by criminals, our ill-equipped and ill-trained police men have become sitting targets for criminals. They are neither safe on the streets nor in their barracks. We read on the pages of newspapers often how criminals walked into police barracks, killed those on duty, cart away their weapons and set the police station of fire.

    Since we can neither secure our water ways or borders, we need a British head of the armed forces. The Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently told us that the nation loses $7b annually to oil bunkerers in the creeks. The Pipeline Professional Association of Nigeria (PPAN) put the figure at N100b annually.

    With a standing army, navy and air force, the federal government was said to have awarded a security contract of $103m to Tompolo to help fight crime on the sea particularly against pirates, who are credited to be ‘too powerful for the Nigerian Navy to control’.

    To protect our pipelines, it was claimed ‘General’ Government Tompolo Ekpumopolo, got contract to the tune of N3.6bn; Asari Dokubo, 1.44bn; ‘General’ Ateke Tom, N560m and ‘General’ Ebikabowei Boyloaf Victor Ben, N560m. While defending the government action, which Okupe said was done by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, he said, “since this exercise began, the crude oil production has jumped from 1.8mbpd to 2.6mbpd. It is safe to suggest British takeover of our armed forces because it will be seditious to suggest a change of their Commander-in-Chief.

    As I watched Dr Anwen White, a female neurosurgeon of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who on BBC Monday evening described as ‘routine’ a skull reconstruction and a cochlear implant surgery on 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai, shot by the Taliban for advocating women education, I secretly wished for the return of British to a teaching hospital like the UCH rated as one of the best three in the commonwealth of nations in 1960.

    With the death of sovereignty, and the ascendancy of globalization, the new god, we have nothing to be ashamed of by asking Britain to start from where they stopped in October 1, 1960.

  • What Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu

    What Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu

    Nuhu Ribadu, the former EFCC boss expressed his anguish during a two-day summit of Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI) in Kano last week. He was troubled by the fact that the 19 northern state governors and the 414 local governments have nothing to show for the N8.3 trillion that accrued to them between 1999 and 2010.

    On the contrary, Ahmadu Bello and his team, with an annual budget of N44m which is less than what a local government collects today maintained law and order and ensured effective security of life and property, built Ahmadu Bello University, Ahmadu Bello Stadium and NNDC conglomerate in addition to well paved roads, etc.

    But what Ribadu like many of us seem to have forgotten was that Ahmadu Bello, like Awo his counterpart in the West, made those giant strides using their political parties, the Northern Peoples Congres (NPC) and Action Group (AG) not just as tools for the mobilization of the masses of their people for electoral purposes but also as participants in the policy thrust of their administrations. The political parties of the first republic, apart from serving as channels for recruitment of political leadership, were modernization agents.

    They had taken a cue from Herbert Macaulay’s Nigeria National Democratic Party (NNDP) which he introduced in 1923 as a response to Hugh Clifford 1922 constitution with defined objectives of seeking a “municipal status for Lagos, local self government, compulsory primary education, non discriminatory private economic enterprise and Africanisation of the civil service.”

    In the same manner, the foundation of NPC was laid by educated and dedicated northern youths, first, through the Bauchi General Improvement Union and Youths Special Circle of Sokoto in the mid- forties. Both metamorphosed into Jam’yyar Mutanem Arewa, Northern Nigerian Congress (NNC) in June 1949 through the efforts of Dr. A. R Dikko and D. A .Rafih. The main objective of NPC as stated by Dr. Dikko, its first president was ‘fighting ignorance, idleness and injustice’ in the northern region’.

    The AG, nurtured by Obafemi Awolowo, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Bode Thomas, Anthony Enahoro, Adekunle Ajasin and other young educated elites of the region was inaugurated in August 1950. Besides its unstated purpose of reducing the influence of Zik in the West, it had a well articulated manifesto which promised free education, free health, and full employment among many others.

    Political parties of the first republic were created as agents of modernization by dedicated youths who had their eyes on history as against what obtained today where we have gangs with garrison commanders engaged in squabbles over the sharing of our common wealth among its members.

    The travails of our party system as modernising agents started with the onslaught of the military. Ill-informed and ill-trained Ironsi and Gowon banned the parties because they could not just understand that they were in fact index of political development.

    Babangida tried to create political parties in the image of the military. But because they were government creations in name but orphans in reality, Tony Anenih of SDP found it easy to trade off his party’s victory while Tom Ikimi of NRC settled for the position of a foreign affairs minister. Both opted for short term advantage.

    Abacha came up with, the UNCP, CNC, NCPN, DPN and GDM which late Bola Ige described as five fingers of a leprous hand. Ige was proved right as all the five so called political parties adopted Abacha as their presidential candidate even before he publicly declared his interest.

    The PDP emerged from the G-34 during General Abubakar’s 11-month transition program. But it was soon hijacked by retired soldiers and their contractors. Using vicious military tactics, PDP was able to easily infiltrate AD and ANPP leaving each to behave like a woman with three husbands.

    What Buhari, Tinubu and their colleagues are being called upon to do is not just an inauguration of party to win an election. That job has been made easy by PDP’s self-inflicted damage. All the new party needs to do is to celebrate the credentials of all those who are today fighting over the soul of PDP starting with Obasanjo, followed by other vicious leaders like Tony Anenih, Ahmadu Alli, Bamanga Tukur, Bode George.

    Nigerians have already known through judicial pronouncements the invidious role of Anenih ‘the Fixer’ in the states and federal elections between 1999 and 2007. The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts only last week declared that Anenih, the newly appointed chairman of Ports Authority, must appear before it to answer some questions regarding his role in the alleged N20 billion road contract scam.

    Before then there was the suppressed Heineken Lokpobiri Senate transport probe report which alleged that from 1999 to 2009, some N645 billion was spent on 4,752 kilometres of road; shortchanging the government to the tune of N49 million on each kilometre of road purportedly constructed.

    Ahmadu Alli has often been trailed by crisis. As chairman of PDP, he was alleged to have nominated his son and wife for board positions. As chairman of PPRA, he and the current minister of petroleum presided over the theft of about N2 trillion by some of the over 140 independent oil marketers they appointed.

    Goodluck Ebere Jonathan is a harmless man PDP leading light imposed as president, sacrificing in the process their party’s constitution. He is as a result said to have sold Nigeria to PDP whose other name has become ‘corruption’. Former World Bank Vice President for Africa Oby Ezekwesili, who was Education Minister in the Obasanjo administration, has just alleged that the PDP administration of Jonathan squandered $67billion reserves left by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. Government spokesman said it was only $43.13billion that was left. Amidst the war of figures, the one thing government has found difficult to do, is account for either of the figures.

    Nigerians can therefore take the right decision if as Chief Bisi Akande recently put it, ‘the Independent National Electoral Commission will provide a level playing ground whereby due process will be adhered to.. and if the security agencies will be fair and impartial and will reject advances that could taint elections’.

    What Nigerians want from Buhari and Tinubu is inauguration of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies. The challenge before the two and their colleagues is to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders who supervised the squandering of N8.3trillion in 10 years by the 19 northern state governors and something closer to that by their southern counterparts.

    Achieving this noble objective calls for a sober reflection on the parts of the main actors. Apart from Buhari’s rigidity and offensive image of ‘blood, dogs, monkeys,’ he seems to have started well by cancelling an elaborate 70th birthday bash Nigerians know he could ill-afford on his own, but organized by those who would have used public funds.

    What these times call for are men with eyes on history; men who would emulate the federalists Hamilton and Adams, the Republicans Jefferson and Madison of USA of the 1790s, the British enlightened elite that established parties as modernizing agents after the Britain reforms of 1832, their French counterparts who did the same after French revolution of 1789 and the Japanese leaders after the Meiji Restoration of 1867.

    Buhari and Tinubu have the goodwill of Nigerians. They are both blessed with educated, dedicated youths and professionals who look up to them to provide leadership so that they can jointly write their names in gold as they map out a better future for our children. This task is not unattainable.

  • Jonathan and a nation in self-denial

    Jonathan and a nation in self-denial

    President Jonathan recent unscheduled visit to the decaying Ikeja Police College has been hailed by many of his country men and women including hundreds of his erstwhile ‘Facebook’ friends. The visit was remarkable in many respects. It was the first time the president would create time to address a domestic issue in the midst of his ever busy international engagements, which this time, was taking him to Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

    The international engagement was to consolidate the war efforts of ECOWAS and international community’s resolve to chase out Islamists that took over half of Mali even in the midst of our own unfinished war with Boko Haram that has made the North-eastern states of Borno and Yobe ungovernable for close to two years.

    The visit was also remarkable because the police institution in terms of power and influence, touches every body’s life; the privileged, the deprived the dispossessed, the depressed, as well as the depraved. Others that look up to the police to survive our harsh environment include musicians, independent oil fraudsters, and even politicians who all have so much to hide or fear from those they claim elected them. The police’s power and authority, as we can see, surpass that of soldiers, priests, doctors, lawyers and even judges.

    The visit, said to have been provoked by a week-long expose by the Channels Television on what was described as ‘the dehumanising conditions trainee policemen go through in the college’, was carried out unannounced by the president accompanied by Mamman Tsafe the Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Zone Two, and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Umar Manko. They inspected the women’s hostels, the kitchen, and the dining halls.

    Amidst the decay and stench of what goes for a police college, President Jonathan ought to have been persuaded that if we have a brutish, sadistic and corrupt police force, it was because that was exactly what we cultivated. The president was visibly enraged, but unfortunately not by the decay he saw but by the fact that Channels Television was allowed to film and wash our dirty linen in public. But it is sardonic that while all Nigerians can see is a parallel between the rot in the Police College and Jonathan administration, described as the most corrupt in our recent history even by his PDP leading lights, what President Jonathan saw was “a calculated attempt to damage the image of his government”.

    When the president, like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand claims “Ikeja Police College is not the only training institution in the country,” the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs , Mr. Usman Kumo, insisted he cannot pretend to be unaware that “All police colleges, barracks and formations in Nigeria are dilapidated and uninhabitable.”, attributable to poor funding, welfare and lack of equipment, problems which ‘had not been addressed for many years’.

    The President’s attempt to play the ostrich has once again demonstrated why his administration has been involved in ‘motion without movement’ (apology to Olatunji Dare) for about two years. Nothing demonstrated this better than the on-going Boko Haram war against government institutions and innocent Nigerians resulting in the recent bombing of St. Andrews Protestant Military Church located in the Command and Staff College, Jaji.

    As it is now the practice, each of President Jonathan’s periodic reassurance to end the Boko Haram insurgency has in the past two years been met by a more devastating bloody attack on innocent Nigerians. Instead of seeking help, we seem to be more interested in expending about $1b monthly on security as recently alleged by El Rufai, the former minister for Abuja Federal Territory.

    Whilst we continue to live in self-denial, the former French ambassador to Mali, an expert in Islamist insurgency, only last Friday told the world during Amanpour CCN program what our president has refused to admit that “Nigeria cannot overcome Al-Qaeda backed Boko Haram without external help”. A day after this bitter truth, the new British High Commissioner, Dr Andrew Pocock, told reporters in Abuja that “Nigeria is not alone in the fight against terrorism” and that. the “United Kingdom (UK) wants to increase its aid to the Nigerian military in its fight against the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, and other terrorists in the West African sub-region.”

    Outside our shores, we can also see the French President François Hollande, who instead of living in self-denial, quickly appealed to the United Nations and European Union immediately France discovered after its troops encounter with Islamist militants in Mali, that the desert fighters are better trained and equipped than France had anticipated before its military intervention. The result was that the EU met the following day, and decided to throw its weight behind the multi-national military operations while also “reiterating the EU’s commitment to providing swift financial assistance to the African-led international support mission in Mali (AFISMA).”

    Government attempt to play the ostrich by its handling of the twin suicide bomb attacks on St. Andrews Protestant Military Church located in the Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna State on November 27, 2012, was a shame and a disservice to our men in military uniform. Why do we delude ourselves by keeping everything in secrecy? Journalists who accompanied Governor Yakowa and other non-military officers were barred from both the scene of the bombing and the hospitals. Officials of the National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, and the Kaduna State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, and the Red Cross were also barred.

    As a nation, we continue to live in self-denial long after America with her unquestionable scientific advancement and as the world biggest military budget has admitted it cannot prevent all militant and suicide attacks. Last year a deranged soldier turned his gun on his fellow American soldiers killing and maiming many before he was overpowered. American authorities and the military did not bar journalists from reporting and celebrating those who lost their lives in the service of America.

    But here, all we were told was that the death toll in the bomb blast was 15. That was the figure the Commandant of the College, Air vice Marshal Ibrahim Abdullahi Kure, gave while conducting the then Kaduna State Governor, late Patrick Yakowa round the church. Apart from the speculation that many more were killed and injured, no one has told Nigerians anything about these courageous men who made the supreme sacrifice for our nation. In the US, when a foot soldier dies in the service of the nation, he is celebrated. Stories are written about his state, town, family, siblings and his abridged hopes and dreams.

    Of course few days ago, when the Deputy Director, Public Relations of the SSS, Ms. Marilyn Ogar, paraded before newsmen an 18-year-old Ibrahim Mohammed who she claimed confessed to have accompanied two suicide bombers to the gate of Command and Staff College on the day of the attack and one Mohammed Idris, a yam hawker and a native Jalingo, Taraba State as the prime suspects in the mindless murder of innocent Nigerians at Jaji, she met with an incredulous audience.

    Frustrated Nigerians who are now calling for foreign intervention have lost faith in the police and the military precisely because government that should ordinarily see them as citizens and focus of governance, has continued to play the ostrich and has reduced them to periodic participants during elections.

  • PDP’s vicious war

    PDP’s vicious war

    The on-going war of attrition among PDP leading light in the face of massive unemployment of our youths, infrastructural decay, 13 years of unfulfilled promises and monumental corruption by its members, is one more evidence that the party doesn’t give a damn about Nigeria. For the greed of its members, PDP that has continued to act as if it is answerable to no one is prepared to drag the nation down along with itself.

    A distinguishing characteristic of any political party is a consensus of members on identified values and principles. But as we have seen in the last few years, there is nothing PDP ever agreed upon. Its leaders, like warlords fight vicious wars over everything, including sharing of our common wealth, but never on behalf of helpless Nigerians.

    In case we have forgotten, it was their members that told us how, under the guise of privatization and commercialization, they shared the nation’s once thriving blue-chip companies among PDP members and its sympathisers using the BPE. They waged a vicious battle over the sharing of prime lands and properties the nation inherited from her colonial masters.

    Lest we forget, it was Senator Bukola Saraki who became the whistle blower over the fuel subsidy scam of about N2 trillion for fuel neither imported nor delivered to Nigeria. The Farouk Lawal whose committee uncovered the scam was found to be like other many PDP men, a man with feet of clay.

    While we have been christened as one of the most corrupt nations on earth, PDP leaders, because of greed cannot even agree on what constitutes a corrupt practice. Leading members of PDP openly accept gifts from contractors. Our lawmakers attribute allocating unmerited salary packages to their members in a nation that cannot pay a minimum wage of N18, 000 to the ‘Nigeria factor’.

    While ex-President Obasanjo, who PDP leading members swore spent close to N10billion on his failed third term bid, claimed during a CNN interview programme last week that “the level of corruption in the country was rising, and Jonathan’s government was not doing enough to stem the tide”, President Jonathan claimed, “…most of these things we talk about corruption are not even corruption”. For him if there is corruption, since “Nigeria has more institutions that fight corruption than most other countries”, the government is also fighting corruption.”

    It is obvious that the removal of Olagunsoye Oyinlola as PDP national secretary which has deepened the current crisis was self-inflicted. His removal was the outcome of a suit filed by a faction of the party’s Ogun State chapter. The court agreed with the faction that the former governor was not fit to hold the post of secretary of the party. Justice Abdul Kafarati also gave a helping hand when he declared “The plaintiff’s suit is not based on an intra-party dispute; rather it seeks to enforce the decision of the Lagos Federal High Court on the grounds that it violated an earlier FHC order of February 16, 2012.”

    Then the question you ask yourself is why has South-west PDP opted to bite its nose in order to spite its face? Now while Oyinlola who has already told an appellate court in Abuja that Justice Abdul Kafarati who removed him from office erred in law by assuming ‘ jurisdiction over an intra party dispute’, Bamanga Tukur, the PDP chairman who like the South-west PDP saw the departure of Oyinlola as a way to get even with his tormenting PDP governors, has quickly planted his only loyalist in the National Working Committee, NWC, Solomon Onwe as acting national secretary leaving both the victorious and the vanquished South west PDP factions to lick their wounds.

    The South-west PDP decision to throw away the baby with the bathwater which is no doubt a clear evidence of a house divided against itself, is a mere reflection of the war of attrition of a party embroiled in a web of intrigues at the national level.

    Meanwhile, there is an alleged subtle threat by about 21 governors elected on the platform of PDP to quit the party unless its national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, resigns.

    Tukur himself carries a moral burden as his son, along with other sons of leading lights of PDP are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding of government of billions of naira for fuel neither imported nor delivered to Nigeria.

    President Jonathan and his godfather, Chief Obasanjo, are also said to be embroiled in a crisis of confidence over the choice of Tony Anenih, the master ‘fixer’ of 2003 and 2007 elections, and Ahmadu Alli former PDP chairman who as chairman of PPPRA presided over the appointment of about 140 independent petroleum marketers, some of whom are standing trial for alleged theft of about N2trillion, as BOT chairman. What more indignity can a people be subjected to?

    And as the de facto leader of an embattled party, President Jonathan was alleged to have personally identified Bode George as member of those to reform the Board of Trustees (BOT) of PDP. Those close to him are saying the choice was informed by a desire to recoup some of the South-west goodwill the president squandered through some of his anti-South-west policies.

    The choice has been widely criticized not just by South-west PDP faction opposed to the politics of Bode George, but also by legal practitioners, civil rights groups, Anti-Corruption Network and Coalition against Corrupt Leaders, all blaming PDP for its disrespect for the public.

    While Dino Melaye, who became an anti-corruption crusader after falling out with PDP, claims Bode George’s choice was because “almost everybody in the party (PDP) is an ex-convict”, while, Debo Adeniran the Chairman of CACOL, said the “PDP’s decision was akin to legalising corruption”. Bode George, he said, “would infest others with criminal virus because he exemplifies corruption”.

    Except that we are all victims, no one would have wept for PDP and the selection of George as a key player in the final lap of its war of self destruction. I however sympathise with President Jonathan principally because of his penchant for sticking out his neck for indicted South-west PDP leaders. I want to believe his choice is often borne out of lack of sufficient understanding of the culture of the Yoruba, his over-reliance on advice of self-serving advisers, or informed by what his political enemies describe as his “politics of perfidy”.

    Jonathan who rose to become the president of Nigeria ought to have known that those who used constitutional means to dislodge Obasanjo from his stolen empire following the massively rigged 2007 election are products of a culture that produced those that ensured those who sowed the wind during the rigged 1965 western regional election, reaped the whirlwind. Their PDP kinsmen may share PDP world view, but are products of a culture that celebrates dissent in the face of arbitrariness and fraud.

    In Yorubaland, it is said that Eniti o jale lerekan, ti o da aran bori, aso ole ni oda bora’ (literarily meaning that a man who had been indicted for stealing, who later turn out in expensive damask dress is wearing a stolen dress). In case the president doesn’t know, the dissent among the Yoruba when it comes to dealing with intra-cultural conflicts that borders on fraud and arbitrariness is more vicious than when PDP engages in squabbles over sharing of our resources

     

  • The $500M aviation intervention loan

    Once again, our amiable Minister of Aviation Princess Stella Oduah has been brought under severe strains over the Chinese $500m loan that Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) is to use for procuring 300 brand new aircrafts for our domestic airline operators. This like other giant steps, such as the initial N300b intervention fund, the ongoing N49b renovation of 22 airports, her lost war with foreign airlines over unfair fares, her resolve to float a national carrier and her 11- man tour of Europe, the US and China in search of investors, has been enmeshed in controversy.

    It is a shame many Princess Oduah‘s detractors dismiss her as having little to flaunt as a minister beyond her PDP membership card and proven record as a grass root party ‘mobiliser’. They conveniently ignored that as a wife to former minister of works, as former NNPC staff and as the chief executive of Sea Petroleum and Gas Company Limited (SPG), an independent marketer of petroleum products since 1992, she is better equipped for her current position than many other PDP card carrying ministers.

    Princess Oduah is one minister that has personified the face of President Jonathan’s transformation agenda. For the survival of our domestic airline industry, she had while the war against foreign airline industry over exorbitant air fares was raging, embarked on a tour of America, Europe and China seeking new investors. Oduah’s detractors seemed to have resolved to deny her the credit for this Chinese $500m loan by downplaying the dividend of her relentless efforts.

    In spite of her commitment to the survival of our domestic airlines industry, the aviation minister, perhaps apart from the president and Alison-Maduekwe, the petroleum minister envied for creating s many PDP billionaires, the minister remains the most vilified public official of Jonathan’s administration. But Oduah should ignore detractors and move on with her crusade. She should take solace that public service is a thankless job. She should also take a cue from her overwhelmed principal, president Jonathan who has ignored the virulent attack on his person; first by northern leaders who are facing revolt of children they deprived of education ; the Igbo elite in their hide out in Lagos and inside Aso Rock who blame him for the kidnapping of children for ransom by Igbo youths whose plight they ignored while they were busy making money; and the Yoruba who unfairly criticize him for infrastructural decay forgetting Obasanjo their son was a PDP president for eight years.

    Sadly, critics who often claim the minister’s policies attracted so much controversies because they are whimsical products of reflexes of a Nigerian fraudulent oil marketer, have been so uncharitable to this hard working minister whose admirers described as ‘an Amazon’ and a Nigerian patriot . It is not totally correct to say most of the minister’s policies were not subjected to rigorous debate. If however such debates were monopolised by those with vested interests such as card carrying PDP members, this by no means can be said undermines the minister ‘s committed to the success of PDP inspired transformation agenda.

    We had the Managing Director of Jimoh Ibrahim’s defunct ‘Air Nigeria’, Kinfe Kahssaye, asserting during stakeholders meeting that ‘the key way to ensure that Nigerian airlines return to profitability is for the Federal Government’s support in terms of finance or tax waivers, as it is been done in other parts of the world from time to time .’

    We also had Amos Akpan, the Managing Director of Capital Airlines, on record as saying during a stakeholders’ meeting that ‘the money the airlines make is not enough to pay for the cost of their operation and service their debts to Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA), the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) as well as pay hundreds of millions of naira owed oil companies’. In all, the stakeholders claim the 16 domestic airlines owed financial institutions and regulatory bodies, about N325 billion.

    And lest we forget, the ongoing N49b development of 22 airports around Nigeria was a fall out of the stakeholders’ debate. It would be recalled the former head of communication of the defunct Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) now CEO of Belujane Konsult, Chris Aligbe had during the stakeholders meeting called on “government to upgrade the airports’ with a view to ‘concessioning.’ them” .

    After such presentation by the minister’s party associates, critics have not told us what they expected a minister who represents a federal government that controls more money that it can reasonably manage, spending money like water, building a N16b mansion to meet the taste of a vice president, constructing a N2b banquet hall inside Aso Villa, and constructing a waste full 10 lane dual carriage way inside Abuja, to do beyond throwing money at a cause she believed in.

    That domestic airlines like Arik, Aero and Air Nigeria whose Managing Director led the crusade and got N35.5 billion today jointly owe AMCON over $700m debt cannot in my view be attributed to lack of robust debate or the minister’s incompetence . A minister committed to transformation agenda of her party cannot be persecuted for acting on inputs of her party members and their sympathizers.

    The minister’s war with foreign airlines also followed the stakeholders report of how foreign airlines swindle Nigeria of about N3.7 billion yearly and their violations of Nigeria’s aviation laws. It was also from the self-serving report of the stakeholders the minister discovered how foreign airline like British Airways swindle Nigerians by charging non-competitive fare of $10,070 for a First Class return seat from Abuja to London while the same facility through Accra costs $4,943.

    Of course, committed to the world view of her party ignored, the minister ignored the argument of others to the effect ‘that market forces that today work in favour of the airlines will also work in favour of ordinary Nigerians, if only ministers, governors legislators, bureaucrats and other parasites stop insisting on first class or business class tickets of foreign airlines’. She went ahead to give a ridiculous ultimatum to the airline, along with Virgin Atlantic to restore parity in fares or risk a ban by Nigeria. That was on March 27 2011.

    And now the current $500b is enmeshed in controversy between the CBN that often talks from both sides of the mouth and the Bank of Industry, a conduit pipe for what former Commandant, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, Group Capt. John Ojikutu has described as is ‘a recycling of public money for some people.”

    The apex bank and Bank of Industry insist the money was not meant for the airlines to re-fleet their airlines; the minister has vowed through (FAAN) Spokesman, Yakubu Dati, that government had ‘concluded arrangement to purchase 30 brand new aircraft for airlines to boost their operations.’

    The minister is insisting on setting up a new national airline. This will probably be supervised by NCAA, NAMA and FAAN, all the bodies that wrecked previous government efforts. She is equally undeterred by lessons from her tour of Europe and America where British Airways merger with Iberia airlines (International Airline Group) IAG, the world third largest airline in terms of annual revenues is battling with its own problems; where American Airlines and US Airways are trying to reach agreement on merger for the former to exit bankruptcy while Branson the Virgin Atlantic man with a magic touch is selling parts of his empire.

    Blame not princess Oduah if the earlier N300b intervention fund is being treated as PDP “family affair’. President Jonathan, on whose table the buck stops and not our amiable princess Oduah should be held responsible for the slip-slop policy in the aviation sector

  • Imo’s battle of convoys

    Senator Chris Anyanwu, beautiful and charming is at all times an embodiment of grace. Brilliant, resourceful and imbued with supreme self-confidence, she is not the one to easily cave in to pressure or intimidation by men. Long before the latest assault by Owele Rochas Okorocha, she had dazzled and dazed powerful men in power who had attempted to pull her down. For instance, despite wielding nothing more than her pen, Abacha who just couldn’t stand her guts, roped her in to an attempted coup, slammed her with a life sentence. From her Gombe prison she became a recipient of many international awards including the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism, the CPJ International Press Freedom Award and the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.

    And like a cat with nine lives, Anyanwu outlived Abacha to emerge a senator on the platform of PDP representing of Owerri Zone of Imo state. “I felt I could do more than observe and moan the things that were not going right … I felt I could be more useful in helping find solutions to the problems”, she had said to justify her decision to join partisan politics. She decamped to APGA and was again elected senator in the April 2011 election.

    No less intimidating are the credentials of Okorocha, the governor of Imo State and Senator Anyanwu’s opponent in this epic ‘battle of convoys’.

    His Excellency is a former member of National Constitutional Conference, former chairman, Board of Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, former Special Adviser to President Obasanjo on Inter-Party Relations and former PDP chairman aspirant.

    Like Anyanwu, Okorocha is a tough fighter, who through hawking of groceries in Jos bought his first bus before he was 14. He also sold fairly used cars via Cotonou.

    Okorocha like Anyanwu also started as a PDP member. When he lost a bid to become PDP governorship candidate, he decamped to ANPP. He decamped back to PDP and was promptly made special assistant to President Obasanjo. He left PDP to form his Action Alliance (AA) from where he decamped back to PDP hoping to grab the plum job of PDP chairman. Fortune smiled on him when he decamped back to APGA in 2010, and fought a brutal battle, allegedly by storming the Imo State Secretariat of APGA with dozens of thugs, who beat up several top officers of the party who were trying to frustrate his efforts. The serial cross carpeting ended on a good note as he was declared winner of the 2011 Imo State governorship election.

    These then are the duo of PDP turned APGA warlords that fought the ferocious ‘battle of convoys’ in Azaraegbelu, Owerri North of Imo State last Wednesday.

    Senator Anyanwu, by her own account, had visited Okorocha earlier in the day ‘to felicitate with him on the up-coming wedding of his daughter,’ with a convoy of cars probably bought, fueled and driven by public officials at the expense of the tax payers. With the convoy she proceeded to Mbaise for a function. It was on her way back that her own convoy was confronted by Okorochas’s “intimidating convoy bearing down on her convoy with full compliments of security operatives, conventional and non-conventional”. Even after directing her convoy to veer off the road and stop for the governor’s convoy to pass, the governor’s security men stopped and blocked her convoy, dragged out the driver of her pilot vehicle and beat him to pulp, before dragging him to the bush with the aim of shooting him but for the shouting and wailing of our delectable senator. The senator also claimed she was miffed and ‘in utter shock’ to see that “Okorocha was watching the entire episode complacently and had even shouted orders to his men saying “disarm her security’.”

    Not exactly so, said Ebere Uzoukwa, the governor’s Special Assistant on Media. The governor, he claimed, narrowly escaped death when the senator’s convoy rammed into his convoy. Thereafter, the senator, in his words, ‘alighted from her vehicle, ‘went berserk by descending on the security men slapping both the governor’s Aide-de-Camp and Chief Detail’, and also ordered her Naval security personnel to open fire.

    The senator denied, saying the governor who she called a ‘psychopath and a threat to decent society,” has ‘pathological fixation on lying”.

    The governor hit back, through APGA chairman Okafor, who should ordinarily be an arbiter, at the senator describing her as having a “penchant for fighting in public”, and with “a history of impulsive violence and disrespect to elders”.

    This disgraceful acts and hilarious tales might have taken place in Imo, but it is symptomatic of the rule of warlords, cliques and gangs that go on in the name of political parties in our nation today.

    The absence of real political parties with vision, and programs aimed at improving the welfare of the governed, is responsible for the gross indiscipline, corruption, and abuse of office or what President Jonathan recently described as unacceptable attitudes of our political office holders.

    PDP that fraudulently ascribed to itself the title of the biggest political party in Africa, APGA and some of the opposition parties are nothing but instruments of warlords to settle political scores and for sharing spoils of war after periodically rigged elections.

    We have since learnt that the seed of Boko Haram that has rendered the north eastern Borno and Yobe states ungovernable for over two years was planted by cliques and gangs that employed its services for balance of terror to win election in 1999 and 2003. It has also emerged that South-south disgraced ex-governors like Alamieseigha and James Ibori, behaved like warlords sponsoring the various militant groups for balance of terror while sharing their people’s common patrimony. It has also been established that PDP government at the centre equally armed its own preferred militant group.

    In the South-east, the fact that kidnapping for ransom has become an industry, in an area controlled by a small regional party with capacity to mobilize more effectively clearly shows that APGA is just an instrument in the hands of cliques of former PDP members.

    Political parties, even when they end in the dictatorship of a small oligarchy, endure only when they treat discipline as a badge of honour among its members. Sadly we cannot say the same of many of our current political parties.

    PDP is an unruly clique that treat every scandal from the fuel subsidy scam, pensions scheme fraud, the privatization and commercialization scam, as ‘family affairs’.

    The governors like our overpaid legislators are wasting public resources because that is the only political culture they inherited from the self-serving military that suddenly cut off our age long political culture that predates the emergence of modern political party in 1926 which emphasized our various cultures, traditions, ‘passion and collective reasoning,’ and group priorities .

    Anyanwu and Okorocha, like our over paid lawmakers and undisciplined governors who behave like warlords are part of thousands of ‘newbreeds’ that breed only corruption unleashed on our nation after the so-called training by our equally fraudulent state house political scientists.

    We have to start afresh. And this is the challenge before the opposition as they haggle over their differences in order to create a strong opposition party that can confront PDP, an instrument used by gangs to protect interest of their gang members.

    The opposition must also take note of the current culture of overpaid opposition legislators’ disingenuous deployment of parts of their disproportionate earnings that run into millions, to build schools, recreation centres, buy cars and motorcycles ostensibly to alleviate poverty of members of their constituencies. It is not only self-serving, but also a fraudulent way of using illegal earnings to embark on gubernatorial race instead of focusing on law making.

  • Igbo and Yoruba culture clash

    The verbal war between the Igbo and Yoruba columnists and opinion moulders over the role of their elites in the Nigerian post independence crisis and the subsequent civil war (1967-1970) rages on. The former celebrate Ojukwu and Achebe as heroes while demonising Awo as the architect of Igbo tragedy. The latter insist the statement of Awo, their hero, that ‘starvation is a weapon of war’, is not the answer to Igbo failure of leadership. That both derived different conclusions from the same set of facts only underscores our multiculturalism. As products of different cultures, our perception of reality is conditioned by our values, mores, norm and language.

    This explains why our elder statesman, Professor Chinua Achebe, a former Biafra cultural ambassador will declare with such finality that ‘Nigerians hate the Igbo because of their superior culture’. Of course, were Bola Ige, the unrepentant Yoruba irredentist and Achebe’s friend, to be alive, he would have countered by insisting Yoruba culture is the most advanced in Africa. Our pastoralists brothers from the Sahel of the north would, have as they once did in the 50s, dismissed the cultures of those they derogatively referred to as ‘half naked people of the east and unbelievers of the west’ as inferior. Never mind that anthropologists have long said no one culture is superior or inferior.

    The clash of culture also accounts for Achebe’s claim ‘there was a country’ while others argue what he saw, was probably an apparition, if he meant the Biafra nation Ojukwu created on May 30, 1967 which he impudently claimed ‘no power in Black Africa ‘could suppress, long after Gowon’s creation of a 12-state structure of May 26, 1967 which carved out South-eastern and Rivers states for the Ijaw, Efiks and Ibibio – sworn enemies of the Igbo.

    Achebe and Igbo elite also insist Awo betrayed the Igbo by reneging on a promise to declare an Oduduwa Republic. Again that amounts to viewing reality only from Achebe’s ‘superior Igbo culture’. Ojukwu was not in a position to know all that transpired in the meeting between Awo and Yoruba leaders in early May, where Awo made the statement, but it is on record that Awolowo later led a delegation of Western and Mid-Western leaders to Enugu on May 6, 1967, to dissuade Ojukwu from seceding according to Hilary Njoku’s ‘A Tragedy Without Heroes’.

    Both Ojukwu, who Professor Aluko said spoke better Yoruba than many Yoruba, and Achebe who lived in Ibadan, knew that Awo might have been revered by his Yoruba people, but that would not translate to Awo railroading the Yoruba to a war for which they were ill-prepared. With western Nigeria taken over by ’a northern army of occupation’ according to Awo himself, Yoruba would have asked him to first go and bring his children from London to lead the battle if he insisted on a mass suicide.

    Achebe claimed Zik was cheated because of cross carpeting after the 1952 election he had won. Igbo commentators as a result of selective perception seem not to be interested in all available documents which have shown that what happened was not different from Igbo going into coalition with the north in 1959 and 1979.

    But even if the story were different, bearing in mind our cultural differences, why should the decision of Yoruba elite to take their own destiny in their own hands in a federation where a northerner then controlled the North, an easterner controlled the East and Zik, based in Yoruba land using the platform of NCNC, a Yoruba party which had only one Igbo man during its first inaugural meeting, to mobilise the Igbo who had by 1959 outstripped the Yoruba in education, become the basis for bitterness passed down generations by leaders like Achebe?

    Would the Igbo elite which later schemed out Eyo Ita, a minority, as premier of the East have allowed a Yoruba man as premier of East in 1952?

    Of course the Igbo had the right to self-determination following the pogrom in the north. But others from different cultural background would have adopted a different approach. For instance the Yoruba culture prepares you for decision making , leadership and bravery through all forms of allegories : “Emi ko leku, ki nje oye ile Baba re’’ ‘the faint hearted never inherits his father’s throne’ ; but you are equally warned , “ti owo eni ko ba te eeku ida, a ki bere iku ti o pa baba eni”. (If you don’t control the armoury, you don’t embark on a war of vengeance). Ojukwu was stampeded to secession with less than 200 rifles.

    By 1968, with the fall of Enugu and defection of Zik, the war was effectively lost. But Ojukwu and Achebe extended the suffering of their people until 1970. Ojukwu returned after a decade in exile for an act of contrition by teaming up with his northern nemesis. He was later to work against the interest of June 12 and Yoruba, his host, by becoming an errand boy to Europe for Abacha.

    Again, if Yoruba do not regard such celebrated Igbo leader a hero, blame it on Yoruba culture that inculcates the spirit of supreme sacrifice for your host in times of great adversity (Fajuyi chose to die with Ironsi). This is contrary to Igbo culture which according to Achebe expects Igbo who stay in strange land to abandon their hosts “who know how to appease their gods when calamity befalls the owners of the land”. Igbo abandoned Lagos during the June 12 crisis to avoid becoming victims of war orchestrated more by their leaders. But again, MKO Abiola who on the eve of 1993 election predicted his martyrdom by making metaphorical allusion to those the Yoruba chose to carry sacrifice to the gods paid the supreme sacrifice.

    What has become apparent from the foregoing is a clash of culture between the Igbo and their Yoruba host. It was precisely to forestall such clash in a nation with over 250 ethnic nationalities that Ahmadu Bello, one of our founding fathers had in response to Zik admonition that they should forget their cultural differences to hasten their task of decolonization, warned they should instead endeavour to ‘understand our differences.’

    Tragically, over six decades after Ahmadu Bello’s warning, a segment of Nigerian ruling class made up of ‘vultures’ from the north, east and west, that have always exploited the divisive cultural differences, for personal gains such as becoming president without a political base, acquiring oil blocks, partaking in sharing of our national patrimony, and day light stealing of close to N2 trillion, still insist convocation of a sovereign national conference to discuss our differences is an invitation to disintegration of the country.

    All our angry, educated but jobless youths want is good things of life. Too lazy to worry about the past, they have become miracle seekers who want victory without war. Their counterparts from the north earnestly yearn for a messiah. Youths who don’t understand where they are coming from cannot chart the way forward. The challenge is therefore before the current political ruling class. They must learn from the selfless sacrifices of founding fathers of America, Germany and present Russia to negotiate our own variant of federalism.

    Every nationality has the right to choose its own hero as dictated by its culture. That is the whole essence of federal arrangement which as a social philosophy strives to liberate groups from the tyranny of the state. More than half of the world population has adopted one form of federal arrangement or the other. Europe after two world wars is resorting to a federal arrangement. Britain has accepted the Northern Ireland challenge after 300 years of forced marriage. This is the time to liberate this nation from the strangle-hold of ‘vultures’.

  • 2012, year Jonathan chose pdp over Nigerians

    2012, year Jonathan chose pdp over Nigerians

    ‘It was a lonely year for the president.  His dear Dame  Patience needed  for support after every day of governing Nigeria which is in itself war, spent part of the year in a German hospital for food poisoning while the  restless  Nigerian  journalists, always in search of tragedies, speculated about the worst’

    The outgoing year 2012 will probably rank as the most testing period of Jonathan’s presidency. The anniversary of January 1, the day his detractors claimed he declared war on Nigerians that gave him a landslide victory is approaching. And these detractors are many. Those who had warned if we voted Jonathan, he would sell the nation to PDP, those of us who harassed him every week for allowing the PDP that Nigerians never voted for to hijack his government, civil society groups, labour unions, students, unemployed graduates, N18, 000 minimum wage agitators and elder-statesmen whose demonstration in support of poor Nigerians had to be cut short by the police.

    To this long list, we can also add university teachers especially those of the University of Lagos that put the president in his place over his attempt to rename their university, one of the few internationally recognized Nigerian brands, Moshood Abiola University (MAU).

    Also in our group of President Jonathan bashing are civil society groups, opposition parties led by ACN publicity secretary who would criticize the president when his wife failed to dress to his (publicity secretary) taste. We also have Tunde Bakare, the pastor with a caustic tongue who had been questioned more than once by the secret police for abusing the pulpit. Of course, we also have the president’s number one sworn enemy, General Muhammadu Buhari who daily invokes images of blood and death in the midst of daily flow of blood of innocent Nigerians whose lives were cut short by those who seem to kill for fun.

    We can also add to the list, the National Assembly especially the lower house which threatened to impeach the president for shoddy implementation of the 2011 budget. Curiously among those who gave President Jonathan nightmares within the year is ex-President Obasanjo, his godfather. Long after the president had said he was neither Pharaoh or a military General, General Obasanjo insisted Jonathan ought to have toed his line by leveling up a large portion of north eastern part of Nigeria to teach those who harbour troublesome children a hard lesson just as he did to the people of Odi in Delta and elsewhere in Benue State. Obasanjo was not done. He said the president was weak on corruption, thereby confirming what other detractors of President Jonathan have been saying.

    It was a lonely year for the president. His dear Dame Patience needed for support after every day of governing Nigeria which is in itself war, spent part of the year in a German hospital for food poisoning while the restless Nigerian journalists, always in search of tragedies, speculated about the worst. But God was and is still on the throne for a president fervently remembered in daily prayers by jet age prosperity prophets. Speculating journalists and others with morbid thoughts were shamed by triumphant return of Dame Patience Jonathan destined to enjoy the fruits of her labour as a newly promoted permanent secretary, in Bayelsa State.

    For succour and support, in the absence of his wife, the president was left with his information crew made up of the information minister who had to be cautioned by the National Assembly for his over enthusiasm . We have Dr Reuben Abati, who was doing what he knows how to do best, mesmerizing with beautiful prose about ‘the president Jonathan they don’t know’. Of course, Dr Doyin Okupe was always there for the president. He defended him vociferously on the attempted change of Unilag name to MAU and the CBN governor’s failed attempt to introduce N5, 000 naira bill.

    It was also Okupe, the self styled president ‘attack lion’ who was to later call the attention of the detractors to President Jonathan’s daring act of sending the son of his party chairman for probe on account of his alleged involvement in fuel subsidy scam. For a president who according to Okupe still has political ambition, it was an act of courage rare among Nigerian politicians especially the PDP breed.

    Now we have been told that the case currently before an Ikeja High Court, has been ‘adjourned till January 30, 2013 to enable Mahmud Tukur, son of the national chairman of the PDP and his co-accused, Abdullahi Alao, the son of Ibadan-based business man, Abdulazeez Arisekola-Alao, Alex Ochonogor, and Eterna Oil and Gas Plc. to settle the N1.8bn subsidy fraud charge preferred against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)’. But can the president really dictate to the judiciary? I don’t think so, except it has to do with a Justice Salami who ruled against PDP indicted ex-governors who stole their opponents’ mandates.

    But this is a year the president cannot wait to end because of other unresolved issues that have continued to haunt him. The president had been stampeded by PDP buccaneers, to remove what everyone except his ministers and those he himself described as ‘oil cabals’ said was a phantom subsidy on January 1. He had ignored the National Assembly demand for the “publication of the list of the beneficiaries of past fuel subsidy and presentation of facts and figures on the true picture of the subsidy”. The lower house subsequently set up an ad hoc committee to probe the fuel subsidy regime covering three years 2009 -2011. The actual budget expenditure on subsidy for both petrol and kerosene was found to be N261.1b in 2006, N278.8b in 2007 and N346.7b in 2008

    We were also told the actual budget expenditure on subsidy for both petrol and kerosene was tolerable when five companies including NNPC were involved. Bare faced stealing only set in after PDP increased the number to 140 marketers. The president has not told us why we still need about 115 marketers if the names of the 25 the government claimed soiled their hands are removed.

    Based on estimated daily consumption of petrol by Nigerians at 31.5 million litres while that of Kerosene is nine million as against other incoherent figures fraudulently bandied around by relevant government officers, the House ad hoc committee proposed a budget of N806.766billion for the 2012 fiscal year for payment of subsidy on petrol and Kerosene. The president is yet to tell us why that figure is now going up to N1.2trillion. Is it that average daily consumption of products that is not available has gone up or that our epileptic four refineries have finally packed up.?

    The president promised to build three refineries in Bayelsa, Kogi and Lagos. The one in Lagos was to produce 200,000 barrels a day and Kogi 100,000 while the planned Balyesa Greenfield Refinery to be built in partnership with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, according to the NNPC Group Executive Director, Engineering and Technology, Mr. Billy Agha, would create 7,000 job opportunities. The president needs to tell us why we are not making progress in this regard.

    It is only chest-beating economist like Sanusi, the CBN governor who would argue about throwing people out of jobs in the banking sector and the bureaucracy when America is trying to put everybody back to job will guarantee development. If America is subsidizing American car manufacturers to keep workers on their jobs, we are better off losing N1.2 trillion as subsidy to support refineries, energy or even the agricultural sector if such efforts will create jobs for our teaming youths currently embarking on a journey of no return of second slavery to Europe and America. Sanusi and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala are only obsessed with economic growth long after America Brazil and other parts of the world have shifted attention to human development.

  • V-P’s lodge and PDP profligacy

    Namadi Sambo as a PDP prince is an accomplished Nigerian who made his fortune first, as a successful architect, and later, as a contractor to northern state governors. Before he was forced into politics by his people, he could afford any luxury money could buy: houses, exotic cars and private aircrafts , long before ownership of private jets became a fad among PDP serving governors, their contractors and our soul winning prosperity prophets that fervently support them with prayers. But Namadi remained a very humble man. Even as an accomplished man prevailed upon by his Kaduna State people to serve as governor on the platform of PDP, he remained himself – a self effacing humble man.

    Namadi has not changed much long after President Goodluck Jonathan, who has a weakness for those who swim in money picked him as his vice president following Yar’ Adua’s death. His executive functions as spelt out in the constitution includes ‘participation in all cabinet meetings and, by statute, membership in the National Security Council, the National Defence Council, Federal Executive Council, and the chairman of National Economic Council.’ Beyond this, the VP only enjoys delegated powers like deputy governors, commissioners and ministers/special advisers to the President. In fact he recites the same oath of office like them.

    Sadly, Namadi has been under severe strain since accepting to trade his peace, freedom and limitless powers of a state governor to serve under President Jonathan. First, his family house in Tundun-Wada area of Zaria came under the attack of gunmen following the post election violence that greeted Jonathan’s celebrated landslide victory. In recent times, the house still undergoing renovation has come under attack once again by the rampaging Boko Haram insurgents who injured a police man and killed a poor shoe maker who had the misfortune of trying to earn a living by practicing his trade not far from the VP’s house.

    Besides these attacks from hoodlums and Boko Haram insurgents, Namadi has come under severe attack of Nigerians. He has been blamed for the ongoing N7 billion VP mansion initiated in 2009 long before he was dragged from his comfort zone as a governor to become vice president. He has similarly been widely criticized for the additional N9b PDP contractors claimed is needed for a mansion reported to be nearing completion.

    Namadi has also been called upon to carry the can for the N8.4 b PDP fortune seekers budgeted for his office in the 2012 budget. Out of this N1.7 billion (approximately $10.3m) was to be spent on trips, N1.3b (approximately $9.7m) on office stationeries, N2b on repair/maintenance of office/residential buildings. Others were, N382 million for vehicles; N53 million for office furniture; N1.7 billion for office building and residential quarters.

    All the above budgetary provisions were supposed to be statement of intensions but since Doyin Okupe not too long ago told us that for PDP, such provisions amount to licence to spend, we can safely assume all the above provisions have been fully implemented. After all, PDP is only accountable to PDP.

    If I were to advise the VP in view of the on-going Namadi bashing, for funds others claimed to have spent on his behalf, I would have counseled the VP’s resignation to spite PDP and save his own integrity. After all, PDP has demonstrated these past 13 years that it can run the presidency without a vice president.

    It started with President Obasanjo. Following blame game over corruption by the president and his deputy, (PDP family quarrels are usually over the sharing of our resources among its members), Obasanjo did not only chase Atiku Abubakar out of office, but also out of his official residence which he transferred to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) under the guise of abiding with Abuja master plan. Atiku ended his term hiding in one of his private houses in Abuja.

    Those who attributed the good fortune of the nation to the fact that Obasanjo did not come to grief during his term, didn’t need to wait for long. Yar’ Adua sadly soon came to grief. PDP proved once again that the post of a vice president was superfluous. A bereaved nation soon discovered that, Yar’ Adua’s wife, his son in-laws, Ibori and other wayfarers that constituted his kitchen cabinet took over the running of affairs of the nation. The ailing president was flown abroad without the knowledge of Vice President Jonathan. The nation’s budget was forged. Contracts were awarded. While the president was away in Saudi Arabia hospital, the vice president had no idea of how resources of the nation were being deployed.

    But for the intervention of civil society groups led by Pastor Tunde Bakare, who with his caustic tongue, forced the law makers to come up with what was called the ‘doctrine of necessity’ Vice President Jonathan was effectively sidelined in spite of the constitutional provisions.

    By resigning honorably, to spite PDP, Sambo will not only stop his name from being used to perpetuate further evil, such a patriotic act will also save the nation about N35b being the sum total of the amount PDP wants to spend on the mansion and two years budget allocations to the VP’s office. This interest free money will help the process of development

    Unlike in the US where president Obama needed to borrow $100m towards training mathematics and science teacher over the next 10 years to prepare American youths for competition against Chinese youths, Jonathan can deploy N35b for revolutionizing the educational sector by producing well equipped teachers and Ph.D holders that will mould our youths for the challenges of the future.

    From the FCT’s proposed N50b 2013 budget, President Jonathan can add the amount earmarked “for the designing and construction of the residences of the President of the Senate, David Mark; his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu; the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal; and his deputy, Emeka Ihedioha”. It is public knowledge that these top public officers already have personal mansions in Abuja. And since this is a legitimate endeavour under our constitution, they should be encouraged to use their personal houses or lose the rent to the state as it is the case in Britain.

    In any case neither President Jonathan nor the minister for Federal Capital Territory has told Nigerians what became of the mansions built for the senate president and the speaker by the Obasanjo administration. If as in its character, PDP has sold the mansions to its members, shouldn’t the proceeds be deployed towards building the proposed new mansions instead putting fresh burden on tax payers?

  • Babalakin as a distraction

    Like most Nigerians who know Dr Wale Babalakin only through his celebration by PDP, I cannot also claim to know him beyond the positive picture of a brilliant lawyer, an astute businessman, a hard taskmaster in pursuit of excellence, painted in our heads by the media. If there were doubts about those positive attributes, they disappeared at the site of MM2 masterpiece he built on concessionary basis. If there were still other cynics, PDP, his current nemesis, took care of them by forcing him on the public consciousness.

    It was Obasanjo’s government that first appointed him Chairman of the Constitutional Drafting Sub-Committee of the National Political Reforms Conference in 2005. He moved up in 2007 to become an Honorary Special Adviser on Legal Matters and General Counsel to late President Musa Yar’Adua. In February 2008, he was conferred with the National Honour of Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR). He was later appointed Pro-chancellor of the University of Maiduguri and Chairman, Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigeria Federal Universities.

    PDP presented him as a national icon and role model that represents ‘the new Nigerian spirit of enterprise, scholarship, courage and consistency’. But all that changed when Obasanjo, in spite of fraudulent ‘due-process’ policy his administration introduced, unduly influenced the choice of Babalakin’s Bi-Courtney above other PDP warring contenders for the reconstruction of the 106 kilometres Lagos Ibadan express way at N89.53 billion on “Built, Operate and Transfer Concession Agreement over a period of twenty five years.

    The project like many derailed basanjo lofty initiatives became a victim of internal PDP wrangling while Nigerian users of the road suffered untold hardship. Babalakin’s name became a metaphor for all that is wrong with PDP; graft, corruption, inefficiency, ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude’ of its office holders who squandered billions on rehabilitation of roads year after year, while the nation’s network of roads remain in state of near collapse,

    Babalakin’s name also took on the imagery of: death of thousands of motorist as a result of accidents, wasted man hours of motorists caught in the traffic grid lucks, unruly truck drivers, who cannot be tamed by an undisciplined PDP administration interested only in squabbles over contracts, the shame of Ogere where motorists crawl for over five kilometers due to indiscriminate parking of trailers at both sides of the roads and more.

    Yet Babalakin has chosen to leak his wounds quietly. He has refused to talk about his many wars with government officials, the tanker drivers in Ibafo, and above all, his battles with demons, witches and other evil forces that drove this well educated man to seek spiritual help from churches that dotted both sides of the express road.

    But as a detached observer, I sympathise with Babalakin solely on account of the double jeopardy he has now suffered. While Nigerians blamed him for the tragedy of the failed Lagos Ibadan derailed project, he is presently being hounded by EFCC. It alleged his companies- ‘Stabilini Visioni Limited and Bi-Courtney Limited, between May 2006 and December 2006 laundered N3.4b for Ibori through Mauritus to buy an aircraft. It has also claimed that Babalakin knew the money to be as a result of criminal conduct by the said James Ibori. It did not however say how.

    Owning an aircraft in Nigeria has become a status symbol. The president has a fleet of nine. Between 2000 and 2012, PDP years of locust, the number of private aircrafts grew from 20 to about 150. They are mainly owned by ‘members of the political class, business organisations, religious leaders, business persons, and a number of state governments, including Rivers State, Lagos State, Taraba State and Akwa Ibom State’. Why is EFCC not showing interest in how serving political office holders and private individuals channel the funds used in purchasing their private jets?

    And Since EFCC expects Babalakin to know or care about the source of money for contracts awarded by governors, shouldn’t the organization extend the probe to all those who got contracts from Ibori as well as from other indicted ex PDP governors?

    What we have been told is that Delta state government awarded contract to Babalakin’s firms along with some others who transferred the money to Mauritius to purchase an aircraft

    We have not been told that Babalakin’s companies involved in this transaction collected money without executing the contract. Even if it is thus established, when did EFCC start running after failed contractors? Is this not the same PDP that defended President Jonathan’s appointment of Dr. Doyin Okupe as presidential adviser on Public Affairs in spite of his alleged shoddy implementation or non implementation of contracts from Imo and Benue states? In the two cases, all the PDP men agreed money exchanged hand. In fact Benue and EFCC went to court demanding for a refund of N600m for contracts not fully implemented.

    As it is often the case, it would appear we are being entertained by government and EFCC, once again to divert attention from other national issues. First, even if the involvement of Babalakin’s companies in contract to purchase air craft for Ibori has suddenly become an offence, what can Lamorde’s EFCC do about it? Was it not only last week he informed the senate that ‘several cases involving top politicians, accused of stealing public funds, have lingered for years after an initial public fanfare with’ some of the indicted officials still roaming the country as kingmakers, lawmakers, and political gladiators.’ Did the alleged laundering of money to buy aircraft by Ibori and Babalakin’s companies fall under the category of ‘small petty thieves, 419 and yahoo yahoo boys’ he claimed his agency has capacity for?

    Besides, we have witnessed this theatre of the absurd before. EFCC once chased Dimeji Bankole the former Speaker of the Lower House from Abuja to Abeokuta in the middle of the night to execute his arrest for alleged fraud. There were even some temporarily chased out of the country. The former EFCC helmswoman once assaulted us for weeks through daily press briefings about the sins of those Sanusi, the CBN governor claimed contributed to the collapse of banks due to their non performing debts. To the shame of EFCC and Sanusi, some of those names have become pillars of Nigerian economy after buying some of the banks following government injection of tax payers’ money. Others have become government advisers while many leading light of PDP on Sanusi’s list are now law makers working feverishly to curb corruption in Nigeria.

    Without the distractions of Babalakin and Ibori who has proved to be bigger than Nigeria until the intervention by the British judiciary, this government and its EFCC have their cups full. Only last week, the world acclaimed audit firm, KPMG in its report. rated Nigeria as the ‘most fraudulent country in Africa, with the cost of fraud during the first half of 2012 estimated at N225 billion ($1.5 billion)’.The Africa Fraud Barometer only last Wednesday identified ‘Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa as accounting for 74% of the total number of cases of fraud on the African continent, with Nigeria recording the highest overall value of fraud in the first half of the2012’. The Punch newspaper, putting together reports of various probe committees set up by the President says ‘over N5tn in government funds have been stolen through frauds, embezzlements and theft since president Jonathan assumed office in May 6,2010’