Category: Jide Oluwajuyitan

If I were an adviser to President Jonathan, I would have counseled self restraint in taking up issues with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, over his recent public rebuke. Tragically, the president’s outburst about the success or failure of the ‘Odi treatment’ is not the answer to crisis of leadership raised by Obasanjo.

But more than this, the president more than anyone else knows his acclaimed god father is a leader who is generally regarded as an evil oracle with goodwill towards neither friends nor foes, a leader who thrives more amidst political intrigue and above all, a godfather who according to his daughter, senator Iyabo Obasanjo Bello, neither forgets nor forgives. No past leader is known to have ever survived a battle of intrigue with the ‘ebora’ of Owu.

I am sure the president is also aware Obasnjo who has publicly admitted nothing embarrasses him is not in a hurry to change people’s perception of him as a man who strikes against those who regard him as friend when they least expected. He ate pounded yam with Ahmadu Alli in the afternoon and master minded his ouster as PDP chairman in the evening. He joined the people against embattled IBB during the last days of his fraudulent transition. Abacha, who he had dismissed as the main beneficiary of Babangida ‘transition without end’, did not take chances. He roped him into a phantom coup and put him on death row.

But he survived Abacha to emerge a two term president. He single handedly enthroned ailing Musa Yar Adua president but turned around to denounce him. He did everything including denying the zoning policy enshrined in PDP constitution to enthrone Dr.Goodluck Jonathan as president. Now, he says Jonathan is a weak president. He is holding him responsible for the monumental corruption that has come to characterize government these past years.

As a creation of Obasanjo, one would have expected the president to be conscious of Obasanjo’s well documented periodic interventions in the affairs of the nation; an intervention which most often tragically ended as a tale of doom foretold for past successive deaf leaders. President Jonathan ought to have known from experience that Obasanjo would at the end exploit these interventions to position himself on the side of the people, as he had successfully done in the past when the nation came under the assault of its elected, self or god father imposed leaders.

But as it is always the case, what Obasanjo has just told the president was a rehash of what others who are genuinely worried about the health of our nation have said. Muhammadu Buhari, Bola Tinubu and other patriotic Nigerians have called attention to the president’s inability to confront his corrupt PDP buccaneers who do not give a damn about the health of the nation. The only difference today is that because it was Obasanjo who raised these issues, the self serving presidential aides, paid by the tax payers to help the president in his decision making process cannot demonise Obasanjo or accuse him of ’insulting the president’. They simply abandoned the president to fight his own war with a god father who neither ‘sleeps nor forgives’.

But since government, as the president knows, is a trust, I think the reprimand by Obasanjo, should help him to deeply reflect on what informed the general atmosphere of mistrust by millions of Nigerians who massively elected a God fearing leader about 18 months ago, but today allege his government is behind the massive looting going on in the country just as they accuse him of inept handling of the Boko Haram insurgency. For the purpose of this inner reflection, let us do a quick recap of some unnerving actions of “a Jonathan we don’t know”

Towards the end of last year, it was President Jonathan who alerted his fellow Nigerians about the existence of ‘oil cartel’ that was sabotaging the nation’s economy. What Nigerians got in place of presidential decisive punitive action was a New Year gift of over 300% increase in the pump price of fuel. The president appealed for support claiming the economy would collapse without such an action. Critics who maintained government action was a mere strategy to raise fuel tax to satisfy the greed of government parasites became targets of government intimidation and harassment.

Not long after, it became a public knowledge that the president men and women deliberately sat on the KPMG audit report that revealed monumental stealing in NNPC. To discredit the message, government officials and political office holders decided to turn the searchlight on the personalities behind KPMG-the largest professional services company in the world.

On the eve of the presentation of the Farouk Lawal House Committee report that exposed the theft of over N2 trillion from the nations treasury, Otedola the rumored friend of the president and a confirmed PDP fund raiser was aided by the state to video tape Farouk Laval while receiving $620 of $3m agreed bribe to ensure the name of Otedola’s company is expunged from the list of defrauding firms.

The focus changed from the contents of the report to the leadership of the lower House after PDP leading light had watched a preview of the video. The report of the Aig Imokhuede presidential technical committee was also a damning verdict of soiled hands of some leading members of the ruling party involved in shady oil deals. Instead of the president tendering an apology to millions of his face book admirers he had let down, what we have seen so far is ‘motion without movement.’

The ongoing devious maneuvering to discredit the report of a committee headed by Nuhu Ribadu, known for his integrity by government appointees is perhaps what has finally forced Obasanjo to take side with frustrated erstwhile president Jonathan admirers.

On Boko Haram, besides Obasnajo the dreaded evil oracle , others not as gifted have equally argued the war on Boko Haram could have produced a different result if the president , known for protecting his friends with might and means had deplored half of the energy used in protecting his friends to wade off political foes , in Balyesa, Edo and recently in Ondo, to Borno and Yobe. During the last Ondo state governorship election, borders were closed days to the election with the IG in direct control. The share number of soldiers and policemen deployed to the state while the election lasted ensured miscreants and trouble makers were put on the run.

Since the rest of the country is at peace, the president’s frustrated admirers wondered why their Commander in Chief has been unable to direct the IG to shift his base to Borno or Yobe, swarm the area with soldiers as he did in Ondo leaving behind a handful of men in uniform to curtail the activities of ‘Okada’ law breakers in Lagos, overzealous south south militants who have hijacked our president, after securing mouth watering contracts and Igbo professional kidnappers on the trail of prominent and not so prominent Igbo citizens that stray home from their safe havens of Lagos and Abuja.?

The rest of the souths west, the president can handover to OPC, best equipped to hand out justice to petty thieves and ritual killers. Let us ignore the evil oracle. Who says the spate of killing of innocent Nigerians by those the government even with its control of awesome apparatus of state power claim are led by ‘ghosts’ does not deserve desperate action.

Opposition plays a vital role in the democratic process. It does not just proffer alternative view on the ruling party policy thrust, it helps the ruling party to periodically review or consolidate what it had initially considered an unassailable position. Because it gives hope to the party in waiting and reminds the ruling party of its vulnerability, opposition guarantees stability in a democracy. We saw the beauty of opposition party politics in the recently concluded American presidential election.

The divisive issue in that election was taxation. President Barack Obama’s party favoured tax cuts for the middle class. His republican opponent favoured tax cut for the wealthy employers of labour. The Republican Party did not attempt to invalidate the Democratic Party’s thesis that the middle class is the salt of life that guarantees development of societies all through the ages, but instead tried to impress it on the over 10% unemployed Americans that they and they alone could create jobs. Rather than dissipate energy over self evident facts, Obama focused on the twin evil of capitalism- greed and individualism which make the wealthy live on the sweat and blood of the overwhelming poor – his core supporters. Obama won through the Electoral College while Americans are evenly divided as shown by the result of the popular votes. That is the beauty of opposition in party politics in a democracy.

Unfortunately, as against application of intellect in the battle over the minds of the electorate, what we have seen in Lagos since the beginning of the fourth republic has been opposition bereft of ideas, an opposition that strives to alienate the electorate by its acts of open hostility to those it aspires to govern and an opposition that has consistently demonstrated at every point its lack of faith in the electoral process.

In 1999, one of the major problems facing Lagos was traffic gridlock, made worse by indiscipline of commercial bus drivers. It was claimed Bola Tinubu, supported by his young intellectual Turks, after a thorough study of the problem decided to organise and empower the transport unions as stakeholders in his planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project. The new administration then introduced Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) to control the unruly behaviour of other would-be traffic offenders.

Instead of coming up with idea that could improve the state government’s initiative, the response of Lagos Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) opposition under the leadership of, Bode George and Ogunnewe, the then transport minister, was to unleash newly recruited and uniformed federal thugs on LASTMA men, bringing more chaos to an already chaotic situation.

When the Tinubu administration initiated the ENRON electricity project to improve the electricity supply needs of Lagos, the nation’s economic capital, President Olusegun Obasanjo was quoted to have jokingly quipped during the inauguration that Lagos would soon be like London. The project, designed to take three months dragged on for three years because of bureaucratic impediments erected by federal authorities under the then President Obasanjo.

Lagos State PDP opposition and its federal backers were not done. The state government created development centres to ensure even development. Claiming creation of local government was on the Exclusive List, an assertion which had nothing to do with the state government’s commendable initiative; the opposition prevailed on the Federal Government to withhold the local government statutory allocations. Even after a judicial pronouncement as to the illegality of such vindictive action, President Obasanjo, under pleasure from Lagos PDP, did not budge, stalling in the process development efforts such as the then ongoing construction of General Hospitals in all the Local Government areas.

Now, the National Conscience Party (NCP) has taken over from where PDP left off after its leading light had been consumed by its own war of attrition over sharing of federal patronage. Like PDP, the party has embarked on peddling lies, and the use of blackmail instead of providing alternative policy thrust as government-in-waiting.

Early in the year, it pitched a battle against Governor Babatunde Fashola over his resolve to reclaim the Makoko water front from illegal squatters who had turned it into a slum. NCP at the time reduced the argument to the protection of the poor and under-privileged fishermen without telling us what their alternative policy on immigrants who erect illegal structures on Lagos water fronts would be.

And in the past two weeks, Governor Fashola has been under severe strains because of his resolve to put an end to the okada menace in the city. When months after the state assembly’s passage of the Lagos State traffic law, many more months of education and sensitisation of stakeholders, the okada riders chose to defy the law and visit violence on law-abiding Lagosians in search of their daily meals, the Lagos State Chapter of the NCP claimed ‘the restriction of motorbike operators on highways and major roads was a confirmation that the ACN administration of Governor Fashola lacked any serious plan to solve the chaotic transport issues in the state’.

For Mr. Tunde Agunbiade, the state party chairman, Lagos State Government is to be blamed for not providing employment for those who are defying the laws of Lagos. For him, the state governor should do nothing as thousands of non-Nigerians shipped to Lagos by Lagos greedy businessmen who care only for their pockets kill, maim and create anarchy on Lagos major arteries. Agunbiade probably having little value to add to the debate further accused Governor Fashola of ‘imposing an anti-people law without consulting with stakeholders’, when every resident of the state knows this to be untrue.

Mr. Akele, the party’s governorship candidate in the state during the 2011 election also wants the traffic law abrogated. He crudely described Mr. Fashola as ‘a pathological liar”, who used loot from the state treasury to buy and lure voters for his second term in office. He and his NCP, he said, are now set to ‘mobilise other political parties, civil society organisations, international human rights outfits as well as Amnesty International and other relevant masses-oriented organisations at home and abroad to intervene’ in what he said was a ‘genocidal policy against the people’.

Lagosians who massively voted for Fashola will feel insulted by Mr. Akele’s unguarded outbursts and half truths. His efforts along with those of other civil rights groups in ending military rule in Nigeria no doubt deserve our commendation. But beyond this, I think it is equally appropriate to suggest he restricts himself to his area of core competence – civil right activities, where he can best serve the nation. It was obvious during his debate with Fashola and other governorship candidates in the run-up to last year election that his passion for civil right activities left him little time to adequately equip himself for party politics and the intellectual challenges of modern governance. During that public debate, Mr. Akele did not know the number of schools or projected number of teachers needed by the state he had wanted to govern.

And since Fashola, the elected governor of the state who is in possession of records of those killed, maimed, robbed and raped has sworn to implement the traffic law as enacted by his state house of assembly, Akele and his party, in the absence of fresh ideas, should join the governor in advising those who cannot comply to go back to their villages where they will learn the hard way that even there in the village, they cannot pollute the environment, drive against traffic, molest innocent people or because of claim of poverty put up structure on a land not approved by the Village Head.

With the spate of virulent attack on President Ebele Jonathan even from his own South-south constituency over the ceding of Bakassi home to about 300,000 Nigerians to Cameroon, it is difficult not to sympathise with him. The final phase of the Bakassi tragedy could not have come at a worse time for a president facing the crisis of legitimacy from the whole of the North-east and that of identification from the South-west that has sustained a principled opposition to nearly all the policies of a president who has equally responded by shutting out the area for appointments to sensitive positions in his administration.

It is of little relief to the president’s critics including his cousins who have called for his impeachment over the Bakassi national tragedy that his role was no more than that of a caretaker long after the deeds had been done by other state leading actors such as Balewa, whose naiveté was exploited by Ahmadou Ahidjo, a fellow northerner with roots in Nigeria, Gowon who panicked over the threat of Ojukwu, his friend and rival to the unity of Nigeria and Obasanjo, who having tasted war, opted for diplomatic settlement following unfavorable ICJ ruling against Nigeria.

Jonathan, who those who have become immigrants in their own country had thought should be most touched by their plight on account of being from South-south, was deemed to have performed less gallantly than former state actors such as Shehu Shagari, Murtala Mohammed and even Sanni Abacha. It was Shehu Shagari who for instance told his Cameroonian counterpart “that the existing Nigerian border at the sea coast of Rio Del Rey was protected by the OAU Resolution of 1964, respecting the inviolability of inherited colonial boundaries”. It was also Murtala Mohammed who consigned the Maroua declaration into the cooler insisting no part of Nigeria will be ceded to appease supporters of Nigeria during her civil war, while Abacha on his part called off the bluff of Cameroon over the disputed Bakasi peninsula.

One can therefore understand why Cross River State that has half of its Efik population forcibly removed from their ancestral homes felt betrayed by the Nigerian state for failing to appeal the ICJ ruling especially after its Attorney General had provided seven additional grounds for an appeal.

The ruling itself was a travesty of justice, an international conspiracy of the offspring of those who exploited our pre colonial antecedents and post colonial division they created for the purpose of pilfering our resources to cushion the social problems in Europe. Otherwise how can the ‘Yaoundé II Declaration’ of 4 April 1971 and the ‘Maroua Declaration’ of 1 June 1975, products of unratified agreement between two self-serving African dictators and the Anglo-German treaty of 1913 take precedence over a treaty of protection of 1884 between Britain and Obong of Calabar? It is curious how, in the wisdom of the ICJ, fraudulent horses trading between European fortune seekers carry more weight than the fundamental human rights of about 300,000 indigenes that are to be uprooted from their ancestral homes.

But beyond President Jonathan, currently every body’s whipping child, this betrayal of the fundamental human rights of the Efiks of Cross River State has once again demonstrated the failure of Nigeria state that has since independence constituted itself in to an obstacle to the self-actualization and aspirations of most of our over 250 federating ethnic nationalities.

Most of the groups have always striven to preserve their respective cultural values, religious beliefs and indigenous languages as supported by the United Nations Charter. Our founding fathers for political expediency failed in London in 1959. The social engineering efforts of the military brigands in creating states had been self-serving. Some of the current state actors both in the executive and legislative arms behave like hoodlums with little or no allegiance to the state they have repeatedly raped.

Deformed and rendered dysfunctional, the state has today been reduced to an orphan by those who are expected to show more concern for her health. The children of those who have repeatedly raped the state in the last 30 years, caring very little for her health have followed the footsteps of their parents. Obviously neither the fathers nor their thieving children see the state as their own. After all, no thorough born of a father deliberately sets out to destroy his father’s estate.

The tragedy of Bakassi and its 300,000 citizens occupying an area of about around 665 km² is the tragedy of Nigerian state that has always physically or metaphorically killed the best of its own rising ‘sun’ such as Isaac Boro,Saro Wiwa, Professor Awojobi, Fela , Vatsa, among many others as well as suppressing by force, groups that demand for self-actualization.

For instance, a United Nations brokered accord between Cameroon and Nigeria specified that on taking over the peninsula, Cameroon should respect the rights of the Bakassi people, who should be free to remain in their homeland. The Bakassi were expected to either become Cameroonian citizens, or retain their Nigerian nationality and be treated as foreigners.

We have also been told by experts that the collision of warm and cold oceans has built in Bakassi submarine shoals rich in fish, shrimps and amazing variety of other marine life forms which makes the area a very fertile fishing ground, comparable only to Newfoundland in North America and Scandinavia in Western Europe.

We therefore had an opportunity in the last 10 years to have changed an adversity to an advantage since the ICJ judgment itself only asked Nigeria to transfer possession of the peninsula, but did not require the inhabitants to move or to change their nationality. But for those 10 years, those that have taken over the state have been too busy fighting over what they could take out of the state to worry about the economic potential of Bakassi. Economically empowered Bakassi would have become an indispensable ally of Cameroon even if they are regarded as foreigners on their own land.

Similarly for 10 long years, none of the state actors was resourceful enough to scheme about exploiting the spirit of the judgment through turning the area to a new haven for its Nigeria inhabitants. But for the greed of the actors, we have enough resources this 10 long years to build schools ,provide health facilities and other infrastructures that would have set out Bakassi Local Government area as a Nigerian ‘new London’ within a rusty Cameroon territory.

‘Two weeks earlier, it was the turn of Mubi in Adamawa state. There, hoodlums murdered about 40 students of higher institutions in the state. Their assailants armed with their names moved from room to room, calling each by name before the execution. The killing spree went on for two hours, enough time to deploy fighter jets from any part of the country to Mubi to confront the hoodlums. But for the two hours the nightmare lasted, there was no policeman in sight’

Assailed and buffeted by myriad of problems, the nation’s nightmare continues. For two weeks, Lagos, the economic nerve centre of the nation has been brought to its knees by traffic grid lock created by long queues of motorists searching for fuel in a nation recognized as the sixth biggest oil producer in the world. Those who fought their ways into the filling stations after hours on the line are confronted by an insolent petrol attendant who dictates the gratification he wants before selling to you.

A trip between Lagos and Ibadan on the broken express road , a distance of a little over a hundred kilometers take about three hours or sometimes 13 hours as it happened last week Wednesday when the unruly tanker drivers that the government has not been able to tame for 13 years once again closed the road to traffic. They only agreed to liberate their victims who slept on the road after government had begged them.

The chaos and anarchy in Ogere is worse than it was 13 years ago. The dangerously packed trailers now stretched for about five kilometres. We also now have an army of Road Traffic Safety personnel paid by taxpayers to merely monitor the unruly activities of those who have repeatedly demonstrated they are above laws. The cumulative amount of taxpayer’s money government waste on this type of unproductive endeavour would be enough to rehabilitate the broken rail lines. But such an option is unattractive to government that has in its economic team some who own as many as 8,000 trailers.

As we move towards South-south and South-east, the two zones responsible for about 75% of foreign earnings, the people’s nightmare increases. Kidnapping and ransom-taking which started with PDP ascension to power in 1999, initially limited to expatriate oil workers has become a very lucrative trade extended to politicians, babies, indigenes visiting homes from Lagos and abroad and university teachers. Only last week, Professor Hope Eghagha, once a member of editorial board at The Guardian and a teacher at the University of Lagos who took time off to serve his Delta State as Commissioner for Higher Education was taken away in a broad day light by hoodlums who slain his police orderly and shot his driver. He was only released yesterday. And it is business as usual in Abuja where the debate has always been about contracts.

The north eastern part of Nigeria has been made ungovernable for about two years. Only last Sunday, hoodlums carried out a pre-dawn murder of about 24 people returning from early hour worship in Dogon Daewa village, Birmin Gwari Local Council area of Kaduna State. The hoodlums thereafter, walked leisurely to the house of a man they suspected could identify them, shot him along with his two children in the presence of his wife. The wife, they left a living dead after cutting off one of her hands.

A few days earlier in Aluu, university town in Rivers State, hoodlums and traditional rulers supervised the brutal murder of four university students and set their bodies ablaze causing universal outrages.

Two weeks earlier, it was the turn of Mubi in Adamawa state. There, hoodlums murdered about 40 students of higher institutions in the state. Their assailants armed with their names moved from room to room, calling each by name before the execution. The killing spree went on for two hours, enough time to deploy fighter jets from any part of the country to Mubi to confront the hoodlums. But for the two hours the nightmare lasted, there was no policeman in sight.

Leadership is about vision and the capacity to motivate people to be part of that vision. Hoodlums have taken over our land because of the quality of leadership provided by President Jonathan and PDP. An overwhelmed President Jonathan who secured a pan Nigerian mandate less than two years back, instead of confronting the problems has been lamenting about being the most criticized president in the world. And to wade off criticism of his lack-lustre performance, he had said with innocence of a child, ‘it is not as if there were roads, electricity…and Jonathan brought hurricane to destroy them’.

On the other hand, Obama emerged as president when America was under siege. He inherited two wars, massive unemployment and collapsing economy. Obama instead of engaging in blame game with his defeated Republicans reminded his sympathizers that he was elected to fix those problems. Obama in spite of sabotage by the defeated Republicans, and betrayals by members of his own party who only front for big corporations, has confronted those problems headlong sometimes taking some unpopular decisions.

Our pre-independence years remain the golden age of Nigeria on account of quality leadership provided by representatives of the dominant ethnic nationalities – Awo, Ahmadu Bello and Zik. Murtala Mohammed with quality leadership in six months secured more mileage in terms of national pride and international recognition whereas all the billions wasted on fraudulent rebranding by Yar’ Adua, Jonathan and Akunyili only further consolidated our position as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Buhari, in eight months, with his crude economic ‘barter arrangement’, saved the nation billions that would have gone into importation of petroleum products and grains which, with quality leadership, we produced in abundance, giving in the process, the West that survives only on our mystery, a bloody nose.

It is inconceivable that the nightmare of motorists in Ogere that has lasted this past 13 years because of lawlessness of hoodlums would have survived Muhammed’s mercurial temper or Buhari’s zero tolerance for indiscipline for a month.

For those who have said our founding fathers operated under a different milieu and that Murtala Mohammed and Buhari operated as dictators, both Tinubu and Fashola have demonstrated in Lagos that what our nation needs to move forward is quality leadership. Oyinlola in Lagos was a disaster, unable to mend pot holes, clear refuse that was choking Lagos or guaranteed security of life and property. Marwa shamed him with quality leadership. Tinubu left enduring legacies through quality leadership and today as we can see Fashola has taken the state to a new height making it a state to beat in terms of quality leadership. He has effortlessly tamed the traders’ anarchies in Mushin, Oshodi, Mile Two, Ikotun and other parts of Lagos. He has, with confidence, asked those who are not ready to comply with the laws of his state to go elsewhere.

In Oyo State, we have seen evidence of resourceful leadership. The whole stretch of less than 10 kilometres portion of the express road from the Old Toll Gate to Ife By-pass that used to take motorists sometimes up to two hours under successive PDP governors today take less than 10 minutes. The Ife By-pass has been rid of anarchists as traders.

If we need any proof that there is really no one in control, the ongoing haggling over the proposed expenditure of N5.8b for new quarters and offices for lawmakers, Senate President and the Speaker, the proposed N2.8b for the rehabilitation and repair of residential buildings for the president and vice president and the proposed N5.6bn to provide water for the residents of FCT is all that is required.

If indeed there is someone in charge, those in Abuja serving none but themselves would have been wary of this type of scandalous proposed expenditure in the face of collapsed Lagos-Ibadan Express road and others in the country that are vital to our economic development.

This article first appeared in The Guardian on August 22, 1991. The article is as relevant today as it was 21 years ago. Today as it was then, it doesn’t appear there is anyone in charge of the economy. Today those who contributed to the collapse of the banking sector, those who supervised their activities and those who have been accused of defrauding the government are also economic advisers to government. Happy reading.

It feels good to be a Nigerian at this period of our nation’s history. For once, attention is being shifted from corruption, police brutality, drug, scandals, student riots and so on, to issues of development. Economic decisions that government believes to be in the interest of the governed are promptly taken. In politics, we have come up with our own models that will shame the whole generation of Western model builders. We have come up with our own definition of political party, elections, manifestos and so on.

In international economic diplomacy, we can ignore William Keeling and his Western masters and co-detractors who were envious because of about $150 million or 1.5 billion naira we spent on hosting the most successful OAU summit since the organization’s inception in 1963. If their problem is our outstanding debt, which is now $30 billion by their records, this we have been servicing without default.

At home, our economists have shamed their Western counterparts by embracing models they had been too timid to adopt. We have embraced what our economists call “the inevitable large scale programme of devaluation” in spite of the reservations of Western economists and scholars like Jaime de Millo (the World Bank official) and Ricardo Fari of Johns Hopkins University. Both men have warned that the wholesale devaluation of our naira would not help our situation. Our former Head of State – the frustrated chicken farmer, once noted for his cynicism about our economic programme, has even taken the battle to Columbia University where he dared our creditors to begin charity at home by adopting the law of demand and supply and to jettison “protectionism” against Japanese goods and subsidy of their agricultural produce. He is on his own; our government economic advisers would want us to know they are in charge. Unlike General Obasanjo, they have faith in our creditors.

What I have found disturbing however is not the economists ingenious recommendation that we must boycott goods and services including drugs, food, telephone, electricity, if the prices are too high, but their occasional head-on collision with government. This tendency tends to cast doubt in the mind of the governed especially when they are being told there is only one way to our economic salvation. The government no doubt needs credibility if it is to carry the people along.

We can now recall that as at November 13, 1986, the first-tier rate was N2.80 to $1 or N4 to #1. But shortly after this, the first rift between the government and its economic experts became noticeable. Then, on November 24, 1986 when the exchange rate jumped to N3.45 to $1, Augustus Aikhomu, then Chief of General Staff, panicked and attempted to issue a decree to ensure stability of the naira in total disregard for the law of “demand and supply”. He consequently went ahead to increase the amount of foreign exchange for auction from $50 million to $75 million.

The rift was settled but not without a strong warning from the Central Bank that government’s interference would not be tolerated. By November 1990, when they had successfully arrested the decline in the value of the naira, the exchange rate had floated up to N10.75 kobo to the dollar. Barely two weeks later, the Central Bank through its Director of Research, Dr. M.O. Ojo, ably defended this rate claiming that the naira was realistically valued because the supply of foreign exchange tallied with demand. In his words, the “rate is dictated by simple law of demand and supply.” He allayed our fears by informing us that low exchange rate is no indication that the economy is not on course.

By last July 24, the floating exchange rate had climbed up to Nl1.32 kobo to the dollar. Once again Aikhomu, the military Vice President, broke the truce by publicly criticizing the Central Bank and its economic masterminds. Characteristically, the Vice President then said that, “the value of the naira cannot be left absolutely to the whims and caprices of market forces”. He is thinking of government measures aimed at stabilizing the exchange rate of the naira at an acceptable level.

The latest confrontation has once again provided an opportunity for the critics of the economic policies of government to ask where exactly we now stand. The economic experts have moved us from first tier to second window, back to second tier and forward to the Dutch market. They have reduced our lives to second-tier lives. We accepted because “hope rises eternal in the human breast.” If government now doubts its able ally in this war of economic survival, how are we sure we have not all been hoodwinked?

In all this, I sympathize more with government. This is not because I care less for helpless Nigerians, who live second-tier lives, but our government that is saddled with the overall responsibility of taking us to the economic El Dorado seems to have been reduced to a pawn in the chess game of our economists. With this type of betrayal from a trusted ally, we can easily see that, were it not for the craftiness of government, our whole economic system would have collapsed.

Our government made up of men and women of great skills has, in spite of its unpredictable self-serving allies, successfully combined the husbandry of our economy with other vital decisions that have. far-reaching effects on our lives. For instance they alone decide for us when the nation needs to be prodigal or ostentatious. They alone know when we can make donations to the needy, sick, elite, successful footballers, musicians, churches and mosques. And it is they alone that can decide when it is time to stop spending money as if there will be no tomorrow.

As if these were not enough burden for government, it has to maintain a delicate balance between investing in our future political stability and health as well as housing for all in the magic year 2000. It has to juxtapose economic rationality with political expediency. It is obvious that our economic managers are not ordinary men. Even craftiness is a measure of resourcefulness. I would therefore rather swim or drown with a resourceful government with all its scheming than with our economic experts who operate more as agents of our creditors.

– August 22,1991

Something new, beautiful or ugly always comes out of the old South-west. The West bred NADECO or “Agbako” if you prefer Diya’s nomenclature. It equally bred the self-styled Abacha‘s ‘new realists’, headed by Ebenezar Babatope who told us Abacha was the best to have happened to Nigeria. His other fellow travelers include Elder Wole Oyelese, Dr Walter Ofonagoro, and Wada Nas.

It was also the western Abacha administrators that constituted the vanguard of what they termed ‘Abacha historic mission’. Leading the pack was Colonel Olagunsoye Oyinlola then of Lagos, under the assault of man-made plague-broken roads, UN cleared refuse dumps and Abacha state sponsored violence. Other ignoble members of the Abacha fraudulent ‘historic mission’ were administrators Nwosu of Oyo and Ahmed Usman of Ondo among others.

But the Fourth Republic has lived up to its reputation by throwing up the ugliest of the wild, wild, West. No matter how PDP governors from other geo-political zones tried, it will be difficult to beat the records of James Ibori described by a London court as ‘rogue in state house’, or that of Lucky Igbenedion who earned the same appellation from a Benin court. Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, Gbenga Daniel of Ogun, Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo, all accused of squalid conducts in government houses still have dates with the court. The West produced more firsts. It produced Olusegun Agagu of Ondo, Professor Oserheimen Osunbor of Edo, and Segun Oni of Ekiti and Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun who were indicted by the courts for stealing others’ mandates.

For those who may be wondering about how South-west PDP governors have been able to chalk up such unenviable and unsavory reputation, the defence put up by Oyinlola, before the Prof. Femi Odekunle-led six-member panel of inquiry set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the procurement of an N18, 38b loan and other major financial transactions by his government between May 29, 2003 and November 27, 2010 provides two possible explanations – incompetence or greed or both.

First Oyinlola, swore he was motivated by service to his people to take the loan of N18.35b which exposed his state to ‘huge monthly repayment of a sum of N615 million to service a loan that by all accounts had no viable source of repayment’. He has told us that faced with a situation where “salaries of civil servants and pensions consumed 90 per cent of the earnings of his state” following “a reduction in the federal allocation to states in 2009, when the crises in the Niger Delta affected oil production” he was left with no other choice but to seek the help of the leadership of his state House of Assembly which in his words “advised us to take the loan at interest rate of 13% to address germane issues of 2010 Budget.”

After obtaining the loan, his “administration used part of the loan to award contract for kits for the use of pupils in primary and secondary schools because of the poor performance of students in science subjects and Mathematics”.

We have no reason to doubt Oyinlola’s genuine concern in this regard. But the question is how come it took the loan for an administration that had been in office for over seven years to realize the ‘poor performance of Osun state students in science and mathematics’? How was the decision to award contact arrived at? This question is relevant because we are not going to invent the wheel. Obama has just proposed in his next year budget a huge sum for the training of about 100,000 science and mathematics teachers to enable America catch up with China. But here it is a lot easier to award contracts than train teachers.

A big chunk of the loan also went into the six stadia projects; the governor claimed was not even the idea of his government. According to him it was ‘the youths of the state that called the attention of its administration to the development of sports, during one of the open forum programme organized by his government’. We were not told if this youth-initiated policy was subjected to rigorous debate by the cabinet or the rubber stamping house. But the ex-governor saw in the borrowed idea, an opportunity to spread infrastructural development through the location of a stadium in each of the six zones across the state.

But the question again is does Osun need six stadia in a situation where Lagos that harbours millions of enthusiastic football and other sports fans until recently had only one? And if Oyinlola’s administration was persuaded that six stadia were needed, should the contracts be awarded less than a year to the end of his term? What is the time frame for the completion of the projects? These questions are also pertinent because ex-governor Oyinlola also disclosed to the panel that some of the contracts his government awarded for roads rehabilitation were not implemented by the contractor. He has had to seek the intervention of Ooni of Ife because cancelation of the contracts was not a viable option since Osun state according to him ‘stands to lose about N500million’.

There are more questions: “Why was the entire loan fully drawn by the PDP administration prior to the commencement of projects, even when the construction periods of the various projects for which it was meant were between 12-24 months? Oyinlola’s admission that only N10.1billion was drawn down does still not answer this question.

Whose interest was being served by lodging the loan in an account with the same bank without accruing any interest while the state simultaneously made payment of N615 million as interests and charges .?

Whose interest was served by an administration that spent over seven years in office, had N67.3billion excess free oil windfall to play around, and yet left behind a legacy of suffocating N615 million loan monthly repayments?

How for instance was Osun state whose total IGR under Oyinlola never exceeded N300m going to survive with a monthly loan repayment of N615 million spread over 13 years?

Aregbesola no doubt has an axe to grind with Oyinlola who stole his mandate for close to four years; but he has in my view tried to rise beyond the bitter politics of the state by merely describing his predecessor’s scandalous action merely as ‘running foul of simple rule of sound financial management’.

The truth of the matter is that Oyinlola and his state House of Assembly have not behaved differently from other South-west PDP governors who have been indicted or facing charges in court for squalid behavior arising from unimplemented contract bazaar they dished out just to satisfy the greed of PDP members.

In a more decent society, Oyinlola who was shamed by Marwa’s superlative performance after his dismal Lagos outing would never have been presented for an elective office by a political party worthy of its name. But in character with PDP philosophy of service to members only, Oyinlola , after another scandalous outing in Osun State, and an indictment for electoral fraud by an Appeal Court, has moved up to become national secretary of the PDP.

As part of our continuing nightmare, PDP which in itself is deficit in honour and morality following the indictment of nearly all its past party chairmen is moulding our nation in the image of some depraved ex-governors, ex-Senate presidents, and ex-Speakers of the Lower House and committee chairmen.