The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Amaechi’s transport varsity

    Our democracy is in crisis not just because our institutions of democracy are weak but more because ours is a democracy without democrats. While compromise after rigorous debate of all issues including government policy thrusts is democracy’s highest badge of honour, our successive ex-presidents and  their  appointed political office holders since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1999 operated  like sole administrators, with total disregard for the constitution, party manifesto and even the electorate on whose back they rode into power.

    Since the states in principle are not inferior to the central government, state governors on their part behaved like emperors, answerable to none but to themselves.

    Obasanjo in office publicly declared he was not obliged to listen to advisers. Buhari like Obasanjo, the PDP crowned ‘father of the nation” suffers from a messianic complex, sometimes behaving as if he was doing us a favour by condescending so low to govern us.

    Capitalising on President Buhari’s insensitivity to public opinion, his ministers seemed to have perfected the art of watching his body language before acting on any issue. This terrible defect in the president’s governing style  was what Minister Rotimi Amaechi exploited before moving on to take personal ownership of what was meant to be a public policy freely using phrases like “I engaged CCCECC’;

    I insisted I will sign only if three things are done” and ‘nobody influenced me “on where to site the transport university. Amaechi’s apparent admission of application of the rule of the thumb on government policy thrust that required input of all actors in policy formulation and implementation explains while most government policies since 1999 including privatization, monetization and rural electricity project among others failed.

    It is worse at state levels where no one monitors what governors who are accountable neither to the electorate nor to the centre that spoon-feed them do.

    When their excellences, the governors are not building bridges over land, stadia in every LGA headquarter, five-star hotel in a village, they are competing for multi-billion local and foreign loans to build mega schools, mega hospitals or unviable airports which will eventually become economic drain on the purse of their states.

    Whereas, public policy in a democracy is often a response of the political system to demands arising from its environment, anyone listening to Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister for Transport while defending his decision to site  N18b transport university in Daura, the president’s village cannot fail to observe the unmistakable sycophancy as he  bellowed “Daura is in Nigeria, it is not in any other part of the world.

    It is not in Niger Republic, Biafra or Mali, it is in Nigeria. So, what is wrong in siting the University of Transportation in Daura?” adding “”When we sited a factory at Kajola, there was no noise, nobody debated about it, nobody abused us for it unlike the site for the university.”

    President Buhari like all humans is not perfect. But I am sure few doubt his sense of decency. While it is true that Daura is eminently qualified to host University of Transportation, it is  most unlikely President Buhari would have gone out of his way to insist Daura of all the towns in Katsina state and of the close to two scores  states in the north must host the university.

    For the president, performing the groundbreaking ceremony of the university in Daura on Monday, December 2, was a force majeure.

    Amaechi, the master of his game had already secured 400 hectres of land from a jubilant Governor Masari who as a politician was expected to facilitate bringing such huge investment to his state. Rejecting Amaechi’s Greek gift which had become a fait accompli would have therefore pitched the president against his own people.

    With ministers like Amaechi, President Buhari who has been accused by some prominent northern leaders of nepotism and provincialism for allegedly filling some key positions in his government with close relatives from his village needs no enemies.

    Read Also: Buhari commends siting of university of transportation in Daura

    I think Amaechi has done a great damage to the president’s sense of decency.

    There must be something to learn from the modesty of our founding fathers, Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Awolowo who did not site any of the enduring projects such as stadia, institutions of higher learning, government estates that have outlived them in their villages or states.

    Sadly, unlike selfless and public-spirited first and second republic politicians, neither modesty, morality nor ethics matter to our current military-baked new breed politicians many of whom cannot in the manners of Zik, Awo and Ahmadu Bello articulate our crisis of nation-building let alone proffer solutions.

    Today’s political stars are made not on account of their ideas as to how to make society better than they met it but on the basis of the number of school buildings they erected, the number of market stalls they built or bus-stops they constructed. For a season, Amaechi was the governor to beat in this regard with our own Wole Soyinka drafted to Rivers to commission projects.

    But with less endowed Wike who was not too long ago christened “Mr. Project” by Vice President Osinbajo, outperforming Amaechi after only four years, it has become apparent, the number of projects in Rivers is a function of the quantum of naira the state receives as monthly allocation which  most times eclipses what some other states receive in one year

    That Rivers State in 2019 is today still defined by poverty, violence and insecurity is a sufficient proof that erecting structures does not guarantee an emergence of a more egalitarian society.

    It can be argued that the state remains poor in spite of huge revenues because of ‘misapplication” (apologies to Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida’s vice president) of funds by Amaechi, his predecessors and successors in office. Many believe most of the resources of the state were ploughed into unviable projects or deployed for self-promotion.

    It is for instance on record that while Amaechi as governor acquired a brand new Bombardier Global 5000 (N565RS) from Bombardier Canada for $45.7million (N7.3billion), Rivers State had an AW139 helicopter, which was leased to a commercial airliner.

    The state also had two other aircrafts –an Embraer Legacy 600, which was sold off because the state claimed it was too expensive to maintain and the other, a Dash 8-Q200 aircraft also sold to Cross River State for $6million.

    “I have no regret siting this university where I have sited it; it is not because I want to get any gain.”  Amaechi has no patience to reflect on the soundness of a University of Transportation with scores of underfunded federal universities offering courses in transportation all over the country.

    But Amaechi is not alone. Soundness of policies counts for little among today’s political stars.

  • Garba Shehu Vs. Alexander Ogomudia

    Responding to the comments by a former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Alexander Ogomudia (retd.), to the effect that “Nigeria may be restructured violently”, presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu last Sunday reminded him and other apostles of restructuring that as “a constitutional democracy, changes to the country in structure, its systems, policy and politics must abide by the norms of democracy”.

    Garba Shehu’s restatement of the obvious should ordinarily not raise any storm.  However because of his past  unrestrained comments on  sensitive and sometimes divisive issues such as the killing of our compatriots by cross-border immigrant herdsmen,  equating of Miyetti Allah cattle breeders association with ethnic national groups such  Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Pan-Niger Delta Forum, and his misleading comments on the controversial RUGA government programme, Shehu has left many with   the impression he is serving other tendencies in the presidency  instead of  representing the  public face of the president. His latest attack on Ogomudia seem to further confirm the fears of those who believe he is in the presidency as representative of those tendencies that view democracy not as a process that places high premium on leaders’ accountability, citizen participation and an open society with a just and equitable social order, but as a method of decision making by those who have gained power through a competitive electoral contest only to hold Nigeria to ransom.

    Democracy, rather than serve as a tool for creating a more egalitarian society for Nigerians, has been used by those who fraudulently swear by the name of those on whose back they rode to power only to end up waging war against them and other Nigerians.

    Read Also: Defections fallout: Tough times for Saraki, Dogara, others

     

    During the 1959 election, Action Group’s flags were banned in the north with its UMBC/AG alliance members imprisoned.  This was done in the name of democracy. When in 1962, the tendency imposed their stooge on the West in other to pave the way for the take-over of the region, it was carried out in the name of democracy.

    By 1952 census, Yoruba constituted 76.4% of the population of Western Region, Igbo 64.5% and Hausa/Fulani 54% of their respective regions. But in 1963, the later created Mid-West which is only 23.6% of the population of the West and kept silent on the on 36% and 46% minorities in their respective regions that had at different times in their quest for self- realization engaged in insurrection suppressed only by federal military might. The tendency insisted it was democracy at play.

    In 1963, tendency fought a war of attrition dragging themselves to the Supreme Court over the disputed 1962/62 census figures. Both in the name of democracy sought the support of the military over the constitutional crisis that followed the disputed 1964 elections and by their error of judgment dragged the military into politics   with dire consequences for the health of the nation.

    The response of a faction of the tendency that had since 1953  insisted their association with Nigeria must be predicated on Nigeria they could control to Ironsi’s  Unitary Decree 34 of 1966, widely believed to have been drafted by Dr. Nwabueze was the symbolic change from unitarism to federalism,  in name but not in content. Even as they plunged the nation to a civil war, both had insisted the motive was not greed for power but love for democracy.

    Babangida who hilariously called himself president after a palace coup took the nation through eight years of ‘transition without end’, destroying in the process, our political socialization, and annulling the most credible election in our nation’s history purportedly on behalf of this democracy loving tendency. And it was for the same love of democracy, General Abacha, the maximum ruler decreed five parties described by late Bola Ige as ‘five fingers of a leprous hand ‘with all of them nominating him as their presidential candidate.

    From 1993 to 1998, successive military regimes ensured more states and more LGAs were created for the north. The current constitution,  federal in name but unitary in content with   68 items on the exclusive list, 52 on the concurrent list and none in residual list, signed in to law in 1999 by General Abdulsalami reflects the tendency’s view of how Nigeria should be run .

    In 1999, the tendency conceded leadership of the country to the Yoruba to assuage their raw feelings over the death of their son, MKO Abiola who died in detention for winning an election. But they arrogantly insisted on picking for Yoruba nation, Obasanjo who went on to literarily climb the palm tree from the top by winning a presidential election despite having been roundly rejected by the Yoruba nation even in his ward. Again we were told it was democracy at play.

    Between 1999 and 2019, all efforts at amending the imperfect document which allows resources of state to be seized by the centre and distributed without objective criteria among indolent 36 states and 774 LGAs, an arrangement which according to General Akinrinade “cannot lift us all up, let alone one part at the expense of the other” has been resisted by the tendency.

    The 2014 Confab report with its modest achievement on devolution of power was rejected by the tendency  according to Bashiru Dalhatu, who was a Minister of Power and Steel in the Sani Abacha government, because  “The 2014 national conference had 492 members and the north which constitutes about 70 per cent of the country’s landmass and 55 per cent of its population was allocated 189 delegates while the south with only 30 per cent of the landmass and 45 per cent of its population was given an incredible 305 delegates.” The NDF therefore “called upon any group of sponsors or individuals agitating for any form of restructuring of the federation, first and foremost, to respect the existing constitutional order and to seek to do so within the bounds and parameters stipulated under our constitution and law. To suggest otherwise would lead to chaos and anarchy,” It said.

    The rhyme between above Bashiru Dalhatu’s mindset and Shehu Garba’s “mindsets and entities rooted in the idea of violence as a means to change” and “such individuals, groups and entities peddling ideologies of violence and hate” is unmistakable.

    In July 2017, Senate President Bukola Saraki of the 8th Senate speaking on the defeat of the devolution bill at the senate had said. “I think what happened was that a lot of our colleagues misread, misunderstood or were suspicious of what the devolution of powers to states was all about; whether it was the same thing as restructuring in another way or an attempt to foist confederation on the country”.

    With the baleful legacy of the National Assembly in constitutional amendments between 1999 and 2019, it is difficult to fault the argument of those who claim Shehu Garba’s campaign for “healthy dialogue through popular platforms including elected parliaments” is on behalf of the same tendencies that have used their numerical strength to frustrate constitutional amendment since the beginning of the fourth republic. In the same vein, one  cannot also fault those who read mischief  to Garba’s reference to” mindsets and entities rooted in the idea of violence as a means to change” and “such individuals, groups and entities peddling ideologies of violence and hate”  on the basis of Ogomudia’s timely warning to those tendencies that relish listening to only themselves.

  • Election as war

    POLITICIANS view election in different light. To some, it is a game in which a winner and loser must emerge. To others, it is do or die. It is either they win or nobody does. Election as a pillar of democracy is a forum for political parties and their candidates to test their popularity. They put themselves forward for the electorate to decide their fate. In making that decision, the electorate are guided by the parties’ programmes.

    In Nigeria, programmes do not determine who wins election, brawn does. This is why parties invest in thugs, arms and ammunition during election. The campaign is just a smokescreen to deceive the uninitiated about the actual intent of the parties, which prepare for election as if they are going to war. Election is war by other means, as some politicians are wont to say. So, ahead of the poll, they procure men and material.

    These men are the children of other people who live in the backwaters of the city, where there is no light, good schools and potable water. These people live in a slum and their prayer daily is that their children will become big and take them out of those seedy communities. Their prayer to have successful children is truncated by politicians who use the same kids as thugs. Unfortunately, many of these children end up being killed in electoral violence.

    The irony is that these politicians keep their own children away from the fray. They send their children to some of the best schools in the world to prepare them to take over the reins of leadership once they reach an advanced age. Election is not supposed to be war; it is supposed to be a peaceful means of transferring power. But politicians who are not sure of their standing with the electorate have turned it to a killing field.

    It is pathetic that what should ordinarily be a game where contestants congratulate one another after it is all over has become a theatre of war. No matter the election, the outcome is predictable. Whether the election is general, that is held nationwide, or isolated, that is held in some parts of the country, it is always marred with violence. For instance, the nation has yet to get over the fall-out of the November 16 governorship election in Bayelsa and Kogi states.

    Read Also: INEC, Police, APC to Dickson: Nobody died during Bayelsa election

     

    It lived up to the predictions that it would be violent. Before the election, analysts said there would be bloodshed in both states because the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were determined to win at all costs. Nigerians had expected that the conduct of elections will be different under the APC. Their expectation of a free, fair and credible poll under the watch of APC has largely not been met. As it was under PDP, so it is under APC election wise.

    APC was a bad loser when PDP was in power, so as PDP is a bad loser today that APC is in power. As a progressive party, the electorate had expected APC to make a difference by showing that it can conduct transparent elections which will be the template for future polls. As things are now, we still have a long way to go. Is it so difficult to hold free, fair elections? Is there any written code that a ruling party must win the election it conducts? What is the big deal in a ruling party losing election?

    As long as parties believe that they must win the election they conduct so long will the process be violent. Election is no war and the earlier the parties realise this, the better for the society. What happened in Bayelsa and Kogi last month could have been averted if the parties had played by the rule. APC and PDP saw the poll as do or die and approached it as such. We cannot continue to hold election, with axes, cudgels and other lethal weapons flying all over the place.

    Over 60,000 policemen were deployed in both states for the election, yet there was violence. That was not all. They were joined by a reasonable number of soldiers and secret agents. But what was the result with all this high number of security? Violence, killing, looting and maiming. In Kogi, a woman was burnt to death in her home. So, where were the security operatives when all these were going on. It is not the number of security men deployed in an election that matters, but the readiness of politicians to allow the exercise to go smoothly.

    If our politicians are ready to do this, thuggery will disappear from the electoral process. No amount of policemen and soldiers can confer legitimacy on our election as long as politicians are ready to do anything to win.

  • Reviving the textile industry

    The planned revival of the textile industry in Nigeria is a strategy in the right direction of improving the economy, creating jobs and funding the industries necessary for appropriate industrialization of our country. Most of the textile industries in Nigeria fulfill the spatial criteria for inclusive national development because they are located mainly in Kano, Kaduna, Aba and Ikeja. One only prays that unlike previous plans to revive the textile industry, the money this time will not be stolen  , mismanaged and in the word of a former Vice President “misapplied” whatever that was supposed to mean. The textile industry in Nigeria presents us great opportunities for backward integration to the raw materials being sourced locally. Before oil, the economy of northern Nigeria was based on production of groundnuts and cotton. The two produce were largely exported but by the 1960s, textile mills sprang up in Kano and Kaduna providing jobs for thousands of people. Also oil mills for crushing cotton seeds and groundnuts also became common feature of the economy. Alas all these disappeared gradually when government’s foreign reserves no longer depended on agricultural produce but on commission paid to our government by foreign oil companies.

    In the southern part of our country, there were textile industries in places like Aba, Ado Ekiti and Ikeja which relied on imported cotton yarn from Egypt and the Sudan. Instead of depending on increased local cotton production, the southern textile mills did not enjoy the advantage of backward integration even though cotton could also be grown in transitional zones in the south before reaching the rain forest. Historically, there existed thriving textile native industries owned usually by women. These women provided school uniforms for their children in their ancient looms behind their homes. Cotton harvested from their farms were manually turned into yarns using their own fabricated tools. These women also had dyes gotten from plants and in Yoruba land for instance, Osogbo was famous for its dyes even though most women were historically involved in the textile and dye industries. Thank God the importation of British textiles did not completely kill the local industry which still survives in Ilorin, Oyo, Iseyin, and northern Oyo generally. They also survive in Ondo, some parts of Igbo land and in Sokoto, Kano and Borno. On important occasions our people are still decked in these traditional textile apparels. The point I am making is that unlike southern and eastern parts of Africa where before the coming of the white man there, their native attire were mainly animal hides and skins.

    When Governor General Sir Reginald Wingate  of Sudan In 1925 decided to irrigate vast area of the Sudan for agricultural development especially the growing of cotton and other produce, Nigerians were sought after for work in the Al Jazirah ( Gezira)  scheme. Most of the workers who built the scheme were Nigerians stranded on their way to or return from the hajj. They have now made the Sudan home and constitute a large portion of the population of the Sudan usually referred to as “Fellata”. The Al jazirah scheme contributes more than 50% to the economy of the Sudan. Imagine what we can do if our surplus and underutilized labour is harnessed for cotton production on irrigated farms to satisfy our domestic textile need and for export.

    Read Also: Nigerians hail Senate over proposed five-year ban on textiles

    Countries like India, China, the USA and Great Britain itself started their journey of industrialization from the textile industry. At the onset of industrialization in the USA, cotton based on unpaid free black labour was king. Industrial Britain grew from its textile mills in Lancashire before the development of heavy industries in Birmingham. The reason for this is that the machines needed for textile mills were not as complex as those of heavy industries. Imagine if Nigeria can provide all her textile needs for everything from what we wear to furnishings, the number of millions of our people who will be in gainful employment. There are probably more than 150 million people who will need clothes of different types. Millions of school children who will need uniforms. The police, customs, immigration and the military and other uniformed forces would need to be provided for. What about beddings, window blinds, flags and so on. Imagine the millions of tailors who will find jobs working for fashion houses or for themselves. We have this blessing of a huge market. What seems absent and missing is somebody or government to mobilize our people to translate the latent force in our country to economic reality. Imagine if we ban importation of all textiles and force ourselves to rely on and use what we have. Within 10 years, we will be one of the strongest economies in the world and we will not have to beg Donald Trump to extend the AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) put in place by the Clinton administration to encourage African countries to export their products to the USA under most favorable terms.

    I am not suggesting a policy of autarky.  Why not? China closed its borders for more than a decade before joining the global economy as a force to be reckoned with. In terms of purchasing power parity China is the biggest economy in the world today. Of course with our known slothfulness and celebration of ethnicity, mediocrity rather than meritocracy, we do not have the discipline needed to leapfrog from the economic doldrums we find our country to a modern economy. But in the advancing world of knowledge economy and moving away from dependence on hydrocarbons as sources of energy, we will soon find out we have no economy unless we mobilize to prepare for a future which will need less of our oil and gas because of their deleterious and abusive impact on the environment causing severe strain on global climate.

    Since our avowed aim is to diversify our economy away from oil and gas and to replace it with agriculture and other sustainable industries, textile industries fit appropriately our strategy. Firstly, most of the textile mills are state corporations owned and even where there are substantial foreign participation in ownership there should be no hindrance in local buy in through the stock exchange. There may even be the need to build new mills if the old ones are too decrepit that it will be waste of resources repairing them. By now we ought to have learnt our lessons from the perennial waste of millions of dollars on petroleum refineries that should have been sold or scrapped a long time ago but still continue to guzzle millions of dollars because of deep state corruption. We can also learn from the Al jazirah scheme in the Sudan by government getting directly involved in the production of cotton for home industries and export of its surplus. Where there are individual farmers growing the stuff, government particularly state governments and not the federal government should provide loans to assist them. This may also be the time to bring back the old cotton commodity board to guarantee fixed and profitable prices to producers so that they would not be faced with gyration of prices which may discourage farmers.

    What one has suggested for cotton can also apply to cocoa, rubber, palm oil and palm kernel, groundnuts, Shea butter, cashew, maize, sugar cane and soya beans. We ought to have a policy of adding value to our agricultural products. We have the land and water and abundant sunshine; all we need to do is put our thinking caps on and make what potentialities given to us by God come into reality.

    As JF Kennedy the former president of the USA famously said “The work of government will not be finished in one administration and not even in our own, but let us begin”.

    This is my charge to this current administration at the federal and state levels

  • Defective mothers, damaged nation (1)

    Olatunji Ololade

    Savage Nigeria can only be cured by farming our loins for the hidden cowries of a nobler race.

    The brothel prostitute, foul-mouthed roughneck, political assassin, ballot robber, kidnapper, rapist, and bestial public officer are produced not by society’s savagery or sexism but by society’s absence.

    The family is the building block of society and civilisation. But in the wake of its dissembling, the responsibilities of raising a child are borne by a single parent, often times, the mother.

    There is no disputing the sacrifices borne by a woman for the sake of her loved ones. In many instances, she is a worker of marvels. She is a peasant farmer and market woman of the sidewalk. She is a maternal hero and guardian of fruits from errant male loins. She is the spangled artisan mining the dreams of those that would put her in fetters.

    But a shackled woman, I would say, is a shackled nation; repressed womanhood denies society of progress. Hence women, like men, are entitled to their freedom. But whose job is it to give them freedom?

    A woman is, then she must be free. Her total freedom, she would tell you, isn’t in the hands of any man. Nor is it some grant to be enjoyed from an abusive patriarchy.

    Freedom without responsibility, corrupts, and a corrupt single mother, like her male peer, often manifests dangerously. For instance, she would never raise a proper family. She would always be the defective parent raising a damaged child.

    Sometimes, she is a victim of circumstance: rape, child marriage, errant hormones and what social media warriors now call ‘dead beat father or husband.’ Sometimes, she is a victim of her own demons. And God help everyone if she appropriates the role of a feminist-avenger and man-hater; she rises from the ashes of her burnt wedlock and romance to raise children in her preferred image as a ‘strong, emancipated woman.’

    Of course, there is nothing wrong in being strong and emancipated, whatever that intones; its the tenor of brute strength and infernal freedom that’s often cringe-worthy. If she chooses to be brute, feminism becomes an itch and a fetish, like porn. She dulls down to an artificial set of sexual-political sensibilities to satisfy her lust for being perpetually ‘oppressed.’

    Like porn addicts, paedophiles, rapists and racists, such a woman is an emotion junkie, infinitely handicapped yet propelled by her lust for unearned benefits. And when she seems truly deserving of sought benefits, gluttony and wile pervert her claims until her agitation attains the tenor of a ruckus, much like the ghastly cries of feral cats jostling for the largest chunk of carrion flesh.

    In the wake of her failed marriage or romance, she celebrates on Facebook, her exit from what she terms the concentration camp of wedlock, and goes on to groom her daughters and sons to live in her jailhouse of notions.

    If money isn’t her problem, she makes sure her wards lack nothing. Eventually, she raises them as glamour pets, ensuring her son grows up to become “nothing like his father.” So doing, she infects him with gall and womanly fits. She overcompensates and splurges to make them miss nothing about their ‘deadbeat father.’ That is hardly child-grooming, its called child maintenance; keeping a child like an expensive pet.

    To the feminazis already wailing, yes, orthodox families may occasionally fail in child grooming; and this is not about the ‘prominent’ or ‘successful’ few, who “made it” despite being raised by a single mother. It’s about the many who grew up broken, partially or completely damaged, because they were denied a father – be it their mother or the absentee father’s doing.

    The dominant role of fathers in preventing delinquency is well-established. Over fifty years ago, this phenomenon was highlighted in the classic studies of the causes of delinquency by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck of Harvard University. They described in academic terms, what many children hear their mothers so often say: “Wait till your father gets home!”

    The benefits a child receives from his relationship with his father are notably different from those derived from his relationship with his mother. While the mother nurtures and provides emotional healing, the father contributes a sense of paternal authority and discipline which is conveyed through his involved presence.

    The additional benefits of his affection and attachment add to this primary benefit. Albert Bandura, professor of psychology at Stanford University, observed as early as 1959 that delinquents suffer from an absence of the father’s affection.

    In recent years, there has been a sudden rise in the phenomenon of single mothers, mostly depicted by misandrists as ‘victims of deadbeat fathers.’

    While some are, in truth, victims of scorching romance and irresponsible male partners, some naively got pregnant after orchestrating a one-night stand with the random ‘superstar’ and criminal, most especially Yahoo Boys, hoping they would get pregnant and the baby would be their anchor into their target’s world of sick wealth and luxury.

    The shenanigans of the feminazi comprising the obsessive-compulsive misandrist, the “alpha single mother,” “embittered sapiosexual,” “dimwitted diva,” among others, devastates the girl-child and spinsters alike by injecting gratuitous animosity into them towards men.

    They burden youngsters with gifts of obscene chips on their shoulders and axes to grind. The latter breeze through the processes as you read, internalising every anti-patriarchy slogan and animosity until they learn to give vent to internalised rage.

    The matrimonial lives of such characters are better imagined. Ideally, children shouldn’t grow up on the watch of such confused individuals rather they should be raised in a family setting where both mother and father assume their respective roles in the upbringing of the child.

    A recent study in Zimbabwe found out that single parents face challenges in paying fees for their children, buying them stationery, monitoring their school work and providing them children with emotional support. This is the abject reality that ‘sponsored’ and oft doctored feminist researches conducted by western NGOs are wont to ignore.

    Dissembling families result from an accentuation of the gender wars. Call it a manifestation of flawed choice, an ultimate human dilemma, precipitated by survival instinct in a blemished system. The gravest challenge to our hopes and dreams as a nation, beyond the messy political transactions prevalent at the grassroots and party arena, every minute and hour of every day, are the scandalous male vs female high dramas rocking the boats of Nigerian families and ravenous relationships.

    More women suffer the scourge of tarnished awareness in a political high drama that renders their conscience, a pitiful hostage of its flesh envelope; “whose surges and secret murmurings they cannot stay or speed,” says Paglia.

    The consequence is that instead of enjoying life naturally and as each situation peculiarly demands, the new Nigerian misandrist reduces her own quality of life by seeing the world through a sexist filter and not as it truly is.

    This goads her to pursue, passionately, the perversion of certain established social and universal absolutes that had at one time or the other served as their moral and psychological compasses and comfort zones.

    They could learn a great deal from veteran actress, mother, grandmother, and Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON), Taiwo Ajai-Lycett. How?

    To be continued…

  • Nigeria has a male problem (2)

    Olatunji Ololade

     

    Toxic masculinity’ is the new rage. It connotes everything supposedly wrong with Nigeria’s male folk. Coined in Western feminist circuits, an obsession with it at the homefront highlights the workings of the misandrist mind. Yea, most of Nigerian feminists are misandrists or closet man-haters.

    Shall we apologise to ‘moderate’ or ‘conservative feminists?’ It’s only fair that they answer for society’s affliction by Feminazis just as the latter tar every male with the sins of misogyny.

    Man hating feminists are done playing catch-up ball. Like tyrant nature, they are making up the rules and redefining the parameters of gender relations in their onslaught against man and society.

    They hope that by recasting man’s identity in the furnace of their torrid intellect, the patriarchy would be cowed and defeated. As far as utopian fantasies go, that is achievable only in feminist dystopia.

    By chanting the sins of toxic maleness, they seek to force men on a defensive swerve. With delusional certitude, they aim to usurp the patriarchy and seize control of society. But like all things novel, they will enjoy their seasons of anomie and pretension to sentience. They will seem to ‘run things,’ until their sand castles come tumbling down.

    The Nigerian man must, however, live to thwart the onset of feminist dystopia. Right now, he manifests as a lost cause. Having strayed in the maze of perverse feminist plots and literature, he navigates manhood, answering to name-plates forged by his nemesis.

    By remoulding him into a demon, a doormat and social affliction, feral feminists or Feminazis, if you like, have gained an edge over him. The exploitative nature of rapists, murderers, looters, assassins, paedophiles, and tyrants among men further affirms misandrist claims against the Nigerian man.

    They argue, that, “Since man is a beast and affliction to women and the girl-child, he must be inconsequential in the scheme of things.” In truth, he is.

    Misandry and demonisation of men have devalued male worth to the extent that society is blasé about the predicament of men and the boy-child. This is responsible for the shocking bias in the lack of attention to men and boys’ health in general, for instance, while the mass media and health advocacy groups perpetually obsess about women’s health and the girl-child’s.

    The absurdity of this mindset is that while girls are badgered with crucial health information even before puberty, boys, with whom they engage in random acts of sexual misdemeanour and experimentation are virtually ignored.

    The cultural and institutional misandry perpetuated by ferine feminists aggravate the destruction of the family system and denies the boychild the boon of an external role model especially when he must seek outside his family for heroes.

    Boys are in trouble; due to the lack of positive male role models in their lives, they get what they can from TV, anti-male films and video games. All they need is someone whose exemplary footsteps they could follow but the society provides them only men they could dumb down to.

    A recent analysis of 2, 000 mass media portrayals of men and male identities, found that men were depicted mostly as villains, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers. From this stock-pile of anti-heroes, the boy-child is expected to navigate for a good male identity.

    Promoting the image of men as juvenile, mean and stupid is cynical and exploitative, which makes the tide of inverse sexism that has swamped out television screens even more appalling.

    In modern Nigeria, boys and young men suffer a dire lack of role models, especially if they are raised in a single-parent home, as one in eight children now are. The situation is worsened by the lack of positive role models in government, and the perpetuation of overwhelmingly negative images of men by the media and feminist scholarly research.

    Ultimately such portrayals lead to negative social costs for society in areas such as male health, rising suicide rates and family disintegration. This is a precarious age for the boychild. He is taught to repudiate patriarchal notions of manhood and imbibe effeminacy as the cornerstone of his becoming.

    If you are a father reading this, it is not too late to teach your son to be a man. Teach him to dismiss aggressive and perverse conditioning hurled at him in the classroom, in the worship houses, on the mainstream and new media.

    Teach him to be proud of the patriarchy, and contribute to its ontology by his blooming as an evolved man. Teach him to be pitiless with odds but gentle and firm with feral females. Teach him to be just and humane, impartial and kind, in his dealings with both gender. Do not ever, ever go out of your way to raise him as a feminist. Instead, teach him to be human. It’s enough to raise him on a gruelling diet of tough love, humaneness, godliness, compassion and honest industry.

    Do not raise your son to be gender neutral. Teach him that gender is never entirely a social construct and that the nature vs nurture dichotomy is a farce. Cultures build on biological foundation. Hence biologic determinism precedes socially learnt roles. It’s nature and nurture engaged in complex interactions.

    Teach him that it is never manly to hit a woman whatever the magnitude of her toxicity. Teach him to understand, that, if feminism for all its double standard and monstrosities is declared a movement for women’s emancipation and equality with men, chauvinism too may pass as both his rampart and riposte to the toxic feminist’s gendered storms.

    Teach him to redefine chauvinism as a movement for family, nationalism and human rights. Teach him to avoid living to stereotypes and the entrapment of what the Yoruba proverbially dissects as ‘Iku ti npa ni.’

    Teach him to deal with his woman with caution; even while loving her deeply, protecting her and providing all of her needs, he must never forget to preserve self and family.

    Teach him to honour women of all shades and temperament. Even the most toxic feminist deserves his respect and gift of subtle re-enlightenment. If her temper gets too ugly like a wilding’s, teach him the wisdom of keeping the distance and self preservation.

    The Nigerian boychild needs worthy role models unlike the sex-crazed, drug addicts parading as hip hop artistes, industry titans and politicians among others. Teach him to understand that not all men would attain the height and billions of Aliko Dangote and that success is never always determined by his fellowship of Tony Elumelu’s Heirs’ network.

    Help him understand that it is sickly to claim that as a millenial, he has no time to read. He hasn’t the attention span of a dimwit, does he? Teach him to appreciate literature’s long reads and journalism’s long forms as the best of mankind’s intellectual gifts.

    And above all, give him the gift of vision and higher learning. Teach him to understand that progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the Olympian, and the lifting of his weaker peers, irrespective of gender, slowly and painfully to his vantage ground, as Du Bois would say.

    Let this be part of your gift of manhood to the boy-child. He needs not alms, but a teacher; not rage, but character.

  • Buhari and survival of APC

    President Muhammadu Buhari during last Friday’s meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC)  in Abuja charged the leaders of his party to work hard towards ensuring the party survives beyond his administration. History, he said would be unkind to the party leaders if the party collapses at the end of his administration. He went on to admonish the leading lights of the party to respect the wishes of their constituents who he said should not be taken for granted because “they know what they are doing”.

    “The messenger”, as advocate marketers will say “is the message”. The truth is that if anyone has taken his party or Nigerian voters for granted, it is President Buhari who by his body language gives an impression he was doing the party that sponsored him for an elective office and Nigerians that voted him into office, a favour.

    The expression of concern for the survival of APC, the platform through which the president secured power after three failed attempts through other platforms, many will argue, is belated. It was the president, goaded on by sycophants that betrayed the party after his 2015 victory. It was the president that failed to provide effective leadership for a party he treated more as a distraction than a vehicle with which he rode to power. And  it was the president’s disdain for his party and distrust for politicians that paved the way for the take-over of the party by Bukola Saraki and his like-minds senators who went on to make the country ungovernable for four years. In fact,  to many objective observers, it was President Buhari’s inability to outgrow past serial betrayals by politicians in military uniform and those in ‘agbada/babanriga’ that deprived him of the much-needed politicians’ support for effective governance of the country for the greater part of his first term. Unfortunately, he sowed the wind; it is his party that will reap the possible whirlwind in 2023. The president therefore, more than the leading lights of his party, poses greater threat to the survival of APC in 2023.

    “I swore by the holy book that I would go by the constitution”, the president told his party’s leading lights last week as a way of dismissing insinuations that he, like ex-President Obasanjo before him, was nursing a third-term agenda. While most Nigerians will agree the president as a man of character will never embark on such laughable endeavor, many will however readily admit President Buahri has been faithful neither to the constitution in other regards nor his party manifesto.

    Admittedly, we are a society of law-breakers where those who have no regard for rule of law want protection under rule of law. Driven by his blind fury to deal decisively with those who want freedom without responsibility and at the same time want to preside over an empire of slaves, he has in a number of cases betrayed his impatience with the rule of law. His alleged provincialism is of course also a betrayal of the federal character provision in our constitution. No matter how good intentioned his actions are, his APC party will have to answer for his constitutional breaches in 2023.

    The president secured  much needed support during the 2015 election from some critical  segments of the country because of APC’ s provision for restructuring in its manifesto as  solution to our unresolved national question. Following his victory, the president ignored this election promise just as he did the report of a face-saving committee set up by his embarrassed party that recommended devolution of power from a dysfunctional centre, state  and community policing as immediate answers to  increasing insecurity, banditry, kidnapping and other crimes which constituted an affront to the  legitimacy of his government.

    It is the primary role of political parties in a participatory democracy to collate and channels views of the voters to government they install. The party therefore becomes the channel through which the electorates speak to their government. Neither APC nor the electorate can be regarded as participants in President Buhari’s government which many believed, was hijacked by a mafia during his first term. Again it is not President Buhari but his party that will be on trial in 2023.

    The president’s 2019 victory was secured from two major geo-political zones of the country where the president enjoys a cult-like followership.  He secured the needed minimum support in the Southwest geo-political zone but lost South-south, Southeast and North-central geo-political zones. The outcome of the 2019 election was almost a replication of that of 1964 that led to a constitutional crisis which contributed to the 1967-70 civil war. The challenge that awaits APC in 2023 if a northern candidate emerges is how to resolve what the late Senator Okadigbo described as the ‘arithmetic of Nigeria politics’ – a situation where the north or two geo-political zones from the north decide the fate of the country if we accept democracy is a game of numbers.

    Read Also: Buhari to APC leaders: party must not die after my tenure

    Because of Nigeria’s unique ‘arithmetic of politics’, Buhari was invincible in 2019 in spite of his mishandling of  the mindless killings of Nigerians by Fulani immigrants from West African countries, the unrestrained comments by his close aides which seemed to have emboldened those waging war against our compatriots and the arrogance of some northern politicians who openly canvassed for conferment of citizenship on stateless Fulani immigrants from west African nations through  taxpayers’ supported RUGA programme. All these will surely haunt APC in 2023.

    Finally, “History will be fair to us if the APC remains strong and not only holds the centre but makes gains in the states”; the President had told stalwarts of his political party during the said Friday meeting.  Political party, Sigmund Neumann once argued presupposes identification with a group and differentiation from another”. Many will readily agree that it is difficult to make a difference between APC and PDP with the ongoing crisscrossing of many politicians facing criminal charges between the two parties.

    There are more parallels. PDP was once big, strong and appeared invincible and in fact boasted it would rule the country for an uninterrupted 60 years. They did everything except addressing   our crisis of nation building.

    Today, like PDP, APC is big. It controls the centre and about 25 states. But rather than embark on constitutional amendment to resolve the national question, the party seems to be more interested in waging PDP’s unfinished constituency projects’ war with the presidency. Nothing has been said about the outrageous salaries and allowances the 8th National Assembly awarded themselves. It has been business as usual.

    Both have failed the true test of a political party which is fixing both the political agenda and policies of a ruling party. Both have not been known to be receptive to public opinion without which democracy can flourish. Both are committed to the interest of only their members. Except President Buhari changes the narrative, a common fate awaits both in 2023.

  • Long dawn on Long Bridge

    IT was bound to happen. You did not need a crystal ball to tell you that evil was lurking around the corner. The Long Bridge of the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway is a notorious spot where evil doers carry out their dastardly act. Since work began at the Kara end of the bridge on September 2, bad boys have been having a field day snatching valauables from motorists and commuters.

    Only God knows the number of their victims so far. Motorists and commuters move on the bridge with their hearts in their mouths. Nobody is safe on the bridge. No matter who you are, the hoodlums will not think twice before descending on you. They attack the rich and the poor; the strong and the weak and flee into the dark recesses under the bridge.

    Where do they stay there? There is a large community of people of different tribe and tongue under the Long Bridge. Do these people know the shady characters who operate on the bridge and flee under it to make good their escape? Besides being a trading outpost, people also live, work and school in the community. Can it be a den of criminals and still be inhabited by many law abiding citizens?

    For the nation to get to the root of the criminal acts on the bridge, law enforcement agents must dig into what is happening under it in the day time and at night. The bridge is most dangerous at night and in the early hours of the day. The middle of the bridge is a death spot. A motorist who has a break down there will have to decide whether he likes his life more or his car. Before the motorist even alights from his car, he would have been surrounded by urchins baying for blood.

    Giving them money or all you have may not save you. They will take your car, take your money and take your life as they did to a retired general some years ago. What have those who ply the bridge daily not seen? It does not take time to drive through the bridge when the road is free, but you will start to appreciate  that it is indeed long when there is a gridlock. It is then you will start wondering if  this is not the same Long Bridge, which takes you less than 10  minutes to breeze through.

    The perennial traffic on the bridge since the rehabilitation started has made it easier for hoodlums to hit their victims who most times are sitting pretty in their cars, waiting for the traffic to ease and drive off.  At times, the gridlock stretches beyond Wawa to as far as Move, leaving motorists groaning and grunting.

    With the government’s promise to deploy security and road safety personnel to work round the clock during the rehabilitation, the public thought there was nothing to fear. But many have lost limbs and lives on that road in the past two months of the rehabilitation. On Tuesday, what many motorists feared most happened. Armed robbers struck, creating fear and panic among the motorists plying the road. As usual, many had set out early in order to beat the traffic that has become part of their daily life.

    The WhatsApp platforms on which traffic news is shared were already buzzing with information. The first post on one of the platforms came in at 4.10a.m.,with  the information seeker, who after wishing the house “good morning”, asked: “Please, who knows what’s going on? The traffic is stand still around ASCON?” Another motorist spoke of “stand still on the Long Bridge”, adding: “People are facing one way (driving against traffic) already”.

    Read Also: Lagos-Ibadan rail to be ready April 2020, says Amaechi

     

    Then came the chilling information: “I hear there are armed robbers on the Long Bridge”. A flurry of prayers followed, with many praying for those already on the bridge. As I got to the gate of my estate, the guards told me in Yoruba: ‘’Daddy, won ma ni awon ole wa lori Long Bridge” (we learnt there are robbers on the bridge). I thanked them and drove off as the motorist in front of me moved aside for me to  pass. The other motorist drove back home as I headed for the express, praying silently for the Lord’s protection.

    Having got wind of the robbery, members of Operation Awatse based in the Journalists’ Estate, Arepo, headed for the bridge. Their presence reassured those of us driving out that the robbers were done for.  The Lagos Traffic Radio also reported the incident and called on security agents to move to the scene. That was what saved the day, as the robbers vanished into thin air when they saw that their game was up.

    For as long as the rehabilitation continues so will motorists be at risk. To ensure the safety of life and property, there should be a 24-hour security watch on the Long Bridge, which is the most dangerous part of that stretch of the road. Government should not wait until people are killed in tens and hundreds before doing the needful. It promised before the work started to do everything to minimise the pains of the people. So far,  it has been all talk and no action.

    From all indications, the work may not be completed next month as the government earlier promised. This is the more reason security should be strengthened. We cannot overemphasise the importance of security while this rehabilitation is ongoing. Who knows what might have happened on Tuesday if not for the swift intervention of  Operation Awatse and other security agents.

  • LAUTECH: A vision abandoned or aborted?

    LAUTECH as Ladoke Akintola University of Technology is affectionately called was established on April 23, 1990 as a technical state university with a motto of “Excellence, Integrity and Service” and located in Ogbomoso. It has a student population of 30,000 and staff strength of 3000 most of whom are administrative, technical and non-academic staff.  The university was previously known as Oyo State University of Technology and was owned by the then Oyo State. But when Osun State was hived from Oyo State on August 27, 1991, the university became jointly owned by Oyo and Osun states, two sisterly states that outside politics should have no problem running and adequately funding the university.

    The university was renamed Ladoke Akintola University after the second and last premier of the old Western Nigeria, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, a great and foremost politician and wordsmith who by coincidence was a native of Ogbomoso where the university is located. Ogbomoso is the second largest town in Yoruba land and during British colonial rule when censuses were taken with honesty and integrity, Ogbomoso was the third largest city in Nigeria after Ibadan and Kano in that order. Lagos was fourth before the deluge of population flooded the city after the civil war and the oil economy of the 1970s.  A college of medicine of the university was established in Oshogbo a year after the university started operating from Ogbomosho. Today the university is more of a comprehensive university but with social and management sciences existing as service faculty while the humanities and education remain happily in abeyance avoiding the unnecessary duplication characteristic of tertiary education in Nigeria.

    In 2003/2004 Ladoke Akintola University was adjudged the best state university in Nigeria and one of the best universities, state or federal in Nigeria. But since then, the fortune of the university has witnessed a downturn. Hardly is there a semester without strike by staff who have not been paid or students agitating against one financial imposition or the other. The cause of the problem is inadequate funding by the two states that jointly own the institution. Since 1999 return of politics, different political parties held sway in Osogbo and Ibadan. The effect has been devastating on the university. It was in these circumstances that Governor Akala built a rival and much more elaborate teaching hospital in Ogbomoso against the puny one in Osogbo, obviously with the idea of concentrating the entire university in Ogbomoso and rendering the so-called College of Medicine in Osogbo redundant and irrelevant. His plan did not pan out and the College of Medicine has remained in Osogbo while Akala’s white elephant has remained unused or underutilized. But who is the loser in all this? Of course, it is the students, the state and the nation.

    There is a need to find a lasting solution to the problem of Ladoke Akintola University so that its mission and the vision of the people who conceived it can be realized. Osun State has since established its own university in December 2006. The state is not capable of jointly funding another university. This is the truth. I know Osun State very well and I lived there for two years and as educationally ambitious as the state may be, the financial capacity is just not there. The enormous resources Rauf Aregbesola diverted to the educational sector particularly building of great primary and secondary schools nearly bankrupted the state and almost leading to his being run out of the place when he could not pay workers. As a friend of the state and a longtime resident of Ibadan, I appeal to the governors of Oyo and Osun states to resolve the problem of ownership of Ladoke Akintola University amicably. Let Osun concentrate on funding its own university which should now include the College of Medicine in Osogbo while Ladoke Akintola University with its modern teaching hospital is allowed to prosper as Oyo State-owned Ladoke Akintola University. I understand there is a restraining judgment on this scenario, but the two sisterly states can approach the court to vacate the restraining order.

    Read Also: LAUTECH: Makinde announces release of N500m

     

    Governors Seyi Makinde of Oyo and Gboyega Oyetola are mature individuals who should by this singular decision write their names in gold in the history of higher education in Nigeria but particularly in Yoruba land. As the Yoruba would say – charity begins at home.

    Then what becomes of Ajimobi’s hastily established Ibadan Technical University? My advice to the governor of Oyo State is to ask if Oyo State really needs two universities of technology? If the answer is yes, then our governor must increase exponentially the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Oyo State so that he would have money for his two universities of technology. I honestly believe that Oyo with its huge population should not be going bowl in hand begging for the monthly federal allocation. That allocation should be solely used for capital projects and not for recurrent expenditure. What Oyo State should do is have a land use charge like Lagos, of course not on the same degree because we don’t have disposable income like the Lagosians. But a charge on citizens who own the government would still be appropriate. Secondly, if the answer as to if Oyo needs two universities of technology is no, then Ajimobi’s Ibadan Technical University would have to be merged with Ladoke Akintola University  if not scraped completely to save cost and to avoid duplication of offices viz vice chancellors, pro-chancellors,  governing councils, registrars, librarians, bursars and so on.

    Ibadan is blessed with University of Ibadan already and the city remains the intellectual centre of Nigeria. It has as a result of this attracted the major publishing houses in Nigeria, namely University Press, Heinemann Books Nigeria, Macmillan Press, Evans Publishers, Spectrum, Bookcraft and others. The Catholic Mission also has St Augustine University in Ibadan.  Ibadan is home to the rapidly growing Lead City University. Chief Kola Daisi has also established a private university in Ibadan and one or two sectarian Christian missions are roaring to go in the establishment of their own universities. In essence, Ibadan city is not crying for an abiku university that will again be a financial burden to a harassed government which needs to be engaged in social welfare for the people, urban renewal and building of modern houses and generally making life better for the harried and harassed people.

    The going trend in global higher education is for well-established universities particularly in the western world such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Berkeley, Columbia, Cambridge, Oxford and London to mention a few to establish colleges in developing countries, selling their well-established brand of excellence and graduating students in the countries of residents of their colleges overseas. This is catching on and such colleges already exist in Europe, Asia, particularly in Egypt, Lebanon, Malaysia, Dubai, South Africa and even China. Ghana is already preparing to welcome such institutions. Once these colleges are established, the home universities may have to fight to survive. In other words, instead of establishing universities merely by name, we should concentrate our efforts and resources on those we can adequately fund. While on funding, we should tell ourselves the home truth that university education is not cheap anywhere and it is in most cases, elitist. Even in the USA and Europe, the percentage of those who go to universities is small compared with the national population. If this is so and if we want excellent universities, somebody had better be prepared to pay. Where parents are unable to pay, state and local governments will have to give scholarships. Banks and commercial houses, as was the case in the past, must allocate funds as part of their corporate social responsibility for scholarships to students in universities. Politicians must desist from using “free university education” slogan in their campaigns for elective offices and as much as possible, universities must be allowed to charge their students reasonable fees for services rendered to them. This will free government from concentrating too much resources on university education with little left to create investment friendly environment for self-employment and also for governments to establish job creating industries that will absorb the teeming products of our tertiary institutions.

  • Security votes as ‘disguised theft’

    Many concerned Nigerians have expressed misgivings about the abuse of security votes by Nigeria political elite operating at all levels. Unfortunately, public opinion which is the pillar of democracy in most participatory democracies counts for little here. Perhaps this explains why  the   Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) last week once again took it upon itself  to file a lawsuit in the Federal High Court, Abuja “seeking leave to apply for judicial review and an order of mandamus to direct and compel President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Ahmed Lawan, and Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila to disclose details of allocations, disbursement and spending of security votes by the federal government, 36 state governors and 774 local governments between 1999 and 2019.

    With the increasing “lack of effective protection of the rights to security and welfare, life and physical integrity of millions of Nigerians” despite yearly disbursement of N241.2 billion, SERAP believes Nigerians need to be reassured  constitutional provisions which compel  government to protect all Nigerians as against few people in government is not being carried out in reverse.

    SERAP seems to speak to the fears of apprehensive Nigerians who watch helplessly as both the federal and state governments deplore security votes for the protection of government, its officials and their family members at the expense of those who traded their freedom for government’s protection.   They see elected officials as well as government appointees move around with lorry loads of police escorts even when they are on social outings.  Nigerians daily observe obscene scenes of law-abiding Nigerians chased off the road by gun-wielding police escorts to protect wives of powerful ministers and elected officials on the way to the market or to the salon. While this massive misuse of security votes by government officials goes on, the level of insecurity, violence, kidnappings and killings in many parts of the country is at an all-time high.

    Unfortunately like every self-inflicted problem in our society such as the current unworkable unitary superstructure foisted on a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and heterogeneous society which requires simple solution such as retracing our steps back to the ‘Nigeria’s path to Freedom’ never taken, a few powerful and influential members of the political, economic and military elite who are benefiting from our tragedy insist we must trudge on even when it is obvious we have lost direction.

    And those who clearly understand that a multi-cultural society cannot thrive on a unitary constitution that allocates 68 items to the centre, 30 as concurrent with no residual list are equally playing the ostrich. They admit the constitution is deficient but insist governors can work round it to provide service. But where is the incentive to provide service? And why should most of our governors without vision sacrifice a system that rewards indolence for the type of sacrifice Chief Anthony Enahoro needed to make during the first republic to ensure the first television in Africa was ready for commissioning within three months?

    Where is the incentive to be resourceful when a dysfunctional centre doles out funds to local governments that constitutionally do not report to it? Chukwuma Soludo, the former CBN governor once said Nigeria is the only country in the world where such happens. And why should state governors be accountable when the centre that has taken over their functions dole out funds every month. Ex-President Jonathan once argued the states can only ask for accountability from their governors if the governors are spending their taxes. That perhaps explains why our governors are so powerful. They are accountable to neither their states where they sometimes owe several months of salary arrears nor answerable to the federal government because even with the defective 1999 constitution, the federal government is not superior to the states.

    And precisely because they are as equal and coordinates both involved in what someone describes as “security votes as disguised theft”, the federal government cannot dictate how states dispense their security votes which range between N4b and N24b annually.

    It is on record that Babangida’s  administration ‘initiated the corrupt culture of maintaining a huge monthly security vote virtually as personal pocket money’ during his fraudulent eight years of ‘transition without end’. He freely deployed funds as patronage in the guise of providing security especially after the failed Orkah coup. The 1994 Okigbo Panel report on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) claimed $12.2 billion was diverted to off-budget accounts during Babangida’s regime. His successors have tried to build on his baleful legacy.

    Using security votes as a decoy, Abacha stole the country blind during his war against NADECO, his regime’s nemesis.

    Abdulsalami Abubakar built on the legacy of Abacha. Besides the allegation of Hamza Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s powerful chief security officer that his regime used security votes to allegedly bribe Yoruba Obas in order to assuage their raw feelings over the death of MKO Abiola, their son and the winner of the 1993 election who died mysteriously under his watch, what was left of the national reserve of $7.1 billion he inherited from Abacha at the end of one year was $3.1 billion.

    It was widely alleged that the Obasanjo administration freely deployed security votes to rig the 2007 elections considered the worst election in the nation’s history. It was also widely speculated that the N50b voted for members of 6th assembly for his failed third term bid must have come from security votes since it was not captured under any heading.

    The huge sum of money in foreign currency ex-President Jonathan allegedly shared out to Yoruba Obas, some urban ethnic groups and proscribed Oodua militant groups were believed to have come from security votes. Transparency International claim President Buhari’s security votes increased from $46.2 million (N9.3 billion to $51 million (N18.4 billion in two years 2015-2016.

    On the whole, a May 2018 report by the body titled “Camouflaged Cash: How Security Votes’ Fuel Corruption in Nigeria” provided a damning report about abuse of security votes by successive Nigerian leaders. It says in part: “Security votes’ are opaque corruption-prone security funding mechanisms widely used by Nigerian officials. As a relic of military rule, by which certain federal, state and local government officials are allocated funds to disburse at their discretion”, it claimed “security vote spending exceeds 70 percent of the annual budget of the Nigeria Police Force, more than the Nigerian Army’s annual budget and more than the Nigerian Navy and Nigerian Air Force’s annual budget combined”.

    Again as it is with our unresolved national question, but for the greed of our political elite, the solution to abuse of security votes is simple. General Abubakar promulgated the 1999 Constitution. Section 14 (2b) states explicitly that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. The second schedule of the constitution also makes the federal government exclusively responsible for the security of the country, as well as the police, armed forces, and border control. The simple solution would have been a revisit of the 1999 constitution by the elected representatives of the people in Abuja.

    But as if to confirm there can be no redeeming grace among Nigeria political elite, our lawmakers join their counterparts in the executive in “disguise theft” through a salary structure that positions them the highest paid lawmakers in the world. And five months into the 9th Senate, it is obvious a part cannot be holier than the whole. Nigeria political elites suffer from the same affliction.