The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Teach them, El Rufai

    GOVERNOR Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State, on Monday, enrolled his six-year-old son, Abubakar, into Primary One at the Capital School Malali, Kaduna, a public school, in fulfillment of a promise he made in 2017.

    By enrolling his son in the public school, El Rufai seeks to reinvent his cantankerous repute on charitable footing. To succeed, he needs empathy and media mention; these he is getting in dubious overload.

    For instance, the social media debates the imperative of his widely publicised visit to his son’s school and the suspicious photo ops; so doing, El Rufai scuds to acclaim on a slippery scallop shell, the heraldic shield of the random politician’s crafty origins.

    In 2017, the Kaduna governor reportedly vowed in a state broadcast, to enroll his child in a public school when he clocks six.

    He said: “As we make progress, we will require our senior officials to enroll their children in public schools. And I will by personal example ensure that my son that will be six years of age in 2019 will be enrolled in a public school in Kaduna State, by God’s grace.”

    Shortly after he enrolled his child, El Rufai explained to newsmen: “I made that commitment because I believe that it is only when all political leaders have their children in public schools that we will pay due attention to quality of public education.”

    Mother of the child, Ummi, described her husband’s action as “a strong message to our leaders and the elites, that we need to start making things work from within our homes.

    “By the time we start attending public hospitals and send our children to public schools, the system will get better,” she said.

    On his part, little Abubakar said: “I am sad that I will miss my old school, my friends and my teachers. But I have to help my father keep his promise.”

    Vintage El Rufai. His statement resonates harmoniously with his wife and son’s thus fulfilling the purpose of his craftily scripted political high drama. Some of the circulated pictures of his latest manoeuvre show him in various poses with his son. There is one in which he spots a dreamy mien staring at six-year-old Abubakar, while the latter stares beyond the governor, pulling at his bag strap.

    That shot, among others, was carefully chosen to portray the governor as a bleeding Goliath, eager to immerse in his people’s plight.

    Whatever his critics’ argument against him, El Rufai has stolen some thunder. His action depicts classic artifice. But praiseworthy artifice, given the ignorance of his audience in the theatre of the blind.

    El Rufai’s action no doubt intones the flurry of a jazzy altarpiece. In the garish epiphany, the governor invades our picture plane, seeking to dominate the public eye and mind. Does he?

    Having attracted condemnation via his recent rants up north and in Lagos, El Rufai drifts like flotsam against the elements of Nigeria’s political deep; eventually, he hopes to bathe in propitious sunlight.

    The Kaduna governor understands that the most essential skill in political theatre is artifice. Political leaders, who deploy artifice to create a sense of faux intimacy with citizens, hardly need to be sincere or competent. All they need is an inspiring personal narrative.

    Honesty becomes tangential in their quest for empathy and appeal. The emotive quality of the narrative is, however, paramount.

    Those incapable of artifice are deemed unworthy of the people’s votes. They are considered ‘unreal.’ Their unreality, however, is never solely a function of their inability to deploy artifice to political and personal advantage but a consequence of their self-deceit.

    While El Rufai betrays studious mathematical calculation in quest of higher political office in 2023, the members of the idle Presidential Aspirants Coming Together (PACT), for instance, careen in self-deception or what some public commentator rightly identified as ‘elite naivete.’

    The supposedly intelligent, vibrant youths, who vowed to make PACT a platform on which the best and most acceptable aspirants, are backed by all to fly the youth’s presidential flag in 2019 against the might of Nigeria’s behemoth parties, are disconcertingly quiet few months after they got outclassed and out-played in Nigeria’s general elections.

    For all their presumed depth, the PACT collective crumbled as the ‘young’ aspirants bickered and whined like clueless youngsters over a kite. Selfishness, greed and immaturity hampered their bid to gift Nigeria with what could have been an inspiring team of bright, spirited candidates or a semblance of it.

    Forget PACT, where are the likes of Kingsley Moghalu? Of course, their apologists would claim that they are quietly impacting lives, raising protégés. But of what use is their influence and mentorship, where their impact resonates like the tired drizzle atop an ocean of filth?

    Moghalu and PACT may learn a manoeuvre or two from the likes of El Rufai. Agreed, artifice is hardly the way to go, but they need to get off their high horse and engage with people at the grassroots, purposefully.

    The ones whose votes would determine their fates as aspirants and self-proclaimed Messiahs are never present at TEDtalk events. They are never part of the ‘elite’ and ‘sophisticated’ audience of ‘26, 000’ that crowd the seats at The Platform, their elite talk-shop.

    There is no gainsaying that fora like The Platform are pivotal, partially, to the spread of progressive waves of consciousness and political awareness among the youth and supposedly literate voter divide, but at the end, the super-charged debates and inspiring deliberations peter out beyond the walls of their talk-shop, like the drone of dung beetles outside the latrine.

    It’s 2019 and El Rufai presents with ‘lessons’ on political savvy. Let the “youthful disrupters” understand that their usual practice of dismissing the north and the incumbent ruling class as a coven of political illiterates depicts greater naivete and illiteracy on their part.

    It’s about time they got involved with the people. Terrorism, flooding, internal displacement, grinding poverty, among others, present wonderful opportunities for them to sow seeds of hope and acclaim among Nigeria’s vulnerable, voter divide.

    What if Moghalu and the PACT collective summon their savvy and socio-economic capital to renovate and equip Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs), schools and roads across Nigeria’s neglected regions? Imagine the political currency that could afford them en route the 2023 elections?

    Imagine Fela Durotoye on a one month sojourn, in the northeast, bolstering relief efforts with gifts of a honest smile, provisions and scholarships, far from the arena of artifice and applause.

    Imagine Sowore exuding a different kind of spunk and spittle; one that sees him commencing his #RevolutionNow crusade down south by seeking justice and compensation for victims of Chevron Nigeria Ltd (CNL)’s 74-day fire disaster in the Ilaje Local Government area of Ondo State.

    But these would require them to actually engage with disadvantaged folk and communities at the grassroots. It would require that they actually feel. They would rather wait to mount The Platform to speak easy or roll their sleeves on a task with the random labourer and market woman of the sidewalk, for the camera, at election time.

    Yet theirs is a curious form of artifice. But it pales, distressingly, to El Rufai’s enrollment of his ward in a public school. That’s a tactical manoeuvre.

  • Philosophy behind Nigeria’s foreign policy on decolonization

    I am writing this to elucidate some of the principles that has guided Nigeria’s foreign policy since independence. This is necessary in view of the casual and glib talk among Nigerians who while deprecating the violence directed against Nigerians in South Africa always say “we after all, liberated the ungrateful country”. This is wrong history. We as a country contributed to the liberation of South Africa, we did not liberate the country. As far as I know, no Nigerian died any where in the liberation of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Angola and South Africa. South Africans liberated their own country with the support of fraternal countries including our own.

    When Nigeria became an independent and sovereign country, the principle guiding our foreign policy was clearly articulated by our prime minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who for some time doubled as our foreign minister before Jaja Wachukwu was appointed foreign minister. Sir Abubakar, while addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations in October 1960, said Nigeria will support and protect the interests of all black peoples in the world wherever they may be. This presumably extended even beyond Africa to the Americas, South and North and the Pacific islands where blacks live. This was an ambitious declaration and many doubted the capacity of Nigeria to carry out this policy.  It is the hope and not its practical application of the policy that mattered. It gave hope to black Americans and other blacks under one kind of oppression or the other. Sir Abubakar was a cautious and conservative politician. He must have read the speech over and over and digested it. He must have asked his principal officials the import of his declaration. He also wanted to undercut his critics at home and the radical elements within his cabinet who must have convinced him he had to snatch leadership of the black world from Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana who since the independence of his country in 1957, three years before Nigeria attained independence, had become the acknowledged leader of the black world. This policy was unanimously supported by the critical mass of our people. It is remarkable that since 1960 till now, this policy has endured in spite of the several changes of regimes and personalities at the helm of our country’s national affairs.

    This policy was grounded on the principle of when  a man, any man, suffers any where in the world, humanity as a whole suffers a little but when a black man suffers any where  in the world, because of the pigmentation of his skin colour and not because of his character, all black people every where suffer a lot. From this reasoning, it was clear to foreign policy makers and executors that in defending black people everywhere, Nigeria was vicariously defending its own honour and humanity. In other words, whether in the case of Sir Abubakar’s government breaking diplomatic relations with France in 1961 over the third nuclear test of that country in the Sahara thus protecting the entire African continent from radioactive fallouts, or Yakubu Gowon assisting to pay the salaries of police and civil servants in Grenada in  the Caribbean 1973, or Muhammed/ Obasanjo buying weapons for the MPLA government in Angola in 1976 and assisting the FRELIMO government in Mozambique and the various liberation movements in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, or, Shagari government’s intervention in Chad in the 1980s, Babangida’s assistance to Jamaica after the devastation of the Island  by hurricanes in  the 1990s, sending Technical Aid Corps to Fiji and his continued support for the liquidation of the apartheid regime in the 1990s and final emergence of  Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa and recently Buhari’s commitment of Nigerian troops to secure a peaceful transfer of power from  Yahya Jammeh to Adama Barrow in The Gambia; all fall within the rubric of protecting the interest of the black man and in so doing protecting our own interest.

    If blacks all over the world are doing well, we as a black people will not suffer the indignity of being looked down upon because of our black colour. In other words, the fate of Nigeria is intricately linked with that of all black people in a world where racism thrives. Even though everybody denies the place of race in foreign affairs, it is however without doubt central to politics among nations.

    This was the political phase of our foreign policy. Nigeria has succeeded to a certain extent in our foreign policy of decolonization. The continent has been rid of colonialism and imperialist domination but neo-colonialism still thrives in the sense that African economy is still largely dominated by former colonial powers of Britain, France and to a certain extent the West generally. In what was called economic diplomacy, Nigeria wanted to engage with other African countries including those it had assisted in joint partnership for mutual economic development to free the continent from neo-colonial domination. This was why Nigeria in the  1990s encouraged Nigerians to participate in fishing off the coast of Angola for example and in the development of Bauxite mines of Guinea in the 1970s and investment in cement and sugar industries in Benin in partnership with the governments of those countries.

    It must be admitted  that these economic ventures did not always succeed as expected but there was no attempt by Nigeria to exploit for its national benefit, inappropriate crude exploitative way western  countries exploit the countries they give aid and a technical assistance to. To do this would have destroyed the high moral grounds on which our foreign policy was founded. This policy of assistance with no strings attached informed the Technical Aid Corps put in place to assist other African countries and black countries in the Caribbean and the pacific countries during the Babangida’s regime. We could not have been criticizing the West and be following a post-assistance policy of exploitation. This however does not preclude individual business people doing businesses in countries where as a result of Nigeria’s goodwill, the environment is favourable for Nigerian private investment. In pursuit of this, we need not rub in the fact that the country so involved benefited from our largesse in the past. That would be immoral and unChristianly and unIslamic. Of course, there is no morality in politics but in the case in which we based our policy of decolonization on the wrongness and immorality of colonialism, standing on a high moral principle was appropriate.

    In the case of recent  xenophobic attacks against our nationals in South Africa, we can make a case for African solidarity without harping on whatever assistance we rendered in the past. Our assistance in the past based on our enlightened national self-interest which happened to have been in the interest of blacks in South Africa was out of our free will and judgement of what was good for our country. It  is quite different from asking for compensation for  current economic damage and injury inflicted on our people. This should stand alone from the sentimental issue of past assistance. Secondly, the nature of our people’s business in South Africa in particular and in other parts of Africa where our people are coming under serious pressure and sometimes murderous attack, needs to be considered and if necessary changed. Any business bordering on criminal and illegal nature must be deprecated and wound up. It is disgraceful for our people to be involved in  human trafficking, prostitution, drugs peddling, and  advance fees fraud and swindling of innocent people of their hard earned money. It is sad that the few of our people involved in these nefarious activities have damaged the many genuine business men and women. We must some how find a way by which our people would be told that each and every Nigerian is an ambassador of this country and that their behaviour abroad will either enhance or damage the image of the country which previous generations have built. Unemployment at home should not be an excuse for criminality abroad. Our government also must take more seriously the issue of job creation at home and control and reduction of our geometrically growing and ballooning population. It is a pity that the issue of the population bomb has not received the attention it deserves. No matter what we do to build a thriving economy, if the population continues to outstrip the economy, we shall continue to create an underclass of criminals at home some of who will find their ways to other parts of the continent as is already happening in our neighbouring countries where the image of the “ugly Nigerian” looms very large.

  • The gods are to blame!

    IT sounds incredible, but it is real. It is unlike one of those tales told by people who also heard it from people that also heard it from people and so on and so forth. You may have heard such incredulous stories of a woman turning into a bird in broad daylight from people who will swear heaven and earth about the authenticity of their tales. But asked for proof, they will become tongue tied.

    They will start hemming and hawing and biting their lips in their attempt to make you believe them. I have never believed such tales. I thought it was one of such tales again when on Sunday the social media was awash with the story of the 36 cows struck dead by thunder at Oke Owa in Ijare, Ondo State.

    It was a story like no other story. It was not the stuff of partners getting stuck together during an illicit affair; it was not one of disappearing manhood after an handshake nor was it that of a boy turning into a fowl after picking money on the floor. This was the real thing – a true life story of the gods dealing instantly with an offender, even when the offender is not human.

    The story has been the talk of town since it broke on Sunday. The incident happened on Saturday night when some herdsmen took their cows to graze on the Oke Owa mountain, which is described as sacred. It is not a mountain that you visit anyhow; it is a no-go area even for those who hail from the place. Their tradition forbids them from going to the sacred grove. It is the exclusive preserve of their king to enter the grove and perform some rites as and when occasion demands. Virgins are the only other persons allowed into the place.

    It was not time for such rites last Saturday when the herders took their cows to graze at the Owa cave.The hilly cave looks frightening from afar. Climbing it is no child’s play, according to the Ondo State Radio Corporation (OSRC) correspondent, who visited the place in the wake of the incident. According to him, it takes “an hour to go from the foot to the top of the hill”. How then did the cows climb the mountain? That is as mysterious as their death.

    To the people of Ijare, the cows’ fate is the consequence of their action – invasion of a sacred place. To traditionalists, the power of the gods is potent and there is no escaping it if they are angry. Was it that the gods were angry with the cows for desecrating their shrine? Is the incident a subtle way of reminding us of the awesome powers of these gods? If there is anything it has done, the incident has succeeded in opening the eyes of many to the much touted powers of the gods, which were well celebrated in the past.

    These powers are now, again being celebrated by the people of Ijare, following the incident. People are also trooping to the town to see things for themselves. Do the gods really have such powers to fight for themselves when their territory is invaded? It all depends on where one stands on matters like this. The people of Ijare and other core traditionalists believe that the gods fought for themselves, pointing out that  they did so in the past and will still do so in future.

    Going down memory lane, prime minister of Ijare Wemimo Olaniran told OSRC that people who desecrated the hill in the past were killed by thunder. He said the Olujare stays in the innermost part of the cave for a day while in seclusion, explaining that the place is out of bounds to other people. Were the herders aware of that? Or did they deliberately take their cows there to test the will of the gods? Why didn’t the thunder also strike the herders?

    What now happens to the carcasses of the cows? Will they be offered to the gods? Is there a sacrifice to be performed before they are removed from those hallowed grounds? To the people of Ijare, life goes on, with Olaniran saying: ‘’what has happened has happened and at our own end, we regard it as an act of God for which nobody can be queried’’. Ondo State police spokesman Femi Joseph spoke in the same vein. ‘’It was a natural disaster and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is very unfortunate’’, he said.

    May we not incur the wrath of the gods.

  • Death in the cantonment

    MILITARY bases are fortresses. They are not places to be accessed with ease by anybody, no matter who they are. Unfortunately, our military formations are not as secure as expected. They have become so porous that hoodlums easily find their way in there. That a place is called a base is enough to instill fear in intruders. This is why when people see walls on which the legend is written: ‘’military zone, keep off’’, they keep their distance. But some daredevils have found military bases so easy to penetrate to commit crime. They go in, kill and vanish into thin air. Just like that. It should not be so. If bases are no longer safe, we are all in trouble because nobody will be safe. What should deter miscreants from entering military formations is that the people there are armed and sworn to kill.

    Whether it is familiarity or what, I cannot say. The fact remains that these formations have lost their bite before hoodlums whose latest victim was Commander Oluwayemisi Ogundana, the Commandant of the Armed Forces Command Secondary School and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji, Kaduna State. Ogundana was allegedly killed by a teacher in the school, Bernard Simon, her body dismembered, bagged and dumped in a well in a village near the cantonment. She did not meet death on the road. She was slain in her home and her remains taken outside the barracks to be dumped inside a well. How did her killers gain access into her home? Didn’t she have security guards? If our military bases cannot stop killers who are on the rampage nationwide from entering the barracks then there is no need maintaining those cantonments. If they cannot secure themselves, how can they secure the country?

  • Sanwo-Olu, deplorable roads and criminal okada riders

    Protecting the interest of the ruled, especially the middle class- teachers, journalists, lawyers, doctors and other professionals, is the best safeguard against government instability in any society. And once those basic needs of the governed are met, government can do no evil. This explains why our highly educated youths and skilled professionals are moving in droves to Canada and other western societies where these basic needs are secured despite the prospect of ending up as slaves in the service of capitalist slave drivers that own those societies. And what are these basic needs for which many Nigerians are prepared to trade their freedom for enslavement in foreign lands? Good schools for the education of their children, security of life and properties and of their families at home or in the streets, regular supply of electricity and water and affordable health care system.

    Today, the governed are not even asking for all these basic needs which were taken for granted in Lagos and some parts of the country until the collapse of the first republic in 1966. They have been scaled down because of our crisis of underdevelopment.  With the collapse of public schools and government tertiary institutions, the governed especially in Lagos spend the bulk of their earnings on sending their children to private schools and higher institutions at home or abroad. They generate their own electricity, are responsible for their own water supply as well as their own security and that of their communities. What the governed expect from their government is therefore limited to clearance of refuse, provision of roads, and protection from unruly ‘okada’ riders and sick ‘danfo’ drivers on those roads. Sadly, the few expectations have been met more in default by immediate past and current Lagos State government.

    Governor  Sanwo-Olu admitted this much  while marking his first 100 days in office on the on September 5 in an event grazed by top chieftains of the All Progressives Congress, traditional leaders, members of the state executive council, civil society, market leaders, students, and youth group. According to him “On assumption of office, we were confronted with major challenges, including traffic management and environmental sanitation. Potholes dotted our highways and heaps of refuse were common sites in our communities. And traffic situation became a source of concern to residents.” He wants Lagosians to believe his declaration of emergency on traffic management and transportation in the state through an executive order “has brought about significant relief to the residents of the state”.

    It is doubtful if many Lagosians, not least, the opposition PDP that dismissed the governor’s outing as “a fanfare of failure”, share his sentiment. In this group are  residents of  potholes dotted Ikeja and its environ, Agege, Ikotun, Ejigbo, Ikorodu, Apapa, Gbagada, Oshodi, Magodo 1, Egbeda, Ipaja, and Abule-Egba; Ikorodu community with huge heaps of un-cleared refuse and motorists who are daily robbed inside traffic gridlocks by okada riders. Obviously the governor is unaware that what has so far defined his four months administration is the chaos and anarchy created by okada riders inside traffic gridlocks on Lagos highways.

    As much as one might wish to sympathise with Sanwo-Olu for inheriting a regime of pot-holes, un-cleared refuse dumps and the takeover of Lagos major roads by okada riders from Ambode who abandoned governance the moment he failed to secure his APC’s party ticket for a second term, but then one remembers he has not only been part of government since 2003, he had two clear months to prepare for Ambode’s failure of governance. In any case, this is the fourth month of Sanwo-Olu in government and there is no evidence the Lagos State Road Traffic Law of August 2, 2012 which restricts the operations of commercial motorcycles on about 475 out of the over 9,000 roads in Lagos State which is today being breached by commercial motorcyclists who ride against traffic on major high ways and express ways has been repealed.

    The governor is also not unaware that most crimes in recent times have been linked with activities of unruly okada and tricycle drivers. Just last Monday, Lagos State Police Commissioner, Zubairu Muazu disclosed 11 notorious traffic robbery suspects arrested by the police on September 14, at Igando area of the state and the notorious armed robbers who specialised in snatching phones, money and other valuables from unsuspecting members of the public, mostly where there were traffic gridlocks “ operate mostly on motorcycles”. According to him, “those arrested all confessed to be responsible for series of robberies at traffic points, bus stops, around Yabatech, Yaba, Ejigbo, Igando-Ikotun, Ipaja and Isolo areas of the state”. In all, he disclosed “19 Lagosians have been murdered in Lagos and 31 armed robbery attempt foiled in one month, a ‘huge reduction in violent crimes over the last few months”. If Sanwo-Olu is troubled by these statistics, the governed are yet to see that in his response.

    Sadly, the tepid response of Sanwo-Olu to the menace of motorcyclists so far was the questioning of 123 Jigawa youths ferried to Lagos along their 48 motorcycles in a trailer on August 31 by his Lagos State Environmental Sanitation and Special Offences Task Force. Ferrying of northern youths and motorcycles to Lagos by northern governors who claimed it was their own answer to mass unemployment dates as far back as 2012. Neither the governors who are under pressure to provide jobs for largely unemployable illiterates nor the desperate marginalized youths who are in search of greener pastures can be blamed. What attracts them to Lagos, the economic capital of the country is what daily draws other poor, jobless youths from other geo-political zones of the country to Lagos.

    What Governor Sanwo-Olu needs is a more creative approach to the menace of unruly and criminal okada riders whose operations had been banned even by some northern states.  He also needs to take a cue from Fashola who called the bluff of okada riders even when they had the support of the then President Jonathan whose party attempted to use them to destablise Lagos.

    Fashola was also not waiting on the public to send pictures of pot-holes through indolent civil servants.  Some three years back, I wrote a piece about the menace of touts and police men on Mile 12-Ikorodu road who ferried their unsuspecting victims to a location behind Agric Bus Stop in Ikorodu where they give their victims after hours of standing in the sun a Hobbesian choice of paying bribe to bail themselves out and going to pay fine in Oshodi which will take about two days while their impounded vehicles attracted demurrage. Two weeks after the report, some indolent men who claimed to handle public complaint for Ambode called asking me to furnish them with more information. Fashola would have driven to the identified location incognito. It is also on record that Marwa ensured that any identified pot-hole in any part of Lagos was attended to within a week while uninspiring Oyinlola before him blamed the deplorable state of Lagos roads on scarcity of bitumen.

    Sanwo-Olu as an executive governor is not obliged to retain political hangers-on and indolent bureaucrats who undermined Ambode’s efforts to meet the scaled-down demands of the Lagos’ governed.

  • Power, bait and the critic

    THE best way to destroy predatory leadership is to debauch its currency: fear. Fear is what we should conquer; the fear of poverty, of speaking out, and being excluded from the coach of government’s popular gravy-train.

    Fear breeds insecurity, entitlement, bigotries, lawlessness and a wild lust for inordinate acquisitions.

    When fear as currency becomes worthless, so would the ruling class. Its traditional standards of behaviour and precepts of transaction must be shattered for Nigeria to progress. But for this to happen, Nigerians must evolve.

    True, we live in a crazy world, where morality manifests as a Utopian ideal. The honest and industrious are bankrupted while looters, thieves, gangsters, terrorists, looters, kidnappers and lobbyists laugh all the way to the bank.

    In the wake of this dystopia, the free market and precepts of equality touted as routes to nationwide prosperity have been exposed as a pathetic con game.

    Many are aware of the con but their awareness doesn’t translate to concerted efforts to evade its lure.

    The critic thus becomes society’s courier of rage and revolt against the ruling class’ arrogant hierarchs.

    To the citizenry, the critic is a modern day hero. To the government, however, he is a scourge; a noxious virus or gadfly. The citizenry depend on the critic to have a voice, the government depends on him to smother the citizenry’s voice.

    To achieve its strategy, the government lures him through the state’s revolving doors on to the corridors of power. The unrepentant critic, in identification with his repute as society’s conscience and political gadfly, rebuffs such overture.

    He understands that his acceptance of such offer would bankrupt the emotional and ethical bank account he has so far, built with the citizenry.

    Seun Onigbinde, co-founder of BudgIT, for all his spunk and promise fell for the Nigerian government’s toxic charms. He accepted to serve, against better judgement, as the Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba.

    Onigbinde’s appointment sparked off wild reactions from Nigerians on social media. A known critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, the tech expert was flayed for accepting to serve in an administration he once described as a failure.

    Among Onigbinde’s fiercest critics was the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO); a presidential apologist, the group issued a statement, condemning the appointment of Onigbinde whom they said lacks honour and integrity for accepting to serve in a government he criticised.

    Few days, after he accepted the offer, Onigbinde rescinded his decision, announcing his resignation from the office.

    In a statement on his Medium page on Monday, Onigbinde announced: “It is clear that recent media reports about my appointment have created a complex narrative, which I believe would engender an atmosphere of mistrust, as I planned to proceed.

    “I also want to wish the Nigerian Government, led by President Muhammadu Buhari, well. I will always be of help to the federal government in my capacity as the Director of BudgIT, a critical fiscal transparency group, as I have been to several agencies. I would also work to ensure that BudgIT continues to build civic awareness on the right of every Nigerian to know how public resources are managed,” he said.

    In the above statement, Onigbinde captures the essence of his role as a policy analyst, government critic and BudgIT’s co-founder.

    Nigeria needs Onigbinde, among others, to continually unmask the pious frauds of leadership by the current administration and subsequent ones.

    We are at a critical point in Nigeria’s democratic experiment; the business of governance is being bungled by a fumbling ruling class.

    While Buhari’s leadership appropriates the demeanour of Nigeria’s saving grace, like his predecessors, he betrays shortcoming in critical areas of governance.

    Education and health funding, for instance, reveals the lack of vision, acuity and compassion of his administration.

    Although he assured the education sector of remarkable improvement in funding in 2019, he budgeted a paltry 7.05 per cent – or thereabouts – of his proposed N8.83 trillion budget to the sector in flagrant disregard of the minimum funding of 15 to 20 per cent recommended for developing countries by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNICEF).

    He has also failed to make history by facilitating a permanent surgical trimming, of recurrent expenditure. At the backdrop of these failings, his administration has announced an increment of Value Added Tax (VAT) in the country.

    This has generated widespread dissent among the citizenry as critics dismiss the idea as yet another gaffe capable of making the government look bad and insensitive to the people’s plight.

    But as the ugliness persists, government apologists cite lifeboat initiatives like the TraderMoni scheme as wonderful, life-changing projects of the Buhari administration.

    How does the scheme translate to a better life for recipients and perpetual segments of the country’s breadlines?

    A laudable model would see Buhari increase education funding, for instance, and power TraderMoni, among others in such a way that recipients’ fortunes would truly improve, sustainably.

    The ultimate aim should be to lift folk out of poverty and not cushion their stay or relapse into it. Nigeria deserves more than a welfare gravy-train from Buhari.

    The impoverished and disadvantaged outside the corridors of power deserve more than a lifeboat solution. And we need critics like Onigbinde to persistently monitor governance, analyse policy and trigger reaction.

    It is understandable that given the harsh economy and the challenges of earning a livelihood in Nigeria, many a government critic and policy analyst may get charmed and eventually, silenced, by the incumbent administration’s crafty deployment of “appointments” and associated perks.

    Onigbinde’s swift recant restores hope among his keen followers and audience of his governance and policy analysis.

    Despite his duplicity and ethical weakness, it’s a great boon that he didn’t bite dust or lose sight in the glimmer of the incumbent administration’s catacombs.

    In The Emperor’s Tomb, Joseph Roth chronicles the decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He wrote that at the very end of the empire, even the street-lights longed for morning so that they could be extinguished.

    Nigeria’s undercurrent, as Hedges would say, depicts the bleakness highlighted by Roth.

    This minute, Nigerians are reduced to tools and disposable integers by a corrupt political elite. Our nation, like Roth’s empire, aspire to the ruins of defunct, powerful civilisations: Rome, Egypt, Persia and the Mayan empires.

    Insecurity, bigotry, nepotism, substandard health and education, dying industries, among others, trigger a similar yearning “for annihilation and escape into hedonism and giddy, communal madness” that signalled the end of the Roman empire.

    We have been taken hostage by a corrupt political elite. “This elite, squandering resources and pillaging the state, is no longer able to muster internal allegiance and cohesiveness” to salvage our country.

    The best they could offer are knee-jerk reactions to devastation inflicted on their watch and by generations of bad leadership.

    As Nigeria careens from maladministration, we need the Onigbindes, among others, to answer as men and fierce critics of the corrupt elite, where many pretenders to ethics have bitten dust.

    Beyond theatrics and lip-service, however, Onigbinde and co, must evolve a more selfless and unflinching resolve to serve the interest of the collective.

  • When strange things happen

    The President could not have asked for a better deputy. Any president who has Prof Yemi Osinbajo as his deputy would consider himself lucky. President Muhammadu Buhari knows that Osinbajo is God sent – not many vice presidents are made like the Professor of Law. Osinbajo is meek and humble, but it will be a grave mistake to take these attributes as a sign of weakness.

    He knows the true meaning of loyalty and he has stood by the President through thick and thin. His loyalty has never been in doubt and the President himself attested to this fact when his deputy turned 61 last year. In a birthday message to Osinbajo, Buhari said: “…Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, to Nigeria and to humanity”.

    Their partnership was and is still the envy of many politicians who keep on wondering how they have been working together in the past four years without any hitch, at least that is known to the public. In a clime where a leader dreads his deputy – at least we saw what happened in the Presidency in the past as well as in some states also in the past and now. Going by their cordial relations, many can swear that Osinbajo can do no wrong by Buhari.

    A cool, calm and calculated man, Osinbajo does not throw the weight of his office about. You will hardly notice him in a gathering except he is pointed out to you. Although he and the President are not known to be at loggerheads, Monday’s constitution of an economic team seems to tell a different story. The question is: is everything okay at Aso Rock? The question is pertinent because constitutionally, the vice president is vested with the power to oversee the economy with recourse to the President.

    Besides, he chairs the Economic Management Team (EMT) with the President’s consent. All these have changed, with the coming of the Prof Doyin Salami-led Economic Advisory Council (EAC). It goes without saying that the EAC has replaced the EMT, but can it take the place of the constitutionally created National Economic Council (NEC) which is headed by the vice president? According to the Constitution, the NEC shall comprise the following members –

    • the vice president who shall be the chairman
    • the governor of each state of the federation; and
    • the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)

    established under the Central Bank of Nigeria Decree 1991 or any enactment replacing that decree.

    The Constitution vests the NEC with power to advise the President concerning the economic affairs of the federation and in particular on measures necessary for the co-ordination of the economic planning efforts or economic programmes of the various governments of the federation.

    Now, the EAC is also expected to advise the President on economic policy matters, including fiscal analysis, economic growth and a range of internal and global economic issues working with the relevant cabinet members and heads of monetary and fiscal agencies. ‘’The EAC will have monthly technical sessions as well as scheduled quarterly meetings with the President. The chairman may, however, request for unscheduled meetings, if the need arises’’, said a statement by presidential spokesman Femi Adesina.

    With this mandate, the EAC will be usurping the functions of the NEC. Will it be proper to have another body performing the constitutional functions of NEC? Can the President set up such a rival body without the amendment of the Constitution? There is bound to be a conflict in the functions of the two bodies if allowed to perform side by side. Why did the President constitute the EAC? Has he lost confidence in NEC? Or did NEC overreach itself? Is there a rift in Aso Rock that the people are not aware of? Was the EAC set up to spite Osinbajo? Where does the constitution of the EAC leave us?

    The EAC is to perform virtually all the constitutional functions of the NEC, but without the vice president, which is empowered to head it, and all  the  state and CBN governors as its members. The President may have inadvertently breached the Constitution by constituting the EAC. I may be wrong though, giving that in a presidential system, the President has the power to do and undo. But does that power include a constitutional breach? I do not think so. It may after all be another executive order!

    Something must have informed the constitution of the EAC and that is likely to be political. Has the President begun to suspect his ‘loyal’ deputy? What brought about the suspicion? Is it all about 2023? The country saw the cost of a divided Presidency between 1999 and 2007 when Obasanjo and Atiku almost tore themselves apart.  Nigerians are not prepared to travel that road again. Whatever the differences between the President and his deputy are should be kept to themselves and not allowed to overheat the system.

    Tacitly taking away the vice president’s constitutional duty through the EAC may not serve any useful purpose. It will only compound whatever the problem is rather than solve it. Buhari and Osinbajo have come a long way to allow anything at this stage to mar their relationship. Or am I crying wolf where there is none? I will be happy if it is so.

    A singer’s day in court

    Muscians are ever too happy to perform before a live audience. When popular artiste Johnson Oyindamola aka Dammy Krane had that opportunity at an Igbosere Chief Magistrates’ Court on Monday, he grabbed it with both hands. He was in court with Merrybet Gold Ltd. Prosecuting police Inspector J. I. Enang did not want Chief Magistrate Afolashade Botoku to grant him bail.

    But his lawyer Adebayo Oniyelu urged the court to grant him bail being ‘’a popular musician’’ who will always come for his trial. The prosecutor quickly jumped up, shouting that he did not know Dammy Krane as a musician.

    The magistrate ran her eyes through the court and calmly asked Dammy Krane if he is a musician. When he answered in the affirmative, she asked him to sing one of his songs. Dammy Krane took up the challenge without batting an eyelid, as his voice rang out: Help me say amin ooo… Ama kole mole…, to which the audience chorused: amin ooo… And the singer walked away with a N50,000 bail.

  • Robert Mugabe remembered

    The death of Robert Mugabe at the age of 95 brings to an end the end of a tumultuous era in Zimbabwean history. What is now Zimbabwe was created by that English speaking South African imperialist Cecil Rhodes in the 19th century’s struggle between the Boers, the descendants of the Dutch-speaking adventurers who had emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope in the 16th century as part of a coaling station on the way to their colony in what is now Indonesia. Over the years, South Africa itself became a prized possession of the Dutch settlers who increasingly came into conflict with native South Africans particularly the Sothos and the much more formidable Zulus.

    Towards the end of the 19th century, the British had replaced the native South Africans in the contestation for power with the Boers leading to a bitter war with them and even drawing in Germany’s support for the Boers in what was a struggle for global power between the two Anglo-Saxon nations of Britain and Germany. Before the Anglo-Boer war (1899-1902), the British had tried to outflank the two Boer republics of Orange Free State and Transvaal by planting a British colony north of them in a private enterprise by Cecil Rhodes, a millionaire who had made his fortune in mining gold in South Africa. This enterprise resulted in the territories of northern and southern Rhodesia named after him thus becoming the private property of Cecil Rhodes who provided the funds for establishing them.

    Africans were not totally docile in the politics of Southern Africa. The same territory claimed by Rhodes was ruled by an African potentate named Lobengula, the king of the Ndebele nation. The  Ndebele were an offshoot of the  Zulus who had precipitated an Mfecane (dispersal) northwards following pressure from European invasion of their territory and a revolution in their military tactics leading to their victory over the British in Isandlwana in 1879 but this was to be a Pyrrhic victory because they were eventually conquered.

    The point to note is that the history of Southern Africa is intricately interwoven. The modern states that have emerged in Southern Africa are the creations of European nation state ideology and map making. The people of Southern Africa are the same Bantu-speaking peoples albeit of different dialects of the same language.

    When the emissary of Cecil Rhodes met Lobengula and promised him protection of the queen of Britain, he laughed and said he was in a better position to protect the Britons who may come visiting. The visitors came first as missionaries and later as settlers. Lobengula later told the story of how the British came to his territory and asked him and his people to close their eyes to pray and that after praying they opened their eyes and lo and behold the British flag had been unfurled and was flying over their territory! The British soon found out that the Ndebele were a minority ruling over the vast majority of the Shona.

    This was soon exploited in the classical “divide et imperia” practice wherever the British ruled in their far flung empire. When the Africans woke up and began to fight for their rights, their movement was divided along tribal lines of ZAPU (Zimbabwe African people’s Union) led by the Ndebele leader, Joshua Nkomo while the ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) was led by the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole who was later edged out by the much more radical and ruthless Robert Mugabe, a Shona, who had previously trained as a catholic friar.

    The British tried unsuccessfully to bring their territories of northern and southern Rhodesia into a federation with Nyasaland (now Malawi) in what was called Central African federation under white settlers’ rule which was unacceptable to African nationalism. Nyasaland withdrew from the federation and became the independent country of Malawi under Dr. Kamuzu Banda in July 1964 and was followed by northern Rhodesia as Zambia under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda in October 1964. Rhodesia remained firmly under white settlers control with Ian Smith as prime minister boasting that black Africans will not in a thousand years rule Rhodesia and unilaterally declared the territory independent in 1965.

    The Africans became more and more desperate to free themselves. They took to the bush and launched guerrilla war to overthrow the white settler ruled Rhodesia. The struggle was very brutal and the settlers regimes in Southern African territories of South Africa, South West Africa (later Namibia), Portuguese-ruled Angola and Mozambique supported in their own interest Ian Smith in Rhodesia. African countries through the liberation committee of the OAU with Nigeria paying substantially the lion share of the budget for the effort of the liberation movements in Southern Africa confronted the regime.

    Nigeria stepped into the effort of liberation of Southern Africa in a big way in the middle of the 1970s especially after the collapse of the Portuguese empire in Africa in 1975. This period coincided with the coming into power of Generals Murtala Muhammad and Olusegun Obasanjo. Even after General Muhammed was assassinated in 1976, the Obasanjo government continued to provide material and financial support for the liberation of Southern Africa especially when South Africa tried to support reactionary movements of UNITA and RENAMO in Angola and Mozambique respectively against the MPLA and FRELIMO governments in the two countries. Nigeria was designated a frontline state along with Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania. The Commonwealth of Nations also put pressure on Rhodesia and South Africa to change their oppressive regimes and bend in the way African nationalism.

    In order to forge a unified front in Southern Rhodesia, General Obasanjo invited Mugabe and Nkomo to Dodan Barracks in Lagos and tried to appeal to the nationalist leaders for unity. When they refused, Obasanjo dramatically locked up the two of them and gave them revolvers to shoot it out. Both later came out laughing and dramatically later merged their forces in a new movement called ZANU/ ZAPU Patriotic Front. Obasanjo’ government nationalized British financial assets in Nigeria by taking over Barclays Bank and British Petroleum (BP) with threat that others will follow.

    This and the intensification of guerrilla war forced the British  in 1980 to concede independence and majority rule to southern Rhodesia renamed Zimbabwe after an African civilization that flourished in the place in medieval times. The country was under the leadership of Robert Mugabe from independence in 1980 to 2017 when in a military putsch, Robert  Mugabe’s authoritarian rule was terminated .The independence of Zimbabwe changed the strategic position of South Africa for the worst for the apartheid regime by strengthening the frontier of freedom confronting South Africa.

    I personally experienced this when in 1989, I stood on the Beit Bridge separating Zimbabwe from South Africa and looked into a future when South Africa would join the community of free African states; a hope which was realized in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa under a non-racial majoritarian democracy.

    With the death of Mugabe, the question is being asked about his legacy. There is no doubt that Mugabe gave his people confidence. The story is often told about a British economic mission visiting Zimbabwe after independence and their leader a British peer getting impatient with young, barely trained immigration officers and arrogantly loudly telling the immigration officers, “We have come to invest in your country”. Deflating the British peer, one immigration officer said “what is wrong in you investing in your own country?” That’s the kind of self-assuredness young Zimbabweans had.

    The unity in Zimbabwe did not last and soon after independence, Mugabe unleashed his North Korean trained special forces on the Ndebele in the south of the country killing thousands of them. He also soon took over by force, white farms and nationalized the diamond and other mineral mines. These acts led the British to mobilize their allies in Europe and North Africa to impose economic sanctions on Zimbabwe. These sanctions ruined the economy of the country and led to more extreme measures and authoritarianism on the part of the Mugabe regime.

    Many young educated Zimbabweans fled to South Africa and Europe to eke out some kind of miserable existence. The country was totally ruined financially and reduced to a laughing stock in the comity of nations while Mugabe remained ever witty in his criticism of the west and Britain in particular. The Mugabe story is a mixed bag of heroism and tragedy of an African ruler who fought valiantly for his country and also let down his own people in a fit of megalomania and inability to vacate the seat of power while the ovation was loudest.

  • Dealing with the world bully

    Precisely because we are governed by law of nature – survival of the fittest, whether at the domestic or at the international level, the laws of the rich and the powerful including their whims and caprices are the laws for the rest of us. Those who control the resources of the world first told us slavery was best for the growth of the world economy; then capitalism and currently globalization, the world’s reigning god. Although the difference between the three is only in paradigm, we have been forced to swallow the fraud. The scam has been sustained though intellectual subterfuge and religion, the opium of the poor and paradoxically the foundation of western civilisation.

    If truth as defined by the powerful is being questioned today, it is not that the subjective relationship between the poor and the powerful is about to change. It has more to do with the emergence of less intellectually endowed world leaders such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and other western leaders who are today increasingly finding it difficult to convince the rest of the world that their motives in the ongoing civil war on Yemen exacerbated by rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia is different from their ignoble role in Libya, Syria, Congo and currently in Venezuela.

    First, a civil war is going on in Yemen. It was partly the result of the ousting of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the first President of Yemen, (1990-2012) through Arab Spring masterminded and designed by self-serving western society to recolonize the Arab world or indirectly take over the control of their economy. A Saudi-led coalition in command of about 190 war planes, supported by America, American weapons and Britain took sides with Saudi Arabia to unseat the Houthis that got an upper hand in the civil war after taking control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, in 2014

    Human Rights Watch has ‘documented about 90 apparently  unlawful  coalition airstrikes’ against  homes, markets, hospitals, schools, and mosques and a wedding ceremony where 22 people, including eight children died in 2018 and that of a bus filled with children resulting in the killing of at least 26 children. Human Rights Watch has identified remnants of US-origin munitions at the site of more than two dozen attacks on civilians in Yemen. As at November 2018, 6,872 civilians had been killed and 10,768 wounded; the majority by Saudi Arabia-led coalition airstrikes.

    Just about a week before the drone attack, over a hundred innocent people were killed through America-aided Saudi Arabia air strike. While many are being killed with American weapons openly shipped to Saudi Arabia, America and its allies are accusing Iran of smuggling weaponry including ballistic missiles fired at Saudi territory by the rebel Houthi movement. America that unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal jointly negotiated by the UN and world powers, imposed sanctions on Iran, embargoed the sales of her fuel and threatened nations and companies that do business with her has also decreed Iran will be held liable for any attack on foreign vessels in the Persian Gulf.

    It must also be said that the Human Rights Watch also documented atrocities committed by the Houthi forces such as repeated indiscriminate “firing of artillery into Yemeni cities, populated neighbourhoods with devastating impact on Taizz, Yemen’s third largest city, use of banned weapons such as landmines, arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances”.

    But as it was in Iraq and Libya where the preoccupation of America and her western allies after the fall of Saddam Hussain and Muammar Gaddafi was the protection of oil facilities as against artifacts dating back to 3,000 years, America seems to be saying crime against humanity can be committed by both sides as long as flow of oil is not interrupted or threatened.

    America’s reaction to last Saturday’s coordinated Houthi Drone strike which shut down about half of Saudi Arabia’s oil output seems to have confirmed that mind-set.  Celebrating the attack, a Houthi spokesman said “We promise the Saudi regime that our future operations will expand and be more painful as long as its aggression and siege continue”. But America despite that claim and despite Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s denial has continued to point accusing finger at Iran for the attack.  With a posture of ‘do as I say and not do as I do’, they are gathering evidence to inflict maximum punishment on Iran for daring to support the Houthis, her own ally.

    Nigeria and the United States have long been close allies. Besides being our biggest trading partner until recently, America supports our fight against corruption and efforts to build institutions of democracy such as political parties, the press and civil society organisations. Since President Trump who operates on impulse has to be managed by the American bureaucracy and tolerated by American traditional allies, we may not be in a position to influence his perception of the truth. But we can maintain our peace as most members of the non-aligned nations have so far done.

    This is why last Monday’s statement about “Nigeria standing in solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, following drone attacks on the country’s oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq” by Malam Garba Shehu, President Buhari’s  Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, was totally uncalled for. We suddenly remember “the attacks represent not only economic warfare aimed at damaging a government, but also innocent citizens’ livelihoods: those with no place, nor cause, to be harmed” after maintaining our silence since the outbreak of hostility in 2015 and with close to 13,600 people killed in Yemen, including more than 5,200 civilians, as well as estimates of more than 50,000 dead as a result of an ongoing famine due to the war.

    The problem with our foreign relations is that we invest heavily and take sides without tying such investments and interventions to what our nation stands to gain.  For instance, while we seem to give unconditional support to Saudi Arabia that  not too long ago disappointed President Buhari  during his desperate  search for funds while the IMF held the nation hostage over his refusal to devalue the naira, Russia,  an undisputed  power behind Iran in her battle against Saudi Arabia coalition and the western powers,  rather than taking a public position, tongue-in-cheek offered Saudi Arabia Russian S-400 ‘Triumph’ air defence systems  weapons to ward off possible future attacks on her oil facilities.

    We must not also allow ourselves to be caught between the struggle for regional hegemonic power by Iran and Saudi Arabia using schism of Shia and Sunni. In any case the age-long  Shia(Iran)  and Sunni (Saudi Arabia ) rivalry has little to do with faith but more with  war of succession following the death of Prophet Muhammed through meat poisoning without  an anointed successor. The Shia support for Muhammad’s son-in-law and Cousin Ali, who was later murdered by the Sunnis along with his sons as rightful successor was the source of age-long feud between Shia and the Sunnis.

  • Truth is in the telling

    After 100 days, our governors’ narratives sprout from a honeyed tongue, not the baleful patois of the boondocks. It is an aesthetic of seduction but like the sweet melody of the Sirens, it spirals like poisonous fumes, afflicting our land with a vapour of hanging participles and colourful hyperbole. The governors’ panegyric excites the passing tribute of a sigh.

    Of the numerous achievements spuriously cited as each governor’s selling points, the phantasm of road projects attains the pride of pitch. To mark their ‘first 100 days’ in office, several state governors boastfully published pictures and literature depicting their ‘widely appreciated and celebrated road rehabilitation’ projects.

    Like I said in last week’s piece, it defies reason and tact for a state governor or federal minister to roll out the drums to celebrate his commencement of repairs on a bad road, a decrepit school or public health facility – particularly when his claims are exaggerated or untrue.

    He is only doing the work for which he was elected and is being handsomely rewarded. Thus any governor that would commit the state’s resources to such fluff is in dire need of counselling and civic education.

    At the back drop of the specious figures being hurled around, Nigerians die for lack of good roads.

    On several highways, the random pothole becomes a vector of death. It attains urgent symbolism as a testament of neglect and element of Nigeria’s grotto of bad governance. Think of them as earth fissures detailing the 36 states’ mutation into varnished tombs.

    Several families have lost loved ones to avoidable accidents on the country’s bad roads. Many a job seeker have missed crucial interviews and lost promising employment opportunities because they got stuck in vehicle traffic caused by road craters.

    Lives are lost on the Bauchi-Alkaleri road as drivers and passengers die in accidents caused by potholes. Similar carnage occur on the Lagos-Abeokuta and Lagos-Ibadan highways; the latter, constructed in 1978 and said to be the busiest in Africa, has about 6,000 vehicles plying it daily according to the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC). Due to government neglect, the road which connects Oyo, Ogun and Lagos States, leading to the northern, southern and eastern regions of the country, continually claims lives in ghastly auto accidents.

    Lest we forget the Enugu-Onitsha highway, the Calabar-Itu road, Calabar-Ikom, Kano-Kaduna, and the Bayelsa State axis of the East-West Road, where commuters extinguish in potholes and road craters.

    A tour across the states would avail our governors a more realistic experience of the inherent tragedy of plying bad roads, on which foul dust and mud spatter spring from the earth to discolour commuters’ vehicles, sully their clothes and corrupt their health.

    Governance in the country is literally grotesque. Like the deathly pothole or road crater, it is borne of a grotto of shady public officers, who like their predecessors, nurture a special affinity for ornamenting one hideous gaffe with another.

    They ignore crisis while it stews and hazard a knee-jerk reaction, when the crisis degenerates. Former Ogun governor, Ibikunle Amosun, and the Federal Ministry of Works, for instance, ignored the condition of the Lagos-Ibadan highway until a 20-feet container fell off a moving truck and crushed 12 students to death in a Toyota Hiace passenger bus, on a bad portion of the road.

    One would expect that frequent travel abroad would furnish our governors, among other public officers, with the necessary exposure about rehabilitating for the long-term, the country’s dilapidated road network.

    The value of good roads to a nation’s agricultural economy and financial regeneration cannot be overemphasised. The economies of the so-called ‘First World’ have been known to pirouette from a sound base of good roads and seamless transportation network. The evidences abound from Asia to Europe and America. In those climes, public officers walk their talk.

    Many a Nigerian public officer, however, would rather dazzle with talk while presenting what’s supposed to be a routine, official duty as stagecraft. It is part of our pagan heritage and rites of governance, our inherited artifice.

    The random imagery of a state governor donning a grim look while inspecting a bad road, predictably, excites applause among his lackeys and an illiterate populace. But it inspires in the observer, depending on his enlightenment, that stirring in the bowels identifiable as disgust or applause.

    The state governors parade a cabinet and coterie of spin-doctors adept at flipping over disgust to applause, by reportage. Truth is in the telling. Knowing this, they recruit a pliant press to entertain and hoodwink the citizenry with exaggerated accounts of their ‘sterling exploits.’

    The State House thus becomes our Versailles. Cradling doctored reports, the media evolves under its rule, into a class of courtiers; government publicists masquerading as journalists and pundits, cede their platforms to ‘friendly’ governors, for whom they spin, prevaricate and lie.

    Consequently, we hear little about the stories of pain and desolation afflicting the victims of bad governance and policy failure.

    In Lagos, however, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu supposedly means well; after all, he recently approved the commencement of repairs on bad roads across the state. And in fulfilment of his executive order on zero tolerance for potholes in the state, the Lagos State Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) has begun full scale routine repair and rehabilitation of roads across the state.

    The General Manager of the LSPWC, Engr. Olufemi Daramola, during an inspection of the ongoing rehabilitation of Iju-Fagba road, recently, stated that

    despite the incessant rainfall witnessed in the past few weeks, the state had been providing palliatives with the use of gravel and crushed stones on strategic roads across the state to ensure free flow of traffic.

    This is, no doubt, a temporary palliative and is grossly inadequate as the patched spots eventually cave in, in less than two weeks.

    Daramola cited rehabilitation works in 26 different locations across the state. It is, however, sad to note, that for the umpteenth time, the Lagos government has failed to treat the sad state of the Lagos-Abeokuta highway and bypasses with the urgency and care it deserves.

    Like his predecessors, Babatunde Fashola and Akinwumi Ambode, Governor Sanwo-Olu’s palliative effort cuts off this neglected terrain of the coastal city.

    The roads are very bad in Agbado-Kollington, Dalemo-Akera, and Ijaiye-Jankara axis. You need only travel the cratered paths and bypasses of Abule-Egba, Ahmadiyya, Meiran, and Alakuko to understand the extent of devastation and neglect afflicting the area.

    Governor Sanwo-Olu has certainly got his work cut out for him. Its about time he understood that good roads and development must be evenly spread across Lagos; they should never be exclusive to the state’s supposedly posh, popular and gated communities.

    Given the pride of place he occupies as governor of the state widely acknowledged as Nigeria’s commercial heartbeat, Sanwo-Olu must shun pedestrian praise and commit to his task with unparalleled gusto.

    At the moment, he unfurls like a newbie at the State House’s pageant rites. Let him remember that his lackeys might be saboteurs and his critics may be friends; together, however, they constitute the periphery of governance. He is the man at the centre.

    And he has less than four years to ennoble his office and dispel inherited stereotypes. This wisdom applies to his 35 fellow governors.