The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  •  Their pound of flesh

    IT was a tough call for President Muhammadu Buhari, the anti-graft czar of our time. The Supreme Court on Monday raised an ethical issue during hearing in a case in which he was a party. Though the case was struck out, the panel of justices wondered whether his lawyer, who works in the Federal Ministry of Justice, was representing him in his official or personal capacity.

    The lawyer said he was representing the President in his personal capacity. The justices frowned at his response, wondering why the President should use tax payers money to fund a private case. His action, they said, offended the Code of Conduct for public officers.

    In a way, they are accusing the President of wrong doing. Coming from a bench where some members are facing corruption charges, the insinuation is not lost on the public.

  • ‘Woke’ youth mustn’t snooze

    The cult of digital citizenship has a supreme theme: that of the ‘digitally-woke,’ youth. Social media, expanded to fill the space life provides, substitutes Nigeria’s bleak moon for a digitized dawn.

    Call it science’s dark revenge or technology’s defiant stand against conservative norms. In the mix, Nigeria incinerates by the speed of blistering terrabytes; two planes of reality collide a la traditional versus new media; conservative ethicist versus deviant liberal, erupting in primeval chaos, cyber-activated.

    The intelligible persistently loses to the unintelligible and citizenship gets redefined as digitally-woke youth vengefully debase and defy society’s arrogant hierarchs.

    The digitally-woke youth is technology’s heroic personae and his cult runs where dissent rebounds. He has a fearless disposition but is afflicted by dewy cowardice. In the cyberspace he inhabits, he personifies spirited narcissism, unfurling wildly to his articulated and unarticulated sinful lusts.

    Yet the joke persists in contemporary circuits that the battle for Nigeria’s freedom would be fought and won in social space and by the cudgels and blades of ‘woke’ youth. This notion sprouts from ideological fields at home and abroad, where pasture, copse and tributary of thought, flourish from sickly seeds of violence and death.

    Being ‘woke’ is next to being a deity in contemporary youth circuits. It confers on the ‘woke’ a colossal ego, an exaggerated sense of awareness and idolatry of fawning peer. To such youth, social media becomes theatre, a public agon. Every issue from policy failure, inefficient leadership, distressed economy, electoral fraud, insecurity, to failing public institutions offers him an opportunity to vent.

    Unlike the conventional patriot for whom protest functions as a catalyst for positive change, the digitally-woke youth protests for ego and applause.

    In his element, he courts the admiration of the strolling spectator; he forgets that he is neither king nor god but manipulable pawn. He is victim of ignorance’s tyranny over intellect thus his susceptibility to being used by shady, criminally-minded others.

    He is arsonist, assassin and mugger at election time; and canon-fodder for disrupting the state, in time of peace. He is the random cyber-rat with multiple monikers, preaching bigotries and a gospel of hate across multiple social media platforms and news sites as you read.

    Beneath his radical chants, however, subsists an immoderate hankering for money and safety. Some would call this cowardice and a predilection for slumber. But he is ‘woke’ and ‘woke’ youth musn’t snooze.

    Money, fast cars, dubious acclaim are, however, a deal breaker hence the morbid race against time to acquire wealth by ‘woke’ young assassins, internet scammers (Yahoo Boys), and prostitutes. Lest we forget the gangs of ‘woke’ political thugs, human rights activists, ‘youth leaders,’ public officers, pen robbers, armed robbers and thieves comprising the nation’s youth.

    Due to perceived trashiness and philosophical harlotry of the journalist, this band of youths would not leave the battle for their freedom from Nigeria’s predatory ruling class to the press.

    Cowardice is what we should conquer. Cowardice enslaves all to mean and homicidal politicians. It cripples the rage of impoverished youth and binds all to the wiles of dubious political parties and public officers.

    It takes courage to evolve a humane ideology and sustain it. As Nigerians, in our youth, we haven’t the courage and the will, and this interferes with our ability to accomplish progressive change.

    More worrisome are our violent attempt to be radical; eventually they resonate too feebly, like a kind of rudderless activism. This was reflective in the attitude of certain youth segments during the last general elections.

    Mistaking hooliganism for “higher political awareness” or “being woke,” they harassed their peers and the elderly who voted for President Muhammadu Buhari, among others.

    They frantically sought for votes for their self-styled messiahs, whose unique selling point (USP) was an exaggerated sense of self-worth. Extravagant sections of the press called the latter, titans. But they were no titans. They were simply merchants of rot, who emerged to clothe dross as gold and filth in newer, fanciful packs.

    Leading a motley pack of rabid followers, they condemned the incumbent ruling class to frantic applause. But soon after they spoke in brilliant, rousing cadences, their platitudes started to trail off in confusion.

    Today, their language echoes like the battle-cries of four-year-olds playing war Generals against an army of hostile corn stalks. Having provoked the citizenry’s dormant passion with deceptive dialectics, as the election wore on, their passion was shown for what it was, the spunk of beetles kindling wet wood.

    Most youth candidates failed to shine at the last general elections because their gospel of hope was untranslatable by realistic yardsticks. They spoke the same gibberish as the oligarchs they sought to unseat.

    Ultimately, they brought nothing new to the table, save a slew of platitudes and tiresome rhetoric. For instance, some dizzy candidate promised to turn marijuana into a national revenue earner and establish a N100, 000 national minimum wage package for the country in a manner reminiscent of the prominent parties’ lifeboat solutions.

    Another promised to rescue the Chibok girls, eradicate terrorism and entrench gender equality without a practical blueprint for achieving such.

    Eventually, their desperate rants and promises established them as dangerous daydreamers, who could and would rip apart a nation already fragmented and ruined by bigotries, maladministration and plunder.

    Such is the quality of the Nigerian youth – the ‘politically woke” and most vocal segment to be precise. They identify all that is wrong with Nigeria but they are never specific about what must be done to correct them.

    It is relatively easy to join a picket line and tirelessly castigate our elders and ruling class for everything that is wrong with our lives but these actions, while they demonstrate frustration, and in some instances, even heroism, deal generally with symptoms of· our problems and not the solutions.

    All the picket lines in the world will not resolve maladies of fraudulent and impatient youth, greed, racism, disillusionment with learning and substandard education.

    Yeah, bad news is in the air. We worry and gripe about it. Bloggers and columnists rant about it. We have even learnt to joke about it. But it’s time we do something about it.

    It takes so much effort to be cynical and vengeful, let us channel such efforts into more profitable enterprise, like visionary politics, honest labour and reorientation.

    It’s about time we projected more progressive views of our world. Let us begin to seek the upright amongst us. They are the negligible few we love to haze and deride for being too ‘conservative,’ ‘boring’ and ‘pretentious.’

    They believe in justice, equality and the rule of law. They are pious without being self-righteous. They are responsible, tolerant, and in many ways, more evolved.

    We need such breed of youth to drive a practicable and all-inclusive plan; a proposal of shared targets and intentions with broadbased support and the moral and political will to implement its mechanisms and ends with profound understanding of law, governance methods, economics and social organisation of humane statehood.

    Without these, we will continue to flounder in the sea of well-meaning but ineffective good intentions.

    These are dark days for the Nigerian youth. We are going through a particularly unpleasant form of hell but it’s a hell that we have made for ourselves.

  • Weep not for Igbo

    Our nation fell into the hands of political tricksters, economic swindlers and young men who wanted to be rich without working during Babangida’s reign of deceit in the mid-eighties. As government self-serving commercialisation and liberalization policy ceded ownership of thriving public enterprises to favoured members of the military junta and their fronts who were never groomed for such challenges, such enterprises collapsed and our nation was turned to major importer of labour of other societies. From Abacha all through the current fourth republic, it has been bare-faced stealing by those who have access to government funds directly or through tax waivers to fund importation. This was the genesis of wealth acquisition without work in our nation. It is therefore not a surprise that a whole generation of Nigerian youths between ages of 20 and 40 that are today involved in drug trafficking and cyber fraud grew up in an era of wealth without hard work and age of lawlessness.

    Now the chicken has come home to roost. Other countries are now insisting we cannot export lawlessness into their nation. Ghana our neighbor, South Africa we helped to liberate from apartheid minority rule, Malaysia whose palm oil revolution we supported through donation of oil palm seedlings and Saudi Arabia, spiritual home to many Nigerian Muslims and now America , source of N23b annual diaspora remittances are asking us to put our own house in order.

    If importation of fake and substandard drugs and goods, drug trafficking and setting up and running businesses illegally and other criminal activities are tolerated in Nigeria, putting an end to such criminal activities became a campaign issue for South Africa president, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa in the recently concluded South Africa election. Many of our youths convicted for drug related offences are on death row in Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia. Last week, it was the turn of the US to remind us that people cannot get rich without working in their country.

    Of the 80 people the US authorities indicted for wire fraud, romance scams and business email compromise crime and for swindling millions of dollars from U.S. businesses and individuals, 77 were Nigerians with 74 of Igbo extraction. As a people that prefer to play the ostrich, reactions of Nigerians and the representatives of government have only reflected this hypocrisy. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Nigerian in Diaspora Commission chief, doesn’t want few bad eggs to spoil the name of Nigeria. She has therefore urged “those accused in Nigeria to voluntarily turn themselves in to American authorities to clear their names”, adding that Nigeria should extradite the defendants “if relevant international treaties between the two governments are invoked.”

    On his part, a concerned Igbo commentator, Fredrick Nwabufo in a piece titled ‘The Igbo have a problem’ which has since gone viral in the social media blames everything on “Igbo culture that glorifies ‘’money’’ crime – ‘’ego mbute’’ – the culture of money grubbing and worship, as the-be-all and end-all of everything. He therefore wants his Igbo compatriots to “stop celebrating people of unknown fortune, name and shame those with illicit wealth in our communities and upbraid them instead of giving them chieftaincy titles and front-row seats in church”.

    Both are wrong. Dabiri trivialises our tragedy as a nation.  Stereotyping by Nwabufo also deprives us the important lesson from the tragedy that has befallen our nation.  We currently have over 50m Nigerian youths who believe it is possible to be rich without work. This fallacy has been reinforced by various institutions of society. Our orthodox churches that promise salvation through sales of grace, the Pentecostal prosperity prophets that have replaced Christ’s message of salvation in heaven with message of prosperity through miracle and our young artists that celebrate nothing but vanity, money, women and sex. Our youths neither read in order to be able to articulate the problems of our nation neither do they vote during elections except in BBN realty show which celebrates decadence, sex, and an illusion of life of leisure without work for winners of N60m in a game of chance similar to the miracle the churches and other institutions of society promise.

    Fredrick Nwabufo has no need for self-contrition. If out of the 21 Nigerians on death-row for drug peddling in Indonesia, 20 are Igbo  from his Anambra State, if lynching of Igbo citizens in Asia occurred in 2013 over alleged criminality, if some armed robbers of Igbo origin launched an attack on a bureau de change in Dubai, and if Nigerians are a pariah in South Africa partly due to the activities of some Igbo drug cartel”, it  was not just because of Igbo culture which by extension is also now the prevailing culture in our society, it is precisely because the Igbo excel more than others in whatever they set their eyes on. As Ahamdu Bello put it, if you employ an Igbo man as a labourer, he will strive to become the head of labourers. As for glorification of ‘’money’’ crime – ‘’ego mbute’’ – the culture of money grubbing and worship, as the-be-all and end-all of everything”, show me one ethnic group in Nigeria where that has not replaced culture of hard work, perseverance and selfless service to one’s community. All  those Igbo youths whether in Ghana, South Africa, Singapore of America  where they are currently undergoing persecution and prosecution,  have tried to do is outdo the rest of their Nigerian compatriots  in what has become a dominant Nigerian culture.

    Indeed no one should weep for the Igbo nation. Rather we should weep for ourselves. What we are faced with is a national plight and all of us are going to suffer the consequences. Diaspora remittances put at about N23b will be affected. Unfortunately, immediate victims are recipients who are mainly old and elderly people. The real estate as well as the capital market will also be affected.

    And as part of the price we have to pay for not putting our own house in order, South Africa which is currently investigating about 6,000 Nigerians is excluding Nigeria from her free entry visa lottery.

    With the latest American action, the rest of the outside world, concerned about the criminal activities of some of our youths will most likely start to tighten the noose against us. With Ghana and America deporting our youths, with lynching going on in South Africa, beheading in Saudi Arabia and with a generation of Yoruba and Igbo youths at home who want money without work now exploiting the herdsmen/farmers  crisis to visit terror on their own people, our harvest basket is full.

    The challenge is not just for the federal government but the state governments who have failed to provide security for their people despite collecting between N4b andN10b as security vote every year, the bulk of which is said to go into upkeep of political thugs and for destabilising their own political parties.

     

  • Climate change: Living in ignorant bliss

    Most Nigerians probably say “what concerns us about climate change?” I can understand this especially when we have many existential problems that are of immediate concern to us while the problem of climate change appears to be something not in the imminent physical horizon. Our problems are legion as the mad man of Gadara said. But this does not excuse our non-participation in saving the only planet where we and others call home. We are also victims of climate abuse and degradation and unfortunately we Africans and poor Asians and Latin Americans are the least technologically prepared to bear the burden and consequences of environmental degradation and climate change. In other parts of the world, individuals are being called upon to reduce their carbon footprints through responsible minimization of individual emissions. One of the constituent colleges of the University of London is presently considering abandonment of beef in order to reduce their individual and collective contribution to greenhouse gas emissions arising from the methane cows belch into the air! Some are taking to vegan lifestyle and eating more grains than animal products. We can join the rest of the world not necessarily through our cuisine and change of diet. We can of course ride bicycles than drive cars for short distances. If we have to use our automobiles we can attach catalytic converters to filter the carbon from our vehicle emissions. When I drive in Nigeria and I see rickety vehicles belching huge smoke into the atmosphere, my heart beats skip some beat wondering why such irresponsible behaviour does not attract sanctions or correction of the apparently ignorant offenders. I hope one of our overpaid and over indulged legislators would bring a comprehensive bill to save our environment and to show the world that as a responsible member of the international community, we want to join in the struggle to reverse environmental degradation and save the planet. The first thing we can do is to have a population policy that says no man should have more than two children. Emphasis and the onus on population reduction and control must be on the man not the women. This will not go down well with the religionists but we must force it down their throats.

    We can do more. We need to stop the slash and burn agricultural practice by which we clear virgin forest whenever we farm. This leads to deforestation and reduction of the very forest that acts as carbon sinks and source of the oxygen we breathe. We need to teach this subject in our schools so that children can be made aware of the global problem. We do not have the time to waste and prevaricate about what to do. Scientists say we only have 11 more years to reverse global warming or else it will be too late. Burning bushes every year and burning refuse contributes to the problem. Instead of burning refuse we should make them into composts since most of our refuse are bio-degradable. The plastics that are not should be collected and recycled. We should use less plastics and try to replace plastic packaging with papers that do not litter our streets and find ways into our oceans and rivers to destroy aquatic ecology and kill and poison fishes on which we are increasingly dependent for our protein intake. Anyone who lives in Lagos like me and those people who live in our urban  areas like Kano and Ibadan  would have noticed the constant smog that tends to hang over our cities particularly during harmattan arising from smoke mixing with dusts and blanketing most our cities. It is not neuro surgery or rocket science to see the linkage between this and the increase in respiratory diseases such as asthma among our children and adults. People are being choked and are not able to breathe because of the unnecessary burning of forests, refuse, tyres and plastics, yes plastics thus poisoning our urban and even village environment!

    Some years ago, the European Union banned the export of tropical wood from countries such as ours. Unfortunately this law has been obeyed in its breach. Trees are still being felled and exported abroad as raw timber or timber products in the mad struggle for foreign exchange. Sometimes trees are felled for firewood for cooking. This is very sad for a country that is the largest burner and emission of natural gas that could have been piped into homes to replace wood and kerosene as sources of energy for cooking. Here we are wasting irreplaceable natural asset while polluting the atmosphere. Yet some of the technologies involved in converting natural gas to power urban transportation and domestic cooking have been around for a long time but because of the availability of petroleum products and hard wood we have taken the least line of resistance in our energy source and use. We need to clean our act. This is not only in our energy use but in the way we live. We are just too dirty the way we manage our wastes. We do not know we can separate our wastes into separate garbage bags, one for biodegradable wastes and the other for recyclable wastes; we simply lump everything together or even in extreme cases throw our wastes including human wastes unto the streets or into the gutters. This eventually contributes to flooding when the unseasonably heavy rains caused by global warming come. It can thus be seen that all our problems are bound together and if we think the problem of the environment does not concern us we shall learn our lessons in a very hard way.

    These enumerated problems are just a few that we can tackle at the local or national level and find beneficial solutions to. If we are unable to find solutions to them on our own, we can link up with international organizations such as the following UN bodies: The Earth System Governance Project (ESGP); Global Environment Facility (GEF); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); World Nature  Organisation (WNO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from which  assistance and funds can be sourced for all kinds of amelioration strategies to add our own quota to the struggle for environmental enhancement. Recently, Ethiopia planted one million trees in one day to reverse deforestation in their country. We used to have a program of tree planting particularly in the north of our country. One wonders what has become of it. This is an area in which we can deploy our millions of rural folk to participate in the greening of our country. In this way the rural population will go through a learning curve in environmental education and they would not likely cut trees again. In Germany it is illegal to cut trees. Trees are living things and their lives should not be summarily ended just because one has a saw or a cutlass. If one wants to build a house one can design it to avoid unnecessarily cutting down all the trees in the neighbourhood.

    The same mistake took place a decade or so ago during the military regime in our country when some young misguided military governors decided to cut down the neem trees in our cities. This happened in Kano, Ibadan and Maiduguri. The trees lining the avenues were felled and replaced with street lights many of which were so fragile that they were blown off by the first rain that fell after their installations. How on earth should anyone cut down trees in the desert of Kano and Maiduguri? Even in lush Ibadan this should not have happened.  No attempt has been made in Ibadan to lighten the arid and harsh urban environment by greening the city. Thanks to Raji Fashola, former governor of Lagos who during this civilian regime tried to green the environment of Lagos. Only the knowledgeable people gave kudos to him for his efforts. The hoi polloi Of Lagos were heard to deride him by saying “Na only tree we go chop?” I am sure history will be kind to him on the account of his environmental concern. I hope his effort can be copied by other state governors and even by the federal government. If there is need for urban expansion into the adjoining forest it must be supervised by a resuscitated forest rangers. We used to have them as forest guards in the old Western Region. Imagine if we had them, he criminal herders and other criminals inhabiting our forest would not have had an easy chance. We also need to watch the kind of fertilizers we use in order to prevent poisoning our soil. We must bring back sanitary inspectors and urban health people to radically supervise our uncontrolled public nuisance and wastes disposal. All these measures will not be easy and it will need considerable investment on public education for our people to buy into a program which at the end of the day will be in everybody’s interest and all these will need people to run and as the cliché goes, there are jobs in green policies and there is money to be made.

     

  • A judge as butcher!

    His name is Butcher and he is a judge in the commercial court in the United Kingdom (UK). The judge has become popular in Nigeria, especially in government circle, where he is seen as more of a butcher than a judge. Literally, a butcher cuts up and sells meat in a shop. But this is no such butcher.

    From the bench, he ordered Nigeria to pay a firm, Process and Industrial Development Ltd (P&ID) $9.9 billion for breach of agreement. Since the arbitral award, officialdom has been running from pillar to post trying to explain how the country found itself in this multi trillion naira judgement debt. The $9.9 billion award is equivalent to N3.24 trillion, which is nearly half of this year’s N8.83 trillion budget.

    So, you can understand where they are coming from if those close to power are complaining. Like everything Nigeria, we brought this undeserving judgement on ourselves. We had all the time in the world to stop the case from getting this far, but the government did nothing. As usual, they decided to play politics with a mater that is not political and which should have been handled with all the seriousness it deserved.

    It all started on January 11, 2010 when the Ministry of Petroleum Resources signed a gas supply and processing agreement with P&ID. The deal was for the firm to build and operate an accelerated gas development project at Adiabo in Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State. The deal went awry, with P&ID accusing the government of reneging on its obligation after the firm entered into negotiation with Cross River State for land for the project.

    At this stage, there was still time to settle the matter amicably but the politics then did not allow that. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua was then battling for his life in hospital and the hawks around him grounded the machinery of government. They did not allow the man to transfer power to then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan before he was admitted into hospital. Perhaps, if the right thing had been done then, the nation would not today be struggling to wriggle out of this humongous debt.

    Arbitration is an alternative dispute resolution, it is not like a court where the parties have to argue to no end in order to prove their cases. At arbitration, all the cards are laid face up. The parties come out plainly, as everything is written in black and white, and admit their fault unlike the court scenario where all manner of lies are told in order to cover up the truth. Since it knew it had a strong case, P&ID resorted to arbitration.

    At the arbitration tribunal comprising Lord Hoffmann, Anthony Evans and Nigeria’s Bayo Ojo (SAN), former attorney-general and minister of justice, Nigeria argued that P&ID’s failure to acquire land for the building of the gas processing facilities was ‘’a fundamental breach of the agreement’’. According to it, no gas could be delivered until this is done. The tribunal rejected Nigeria’s argument and upheld P&ID’s request for damages.

    What should be the damages became a contentious issue among the members. Hoffmann and Evans calculated it to be $6.597 billion, but Ojo, in his minority report, put it at $250 million. The matter also came up before the United States (US) District Court in Columbia and the US District Court of Appeal which ruled in the petitioner’s favour. But can a sovereign country like Nigeria be bound by the decisions of these domestic courts?

    Yes, says P&ID, which claims that Nigeria is bound by a treaty to pay up having waived its right to immunity as a sovereign nation when it signed the agreement. In its application seeking the enforcement of the award, the firm said: ‘’The final award is governed by the New York Convention. So, Nigeria’s status as a foreign sovereign does not deprive the court of jurisdiction to confirm the award”. Justice Butcher agreed and the rest, as they say, is history.

    The law, we are told, does not help the tardy. Nigeria’s indolence has put it in this awkward position. Our nonchallance of yesterday is costing us a fortune today. Apparently just waking up from slumber after being slammed with this multi trillion naira award, Solicitor-General of the Federation Dayo Apata said the court lacked the power to give such an order against a sovereign state. Speaking legalese, he said what is actually being touted as “default judgement is default entry”.

    ‘’Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), a defendant has up to 60 days to answer to a petition filed against it.  Where no response is entered for the defendant, the court clerk, upon application by a petitioner makes a default entry, which in this case was made on June 5, 2018’’, he added. Well said. But why didn’t the country follow through the plan to pay the firm  $850 million in 2015?

    What stalled that arrangement? If the firm agreed to accept $850 million four years ago and we refused to pay up after entering into that agreement, who then do we blame today for the multi trillion naira award slammed on us? The government and its officials, of course. There is nothing they can say that will absolve them of blame. They have let Nigerians down at a time it mattered most. This is not how to defend our sovereignty.

    This is not the time to grandstand or play to the gallery. Those talking from both sides of their mouths should watch it. A court has confirmed the arbitral award. We should just go back there and sort things out. We should be spared such statement as ‘’we know the implication of that judgement and its impact on monetary policy. That is why the CBN is going to step forward and very strongly too to ensure we defend the country and defend the reserves of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’’.  How do we do that when they have our balls in their hands?

    Did Nigeria default in its pact with P&ID or not? If it did, is the arbitral award justified or not? Justice Butcher may have butchered us with his verdict, but can we blame him for doing his job? The fault is in us and not in him for upholding the scale of justice.

  • Do mosquitoes make a noise like thunder?

    A MULTITUDE of disgruntled youths may flirt with strife and call it ‘revolt’ just as a swarm of mosquitoes can make a noise like thunder – left to their own devices. But where their ignorance and rage enjoy the caress of a dubious demagogue, Nigeria should flinch.

    The demagogue deploys distortion and deceit for dramatic effect. His hypnotic repetitions resound as a series of soothing gestures to distressed, ignorant youths but in truth, they are borne of greed, calumny, acrimony and deceit.

    Thus when a self-styled demagogue issues a call for revolt, Nigerians should be wary. The youth, in particular, for such supposedly heartfelt ‘patriotic’ call is often issued by the demagogue or ‘revolutionary’ after he fails to clinch a lucrative role in the government that he condemns.

    The legend persists, for instance, of the bitter ideologue, who radically morphed from President Muhammadu Buhari’s staunch apologist into one of his greatest detractors, simply because Mr. President refused to offer him a ministerial role. The embittered character has since, seized every opportunity to attack Buhari. Makes you marvel at his entitlement syndrome.

    This is not to absolve Buhari of his shortcomings, however. Yes, Buhari could be more detribalised and presidential in several respects; yes, poverty, corruption, maladministration, official irresponsibility, and insecurity persist despite his claims otherwise.

    But most of these problems are aggravated by the citizenry’s refusal to aspire to the finer aspects of citizenship, character, and tact.

    Nigeria had a perfect opportunity to elect the right calibre of men and women into public offices during the last general elections but as usual, they opted to squander their votes, routing for convicted felons and money-bags, for a token.

    Now, that the consequences of their misguided action bear down at them, they sing a song of revolt. The call for a revolution becomes even more worrisome, and dangerous perhaps, given the sources and audience of the damning call.

    Omoyele Sowore’s #RevolutionNow, while seasonable, is fraught with errors. Sowore anchored his call solely on the cult of self. This cult thrives on a facile charm, ornateness and conceit; a need for constant adulation, a penchant for manipulation and wild drama, and the inability to take correction.

    This is, of course, the ethic promoted by corporations and the predatory ruling class. It is the ethic of looters and unfettered capitalism and it advances the misguided belief that charisma and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as patriotism and democratic altruism.

    Youths and civil societies under the auspices of the Global Coalition for Security and Democracy fell for the ruse thus serving as hapless tools. Somewhere amid the movement, however, lurks one or more Janus-faced comrades, who understand the rules of the ‘game’ and take their inspired rabble for suckers.

    While the latter ignorantly lend their hide and shrill voices to the ‘struggle,’ the leaders of the pack strategically amble closer to the seats of power. If they don’t get courted by the incumbent government, they would be patronised by its enemies. Something’s gotta give.

    A lot of their demands are unrealistic. Even so, the revolutionaries highlighted their demands to the Buhari leadership in three phases. Among other things, they seek a return of fuel prices and electricity tariffs to their levels in 1999; an end to estimated and inflated billing by the electricity distribution companies; no devaluation of the Naira; free education; immediate payment of the N30,000 minimum wage; the immediate release of all political prisoners, including Shi’ite leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife and the immediate payment of all outstanding salaries of workers and pensions of retirees.

    They demand that all public officials be banned from educating their children in private schools in Nigeria or abroad; the complete socialisation of all land in the country and declaration of access to land as a basic right; they demand a ban from politics, all who have stolen the people’s money and property since 1960 and the abolishment of the Senate thus establishing a uni-cameral legislature with only the House of Representatives.

    Failure by Buhari to accept these terms would spell a great deal of trouble according to the group. It’ quite sad that they moot a socialist-styled revolution while scorning the philosophical bedrock of such revolt, a reorientation of vision and mind.

    Its suspicious too that the arrowhead of the movement is Sowore. The jury is still out on the integrity of #RevolutionNow. Sowore’s revolutionary chant, however heartfelt, resonates as the rant of a sore loser, who would rather topple the apple cart than accept his lack of access to the fruit within. Buhari apologists argue that Sowore, having failed to earn the presidential powers via the ballot box, intends to snatch it by fomenting trouble.

    There is yet promise in a man like Sowore. There are millions like him, of which many are better qualified to lead. What distinguishes Sowore though is the courage he summoned to speak until he began to sound like a human barrel-organ chanting a list of tunes with wild variations.

    To champions of the ‘struggle,’ what are their revolution and post-revolution plans? What is their blueprint for the revolt? How would they ensure that it is not hijacked by criminals, bigots, genocidal warlords and demagogues? How would they protect the struggle from the antics of scorned ministerial hopefuls?

    #RevolutionNow isn’t the first call to commingle overt duplicity, freedom to rail, the swagger of youth, righteous rage and a refusal to play by the rules. But distortion adds another layer; it drives trending discontent thus its dismal philosophical aberration, and the delinquency synonymous with #RevolutionNow.

    The revolutionary call is a ruse; dubious, berserk, strongly ritualistic. Gradually, it becomes pop culture and the youth embrace it. This makes it even more dangerous, knowing the calibre of youth embracing the call. How mature are they to wield the burden of rage and such enormous task?

    Revolutions can be championed by conmen and crushed by the state using tyrant forces. Then, there is the possibility of the faux revolution when, through subterranean, lethal influence, counter-revolutionary forces, emerge to seize the struggle and demand, not reform but the restoration of retrograde power elites.

    Things get messy when the movements within the revolutionary body emerge to compete for power, squabble over arcane bits of doctrine, dispute tactics, misread power, and engage in self-defeating power struggles.

    When authentic, revolutions express a fundamental truth about societies in decay. They offer fresh vistas of hope, a new language and future, to victims of failed systems of governance. #RevolutionNow, however, manifests as a series of soothing gestures, like rubbing a lantern to make a genie appear. The call will gradually peter out, and diminish, like a spell materialising a dark power in a blaze of light, if borne of selfish intent.

    Yes, Nigeria is in dire need of a revolution but what we need is a revolution without bloodshed.

    #RevolutionNow is best propagated, practically and ideologically, in our lecture theatres, artworld, townhalls, worship houses, public parks by folk united to restrategise and chart our path to a better future via the ballot box.

    The current call for a revolt is being made by characters with access to exit visas out of the country at the slightest eruption of violence. Yet they sing a song of chaos.

    Let us all be wary of the dubious revolutionary badgering on to the stage for acclaim through the trapdoor.

  • Trouble with Southwest governors

    The state, we all agree is evil and tyrannical. Everyone therefore blames the state as represented by the centre for all our woes and crisis of nation-building, lack of vision, underdevelopment, insecurity, corruption, inability to feed ourselves and the collapse of the education and the health sectors.  Even our elected governors that preside over 42% of the nation’s annual budget when not pretending to seek solutions to their states problem from the centre join us to rail wail and throw stone at the devil forgetting the devil is in us.

    Unfortunately unlike the first and second republics  marked with the giant strides in education, rural development, agriculture and infrastructural development  secured through the  versatility and brinkmanship of men of great vision such as Obafemi Awolowo, Samuel Akintola, Anthony Enahoro, Alfred Rewane as well as, Adekunle Ajasin, Bola Ige, Ambrose Ali, Bisi Onabanjo and Lateef Jakande, many of the fourth republic inheritors of power are regarded as unscrupulous, venal, egoistical with naked ambition, surviving only on intrigues.

    Awolowo was in power for only seven years. He initiated the free education programme. The number of Western Region youths sent on scholarship to foreign universities during his second year in office was more than the total number of Nigerian youths that enjoyed scholarships under the colonial administration for three years. In the second republic, visionary southwest leaders established universities in Edo, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos. As a result of the efforts of these visionary leaders, the old Western Region was regarded as the most educated part of Africa before the birth of the fourth republic. Today the educational sector has virtually collapsed.

    In a report titled Nigeria: WAEC Results as metaphor of collapsing education standards in Southwest, in The Guardian of September 14, 2017, Iyabo Lawal reported the dismal performance of the southwest in the last few years. According to the report, while Anambra, Imo, Edo and Rivers top the list for that year, the southwest states like Ekiti, Ogun, Osun and Oyo once synonymous with high education standards were at the 14th, 19th, 24th and 29th positions.

    Anambra State according to the report earned the position because of the state’s investment in education. While the southwest governors who probably never bothered to study the educational revolution under the Obafemi Awolowo’s administration in the first republic or that of Lateef Jakande in Lagos State in the second republic, were neck-deep in the politics of take-over of schools from their initial owners , building of mega schools and self-induced crisis over uniformed uniform for all students, Governor Peter Obi,  quietly  “returned 1,040 primary schools to the missions that established them, awarded N6bn to the schools as grants, donated buses, laboratory equipment, transformers, generators, dispensary consumables, sports gears, computers and other tools to the schools.”

    In 2015, Abia and Anambra took the first and second positions while Osun took the 29th position, Oyo the 26th; Ogun 19th; and Ondo 13th while Ekiti came 11th. In 2014, Anambra, topped the list with Abia coming second. “In terms of education, Nigeria’s Southwest states, the report concluded, “are fixated on the past, lost in the present and without vision for the future”.

    In other departments, the southwest equally lives on its old glories. In the area of agriculture, the southwest also set the pace in the first republic. The region was self-sufficient in food production with farm settlements set up for products of primary schools that were prepared to work to raise money for their secondary school education. The region was popular for her Igbimo and Ofada rice. There were cattle ranches set up in about four locations in the region. Today, the same southwest under our new inheritors of power depends on the north for yam, pepper, tomato and about 8,000 cattle valued at about N1.6b consumed in Lagos daily. The N700m Ikun dairy farm set up by Adekunle Ajasin’s administration in the second republic after ex-Governor Oni’s initial efforts at rehabilitation was abandoned and allowed to rot away by his successors in office.

    Since there is no vacuum in nature, other states have seized the initiative from the southwest. Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State started his rice production initiative with about N4b loan, an amount far less than the N5.4b Ayo Fayose spent on building 1.3km bridge over land in Ado Ekiti.  The governor recently disclosed that three giant rice millers, Wocat Rice Processing Mill, Dangote Rice Processing Mill and Dadangari Rice Processing Mill are working at full capacity with the state earning about  N150 billion from sale of rice last year alone. Currently about 200,000  farmers are cultivating about 400,000 hectares of land for rice production, many of them  under the Central Bank of Nigeria Anchor Borrowers programme. There is also the World Bank $15million assisted ‘Nigeria for Women Project’ in three local government areas of the state. The state which according to the governor is also the highest producer of rice, onions and pepper in the country has also entered into partnership arrangement with an indigenous company for an ultra-modern world class sugar processing plant with a total cost of about $330million when completed

    With its Ebonyi State’s current 72,000 hectares of rice production, Eboyi rice is already available in every supermarket in Lagos. The Zero Hunger Forum, headed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has also now pledged to assist Ebonyi to generate N48.4bn from rice production annually through offer of technical support.

    Road infrastructure has virtually collapsed in the south west with Intra-state and inter-state roads, all in state of disrepair. Governor Fayemi has just announced the award of an N8.5b contract to reconstruct the collapsed Ado Ekiti Itawure Osun boundary road. Travelling from Ondo to Ekiti, Ekiti to Osun or Abeokuta to Lagos is a nightmare.

    Yet, of the N3.97tn domestic debt owed by the six geopolitical zones of the country, the southwest according to a Punch newspaper’s last Tuesday August 20 report, credited to  statistics from  the Debt Management Office, accounts for N1.04tn. Unfortunately instead of investment on power generation, road infrastructure and light rail to link the southwest states, all our new inheritors of power in the southwest  have to showcase are 1.3km bridge over land in Ekiti, abandoned stadia scattered around Osun towns, commissioned empty swamps in Ogun,  mega secondary school buildings in Osun and mega massive hospital buildings in Ondo.

    The new inheritors of power seem to have learnt nothing from their illustrious forbears. The southwest  for instance has been in the forefront of the struggle for devolution of power and state policing .With President Buhari’s approval in principle provided states can fund state policing, one would have expect Fayemi and his southwest colleagues to seize the initiative. The zone seems to have lost that opportunity with the excuse of Governor Fayemi that state policing cannot take off until there is a consensus among the governors.

    To many, such statement only underscores the dearth of vision among Southwest’s new inheritors of power. With good husbandry of their resources, many believe each of the southwest governors who collect between N300m and N600m monthly (N3.5b-N7b per annum) should have no problem funding state police.

  • Diezani fights for gold

    What is it about luxury goods that make some women lose their heads. No matter how much of these items they have, they crave for more and are even ready to lose their lives than to forfeit these goods. Those in power among them like to flaunt these items because they have them in super abundance. Whether as First Lady or a cabinet member, it does not take long to identify a woman with a penchant for jewellery, costly shoes and related items which they believe confer them with status.

    It is not the status that matters to some, but the kick they derive from showing off to the world their collections. It is easy to know a woman who is crazy about shoes, jewellery, exotic wrist watches and the like. By their appearance, you will know their taste. As the First Lady of Philippines between 1965 and 1986, Imelda Marcos was known for her acquisition of shoes. As the Filipinos wallowed in poverty, the mother of the nation displayed her collection of shoes with reckless abandon.

    Her home was more of a boutique than an abode as everywhere was filled with shoes. Before she and her husband Ferdinand were forced out of power by the people, she had 3,000 pairs of shoes. What did she need all that for? At 90 today, she will be hard pressed to answer this question. Where are those shoes now? Or better still, what is left of them. Because she and her husband fled the Malacanang Palace to escape the people’s wrath, many of the shoes were carted away by the invaders.

    What is left of them are now in the Marikina Shoe Museum. Imelda did not fight for her shoes but for her life when it came to a crunch. In the face of imminent danger from a rampaging crowd, she fled her fortified home, forgetting about the shoes she went round the world to collect. Another woman like her is Diezani Alison-Madueke. Diezani was not a first lady; she was just a minister. She was however much more than that. She was a super minister who had the ears of her boss, former President Goodluck Jonathan. Anything she did had the seal of authority of the number one citizen under who she served.

    Her colleagues who knew where power lies came to her in order to reach the president. She loved and still loves the good world. She spent our money not on any consequential official work but on mundane things like gold, wrist watches and what not. By the time the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) took stock of these items, they were valued at N14.4 billion only. Isn’t that chicken feed for someone of the status of Diezani? What is the big deal about N14.4 billion worth of jewellery that the people are shouting ‘’crucify her’’ all over the place?

    EFCC has drawn Diezani’s ire for seizing her collections of 2,149 pieces of jewellery and a customised golden iPhone. She has joined issues with EFCC in court, stating that these items cannot be permanently forfeited to the government. EFCC is praying for their forfeiture because ‘’it is reasonably suspected they were acquired with proceeds of unlawful activities’’.  She said to make her forfeit the items would amount to denying her of the right to own property as enshrined in the Constitution.

    Can somebody please ask her if she acquired them with her hard earned money. If she did, what is the source of that fund? She has a right to own property, but it should be property legitimately acquired.

  • The fugitive

    The arrest of Hamisu Bala Wadume is cheery news to many Nigerians. Wadume escaped after his arrest on August 6 in Ibi, Taraba State.

    He was being taken away in handcuff and leg chain by the police when some soldiers opened fire on them at a checkpoint and he fled.

    His arrest is the first step towards unravelling what happened on August 6. Who is Wadume? A kidnapper? A misunderstood person? Was he helped to escape?

    Who helped him? And more important, under which circumstance did some of the policemen who arrested him die? Wadume should be able to provide answers to these posers because he saw everything. Will he sing or has he sworn to a oath of secrecy?

  •  Buhari’s riot act

    There is no doubt that something drastic has to be done about the insecurity in the land. It is getting worse by the day. The government has thrown virtually everything into it, yet the problem persists. One of the election promises of this present government is to ensure the security of life and property.

    It is trying to live up to its promise, but it needs to do more. We will only be deceiving ourselves if we say all is well in the country. Even those who initially said Boko Haram has been ‘’technically defeated’’ will think twice today before they repeat that statement. It is no longer only Boko Haram insurgency; banditry, kidnapping, killings, and robbery have been added to it.

    Perhaps, upon assessing the situation, President Muhammadu Buhari directed the military to take the war to the hoodlums. Indeed, enough is enough. For how long will we allow bandits to make life unbearable for the people. It is time to finish them off. And the President told his soldiers so unequivocally.

    Addressing the 17th Army Brigade and Nigerian Air Force 213 Operational Base which comprises Operation Hadarin Daji in Katsina, he said : ‘’This group was formed to secure the geo-political zone from bandits. I don’t think you should spare any bandit. Identify and eliminate them. Pursue them anywhere you can find them and eliminate them’’. Yes, there should be no hiding place for bandits.