The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A journey that has a beginning…

    A journey that has a beginning must have an end, says a Yoruba proverb. Another says it is not the beginning that matters but the ending. For the first time in recent times a governor of Oyo State has served two full terms of eight years. This is in itself some record of a sort. Ajimobi deserves our congratulations for this feat . By all yardsticks the governor has done well. Of course he could have done better, all things being equal. He definitely has improved the road infrastructure of not only Ibadan but Oyo State as a whole . Some of the network of roads are still under construction. One hopes the in-coming governor, Seyi Makinde, will not abandon them as it is the tradition of new administrations in Nigeria. The Bashorun and Iwo roads in Ibadan and the Ibadan – Iseyin roads come readily to mind  as unfinished projects. I suppose the lack of money made it impossible for Ajimobi to contemplate building of fly overs at the intersection of Ring road and Molete roads and intersections at Alesinloye and Abeokuta road.

    The Abeokuta   Road from Dugbe up to NNPC depot should have been dualised  even though a federal road within Ibadan. Ibadan as a whole needs urban renewal  and transformation from what Canadian professor  Farley called the “biggest slum I have seen “ into a modern maga-city and the down town areas around Gbagi and Old Lebanon streets need up grading. In the good old days a government was judged not only in its infrastructural performance but also on provision of water since water is life but these days every home takes care of itself by digging a wells or boreholes to provide water for the use of the families living in them. This has been my experience in Ibadan in the last thirty five years.

    I have on this column asked why Ibadan goes to bed at 7 pm with the dark streets abandoned since there are no street lights. In most countries of the world there is what is known as the night economy of entertainment, catering, cinemas, discos,  shopping, street food, taxis, operas, stage plays, football matches, boxing matches and Sundry other things that make the night tick. It seems 12 hours of the twenty four hour day cycle is wasted in Ibadan and of course in Nigeria as a whole. This means we can easily double the size of the economy and provide jobs for young people if we seriously make provision for night economy in Nigeria. It has to start some where. There is a bit of this in Abuja and Lagos . Ibadan of my youth used to have it but alas not any more. We must not surrender to insecurity. Why do we have the police if honest people cannot move around in the night .Lagos under Raji Fashola and Akinwunmi  Ambode tried very hard to resuscitate Street lighting with only considerable success. My advice to their successors is that they must continue trying. This is also my advice to the coming Governor in Oyo. Please light up the major cities. When there is light darkness and the evil that comes with it will disappear. If we don’t do this the creeping crime of kidnapping will spread to the cities“. Oru o meni owo “ that is “Night has no respect for dignitaries“ but that is when it is dark !

    Ajimobi scored himself high on education. I disagree. Yes he has tried to reorganize secondary school administration and has made some physical improvement in some schools like his alma mater Lagelu Grammar School. I went to my late brother Edward’s school , Government College  Ibadan which used to be a pride to Nigeria. It remains disheveled, disorderly and disorganized the way the late Chief Bola Ige and his misdirected UPN policies left it by turning boarding houses in the school into independent day schools. My old school, Ibadan Grammar School wears a sombre look. It is at least better than the way it looked five years ago. I wish Ajimobi had taken a leaf from his brother Rauf Aregbesola, former Governor of Osun State in building modern and revolutionary primary and secondary schools. His so called model secondary schools are caricatures of what Aregbesola did  all over  Osun  and not just in a few places, The Ibadan Polytechnic seemed to have been abandoned by the Ajimobi government. They were practically on strike most of the time. I sponsored a young man for his HND in engineering. A course of four years has lasted six years because of all kinds of industrial action and as I write we are still going there to beg for the certificate of graduation . How can a government that could not take care of one polytechnic upgrade Shaki and Igboora campuses to full fledged polytechnics? How are they going to be funded?

    Ladoke Akintola University Of Technology is jointly owned by Oyo and Osun states . There were moves before to let Oyo alone own the university . A rational solution to the problem of joint ownership was sacrificed on the altar of politics . Osun has more than it can bite and chew in its multi campus  Osun State University. It is simply unreasonable for Oyo State to think Osun State  can adequately contribute to the running of Ladoke Akintola University. Oyo should declare unilateral independence for LAUTECH  and save everybody the embarrassment of a university that has the infrastructure for all the disciplines including a magnificent teaching hospital in Ogbomosho but is made to lag behind its contemporaries because of politics of ownership . Let Osun State inherit whatever is in Oshogbo which can then be merged with a OSUN State University. Cutting this Gordian knot will be in the best interest of the two sisterly states. I honestly do not see a need for Ajimobi’s technical university in Ibadan when there is a full fledged faculty of engineering in LAUTECH. In any case ab initio LAUTECH was supposed to be a university with bias for science and Technology. If it was not doing what it was supposed to do the solution is not starting a new university with its expensive administrative paraphernalia. Luckily not much development has taken place there. It should simply be merged with Oyo State owned LAUTECH.

    One of the things that amazes me is the fact that governance in Nigeria is largely divorced from relationship with academia.   Was Ajimobi using the expertise and experience of people in the university of Ibadan to solve some of the problems of Oyo State? With the university of Ibadan and the  concentration  of knowledge there one hardly sees their intellectual input into governance. What is the purpose of research which makes no impact on  its immediate environment and the wider  national society. In the first Republic the western region sought second opinions from academics after the politicians and bureaucrats must have advised government. It does not seem to happen any more.  I can categorically affirm that the land use law in Lagos was as a result of what some Canadians working with the Nigerian – Canadian chamber of commerce of which I was president  suggested to Tinubu, ran it and after a year the secretary of our chamber began successfully operating the scheme which yearly brings billions into the coffers of Lagos government. I personally never benefited from it but I can see what a modified form of it can do for  Oyo State. The point here is that Lagos was open to advice.

    Oyo State should be financially buoyant if everybody pays taxes and if the state adopts and adapts the Lagos type of land use charge. We can put a ceiling of say N250;000 for commercial houses and N100;000 for homes not occupied by their owners and rented out . Then we have categories of rural and urban, low density and high density and  the various GRA and commercial institutions. All these can be worked out with stake holders in such a way that the taxes do not become onerous. The point is that the people must own the  government.

    When I was young those of us who grew up in Ibadan did not defer to our friends from Lagos. But now every young man wants to go and live in Lagos because Ibadan is considered dull , slow, dirty and uninteresting. This was not the way Ibadan was vis a vis Lagos . Of course the  creation of states robbed Ibadan of material and Human Resources but Ibadan remains and will continue to remain the center of Yoruba culture and politics and we cannot allow it to decline. The rate of development can only be accelerated by good governance based on consultations and raising of revenues.”  Eniyan laaso mi” translates roughly into “wealth is in the people “ and Oyo State has millions of good people . This is going to be the challenge of the new Oyo Governor. He must avoid the kind of self- imposed distraction Ajimobi imposed on himself by fixing what was not broken in his diluting of traditional monarchy in Ibadan. Oyo State with the conurbations of Ibadan, Ogbomosho and Oyo should never be poor because people create wealth because they are the greatest factor of production if well harnessed and mobilized. Finally, without peace there can be no development, Ajimobi ensured there was peace in Oyo State and that is no mean achievement.

  • Next Level

    BY this time next week, the inauguration would have come and gone President Muhammadu Buhari would lead the way as he and the governors, both returning and incoming, take their oath of office. For the President and the returning governors, it would be their second and final four-year term, which will round off their constitutionally approved eight-year tenure in 2023. The May 29 Inauguration will be low key because the day will only be for the swearing in of the President and governors. There will be no pomp and ceremony as was the case in the past 19 years.

    In the past, at least since the nation returned to democracy in 1999, May 29 was a high pedestal in the nation’s political calendar. It was observed as Inauguration and Democracy Day. Since it served that dual purpose, the day was marked with fanfare. The drums were rolled out at the national and state levels in celebration of democracy and the oath takers’ victory at the polls.

    All that has changed with the adoption of June 12 as Democracy Day. June 12 is no ordinary date in the nation’s  annals. What makes it significant is the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which is considered the freest and fairest poll in the country’s history. The late newspaper mogul, Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola, of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) won the election hands down, but was never allowed to assume office. Former military president Ibrahim Babangida annulled the election and threw the nation into crisis.

    The crisis consumed him as he was forced to step aside on August 27, 1993. The Interim National Government (ING), which he installed, was sacked by the late dictator, Gen Sani Abacha, who detained Abiola for four years after he declared himself president at Epetedo, Lagos, in his bid to reclaim his mandate. Abacha and Abiola died in controversial circumstances one after the order in a space of one month in 1998.

    With the President taking his final oath of office on May 29, he and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) have another chance to fulfil their promise to the people. The people have seen how the President fared in his first term. His final four-year term is expected to be defining. Not many have good things to say about his first four-year term. To these people, the President did not meet Nigerians’ expectations. They wanted to see a President that will transform their lives in a twinkling of an eye. But that did not happen.

    Really, the President and his party gave the citizenry the impression that  things will change overnight on their coming to office. They promised CHANGE; the people took them on their word, expecting instant change. But such change does not come like instant coffee. If it were that easy, our country would have been transformed by now. What with the promise to ensure regular power supply within six months and statements such as any government that cannot guarantee that should simply pack and go within a few months! Those who talked like that now know better.

    The party seemed to have spoken out of turn before coming to office and that came back to haunt it when it mounted the saddle. Its perception of what  to do and the reality on ground were diametrically opposed. The rot left by their predecessor was endemic and the President and APC did not know this until May 29, 2015. After four years, it is expected that the President and his team should have devised means of overcoming the problems of governance. Nigerians, in the next four years of this administration, will not be interested in why it cannot discharge its obligations.

    Of course, they are also tired of hearing government officials heaping the blame of everything that is wrong on the ‘’16 years misrule’’  of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which was in power between 1999 and 2015. There will be no room for such talks in this coming dispensation. What the people are interested in as the government begins its second term  is how it  will improve their lot before the next elections in 2023. Its campaign slogan was Next Level meaning that it will move the people from their present position to the next. It is a promise to take them to greater heights. Next Level means promotion; it means better days ahead, a rosier future. Anything short of this in the next four years cannot be tagged Next Level.

    The Buhari administration can deliver on its Next Level promise by facing the issue of governance squarely without blaming the previous government for every problem that rears its head. Government is a continuum no matter the change in the party at the centre. It is the beauty of democracy for power to change hands between parties. This is not a big deal.  It happens elsewhere and it does not disrupt governance. The case should not be different here. A change in the party in power should not be an excuse for not delivering dividends of democracy to our long-suffering people.

    Rather, it should be an impetus to win them over to become the party’s die-hard supporters based on its performance. A party that delivers will always win elections because the people will fall in love with it. But, if it does not deliver, it can never count on the people’s support. APC knows what to do if it wishes to remain in power longer than the years spent on the saddle by PDP. The people’s prayer is for the President to take them to the Next Level before he finally bows out of office in 2023.

  • Ignorance is the disease

    Today, complaint is often made of what we call the failure of the Nigerian dream. We lament how monstrously, forces of society accomplish and fail to fulfil their work. We lament how the ruling class function in profligacy and chaos. Nigeria laments the insensibility of governance.

    But today, as usual, we fail to look inwards. Perhaps because we fear we would find in you and me, the summary of all other failures and disorganisation. A sort of heart, from which every kind of confusion and horror gravitates in our fatherland.

    The complaint was often made that our problems persist because we refused to convene a Sovereign National Conference (SNC). There is the argument that our afflictions worsen because President Muhammadu Buhari refuses to implement the recommendations of his predecessor’s shady SNC.

    Perhaps there is depth and a semblance of truth in such frivolous mindset even as it becomes more glaring that a trillion SNCs will not save Nigeria.

    This is because any consensus or ‘practicable solutions’ proffered at the conference would be the result of self-serving efforts of generations of shady characters comprising ex-convicts, hired assassins, treasury looters, armed robbers, advance fee fraudsters, indulgent clerics and bloodthirsty political godfathers, to mention a few. What manner of humaneness could result from such gathering?

    That we undermine ourselves and underestimate our worth are old stories told.

    There is a tragedy inherent in our customary lamentation every time our conscience is roused with a damning incident or report, like Boko Haram’s abduction of Chibok girls and murder of ICRC’s Hauwa Leman.

    In a fit of rage, tribal bigots suggest that we go our separate ways. They tout ‘true federalism and secession in one breadth, describing them as worthy solutions to Nigeria’s afflictions.

    Secession is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of ‘reason’ that we need to be wary of and I will continue to say this, hoping every prospective muscle – that is, the youth – by which the separatists hope to achieve their dreams of dissolution, would listen and let the masterminds risk their hides and deploy their children and wives to actualise their fantasies.

    The biggest misconception about ‘secession,’ ‘insurgency,’ ‘self-determination ‘or whatever the prejudiced choose to call it, is that, it could be peaceful, and that, the outcome would be a patriotic, humane dispensation.

    It’s all dirty, greedy politics. Tribal bigots want the youth to fly the flags of their dream nations. They want everybody to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows: “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” They call anyone that’s anti-war and anti-chaos: “pacifist,” “traitor” or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage.

    Then, they promise the youth a prosperous future and better fate in their dream nation. Astonishingly, youth that ought to know better, buy into their farce, and they begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become.

    Such dangerous beliefs led to the blooming of terrorist groups like Boko Haram, among others. The disillusioned youth becomes willing muscle to criminal masterminds in charge of such groups and he engages in bootless pursuits at the end of which he accomplishes some individualised goal – the satisfaction of sentiment, a murderous lust or material gain – which to him is everything.

    Eventually, he dies before his time; if he doesn’t, he morphs into the proverbial breathing corpse, who suddenly realises in his twilight, that, he had squandered God’s greatest gifts to him: life, talent and intellect.

    Then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realises, that, his miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin – less suitable for the social transaction than a contemptible kobo.

    To prevent the manifestation of such youth, what evils should we set out to abolish in our modern society? We must answer the question: “What evils afflict us with misguided youth?” To this, I bet very many well-meaning people would cite ‘poverty.’

    Face to face, every day, with shameful contrasts of riches and destitution, high dividends and low wages, and the futility of trying to adjust the balance by means of charity, they would answer, that, they stand for the abolition of poverty.

    But poverty is merely a symptom, ignorance is the disease. The extremes of riches and destitution bloom inevitably upon the extremes of misgovernance and ignorance, by which the electorate are kept in bondage. We are not enslaved because we are poor; we are enslaved because we are ignorant.

    Every attempt to conceive a better ordering of society than the destructive, pitiless chaos, in which Nigeria has sunk, is by no means modern. It is as old as Plato, whose “Republic” set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers and self-styled revolutionaries.

    Tribal bigots contemplate a new world in the light of an ideal. They claim to feel a great sorrow by the evils that characterise Nigeria, and they claim to be driven by an urgent desire to lead their ethnic groups to the realisation of the collective good.

    It is this desire which has been the primary force moving the pioneers of anarchism and horrid tyrannies – as it moved the creators of ideal commonwealths in the past.

    It is incense for suspicious revolutionaries claiming to fight for the interests of ethnic divides. In this, there is nothing new. What is new and unpardonably offensive is the pretension of such characters to heartfelt sorrow and shared grief in the suffering of the masses.

    This has enabled cynical and anarchist political movements to grow out of the frustrations and hopes of Nigeria’s youth and predominantly impressionable thinkers, whose thought processes and politics are anything but humane.

    This makes the agitation of the Nigerian separatists worrisome and markedly dangerous to the survival of the youth and the state.

    The process of re-sensitising the youth away from the establishment of chaos and genocide advocated by the bigoted will be greatly accelerated by the abolition of the current political order.

    However, this can only be achieved by the nation’s youth – who are unfortunately enthralled by the platitudes and desperate politics of Nigeria’s ruling class.

    It is no doubt the stock in trade of the latter to refer to violent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, India-Pakistan, Mali and parts of Asia among others, as worthy indicators of Nigeria’s need to follow suit.

    Whenever they dazzle with such informed commentary, tell them to lead the violence they advocate with their wives, children and closest relatives.

    Many activists, youth leaders and self-acclaimed political heroes today have their wives and children tucked away in secure schools and neighbourhoods abroad even as they goad impoverished, clueless youth back home to untimely doom.

    If it is true that there is an appreciable number of youth capable of powering revolts for ethnic self-determination, the end of which is the dissolution of Nigeria, why can’t the same youth power the social regeneration and reclamation of the state from the clutches of the predatory ruling class, ethnic bigots and dissolution activists?

    The current political dispensation and acute tribal bigotry must eventually yield to the influences of education and culture if the youth could aspire to progressive ideals. But such transformation calls for remarkable wisdom and tolerance.

     

  • Yoruba nation under siege

    With tepid response to the spate of herdsmen killings and kidnapping for ransom by bandits across the country, Nigerians are, in spite of President Buhari’s impressive outing in last March’s presidential election, becoming increasingly impatient with a ‘government of excuses’ after recurring harvest of deaths. Amnesty International’s report late last year indicted the federal government for failing to stop the killing of 3,641 Nigerians by herdsmen in the last three years. Many frustrated Nigerians who understand that the primary responsibility of government is the protection of life and property have asked the president to act his position as commander-in-chief instead of appearing in tears as ‘mourner-in-chief’ after each cycle of senseless killings.  Abubakar Atiku, Buhari’s main rival in the said election captured the frustration of Nigerians when he reminded the electorate that ‘After every attack, either by herdsmen or by kidnappers, the government will vow to get the culprits and punish them. Then more deaths will occur and the government will repeat its vow’. He had then appealed: ”Unless Nigerians vote out the All Progressives Congress administration, killings by herdsmen will continue and ultimately spark series of ethno-religious crises that will be irreversible”.

    Atiku might have lost the election, but his warning seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophesy with the renewed spate of killings in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, with Kaduna- Abuja road taken over by kidnappers and Zamfara state seized by war lords in spite of government show of force. While government’s apparent loss of grip in the besieged communities in the north has led to increased hostilities among the restive ethnic groups, the southwest that has always been home to those fleeing from the war zones of the north and others that seek peaceful environment to actualize their potentials is fast becoming the new theatre of war. The Yoruba whose leaders have striven to create a more egalitarian society are now being forced to suffer from the follies of northern political elite that want freedom for themselves while scheming to preside over an empire of slaves. Herdsmen, unfortunate victims of a culture of ‘labourer born labourer’ ideology instituionalised by northern political elite have brought their war home to the southwest.

    Yinka Odumakin,  speaking for our war-weary Afenifere elders, recently cited  the murder of  a Permanent Secretary of Osun origin, Mrs. Funke Kolawole along Okene-Lokoja road on her way to Abuja as one more example of ‘renewed onslaught of herdsmen in Yorubaland while the ‘federal government turned the other eye. The peace meeting brokered by Oyo State Commissioner of Police Abiodun Odude between  herdsmen, farmers and leaders of agrarian communities of Oyo State  in Eleyele, Ibadan had hardly ended when his officer-in-charge of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad in Saki area of the Oyo State Police Command, Sheu Magu, and a member of his team were brutally murdered by suspected herdsmen. With last week’s abduction of Olayinka Adegbehingbe, a professor of surgery at the Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital, the war was finally taken to Ife, the ancestral home of the Yoruba. He identifies his abductors as six Fulani herdsmen bearing Mark –IV machine guns with several rounds of ammunition. Their ransom demand of N30m, negotiated down to a little over N5m was paid by his family members and friends in order to secure his release.

    There must surely be a cheaper way to win this war. Fortunately President Buhari is not being called upon to re-invent the wheel. Close to a century ago, faced with insurrections, interstate wars, and world wars, Europe discovered a cheaper alternative to coercion was a workable federal arrangement that allowed all the warring groups to imbibe the values of compromise and coexistence. President Buhari who many regarded as the only stumbling block against restructuring of the country, as CPC candidate in 2007, 2011 and APC in 2014 mouthed restructuring. In 2015 his party had restructuring as parts of its manifesto. His victorious APC also set up a committee that came up with a recommendation in 2017. The president who often defies public opinion by behaving as if he is doing Nigerians a favour for being elected once again mouthed workable federal arrangement last week.

    The Yoruba nation is today under siege with people neither safe on their farms, on the roads nor in their ivory towers. The peaceful and accommodating Yoruba people who want the best for themselves as they want for others are also dying from side effects of imported substandard products including drug and food items.  I think it is time to tell the president what the Yoruba want. This is the time our elders, political leaders and elected representatives must demonstrate they are ready to secure freedom of our people. Many perhaps can no longer remember that not all the federating units in Nigeria secured self-government at the same time. Nigeria became a federation in 1954. While the Eastern and Western regions gained internal self-government in 1957, the Northern Nigeria achieved the same goal two years later. No sub unit of the federation should therefore be allowed to hold the nation to ransom. We don’t need war to achieve this.

    Our elders who jar our hears with name of Awo and young politicians who go around wearing Awo cap as St. Christopher’s badge for good luck should revisit the template Awo and his visionary group set up for the liberation of the southwest. ODUA conglomerate was once the largest cooperative organisation in Nigeria with diverse business interest across the southwest with interest in manufacturing, packaging, hospitality, travel and tourism, corporate security and hygiene services, agriculture, real estate oil and gas etc. Its objectives include promoting economic empowerment of members at the grass roots, according to cooperative values and principles, allowing market needs to determine choice of products and services, driven by the zeal to do the right thing at the right time for customers and other stakeholders.

    It is a sad commentary on the quality of leadership the west has thrown up over the years that the same area is today at the mercy of peddlers of fake drugs, killer vegetable oil and vehicle spare parts.

    There are enough resources to reactivate some of the moribund companies ran aground by successive military and civilian Yoruba administrators. These include such  loose monies as  the N250m constituency project funds  from the 18 senators representing the Yoruba states,  their counterparts in the lower house and part of the security funds the governors collect monthly. If setting up industries is out of fashion, nothing stops them from using some of the moribund companies for importing genuine drugs and other goods needed by our people.

    Bola Tinubu, Wale Oshun and all the elected governors and lawmakers must remember this is exactly what Awolowo, Abraham Adesanya, Adekunle Ajasin our forbearers who saw government as service would have done.

    And of course with the reported directive of the minister of defence whose village in Zamfara State has become headquarters of kidnappers, to emirs to start community policing in their domains, our governors will have no excuse for not protecting our people from deviants among us and deal decisively with settlers who want to impose their values instead of living by our own rules.

  • Tonto Dikeh, Caramelo girls and justice

    IT almost got drowned in the ocean of distress in which we are all immersed.

    In normal times, it would have got so much attention, considering the subject and the personality involved. But, that is not to say that it is a subject that we discuss freely. Our cultural and religious inclinations do not give room for an open debate of such matters, except occasionally when celebrities are involved. Among parents, it sparks a huge debate whenever the idea of discussing it in schools is mooted. A taboo? Not quite, but not talking about it is seen as a measure of moral rectitude. Right? Well, that is neither here nor there.

    Besides, these times seem not to favour such matters in public discourse. Consider Boko Haram’s bloodletting, throw in armed robbery and communal clashes. Then,  mix them up with the new kid on the bloody block, kidnapping and its more vicious cousin, banditry. You have a cocktail of crises, worse than a civil war, some have said.

    Just how much can a country take?

    When he returned from a 10-day private visit to Britain the other day, the President acknowledged the arrival of a new trade – boom, gloom, doom and all – kidnapping.  Agents of violence are loosed on this beautiful country, a blight on our lively cities and seductive countryside of green forests that speak to the majesty of nature. They have all become theatres of their devilish operations.

    So, amid the clash of desperation and despondency, who will talk about it and risk being dismissed as a nitwit or a mere curtain-twitching busybody who won’t just mind his own business? It is, to many, a trivial issue for which no serious minded person should spare a thought, particularly now.

    What am I talking about?  Star actress Tonto Dikeh’s outburst about her ex-husband Olakunle Churchill. Heard it? She told radio show host Daddy Freeze: “At the beginning of the relationship, I never suspected him of cheating because he has a sexual problem, a disease. It’s called premature ejaculation. He can’t stay…for more than 40 seconds. My son was the longest … one minute.”

    The Nollywood star got married to her ex in 2015. When the marriage collapsed, she made a documentary video on the breakup. She alleged that her husband was a ritualist and fraudster.

    That was, in the estimation of many a fan, charitable. Not so the radio show  outburst, which has been rated to be more explosive than the three-part video. Tonto Dikeh claimed to have revealed her ex’s bedroom mannerism because, according to her, he called her a drug addict. Churchill is said to have recalled that he met her at a night club.

    The Tonto Dikeh allegation of 40 seconds bedroom show has provoked many questions, which marriage counsellors, psychologists, medical experts and ancillary professionals will have to answer. This, being a family paper, I will not list some of the posers being raised by observers of this matter so as not to offend the sensibility of the reader.

    Why will a woman bring into the open the salacious details of her ex-husband’s concupiscence competence? What has time got to do with it? Is it a general problem or one that is peculiar to philanderers and lotharios among who Tonto Dikeh has numbered  her ex? Did she complain to him and what did he do to reverse the situation? Is it right for women to go public with such erotic grievances? Is this also part of the Beijing spirit? Will other women embrace Tonto’s formula to whip their ex into line?

    One would have thought that Tonto’s testimony is the stuff for hair dressing salon gossip. Wrong. Now, it has set the social media on fire. Even if the actress had insisted on talking about it, why bring in her son? In future when his mates begin to taunt him with his mum’s assertion about his dad’s bedroom report card as signed by his ex, his mom, what will the poor boy do?

    Is 40 seconds medically realistic? Was the star just being hyperbolic to stress the fact that, in her words, Churchill would “not last more than 40 seconds?” Is it possible to get wrapped up in such an erotic act and, at the same time, keep the time? Was Tonto taking a stopwatch to the bedroom to time her man? Was the man aware that he was being timed? Can the actress prove her assertion? How? Video? Mere oral evidence? A medical report? Witnesses? These are just a few of the questions her fans – and foes – have been asking.

    Her Nollywood colleagues have been screaming: “Ah, incredible!”. Churchill, it is to be noted, has not said a word in his own defence against what some men have described as a grave allegation. He has taken it all on the chin. Trust the busybodies; they have been asking: “Is he guilty? Why will a man keep quiet about such a serious allegation? Does he need help? Is the woman perfect; why not release details of her shortcomings?”

    Some charlatans have been recommending their so-called remedies to Churchill – unsolicited.  Thankfully, there are no reports that he has accepted any of their prescriptions. An overzealous fellow listed the remedies he said Churchill could try – Jigijigi, Ogidiga, Manpower, Alomo, Pakurumo, Fodo, Afato, Eruku, Flusher, Bazooka, Osomo, Wiper, Kick and Start, and many others.

    Their potency, claim the self-acclaimed exports, is not doubtful.

    One of the manufacturers announced gleefully the other day that he had, at last, found a solution to (I guess you know it) “45 seconds”.

    Suddenly, “45 seconds” has gone beyond being a measure of time-taking on other meanings. Gone are popular phrases, such as “see you in a minute” and “give me one minute”. Now it is “I’ll be there in 45 seconds” or “see you in 45 seconds”.

    It is a measure of Tonto Dikeh’s magnanimity that she has moved on from this matter. She has just announced that her birthday is coming up next month. To mark the momentous occasion, the philanthropist and self-acclaimed evangelist will be getting a new pair of breasts. “Dear Lord Jesus, I have all I want for now. My birthday wish is that you make my schedule and that of Dr Ayo align so that I have my new boobs,” she announced excitedly. Her fans are hailing her.

    If the Tonto Dikeh  kiss-and-tell seems to be generating less attention, not so the matter of Caramelo, the Abuja  lap dancing club from where the police arrested many girls for alleged prostitution.

    Caramelo was demolished on Monday by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) authorities. I do not know yet the legality of such a drastic action. A court may have to resolve that someday. But, many Nigerians have been crying out over the fate of the girls who were hurled into detention for being found in that club. They were reportedly harassed and asked to pay in cash or kind (sex) for their freedom. Those who would not budge were beaten up, reports said.

    There have been protests in some cities, including Abuja and Ibadan, over this matter, with young women bearing placards. Their message:”Sex for bail is rape”. Police chief Mohammed Adamu has set up a probe to determine what happened. We await the panel’s report.

    It is hard for me to comprehend what a strippers club clients gain. I am told the most difficult thing to get there is sex. You just watch some women gyrating and gyrating until they get tired. You are not to touch them. If you do, barrel-chest bouncers will throw you out.

    I do not know yet if the girls have proof that they were raped. Medical evidence. Video (as is common nowadays). Oral proof (remember the Obafemi Awolowo University girl and the disgraced professor?). If the police are found to be wrong in this matter, they should surrender their men for trial.

    The fundamental rights of all, including lap dancers, must be respected. Besides, the economic and social situations that have forced many into immoral ventures, turning cities into Sodom and Gomorrah, should be tackled. Now.

     

    When friends are enemies

    THE police are holding three University of Abuja students who watched as their mate got drowned in a swimming pool. It was all at a party for freshers.  Emmanuel Aigbokhalode  Balogun’s friends were watching as he struggled for life. They refused to help him. When they were satisfied that he would not make it, they shared his belongings. One took his telephone; another took the cash in his pockets. The third wore his shoes. They reported the matter to nobody.

    When Emmanuel’s parents learnt that their son, 17, had not been seen in school, they began to search for him. The hotel directed them to the police who asked them to check the morgue where they got the shock of their lives – Emmanuel’s body.

    It is not yet clear why these young men would visit such savagery on their friend. They were said to have claimed that Emmanuel was flaunting his wealthy background. Hence, they decided to go for the final solution. Morbid envy.

    The three evil friends are symbols of the gross failure of parenting the society is yet to start tackling. I wonder the kind of lessons they got from their homes. No respect for human life. No good thought for a benefactor. No thought about the future. No loyalty to friendship.

    Why would the hotel allow guests access to the pool at about 3 am. Where was the life guard? Where were the security staff?

    After reading the heart shattering story of Emmanuel’s tragic fate, I remembered a message on somebody’s Facebook wall: “God, show me my friends, my enemies I can handle.” How apt.

  • The weed of money

    MONEY has a peculiar smell, especially when it is mint fresh. The smell is soothing to the nose. It does not emit the smell that can make you puke when the currency is torn and dirty. New notes are a joy to behold. They do not fill your pocket nor make you feel as if you are carrying a load. But not so old notes which make your pocket heavy.

    Money comes from different sources. We earn money from the work we do; we also make money from trading. We equally make money from the disposal of human waste and from the export of commodities in which nations have comparative advantage. The sources are endless. Money making does not come cheap. It comes with a lot of thinking and planning. What some see as sources of money making may not hold an attraction for others.

    There was a time we were exporting cocoa, palm kernel, groundnut and other crops from which we derived huge foreign earnings. Sadly, these days, we export crude and import it back as refined product to sell at N145 per litre to consumers. What we make from this venture is only known to the sharks in the oil sector who parlay the gain into their own use, while the nation is bleeding. The country needs foreign earnings badly in these hard times in order to provide schools, hospitals, roads and other amenities to make life better for the people.

    Money rules the world and those who have it are lords over others. The developed economies look down on countries like ours because we do not have their kind of resources. These countries have no qualms when it comes to making money. There is nothing  they cannot dabble into for the sake of money. Whether legal or illegal, to them, the venture is good as long as it yields money. With their technological know-how, they can turn virtually anything into money. Some of them have turned what was once considered illegal into a source of making money.

    I am talking about weed, or if you like, marijuana or cannabis sativa, which is popularly known as Indian hemp. For ages, Indian hemp has been used in the making of hair pomade and as an ingredient in some foods and drugs. But Indian hemp smoking was frowned at in many countries. Those caught were made to face the law. The situation has changed as these countries have legalised the smoking of weed. The latest country to do so was Canada, which last November, approved Indian hemp for ‘’recreational use’’. Whatever that means!

    But because they rule the world, they can get away with anything. The developing economies like to toe their line because we think whatever they do is right. Indian hemp is a banned substance in Nigeria. It is an offence to grow or traffic it. The late maverick musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti called it vegetable, describing it as a stimulant which energises the system. He was once arrested for being in possession of the substance. The police claimed that he chewed it when they came for him in order to evade arrest.  To prove their case against the Abami Eda, they induced him to defecate.

    Fela defecated and defecated, yet the police could not trace the weed in his faeces. This led Fela to sing Expensive Shit. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) hangs around every nook and cranny of the country, including the sea and airports and borders looking for those carrying Indian hemp and other hard drugs. Soon, very soon, it may no longer be an offence to be in possession of Indian hemp, courtesy of NDLEA and the  Ondo State government, which are collaborating to make the weed a foreign earner. The love of money can lead man to do anything indeed. Apparently taking a cue from what is happening in some parts of the world, Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu and NDLEA boss Muhammad Abdullah are pushing for converting Indian hemp into a  foreign earner to boost the economy. In these days of diversifying the economy, their proposal sounds like music in the ear. At a meeting in Thailand to learn how to turn Indian hemp into a money-spinner, they made a case for Nigeria’s adoption of the substance to its benefit.

    “We all know that Ondo State is the hot bed of cannabis cultivation in Nigeria. We know how to grow it and it thrives well in the Sunshine State. With an estimated value of $145 billion in 2025, we will be shortchanging ourselves if we failed to tap into the Legal Marijuana Market. Our focus now is medical marijuana cultivation in controlled plantations under the full supervision of the NDLEA. I strongly implore the Federal Government to take this seriously as it is a thriving industry that will create thousands of jobs for our youths and spur economic diversification’’, said Akeredolu.

    Abdullah noted : ‘’We are here to study how cannabis can be of more advantage to Ondo State and Nigeria at large just the way the Thailand government has done. The current trend in the world is to look into the advantages of cannabis in the making of foods and drugs’’. If the developed economies had not taken the lead, would we be thinking along this line? I do not think so. We would have thought twice before going this way because we do not know how they will feel about our move.

    Do we have what it takes to check the abuse of the system when Ondo starts the production of legal marijuana for the food and drug industry? I am sorry to say this :  we are good at copying the developed economies, but we lack the capacity in addressing the problems that may arise therefrom. This may be a good move because it is going to bring in money. And money made from human waste disposal, according to a Yoruba adage, does not smell. So, the money made from the planned Indian hemp export will not reek of the weed. Lobatan.  But we need to think the proposal through so that it does not become an albatross at the end of the day.

  • General insecurity: What to do about it

    Since the handover of power by the military to civilians in Nigeria in 1999, Nigeria has not has a respite from insecurity. It started on a small scale in the Niger Delta and Saki Biam in Benue State and the Nigerian Army was called in to put out the fire of rebellion. But like bush fire not completely put out, the Niger Delta got out of hands in spite of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s ingenious scheme of buying peace by giving out money to the youths of the Niger Delta and sending many to schools at home and abroad. The policy was continued by President Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan expanded the scope of the policy by awarding security contracts in the Niger Delta creeks to known leaders of militant groups. Some of these leaders became stupendously rich. This policy of buying off the leaders of the militant groups and educating the youths seems to have succeeded at least for now because the Niger Delta is reasonably quiet now. Thanks also must go to the security forces in the Niger Delta for their robust work of pacification. Recently the youths in the area were pleading with the security forces to extend its security umbrella to the East -West road which they complained had been taken over by kidnappers, bandits and brigands. It is interesting that the former militants have developed a love for the military to the extent that they are now pleading with their former enemy, the Nigerian military, to come and save them. This shows what a policy of cane and carrots can do if applied nationally.

    It appears the federal government is thinking about applying the paradigm already established in the Niger Delta to other distressed and rebellious communities in Nigeria. A new Northeast Commission has just been established with a take-off financial allocation of N10 billion out of its budget of N100 billion a year already captured in the 2019 budget. The government appears to have concluded that poverty is at the root of a rebellion that is masquerading as a religious uprising. The development of the area is one side of a two-pronged strategy. The military and police pacification will of course continue. Government must avoid wasting all the money on paying bureaucrats instead of spending it on the people directly. If this is not avoided the whole exercise will fail. The question to be asked really is what has happened to all the financial allocation to states in the northeast in the last decades. Why has it not made any impact on the lives of the people?

    Unless there is a new direct approach to the problem, the issue of poverty will continue as an affliction in the region. It is heartening to know that some our leaders have realized that education is the key to finding a solution to the problem. By this I am not suggesting and supporting the spate of the establishment of state universities when the fundamental and solid foundations of primary and secondary education are not there. The recent kidnapping of people across the whole country has raised the problem of how to alleviate poverty to a national level.

    The time has come to have a national policy on human welfare in this country. This is not a new and untried strategy. Since 1945, the Labour government of Clement Attlee in the United Kingdom put in place a policy by which all unemployed citizens received the dole so that no one would starve to death when they fall on evil times such as sickness and unemployment. Many countries including the United States and other OECD countries have followed suit. The system is most developed in the Scandinavian countries. I don’t know of any country in Africa that has developed a social welfare package for its unemployed. Nigeria may have to lead because of necessity. The country is overrun by kidnappers and all kinds of young unemployed terrorists. We have to find something for them to live on. In some countries, the issue of “basic income”, meaning the amount for an average person to live in dignified poverty has become the current experimental practice. In a wonderful book with the long title of Utopia For Realists: And How We Can Get There,  Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian and philosopher has argued powerfully that the world can afford this if there is a rational redistribution of wealth without killing the profit motive. This has been tried in a few countries including some states in the USA. This idea of basic income is different from welfare pay which only goes just far enough to avoid starvation.  I am suggesting the trial of a modified form of it in our war against terrorism, kidnapping and banditry in Nigeria. Whatever name we may call it, somebody would have to pay for it. If we are to do this, we have to increase taxes and widen the base and scope of taxation so that all those who should pay taxes are made to pay. It will also mean reducing radically, the yawning gap between the highest and least paid workers in Nigeria without destroying incentive for performance. We as a country will also have to work harder, increase production and grow the economy substantially. We have no alternative to making everybody a stakeholder in the national enterprise. A situation in which we can no longer travel between cities is not sustainable and we might as well be all dead than continue to live like this.

    We are at war and the president should send a proclamation to the National Assembly declaring an emergency and a state of siege on the nation. There is need to change the pussyfooting leadership of the armed forces. The security forces also need to do more to capture all these kidnappers, herders, and cattle rustlers terrorizing Nigerians. Examples of arrested terrorists need to be made through swift and sure punishment. The impression people have is that it takes years to jail arrested offenders in Nigeria. The government must demonstrate that it has capacity to govern and to secure the lives and properties of the people. This security is the raison d’être of government. Once it becomes obvious to people that government has abandoned them, they will adopt self-help measures.

    In the past one could apply to the police for gun license. I used to have one myself and my father and four of my brothers had double-barrelled guns almost as a family tradition the way we all had dogs in the past. I gave my rifle to our community guards in our area just as other licensed gun owners did the same. There were criteria which one had to meet to qualify for gun license. They include solid and sane backgrounds, middle class type of employment such as those in senior positions in the public service, university and other such people and people in management positions in private employment. In short, the class the British would call property-owning class could apply to the police for gun licence. The licensing regime was patterned after the British practice. From what I know and my research, not many people abused the right to own these weapons. Of course those were the days when Nigeria was safe. To repeat Chinua Achebe, when “There was a country”.  Only God knows what we have now when major roads connecting our most important cities such as Abuja-Kaduna, Lagos-Ibadan, Ibadan-Ife, Enugu-Port Harcourt and so on are under siege of kidnappers and terrorists and the northeast and northwest of our country are besieged by bandits.

    The situation has become so desperate that people are suggesting what at first sounds irrational but on second thought not as crazy as I first thought. A colleague told me that since those who are targeted by kidnappers are the middle class who are waylaid on the roads or captured in their homes, those of them who have the nerve and stomach to carry revolvers should be asked to apply for license for these concealed weapons which are not as cumbersome as the long rifles of those days of yore. At least people will stand some chance of defending themselves and if they die while doing this they will die fighting and as men and not like lamb led sheepishly to slaughter .The desperate situation in our country has made some people to begin to talk and think like members of the American National Rifle Association (NRA), a rabidly racist right wing organisation. They usually argue that a gun in the hand of a good man may deter or even kill an evil person. While that may be true, but what happens when an apparently normal person goes berserk? Or what happens when a man or woman during domestic quarrel shoots his or her spouse?  What about road rage when a reckless driver collides with the car of a gun carrying person? Of course, there may be all kinds of accidental discharges at home through careless handling of guns. Our people are also not the most careful people on earth! There are a million reasons against proliferation of weapons, a phenomenon which got Nigeria where we are today. If we regard carrying individual concealed weapons as not the way to go, our government must show us that it cares. First of all, it is not rocket science to have highway patrol vehicles patrol the major highways in the country 24/7. In countries where they don’t have the country-wide breakdown of law and order, this is what they do. If the personnel is not available, they should be recruited rapidly and demobilized soldiers could be deployed into the highway patrol corps of policemen.  The time for community, city, state and zonal police has come whether the government likes it or not. From experience, kidnappers waylay their victims at bad spots on the highways. If these bad spots cannot be immediately fixed, then they should be appropriately policed. A mixture of all these suggestions should be tried, namely, military and police pacification; secondly payment of welfare to all unemployed youths, expanding the productive capacity of the economy to absorb the unemployed; thirdly, arming those who apply for concealed weapons after proper background and psychological checks, introduction of community/city, state/zonal police and finally increased patrol on major highways on a twenty four hours basis.

  • ‘Bad breath could lead to gum disease if unchecked’

    A Dentist, Dr Innocent Osazuwa, on Wednesday, said persistent bad breath or bad taste in the mouth may be a warning sign of gum disease.

    Osazuwa, a staff of a hospital in Benin, made the disclosure in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

    He said “gum disease is caused by buildup of plaque on the teeth caused by bacteria.

    “Bacteria causes the formation of toxins which irritates the gum and if gum disease continues untreated, it can damage the gum and the jawbone.”

    The dentist said that bad breath, also called ‘halitosis’, could be embarrassing and in some cases might even cause anxiety.

    He added that “bad breath is often caused by a buildup of bacteria in your mouth that causes inflammation and gives off noxious odour.

    “Cleaning between teeth daily once a day is very important.

    “This helps to remove plaque and food particles from between the teeth and under the gum line too.

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    “Tooth decay-causing bacteria still lingers between teeth, where toothbrush bristles cannot reach.”

    He explained that brushing the teeth twice a day with a soft-bristle brush and replacing toothbrush every three or four
    months would help to eliminate bad breath.

    He noted that the symptoms of bad breath vary, depending on the source or the underlying cause.

    According to him, some people worry too much about their breath even though they have little or no mouth odour, while others have bad breath and do not know it.

    He said the causes of bad breath include food, poor dental hygiene, use of tobacco products, the lack of balanced diet, wrong medications, dry mouth and the lack of drinking water.

    He advised anyone with such problem to see a dentist for treatment.

  • Nigeria’s open secret

    Man’s karma travels with him, like his shadow. But karma is on nobody’s leash. The universe’s agent of cause and effect, deterrence and retributive justice, can neither be owned nor tethered. Unlike life, it doesn’t suffer the affliction of man’s dubious acquiescence to daunting, baleful bestiality oft summed up by the terse, intense statement: ’Life’s a bitch.”

    Karma is our open secret. In Nigeria, it is our sacred, secret space, ignored in plain sight. It becomes our temenos, ritual precinct of reward and deserts. In this divine, marked-off terrain, the moral code of the universe operates at its darkest and most mechanical – there are no emotive shingles of pardon or persuasion, just causes and effects, actions and consequences.

    In 1932, the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget found that by the age of 6, children begin to believe, that, bad things that happen to them are punishments for bad things they had done. The Nigerian society, however, fights to subvert the karmic laws of cause and effect, and thus insulate individuals from the injurious effects of their vices and poor judgment.

    Local ‘gender activists,’ like their European and American role models, abandon more progressive causes to pervert the birth control and abortion debate, in bid to detach sex from morality and its natural consequences.

    Politics is equally rigged to reward greed, savagery, indolence, illegitimacy and so on.

    Lest we forget the pervasive political and economic crisis bedeviling the country. The nation’s woes originate from her moral lapses. Endemic poverty, substandard healthcare and education, ethnic and religious bigotry, bribery and other forms of corruption manifest by the society’s poverty of morals and humane ethics.

    Hence those guilty of corruption escape the consequences of their wrongdoing in connivance with a bland, treacherous government. The consequences of this anomaly are of course, better imagined – think Dasukigate, Mainagate, and so on.

    The frightful blooming of the Nigerian karma is a brazen incantation of debauchery’s triumph over morals. Desire trumps ethics on the watch of supposedly invincible oligarchs.

    The latter espouse raptorial power in rebuttal of patriot magic. Their awful energy incites the eerie flurry of Medusa’s reptilian hairlocks, entangling everyone and everything. From treasury looting, sponsorship of terrorism, to the elevation of random bigotries, the incumbent ruling class manifests as Nigeria’s worst comeuppance.

    Until recently, there was no punishment for the wicked and no deterrence for the corrupt. On President Goodluck Jonathan’s watch, Nigeria was pilfered silly. The country was persistently debauched by cliques and individuals.

    There was no good or evil. The cult of moral grayness bloomed on Jonathan’s watch. Thus our reality of chronic indebtedness and bankruptcy.

    Enter Muhammadu Buhari, incumbent President and leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Buhari suffers the flipside of karma – from his ascension to power and ouster by military coup in the 1980s, to his re-emergence as democratic President, the retired General from Daura, is widely appreciated and denounced along bigoted shoals of ethnic and religious extremism.

    In his first term, base sentimentality and impoverished logic of entitlement fostered by the ruling class and segments of the citizenry, afflicted Buhari with a clumsy cabinet; subtle cues abound therein, establishing incompetence and workings of unforgiving karma.

    Thus we have ministers whose appointments were hotly debated and questioned on basis of their shameful antecedents either as governors, commissioners and other capacities in public and private sectors.

    Four years after their appointment, these ministers can only manage a hobble along the clogged, swampy corridors of the APC’s castle of “Change.” Such individuals must be replaced with competent hands. Buhari’s next cabinet mustn’t bloom as yet another bower of ill-bliss.

    Contemporary legend contend that some of the outgoing ministers are victims of hubris and retribution trailing their emergence through vile, subterranean tactics. Such characters constitute impediment to national progress and his presidency – his personal inadequacies notwithstanding, if Buhari has a formidable team, his shortcomings as an administrator and leader wouldn’t be so bothersome.

    Lest we forget the country’s outgoing Eighth National Assembly and its lack of character. Lawmakers in the country’s upper and lower legislative chambers currently constitute a disgraceful burden to national purse and pride.

    But groupies of the ruling class would have none of that. Left to them, their cronies and benefactors in the current administration can do no wrong. In the scheme of things, not only are the corrupt saved from their just deserts, the worthy and true are punished for their uprightness and industry via burdensome levels of maladministration, taxation and bureaucratic ineptitude.

    In the ensuing moral sepsis, the ruling class treats equality as an ethical baseline even as it establishes prosperity and poverty as fortunate and unfortunate draws in Nigeria’s cosmic lottery. Thus public office metamorphoses to moral insult and government officials make concerted efforts, daily, to subvert progress.

    The most prescient portrait of the Nigerian character and our ultimate fate as a nation however, resonates Hedges’ apt commentary on Herman Melville’s allegorical portrayal of the American character in his literary classic, “Moby Dick.”

    Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage. He is our foremost oracle. He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia, argues Hedges.

    In truth, Nigeria is likable to the fictional ship, the Pequod. The ship’s crew is a mixture of races and creeds which is reflective of Nigeria’s heterogeneous society. The object of the hunt is a massive white whale, Moby Dick, which, in a previous encounter, maimed the ship’s captain, Ahab, by biting off one of his legs. The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like the Nigerian society’s inordinate dash for wealth, assures the Pequod’s destruction.

    While Ahab and his crew eventually gained awareness of their imminent doom, very few Nigerians appreciate from experience that our prevalent culture of acquisition, fostered by insatiable greed and based on cutthroat politics, extreme corporate profit and devastation of farmlands by oil exploration accelerates doom.

    Nigeria, like the Pequod’s crew, rationalises insanity, scorns prudence and bows slavishly before hedonism and greed. The society yields to the seductive illusion of unbounded luxury, wanton idolatry, limitless power and acclaim. Thus we unfurl to degenerate forces and systems of death.

    Those who foresee the impending doom lack the fortitude to rebel. Thus moral cowardice makes hostage of all. This shouldn’t encourage Buhari and his ruling class to scorn the subtle nudge of tact. History offers timeless lessons in the fate of Napolean, Hitler, Stalin, Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko), Saddam Hussein, to mention a few.

    These men rose to lead with positive intentions. In time, they did good but later got drunk with power, losing touch with reality, causing misery for many with their own fate sealed in the Karma of their actions.

    They forget that a movement toward the illicit, as Camille would say, produces a violent movement outward in desolation. We see the same pattern in the finale of Moby Dick, where Ahab’s attempt to pierce the heart of nature by harpooning the whale ends in tragedy and a vast, empty silence.

    Moby Dick eventually rams and sinks the Pequod. The waves swallow up Ahab and all who followed him, except one.

    Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark.

     

     

     

  • Violence unlimited

    THE hallowed Senate Chamber trembled on April 25 amid debate on the prevailing security situation. It was time for soul searching and the senators were frank in their assessment. Our country is going through a rough patch and it appears those in power do not have an answer to the problem. The people are at the mercy of hoodlums who have virtually taken over some parts of the country.

    From Lagos to Lokoja; Kaduna to Katsina; Benin to Birnin Gwari; Abuja to Akure; Makurdi to Minna; Ibadan to Ilorin; Gusau to Geregu; Jalingo to Jos;  and Yenagoa to Yola, Nigerians no longer sleep with their eyes closed. Whether on the road or at home, they are not safe. They live in fear of hoodlums who strike at will with venom. It is as if they have something against their victims. Going by what they say when some of them are caught, they do not. These hoodlums are only angry with the system, which has conferred undue privileges on rogues at the expense of  the deserving.

    It is this social imbalance that is at the root of our problems. The irony of it  is that some of the beneficiaries of this rot were the ones engaged in the April 25 debate. They knew that it was in their enlightened self interest that a solution be found to the problem before it became too late. As a senator rightly observed, the hoodlums no longer discriminate in their choice of victims. ‘’The problem used to be for only poor people. Now, it has moved to the upper class of people…’’, said Senator Shehu Sani, who with 108 others, sponsored a motion on ‘’Senseless killing of a Briton and the abduction of three others in a holiday resort in Kaduna State by bandits’’.

    Almost everywhere in the north today, the story is the same : ‘’bandits’’ have taken over. Who are these ‘’bandits’’? Are they the same as members of Boko Haram, the Islamic sect which has since 2009 turned the Northeast into its fiefdom? These bandits could not have dropped from heaven. They must be from somewhere and may have been living in their state of operation – Zamfara – long before they started wreaking havoc on the place.

    Rather than confront the problem headlong, the government has reduced it to what it called the illegal gold mining going on in Zamfara.  It consequently banned the illicit trade, but that did not solve the problem. That, in essence, should tell the government that the problem goes beyond illegal gold mining. Hear Senator Kabiru Marafa, who is from the state, at the April 25 debate: “There might be no Zamfara State in the next two years if something is not done about the insecurity in the state…there are over 3,000 kidnapped victims in the dens of bandits. Banditry is not reducing; it has become a business. There is technically no business in the north, except kidnapping’’.

    The situation is dire and it is reflected in what has been happening since the Senate’s deliberation. On that same April 25, two Chinese nationals working on a road project were kidnapped in Ebonyi State, lending credence to the claim of Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu that such abductions were responsible for the high cost of some contracts. Why? According to him, construction firms  were now factoring ransom payment into the contract cost.

    Banditry, kidnapping, killings and cattle rustling remain the ugly face of our country.  On Monday,  kidnappers struck in Plateau, Osun, Borno and Ondo states, taking away five persons. Their victims were the sister of the registrar of Plateau State Polytechnic, a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member and a man and his daughter. These are the ones reported by the media. There are many unreported cases, which we do not know about. It is a huge problem, which requires drastic solution.

    A society where violence thrives cannot attain its potential. Nigeria has a lot of potential and all it requires is peace for it to turn this into greatness. Where there is peace, there will be development and a boost in economic activities. Investors will never come to a country where they are not safe. We must make Nigeria safe for our own good. Our population keeps growing by the day and as a nation we lack what it takes to build our economy on our own without external help.

    For this external help to come,  our country must be conducive for investors to stay. This onerous task falls on the police. I do not envy Acting Inspector-General  (IG) Mohammed Adamu. A time like this calls for policing with intelligence in order to beat the bandits in their game. We have laws and we have men who can enforce these laws. The police and other law enforcement agencies should not yield the turf to these bandits. The wages of sin, the Bible says, is death.

    A criminal is a sinner; so he deserves to be punished to deter others. The only way to make these bandits and their ilk know that violence does not pay is to bring them to justice. If the police fail to do this, these hoodlums will continue to sprout and torment the people.

     

    The title chasers

    THE 2018/19 Premier League is something else. It started with 20 teams fighting for the Cup. Now, the title chase is between Liverpool and Manchester City, that are head and shoulder above the other teams.  City is topping the table with 95 points, followed by Liverpool at 94. Next to them is Chelsea, which stands at far third with 71 points.  The season ends on Sunday, with both teams playing their last game that day to determine who wins the title.  The leadership of the table has interchangeably rotated between them 32 times in the last 37 weeks. For both teams, Sunday’s game is do-or-die. Liverpool is at home to Wolverhampton; City plays Brighton on away soil. My brother Ade, a jolly good fellow,  is a die-hard Liverpool fan and for his sake, I hope that Liverpool wins the title at the expense of City. No matter who wins, it will be a league to remember for a long time to come. I do not think English football has ever witnessed this kind of soccer battle before. But will it be a season double for Liverpool, which came from three goals down to demolish Barcelona 4 – 0 on Tuesday to reach the Champions League final for the second year running?