The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Lessons of Easter and our troubled polity

    A COLOURFUL procession of excited youths, who were singing, drumming and dancing. There was no sign that something unusual could happen. It was a sunny, bright and beautiful day. Most of the youths belonged to the Boys’ Brigade. Those who couldn’t join the parade were waving at them. Elders were smiling in appreciation of the yearly show that marks the end of Easter – the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ over death.

    Then came the chilling moment. A driver rammed into the procession and mowed down a long line of active boys who had dreamt of a great future. No fewer than eight died. All was silent for a while. When those left standing somehow recovered from the shock of what had happened, they sped after the driver, caught up with him and lynched him. His passenger was not spared. An eye for an eye.

    What happened in Gombe on Easter Monday? Why did an agent of death visit those youths celebrating the triumph of the Saviour over death? Was it spiritual or ordinary? Was the evil driver struck by a strange mental illness? If so, what about the other occupier of the vehicle; could he have been mentally deranged too? An error? No. The driver had passed the procession before reversing his vehicle and plunging into the row of youths.

    It is neither here nor there.

    A newspaper headline captured it all. “Bloody Easter,” it roared like a typical tabloid, always screaming for attention. That was not just screaming as an expression of character; it was truly bloody.

    In Sri Lanka, no fewer than 359 people died on Sunday when bombs ripped through some churches and hotels. Many were hospitalised. Eight blasts were reported during Easter services. A family was at breakfast, taking photographs and laughing heartily just before the blast. They died. The explosions seemed to have been well coordinated, occurring  simultaneously in as many as eight places.

    President Muhammadu Buhari sent his condolences. Pope Francis, in his traditional “ Urbi et Urbi” speech, condemned the attacks as “such cruel violence”, which had targeted Christians celebrating Easter.  Seven suspects were said to have been arrested. But the question remains – why the violence, particularly in Christendom’s season of renewal, regeneration and freshness? Who did it?

    There were other incidents here and there. Gunmen attacked a village in Katsina, killing 10 residents. The military has been battling bandits in Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara and Kaduna. They seem to be in a hurry to impose a reign of savagery on us all. The more the government moves to rein them in, the more vicious they get.

    Police officers went after a suspected car thief in Ogoja, Cross River State. Instead of giving up the stolen car, the suspect unleashed his thugs on the officers who were attacked with machetes. They were said to have restrained from firing at their assailants so as not to be accused of extrajudicial killing. Were their lives not endangered?

    Poor officers, they were on a legitimate voyage in search of the truth – who is behind the car thieves? Why the brigandage?  But the truth has always been the victim. Many of our leaders live in a world of fakery where truth is stifled and all that matters is self interest.

    When Pontius Pilate asked what the truth was concerning the allegations against Christ, the priests lied. They were desperate to nail him – to nail the truth. He asked who to release between Barabbas the thief and Jesus; the crowd roared that Barabbas should be freed. “What then should I do to Christ?” Pilate asked. “Crucify him,” they chorused. Pilate then washed his hands with water, saying: “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see you to it.” His wife had actually sent him a message, warning that he should not join the grand conspiracy against Jesus Christ (women could be more cautious in deciding delicate matters).

    He recused himself from the case. How many judges of today will quit a case for genuine reasons that run against the thought of the powers that be? But then, couldn’t Pilate have sat over the matter and set Christ free as he had committed no offence? The scriptures cannot be broken.

    Truth is so hard to defend today in our polity where crowds are glorifying corruption suspects. A suspect is believed to be in trouble only because he is of the opposition party. Any attempt to talk about the past looting of the treasury is condemned as lack of vision or just laziness. As far as many are concerned, no need to look into the past; only the present matters.

    A friend was saying on Good Friday that “by this time some 2000 years ago, Judas Iscariot had received alert”. Isn’t treachery the hallmark of our politics? Leaders squeal on one another in a desperate bid to acquire power, in most cases, as an end in itself and not a means to an end, which should be a better life for all.

    After realising his folly, Judas returned the money he had collected for betraying Christ. When the priests refused to take it from him, he dumped it and left. How many of our former looters –sorry; an error there – leaders will voluntarily surrender their loot. They seek plea bargaining only when they can see that the prison gate is wide open to let them in.

    The police in Ondo State are searching for a man who sold his mother – yes; his mother – for N7m to ritualists. When the money ritual failed, as the story goes, the evil men went after the man to demand refund of the cash. They claimed that the 60-year-old woman’s hunchback was not original. He fled. Will he out of his own volition return the cash as Judas did? Why will a man surrender his own mother to killers for money? Foolishness? Wickedness? Criminality? Tough to decipher.

    There is also the question of restitution, repentance and forgiveness. Was Judas genuinely repentant when he threw the money back at the priests? Could he have done that if it was more than he got? Did he make restitution? How many of our leaders actually apologise when they err? Do they regret any of their actions? Was it just the love of money that made Judas to do it or it was all in fulfilment of the scriptures, “which cannot be broken”?

    One point remains indisputable – death will never have the final say. Architects of violence will never. Anarchists will never. The government should ensure that they don’t. That is the lesson of Easter, which they and their agents are and which many of us have forgotten, drowned in the revelry of the holidays.

    An ex-president’s bloody end

    Just before Good Friday, a former president of Peru died after shooting himself in the head as police entered his home to arrest him on corruption charges. Alan Garcia was 69. He was president twice – from 1985 to 1990 and 2006 to 2011. The police stormed his home, armed with a warrant – and, of course, guns – to detain him in connection with a bribery probe.

    Can we have a Garcia here? Oh yes; we have them, but I doubt if we can have one who will think it is better to just end it all – somehow. Our leaders love life. They love power; they love money; they love all the good things that money can get and all the excesses that power guarantees. To them, being accused of bribery is no big deal. They will hire a battalion of senior lawyers to defend them in court. They will look the judge in the face and tell him that he has no jurisdiction to try them. The judge may insist he has. Instead of facing the law with a bold face if they are sure of their integrity, they will seek to prolong the matter. They will fight up to the highest court in the land, their supporters hailing and cheering them as if they and their children are not the ultimate targets of their indulgence.

    The late Garcia

    If they are unlucky, they may be convicted after about eight years of a legal rigmarole and gymnastics. If they choose not to undergo the rigours of coming in and out of the court, they will simply file for plea bargaining, surrender a fraction of their loot and go home in peace.

    Peru seems to have no such cosy room for corrupt leaders. So, Garcia decided not to bend it but to end it in such a brutal manner. He fell on his own sword. Again, can we have a Garcia here? No, I dare say. Our leaders enjoy the fruits of corruption and , irony of ironies, preach to us the rudiments of good conduct. Shame.

  • Absence of governance and Zamfara misery

    Last week, Professor AngoAbdullahi, the convener of Northern Elders Forum and former vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria while calling on President Buhari to ‘demonstrate a higher level of concern and sensitivity to the plight of traumatised citizens, especially in Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Plateau and Taraba states, alerted the nation to what he described as ‘serious irresponsibility of governance in the country’.

    He probably spoke the minds of many Nigerians who have been wondering whether there has ever been real governance in the country since the exit of Obasanjo in 2007 when bandits took over the country deciding who was to be secretary to government, attorney general and new leadership of the various anti-corruption agencies probing them for financial malfeasances.

    The much that has changed under President Buhari’s ‘government of change’ is that while criminals are no more deciding who get what, when and how in the country, they are using the resources they illegally and immorally acquired to hold the nation to ransom in spite of a democratically elected sovereign who is allowed to exploit the lacuna in our laws to end people’s misery and pursue the greatest happiness for the greatest number of Nigerians.

    Before AngoAbdullahi’s intervention, there were two other recent developments which appeared to confirm absence of governance in the country. First was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s  scapegoating of immigrants while on the campaign trail for his re-election bid coming up in May, a development which has sparked fresh xenophobic attacks on African migrants especially Nigerians. He was quoted as saying: “Everybody just arrives in our townships and rural areas and set up businesses without licenses and permits. We are going to bring this to an end”. The above campaign rhetoric which has since gone viral on social media is also said to be responsible for renewed police clampdown in the guise of ‘saving their communities from the harmful effects of imported substandard goods and ridding their street and alleys of criminal elements’.

    But for the fact that we often like to play the ostrich, we know who the cap fits. Nigeria tops the list of unscrupulous drug manufacturers and importers of fake and substandard goods. This was an unwinnable war for the late Professor Dora Akunyili and her Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).Thisday newspaper recently quoted an importer of electrical materials in Onitsha, Chief Ethelbert Uzodinma who lamented, “We Nigerians are our own problems. These people take genuine products to manufacturers and ask them to water them down in quality”. The paper also quoted another trader in Onitsha, Mr. CallistusEzeuba who admitted that fake products are even more with eatables which are dangerous to health. And in recent times, many criminal-minded Nigerians involved in manufacturing of fake drugs and eatables have been arrested from various locations in Lagos, Aba and Onitsha.

    It is on record that, the former Director-General of Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr. Joseph Odumodu, not too long ago alerted Nigerians about the incidence of “cutting corners” by local manufacturers of iron and steel products who put out products  which were supposed to measure 16 millimetres (mm) in diameter, but turned out to be 12mm. The utilisation of such sub-standard steel components was said to be partly responsible for the incidence of collapsed buildings resulting in the death of over 400 people across the country in the last few years.

    The minister of agriculture, AuduOgbeh on Channel Television programme a few weeks back also spoke of some Nigerians with criminal tendencies who imported substandard goods to sabotage our nation’s effort at self-sufficiency. If we cannot put our own house in order by bringing these criminal elements to book, South Africa is not obliged to allow us export lawlessness and anarchy into their country.

    The second event was the federal government’s belated banning of all illegal gold mining in Zamfara State. This was said to be responsible for the death of over 5,000 people including the 45 illegal gold miners from Bindim Village, in Maru Local Government Area killed on November 8, 2016 in Zamfara bloody gold miners’ war of ex-generals and politicians. Part of the fall-out of the illegal mining, was also the reported case of major outbreak of lead poisoning in children related to the processing of lead-rich ore for the extraction of gold since March 2010. Then Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) alerted Nigeria of an increasing number of childhood deaths and illness in villages in the two local government areas (LGAs) of Bukkuyum and Anka. There was also the United States’ Centers for Disease Control (US CDC) that assisted in the investigations confirming severe lead poisoning in more than 100 children in the villages of Dareta and Yargalma.

    And as if to prolong the misery of the people of  Zamfara, there  were also bandits who left  sorrow, tears and blood in such areas as  Ajia and Wonaka in BirninMagaji local government,  Kayayi village in Shinkafi local government and Yan TaskuwaKucheri, TungarKolo following rustling of hundreds of  livestock, goats and birds.

    Unfortunately, just like the herdsmen’s mindless killings of innocent farmers and their families especially in the Middle Belt region of the country that went on unchallenged in the last eight years, it was only unfavourable public opinion that forced President Buhari’s ‘government of change’ to belatedly ban illegal mining, some two weeks ago, citing police intelligence reports which “clearly established a strong and glaring nexus between the activities of armed bandits and illicit miners”. Many will argue, if there had been any form of governance both at the state and federal levels, there would have been no illegal mining going on unchallenged for several years in the first place.

    Our major problem since Babangida hearkened to the false prophecies emanating from Breton Woods institutions and turned our nation to the dumping ground for various kinds of sub-standard goods and products in the mid-eighties has been lack of political will by our successive leaders to act on behalf of Nigerians. Just as they look the other way as fortune seekers as retired military officers and powerful politicians subject ordinary people and children of Zamfara State to untold hardship in the last few years, President Buhari and his APC government even while in possession of dossiers on unpatriotic elements who want our nation to remain importer of labour of other societies seem to want to be politically correct to avoid being accused of stereotyping.

    We will continue to move in circles until we are ready to confront our own demons. Since no one deliberately sets out to destroy his father’s house, it is obvious those who are doing everything to destroy the country to satisfy their greed have no faith in the nation. An elected sovereign with a fixed term must therefore be prepared to govern, sometimes by taking unpopular decision in the overall interest of a nation and awaits the judgment of history.

     

  • The fuel subsidy game

    IT remains a touchy issue. Should fuel subsidy be removed or not? This is the question that has been asked for ages. Yet, there has been no answer because of the divergent of opinions on the issue.   Advocates of subsidy believe that it will bring succour to the common man; provide him relief from the harsh economic climate where prices are always going up and never coming down. They believe that as long as subsidy remains, the hoi polloi will not suffer. But is that really the case today?

    We all know the answer. There is subsidy, yet commoners are suffering. They are suffering because the gains of subsidy do not get to them.  Marketers and their ilk in government are the ones reaping the benefits of subsidy. Marketers are getting paid for fuel not imported in connivance with top oil officials. The subsidy thing is a huge racket in which the masses are made to hold the short end of the stick.

    Yet, its champions want subsidy retained despite the underhand game associated with it. Those against subsidy want it removed in order to free money for development. The money wasted on subsidy, they reasoned, could be parlayed into providing social amenities. Subsidy was introduced with the best of intentions to protect the poor whose purchasing power is low. The essence is to ensure that the price of fuel is within the reach of the poor. Today, with the pump price of fuel at N145 per litre, it is certain that the poor cannot afford it. Those affected most are the small traders who need fuel to run their businesses. We are talking of the barbers, hairdressers, welders and fashion designers, who make little or nothing, but still require a lot of money to fuel their generators.

    How can they cope in an economy where business is dull because of irregular power supply? Yet, they have to deliver as customers will not hear that ‘’I could not finish your job because there was no light’’. Our stifling business environment does not help the poor who are struggling to make ends meet.  Subsidy is meant to help them but the oil cartel has hijacked everything, leaving nothing for the envisaged beneficiaries. The government tried to remove subsidy in the past and burnt its hands. It was blackmailed into restoring the regime by the sharks in the oil and gas world.

    How these people became so powerful that they can hold the government to ransom is baffling. Whenever talks centre round the removal of subsidy, they come out fiery and smoky, giving a thousand and one reasons why it should be retained.  At N145 per litre, how many litres can the poor buy to meet their needs? It is crystal clear that the subsidy regime is not being properly managed because the money is ending up in the pockets of some people, thereby defeating the purpose for its introduction.

    At the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washingtion, United States,  IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde advised that subsidy be removed so that the money can be ploughed into other important sectors. Whenever Nigerians hear IMF, we cringe because of our experience with the Bretton Wood institution during the Babangida regime. At the behest of IMF, Nigeria adopted the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986 under which it reformed its foreign exchange/trade policies, business and agriculture regulations. But it was at a huge cost to the people, who virtually went through hell as the government rammed SAP down their throats because, as it claimed then, there was ‘’no alternative to SAP’’, and IMF supported it all the way in this warped thinking.

    IMF’s call for subsidy removal does not sit well with the people who still remember its role in the SAP debacle. There is a lot of difference between SAP and subsidy, but the huge economic crisis wrought by SAP might have brought us to where we are today and resulted in the introduction of subsidy.

    IMF saw through the subsidy fraud. This is why it urged the government to establish a social protection safety net to meet the people’s needs after subsidy is removed. The argument for subsidy removal is the same. It is hinged on the premise that the regime has no trickle-down effect. How can it when the high and mighty have cornered it? According to IMF, Nigeria should remove subsidy and use the money to build hospitals, roads and schools as well as support education and health for the people.

    The government reacted swiftly, describing the advice as ‘’good counsel”. But seeing that the advice did not go down well with the people, Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed quickly beat a retreat, saying: ‘’In principle, this is a good suggestion. But in Nigeria, we don’t have any plans to remove subsidy at this time because we have not yet designed buffers that will enable us (to) remove the subsidy and provide cushion for our people’’. Meaning, at the appropriate time, subsidy will be removed. When will that be?

    Removing subsidy is certainly not going to be easy. We saw this in the past. I do not know how the government is going to sell the removal to the people.  Marketers can fret all they want and threaten that they will not import fuel for all I care. We will suffer if they do that no doubt, but we will eventually get over it. We cannot continue to enrich a few through a bogus subsidy regime, while the people and infrastructure suffer.

    Some are likely to see IMF’s call for subsidy removal as dubious because of its perceived negative role in the economic affairs of Africa. It is either of these two things – we retain subsidy and ensure that fuel price is affordable by all or we remove it and use the money for developmental projects. Will the removal not bring the people pain, some would ask? Of course, it will. But has its retention brought them relief?

    I do not see the removal of subsidy as an IMF agenda. It is a matter which affects us as a nation and the government attempted to do the needful about it a few years ago. It removed subsidy but lacked the nerve to carry its action through. Fuel subsidy has become a free meal ticket for marketers. Whether or not they import fuel, they know how to benefit from the regime. If that is not the essence of subsidy, why then is it still being retained?

  • Elite scum and other abstraction

    Elitism fades to melodrama, where the elite, misappropriates the role of a revolutionary, and considers himself greater than the state.

    In his struggle to usurp privileges and power, he inflicts misery on ordinary citizens, those whose predicament allegedly triggered his discontent.

    “For the love of country” becomes his arrant lie, the falsity that becomes his slogan. Thus, this minute, Nigeria pulses to duplicitous rant. Having lost or seen their favourite candidate lose at the last general elections, cliques and criminal masterminds among the nation’s elite are going for broke.

    These characters, comprising top clerics, political and business leaders and failed aspirants, have resorted to spite, couching their dissonant vibes in the language of patriots. For instance, they would claim to condemn President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption fight ‘for the love of country.’

    Too much of such duplicity is discernible in the exploits of militant warlords of Nigeria’s delta and north-east regions – many whose ‘hardcore’ agitation had been seen to extinguish, soon after they got ‘settled’ by the ruling class or power brokers aligned to the former.

    The incumbent elite, despite his pageantry of poise and mantra, answers to a more frantic form of savagery than militant terrorists and warlords; ultimately, he affects the passion of a wildling.

    Ferocity manifests as crucial aspects of his passion, the clique culture, authoritarianism, and sense of entitlement characteristic of his class. Its a precursor to rite of Nigeria’s rape cycle.

    The country’s elite is morally ambivalent. He pays lip-service to patriotism even as his provocative ‘purity’ incites filth in its wake. Stripped of his slogan, his passion betrays neither breadth, nor depth. It is barely individuated from the insensitivity and grotesqueness resonant of the primeval gladiator arena.

    His passion connotes moral emptiness. What Paglia would liken to the still heart of a geode, rimmed with crystalline teeth. His platitudinous chant are disguised as a series of soothing gestures, like rubbing a lantern to make a genie appear.

    In truth, he weaponises a dark sentiment, luring the masses into a dark cycle of sadomasochism. His exaggerated gestures and confessions of love, are an assertion of savage lust. He moots no selflessness or sacrifice, only refinements of domination.

    Beneath the glitter and ire of his platitudinous chants, however, subsists a frantic hankering for privileges and spoils of power.

    Gold plated doors and sofas. Plastered walls and Venetian glass. Platinum pumps and home theatre. Spring locks, expensive cars and wine cellars. Offshore villas and bank accounts; trophy wives and concubines among other things, symbolise the good life; according to the contemporary elite.

    Civilisation, as Thoreau would say, has been improving our houses and husks, but it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. In Nigeria, the “civilised” or sophisticated elite’s pursuits are no worthier than the barbarian’s.

    He spends the greater part of his life in pursuit and acquisition of affluence. At the prime of his life or apex of his growth, he becomes a President, Governor, industry titan, religious leader and “very successful” activist or media consultant, among others. Essentially, he becomes “rich” in societal terms.

    But for all his touted affluence, he remains inherently poor; a consequence of his poverty of intellect and mind. This manifests as his handicap, which extends beyond the familiar trope of the human forelock or Intelligent Quotient (I.Q.) thus his alarming vanities and incompetencies.

    Take for instance, the abject horror the nation’s political elite perpetuates in the name of governance and provision of decent shelter or “affordable and low-cost housing for all.”

    Via such “citizenry-centred” and over-celebrated efforts, they brazenly embezzle public fund. The political elite, thereby, perpetrates a two-pronged atrocity with chain reactions: it defaults in its promise of “affordable, low-cost housing” and subjects the citizenry to untold hardship, characterised by homelessness and the burgeoning of slum republics prevalent in Nigeria’s high-profile cities.

    To this, not a few elitists in government and their apologists within and outside the corridors of power, would argue, that it is not the duty of the government to provide housing for all.

    They would argue, that, the government couldn’t provide decent shelter for all even if it tried. Then they would seek refuge in the workings of capitalism which purportedly provides for every man to fend for himself, according to his means.

    They would pertinently state, that, the persistent failures of their class to facilitate an acceptable human state of affairs in the country are hardly unforgivable failures. They would claim that they merely add up to their inability to fulfill their constitutional obligations due to the “Nigerian factor” and because doing so, would impose avoidable inconveniences on them.

    They would also argue, that, it would be essentially, inexpedient, to fulfill their statutory responsibilities, given the unstable and feral nature of Nigeria’s democracy.

    Simply put, it is the moral character that breaks down. How many Nigerians can afford to pay between N9 million or N15 million to acquire the two and three-bedroom contraptions shamelessly splattered across the “affordable and low-cost housing estates?”

    Only party chieftains, cronies and associates of serving public officers are able to afford such conveniences at ludicrous rates. Once they acquire them, they put them up for lease, at rates that would make Shakespeare’s Shylock, a saint.

    Even in the primeval epoch, every family owned a shelter sufficient for its coarse and simple wants. Today, in Nigeria’s towns and cities, where civilisation supposedly prevails, the fraction of those who own houses is negligible.

    The rest pay an annual rent that renders them impoverished and barely able to feed and clothe, let alone attempt the ownership of a house.

    The Nigerian elite cares less about such issues than about getting one of its own into power. Its members are loyal not to posterity and ideas, but to the pursuit and attainment of wealth and power by any means.

    In an ostensibly capitalist country, these self-styled vanguards of private enterprise espouse and brazenly perpetrate an oppressive social philosophy, that, upholds the existence of the average Nigerian as an imperceptible social organism—a view which implies that his needs are not valid instruments for perceiving social reality and improving it.

    So doing, they project themselves as the chosen few supposedly endowed with special insight and ability to direct others. This implies the existence of an elite foundation of knowledge and aristocracy; a socio-political arrangement inaccessible to logic and beneath the mind.

    Notwithstanding its astounding rise to relevance, the Nigerian elite will be toppled off its high horse sooner than it can ever imagine. This is unavoidable in spite of the citizenry’s seeming docility and apathy.

    The elites are probably unaware, that they have lost the weaponry that guaranteed their rise to eminence and made all of their conquests possible: idealism and morality. They lost both precisely at the height of their acclaim, since their claim to either value was a fraud; the evident realities of their politics demonstrate the brute illogicality and cruelty of their social code and gospel of sacrifice.

    The country’s elite do not preach sacrifice as a temporary means to some desirable and lasting end. Sacrifice is their end—the sacrifice of the lives of others.

    It’s about time the ‘others’ reclaimed their lives.

     

  • Sudan: End of El Bashir regime

    After days of street protest led by professionals particularly doctors and after close to 200 people had been shot, the army moved against President Omar Hassan el Bashir who has been in power for more than 30 years. Military rule in the Sudan is almost a permanent feature of the political life of the country.In 1953, an Anglo- Egyptian Agreement was signed to allow the Sudanese people through a Constituent Assembly determine their future. Until that time, Britain and Egypt maintained a condominium over the Sudan. As a result of the decision of the 1953 Constituent Assembly, a British type parliamentary democracy presided over the country until 1958 when a group of army officers headed by Lt. General Ibrahim Abdud established a military regime and dissolved all political parties. The regime remained in power until it was overthrown in 1964. There was then a short transitional period leading to the formation of a democratically elected government which lasted till 1969 when once again, a group of military officers led by Colonel Ja’farMuhammad al Numayri proclaimed a new revolution and outlawed all other political activities. He ruled the country with-iron hands until 1985 when, following days of street protests by students, Numayri who was on a visit to Washington was overthrown by his defence minister, General Abdel Rahman Swar al Dahab.Within a year, an elected government was installed and headed by Sadiq al Mahdi, Oxford-educated grandson of the 19th century Islamic revolutionary, Shaikh Muhammad Ahmed al Mahdi, who between 1881and 1898 established an Islamic state in the Sudan. Sadiq was head of the Umma party but there were other stakeholders in his coalition government. But having a feeling of ownership of the country because of his ancestry, he ran a corrupt faction-ridden and nepotistic administration until he was overthrown by Omar Hassan al Bashir in 1989 because among other reasons, his enforcement of sharia law put in place by Numayri and the debilitating war in South Sudan led by General Garang.  The war did not end until 2011 when the south seceded from the north after much suffering and international pressure on Omar Bashir. Omar Hassan al Bashir has been in power since 1989 until he was overthrown a few weeks ago.

    His regime has been marked by much wickedness and state terrorism which saw to his unleashing of armed Arab horsemen known as Janjaweed on the hapless and helpless people of Darfur in the west of the Sudan murdering about 400,000 people as estimated by the UN. This has led to his being accused of war crimes of crimes against humanity and genocide for which an international arrest warrant hangs over his head from the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The ferocity of the Sudanese campaign in Darfur brought the charge of racism against Omar Bashir because Darfur is largely inhabited by black people. However Sudan is inhabited by blacks as well but majority of them are Arabized blacks.

    Sudan has strong historical ties with Nigeria. Islam entered the northeast of Nigeria through the Sudan even though Malian Muslims were largely responsible for spreading Islam into Hausa land and Yorubaland but this was much later. The Seifawa Empire of Borno as far back as the 8th century had madrasas (students’ hostels) in the Sudan and Egypt for its students. These educational ties have remained throughout the colonial and post-colonial period not only for recruitment of teachers and medical personnel but also for Islamic and Arabic instructors.During the colonial period, many Nigerians went to Mecca as they had done before the advent of British imperialism on foot,donkeys and horses. Many settled in the Sudan either on their way or on return from the hajj.Many worked in the vast cotton plantations on irrigated Gezira plains. Today, Nigerians and their descendants variously known as “ fellatta” constitute substantial portion of the Sudanese population.In other words we share a similar worldview (Weltanschauugen) and similar problems of political instability, underdevelopment, insecurity and struggle between Islamic theocracy and commitment to secularity. It is therefore appropriate to watch development in the Sudan with special interest because of common ties of history, culture and consanguinity.

    Initially after the overthrow of Omar Bashir, General Awad Ibn Auf, the minister of defence stepped in and promised a transitional government of two years and vast consultations with stakeholders before installing a democratically elected government. He also declared curfew from dusk to dawn. The demonstrators simply ignored him saying what they wanted was not an interim military government but a government of civilians in which any previous office holders would be barred. He threatened to enforce the curfew and when he realized soldiers were no longer ready to fire on civilians, he gave up and left the headship of the military transition council to a new man Lt. General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. To placate the street demonstrators, he quickly removed the much hated chief of internal security who allegedly detained thousands of people torturing them in the process. Provincial administrators were removed and the jails were thrown open so that all political prisoners can come out. General Burhan however has stuck to the two year transitional military council imposed by his predecessor. But how long he will last without resort to terror and strong-armed tactics remains to be seen. In the meantime, the demonstrators have said they have seen the kind of tactics of army coming to power and stating they would stay in power for a short while but after consolidation they stay for ever as shown by Numayri and Omar Bashir. While this is true, the fear in many circles including the international community is that the world cannot afford the disintegration of another Arab country with the possibility of it being taken over by terrorists.

    The situation all around in the geopolitical area creates fear in the mind of those who care for stability. Southern Sudan which seceded in 2011 is still involved in fratricidal ethnic conflict. Ethiopia is still not stable and is still involved in campaign of military pacification particularly in Oromia among its largest ethnic group. Egypt to the north under General Muhammad al Sisi is not the model of stability and the country’s hold on Sinai to the north is tenuous and is infested by ISIS terrorists. Libya since the NATO-assisted murder of Muammar el Khadafihas ceased being a state of one government. There is an going campaign against the UN-recognized government by GeneralKhalifaHaftar based in Benghazi who is backed apparently by Egypt, France and Russia hoping that he may impose his will on the whole state as General Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El Sisi has successfully done in Egypt by putting the Islamic revolutionaries and brotherhoods to the sword. The situation in Algeria is not yet clear after AbdelazizBouteflika resigned as president and was succeeded by an army council that has set a date for election in July with the well-organized FIS (la FronteIslamiqueSalut) possibly winning and declaring Algeria a caliphate. In the meantime, the vast majority of Arab countries of Syria, Yemen and Iraq are in disarray and in disaster and the world cannot afford the suffering of the Arabs to continue and to spread to the Sudan. This is why the international community, including Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain are engaged in helping Sudan to transfer power peacefully without making the mistakes of the so-called Arab Spring during which time, Islamic idealists were allowed to hijack genuine cry for freedom. Sudan once hosted Osama bin Laden and this still rankles in the minds of American leaders who inspite of the basket case of Sudan must, for geopolitical reasons, have interest in what becomes of the country.

    Unfortunately the political prognosis for the future of the country is not very good. It lost most of its oil wells to South Sudan after partition. There are still regional and ethnic fissiparous movements in the country. There is massive unemployment and salaries are just too poor to satisfy the well-organized professional and labour unions. It used to get substantial financial support from Saudi Arabia which is now no longer as generous as it used to be. The industrial sector is not well developed and the country is surrounded by predatory neighbours of Egypt and Ethiopia. Sudan’s options are not many outside the River Nile floods-dependent cotton-growing agriculture and textile manufacture. Without political stability, it is doubtful if the problems of the country will be solved and this political stability rests on sandy and fragile agricultural economy.

  • Tiger Woods, golf and life

    IT is perhaps no mere coincidence that the two monumental events occurred about the same time. One, a human tragedy turned triumph; the other a calamity that has bred global amity and empathy.

    I speak of the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the 855-year-old building which was hit by a strange blaze on Monday, one day after the Palm Sunday ahead of Easter, the season of triumph of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, a time of renewal, resurrection and redemption.

    The other event is no less instructive in its significance and symbolism – the triumph of Eldrick Tont “Tiger” Woods, the legendary golfer whose story of revival is, perhaps, the biggest comeback miracle in sporting history. Amazing. Magical. Simply incredible.

    Tiger knew he was destined for greatness. As a kid, he had boasted of beating the best. He had won 15 majors, second to Jack Nicklaus’ 18, before the comeback win at Augusta on Sunday – his fifth. He was on the way to being “the greatest” – what Edson Arantes do Nascimento, widely known as Pele, is to soccer and Mohammed Ali was to boxing.

    He was the toast of the golfing world. Many saw him as the greatest man to have ever swung a club. His were classic shots that sent spectators screaming and yelling, “Tiger!”. All that collapsed as the star plunged into one trouble after another. There were scandals – of infidelity and salacious stories of concupiscence – drink-driving, injuries and surgeries, rejection and depression. His health failed as he had to undergo surgeries. After allegations of infidelity, Tiger crashed his SUV and a string of speculations followed. He issued a statement on his website, accepting responsibility for his action. “This situation is my fault and it’s obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I’m human and I’m not perfect. I will definitely make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Woods said.

    Then golf began to fail him. He lost form. He even took a break from the game he loved with incredible passion. He checked into a sex rehab. Tiger was written off by golf purists and pundits as an old story.

    The superstar who raked in millions from endorsements and sponsorships could no longer attract them. Sponsors withdrew in droves to save their reputation. A paradise lost. Tiger was lonely. But Nike, the sporting goods giant, stood by the superstar. So did the Swiss watchmaker, Tag Heuer. They said Tiger’s personal life was not their business. Now Nike’s shares are surging, investors are cheering and the world is celebrating Tiger’s “tigritude “.

    President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama, Tennis star Serena Williams and many other dignitaries joined the celebration of the great comeback.

    As I walked smartly to the tee box on the ninth hole at the MicCom Golf Club in Ada, Osun State – Nigeria’s first privately -owned golf facility – last Saturday, I chatted with the pro with whom I was playing. “Have you been watching the Masters? Tiger is doing well and he may just be on the winning way again.” Najeem Sofela, one of Nigeria’s best, smiled derisively. “Tiger? No. He can’t win. His time is gone. He himself said so some two years ago that he could no longer do all that he used to do with golf. The injuries and age have affected him.”

    Sofela and many other golf enthusiasts across the globe were shocked on Sunday as Tiger made his last putt in the final round and won his fifth Masters by a shot. For a moment, he was frozen in his thought. It all felt like a dream. Then, he screamed, punched the air and shook hands with the other players before grabbing his caddie for a big hug. Tiger then walked down the gallery to his family. His son sped  as fast as he could, jumped up at him and buried his head in his chest. His mum was clapping. The golf idol’s face was wreathed in smiles. For moments, mother and son hugged each other. It was so emotional.

    At 43, Tiger became the second oldest to ever win the Masters, golf’s premier league; the El-Clasico. It was his fifth, the first since 2005 and 15th major title of his career; he last won in 2008 at the US Open. Now Jack Nicklaus’18 major’s record is in sight.

    Tiger’s amazing comeback will be well appreciated as a miracle when juxtaposed with the stories of some other giants who fell and failed to rise again. Mike ‘Iron’ Tyson conquered the heavyweight world the way no boxer his age ever did. Mohammed “the greatest” Ali had finesse. He churned out rhymes like a master poet, predicting with accuracy the round in which an opponent would fall. With his deft footwork, “the Louisville lips” brought showmanship into the game. But Tyson was “the beast” for his clinical finishing and raw energy as well as the display of that animal instinct that got his opponents knocked down–and out –fast.

    Tyson lived big. He had so much money. In one day, he bought dozens of Mercedes Benz cars for his friends. He kept wild animals as pets. Then fate – that unseen hand in human affairs – barged in to knock out the 5-foot-11,200 plus pugilist. He was found guilty of raping an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant, Desiree Washington. Tyson was jailed. He lost form and fame. His star dimmed. When trouble comes, as they say, it does not just rain; it pours. His daughter died. It was such a pity to see the man who inflicted so much pain on opponents cry like a baby. He started begging for roles in movies. Now, Tyson is into cannabis farming.

    American football star O.J. Simpson had all a man could desire. Money, fame, influence and more. He was a small god, worshipped by millions who love America’s number one game. In 1995, OJ’s life took a tragic turn. He was accused of murdering his wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. The mainly black six-man jury freed OJ, but the sensational trial divided America along racial lines. A judge in Florida asked this reporter how the matter was perceived in Nigeria (the trial was televised) . She nodded in agreement when I told her that many felt OJ did it, but there was no proof.

    Simpson eventually went to jail for robbery after storming a hotel to retrieve his memorabilia. He was armed. At 61, it was a terrible way to end an exciting life of a celebrity

    Music great Michael “Wacko” Jackson fought hard to retrieve his falling career; he failed. The “king of pop” faced child molestation charges in 2004 and every move he made to rekindle his career failed until he died on June 25, 2009.

    Back home in Nigeria, there was Etim Esin, the former soccer star, one of the first to play in Europe. He got into many unsavoury things and faced many accusations, including rape. The man nicknamed “super brat” was in the news sometime ago- for stealing a phone at a party organised by soccer great Austin “Jay Jay” Okocha.

    Tiger’s story – of cheers and jeers, sighs and highs and lows- is not just about golf. No. It is the relationship between golf and life. Both demand patience (putting the ball in the hole requires deep thinking and a sense of proportion); endurance (walking 18 holes is no lazy man’s job); confidence (driving the ball several metres to land on the green is no frivolity); perseverance (every hole offers an opportunity to correct a mistake) and honesty (recording the right score even when nobody notices is the hallmark of a true golfer). And more.

    No wonder many golfers say “golf is life; life is golf”. Considering Tiger’s sensational return, aren’t they right?

     

    Death for kidnappers

    THREE policemen and four others are to die for kidnapping a woman in Akwa Ibom State. Justice Joy Uuwana handed down the sentence to the criminals on Tuesday in a trial that began in 2012. The gangsters yanked Deaconess Ime Anietie Ekanem off her husband’s vehicle and took her into captivity.
    They hired her neighbour for N50,000 to cater for the victim while negotiations for ransom went on. When detectives investigating the matter went to pay the ransom, they were shocked to discover that three of the evil men were their colleagues.
    The law prescribes death for abduction in Akwa Ibom. The convicts are to die by hanging. The age-old argument that death penalty does not deter criminals will remain with us; so also is the question of how to rein in the bad guys among us. It is shameful that policemen – some of them that is; there are many good officers in the police – who are hired to protect the people are part of the danger we all face.
    It is sad that heroic stories are no longer common among our law enforcement officers. Nowadays, if they are not part of a gang of kidnappers, they are busy shooting innocent Nigerians who they have no reason whatsoever to shoot.
    Acting Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu surely has his job cut out for him. The rot in the system is huge; the clean-up should begin now. Gangsters should never be allowed to take over the police.

  • APC’s dirty politics of identity

    There are over 350 ethnic groups at different levels of cultural development in Nigeria. The country was described by Oliver Stanley, British Secretary of State in 1920 as “a collection of self-contained and mutually independent native state separated by difference of history and tradition and by ethnological, racial, tribal political social and religious barriers”.Awo in 1947 declared that “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression; there is no Nigeria in the same sense as there are English, Welsh, or French.”

    Neither the Fulani that is today regarded as the hegemonic classnor any of the warring dominant ethnic groupsfighting to impose their cultural values on the rest of country can be said to be indigenous to Nigeria as they all traced their roots to the middle east and elsewhere in Africa. For instance the Fulani was described by Lord Lugard, the then High Commissioner for Northern Nigeria as “the alien conquerors” in his 1902 Annual Report on Northern Nigeria to both Houses of Parliament through the Colonial Office”.And of them, Olaniwun Ajayi, lawyer and Nigeria elder statesman, in his Nigeria: Political Power Imbalance, wrote, “With the growing power of the Hausa, immigration into the country of a people called Fulani took place. Where they came from, nobody knew”. The Igbo claimed they are Jews. The Igalas traced their home to Egyptwhile the Yoruba through Ifa, their god of wisdomclaimed they migrated from Northern Egypt through Sudan to Ife. For Femi Fani Kayode, the ‘’Yorubas’’ are the descendants of Ham who was the third son of Noah.

    What is missing in all these narratives is the place of the real indigenous Nigerians governed by their chiefs for long centuries past and their today’s descendants. But since the representatives of warring dominant groups – Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba,  Ijaw Tiv  that always insist no other person  gets what they cannot get, have nothing in common with happy, contented free-spirited Nigerians one comes across in Kano Central Market, Lagos Mile 12 yam market,Ladipo spare-parts market,as well asthousands of Igbo youths who are quietly making a living retailing beans and  millet produced in the north across the nation and thousands of young Hausa boys who survive on retail sales of yam produced in the middle belt  in Lagos and across Nigeria’s big cities, it is not difficult to make a distinction between  real Nigerians who have no other place to go and scheming politicians who think only of how to exploit the riches of Nigeria for their private use through politics of identity.

    A journey through memory shows Nigerian political eliteresort to politics of identity not necessarily to protect the unique culture or the political and economic interests of their ethnic groups but the political and economic needs of individuals. During the nationalist struggle for independence, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe took over the leadership of NCNC, apredominantly Yoruba party (there was only one non-Yoruba in its inaugural meeting) without opposition. Heenjoyed massive support across the Yoruba nation where he also presided over a thriving newspaper chain. But following a petition written by Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and Dr.Olorunnibe over Zik’salleged mismanagement of funds during their trip London, Zik rallied Igbo who had for long yearned for a spokesman in a stranger’s land to see his trouble with members of his party as an attack on Igbo race.

    Obasanjo literarily climbed the palm tree from the top by winning the 1999 presidential election without a political base but with the support of other ethnic groups. He even lost his ward in Abeokuta. And conscious of the immense contributions of non-Yoruba ethnic groups to his victory, Obasabjo relied mainly onIgbo advisers such as Dr.Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Dr.Obi Ezekwesili,Professor Charles Soludo, and Andy Uba. He also had no problem ceding the running of the economy to Atiku Abubakar, his vice president. They bothdid not see anything wrong in running our once acclaimedworld class universities aground before allocating themselves licences to establish private fees-paying universities. It was not until Atiku threatened Obasanjo’s secondterm bidthat he raised questions about his nationality.

    Similarly, Atiku was a former vice president and a successful businessman considered an asset by APC. All that changed with his decamping back to PDP for the purpose of contesting last March presidential election against the APC candidate. And for threatening President Buhari by challenging the outcome of the election in court, APC now sayssince Atiku was born in 1946, and  it wasn’t  until 1961, a plebiscite turned northern Cameroon to Nigeria” , he is not a Nigerian ad therefore not qualified to contest the election.

    Unfortunately for the APC, Nigerians now know from experience that those who resort to identity politics or denounce membershipof their ethnic group claiming they are Nigeriansfirst are not necessarily driven by altruism. For their pains Obasanjo got appointed first, as military Head of State and later, an elected two-term president. Theophilus Danjuma got a lucrative oil block.

    Nigerians also now know that those politicians who often resort to identity politics when their interests are threatened owe no allegiance to Nigeria. They often behave like an army of occupation.  As far as they are concerned, they “are strangers in the land. If good comes to it, may we have our fair share.But if bad comes, let it go to the owners of the land who know what gods should be appeased”. Chinua Achebe capturedthe very essence of those politicians who proclaim themselves Nigerians first as if it is possible to be a good Nigerian without first being a good representative of one’s ethnic group.

    By strange coincidence, nearly all those who resort to identity politics to prove they can swim against the tide seem to have come to one form of grief or the other. AguiyiIronsi who wanted to be more Nigerian than our founding fathers who bequeathed to the country a legacy of a workablefederal arrangement, had an identity crisis as a product of a Sierra Leonean father and an Igbo mother. Ibrahim Babangida, the so-called “prince of the lower Niger’, who annulled the most credible and freest election in our nation’s history claiming he was trying to meet the demand of the Fulani hegemonic class, is widely believed to have an Ogbomoso root. Obasanjo who tried to prove he can be a good Nigerian without first being a good representative of his Yoruba people faces identity crisis at home. For exhibiting none of well-known Yoruba traits, his political enemies alleged he has his root in Onitsha! Abacha, the maximum ruler who waged a five year war against Nigerians before his mysterious death inside the presidential palace was said to have his root in neighbouring Niger.

    Instead of resorting to dirty politics of identity, Nigerians expect APC to start planning how to put square pegs in square holes in the National Assembly to prevent a reoccurrence of the 8th senate’s disastrous outing when it was difficult to make a distinction between senators elected on APC platform of change and those of the totally discredited PDP who jointly constituted themselves into ‘like minds senators’ working against the interest of Nigerians.

  • Voice of reason

    BY its nature, the legal profession is close-knit. Its members bond together. Be they lawyers or judges, they do not allow intruders into their midst. Even though, judges are first and foremost lawyers, once they cross to the bench, they become something else. Unwittingly, they turn themselves into a cult, living in their own world.

    Truly, judges are expected to be above the rest of society in order to do their work freely and fairly. They should not be seen mixing with unscrupulous people so that their integrity will not be called to question. Judges are expected to maintain a moral high ground for them to command the people’s respect. What is a judge if his honour is not intact? Judges are not called honourable for the sake of it, they are so called because they earned the title.

    A judge cherishes his honour as a woman her chastity. A judge without honour does not deserve the respect of others. More importantly, he is not worthy of being on the bench. The best of the best is expected to be on the bench. This is why the Constitution provides that only men of impeccable character should be appointed judges.

    In some cases, black sheep have found their way on to the bench. These judges have brought ridicule to the institution through their unseemly conduct, thereby eroding public confidence. The court, the saying goes, is the last hope of the common man. But how can that be where the judge is corrupt? We have seen over the years, how some judges brought shame to themselves and what successive governments did to cleanse the Augean stable. The exercise, it seemed, was not far reaching; and the result is the kind of judiciary we have today.

    Despite the efforts of the anti-graft agencies, a lot still has to be done to sanitise the judiciary, which in the last four months, has been in the limelight because of the ongoing trial of the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen for alleged false declaration of assets and non-declaration of some assets. He will know his fate today at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. As expected, many lawyers as well as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) have shown solidarity with him. They want the charge against him dropped. The National Judicial Council (NJC), which looked into a petition brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has recommended that he be retired with benefits.

    The council added that he should be allowed to maintain his seat on the Council of State (CoS) like other former CJNs. But a group, the Justice Reform Project (JRP), comprising 20 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), believes that the Onnoghen case provides opportunity for an holistic rejigging of the judiciary. In its first intervention on February 2, JRP deplored what it called the rot in the judiciary. It noted, among others, that there is widespread perception of corruption in the judiciary and this perception is supported by anecdotal evidence; and unscrupulous litigants and some complicit lawyers, including some senior advocates, procure judgments and orders by corrupt means. The group consequently called for the reformation of NJC, which is headed by the CJN; NBA national executive committee and the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC), among others.

    On Tuesday, it came out with its second intervention titled: An open letter on judiciary reform, in which it stated that Onnoghen’s resignation, which was made known shortly after the NJC’s recommendation, was not enough because of the grave allegations against him. It said extending the anti-graft campaign to other judges would erase the impression that Onnoghen is being victimised. JRP said : ‘’His resignation/voluntary retirement is not an answer to these allegations and the JRP expects that justice, which is no respecter of persons or position, will be allowed to take its course. Beyond Justice Onnoghen, however, the JRP believes that the revelations that have been made in the course of this affair necessitate that urgent steps be taken to identify and sanction all other judicial officers who are found to possess inexplicable wealth that cannot be reconciled with their legitimate income or their asset declarations, two of the allegations made against Justice Onnoghen.

    ”These steps are necessary … to restore public confidence in the judiciary and disabuse the notion that all judicial officers in Nigeria are corrupt and that justice is for sale; to disabuse the notion that Justice Onnoghen’s travails are a mere witch-hunt motivated by ethnic and political interests rather than the result of a genuine concern for sanitising and reforming the judiciary…”

    The JRP said Onnoghen’s response to the EFCC’s allegations against him raises questions about how heads of courts manage funds entrusted in their care, adding: “If the profession does not regulate itself effectively, incidents such as those involving Justice Onnoghen will remain a fixture in our judicial system’’. The group could not have put it better. For the judiciary to keep its pride of place, our judges should be above board. There cannot be one set of rules for them and another set of rules for the people. Why?

    Former CJN Muhammadu Lawal answers the question succinctly: “A corrupt judge is more harmful to the society than a man who runs amok with a dagger in a crowded street. The latter can be restrained physically. But a corrupt judge deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes incalculable distress to individuals though abusing his office while still being referred to as honourable”. What is honourable about a tainted judge? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

  • Moghalu’s faux lyrical

    Infant lust flaunts deceptive grandeur. It imbues many a man with false sense of self-worth. It goads the ‘worthy,’ leading him by the ego, through providence’s unforgiving labium, till he drowns in pridefulness’ treacherous fount.

    Infant lust has derisory simplicity. En route the last general elections, it corrupted the young aspirant’s rousing chorus.

    It tarnished, for instance, supposedly promising candidate, Kingsley Moghalu’s clarion call; pitching it, like Theodore Roethke’s ‘Elegy for Jane,’ where the bear-like poet, with petrifying, thunderous zest, approaches a delicate being in dangerous nearness.

    Picture Moghalu as the bard, and Nigeria as the ill-fated subject and object of his lust.

    Few weeks ago, Moghalu waxed poetic, faux lyrical if you like, bemoaning Nigeria’s blooming dystopia.

    “There is little to convince anyone that Nigeria values life. If it is not communal clashes, it is tankers and trailers. If it is not malaria, it is cholera…If it is not armed robbers, it is Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS),” he lamented to applause, at the TEDx forum in Maitama, Abuja.

    Fast forward to the end of the presidential elections, and the hitherto swashbuckling aspirant of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) and former Deputy Governor (DG) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) came 14th, polling a measly 21,886 votes against familiar contenders, Muhammadu Buhari’s 15.2 million and Atiku Abubakar’s 11.2 million votes.

    Moghalu is distraught. If he would fail, it shouldn’t be by such ridiculous margin. After all, he was elite-Nigeria’s chosen child, the face of a new, progressive Nigeria.

    Speaking with Arise News TV, recently, he said: “The biggest disappointment was with the youths. The youth vote was absent. They make a lot of noise, they rant and rail but you will not see them on the voting day. And when they vote, they don’t vote in line with their rhetoric.”

    Consequently, Moghalu announced his withdrawal from partisan politics, in order to commit to a movement called, To Build A Nation (TBAN), “a citizens’ movement that will campaign for electoral reform and engage in voter education. Those are the two things this democracy needs if it is to survive,” he said.

    His touted panacea hardly addresses Nigeria’s major afflictions. It smacks of common aspirants’ over-exploited lifeboat solutions.

    As Nigeria careens dangerously by policy failure, lax regulations, insecurity and inadequate investment in the comatose education and health sectors, Moghalu could only knock sweetened banality against the ruling party, APC and its arch rival, PDP’s washed-out bromides on national unity, a vibrant economy, privatisation of the NNPC and security.

    Throughout his campaign, he focused on the political and business elite, students, churchgoers, and supposedly evolved segments of the youth divide. Then his candidacy, presumably, received a remarkable fillip at his endorsement by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka’s Citizens’ Forum.

    But endorsements alone, do not win elections, he would learn. Of course, like other candidates, he enjoys the inalienable right to vie for elective office, but he has no right of entitlement to any public office beyond that granted him by the privilege of popular votes.

    What did he expect? A YPP walkover? About 10-12 million watertight votes in the kitty?

    Like too many cub aspirants, and the PACT collective, Moghalu nursed a fantasy of disrupting the status quo but that was all it was, a futile dream.

    His weaponisation of dejection at his loss, however, manifests ominously; his attack on the youths reveals unheralded aspects of his character. The presidency isn’t a ripe carrot at the end of a stick, nor is it some reward to be earned at the end of a task. Moghalu lusted for the presidential seat but he didn’t earn it.

    His candidacy manifested as an emotive caress, on random youth segments. Even Nobel Laureate, Soyinka, was smitten by his swagger.

    Of course, his party and supporters knew he stood no chance against the devilry and spending power of the big parties, but they idealised his candidacy and romanticised the likelihood of his victory all the same.

    While canvassing for votes, he boasted that he would achieve a lot in four years “largely with the mechanism of four offices: the office of national strategy, the national office of risk management, the office of performance management and the office of human capital development…We’ll run Nigeria like a corporation. I’ll smash a lot of toes. If your toe is stopping progress in this country, I’m going to be your enemy,” he said.

    Yet Moghalu could not articulate, convincingly, what positive impact his ‘four offices’ would have on riverine poetry in the Delta, and the impoverished communities of Sankwala; he couldn’t assert what relief it would bring to terror-stricken, displaced, and orphaned children of Bama and Doron Baga, beyond lyricism and lip-service.

    Of course, he ‘made great sense’ to his elite patrons and endorsers but did he make as much sense to the cart-pusher, the commercial sex worker, peasant farmer, commercial bus conductor, unemployed youth, political hooligan and market woman of the sidewalk?

    He squandered a rare chance to connect across social strata. While the big parties engaged in familiar, cut-throat, monetised politics, Moghalu failed to seize his big opportunity, to establish his presence across Nigeria’s boondocks and suburbs, in order to get the votes that would count, come 2023 polls.

    Instead, he retreated into esoteric enclaves, bandying platitudinous chant to the applause of a fawning crowd.

    If he had won the election, he would have emerged as a pawn and associate of a corporate power structure that he had never been taught to question. He would have ascended as a president capable of looking down, with thinly veiled contempt, on sprawling segments of an illiterate populace irreconcilable to the ‘superior’ mechanisms of his ‘four’ special ‘offices.’

    Moghalu should quit blaming the youths for his abysmal failure at the polls. It’s about time he owned his flaws. Like Hedges’ delusive elites, he chanted a private dialect that manifested as noise to large segments of the youth divide.

    Next time out, he may ditch that cloistered dialect, to achieve a synergy of boondocks lingo and his elevated accent of the elites. An exclusive resort to the latter, would only earn him avertable defeat, come 2023, if he still has the stamina to compete.

    Moghalu should avoid the company and endorsements of corporate con artists and economists, who, having rigged our financial system and industry to serve their selfish interests, laboured to repel Buhari’s anti-corruption drive.

    Yea, Buharism isn’t perfect; the more reason why Nigeria needs the likes of Moghalu to march in virtual lock-step with him in policies and ideology, offering constructive criticisms, uncompromisingly, and with clinical depth.

    The organised dialect of the rostrum reinforces the elitism’s narrow education. It seeks to preserve the predatory nouveau riche raring to usurp power and privileges from Nigeria’s calcified, sit-tight oligarchs.

    It’s about time Moghalu and his ilk jumped into the trenches, to feel and see through electorate skin and eyes. So doing, they may unlearn elite bias, and attain reality’s higher learning.

     

  • Crime, criminals and our troubled humanity

    We have never had it this bad. The reality of terrible oddities in our lives. Strange acts wrought by people who seem ordinary.

    A man rapes his daughter. Another and his son take turns to rape a 13-year old who they put in the family way. The man’s wife is the poor girl’s aunt. An alfa rapes a physically challenged girl in a mosque and flees. Boys go after girls’ undergarments for money ritual. Human waste becomes edible in a money making ritual. A boy rapes his grandma.  Men sleep with minors in a bizarre assault on innocence. A man is found carrying a roasted human hand as if it is a trophy won in a sporting competition. Does he want to make a meal of it? Ah, the Clifford Orji days again.

    What is happening to the world, our world? Why do men commit these atrocities that make nonsense of our age-long claim to humanity? Mental depravity? Spiritual powers? Spiritual powers for what? Are such powers an end in themselves or a vehicle for some ends that are selfish and destructive? Why will a human being want to destroy others just for his own well-being, forgetting that the well-being of an individual becomes a Herculean task if the society is troubled in whatever way?

    Why? Money? A young man murders his girlfriend, digs a grave in his bedroom and buries her body there. But the ghost of former Ondo State Deputy Governor Lasisi Oluboyo’s daughter would not rest in peace. It tormented the hell out of her killer until the law hit him hard. Seidu Adeyemi is to die by hanging for her murder.

    A young man craves fame and riches. He gets into occultism, acquires some strange powers for cash, gets so rich, spends money with so much obscenity, revels in being called “Ezego” (king of money) and ends it all in a shocking manner. He dies just when the sun of his life begins to rise; sunset before noon. The end. Why?

    Is money – and its material benefits- all that is to life? Does joy actually spring forth from the fountain of cash? Can money buy happiness? The Holy Book enjoins us not to lay up for ourselves “treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal…”.

    We still lay claim to our membership of the human community, but our sense of right and wrong is suspect. How do we halt the way we hurt ourselves? Why bend it when we should end it?

    It is not that Nigeria had been crime-free. No. Far from it. Criminals have been with us for ages – and they will remain with us anyway–. It is the heartless nature of today’s criminals that is worrisome as they battle to turn our world into a jungle in which there are no laws. All is fair. No fear.

    Those men of the underworld whose stories sound like Hollywood scripts handled by first class producers and actors must be surprised at the way their bloody records are being shredded by our new gangsters, mobsters and fraudsters.

    Some flashback into the hall of infamy. Salami Bello Jaguda was a Lagos musician who found fulfilment in crime. So popular was he in the nefarious trade that his name became synonymous with robbery and theft. He quit the bloody stage for the dreaded self-styled Dr Ishola Oyenusi (aka Dr Rob and Kill) who reigned from 1965 to 1971. His first reported major operation was on Herbert Macaulay Street, Yaba, Lagos Mainland where he snatched a car, killing the owner. Reason: his girlfriend was broke and needed money for her makeup. Thousands watched excitedly as Oyenusi was tied to the stakes and executed by a firing squad on the Lagos Bar Beach. The spectators had come to confirm his much rumoured invincibility. Oyenusi, according to the myth, possessed the power to be visible, invisible and invincible. Besides, his body was said to be impenetrable to bullets. It all turned out to be a myth. But the spectators confirmed that he was all smiles as the soldiers took position, awaiting the command, “fire!”.

    Oyenusi died. But his gang remained active, headed by second-in-command Isiaka Busari (aka Mighty Joe), who killed many in a savagery that also crashed before a firing squad on the Bar Beach.

    Horrible as it was, the Oyenusi saga had a redeeming feature. Kayode Williams, a member of the gang, later found Christ. He became the Bishop of the Christ Vessel of Grace Church and the Director-General of the Prison Rehabilitation Mission International (PREMI) after a 10-year jail term.

    Army deserter Youpelle   Dakuro is reputed to have masterminded the most vicious daylight robbery in Lagos in 1978. Babatunde Folorunso, Lt. Oyazimo and Mohammed Kolomi were dreaded names. But their exploits were nothing compared to those of Lawrence Nomayogbon Anini (aka The Law) and his deputy, Monday Osunbor. They killed several policemen before fate caught up with them. Before he was executed on March 29,1987, Anini, wheelchair bound – one of his legs had been amputated– sober and dejected, said of the fate that awaited him: “I am afraiding.” He also warned excited photographers to stop feasting on him. “E don do now”, he said, waving his hand.

    Those who thought the worse of the beasts had been seen off were wrong. Enter Shina Rambo. With Yemisi Akinsanmi,alias Yemo and Tony “Montana” Ikiagwu, Rambo rumbled through the 90s. He was notorious for striking in several places at the same time, driving snatched exotic vehicles in a long convoy all the way from Lagos to the Republic of Benin.

    Okwudili Ndiwe (aka Derico Nwamama) held Onitsha, Anambra State’s commercial city, and other parts of the East by the throat early 2000. A former “area boy” and pick pocket, he became the most dreaded gangster of his bloody time, smashing banks at will. The police on August 1,2013 gunned down Abiodun Egunjobi (aka Abbey Godogodo), who reportedly killed scores of policemen. His arsenal included 60 AK 47 rifles, which the police recovered. He reigned for 14 years.

    Henry Chibueze (aka Vampire), who terrorised Imo and neighbouring states, fell in March 2017. His gang was said to have murdered no fewer than 200 people, including the victims of the 2013 bloodshed in Igando on the outskirts of Lagos, among them his girlfriend, her expectant sisters and their children.

    Ruthless and brutal Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike (aka Evans) is on trial for kidnapping the rich and collecting ransom in hard currency. The police described him as Nigeria’s “cleverest” kidnapper who evaded arrest for seven years by using 126 mobile phone SIM cards.

    Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano has been in holiday mood since last week’s arrest of murder suspect Ikechukwu Udensi (aka Ikanda), whose gang  allegedly killed 38-year-old businessman Ndubuisi Nwokolo in Onitsha.

    Five Nigerians were arrested the other day in the United Arab Emirates after smashing their way into a currency exchange shop, injuring the staff and carting away some cash. Their fate hangs in the balance.

    Back home in the North, Boko Haram seems to be yielding the headlines to herdsmen-farmers violence. By the way, where the hell is the loudmouth Shekau? He hasn’t released a video for a long time. Now, the new criminals have no name; they are simply lumped together as bandits.

    Why are they killing in Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara, where the Federal Government has just banned mining? Is it all economic? Where are the guns coming from? Who exactly are these gangsters? Are they more powerful than the government? Why has it taken this long – and many lives of innocent Nigerians, including women and children – to think of reining in these murderers?

    Defence Minister Gen Mansur Dan-Ali has accused traditional rulers of aiding the criminals, leaking information on security moves to curtail them. He should do more. Any monarch who fuels the bloodshed does not deserve any respect. He should be seized like a common criminal and brought before the law.

    Our rich men have fled the Kaduna-Abuja highway for fear of being kidnapped. Train ride is it now. Kajuru, Kaduna State residents are crying for safety. Cultists are striking in Rivers State. Kidnappers have just let go of the Lagos Fire chief and others.

    The government should go after the big masqueraders behind these evil ventures. This should be part of the “tough decisions” President Muhammadu Buhari should take. Now.

    Coping with the heat wave

    The full effects of the prevailing heat wave are here. Sleepless and sweltering nights. Dry fields stripped of their seductive lush greenery. Dusty streets. Humming air conditioners shattering the peace of the workplace. Medical experts are warning of the effects on our health. Dermatologists are having fun, their clientele rising by the day.

    Trust Nigerians. Some are considering taking up insurance covers for their glittering skin. Others are checking the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to see if it promised to install air conditioners on our streets. Could the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have turned the table if it had promised this?

    The scorching sun emits the heat that has turned our towns and cities into huge cauldrons. We are all sweating like bakers retrieving hot loaves of bread from the oven, with its burning charcoal. Young women are going about in bum shorts. Environmentalists are saying these are some of the effects of the global warming they have been warning against, asking the world to plant more trees.

    And this on the social media: “We sincerely apologise for the intense heat all over the world. This is due to the maintenance  going on in hell fire. The maintenance is imperative to accommodate more Nigerian politicians when the world eventually ends. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused. Signed. Angel Gabriel.”