The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • January blues

    YEAR 2018 passed away early on Tuesday, yielding way to 2019. With the coming of the New Year, came the well-known greetings of ”Happy New Year” and ”Prosperous New Year” and in this age of social media, we saw other ingenious ways that people wished their loved ones well. Of course, every new year begins with January and so we are in the month of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, from which it derived its name.

    January is a tough month, especially for workers and parents. It is tough because of some reasons peculiar to this category of people. To workers, it is a long month because they would have collected and perhaps, spent their December salary long before Christmas. So, trying to cope in January becomes tough because of the expenses they would have incurred on the Yuletide festivities.

    Before the tenth of the month, many would have gone broke and may resort to seeking financial help from friends and family members who are well off. In most cases, these people also have their own challenges and may not be of immediate help. It is not strange to see these workers wearing long faces so early in the month. Ask them what the trouble is and they will say: ”my brother ground no level. I need money badly”

    Virtually, everybody ”needs money badly” as soon as the noise of the New Year celebrations dies down. If you are a tenant, your case may even be worse as you might have been served notice of a rent increase in the New Year, with a deadline for payment. As you are struggling to pay your rent,  you are also struggling to attend to other issues, especially school fees. Where the money to serve these two needs will come from, you do not know. But you are so sure that God will provide; so with a wry smile on your face, you soldier on. Man no go die like this, you mutter under your breath.

    But deep down inside, you are worried. You do not want your worry to show in order not to alarm your wife and kids. They know all the same that something is amiss because whenever they ask for money, you flare up. As fathers, the man in us will never allow us to admit to our families that we are cash strapped; that we may need to manage until something comes up or our company decides to throw us a lifeline – in form of a bonus – just like the bailout by the Federal Government to states.

    When the lifeline is not forthcoming, we become agitated. We are somehow lucky that we were not confronted with the usual December/January fuel crisis. We rode the storm this season, thanks to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which did all it could to prevent that perennial problem. One seasonal crisis – workers’ strike –  which may not be averted, is staring us in the face. It has to do with the minimum wage, an issue which should have been sorted out long ago, if we had followed the wage law strictly.

    The N18,000 minimum wage came into being in 2011, following the approval of the National Assembly. By law, the wage is to be reviewed every five years. The review should have been done in 2016. This is 2019 and the least paid worker is still earning N18,000 monthly despite the prevailing harsh economic condition. Even not all the states are paying the N18,000, though some are paying higher than that. In the past seven months, labour has been agitating for higher pay for workers.

    Before 2018 ended,  the Ama Pepple-led tripartite committee proposed N30,000 as the minimum wage. Although labour’s demand was higher than that, it accepted the amount in its words ”in the interest of peace”. But the governors kicked. They said they could not pay N30,000, asking labour to accept N22,500. Last December in Lagos, labour warned that it would call out workers on strike if by January the issue was not resolved. It reiterated its strike threat on December 31.

    At a briefing in Lagos, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) General Secretary Peter Ozo-Eson urged workers to prepare for a prolonged strike that will start on January 8. Labour, he insisted, is against the setting up of a technical committee after the Pepple panel had submitted its report to President Muhammadu Buhari. What the President should do is to send a bill to the National Assembly for the passage of the proposed N30,000 minimum wage into law, NLC said.

    The governors do not see any justification for labour’s stand. In a swift reaction, the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) described as unpatriotic labour’s insistence on N30,000, saying it is an attempt to hold the President to ransom. The governors said they would have loved to pay N30, 000, but lacked the wherewithal to do so. They said it was not true that they were merely refusing to pay. ”Times are hard and because of the financial constraints and other limitations, many states cannot afford it, for now”, they claimed.

    They insisted that they could only pay N22,500, adding that they made this known to the Pepple panel.  The Pepple panel, it seems, did not see reason in their submission as it recommended N30,000 to the President. For the panel to have arrived at that amount, it means that it would have taken some factors into consideration, among which will be the states’ ability to pay. Do the governors think that labour will now accept anything less than the panel’s recommendation?

    It is true that ”times are hard” as the governors said, but there are loopholes in government, which must be plugged in order to improve workers’ welfare. The goose that lays the golden egg should not continue to suffer while those who come to office once in four years just lap up everything. If the governors cut their coats according to their materials the nation will not be in this dilemma. What is N22,500 minimum wage or even the N30,000 that labour has settled for in these ”hard times”, going by their own words?

    Workers deserve more than this and the governors know that too. They are just hiding under what they called ”hard times” to deny workers what they truly deserve. This monkey dey work, baboon dey chop mentality cannot continue. The earlier their excellencies know this, the better for all.

  • And the winners are…

    A NEW year is here.

    now that the last of the revellers are finding their way back home, the itinerant drummers are calling it a day for their recession to the countryside and businesses are struggling to overcome the hangover of the Yuletide, it is fit and proper to pay tribute to our deserving compatriots.

    In other words, dear reader, it is time again for the yearly ritual in which  “Editorial Notebook” honours all those whose actions and inactions one way or the other affected our national life in the past year, lest they feel ignored and disenchanted from making more sacrifice in the new year.

    Where do we start? Politics, of course. Politics and politicians have been dictating the pace and face of our national life.

    Who then is our Politician of the Year?

    Not Dr Kayode Fayemi, who made a dramatic return to the Government House after winning an election many thought would be tough. Nor testy Ogun State Governor Ibikunle Amosun, who led his supporters to another party – can you recall the name? – in a desperate bid to install his successor.

    Nor is it Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom who dumped the ruling APC for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the heat of the killings blamed on cattle herders. The bloodshed seems to have subsided since His Excellency quit the APC and found himself in the same camp as his opponent and former Governor Gabriel Suswam.

    Nor is it Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje who has held his head high and his political family firmly even after being accused of taking bribes.

    Our Politician of the Year swore to stay off politics. He supervised the shredding of his party card and declared himself a statesman. Then something snapped. He began a surreptitious move to rally his troops, many of who were described as discredited and spent. He wrote a memo to Buhari, lashing the administration for what he saw as its weaknesses. He formed a group that morphed into others with the aim of picking a candidate who will wrest the presidency from President Muhammadu Buhari. He went from city to city and town to town. His message was the same – Buhari must go in 2019. Yet he insisted that he is a statesman.

    And many were saying: “Yes, you are a man, but a statesman? Doubtful. You are a man desperate to be the State, appointing kings and reigning for them. No; you      won’t.”

    As the world was trying to make sense of his peregrination around the country and overseas, he suddenly announced a truce with his former deputy who he had condemned in the most vituperative language in his memoirs. The public was stunned as he sang Atiku Abubakar’s praise.  They called him names.

    For standing firm, despite the knocks, ladies and gentlemen, former President Olusegun Obasanjo is our Politician of the Year.

    Every time the President visits his physicians in Britain, he draws so much attention. Rumours lead to rancour. A former governor once swore that Buhari was dying and would not return. His last trip attracted the worst backlash. Fugitive Independent People of Biafra(IPOB) chief Nnamdi Kanu announced that Buhari was dead and a certain  Jubril or Jibril or Jubrin – pick your choice – from Sudan was running the show.

    Many, including otherwise attentive people, bought the tale and went to town with the Buhari Double story. In fact, Buhari had to tell the world that he is indeed Buhari from Daura and not Jubrin from Sudan before the matter began to fizzle. But, dear reader, Buhari is not our Patient of the Year.

    To whom honour is due, honour must be given. Step forward Mr Ayodele Fayose, former governor of Ekiti State.

    The way he fought the July 14, last year governorship election, it wouldn’t have been out of place to think that his name was on the ballot. Fayose threw in everything he had. On the eve of the poll, he was asked to shelve a major rally so as to prevent a clash as another was being organised by the other party in the same town. His Excellency would not be intimidated. He insisted on holding the rally. The police stood their ground; no rally.

    The public watched with trepidation the events in Ekiti. As the rally got underway, huge plumes of teargas went up to darken the sky around the Government House. Fayose was televised being wheeled into the theatre, surrounded by anxious medical personnel. He had been hit, not by bullets, but the teargas which, strangely, had no effect on others who were with him.

    A few minutes later, His Excellency appeared at the rally, his right hand heavily bandaged and slung on his broken neck, stabilised by a brace that was won upside down – Ekiti doctors swore they could do better. He was crying like a hungry baby.

    “I am in pains. I am in severe pains. But I will endure this pain because of you. All I ask of you is to go out and vote for my candidate, Eleka, I am going back to the clinic now,” Fayose said in a shaky voice. He was drenched in tears. It was a moving spectacle. Many, Overwhelmed by emotion, also began to sob. And the rally turned into a scene of mass sobbing.

    Confronted by reporters on his way out of the rally, Fayose sobbed: “Fly me abroad. Fly me abroad.  If anything should happen to me, the Inspector General of Police should be held responsible.”

    Against all expectations of his traducers, Fayose was on his feet the next day. Till date, experts still acclaim it as the fastest recovery ever from such a near-death situation. Who then should be Patient of the Year?

    Choosing the Governor of the Year was contentious, considering how well members of this elite group performed.  Governor Abdulaziz Yari was fighting to choose his successor when suddenly the Zamfara killings started. Apparently overwhelmed by the bloody situation, he threw up his arms in capitulation and joined the call for a state of emergency. Instead of praising his courage, his opponents lambasted him for, according to them, not exhausting all democratic avenues of resolving the matter.

    Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha has been fighting to install his in-law as his successor. APC chair Adams Oshiomhole insisted that Okorocha could not decree that, adding that His Excellency was creating a dynasty. His proof: Okorocha’s daughter is a commissioner, his father in-law holds a Federal appointment, his son-in-law is Chief of Staff and more.

    The governor replied with a list of Oshimhole’s relations who got appointments when he was the governor of Edo State. Okorocha’s candidate has since moved to another party to realise his ambition.

    Akwa Ibom’s acclaimed serenity was violated the other day when five lawmakers sat to, as the story went, impeach the Speaker of the House. What nonsense, His Excellency Udom Emmanuel must have thought. He stormed the place and flushed out the fellows. Another governor would have reported the matter to the police and waited patiently at the Government House for peace to be restored. Or ordered a probe into the immediate and remote causes of the problem, with a 20-member panel of persons of unblemished character and headed by retired Judge working round the clock to meet a seven-day deadline. Or would have just kept quiet, hiding under the principle of the separation of powers. Not Emmanuel.

    Since Nasir El-Rufai brought a novelty to governance, others have been struggling to understudy him. He had a disagreement with some politicians, including Senators Shehu Sani and Suleiman Hunkuyi.  All attempts to resolve the matter failed. At dawn when many were still snoring in bed, El-Rufai led a squad to Hunkuyi’s home. By the time residents realised that a VIP was in the neighborhood,  a bulldozer had levelled the property, which will now be for public use. Ever since, there has been peace in Kaduna.

    For this novelty, El-Rufai has snatched away the Governor of the Year.

    Senator Sani, aforementioned, would have easily been Lawmaker of the year for divulging one of the world’s best kept secrets – the emoluments of our senators. They earn N13.5m, he said, pleading that his conscience could no longer take it. If he had gone all the way to state the salary of a senator, he perhaps would have got the trophy. He did not.

    Who then does the cap fit? Senator Ademola Adeleke? His academic credentials were incredulous. But what he lacked in paper qualification and business acumen and oratory and key leadership skills he made up for by his remarkable dancing skills. He mesmerised the electorate, many of who voted for him during the Osun governorship election. He would have without doubt been the best dancer-governor in the land. But fate, that unseen hand in human affairs, supervened. Adeleke lost the election. He says he was robbed. He is now shuttling between the tribunal where is battling to have the verdict reversed, and the law court where his integrity is under attack for alleged criminal conspiracy in an examination “fraud”.

    Lawmaker of the Year. As we speak, the distinguished Senator Dino Meleye’s home is under siege by the police who are asking him to surrender. They need to question the lawmaker in the investigation of an  alleged homicide and other ancillary matters.

    Dino, rude and crude – according to his critics – has in and out of the chamber shown the capacity of an average lawmaker for sensational mischief. Psychologists, I am told, are studying the relationship between the thought process of a motor park tout and a lawmaker – all because of Dino’s eccentricities.

    He once spent 24 hours on a tree to escape being kidnapped; he has escaped many assassinations; and, he says, the police are planning to inject him with a lethal drug. He often enlivens the system with his occasional videos.

    For his drama, Dino is Lawmaker of the Year.

    Meanwhile, here is wishing all the fans of this column a Happy New Year.

     

  • Badeh: Even a villain has right to life

    Fortunately, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh was not a villain. He was never so pronounced by the courts. When last week he died a cheap death, a common feature of contemporary Nigeria, he died a victim of our dysfunctional system that couldneither protect him nor our children routinely carted away like sheep from their schools by insurgents, farmers killed or driven away from their farms by suspected migrating herdsmen, travellers kidnapped for rituals or ransoms, and of course thousands who die a slowdeath following consumption of fake drugs. Our cities and villages are taking the form of Hobbesian society where life is nasty, cheap and short.

    With Badeh’s death,we areall losers, starting with a nation that invested heavily in sending him to the best military academies across the world; the government andits security apparatus who on account of their turf wars sealed Badeh’s fate by leaving him at the mercy of those he was said to have offended and of course the judiciary which, by its penchant to resort to technicalities instead of substance,made sure that for Badeh, justice delayed was justice denied.

    Alex SabunduBadeh was a four-star flag officer of the Nigerian Air force. Before he was killed on December 18, 2018, he had served as the 18th Chief of Air Staff and the 15th Chief of Defence Staff of the armed forces of Nigeria. He did hisundergraduate pilot training at Vance Air Force Base of the United States Air Force. He passed through the Armed Forces Command and Staff as well as the National War College. Besides a M.Sc. degree in Strategic Studies from the University of Ibadan, he also attended Safety International Institute at Teterboro in New York for a course in simulator recurrence,all at taxpayers’ expense. He laterserved asthe Director National Military Strategy at the National Defence College, Director of Research and Chief of Policy Plans, Nigeria Air Force Headquarters. In other climes, Badeh would have remained an asset to the armed forces even in retirement.

    Badeh was alleged to have committed the most heinous sin in the military – betraying his foot soldiers,(a General’s greatest assets)whose welfare and safety he was alleged to have traded for personal gains.He allegedly diverted about N3.9b, funds meant for procurement of arms and for the welfare of his soldiers towards procuring houses for himself and his children.

    According to EFCC,parts of the funds was allegedly used to buy mansion at No 6 Ogun River Crescent, Maitama worth N1.1 billion; shopping plaza at Plot 1386 Oda Crescent, Cadastral Zone A, Wuse 11, Abuja worth N1.6bn; set of duplexes in Wuse 11 for his children, Alex Badeh Jnr and Kam Badeh worth N260m and N330m respectively. EFCC also alleged about N150m was paid to Platinum Universal Projects for the renovation and furnishing of Badeh Jnr’s house. Badeh’s N150m personal house in Yola, Adamawa State was also said to have come from the diverted fund.

    And in court, the Director of Finance and Account of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Air Commodore AliyuYishau (retd.) Yishau revealed how the former Chief of Defence Staff converted N558 million from funds meant for the NAF into dollars for his personal use.The witness also narrated how he  used dollar equivalent of the sum of N1.4billion removed from the accounts of the Nigerian Air Force to purchase a mansion situated at No. 6, Ogun River Street, Off Danube Street, Maitama, Abuja

    Then Anna Awe Akuson, another witness in the N3.9billion fraud trial as far back as Wednesday, February 28, 2018 told Justice OkonAbang of the Federal High Court sitting in Maitama, Abuja how a search conducted on a property allegedly belonging to Alex Badeh, the defendant led to the recovery of $1million suspected to be proceeds of illicit deals.

    But the lawyers slowed down Badeh’s trial using one technical issue after the other until Justice OkonAbang was forced to orderBadeh to open his defence on January 16 and 17. That for Badeh turned out a bridge too far to cross.

    In the courts and in the courts of public opinion, the stakes could not have been higher for Badeh especially when the sufferings of thousands of those who were driven from their homes in the 19 LGAs taken over by Boko Haram insurgents and hundreds of our ill-equipped soldiers who died on the battle field were attributed toBadeh’srecklessness. Badeh appeared to have assaulted sensibilities of both civilians and soldiers.

    But how we or  President Buhari’s round pegs in square holes in the police, defence and internal affairs ministries where  inflammatoryrhetoricare often substituted for deep  thinking ,feel does not attract death penalty. As an accused, Badeh had the right to life. It is for this reason many believe it was too much a coincidence that the four soldiers detailed to protect Badeh were said to be some kilometres away from where an Air Chief Marshall was killed like a chicken.

    But the Nigerian police whose overzealous IG thinksit is his responsibility to pursue perceived enemies of thepresident seems to have started on a wrong footing by swallowing hook and line, the claim by Rabione of the suspects, that they killed Badeh because of “information that Badeh was in possession of a huge sum of money which he wanted to use in purchasing a parcel of land in Nasarawa State”.

    According to Rabi, after the killing “we opened the car and found a bag of money and went with it. When they opened the bag, the money was beyond what I had ever seen before”.For now, Rabi and the police seem to have agreed to keep the figures or where recovered funds are warehoused secret.

    There are more unanswered questions. IfBadeh was killed in the evening between Koso and Kugwaru communitieson December 18, 2018 while returning from his farm, what would he still be doing with humongous amount he was supposed to have used to buy land?

    Worse, Badeh’s family has dismissed Rabi and the police narrative as a subterfuge to cover the tracks of Badeh’sreal killers. They insisted Badeh, whose salary and pensions account had been frozen and who on account of this could not meet his financial obligations to his domestic staff, his farm workers and the Abuja Environmental Protection Board that had refused to clear huge refuse dump at his house in Abuja, couldn’t have been carrying huge sums of money as at the time he was killed.

    With the confiscation of most of Badeh and his sons’ properties regarded as proceeds of fraud by EFCC, the question that should ordinarily interest the police is who stands to gain from Badeh’s death? Unfortunately, the over enthusiasm of the police to carry out the now stalled parade of two of Badeh’s suspected assailants while the rest are still at large seems to have betrayed their mind-set.

    For critics of President Buhari’s security apparatus, the pursuit of Rabi’s narrative alone amount to chasing shadows. Nigerians look up to the president on whose desk the buck stops to ensure Badeh’s killing does not follow the pattern of other unresolved high profile killings in the country.

     

  • Prodigals’ anthem

    This year as all others, we pretended to have answers to everything. Did we? This year, we continued to spit words and eat them, like the dog that waddles back to gobble its vomit.

    This year, we quoted Nietzsche, Plato, Disreali among others to garnish our columns while we did all we could, to silence true-born dissent on our news pages and news networks, lest we incur the ire of irate benefactors.

    This is the year we ennobled the thieving statesman and denied the patriot the plaudits we save for noble compatriots. This is the year we celebrated underachievers as the best of overachievers.

    This year, we celebrated the vanities of dim-witted celebrities on front-pages of our national newspapers.

    Here goes the year we exhausted newsprint and priceless airtime to glamourise the shenanigans of “society bigwigs and small wigs” although we cannot tell and still cannot tell, the simplest manifestations of our news practice, on say, the vendor who markets the newspaper or the child-labourer to whom Universal Basic Education (UBE) remains an everlasting fantasy.

    This is the year we feted the northern mafia, eastern cabal, western gerontocracy, and south-south uprising, as usual, even as they undermined our collective dreams and everything that nationhood and ambition had ever bestowed us.

    Beyond our elegant words and brazen manifestations of high character, our practice is modelled after some greedy few’s cartography of citizenship, rather than by any internal dynamic of allegiances.

    Hence our misinterpretation of the social contract between the Fourth Estate and every other estate charged with the administration and supervision of our nation-state.

    Thus this year as all others, we hid behind interviews, ‘big interviews,’ to abdicate our responsibilities to the Nigerian public. This is the year we taught the public to feast and digest perversion because we believe it’s what they love to do best; because we know if we treat them to more depravity, they would become more willing participants, and we would get more adverts and keep smiling to the banks.

    This year as all others, we turned a blind eye and conveniently lost our voice as creatures running the three arms of government squandered public fund to feed their gluttony.

    This year, we watched unperturbed as most of our colleagues ennobled and defended with their lives, the rights of the ruling class to pilfer our chests and rob us silly because leaders of men like them deserve to eat and dwell like no ordinary man.

    This year, the ruling class afflicted our lives with ineptitude and savagery. In response, we cried ourselves hoarse, twisting logic and lip service for and against our favourite public officer. Eventually, we lost our voices to bigotry and confusion.

    This is the year in which our brothers in the north-east tirelessly blew to death, our mothers and daughters, sons and fathers, in the market place, schools, on the playground, in our bedrooms and houses of worship in the name of politics and religion.

    This is the year in which our brothers in the south-east determinedly kidnapped our wives and daughters, mothers and fathers, sons and heirs apparent, for a ransom, in pursuit of unearned affluence.

    This is the year in which our brothers in the southwest habitually mortgaged our future on the altar of politics, personal and sectarian greed.

    This year as all others, we refused to dissect these maladies, in the interest of our nation and thus helped the world to understand why we are regarded as the inheritors in whose hands the heritage dies and everything fails.

    This year, we failed to actualise press freedom because it was socio-politically incorrect to do so. We failed to acknowledge that our survival or death as a nation is undeniably entwined with the tenor of practice and citizenship of the Nigerian press.

    We are our worst enemies. In spite of everything, we choose to play god. That is why “dogs don’t eat dogs” in our Fourth Estate although it’s okay if we choose to eat the entrails of a few ordinary Nigerians and almighty benefactors, like the unfortunate adulterer caught pants down, even as we ignore the thieving bankers stealing from wretched folk to enrich Nigeria’s richest billionaires.

    I hope we find the courage to report; “The Rot in the Media.” I hope we find the courage to report that for every kobo looted by government, in our public and private sectors, the press gets to have its share however meager it is. Dateline: media parleys, press conferences and breakfasts with governors.

    Were we humane enough to improve our welfare and conditions of service, wouldn’t the journalist be dignified and our practice nobler?

    It’s about time we asked: “Who is a journalist?” and aspire to an untainted definition of it. Shall we redefine, in 2019, what level of knowledge, qualification and professionalism is expected of a journalist?

    Shall we, from 2019 henceforth, refuse to humour society that treats us as disposable pawns in its grand scheme of themes? Come 2019, shall we continue to service the depravity of folk for whom our pens write maladies at the expense of melodies impoverished folk would die to have us write about, that they might fare better?

    Will 2019 mutate like today and our immediate past? Shall we remain intellectual hit men of every hoodlum with deep pocket? Shall we become cliff-hangers to take the portrait of every celebrity looter and simpleton with a promising smile?

    Shall we remain the media managers that pay poorly even as we label expatriate firms, slave-drivers?

    Next year, will the masses stare at our cover pages resignedly, knowing they would neither feel nor hear, the infinitesimal clangour of freed hope, because we are, as usual, an aberration of their desperate circumstances?

    Shall we continue to speak from both sides of the mouth? Shall we continue to eat like idiots at the feast of the one who calls us “idiot?”

  • As 2018 ends in a whimper

    Merry Christmas to all my readers and  wishing you all happy 2019 .

    Many comments have been made and written about the disgraced Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, professor who is now facing the possibility of spending time in jail unless he appeals successfully against his sentence. This is the time of Christmas and goodwill towards all men. Instead of laughing at the fallen professor, I want to plead that we remember him and his family in our prayers. In advanced countries of the world, the man would have been taken for psychiatric assessment. It just does not make rational sense for such a highly educated man and an ordained priest of the Anglican Communion to demand sex from his female student and to insist he must have sex with her five times before fair assessment of her examination papers. Sexual harassment is not unique to Obafemi Awolowo  University or Nigeria. It is a global problem and phenomenon. This is why universities all over the world have in their acts or statutes, processes and punishment to deal with what is usually described as “moral turpitude”. University teachers and administrators found guilty are usually sent down and fired without financial entitlements no matter how many years they would have served the institutions. No one so dismissed would find employment in the academic sector anywhere unless such a person emigrates. So it is a major life-threatening stricture and punishment and any rational and sane person would try to avoid it .

    In spite of this, people still engage in such shenanigans. This is human because dangers sometimes attract foolish people to do what does not make sense and what is to most of us outrageous behavior.

    Now to the Ife professor whose offense really is that he marked down a lady’s papers with the hope he could lure her to bed for change of marks. So he was guilty of intent to commit “moral turpitude”. He was dealt with according to the laws of the university as approved by parliament in 1961.

    My worry is that he was then taken to court and subjected to what amounts to double jeopardy. In sentencing him, the woman judge became emotional and said she was using the professor as “scape goat” in a situation of rampant harassment of “our daughters”. Is using a person as scapegoat permissible in law? Is there any jurisprudence to back such an emotional outburst?

    My  Christian religion says I should love even those who are unlovable. The plight of this man  makes me so sad that I find his action so irrational not only as a professor but as an ordained preacher of the Anglican Communion that rather than sending  him to prison, he should be made to seek medical attention. From my discreet research, I am told his department knew about his problem of overexcited libido even before the case under discussion. People reading this piece will ask about the wound inflicted on the student. All I can say is that this calls for restitution. I spent virtually all my adult life in the university system. Students have recourse to asking for their papers to be remarked if they are not satisfied. Students do make use of this opportunity when they have reasons to feel they have not been properly assessed. A student can be victimized not only on sexual grounds but even for religious, political or ethnic reasons.

    In some universities in Nigeria today, there is the practice of two examiners per course. This needs to be made the standard norm. We would not extirpate sexual harassment in our life and not just in universities but everywhere including in the judiciary, in government, the legislature and in private and public sectors of our country. The solution is not cruel and unusual punishment. Prevention is also better than cure. We can devise a system that makes it impossible or at least difficult for students to be victimized for any reason.

    Now to the serious problem of acceptable manners of behavior by our politicians. In the particular case of heckling our president at the recent budget presentation, I found the situation most unbecoming. The president is not just a person, he is the embodiment of our country. Whenever he goes he is “Nigeria” and his principal representatives abroad are also so designated. If we do not respect the person and office of the president, we belittle ourselves in the eyes of the world.

    When people give examples of heckling the presidents in other countries as a justification for their bad manners, they need to know that institutions in those countries are so well-established that they can take some buffeting without serious damage to them. But in our  inchoate fragile institutions, we play with the devil if we do not carefully treat them with the consideration and respect they deserve. We know about the immunity parliamentarians enjoy for any action in parliament. But has it occurred to these unruly people in parliament that the mob could invade the parliament if parliamentarians turn their chamber into a house of riot? We need to give example of good manners and decorum to the not-too-highly educated members of the society who look to their leaders  as the standard of  behavior and comportment.

    In this regard, we must deprecate the regular incendiary diatribes coming from political opponents in this pre-election season. The wild exaggerations of government misdeeds coming particularly from the PDP’s spokesman, Kola Ologbodiyan should be stopped. It is obvious to intelligent people that his claims of looting of trillions by people in the present government is mere juvenile vituperation lacking in merit. Targeting the vice president and tarring him with the brush of corruption is mere politics without fact. Those of us who know the vice president just laugh when we read or hear about Ologbodiyan’s accusation of corruption of members of this government in a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If politics of  throwing mud at opponents is what we can indulge in, then we should spare the public the ugly fighting that seems to characterize our present political discourse. In this regard, we will all lose if we don’t stop the religious campaign and denigration of people who belong to different faith. Our country has enough problems and what we need are prayers not religious war.

    We are now in the dry season and one hopes that the various contractors handling government projects on the roads, railways, hydro-electricity and other areas of much needed infrastructure will hasten the rate of their work so that this country can go back to where we were in the 1970s in terms of infrastructure. The case of the ports in Lagos, both Apapa and Tin Can, calls for mention. The approach roads  to these ports constitute a cog in our economic development. For how long will suffering humanity wait in Oshodi and Apapa before something breaks?

    There may have been some noticeable improvement in power supply but it is too fitful and far between. The practice of load-shedding is just too primitive to be acceptable. Within 27 months, Siemens AG of Germany delivered to Egypt 14000 megawatts of electricity. The same Siemens has been in Nigeria for donkey years but because of corruption and lack of focus, we are still celebrating 4000 megawatts of electricity yet our country is vastly richer than Egypt but we have nothing to show for our so-called status as the biggest economy in Africa.

    Finally, we are shedding too much blood in this country. The number of people killed on our bad roads or by kidnappers, cattle herders and armed robbers have inured us to the enormity of the breakdown of law and order in our country. The killing of General Muhammed Alkali on the Jos Plateau and assassination of Air Vice Marshall Alex Badeh has brought home to us the gravity of our situation. If high profile military people are not safe who is safe? The annual migration of people home to their towns and villages at this time of the year has for years stopped because of fear of being killed on our bad roads or by marauding robbers, assassins and cattle herders and highway brigands. When will peace like a river flow in our country again? Without peace, there can be no development, employment and the civilized arts. Our governments have full plates before them. They have jobs to do. They need our prayers and our vigilance which are the price of liberty.

  • Nigeria in 2019

    CERTAIN things happened in 2018 which even the seers did not foresee. We do not blame them though because a man can only see as far as God allows him. It is only what God reveals to man that he can see. If God does not reveal it, forget it, no matter how gifted a prophet may be, he will see nothing.

    Nothing buttresses this submission better than the story of the  Shunammite woman and his son in the Bible. She got the boy after a long wait on the Lord following the intercession of Prophet Elisha. Then, the boy died. The mother virtually ran amok. How will I lose my child which I bore after years of barrenness? She wondered and sought out the man of God for solution.

    When Elisha saw her afar off, he ordered his servant to meet her and ask her if all was well. “It is well”, she said, to every question she was asked. When she poured her heart out to Elisha, he knew immediately that something was amiss. As his servant tried to shoo away the woman, who had by then, fallen at his feet, Elisha said candidly: “Let her alone; for her soul is vexed within her: and the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me”.

    None of our prophets saw the February 19, 2018 abduction of the Dapchi schoolgirls, some four years after the kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls. If anyone had predicted that another set of schoolgirls would be kidnapped in such manner after the 2014 Chibok incident many of us would have labelled such a person a fake prophet.

    Leah Sharibu, this paper’s Person of the Year for 2018, daily reminds us of the Dapchi saga, which we should have put behind us by now, if she had been released along with her mates who were let go on March 21. She is still being detained because she held on to her faith. Leah refused to renounce Christianity not because she hates freedom, but because she loves Christ with all her soul. May God touch the hearts of her captors and let her go in 2019.

    Two thousand and nineteen is a year of great expectations for us as a nation. It is an election year and the parties and their candidates have been selling their programmes to the people. The candidates are as many as the parties. The electoral umpire has told us that 79 candidates would contest the election. Of the lot, two stand out and they are President Muhammadu Buhari of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    We can liken what is unravelling right before our eyes to what has since evolved in the United States (US) which presidential system of government we adopted. In the US, there are many parties, but you hardly hear about them. Before, during and after elections, the world only gets to hear about the Republican (the Grand Old Party, GOP) and the Democratic Party. These parties have dominated the scene for ages. Nigeria seems to be heading that way. The other candidates have been doing all they can to shift attention from Buhari and Atiku, but they seem not to be succeeding.

    Everywhere you turn, talks centre on these two. Will Nigerians return Buhari or will they vote Atiku in 2019? Those in support of Buhari point at his integrity, the attribute which got him into power in 2015, and his ongoing war against corruption which some say is selective. Indeed, Buhari is a good man, but having been in power for over three years now, the question is how has he fared? Many voters may not look at his integrity but at his achievements in deciding whether to return him or not.

    As for Atiku, hmmmmm! He has been tarred by the corruption brush. Even his number one supporter today and former boss Chief Olusegun Obasanjo did not see anything good in him until now. But it took a split with President Buhari for former President Obasanjo to see the good in Atiku. Is it not too late in the day for that? If Atiku is that good why didn’t he back the former number two citizen to succeed him in 2007? Isn’t it this same Atiku that Obasanjo accused of selling public enterprises to himself under the guise of privatisation in his book ‘’My Watch’’? What happened to his claim that Atiku’s source of wealth is suspicious.

    But fortunately for Atiku, the government says there is no evidence to nail him. How lucky can a much vilified man be. Despite he and Buhari not being the most outstanding of all the candidates, the focus continues to be on them because of the strength of their parties, which will never give their tickets to any of the other contestants no matter what, except the unthinkable happens.

    For the Lagos State governorship election, it is going to be Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu (BOS) of the APC all the way. Jimi Agbaje of the PDP does not stand a chance against him. Agbaje has said he is running because his party could not get a younger candidate. Can that be true? So, of all the youngsters in the party, none is good enough to be governor? That’s hard to believe. What this shows is that Agbaje is a reluctant candidate; he is not ready for the arduous task of managing the burgeoning Smart City.

    Our economy is still a source of worry. With the price of oil tumbling, the government has to buckle up to ensure that it gets money from other sources for the provision of infrastructure. The 2019 budget is hinged on a $60 per barrel of oil benchmark. In the past few months, we have seen the price shoot up to $80 per barrel and from that height fall to its current $53.82, which is lower than the budget benchmark. If it continues on the downward trend, implementing the budget may be a huge problem. Will oil price go up again?

    Yes, it will, but we should not continue to rely on a commodity which topsy-turvy nature can derail any well laid plan. No matter how good our budget may be on paper, as long as we do not have control over the price of oil, which is our major revenue earner, we will continue to hold our breath whenever the price crashes. When the price goes up, let’s be wise and save for the rainy day and not behave like the prodigal son. In the meantime, let us pursue the diversification of our economy with vigour.

    Better days lie ahead. But let us pray that we do not start 2019 with a workers’ strike over minimum wage. Happy New Year in advance.

  • 2023: In defence of Fashola and Osinbajo

    Students of Nigerian political history concluded a long time ago that our crisis of nationhood, starting from the first republic, can be located within Nigeria’s dominant ethnic groups, their regionally-based political parties and their ethnic irredentist political leaders. Fifty-two years after the collapse of that republic as a result of the struggle by each of the dominant group to impose her values on the nation, not much has changed,

    The Yoruba, according to Professor Banji Akintoye by culture and world outlook, are natural federalists. Their new emergent political elite organized themselves into Afenifere (those who want for others what they want for themselves). Their leader came up with what he called ‘path to Nigerian freedom’, as solution to instabilities associated with multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies.

    Ignoring the warning of the departing colonial masters that ethnic groups in Nigeria are at different levels of cultural development, they tried to impose their values on the rest of the country with disastrous consequences.  Those whose freedom they sought confirmed their status by fighting like slaves during the July 1966 vengeance coup, through the civil war (1967-70) and since the beginning of the fourth republic when on accounts of crumbs, forgot their forbears’ uncompleted war which recently resurfaced with vengeance with some of their leaders now threatening a belated rebellion.

    In 2003, after almost 50 years of Afenifere’s failed battle for restructuring using the same strategy, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his Afenifere Renewal Group became convinced a new approach was needed  but not until they had retired their war-weary  fathers. In 2015, the group displaced the Igbos from their natural position of playing second fiddle to Hausa-Fulani. Unfortunately, Buhari has not been able to deliver on his promise of restructuring perhaps because as a civil war hero, he sees any attempt at restructuring as a threat to the unity he fought for or as many others have argued, suffers from Fulani mindset. After almost four years in government, Tinubu’s younger colleagues – Fashola and Osinbajo – are saying if the country is to be restructured for sustainable development, it has to be done with those who have faith in a restructured Nigeria occupying the driver’s seat.

    And their argument is unassailable. Democracy is nothing more than a process for winning election in order to acquire power. The Yoruba was a factor in Buhari’s success in 2015 after his three earlier failures, two of which his Igbo vice presidential candidates abandoned him in the courts to take appointments from the victorious party. They are now trying to impress it on their people that 2023 is for Yoruba to pick if they aid Buhari to win again in 2019 since Igbo would most likely give their block vote to Atiku’s PDP as they did for Jonathan in 2015.

    But both have come under vicious attack. The first salvo came from Afenifere’s spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin who challenged Osinbajo to show what he has done for the Yoruba during his four years in office. Odumakin seems to forget that the Yoruba do not want anything but good governance and government policies that will allow them do things for themselves. It is also a disservice to the Yoruba people that pride themselves over the right of individual to call God by their preferred names, that Odumakin is introducing a religious dimension by accusing Osinbajo of doing nothing “When they killed the Yoruba evangelist of the Redeemed Christian Church of God under his nose in Abuja as vice-president”. Again, students of Nigerian politics know no one dictates to the Yoruba who won the June 12 battle without a shot, when to fight their wars.

    The spokesman for the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Uche Achi-Okpaga says that “the 2023 Yoruba presidency is a plot presumably well-hatched and efforts are being exerted to win it successfully as dramatised in the public pronouncements earlier by Fashola and now the bleeding utterances of Osinbajo”. That in itself is also not an illegitimate ambition in a participatory democracy.  But he introduced a new dimension by adding: “The Igbo are the descendants of King David, the man after God’s heart. Anything you do in Nigeria without the active cooperation and participation of the lgbo would always crumble as exemplified in the present administration of PMB. The Igbo are to Nigeria what Israel is to the world today”. That is scary. The Israelis are descendant of a rebellious group that killed Jesus, their illustrious son and the messiah for chiding them against rebelliousness. They are today international outlaws.

    But a journey through memory actually shows that these two dominant ethnic groups do not want a restructured Nigeria but a Nigeria which Awo likened to a fattened cow held down while being milked by a few powerful people.

    For the core northern political elite, the dream of planting the sword in the sea by their grandfather is alive. They also share Ahmadu Bello’s 1953 vision that there should be no boundary adjustment in Nigeria since the middle belt including Ilorin where they planted emirs is their grandfather’s conquered territories. The 1999 military supervised constitution seem to support such an illusion.

    Let us also examine the following historical facts:  Zik reneged on earlier agreement with Awo to make state creation a precondition for independence during the 1957 independence London conference and in 1959, settled for governor-general when he had an option to be prime minister. After the January 1966 coup, Nwabueze was credited with drafting Ironsi’s Unification Decree 34. In 1967, Ojukwu’s soldiers, led by Brigadier Banjo, overran Midwest and chose Albert Okonkwo as military administrator against Banjo’s choice of a Midwesterner. In his 1967 letter to Banjo, Ojukwu said “you will have nothing to do with the military administrator in the Mid-West territory during your sojourn there prior to your move to the West; on the liberation of the Yoruba land, you will be appointed as the military governor of that territory. During the period of Biafra’s troops’ presence in your territory, all political measures, statements or decrees shall be subject to the approval, in writing, by myself or on my authority. Should our troops arrive and liberate Lagos, the government of the Republic of Biafra reserves the right to appoint a military administrator for the territory. Such an administrator will remain in office until a merger of that territory with Yoruba land is affected by Biafra troops.”

    In 1979, Zik chose to become the beautiful bride to Shehu Shagari with Ojukwu the warlord returning from exile to consolidate Igbo position in Shagari government. In 1993, Igbo’s leading lights, including Nwabueze who drafted the interim contraption decree sealed the fate of MKO Abiola and his June 12 mandate while Ojukwu became Abacha’s envoy to Europe where he hilariously told western leaders that Abiola could not be president on the basis of his many wives. In1998, they teamed up with their traditional rivals, Hausa/Fulani to impose an Obasanjo’s government in which they played leading role.

    Even if the two dominant ethnic groups have not betrayed the struggle for a federal arrangement that satisfies the legitimate demand for justice and fairness by Nigerian federating units, the quest by Fashola and Osinbajo for the Yoruba to be in the driver’s seat come 2023 is a legitimate ambition in a participatory democracy where power is not acquired by swearing on a false sense of entitlement, but through astute scheming and bargaining among critical groups.

     

  • In the spirit of the season

    HUMANITY has once again risen to salute the arrival of The Saviour. The Prince of Peace brought so much hope, but the world remains hopeless. He brought salvation, but many are getting lost in a world that is wracked by hunger, disease, poverty and wars. So much misery in a blessed world.

    In many instances, the message of our Lord Jesus Christ has been turned upside down. Evangelism is clashing with materialism. A self-absorbed believer will easily forget the essence of Christmas – the humility of Christ’s birth, the salvation he brought, his selflessness, the sacrifice of his blood for the remission of our sins, the hope he represents and more.

    It is not all about the revelry and merrymaking. It is a time to spare a thought for our future, the essence of our being here, the poverty that has made many people lose their humanity, the wickedness of the wicked and the hope that “all this too shall pass”.

    Where were you on Christmas Day?

    I tried to reduce my sleep deficit, but it was difficult. The phones kept vibrating. Friends and relations were calling to wish me a merry Christmas. With the intrusion becoming unbearable, I quit sleeping and hit the road to have a feel of the city.

    Parks were packed full of people. Vehicular traffic was heavy but smooth. Movie theatres were jammed. Retailers were battling to cope with crowds. So were beaches and motor parks – many passengers were still struggling to travel out of Lagos for the Yuletide. Beer parlors and clubs had more revellers than usual. There were long queues of card holders waiting to use the cash machine.

    How do Nigerians finance all this despite the economic situation? Does it mean that the rich are being more compassionate, giving more than they used to?  Did our compatriots just resolve to defy the prevailing situation? In other words, how do we match the celebrations with the popular thinking that poverty keeps torturing the land?

    Well, the figures may not be looking good and many emergency economists may be sounding off, but the celebrations have made nonsense of the theory that we are dying of starvation.

    So what is going on? Politics, of course.

    The strategy in one camp, it seems, is to make the situation look so bad that the electorate will be impelled to just march on the Presidential Villa even before the February 16 election. But the legendary Nigerian spirit has, once again, triumphed – against all odds.

    This is a season of harvest for mobile telephone companies. Everyone carrying a telephone set is being forced to use it now. That means more money for the operators.

    The messages range from the very serious to the seriously funny and the utterly meaningless – depending on who is sending them. A friend sent me this yesterday: “My dear brothers and sisters, this is to inform you that I have just learnt from a usually reliable intelligence source that some disgruntled elements have concluded plans to publish in newspapers and social media that I will stop receiving gifts after Christmas. It is a lie from the devil and his boys. I will keep receiving gifts until I say no more. For those of you who are yet to send me gifts, hurry up so that this evil gang-up against me will not work. Merry Christmas.”

    And this, titled: “Very Important Announcement”:  “ Due to heavy traffic at the Onitsha/Asaba bridge-head, all the Southeast APC members coming home for the Christmas are hereby advised to use their Second Niger Bridge, the contract for which has been awarded and project completed on social media.”

    There is indeed nothing that Nigerians will not play politics with. Our leaders have been struggling to outdo one another in sending seasons greetings to Nigerians. The same boring and vacuous themes all the time. They talk about peace when most of them behave like motor park touts and the thugs they breed.

    Consider the behavior of our lawmakers the other day when the President was presenting the 2019 budget. He was heckled and booed and taunted. So bad was the situation that President Buhari remonstrated them, saying: “The world is watching.”

    Did they care? Of course, they didn’t.

    They talk about making sacrifices. Good. But the question is, should sacrifice be a one-way traffic? Our lawmakers are said to be feeding fat on the sweat of all for doing little or nothing. Their salary remains one of the world’s best kept secrets. Troubled by his conscience, Senator Shehu Sani once confessed that a senator carts home N13.5m as running cost (Are they running factories?) Imagine that in a country where many families struggle to have one meal a day. Workers are fighting to have N30,000 minimum  wage. And many kids are out of school.

    Can’t our lawmakers make some sacrifice by, first, divulging this long-kept secret and then slicing the huge pay?

    President Buhari , Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and All Progressives Congress (APC) Chair Adams Oshiomhole featured in  a short video, wishing Nigerians a merry Christmas. It was dramatic.

    The President, in his Christmas message, promised a level playing field for all in next year’s elections. This is not the first time he has spoken about a free and fair election. He has, according to him, directed the security agencies to ensure that the outcome of the election reflects the will of the people. “My word is my bond,” Buhari said.

    Buhari’s opponents have been crying that there are plans to rig the election. They allege that foreigners will be shipped in to vote and that APC is working with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rig the elections.

    Evidence? None, of course.

    They say APC is not campaigning because it plans to rig. They seem to be referring to those huge rallies with crowds of people many of who may not have the voter card. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has been going from one home to another, talking to ordinary Nigerians. He has been to many marketplaces, with the “TraderMoni”, which has been well received by many Nigerians.

    The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the scheme is vote buying. But APC supporters disagree. They recall that in the twilight of its reign the PDP in 2015 launched SURE-P for small businesses. The cash, they allege, went into the pockets of party chiefs.

    When our leaders admonish us to imbibe the spirit of this season, it will be fit and proper for them to also spare a thought for how they run our country. Those who are taunting the Buhari administration for not reviving the economy are the very people who ran it aground in the first place. Today they apologise for their rapacity that has defied any rational explanation. They were spending money in hard currency as if it was growing on trees. They neither saved nor spent wisely.

    Despite the pains of these times, it will be fine to remain hopeful. Nigeria has the potential to be great. We should examine critically the kind of people who are aspiring to lead us and make the right choices. That way, our hope will not be misplaced.

    All the best for an exciting Yuletide and a great year ahead.

     

    Dino and his would-be assassins

    Whenever Senator Dino Melaye opens his mouth wide –too wide sometimes – the sounds reverberate all over the country. Not because of his wit or wisdom; he is neither witty nor wise, many would argue. In fact, his opponents see him as a nitwit.

    Why? The disgruntled – sorry, an error there – the distinguished senator (so much anguish he has caused the good people of Kogi West) makes wild allegations. He once told the world that assassins were after him and he had to hide on a tree in the bush for an entire night – no food, no drink, no sleep and, of course, no talking, lest his assailants drag him down and deal him a fatal and final blow. The hilarity of it all did not stop the police from asking Dino to make some explanation. He refused to.

    Dino
    Hon Dino Melaye

    Now, he has alleged that the police plan to arrest him and inject him with a lethal substance to silence him permanently.

    Why will the police want to kill Dino? Is he the only lawmaker who has a case to answer on his conduct? What will the world gain in Dino’s death? Who will miss Dino?

    Jokes apart, many will miss the senator for his melodrama – he is always as excited as a kid who has just landed a bowl of ice cream – and for his comical interventions. But then, shouldn’t there a limit to an adult’s tomfoolery?

  • Vengeance finds everyone

    What could be wrong in wishing that the Nigerian ruling class experiences the catastrophe it inflicts on the citizenry via bad governance? Consider for instance, the sad case of a man who loses his wife and three children to a fatal road accident caused by bad road; knowing that his state governor had persistently ignored pleas that he repaired the badly cratered road, could it be wrong for the bereaved to pray, that our Heavenly Creator, rewards the governor with similar tragedy?

    Would it be wrong to pray that divinely inspired vengeance, scorn all religious, anti-retributive rites by the governor, and wreak greater havoc in his life?

    How about the poor, helpless under-age girls abducted from Baga, Bama, Konduga and other parts of Borno State? If such girls – the survivors among them to be precise – eventually understand that they were labelled disposable integers, the casualties of dirty politics and a war of wiles by the political class, would it be wrong that they wished upon the men and women responsible for their plight, greater tragedies, in retribution?

    Maryam Alhaji-Wakil was abducted at the tender age of nine. In 2014, insurgents of the deadly terrorist sect, Boko Haram, invaded her town and burnt her home. They killed her relatives and decapitated her neighbours. Then they whisked her off to Sambisa Forest. There, she was forcibly married to Modu, a lustful and violent Boko Haram insurgent. In two days, little Maryam was violently thrust into womanhood. Modu, 35, forced his way into her unripe orifice, robbing her of innocence and the mystic pleasure of first and legitimate adult sexual experience.

    Modu was hasty and rough thus making her ‘first time’ bestial and replete with pain. Maryam screamed in agony but Modu didn’t care.

    “The louder I screamed, the more violently he shoved into me until I passed out,” she revealed to me in a personal encounter.

    Thus at the tender age of nine, Maryam was violently abused. When she could not withstand the misery of living as Modu’s sex slave any longer, she volunteered to serve as one of Boko Haram’s suicide bombers.

    Consequently, she was dispatched with a bomb to neighbouring Cameroon. She was taken on a motorcycle to blow up soft military targets in the country but Maryam had other plans.

    When the rider dropped her, she approached the soldiers and told them, ‘I have this thing on my body. It is a bomb. I was sent to kill you. Please, help me remove it.” Instantly, the soldiers sprung into defensive position but when they realised that she had come to surrender, they approached her and unstrapped the explosive from her body.

    Maryam spent several months in the custody of the Cameroonian gendarmes until she was handed over to the Nigerian Army. Hard as it is to picture the extent of bitterness devastating her heart, an intense gape into her eyes reveals a girl utterly torn apart. Beneath her pretty face lurks a battered soul.

    Now 12 years of age, Maryam is yet to break out the jailhouse of her past. She is still that abducted, frightened nine-year-old, who got whisked off to Sambisa Forest, after watching her relatives and neighbours fall in a bloody heap, to the bullets of Boko Haram’s terror squads.

    Maryam relives the days she went without food because her insurgent ‘husband’ was too lazy and poor to feed her. She remembers the excruciating nights that she laid captive and helpless under Modu’s massive bulk, while he violently plowed into her because she “was an unwilling bride.”

    When Maryam eventually discovers that the men and women, fathers and mothers, who were meant to ‘protect and serve her’ as all good leaders should, were responsible for her misery, should she simply ‘forgive and forget?’  When she discovers that they embezzled the £2.1 billion disbursed to procure weaponry meant to secure her release, should she seek them out for a hug?

    It is only just that Maryam utters, persistently, heartfelt prayers, that the Most High God, blesses the daughters and granddaughters of the men and women who triggered and accentuated her misery, with similar fate.

    Some would claim, that, it is wrong to wish such retribution on ‘innocent children’ of the predatory ruling class. They would counsel forgiveness saying: “Let the actual offenders be punished and not their bloodline.”

    Why? In a nation where rich, privileged criminals are given a slap on the hand and pat on the back, it is only just that the progeny and wives of such characters suffer same tragedies as victims of their inhumanity.

    After all, prosecutors have established that certain governors, senators, presidents and bank chiefs plundered Nigeria’s treasury with the assistance of their wives and children. Just recently, the anti-graft agency confiscated 20 expensive automobiles from the unemployed son of a military chief, who is under inquiry for corruption.

    If Nigeria’s leadership is just to the citizenry, the universe will in turn, be just to them. However, public officers responsible for the incessant disasters plaguing Nigeria, should get their just deserts even as you read. State governors and senators for instance, may remain rich, privileged and aloof, while electorate families perish on bad roads and rural kids die for lack of adequate care across Nigeria’s primary healthcare centres; very soon, they will watch their children and grandchildren suffer the same fate.

    Such is the working of divinely ordained retribution – I only give voice to the immutable.

    If as a president, state governor or legislator, you embezzle public fund and divert it to sponsor your children’s education overseas while the children of peasants and working class who voted you into power, extinguish in intellect and passion, across Nigeria’s underfunded schools, it is only just that those children of yours never amount to much or anything in life, like the victims of your greed.

    Sanctimonious faithful and intellectuals may condemn this because it is ‘religiously and politically incorrect.’ They would claim only the offenders deserve to get punished. Where the offenders are caught, they would suggest plea bargain, and urge that they get pardoned, in the spirit of godliness.

    To this, I say: ‘What crime did Maryam and her parents commit?”

  • 2019 elections in Nigeria

    The two major parties, the APC and the PDP, have chosen their presidential flag bearers in the persons of the incumbent president, Muhammadu Buhari and former vice president, Abubakar Atiku. Some foreign commentators demonstrating more enthusiasm than wisdom have characterized the contest as between tweedledee and tweedledum. This is far from the truth. The difference between the two is clear to all Nigerians no matter how their propagandists may try to portray them.  Buhari is introverted, withdrawn, quiet – some will say cold, but at the same time determined and set in his ways. He is certainly not a man given to frivolity and worldly interest and materialism. He does not relate with people well and does not go out of his way to make friends. This is why as a former military head of state and for the past three and a half years as president, he does not seem to have friends or close contacts outside the coterie of a few northerners who served with him either in government or in the military.   He is so distant from people outside his immediate ethnic or religious cohort that he attracts negative feelings from other Nigerians. He is a product of the Nigerian military and even though retired, still represents the proud tradition of that institution at its finest hour. All this would have been fatal to his candidacy in normal times but these are not normal times in Nigeria. This is why Buhari remains the candidate to beat.

    Atiku on the other hand is gregarious, outgoing, lively, a man of the world and a wealthy man and a man of capitalist inclination. Atiku served as a customs officer in Lagos for several years before retiring into business exploiting either his contacts or knowledge garnered when he was in the Customs. Atiku has family connections with the three major ethnic groups of the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, and the Igbo through marrying wives from them. I first  knew  about him in 1983 or so when in an outlandish fashion, he married the young daughter of the then Lamido of Adamawa and shut down Yola for a whole day with who was who in Nigeria, flying in private jet to attend the wedding. That was the year Shagari was overthrown because of rampant corruption and Buhari played a major role in that change of government.

    Atiku since the return to democratic governance was a protege of General Shehu Yar’Adua who had himself wanted very much to be president in the Babangida “transition without end “quoting the recently departed professor, Oyelaran Oyediran. General Yar’Adua was murdered by General Abacha while in detention. Atiku in 1999 had been elected governor of Adamawa State before Obasanjo brought him to the centre as his running mate. He was virtually the president between 1999 and 2003 while Obasanjo was busy travelling around the whole world showing the flag of Nigeria’s new democracy and begging for reduction or cancellation of our foreign debt to reduce our then debt overhang that had crippled our economy. Atiku was in charge of the privatization of the various federal companies and parastatals, houses and lands acquired over the years from colonial times to the most recent time. Selling off of government-owned companies under the ideological slogan that “government has no business in business” may have made sense in the capitals of the capitalist western world but to us in Nigeria, only few people had capital or access to it through their friends in the banks. Thus most of our heritage was sold to companies fronting for people in government and their foreign collaborators. The process of sale was so opaque that it was bound to be corrupt like in Russia; Nigeria witnessed the rise of our own oligarchs controlling enormous wealth in property and oil blocks.  Rightly or wrongly, Atiku’s stupendous wealth is traced to his years in the customs and in government.

    Both Buhari and Atiku are employers of labour. Buhari employs farm hands on his cattle farm in Daura, the ancient city of Bayijidda to take care of his cattle. His embrace of pastoral agriculture has made him a target of the victims and potential victims of the rampaging cattle herders who in recent times have constituted themselves into a scourge of the peasantry in many parts of Nigeria but particularly in North-central Nigeria. On the other hand, Atiku’s companies particularly at the ports and at the so-called American University in Yola employ hundreds of Nigerians.

    Atiku is a natural politician while Buhari is a reluctant politician in the mould of General Charles de Gaulle, who as a patriot feels it is his bounden duty to save his much beloved country. These two gentlemen have great experiences in government. Buhari as head of government is used to delegating power and responsibilities to his lieutenants while Atiku in government enjoyed a lot of delegated power and responsibilities until his principal felt his deputy was developing wings and arrogating too much power to himself and building rival loyalty rivalling that of his principal. The picture I am painting therefore is of two totally different human beings interested in leading the most populous African country with the biggest economy on the African continent.

    As Chief MKO Abiola used to say “The bigger the head the bigger the head ache”; Nigeria has legion of problems ranging from infrastructural inadequacy to health, financial and educational deficits. Above all, Nigeria needs moral rearmament and ethical revolution. It is not that we do not have resources; what is lacking is resource management and ability to plan well and execute plans that will lift our people from our present economic dependency and the curse of easy money derived from hydrocarbons as well as unstable economy swinging dangerously from boom to doom following the ups and downs of oil prices.

    The leader that Nigeria therefore needs in a hurry is a man who can force the country to embrace changes while he himself and the coterie of advisers around him remain transparently untainted.  We do not have too much time on our hands. The window opened to us will shut within the next decade when the world will shift from the industries and transportation system being currently powered by hydrocarbons to electricity derivable from renewed energy and liquid oxygen, thus undercutting our economy that is now dangerously dependent on oil and gas. We need a president who can totally embrace the knowledge economy prevalent in most developed countries and in rising powers like China and India. Africa’s 4% contribution to the quantum of global trade must increase exponentially and Nigeria must be at the vanguard of this revolution. To achieve this, Nigeria must build modern infrastructure of railways, autobahnen (expressways) aviation and shipping networks unlike the present antediluvian system crippling our cities ports and highways.

    To get to our Eldorado, emphasis must move from politics to development and governance. The world respects China today not because it is a huge exponent of democracy but because it is a rising economic and technological power. Even the high priests of democracy in the west are kowtowing to China. Until we have the technological know-how, Nigeria will never be respected. This is why in spite of our being the biggest economy in Africa; nobody bothers to invite us to the G-20 annual conferences in which only South Africa is the only country invited apparently because of its manufacturing and financial capability and capacity. The president we need is somebody who will be able to assemble a good team and impose a discipline based on his own sense of discipline and integrity and lead from the front by example. We need a man of tremendous focus who by his asceticism and charisma would attract the respect of the people. We need a president who will commit himself to finding solution to our multifarious problems.

    Unfortunately we have to make a choice between two people who do not provide us with an exciting choice. No country that I know has the best president that it can have. Looking around the whole world, with the exception of Monsieur Macron, there is no exceptional leader and Nigeria will just have to make do with the president that it can have at the present. A president who can keep the country together. We need to have a country first before we can reconfigure or restructure it and if it cannot be kept together without restructuring the weight of opinion and the force of events will force Buhari to lead the way to peacefully restructure Nigeria. No matter who wins in 2019, he will be faced with a situation that makes it impossible for him to conduct affairs in a leisurely business as usual fashion. The country will not stand for it.