The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Who’s fooling who?

    Who’s fooling who?

    TO SOME, the anti-corruption crusade is a sham. But to the government, it is one of the best things to have happened to the country in its 57 years of independence. Indeed, no administration tackled corruption the way the present government is doing. From the outset, President Muhammadu Buhari made it clear that he was going to fight corruption with all he has and he has been doing just that in the past three years.

    But critics are not satisfied. They claim that the government is selective in the fight, pointing out that only those in the opposition are being arrested for corruption. Where those in government are involved, the case, they allege, is treated with kid’s glove. The critics readily cite the case of  former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Babachir Lawal, who  was said to have soiled his hands with filthy lucre.

    They alleged that it took the government too long to act on his case. The government, they added, would not have acted if the people had not spoken out on the matter. The government may also have played into the critics’ hands. The handling of the case of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Executive Secretary Prof Usman Yusuf has again  pitted the critics against the government. Yusuf was suspended by Health Minister Prof Isaac Adewole when the President was in London receiving treatment.

    It was a tug of war before the minister suspended Yusuf, who heads an agency under his ministry. Yusuf had reportedly said he could only be suspended by the President from whom he directly takes orders. Then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo was said to have stepped into the matter and the minister had his way. Yusuf was suspended pending investigation into the allegations against him. But a few days ago, he was reinstated despite being under probe. The public was outraged, with many wondering why the hurry in recalling him when the panel has not submitted its report.

    Lawyers, civil servants and the leading opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), described his reinstatement as a mockery of justice. The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCN) said his recall could be interpreted to mean that the anti-graft crusade ‘’is selective and designed to deal with specific targets”. “How can an official being investigated for an alleged N919million fraud by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) be reinstated by a government that came to power promising to sanitise the system? This is unfortunate. We, therefore, urge President Buhari to rescind his action and allow Prof Yusuf to leave the system in peace’’, the group said.

    To the PDP, the ‘’Presidency stinks of corruption and has lost all claim of fighting graft as long as it continues to protect alleged indicted officials of the administration’’. The government’s reaction to the criticisms seems absurd and laughable. According to media reports, the President ordered Yusuf’s recall because of the belief that the allegations against him “remain largely unsubstantiated”. Quoting a source, the report said ‘’the government’s position is that the committee constituted by the minister to investigate Yusuf is neither independent nor free from bias’’.

    Twenty of the 23 allegations against him,  the source said, were not backed with evidence while others appeared concocted because of evident alterations and mix-ups in dates, adding : ‘’About N411,688,704 of the N919million alleged to have been mismanaged by the executive secretary  was paid to NHIS staff as allowances and also to seconded staff as allowances and entitlements when he resumed’’.

    From the foregoing, it is obvious that the government spoilt an otherwise good case by its handling of the matter. Why did it not  allow the panel to complete its job? With the preponderance of evidence before the government, if we are to believe the reasons said to have been given for Yusuf’s recall, the panel would have found nothing against him and would have recommended that he be reinstated? The way Yusuf was recalled is untidy and this is why NHIS workers are divided over the issue. The government is to blame for all this. Its poor handling of the matter brought us to this pass.

    If it really has information that could help Yusuf’s case at its disposal, the best it could have done was to pass such to the committee and allow the panel to do its job and arrive at its own conclusion. There would have been no fuss if the committee had recommended Yusuf’s recall. The government cannot be said to have acted properly by recalling him after it had raised a panel to probe him. Why did it set up the panel if it knew it was going to recall the executive secretary anyway? Did the government recall him because it was afraid of what the panel’s findings would be?

    Truly, what the government did is a mockery of justice and due process. What becomes of  the panel now? Can it still sit after the subject of its probe has been reinstated? What happens if it upholds the suspension of the executive secretary? If the government wishes to fight corruption, it should do so transparently and honestly without leaving room for doubts.

  • Obscene pensions for state governors

    Obscene pensions for state governors

    Some few weeks ago, Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo, presiding judge at a Federal High Court in Lagos gave decision in favour of the Socio- Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) that brought a suit in December 2017 challenging the legality of 21 former state governors or deputy governors now serving as ministers and senators and drawing two salaries and emoluments, one as former governors and now ministers and senators. Even if it were not illegal, it will be immoral in situations where most states are unable to pay salaries and pensions. But in real fact, it is actually illegal. SERAP is also asking the federal attorney- general to sue the 21 former governors involved who have allegedly collected N40 billion since 2015. I have on one occasion written about the immoral allowances and pensions some of these governors awarded themselves on their way out of their executive mansions. For example In Akwa Ibom the most extreme in generosity, a former governor is entitled to the following: N100 million for medical treatment annually; N1 million monthly medical allowance; Five bedroom bungalow each in Abuja and Uyo; 300% of the basic salary of the incumbent governor; a new utility and three saloon cars every three years; foreign holidays for wife and children under 18 years; provision of personal aide, cook, security guards not exceeding N5 million per month.

    Former deputy governor of Akwa Ibom receives about half of these humongous and unfair salaries and allowances.

    It is of course not Akwa Ibom alone that is involved in this executive looting. All the states of the federation are complicit in this sordid deed. One of course hopes that Ekiti and Gombe states – the two poorest states in the country will not be involved. This is only a hope but my guess is that all the former governors and their deputies in Nigeria are collectively involved in this gubernatorial financial selfish financial self-aggrandizement.  It seems these governors are in competition with the federal legislators who are each allegedly earning from N23 – N28 million every month. The suit filed by SERAP hinges on the illegality of earning two salaries from the same government in the federation. I will even go further for a cancellation of pensions for governors and their deputies who may have served for between four and eight years or in some cases less than four years. Ordinarily a person who has not worked for up to 10 years is not entitled to pension under the old labour laws of Nigeria. My assumption is that former governors and their deputies were either self-employed or on salaried jobs before coming into elective offices and they are by my own reasoning not entitled to pensions.  We all know that these former state executives do not need these huge unearned pensions. The former governor of Lagos, Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN said he declined to accept any pension saying serving as governor of Lagos was sufficient honour for him. I commend Fashola and I hope this republic will benefit from his excellent character and service for many years to come. Dr Bukola Saraki also said he has stopped collecting pensions from poor Kwara State for now.

    In the First Republic, members of parliament at regional and federal levels served on part-time basis. Those who were elected were professionals and whenever they left office they went to their jobs as teachers, lawyers and civil servants. I regret to say that some of them died in penury but this should not be used as justification for this financial shenanigans masquerading as pensions policy we have today.

    We do not know if the legislatures at state and federal levels have also approved humongous pensions for their members, most of whom are birds of passage.

    Since the public, in spite of the Freedom of Information Act, do not know the terms and conditions of service of members of the various legislatures in the country, former members may also be earning huge pensions quietly. We have also heard of people being given so-called “severance packages” which are totally illegal. At the right time when we have a regime that wants to cleanse the system, many may have to pay back moneys illegally collected. Who for example would have believed a conservative kingdom like Saudi Arabia would arrest several of its leaders who are mostly princes and force them to disgorge US$117 billion which they illegally appropriated to themselves from the public treasury?  In the United States, former governors would have contributed to public pensions scheme which is available to all public workers unlike here where politicians treat themselves as unique and special individuals. In the United Kingdom, Members of Parliament   receive a pension of either 1/40th or 1/50th of their final pensionable salary for each year of pensionable service. Ministers who are members of parliament are also entitled to pensions on the same scale. Members of parliament are also encouraged to buy into investment that is available to all British people. With the huge bulge of youth unemployment and economic hopelessness in the land, we may have to tidy our finances and recover whatever had been illegally cornered using political power.

    There is nothing stopping governors, their deputies and members of parliament at state and federal levels setting up pensions schemes or buying into existing pensions that are based on voluntary or in some cases compulsory contributions. This is what Nigerians who are lucky to find jobs do and our representatives should reflect our financial reality and in any case politics should not be made so attractive that getting elected becomes a matter of life or death. We must go back to part-time legislatures and abolish the extant laws permitting current executive brigandage. The only elected officials of government who should live at our expense after their service are the president, vice president and judges who cannot after office go back to work. The president and the vice president are by the nature of their offices, physical representation of the Nigerian nation.

     

  • Righteousness as substitute to governance

    Righteousness as substitute to governance

    Most Nigerians believe President Buhari is an honourable man.  As the late Nigerian elder-statesman, Maitama Sule put it. “Buhari cannot be unfair”. The only ware Buhari had to sell in 2003, 2007 and 2011 was his righteousness which he carried around like Saint Christopher’s medal, refusing to deal with politicians who he then considered evil. This was what informed his choice of Pastor Tunde Bakare, a televangelist without a political base as running mate in 2011 without a conscious effort to first understand the role of religion in Yoruba society as many believed Buhari by his choice, shot himself on the leg and prolonged Nigerian nightmare by losing the election. But attitudes, as it is often said, are difficult to change. Buhari has continued to hold politicians in suspect even after riding on their back to power, preferring to celebrate his righteousness as substitute to governance.

    While most thought it ought to have dawned on him that he did not win the 2015 election by being righteous, he  was to declare with little reflection  during his inauguration that  ‘he belongs to everyone and belongs to no one’. As one of his critics cynically asked during a television programme, days after the inauguration, “has he suddenly forgotten he flew other people’s private jets while on campaign trail and depended on some people’s funds to prosecute the election?  But righteous President Buhari was to later display disdain for APC that provided him a platform precisely because it was owned by politicians.

    After distancing himself from evil politicians whose help he needed most, he held the nation to ransom for the next six months as he continued to celebrate his righteousness. In the absence of political party that packaged a manifesto that won the election, his government was hijacked even before it took off, first by those his critics describe as his ‘cousins and nephews from his Daura village’ who according to the president’s wife were neither members of APC nor had any idea about the party’s manifesto, and later by freewheeling power hawkers in the Senate and Lower House. Ostensibly, for fear of politicians, President Buhari for the next two and half years failed to constitute the boards of over 500 small government he needed to run a successful administration allowing PDP appointees  to continue business as usual. In an age when modern government has become a science, President Buhari continues to operate with a mind-set of an emir, listening only to his self-serving trusted men.

    Almost three years in office, not much has changed. An exasperated colleague riding with me last week as a radio station in its newspaper morning reviews mentioned the Usman Yusuf’s scandalous recall  could not help asking aloud: could this be the same Buhari we all knew and believed could do no wrong back in 1984?  Yes, but for the newspaper report of a joint meeting of the minister of health and the embattled NHIS boss reportedly presided over by the president, most Nigerians would have found it hard to believe the president had a hand in the recall of a man under an ongoing probe by EFCC.

    But what is the story? “Buhari decided to appoint Yusuf at a time the Health Management Organisations were short-changing the system, leading to a situation where subscribers to the scheme were not getting the best out of it due to sharp practices on the part of the HMOs and health providers”. He was however suspended following an indictment by a panel set up by Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, accused of perpetrating fraud to the tune of N919million. Yusuf was being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission until a letter signed by the president’s chief of staff ordered his recall from suspension.

    My  good friend , the highly resourceful chief Mike Ozekhome,(SAN), whose judgment  on account of huge successes  he had chalked up defending ex-President Jonathan and his wife  and other politically exposed persons  on charges bordering  on  impunity and corruption, can hardly be faulted has said the president intervention is “ evidence of impunity, corruption and executive lawlessness under his administration”.

    A whole a week after Yusuf’s recall, President Buhari, probably hiding under his righteousness, is yet to talk to Nigerians. The explanation by Lai Mohammed, his, minister of information to the effect that Yusuf’s reabsorption would not colour the outcome of his EFCC’s probe only strengthened the claim by some APC lawmakers and in recent days Dr. Obasanjo, who have continued to insist President Buhari’s anti-corruption war is selective.

    Meanwhile the only thing noticeable in the health sector is evidence of failure of governance. University College Hospital, Ibadan, where the minster was once a provost remains a relic of its past glory with relatives of orthopaedic patients compelled to ferry their loved ones on their back from the ground floor to the 5th floor where the orthopaedic ward is located. Patients are running away from Igbobi where routine surgeries are said to cost as much as N400,000, to neighbouring  Togo  which boasts of the state-of-the-art equipment comparable to what obtains in France  and without fears of complications associated with administration of fake drugs . The NHIS itself remains a rip off.

    Unfortunately, NHIS and Prof Usman Yusuf’s recall scandal is not an isolated case. There have been other instances where President Buhari traded his righteousness for accountability, an important component of democracy. In the Abdul-rasheed Maina’s reabsorption scandal, besides the president’s directive that the reabsorption be reversed, Malami remains a minister despite Itse Sagay’s suggestion that he needed to be probed and the National Assembly probe that seems to question the motive behind his secret meeting with fugitive Maina in Dubai.

    In the case of Maikanti Baru, the NNPC Group Managing Director, who was accused by Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of petroleum (state) of awarding some contracts without carrying him along as the de facto minister while the president was receiving medical attention in Britain, although he admitted awarding huge contracts but said no cash was involved. And then like the current NHIS case, Baru, even in the absence of President Buhari, who doubles as minister for petroleum, insisted he was not reporting to the minister of state. Baru retained his job after President Buhari’s meeting with the duo, the same scenario that has just played out in the Usman Yusuf and Isaac Adewole face-off.

    The above contradictions seem to have forced Nigerians to now question the president’s continued celebration of his righteousness  as substitute for real governance especially in the wake of the ongoing herdsmen aggression against communities across the nation  Many now believe good governance which finds expression  in application of  few acts of statecraft such as visiting Benue instead of having to be briefed like an emir after which the governor  receives lessons on how  victims of herdsmen aggression can be their brothers’  keepers;  sending a query to the Emir of Kano for encouraging resistance to Benue laws to prove emirs are not above the law and prosecuting leadership of Miyetti Cattle breeders association who did not only support the mindless killing of 73 people in Benue but also threatened to invite their Fulani compatriots  from neighbouring countries to  unleash further terror on communities that resisted open grazing; and of course the sacking of  ministers of justice and defence whose actions and pronouncements have greatly undermined the president’s credibility, will be more reassuring.

  • The cash snake

    IT IS likely you have heard of cash cow before. But cash snake? I am certain you have never heard about that before. In Nigeria anything can happen. A cash cow is a money-spinning venture. The owner of such venture usually smiles to the bank and he is the envy of his competitors.

    On the other hand, a cash snake is the opposite of cash cow. Instead of spinning money, it swallows money.

    It swallows money from the strongroom of banks and office vaults, going by a story told by a Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) worker in Makurdi, the Benue State capital. According to Philomina Chieshe, a sales clerk, her housemaid and another JAMB worker Joan Asen have been conspiring to steal money from the office vault “spiritually”. She said she was hitherto depositing the money in the bank, but stopped when she could no longer account for it and started keeping it in the office. Before anybody knew what was happening Joan and her accomplice had allegedly “spiritually stolen N36million through a snake that sneaks into the vault to mysteriously swallow the money”. Wetin we no go hear or see for this country. I won’t be surprised if tomorrow another person comes up with a similar bicycle story of a mysterious bird also wreaking havoc on our commonwealth.

    It seems what humans can do, reptiles will do better!

  • In defence of snakes

    In defence of snakes

    THE incident remains fresh in my memory. It was an early harmattan morning in 1974, my first year in secondary school. I had finished the morning duties – fetching water for my college father and sweeping the Form Three classroom before braving the biting cold to shower near the school dam. It was time to dress up and get set for the assembly.

    My uniform of a green pair of shorts and a white shirt was lying there, neatly arranged behind my seat in the classroom. I pulled off the dirty shirt with which I did the early morning chores, pulled out the white shirt, put it on and buttoned up. I was already running late. Chief Guy Gargiulo (GG), a born teacher and humanist of the finest kind, never tolerated late coming to the assembly- one of those dreaded routines at Ajuwa Grammar School, Okeagbe – Akoko, Ondo State.

    It was for prayers, Bible reading and singing of soul-lifting hymns. But it could all turn sour if GG got angry and needed to use the cane. He would be screaming and swearing, “Bloody hell.” Ah. What a terrifying experience for us the junior boys who had to strain our ears to make out why theoyinbo was angry. He would be talking so fast, fuming and vibrating like a huge boom box working at full capacity.

    I grabbed my shorts and jumped into them. Then, I noticed that the right pocket was unusually heavy. I pushed my right hand into it to find out why. The object in there was soft and slimy, like a nylon bag. As I pulled it, I discovered that it was long. I looked down to find out what it was. I saw the tail of what looked like a long snake and began to scream. I couldn’t pull off my shorts. Neither could I grab the snake and fling it out of my pocket. What if it decided to bite me? My mates were laughing. To them, it was fun. To me, it was hell. I was yelling. One of the boys displayed some courage, moved close, a stick in his hand, and flogged out the snake. It fell gently on the floor, immobile. It was a dead snake with which somebody had decided to pull a fast one on me.

    My subsequent encounters with snakes at Ajuwa were full of fun. GG ensured that none of us feared snakes- the only thing he said he ever feared. The day he got bitten by one was the end of the fear, he told us. We had in the school library several books on snakes. GG kept some as pets, but he warned us never to go near a cobra. “It is deadly. If it bites you, you’re finished; o pa ri,” he would advise us. The green snake we went after and caught alive any time.

    I felt good recently with one of GG’s snakes playing on my neck when I visited his The Plaedi home on a massive rock in Okeagbe.

    You can therefore imagine my disgust and anger with what is fast becoming a grand design to demonise snakes, following the confession of an official of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that a mysterious snake swallowed N35m cash belonging to the agency. JAMB has suddenly become a testimony to the claim that the anti-corruption war is on, with Prof Isha-q Oloyede leading the battle.

    Where are our animal rights activists? Here is another crude attempt to blackmail an innocent animal and nobody seems to be raising a finger in anger over these attacks. When President Muhammadu Buhari returned from his medical trip, he could not resume work in his office. We were told that rats had seized the place. Construction giant Julius Berger was called in to flush them out.

    Even before the President’s return, his wife Aisha had been talking about hyenas and jackals who would be kicked off the corridors of power upon the arrival of the lion.

    “Some criminals have also blackmailed cows, using the poor beasts of burden to destroy farmlands that represent many years of sweating and toiling. Should the landowners complain, they pounce on them with AK-47 rifles, killing, maiming and burning. Everything is blamed on the poor cows for whom the marauders claim they are fighting.”

    In the heat of  Nnamdi Kanu ‘s Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) whirlwind of protests, the military launched Operation Python Dance I to fight criminals in the Southeast. Many wondered how a python was going to dance. Before the early sounds of the drums that would herald the dancing python, Kanu had engaged his feet. He fled. To date, his whereabouts remain a subject of serious contestation.

    That was when I suspected that a grand conspiracy against snakes was in the offing. Monkeys seem to be lucky. They are accused of causing monkey pox. Ebola is associated with some animals, none in particular but those that are of special delicacy, popularly called bushmeat. There are also chicken pox, bird flu and others associated with animals.

    Never in the history of ethology has it been proven that snakes could devour cash. Now, a court is set to hear how this happened. Many zoology giants and renowned criminologists are said to be on their way to Nigeria to witness the landmark case; Federal Government versus Philomina Chieshe, who claimed that a snake swallowed N36m she kept in her office.

    I am told by sources who claim to have seen the charges, that Chieshe will tell the court the denomination of the cash – was it in N1,000 or N500 notes?  Or N200 or N10 or N50? How long did it take the snake to swallow the cash – one hour? One day? Three days? Are there witnesses? Why did Chieshe not raise the alarm? Was the snake induced to do it?

    What kind of snake was involved in this mysterious venture? Python? Corn snake? Viper? Cobra? Rattlesnake? Carpet Viper? Male or female?

    JAMB  has meanwhile suspended Chieshe – apparently to enable her assemble her legal team. Lawyers, by the trainload, I gather, are said to be warming up to join her defence. They will, according to sources, submit that the court has no jurisdiction to hear the matter as it borders on mysticism. If the court refuses to listen, they will ask that the snake be subpoenaed.

    As the court clerk searches for the snake to serve the summons, the legal giants will counter-sue JAMB, claiming N1b damages for making public a piece of information Chieshe gave its officials in strict confidence, thereby trampling on her right to hold  and protect such esoteric confidentialities.

    Should the court insist on the trial, Chieshe will simply be advised to check into a hospital, live well and return home when the dust must have settled and the term would have been served out doing the case. Everybody will go in peace; justice is served.

    Snakes have now become an-endangered species. Fortune-hunters are killing them in a desperate bid to extract the N36m. Yet, our animal rights activists are sleeping. A politician was saying the other day that if the incident had happened in Ekiti State, Governor Ayo Fayose would have assembled all the master hunters –dane guns, headlamps, amulets, charms and all – to retrieve the cash up to the last kobo. Anyway, can we force anybody to emulate Ekiti?

    Besides, snakes have become the subject of offensive jokes. I chanced upon a video yesterday. A woman comes out of the bathroom to find his son on all fours in the living room. Crawling, like a baby. Shocked, she screams: “Blood of Nebuchadnezzar. Dami, what are you doing?”

    “I’m practising for my new job to be a snake.” The woman grabs a bottle of holy oil and cries: “Blood of Jesus. You’ll never be a snake. I anoint you in the name of the father.”

    Unyielding, the boy replies: “Mummy, that’s the new hot job in Nigeria o. Snakes are swallowing things all over the place and they say you keep whatever you swallow. One has just swallowed N36m. That’s $100,000. Let me do my snake o.”

    The mum screams, “N36m!”  She drops the bottle of holy oil and begins to crawl. “Mummy what are you doing?” the bewildered boy asks his mum. She replies excitedly: “We are a snake family.”

    And this, just in from a friend: “I’m just leaving the bank now. I went to drop bitter kola around the premises because of snakes. I no wan hear say anything do my money.”

    The situation is not without a redeeming feature, however, nevertheless, Senator Shehu Sani (APC Kaduna …) was reported to have led some snake charmers from his constituency to the JAMB office in Abuja to help should there be more snakes trying to swallow what does not belong to them. Now snake charmers can no longer complain that there is no work.

    Many unemployed youths are now training to become snake charmers.  Some pubic-spirited lawyers are encouraging them to incorporate an association so that untrained hands do not hijack the trade in this age of quackery.

    The rich are said to be thinking of how to get some snakes as pests. The bright idea is that if they keep their cash in the bellies of snakes, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) detectives will never get them.

     

     

     

  • Of politicians and serial killers

    Of politicians and serial killers

    When a president’s child dies, ‘it’s a tragedy.’ If a governor, lawmaker or minister, loses his child, ‘it’s heartbreaking.’ And God forbid that a politician dies a ‘shameful death’ that’s ‘well-deserved’ or he expires for a reason that the media is too timid or compromised to reveal, ‘Nigeria mourns’ all the same.

    Nobody mourns the death of the masses. Except the bereaved. Thousands are hacked to death in the northeast by politically-sponsored Boko Haram; hundreds are murdered in cold blood by vicious herdsmen rampaging through Benue, Oyo, Ogun and Bassa, Plateau States; their deaths are inconsequential in the scheme of things.

    Indeed, a single death is a tragedy while a million murders becomes mere statistic. Apology to Stalin.

    Today, we become the tragic nuance of Africa’s psyche; no thanks to machinations of rich, spoilt governors, lawmakers and a presidency to whom electorate deaths resound as spirited waltz in a bloody, never-ending political rite.

    “Politicians are at the root of ill. They are the cause of everything,” a fair-weather friend of mine would always say. There is truth in his relative truth. Nigerians’ acquiescence to politicians’ bloodlust is eternally confounding.

    What is it that gets to us? Their poetry of citizenship? Their wrongness of style? Perhaps their variable truths, half-truths, unpardonable lies and eccentricities that pierce like shears in the hands of a flesh gardener – or serial killer if you like.

    Every politician is complicit. None is worthy of the benefit of doubt. If your favourite politician or benefactor in public office do not have an army of thugs or assassins at his beck and call, he or she fulfils the role of a slayer.

    Every politician is an executioner of lives and extinguisher of hopes save the ones that do not loot public coffers or divert public fund for personal use – remember, diverted funds lead to multiple deaths on bad roads and substandard hospitals. Do we have any such politician or public officer alive?

    Even the ones that posed as the people’s champions until their election, have learnt to keep their mouths shut in the National Assembly, presidential cabinet and State Houses. It’s called ‘Table Manners.’ Indeed, “When you are eating you don’t talk.

    Odi, Okija, Bakassi, Maroko, Gbaramatu, Ijegun, Makoko, Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Plateau, Kano, Katsina,; where do our factories of misery and death resound?

    How do we evade this sorry pass? By whose leadership shall we triumph against the odds? Come 2019, in whose manifesto should we believe? Whose humaneness runs deeper than the madness we fete as life’s truths? Atiku Abubakar? Muhammadu Buhari? In which candidate does the spirit that restores the land to productive order reside? None.

    In whose possession does power reside? The predatory ruling class or the masses bartering their strength for a quarter bag of rice, N500-bribe or worse?

    We still find sport in the tragedy that our lives have become and we still do nothing save our persistent rant and idle talk over the weekends in our courtyards, while we devour relative truths on the pages of barely dependable newspapers.

    The politicians are still in control and they have grown more devious. While we indulge in idle talk and futile debates in our soapbox circuits, they incite the jobless and impoverished among us to  terrorism, interminable bigotry and mass murders –  think herdsmen-farmers bloodlust, the carnage in Borno among others.

    Talking grief amounts to nought. Aren’t revolutions born because patriots decide to react? Then it spreads like wildfire in harmattan to incite the guts of latent spirits.

    On the bread lines, below our poverty lines, our talk is of struggle. Our struggle is of class. Would I like Marx enthuse the incense of the muse, I would pen brilliant chapters to illumine the agonies of the working class. Would I like Engels excite the whims of scholarship, I would espouse the philosophy of the millennium and analyse the workings of materialism, its benevolence to the lucky few, and its malevolence to the underdog.

    Like Russell, I could make a case for Socialism. Like Rand, I could prescribe the virtues of selfishness. Yesterday, I bandied Nietzsche-speak like our salvation depended on it. Today, I know better; misfortune won’t flee our portals just because we desire to be great. There should be more to end our grief than the greatness of extraordinary folk.

    Perhaps I should propose a Soviet-styled uprising and incite the downtrodden to arms. Like the Bolsheviks, I could incite the working class to power, united around the mantra, ‘Bread, land, peace.’

    Oftentimes, I visualize the success of a mass revolution, the triumph of the electorate and the re-emerging middle class. I wonder if compatriots might be consciously inspired not by the ideas of Marx or the contemplations of Nietzsche, but by the Nigerian reality.

    The earliest insurgencies occurred in climes different from our ‘liberal democracies.’ Now we have democracy but despite its touted advantages, our lives are hardly better.

    I think we should take more active part in our politics. Our problems can never be solved by rant or idle cynicism. Nor can we survive self-destruct by ideals much better than those our modern prophets extract from volatile arsenals of misinterpreted scriptures.

    Nigerians should never vote for any All Progressives Congress (APC) or People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate again except they intend to commit political and socioeconomic suicide.

    Most APC and PDP candidates are likable to vultures jostling for carrion meat at the crossroads. They are birds of a feather – after all, APC is currently teeming with established rogues, looters and thieves recycled from the PDP and associated parties.

    Nigerians should seek out candidates whose politics ignite the lush fragment of history that was once our lives.

    They are not in the APC or PDP. Not at the moment. It’s time for a new movement. A new party. But unlike Obasanjo’s Third Force.

  • Piece of IBB

    Piece of IBB

    FOR President Muhammadu Buhari, these are not the best of political times. He has been the butt of attacks by two senior members of his first  constituency – the military. First to fire was former President Olusegun Obasanjo and then came former military president Ibrahim Babangida last Sunday. The thrust of their statements is similar to a certain extent. While Obasanjo is asking the President not to go for a second term, Babangida is making a case for ‘’newbreed leaders’’ starting from 2019. All of a sudden, everywhere is abuzz with the noise of 2019 because the election year is approaching.

    But like everything Babangida, who was nicknamed Maradona (because of his slyness) after the legendary Argentine footballer, who scored a goal with what he described as the ‘’hand of God’’,  there seems to be something maradonic about the general’s statement or if you like statements. Statements in the sense that  there was another statement said to have been personally signed by him denying his earlier statement. The first statement was signed by his longtime media aide Prince Kassim Afegbua.

    The statements are causing ripples and in the maze of confusion, the public does not seem to know which to take. The one signed by Afegbua, who has vehemently maintained that he issued it on Babangida’s behalf or the one purportedly signed by Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) himself? The heat over this matter is so intense because of the IBB persona. Over the years, especially in his days in power, he portrayed himself as a wily and cunny leader. You had to look through the window when he greeted you good morning. That is the kind of person Babangida is and this is why the controversy over his statement(s) is raging like wildfire.

    Despite his clarification, as contained in ThisDay of February 5, nobody is ready to give him the benefit of doubt. To them, IBB has come with his wily ways again. This is not a matter that we should dismiss offhandedly as just another maradonic statement. If we do so, we will be losing the import of the statement issued by Afegbua, which IBB himself has said emanated from him. What else do we want as evidence after he said that? The “original statement (that is the one issued by Afegbua) still stands”, ThisDay quoted him as saying. Babangida has yet to deny that statement.

    According to ThisDay, he dissociated himself from the second statement, saying it was issued by friends and had nothing to do with him. This is not hearsay; this is IBB talking. So, what other evidence do we need on whether or not he authorised Afegbua to issue the initial statement? We may not like the face of IBB, but we cannot deny him his right to comment on national issues. We may not agree with his position, but we cannot because of his past try to curtail his right to freedom of expression. In the same token, we cannot circumscribe the right of any Nigerian to freedom of speech.

    This is why I do not understand the noise the police are making over Afegbua, who was just a vehicle for conveying a message. If IBB has come out to say he authorised Afegbua to issue the first statement, is that not enough for the police to let him be? Must Afegbua be crucified because he issued a statement on behalf of his principal whose guts many of us do not like? Under the law of agency, Afegbua cannot be held liable for issuing what the police called a false statement since his principal, who in this case is IBB, is standing by him. We should not leave leprosy and be treating ringworm. If there is anybody to be declared wanted it is the author of the other statement, which IBB has since distanced himself from.

    In matters like this, the police should tread softly. They should not be in too much of a hurry to arrive at a conclusion. Even if Afegbua did not issue that statement on IBB’s behalf but only purported to have done so, will it amount to committing a grievous offence for which he should be hanged as the police want to do? Without questioning him, they have levelled a three-count charge of giving false statement, defamation of character and acts capable of inciting public disturbance against him. How can the statement be false when the issuing authority is standing by it? How did Afegbua defame anybody when IBB, his principal, has not accused him of such? Or is it the President he defamed? Then, there must be a new definition for defamation, which the police should tell us about.

    Inciting public disturbance? How many people have taken to the streets since the statement was issued? There is a lot for the police to do. Herdsmen/farmers clashes, armed robbery, kidnapping, vandalism et al, are all there for them to tackle. They should concentrate their energy on these and other crimes and leave political matters for politicians. I commend their swiftness on this case, how I wish they would show the same zeal in dealing with the herders/farmers skirmishes in Benue and some  other states.

  • The Trump doctrine

    The Trump doctrine

    At his presidential inauguration about a year ago, Donald J. Trump came up with the slogan “America first” or “ make America great again”. He again in October last year at the plenary session of  the United Nations General Assembly said he would put American interest above that of others and that he expected other countries to put their countries interest above those of others. He further threatened to incinerate North Korea if that country, led by a “little rocket man” dared to threaten the United States or her allies. He did not find this statement out of place in the venue of an organization founded on the principle of collective security after the terrible destruction of the Second World War when an approximated 60 to 80 million people were killed which was about 3% of the global population then. The approximate loss country by major countries were as follows: Soviet Union – 24million military and civilian deaths; United Kingdom – 450700; United States – 418500; Yugoslavia – 1000000; Germany – 8000000 including those seized by the soviets and those expelled from their homelands; China – about 14 to 20,000000 killed by Japanese from 1937 to 1945; Japan – between 2,000,000 to 3000,000; Italy – about 4.3 million civilian and military deaths.

    It is important to state that the United States was largely responsible for rebuilding the world after the global catastrophe. It was the USA and others that  were responsible for the post-war political and economic architecture that has worked reasonably well since 1945. Even though the  post-war division of Europe into two military alliances, namely the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)  and the Warsaw Pact ushered in a period of ideological rivalry and Cold War lasting till 1994 when the Soviet Union collapsed, there has been no major global conflict originating from Europe. Imperfect as it may appear, the global system has worked reasonably well. The unipolarity following the collapse of the Soviet Union has now happily been replaced by a bipolar world of the United States and China with resurgent Russia trying to regain big power status.

    The bitter ideological conflict of the past has been replaced by the quest for economic development and prosperity. Even though Peoples Republic of China and Vietnam that were previously enemies of the United States still continue to mouth the communist slogans, but no one is deceived and China for example has a gerontocratic  regime masquerading as communist party rule. Russia has abandoned communism for some form of guided democratic authoritarianism. China and Russia in terms of military capacity, are the only countries that can challenge United States’ dominance or hegemony in global politics. The European Union, dominated by Germany and France, just want to be left alone to trade with all parts of the world while enjoying the United States’ nuclear umbrella. Japan is also in the same relations with the United States. South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are for now too poor to be an arena for global conflict. There are two nuclear countries here, namely Pakistan and India, who for religious reasons are locked in mortal conflict of self-destruction to bother the rest of the world. The Middle East is important because of its oil and gas and also being the birth place of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But the area is divided by sectarian conflicts between Shia and Sunni on one hand, and between Iranians and Arabs on the other. Superimposed on this sectarianism is the nuclear weapons state of Israel which enjoys special relations with and protection of the United States.

    The former communist states in Eastern Europe, if allowed by Russia will find their way into the European Union and possibly into NATO. They are all busy adjusting to capitalism and free enterprise and market economies along western lines. They are also sorting out ethnic problems that were suppressed under communism.

    The continents of Africa and South America with their enormous natural resources and inchoate nations will in future be places for struggle by China and the United States. Trump is making a mistake by regarding these two continents as “shit holes”. America will pay for this in the future. No country or continent is unimportant. For example, according to Robert Kennedy who was his brother President John F. Kennedy’s Attorney-General, it was through Guinea that communication that ended the Cuban crisis of 1962 passed between the Soviet Union and the United States by which the world avoided a thermonuclear conflict that may have wiped out human civilization.

    This broadly speaking is the picture of the world facing Trump.

    He has said globalization has been unfair to America. What he says he wants is not free trade but fair and balanced trade. Rather than multilateral trade agreements like the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) from which he has withdrawn or regional economic integration like NAFTA (North American Trade Agreement) from which he is likely to withdraw, Trump wants bilateral trade agreement with each country. In his scheme, the World Trade Organisation ( WTO) obviously has no role. Even NATO, the military alliance that had served the United States since 1945 is under scrutiny on the basis either that it has outlived its usefulness or on the basis that member-states were not paying their fair share of the alliance budget. His attitude to the United Nations is very lukewarm. He has already withdrawn from UNESCO and withdrawal from some other specialist agencies of the United Nations may follow. Ironically, he has in his nuclear confrontation with North Korea often rushed to the UN Security Council asking for one resolution after another.

    In the Trump strategy, he  has argued that the United States has two strategic competitors – namely China and Russia. Left to Trump, he would reach a rapprochement with Russia even recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea and perhaps asking Ukraine to cede the ethnic Russians-inhabited eastern part of Ukraine to Russia. But for the United States Congress’ opposition, Trump wants to be friends with Russia. He sees Russia from the prism of a white country in  his nativist picture of the world. He seems to see China as a potential existential challenger to American hegemony in the world perhaps harking back to the 19th century of seeing China as the “yellow peril” to the white race. Even though China and America maintain some symbiotic economic relations, Trump  however sees China’s remarkable economic leap forward  as something that was achieved at the expense of the United States. The people of the American rust belt of Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the southern states of Alabama, Missouri and the Carolinas who have watched helplessly their manufacturing industries fold up while China has become the industrial workhouse of the world are with Trump in his economic war with China. Playing to his base, China has become the bête noire of the  Trumpian  White House. In his strategy, he sees Europe as a competitor and he is not even a supporter of the EU and sometimes insinuates that the EU is dominated by Germany and was one of the supporters of Britain’s exit from the EU (BREXIT ) apparently as a first step to dismantling a successful economic union which has made war in Europe inconceivable.

    One thing  that is clear about Trump is that he is an iconoclast determined to undo what existed before him without having thought about what will replace the institutions he wants to dismantle. In doing this, he is dispensing with good old diplomacy with what he calls “peace through strength”. This is why he would threaten North Korea with “fire and fury” and seriously mean it. He seems to believe in the use of American power to achieve his aim whether in Iran where he wants to abandon the carefully negotiated five power plus one deal to rein in Iranian nuclear ambitions, or in North Korea where that country has presented the world with a nuclear  fait accompli. Where his  bellicose politics will lead remains to be seen but one thing is clear is that the world is entering a dangerous denouement.

  • OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    OBJ, PMB and ghost of first republic

    Obasanjo tried to justify the inauguration of his new movement last week by reminding us of the need “to rethink and retool since the instruments we have used so far in our nation-building and governance since independence have not served us well”. He says his new movement “will mobilise our population for unity, cooperation, development, rule of law, employment, law and order, justice, integration, peace, security, stability, welfare and well-being”. He also says the movement is not the third force or a political party but a means to an end and the end is “Nigeria, unshackled, united, dynamic, strong, secure, cohesive, stable, and prosperous”. For him and his group, it is “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future.”  He however says in the event the movement decides to transit into a political party, he will cease to be a member.

    The first observation is that as indicated on these pages last week, Dr. Obasanjo who hijacked and destroyed PDP along with opposition AD and ANPP in 2003, seems to underestimate the value of political parties in a democracy. Yet no modern state is known to have developed since the 18th century without political parties serving as modernization agents.  Obasanjo unfortunately shares this fallacy with  his other military adventurers including  Babangida who tried to decree parties and Abacha , who in the guise of unipartysm, hilariously decreed what the late Bola Ige described as ‘ five fingers of a leprous hand’. Finally, Obasanjo was silent on why the old system failed and why for the nation, it has been motion without movement since 1966. We will address that shortly.

    But with Col Amhadu Ali (rtd), former PDP chairman and under whose chairmanship of Petroleum Products Prices Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), house probe confirmed the theft of N1.6trillion by PDP stalwarts and their siblings under the fuel subsidy scam, and Olagunsoye Oyinlola who  as governor of Osun State was sacked by the courts for electoral fraud, as the movement chief drivers, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of his proposal which  in itself is a recipe for a rule of mob by ill-equipped men as we have witnessed since 1966. Since people cannot give what they don’t have, what his movement will produce will not be different  from what is generally regarded as military social engineering efforts such as NYSC, unity schools, quota admission to universities and civil service, all aimed at symptoms rather than the fundamental problem of crisis of nation-building which Obasanjo claims is his concern.

    Secondly, we cannot climb the palm tree from the top as Edmund Burke reminded us a long while ago. “My Nigeria, your Nigeria and our Nigeria with enchanting present and secure and glorious future…” has no meaning when we share no common culture, values or world outlook. No ethnic group, whether dominant or minority, can impose its culture on others without resistance. The best route to national cohesion as advised by the UN is to encourage nationalities to promote their own cultures and values. Uniformity is the language of Nigerian military and their fronts that stand to gain economically or politically from the chaos that has come to define our nation since 1962.

    There was no evidence that southern youths who read architecture and other courses in ABU in early sixties were superior to their northern counterparts. Those who came to read medicine and other courses in University of Ibadan came on merit and were never considered inferior to their southern colleagues. Unfortunately, since the death of Ahmadu Bello in 1966, except for the ongoing effort of El- Rufai of Kaduna State to address the fundamental causes of low standard of education in the north, the obsession of successive northern leaders at both national and local level was to drag the rest of the country down to their level through quota system of admission to federal institutions which were taken over from the states. While the architect of forceful seizure of institutions from their state owners has not told us how his proposed rule of the mob will contribute to nation-building, we have seen without having to reinvent the wheel, how nations like Germany, France Italy and the rest of Europe after two devastating world wars came to grips with their crisis of nation-building. We also have examples of Brazil and India, a more heterogeneous society to learn from.

    But the question many may ask is why weep over the collapse of all our parties since 1979, if democracy that cannot survive without it, like Obasanjo’s proposal will only lead to the rule of a majoritarian mob? The simple answer is that unlike other institutions of democracy viz vibrant civil society, free press, free and fair elections, independent judiciary, and independent legislature, political parties help in recruiting and training gifted and astute individuals capable of managing the majoritarian mob.

    We can now address the question of why our system failed.  It failed in the first republic and under Obasanjo because those recruited by political parties to manage majoritarian mob had limited vision.

    With the control the of state security apparatus in the hands of the north as we have it today, Fulani agenda replaced the Nigerian agenda. Coercion was freely applied as response to restiveness among the Tivs, the Ijaw and was to be used to pacify the Yoruba before the coup of 1966. In fact, anarchy reigned in the land especially in the Yoruba country when the military came in 1966.

    Although Dr. Obasanjo calls himself ‘Mr. Nigeria’, available facts do not confirm he has a vision beyond self. He has publicly admitted he manipulated the system in 1979, just as he did in 2007 when, following his third term fiasco, he imposed terminally ill Umaru Yar’Adua and an untested and incompetent Goodluck Jonathan in 2011. Before then, he had, during the aborted third republic in 1993 said MKO Abiola, the astute politician produced by Babangida’s decreed parties, was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. He voted for an interim contraption to be headed by an Ernest Shonekan. As it turned out, he became the greatest beneficiary of MKO Abiola’s tragedy.

    As for President Buhari, his ‘extraordinary strength of character seems to be marred by his stiffness and bigotry’. He doesn’t appear to have the capacity to build consensus, an important ingredient for democracy’ and this perhaps accounts for his inability to manage even his own ANPP and CPC until Bola Ahmed Tinubu worked along with others to put the APC together. He and he alone is to be held responsible for the failure of APC.

    In a piece titled ‘what Nigerians expect of Buhari and Tinubu, published on these pages on January 11 2013, I had advised Buhari and Tinubu to see APC inauguration as that “of a modernising party in line with what obtained in the first republic and elsewhere in the developed democracies…to replace the current political parties moulded in the military image, with garrison commanders as party leaders”. Tragically, what Oyegun and the president succeeded in doing since riding into power on the back of APC is striving to make it a carbon copy of PDP.

    With President Buhari’s apparent opposition to restructuring,  with Myyetti Allah leaders who justified mindless killings by Fulani herdsmen and threatened to unleash more violence still walking free, with video probably sponsored by Buhari detractors promising pacification of Nigeria with help from other West African Fulani making the rounds while those in charge of the state security apparatus keep blaming victims of herdsmen violence, it appears we are once again being haunted by ghost of collapsed First Republic.

     

  • Show of terror

    IN every police division, you are likely to find the legend : ‘’Police is your friend’’ boldly written and placed conspicuosly at the front desk. It is to tell you that you do not have anything to fear when you see a police officer. Unfortunately, not many officers live up to this credo. Instead of being the people’s friend, the police have become their foe. Nigerians merely tolerate their police because they do not have any other law enforcement agency to run to in case of trouble. At the least provocation, the police will descend on those they are expected to protect, beating them black and blue. Being a kid will not even save you from their wrath. Ask the  pupils of Top-Teez Nursery and Primary School, Ojodu in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State. On January 26, some policemen from the Ojodu Abiodun Division stormed the school to arrest a five-year-old pupil, David. In order to get  David, they allegedly assaulted the receptionist and the Headteacher, Mrs Ayodeji Orojo, who came out to see what was happening. Nobody is saying the police should not do their job, but they must do it with decency.  What is the point in storming a school to arrest a pupil without first meeting with the headteacher, who could have facilitated the boy’s release,  if need be? Can a minor be arrested and detained as the police did to David before releasing him on bail to his mother, who allegedly coughed out N19,000 for him? Is bail no longer free? The police need to be extra careful in the discharge of their duty to avoid clashing frequently with the public. Just the other day, this same Ojodu Abiodun Police Division was attacked by angry residents. It is  high time Ogun State Police Commissioner Ahmad Iliyasu stepped in to ascertain what is happening at this division before the unthinkable happens.