The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Buhari and his men

    Nigerians, as Femi Adesina, the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity rightly observed during a Channels Television programme Monday evening, ‘love and trust the President’. Although goodwill is considered a scarce commodity, there is no shortage of goodwill from Nigerians. This is without prejudice to the President’s limitations. Nigerians who are passionate about our country believe that the nation after 16 years of PDP’s mindless looting in place of governance, needed 73 years old Buhari, reputed for his zero-tolerance for corruption and they have not been disappointed.

    Who but Buhari  could have taken on our thieving Generals in the ‘Nigerian Army of anything is possible’ who diverted billions of funds meant for troops welfare and procurement of military hardware to buying properties for self and family members while Boko Haran overran military barracks and took control of over two third of Borno State; disgraced errant elders who confessed to receiving bribes from ex-President Jonathan’s NSA, challenged First Lady who attributed billions of naira  found in her account to gift from her husband’s well-wishers and inheritance from her petty-trader late mum and who but Buhari could have dared the Nigerian judiciary where not a few judges and senior members of the bar pursue not the end of justice but their private pockets?

    But unlike President Obasanjo who effortlessly makes friends among Nigerians and actors in the international community and regards himself as intellectual by not just surrounding himself with intellectuals but also by going to obtain a PhD in Theology from National Open University of Nigeria, President Buhari hardly moves out of his comfort zone and from the circle of close friends and relatives.  It is on account of this he has continued to be haunted by what some Nigerians, including Dr. Junaid, Mohammed, a radical Second Republic member of the Lower House, sees as ‘nepotism and cronyism’. It is this weakness that has been exploited by his trusted aides who after caging and shielding him from those who could look him on the face and ask questions embarked on a war of attrition to outwit each other. If we needed proof of betrayal by his warring aides, the  Babachir Lawal tragedy and the Abdulrasheed Maina’s disaster provided that.

    When the Senate Ad- hoc Committee report that recommended the sack and prosecution of Babachir Lawal first got to the president, he had no difficulty choosing between Lawal, who like Caesars wife, he had expected to be beyond reproach and the eighth Senate perceived by many as house of deals where senators pay themselves scandalously high salaries with over a dozen of their member facing EFCC corruption charges. Besides the president, most Nigerians saw the action of the Senate that was at dagger drawn with Lawal over constituency projects as corruption fighting back.

    But as Adesina has pointed out, the President ‘did not give Lawal a clean bill of health’ but sought the help of one of his two warring groups. The rival group to which Magu belongs which is better placed to give unbiased advice was shut out. This also played out in the case of Abdulrasheed Maina who was smuggled back to office with EFCC 14 charges of corruption still hanging on his neck.

    In his letter dated January 17 to Bukola Saraki, the Senate President, the president admitted his refusal to suspend Babachir Lawal was based on the recommendation of a review team he had set up. Obviously, on the strength of the team’s self-serving advise to save one of their members, the president  insisted ‘the Senate Ad hoc report was an interim report signed only by three of nine members and which ought to have been presented to the Senate at plenary for adoption’; and that the ‘Senate ad hoc report dated 16th December 2015 does not meet the principle of fair hearing and compliance with Senate rules for conduct of investigation in matters relating to abuse of office by public officers’. On both counts, it happened the president was misled. The report was signed by seven members and Babachir Lawal was in fact invited through a newspaper public notice advertisement.

    Babachir  Lawal who was accused by the Senate of misappropriation of funds and lack of transparency in the Presidential Initiative North East (PINE) was finally sacked on Monday. This was coming about five months after the submission of the Vice President Osinbajo’s committee report. The self-serving advice of the president’s trusted aides has opened him to attack from even his APC party members such as Shehu Sani, chairman of Senate Committee on the Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the North-east who claims “when it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and in the judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the president uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption in the presidency, they use deodorant”. Now even PDP men who in decent societies should be behind bars for their crime against our nation are trying to divert attention of Nigerians.

    If Pa Bisi Akande’s warning about the presence of some unpatriotic Nigerians determined to sabotage Buhari’s government even before it took off fell on deaf ears; if the president’s wife alarm that those who do not even understand the agenda of APC were out to sabotage her husband’s presidency was dismissed as antics of a housewife whose place belongs in the kitchen and the other room, it is hoped the unpatriotic role of the president’s kitchen cabinet members in the Lawal and Maina scandals will at least remind the president of Maitama Sule’s warning  that he stood the chance of becoming  the greatest Nigerian president if he embraced justice and fairness, virtues that have come under severe assault  by members of the president kitchen cabinet in the last two years.

    Adesina who attributed five months delay to the president’s ‘painstakingness and thoroughness’ is perhaps too young to know that we once had an organized society with Action Group, NPC and NCNC in a race to outperform each other in serving their various people. And as if celebrating his boss’ virtue, he says of the president, “Anybody that knows this president will know that he’s a man that takes his time but when he makes up his mind, he makes it up real good. Who can pressure the President?

    Again this is part of the president’s problem.  No one is telling the president that he is an elected servant of the people and must hold FEC meeting as scheduled or delegate without abdicating and that the president’s cabinet members who continue to genuflect instead of pointing out some of his inadequacies are not different from Obasanjo or Jonathan’s cabinet ministers that humoured both former presidents to disastrous end.

    President Buhari must be told the buck stops at his table. We did not elect his warring kitchen cabinet members. Neither did we elect his ministers some of whom even in an APC government of change, move around in convoys of many cars at taxpayers’ expense.

  • Nigerian media aides and the Tantalus plague (2)

    •Mutations of the journalist in the corridors of power

    A notable politician/public officer dismisses fear of backlash over his persistent rape and impregnation of minors. He brags to a friend in Diaspora, in his native dialect translatable thus: “The news is dead on delivery. I have top journalists at my beck and call.” He bragged that he has journalism’s shining lights on a leash of cash. As the mongrel dares extremities for a gift of bone, so do his ‘boys’ in the media, he claimed.

    Predictably, the most senior media aide in the culprit’s pack of hounds spread the cash and killed news of his sex crimes.

    It is only fair that the aide watches helplessly as randy, power-drunk politicians rape his daughters and infect them with gonorrhea, like his principal’s underage victims; by Edumare’s retributive grace. It is only just that Edumare situates the fruit of his loins in similar circumstances, without the luxury of justice. That he might understand agonies of his principal’s victims and their families.

    The media aide is neither conflicted nor appalled. He says: “Na today e dey happen?” (It’s no oddity. It happens). A passion for truth and ethics could never spur him to imperil his job – which he considers a saving grace, his ‘out’ from bleak, thankless Journalism.

    The life of a journalist-turned-media-aide is a parody in which honour plays no part. Unlike other members of his principal’s court, he enjoys no prideful place. He sits on his haunch, like a dog on its paws outside its master’s court. Like the hound, he is forever waiting to lunge, with a kill-cry and bare fangs, at perceived ‘detractors’ of his principal, the dog owner.

    ‘Ki lo ma nse awon boys yii naa?’ (What’s wrong with these boys?), he drones irritably, whenever his former colleagues in the media, subject his principal to harsh scrutiny and objective criticism. He assures his principal – who could be the president, senate president, a state governor, legislative speaker or local government chairman – that the press can be bought over.

    Media aides wrongly assume every news editor, correspondent and  reporter to be manipulable by cash, a foreign trip, a gallon of vegetable oil, Christmas/Ileya ram or a bag of rice, items by which his conscience was sold and bought.

    Thus he gets a generous budget to silence the ‘boys’ and inspire them to ignore the ineptitude and corruption of his principal. Of the bribe allotment, the media aide siphons 70 per cent to his personal account, and splits the remainder among the ‘boys.’

    It never gets old to see the so-called ‘press boys’ scurry for residue of the bribe with dark delight. Rebels against the prevalent rot are daubed unfairly aggressive, biased, sanctimonious or driven by questionable animosity because they have been ‘left out.’

    There is a difference between ‘press boys’ and ‘Gentlemen of the Press.’ The press boy forever prowls, lobbying along the corridors of power in frantic quest to become media aide. A ‘Gentleman of the Press’ however, is a true ethical native. And he exists.

    He understands that the work of a media aide connotes the soul’s struggle against the body. Thus he rejects the role, knowing that as media aide, he would suffer the affliction of languid ethics, insatiable lusts and poisonous glamour, like a courtesan haunted in post-orgasmic flush, by relentless spasms of lust for riches and unearned pleasure. Like fabled Tantalus, his thirst is never quenched.

    Media aides get confused too. Mcenteer calls this condition occupational hazard for those who move from journalism into government, or vice versa. They experience confusion about the role and functions on their new jobs, likewise their colleagues and news audience, seeking information from or about them, their professionalism and evolving identities.

    Reuben Abati for instance, was a notable, venerated critic, celebrated at home and abroad. Yet he suffered irredeemable descent as justifier of ineptitude and political trifles as ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s Special Adviser on Media Affairs (SAMA).

    Enter Femi Adesina, SAMA to President Muhammadu Buhari. Adesina’s performance as presidential media aide further diminishes the worth of the journalist in the corridors of power. Although his apologists within and outside media circuits justify his indiscretions claiming, “What’s he supposed to do? Would you quit if it were you?”

    Nobody is asking Adesina to quit. Yet it is instructive that a man who used to be a journalist of immense wisdom and worth, at least to those inspired by him, has been reduced to whatever he is currently.

    Adesina’s difficulties vary in character and severity but are classifiable as problems of ethics, irony, conflict, confusion and blur. What if he had vied for the presidency? This couldn’t be preposterous given his once luscious reputation as a thought moulder, manager of men and resources. Sadly, like his predecessors and several lesser aides, he manifested as glowing work of self-sculpture, until his descent into the labyrinth of power, as presidential statuette and every gadfly’s unfinished model.

    Similar ethical dilemma afflict journalists across the seas. Charles Royer suffered unpleasant, public, irony at his election to Seattle City Hall. Before he became American Mayor, Royer attained fame for his nightly 60 to 90-second political commentaries on KING-TV. In 1976, his half-hour documentary, “The Bucks Stop Here,” exposed improper use of special-interest money in the state legislature.

    The programme earned him two national journalism awards. When he became Mayor in 1977, Royer decided to share valuable information with his former press colleagues in off-the-record sessions. But TV crews wanted to bring their cameras into the meetings, against his wishes. Royer eventually showed up on TV and newspaper front pages, shoving TV cameras out. He will forever remember the headline with the photo: “TV Commentator turned Mayor shuts out TV.”

    Another poignant example is Edward R. Murrow, respected radio and TV journalist’s alleged bid to prevent the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)  from airing “Harvest of Shame” soon after he became the head of United States Information Agency. It was one of Murrow’s final documentaries for the CBS network and it revealed the terrible living and working conditions of migrant farm laborers in Florida.

    His attempt however, failed, but leaked to the press thus embarrassing the novice bureaucrat. “Murrow, the government propaganda chief, had tried to censor Murrow, the muckraking journalist,” notes Mcenteer.

    Despite their shortcomings Royer and Murrow served in more ennobling circumstances. Not as glorified errand boys or attack hounds. It is the job of journalist turned media aides to pitilessly offer harsh but constructive criticisms from patriotic and envisaged media perspective, of their principals’ intended policies or actions before they are made public.

    If it is their principals’ wish to transform Nigeria, media aides should help them understand that in heaven, saints don’t become ‘God’ and an angel is nobody in particular.

  • Taxation, then and now 

    Taxation, then and now 

    I remember vividly that sunny afternoon. A kid, I was on my way to the market, running an errand for my mum. Right there in the heart of the town, a few minutes away from the palace and opposite the main market was a strange scene.

    A small crowd of sober residents had gathered to watch the odd show. I joined them. And what a moving spectacle! Some men were holding horsewhips. They were watching over a group of men, some of them elderly, who were lying flat on their backs and facing the scorching sun. Any of them who attempted to turn his face away from the sky got horsewhipped . Whenever the whip landed on any of the unlucky men, a shrill cry of pain rang through the gathering.

    Unable to make any sense of it all, I asked an elderly fellow who stood beside me: “Oga, why this? What is going on? His face betrayed some eerie feeling. He said in a sober voice: “They are tax dodgers.”

    That was Ado-Ekiti in the 60s. The fear of the tax collector was real. Men would watch carefully before setting out to their farms if they had not paid their tax. To be caught and lashed was a big humiliation.

    All that has changed. Today, nobody is scared of the taxman. The poor pays one way or the other. The government worker and his private sector counterpart pay. The rich drops a little into the government’s purse.

    Why do people dodge tax? Some believe an inefficient and corrupt government does not deserve to levy taxes. Others dodge taxes just out of ignorance.

    I do not share the thinking that most Nigerians do not want to pay taxes. Ignorance is a big factor in this regard. A friend of mine once spoke of a Lagos taxi-cab driver whose cab he boarded. Passing through the once troublesome Berger bus stop – famous for its crippling traffic jams and terrific pickpockets – on the outskirts of Lagos, the driver screamed as he beheld the great transformation the place had gone through. He praised the government and said excitedly: “Ah, oga, I wan pay tax. Show me where dem dey pay.”

    Now that falling oil prices have turned back the clock, the government is looking at taxation as one of the ways to save the economy. Enter the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS). It is all about increasing tax awareness, compliance and, simultaneously, giving tax defaulters a nine-month time frame to regularise their tax affairs with the federal and state governments. This will be done through voluntary, truthful declaration of tax arrears within the nine-month window.

    The poor won’t mind paying; the rich are the tax dodgers. They either do not pay or underpay. Now they have a grace period to, out of their own volition, come forward to pay – thanks to VAIDS. But will they embrace this opportunity?

    The scheme is a baby of the Federal Ministry of Finance, running from 1 July  till 31 March 2018, the period for its first phase. VAIDS offers, as incentives to the participating taxpayer, waivers of penalties on previously unpaid taxes, tax audits, and prosecution for default, as well as  and an opportunity to spread the payment of tax liabilities over three years.

    The overall objective of VAIDS is the correction of the plethora of tax anomalies, with a view to generating income for government and ensuring better income redistribution.

    In the United Kingdom, for example, those on yearly income below £11,500 per pay zero income tax. In France, citizens pay income tax only if they earn above €5,963 yearly and €5,165 in Spain. In Germany, the rate is €8,354. A feature in all the mentioned countries is that income tax rises as income increases.

    The reverse appears to be case in Nigeria. Yet, the country is home to many stupendously wealthy people, who own huge businesses and luxury items, such as yachts, aircraft and some of the world’s costliest automobiles, the types referred to as heaven on wheels. We are one of the leading consumers of Champagne and we gorge on imported rice gulped down with exotic wines.

    When the World Bank released a damning report on Nigeria, saying we are among the world’s five poorest, former President Goodluck Jonathan replied in a boisterous manner that shocked the writers of the report. He said: “We are not poor. If you talk about ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries, yet they are saying Nigeria is among the five poorest countries.”

    Some logic there. But it is a fact that no fewer than 29 Nigerians and Nigerian businesses registered their private jets in South Africa to evade taxes in Nigeria – according to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). People in this category also own choice homes in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. They use tax havens to hide their wealth.

    VAIDS is offering them a chance to pay up. If they do, the $1b target will be surpassed, I bet. Gradually we will wean our economy off its lethal dependence on oil, which the world is dying to do without.

    When Dr Jonathan made his assertion, oil prices were above $100 per barrel. There seems to be no hope that oil will ever return to that golden era. It is good that the Buhari administration has found a lifeline in VAIDS to fatten the national purse. We seem to have learnt a lesson – we rarely do – that our indifference to tax collection was a grave error of leadership and judgment.

    The effect of falling oil prices started to manifest in 2014, The Federal Government and most of the states began to default in the payment of workers  salaries – paying is now considered a landmark achievement, which politicians celebrate as if it were an Olympic gold medal.

    Over-reliance on oil revenue also left Nigeria near the basement of tax-to-GDP ratios in the world, with the country having 6.1 per cent, according to World Bank estimates. African countries, such as South Africa (26.9), Egypt (15.8) and Botswana (35.2), are better placed than Nigeria in this regard.

    According to the FIRS, of our 70 million taxable adults, only 14 million pay income tax, with 96 per cent of them on the Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) system. A 2015 Knight Frank wealth report listed Nigeria as home to an estimated 770 billionaires (in naira terms) out of whom only 214 pay income taxe of N20 million and above.

    This provides uncomplicated indications that self-employed people account for only four per cent of taxpayers and that the country’s billionaires are either not paying or underpaying. It also suggests that tax compliance in the corporate sector has been squalid.

    A similar nine-month tax amnesty initiative implemented in Indonesia this year earned the country $10 billion, attracted 970,000 new taxpayers and an additional $330 billion worth of assets to the tax net.

    The implementation of VAIDS will be assisted by various information-sharing agreements to tackle tax evasion and illicit financial flows.

    Accountability is important. The anti-corruption battle should be reinforced in a way that the public will be assured that stealing from the public till will attract grave consequences.

  • Aso Villa clinic as metaphor

    It was Zahra Buhari who back in September first wondered why despite the N3 billion budgeted for the State House Clinic, workers not only “don’t have the equipment to work with, patients/staff have to buy what they need such as ‘simple paracetamol, gloves and syringe”.

    Aisha Buhari, the president wife will later seize the occasion of the opening of a two-day stakeholders’ meeting on Reproductive, Maternal, New-born Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition held at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa to take the fight directly to Dr.  Munir, the Chief Medical Director of the State House Clinic. She wanted to know the rationale for “building new structures when there are no equipment and  consumables in the health facility established to take care of the President, Vice-President, their families as well as members of staff of the Presidential Villa”.

    Aisha and her daughter undoubtedly meant well for the country. If those who could look at the Leviathan, President Buhari, on the face and remind him of his contract with the people have been shut out by short-sighted northern irredentists, the president’s immediate family can at least remind that him the buck stops at his table. If there is no syringe or cotton wool in medical centre located under the nose of the chief priest of change, and which had for 15 years attracted humongous budgetary allocations before the 2016/17 N3.87b, an amount which is N787m more than all the total allocations to all the 16 federal Teaching Hospitals spread around the country, it is obvious it will be business as usual in all those far-fetched areas. And if the problem is corruption as being insinuated by the president’s family members, that will give us an insight as to why there is total decay in all the nations federal health institutions including the University College Hospital, Ibadan, once regarded as one of the best three teaching hospitals in Commonwealth nations, and the 16 other glorified teaching hospitals set up without any abiding philosophy beyond sharing free oil revenue.

    But there is a heuristic value in the current intervention of the president’s immediate family. The waste associated with the state house medical centre is a metaphor for all that is wrong with President Buhari’s administration—nepotism, corruption, lethargy and betrayal of expectation of many Nigerians.

    This column had argued President Buhari was free to select those he could trust to deliver on his contract with Nigerians even if they all came from his Daura village. Unfortunately, those the president trusted as Pa Bisi Akande pointed out at the early stage, did not share his pan- Nigeria vision beyond shutting out those who carried him on their back across the country during the electioneering period and others who publicly dared Nigerians to stone them if Buhari failed to implement the APC agenda to the letter. More tragic for our nation, a section of the Nigeria press,  committed to no higher values beyond what goes into their pocket for merely mirroring society at its basest, provided the intellectual support for this anti-Nigeria group. It took the intervention by the president’s wife to confirm Pa Akande’s fears when several months later, she accused those she claimed hijacked her husband’s government of knowing nothing about APC agenda.

    We now know that those Buhari put in place of trust did not share his pan-Nigeria vision and passion. Babachir Lawal, who knew Buhari expects Caesar’s wife to be above board, had no excuse in his capacity as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, getting involved in contract awards to a company in which he allegedly had an interest. The lopsided appointments into various positions including the recent appointment into the Board of NNPC were carried out by those President Buhari placed in positions of authority. Maikanti Baru of NNPC arrogantly justified his action by claiming he reports to the minister and not the minister of state. He did not tell Nigerian who chairs the Board of NNPC in the absence of President Buhari who also doubles as the minister for petroleum. We all know President Buhari turned back those who carried official files to him in London.

    Other President Buhari’s confidants that have betrayed the president’s confidence include the Attorney General who not too long ago, attempted to hide behind an ad-hoc committee the president set up to reposition the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit and restore its membership of the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Unit, to undermine the office of EFCC acting chairman. We can also recall how two different reports emanating from the office the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DG-DSS), Lawal Daura was all the self-serving Senate needed to justify non-confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC chairman. And finally, if the president has any doubt about the warnings of Pa Akande and his wife as to the loyalty of some of his confidants, the scandalous reabsorption of Abdulrahseed Maina in spite of the 14 EFCC charges on his neck with the help of the offices of Attorney General and Minster of Justice is sufficient evidence to show they do not identify with the president’s anti -corruption crusade.

    The president has made some giant strides despite effect of naira devaluation foisted on him by the World Bank and their Nigerian fronts that dismissed his argument against devaluation in an import-dependent economy. The government, as the minister of information has said, has also continued to provide regular supply of fuel to Nigerians without having to pay some parasites N1.6trillion as fuel subsidy. We have paid counterpart funding for the modernization of some of our railway projects.  But these are no substitutes for good governance which manifests through fairness, justice, and creation of an enabling environment to make the governed believe they have the protection of their government as they pursue their daily chores.

    From the crisis of nepotism, corruption, legitimacy and identity, the fallout of attempts by President Buhari’s confidants to undermine his pan Nigerian vision, let us now return to the billion-gulping State House Clinic. Do we really need a State House Clinic whose combined N3.1billion budgetary allocation in 2016 and 2017 is higher than the combined allocation to all the tertiary healthcare centres in the country?

    The answer is no. Elsewhere in the world, state houses have only clinics that take care of emergencies while head of governments and civil servants like those they are elected to serve depend on public hospitals for their health challenges. While leaders of government in those advanced economies fly commercial airlines and use public transport, our president controls a fleet of aircraft while the leadership of the legislature control fleet of cars at taxpayers’ expense.

    The decision by our political leaders to create special privileges in the guise of perks of office is a misreading of the policy thrust of our colonial masters who did so to meet the needs of civil servants who were birds of passage as they were posted around the Commonwealth nations.

  • Maina and the fire this time

    Maina and the fire this time

    Bookmakers were shocked on Tuesday when Senators set up a committee to probe how Abdulrasheed Maina, who was fired from the civil servant at the peak of the pension funds scandal, got reinstated and elevated.

    They had thought the National Assembly would give the super civil servant the Dame Patience Jonathan treatment. Banks were ordered to unfreeze the former First Lady’s account – simple act of legislative responsibility to an ex-First Lady who deserves much reverence in a society famous for honoring its dearest citizens.

    Those busybodies who always hide under the nomenclature of social critic and activist in pursuit of their selfish ends went to town. They said the lawmakers’ action was subjudice as there were cases in court. Do they want to teach the lawmakers their job?

    They called the honourables and distinguished ones names – paedophiles, drug pushers, thugs and thieves. This being a newspaper for the discerning mind, I would not bother you with other things they said about our Assemblymen.

    Before President Buhari stepped in to fire Maina (for the final time?), a source close to a popular lawyer had told me he planned to enter a writ seeking to enforce Maina’s fundamental human rights that had been abused in a most obnoxious manner. He was to demand compensation. Thereafter, Maina would issue a press statement, saying he has forgiven all – just as men of his class do whenever they are targets of naked envy.

    Maina’s record will be hard to beat. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) declared him wanted, yet he was all over town, moving like a celebrity. The police chief was summoned by the Senate and ordered to seize him. Alas, Maina was elusive, even as the task force boss had an army of police guards.

    Who ordered Maina’s return and promotion? Where did he get those escorts? Will he surrender to the EFCC? What happens to the pension funds? Who bears the loss? Will his accomplices be punished or polished? And where is he now?

    For Maina – the last three letters of his name stands for “fire” in Yoruba – will the fire this time stay real?

  • Quality assurance in varsities: Umudike example

    The news that 28 professors at the Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture in Umudike were demoted came as shock and a surprise to me as a retired university professor. Things have definitely changed in the university system in Nigeria. This watering down of standards was recently underscored when JAMB lowered admission scores into universities to 120 out of a total of 400 marks. Thank God this ridiculous admission policy was roundly condemned by the universities themselves and by parents who felt standards should be higher in the interest of academic integrity of the universities. What apparently happened in Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture was that 28 people who were either promoted or appointed professors were deemed unqualified by a committee of joint Senate and Council and were therefore demoted to either Readers (Associate Professors) Senior lecturers or lecturers grade one! How could this have happened in a university that has been in existence for at least two decades or so? Was there no Appointments and Promotions Committee (APC) which meets to do a final approval of an assessment and interview process when presumably papers of potential professors would have been sent out to senior professors who are experts in the fields of candidates being considered for appointments or promotions? In the old days when the university system in Nigeria was small, papers were always sent to the IUC ( inter university council) which was an outfit of the Association of Commonwealth universities (ACU) for assistance in sending papers to experts located in several commonwealth universities. All universities in the commonwealth were members of the ACU. It was therefore axiomatic that a professor in one university, say Ibadan would be accepted as professor in any Commonwealth university either on sabbatical leave or for regular appointment. The hallmark of a good university was the international make up of its staff. All this has of course changed. We do not have the money to recruit international staff anymore because a British university professor for example earns £100,000 per year which is about N50 million. Recently, the British government issued a warning to British universities vice chancellors to defend their salaries of £150,000 per year and this is about N75 million. Vice chancellors in Nigerian universities earn N12 million per year while their professor colleagues earn lower than half of that. The point I am trying to make is that it appears that people are being made professors because of the salaries attached to the category or class of appointees and not as a mark of academic distinction and excellence.

    Having said this, it is still puzzling to me why somebody who is a lecturer grade one would be appointed a professor. An extremely brilliant person could be promoted from senior lecturer to professor, but even then, his papers would have to have been assessed by external assessors suggested by his head of department or Dean of his or her faculty or college to guide the vice chancellor who will make the final decision about the external assessor. In all this process, anonymity of the external assessor is the rule rather than the exception. In extremely rare and exceptional cases, the number of years as teacher may not be relevant in appointing a person a professor.

    In the case of Michael Okpara Federal University of Agriculture, the vice chancellor and the council stand condemned and indicted and should be removed immediately if they are still in office. I am sure this travesty of the system is not limited to the university alone; the practice pervades the entire university system especially the new federal universities and some of their state counterparts. It is also a reflection of the low academic calibre of some of these vice chancellors. In the rush to establish federal universities, assistant professors (lecturers) from some American universities and senior lecturers from existing Nigerian universities were appointed vice chancellors. These unqualified people’s first action as vice chancellors was to promote themselves as professors and after doing this, they had no moral right to deny promotion to their academic colleagues and friends. I personally know of a case of a former student of mine who moved from lecturer to professor the same year by tactically shopping around and moving from one university to the other until arriving at his destination of professorship. This has been made possible by the ballooning number of universities without corresponding planning for staffing them. I know of a case of a young lecturer in a hard area of computer science applying for a job of senior lecturer in another university. As soon as he got it and without even assuming the position, made a bid as in an auction or in a market for a higher post in another university and got appointed a professor. There are professors and there are professors of course! This academic title has become like chieftainship title in the usual bad tradition in Nigeria. Academic trade unionists also sometimes blackmail their vice chancellors to make them professors and many weak vice chancellors have surrendered to these people by manipulating the appointments process to bastardize the system. If we are to be honest with ourselves, there is a systemic problem in Nigerian universities. First of all the crowding of the university system by the new mushrooms of federal universities and their private counterparts has led to too many unqualified people masquerading as academics in our universities. Any professor who is neither known by colleagues here at home and abroad is not fit to parade himself as a professor unless of course he is a band leader of one our musical groups! The calibre of people being made vice chancellors should be looked into because academic leadership in a university can only be provided by a true academic who knows his onions. Respect for academic excellence can only emanate from a boss who has gone through the academic grill and not from an academic parvenu or upstart who came to his or her position through political jobbery. The council of any university is crucial to maintaining academic integrity. A situation where failed politicians or any politician at all are routinely appointed pro chancellors and chairmen of councils does not augur well for the future. These buccaneers do not belong to universities because to them public office is for material exploitation and self-aggrandizement. Governments at state and federal levels must find other ways of compensating their colleagues after elections. There are several knowledgeable retired academics who can bring their experience to bear on supervising the universities and maintaining oversight responsibility for the good of the universities. There should be a stop to further licensing of new universities by the NUC. The more universities are established, the downward spiral the universities will experience in its academic integrity.

    Most universities in the country have units of Quality Assurance charged with ensuring academic offering in terms of good teaching and laboratory supervision of students as well as ensuring that lecturers go to their classes to teach. The unit also ensures the integrity of examinations and fairness in assessments. All this is good but any academic who has to be monitored to do what is necessary by my own book does not belong in the university system. What this Quality Assurance should also do is check the academic claims and certificates of those who are teaching. It will surprise us what we would find. In 1979 when I was director of the NUC office in Washington D.C, we found two members of staff in the Department of Business Administration in University of Lagos who falsely claimed they had PhD. from an American university. On investigation we found out that the so-called university was only a certificate-issuing one room office in California. When confronted with this fact, one of the people involved disappeared into the thin air and we never heard from him again and the other begged to go back to a regular university. I do not know why this latter person got away with this lenient treatment on the grounds that his Masters’ degree was genuine why the doctorate degree was fake. He later returned to the university and several years later became professor and head of department!

    The situation in Michael Okpara University has exposed the soft underbelly of the Nigerian universities. The federal government can set up independent audit committees of retired professors to look into the appointment and promotion processes of these universities and try to streamline them. The state universities should do the same. The NUC which has spread the joy of university ownership to all and sundry should be empowered to do the same for all private universities. Their reports should be submitted to the various councils of these universities for their implementation. Quality assurance should spread to every aspect of the university system from staff to students in order to remove the stain of low quality staff as well as people holding unmerited positions of academic leadership in our universities. This is the only way to avoid everybody in the universities being tarred with the brush of academic fraud which sadly pervades the entire university system in Nigeria and casting doubt on the quality of academic degrees and certificates awarded by Nigerian universities.

  • Nigerian media aides and the Tantalus plague (1)

    •Mutations of the journalist in the corridors of power

    Man loses wife and three kids to vehicle accident caused by bad road. Media aide justifies governor’s refusal to repair the road, claiming there were more pressing state projects. Aide scornfully dismisses uproar over the incident as negligible tirade of ‘the wailing wailers.’

    It is only fair that the aide suffers the loss of all his children and wife, in similar circumstances, that he might understand the misery of the bereaved father and husband.

    If presidential media aides disdainfully justify government indolence in curbing frequent murder of innocent rural families by northern herdsmen, it is only fair that such aides suffer inexplicable, brazen murder of their loved ones too. That they might understand the insane pain borne by victims of such killings.

    A governor cum phony progressive honours an African president with an obscene N520 million effigy, to the consternation of his impoverished electorate. His media aide justifies the juvenile enterprise even as the governor owes salaries and pensions. It is only fair that the aide experiences divinely imposed hunger and famine of the purse, that he might understand the agony of the state’s starving, elderly pensioners.

    If after experiencing such losses, media aides are able to smile, keep a stiff upper lip and unflinching belief in the ‘fairness, efficiency and honesty’ of their principals, Nigerians may begin to assimilate their illusory gospel of fortitude and hope.

    The contemporary media aide urges you to be happy irrespective of your plight. He advances to dissenters, the illusion of happiness, an attitude akin to David Cooperrider’s “Transformational Positivity.”

    Media aides urge oppressed electorate to embrace their pains and see the world anew, touting obscure and incomprehensible jargon about the power of positive thinking. ‘Nigeria is getting better,’ they urge the citizenry to believe.

    Their admonition would be edifying had they experienced same miseries as the citizenry they request such optimism of. Their smiley gospel of contrived bliss and resignation would be acceptable if they could mount the soapbox and preach so, soon after they lose loved ones to avoidable deaths caused by bad governance by the principals they represent.

    When the citizenry complain of perceived shortcomings of their principals, media aides liken expressed dissent to whimpers and cries of neutered enemies of the state. These days, they simply dub every critic, a ‘wailing wailer.’ For instance, if you criticize the incumbent administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, you must be one of the greedy beneficiaries of immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan’s corrupt regime.

    If you complain of deaths on the nation’s bad roads, hospital corridors of death, substandard schools, corrupt, overzealous government agency officials , they tell you that Nigeria can’t achieve a sudden resurrection from devastation and sleaze foisted upon her by previous regimes.

    There is no gainsaying that Nigeria currently experiences pangs of a healing process, which requires patience and commitment to the course of positive ‘change.’ It is an open secret however, that the process of rebirth is constantly hobbled by leadership and nemeses enslaved to hubris, nepotism, greed and a god complex.

    The incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) government expects to be cuddled and patronised while its chieftains and elected officers foists on Nigeria, grotesque governance akin to that imposed on the country by immediate past leadership of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

    No doubt, bad roads and deadly waterways, substandard education and healthcare, depressive economy and unemployment , insecurity and untimely death, still constitute the greatest assault on the populace by the ruling class.

    The citizenry’s deadliest  aggressor, however, are journalists turned media aides in the corridors of power. They are like Spenser’s genitally deformed Duessa to the ruling class’ misshapen phallus.

    From the presidential villa and state houses, to lower public service ministries, journalists mutate into modern versions of the whore of Babylon. Like Spenser’s Acrasia, Phaedria, Malecasta, Duessa and Hellenore, they foster the triumph of predatory government over a critical press. While a shrewd few struggle to stay upright and true, a greater number play whore to the ruling class.

    It is instructive to note however, that the Nigerian media aide nurtures variants of lesser aides or attack dogs within and outside his office. While he licks the boot of his principal, his minions jostle for crumbs from his ‘operating budget’ or the largesse he gets from his employer.

    Mongrels to the media aide often function further down the pecking order; they are the thugs and trolls of the traditional and new media. They issue caustic retorts to critics and perceived detractors of the media aide and his principal. A critique of a presidential media aide’s disgraceful sycophancy for instance, attracted sharp retort from one of his thugs.

    Manipulative and exploitative, media aides tirelessly seek to validate humiliation, poverty, pestilence and death foisted upon mostly poor, underprivileged citizenry by their principals.

    But unlike majority of Nigeria’s impoverished who are driven by hunger, tokenism and base sentimentality to justify the callousness of their elected representatives, these ‘Yes-men’ aren’t conditioned so by severe bouts of hunger or affliction by Stockholm Syndrome.

    They are in perfect control of their desires and aspiration to be ‘turned’ and dominated by predatory principals. They are eager to serve and devote their lives to the celebration of evil, in whatever guise, as long as it translates to currency deposits in their bank accounts.

    They are greatly efficient in closed, womblike spaces; the TV studio, compact halls, the boardroom, and State House press halls. These replace the medieval spaces in the bedchamber, groves and caves like the leafy grotto of Homer’s Calypso, where their medieval archetype is captured, seduced, sodomized and infantilized.

    Thus Nigeria’s major affliction besides the archetypal rogue, corrupt journalist includes, Special Advisers on Media Affairs, some State Commissioners for Information, Chief Press Secretaries and Special Assistant on Media Affairs. These ‘Yes-men’ conduct themselves like political Labradors, constantly undergoing psychological entrancement, thus turning their linearity of quest into a Tantalus problem.

    Tantalus, the eternally hungry king in Greek mythology, was condemned to stand in water under a fruit tree. Whenever he tried to drink or eat, the water or fruit receded beyond his reach. Such is the predicament of the media aide. Like his principal, he is ravenous for unearned riches and other vulgar perks. Thus his insatiable appetite for the spoils of office, irrespective of his position at the root of the totem pole.

    Media aides should be pitied. They bring no honour to their work. They are mere errand boys hence their inability to speak truth to power. Before their descent and domestication like yard dogs, some of them struggled to personify the country’s finest press men, critics and leaders of thought. Today, they serve in mortifying circumstances, in capacities unbecoming of patriot-journalists and critics.

  • Restructuring has become irresistible

    To most Nigerians, the need to restructure the federation is now a critically important and pressing need. For instance in the Yoruba South-west, restructuring is virtually a universal demand. The recent Yoruba Summit on restructuring held in Ibadan easily drew a crowd of over 6000 Yoruba people, representing most Yoruba organizations. Then, Yoruba responses to the ongoing Public Hearing on Restructuring by the APC, Nigeria’s ruling party, have been massive. At every seating of the public hearing in the South-west, large crowds attended and many groups made presentations. At the seating in the Yoruba central city of Ibadan, not less than 3000 people attended, almost all of them members of the APC. At that Ibadan seating, one of the highest fathers of the Yoruba nation, the Alaafin of Oyo, put a very informed seal of authority on the voice of the Yoruba people over the matter – to the loud and grateful applause of the huge audience. Many other fathers of the Yoruba nation, including significantly the Ooni of Ife, have at other times added their great voices to the voices of their Yoruba people on this matter.

    Yoruba leaders and members of every political party that has members in the Yoruba South-west have publicly committed themselves to the Yoruba position on restructuring. All Yoruba persons of note who have taken time to speak or write on the subject have strongly supported the Yoruba people’s demand for restructuring – including politicians, professionals, religious leaders, countless civic organizations, women and youth organizations, academics, labour leaders, yoruba men and women who have held high-level positions in the Nigerian federal government, former and current governors of Yoruba states, countless Yoruba legislators, etc. Yoruba governors of all parties have, at a meeting, spoken up for restructuring. The Yoruba are well known for their respect for the freedom of speech and choice; but today, any leader of any party or organization who says that he rejects the massive Yoruba position on restructuring could easily doom himself and his party or group to political oblivion.

    The same level of intensity about restructuring is common to most other parts of Nigeria too. Virtually all notable citizens of the South-east and South-south have spoken up strongly and fearlessly for restructuring, and the masses of citizens support their position. More or less the same is now true of most leaders and citizens of the Middle Belt too.

    Most elder statesmen of the South-west, South-east, South-south and Middle Belt have stepped bravely and patriotically forward together and founded a Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum to promote orderly and peaceful restructuring of their country. This is the first ever in Nigeria’s history.

    Even most of the avowedly secessionist movements in the South-east and South-south have said, at various times, that restructuring would satisfy their demands. It is only because the rulers of our country don’t listen carefully that we don’t hear these youth organizations when they say these things.

    Moreover, even in the North-west where many leaders have been opposing restructuring determinedly, some very important leaders already understand the benefits of restructuring and have turned to expressing strong support for it. More and more are adding their voices.

    Many citizens in most parts of Nigeria are now saying that restructuring is an idea whose time has come – an idea that has become irresistible. They are manifestly right.

    Naturally, there are people among us who might not immediately understand what restructuring means and what it can do for all peoples and sections of Nigeria. The answer is that we who have been speaking loudly for restructuring must simply keep trying harder and harder to explain to all. Every single person in all regions of Nigeria is important and deserves to be assisted to understand this crucial matter.

    Some leading citizens in the North-west think that we southern peoples stand to gain something exclusively from restructuring – and they therefore oppose restructuring. No, southerners do not stand to gain anything that north-westerners do not stand to gain. Restructuring will release every section of Nigeria to develop its God-given resources, and that will promote prosperity and eliminate poverty all over Nigeria.

    Some members of the political elite of the North-west also think that their region is benefiting much from the present structure of Nigeria, and they therefore oppose restructuring. We who advocate restructuring must continue to explain to them too with respect, patience and brotherly love. The real truth is that no section of Nigeria has gained, or is gaining, anything on the aggregate from the present situation. There is much more poverty today than before 1966 in every region of our country. Whatever gain any region of Nigeria can claim is small compared to what that region could have achieved if Nigeria had continued to be structured and managed as she was before military rule began in 1966.

    The undeniable truth is that Nigeria has been declining since the late 1960s, and she is declining even more sharply today. The over-centralization imposed by the military regimes is wrecking our country.  Education is the root of all development; but our schools, even our universities, have become very weak centres of teaching and learning, and our children and youths are not learning as effectively as they should. Poor education is weakening our country and jeopardizing our country’s future.

    We entered into independence with a fairly strong economic foundation based on the development of our natural resources – agricultural crops like groundnuts in the North, cocoa in the West, and palm produce in the East, plus some mining of solid minerals in every region. The agricultural successes were all achieved by our regions, not by any federal government – and they were achieved through various programs of friendly assistance to our farmers by our regional governments. And these achievements served as the base from which we then began to improve upon our infrastructures and social services and diversify into other economic areas – in every region. Altogether, these regional achievements were advancing the over-all progress of our country and building a country of hopeful people. We Nigerians were not yet a rich people, but hope was growing among us – and definitely, there was no possibility of our becoming the enormously and hopelessly poor people that we are today.

    The source of the problem is, I say again, military rule, 1966- 99. Finding themselves as rulers, the military embarked upon seizing control of everything – schools and universities (including schools belonging to private proprietors, and the great universities established by the regional authorities), the export agricultural products, roads and highways, ultimately everything of importance. And everything went to the direct control of the central military command, with regional military governors becoming subordinates directed by, and answerable to, the central commander.  As petroleum became a big source of revenue in the 1970s, our military rulers thought that ultimate wealth had come to Nigeria. And they gradually abandoned the old sources of wealth. Regional authorities lost all sense of control and competence, and all local development initiative. The federal establishment itself became overloaded, confused, inefficient, wasteful and horridly corrupt. Inevitably, the corruption and loss of interest in the welfare of citizens spread to state and local governments. And social services and infrastructures are perishing all over Nigeria.

    Our farmers lost the assistance programmes that had used to help them to be efficient producers. Most cocoa farmers gave up; the few still producing cocoa quietly smuggled their cocoa to Benin Republic where they could get better attention and higher prices. Nigeria ceased being a serious exporter of cocoa. Similar fates befell Nigeria’s groundnut and palm-produce exports. Then, repeated droughts descended on our Northern Region and wiped out much of our farming there – with no competent and concerned regional or state authorities to help. With all these massive losses of income, Nigerians became a hopelessly poor people. No region has been exempt. Northern leaders who think that their region is benefiting from today’s condition need to reassess the situation very seriously, and very realistically. The real truth is that the North has been impacted more harshly than other regions.

    The final source of our country’s trouble now is that, when the last military dictator prepared to leave in 1998, he put all the over-centralization that the military had achieved since 1966 together in a constitution. Unwisely, we accepted his constitution – and we have been trying to govern our country with it. It has proved a near-total disaster. What most Nigerians are saying is that we need to toss out this military constitution and write a new civilian federal constitution under which we can have conditions similar to those of the years before 1966. That is the surest way to return to having governments that care about the people and about local resources. It is the only way to revive our productivity and prosperity – and to save our country from breaking up. Most Nigerians know this.

  • A friendship betrayed

    A friendship betrayed

    Where are our animal rights activists?

    If animals could talk and march, we would by now be contending with a huge protest – and justifiably so. Every evil phenomenon is named after some animal. Animals are carriers of the most terrible of diseases. When we take any action that is meant to reverse a bad situation, we draw from the jungle some imagery to convey our message. When we are angry with a public figure we name our pets after him. The tortoise is notorious for being deceitful in Yoruba folklore.  But animals are supposed to be our cousins; our closest friends. What have they done wrong?

    The other day when the First Lady – sorry; I don’t wish to live in the past – the President’s wife spoke of hyenas and jackals in the corridors of power, many were wondering how those dreaded creatures left their comfortable abode in the woods to invade the hallowed seat of power. She said the lion king was on the way back to  drive them out.

    Mrs Aisha Buhari was only using the symbolism of the animal world to describe the power game that was unknown to those far from the scene of action. Now that the lion is back and roaring, are the hyenas and jackals still at work?  Who are they? Animals in human skin (God bless Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s soul)?  What is their modus operandi? Who are their backers? What is their aim?

    What is their role in the bickering between Minister of State Ibe Kachikwu and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) boss Maikanti Baru?

    Kachikwu, by the way, seems to have shot himself in the foot, with that sensational letter. If he couldn’t see the President, why was he sitting tight in office? Are his explosive allegations still valid now that the NNPC has laid bare the facts of the matter, which our dutiful senators are threatening to probe?

    A source close to the Villa confided in me the other day that hyenas and jackals truly exist in the seat of power. The only place they have not infiltrated is the “other room”. Again, who are they?

    This is indeed a failure of reporting, of which this reporter is also guilty.

    When the military felt that  kidnapping, armed robbery and such detestable criminal activities were getting out of hand in the Southeast, it launched Operation Python Dance I. All was quiet – for a while.

    Then came Operation Python Dance II. Despite the army’s strident explanation that the exercise was to rid the Southeast of criminals, the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), now outlawed, claimed that it was all targeted at it and its leader Nnamdi Kanu – where in the world is he? Soldiers and IPOB activists clashed. It was bloody. Heads were smashed and limbs broken.

    No surprise there. What is to be expected when pythons dance? Even in a circus, a python is not a spectator’s toy. It won’t dance for nothing; its dance is a dance of death.

    Kanu, you may wish to recall, had boasted before the “python” slithered its way to his community: “By the time we finish dealing with the enemies in the zoo, there will be none left to tell the story.”

    Where is the zoo? Who are the animals? The insolence was so much that all that was left was for the python to dance. Since it did, Kanu has not been  seen in public. Except for some tepid statements, IPOB has largely been quiet.

    As part of the exercise, the military launched a series of medical missions to attend to many who lack access to good health care. Then, there was commotion everywhere. Parents stormed schools to fetch their children. The story was that the Federal Government had unleashed soldiers on the people who were to be forcibly injected with the monkey pox virus. All attempts by the government to explain that no evil was intended failed to convince the public.

    By the way, monkey pox is another ailment that broke out in Bayelsa State. One of the three patients in the state has committed suicide, we are told. It all sounded strange and people were wondering: another disease borne by an animal? Bush meat vendors and lovers of such delicacies have again been put in disarray. A replay of the Ebola hoopla.

    Undeterred, the military launched its Operation Crocodile Smile in the Southwest. We are yet to hear of any casualty, not even among those fellows who have found a huge fortune in kidnapping people for ransom and their cousins who rob homes and seize the highways. Now many are asking: “When will this crocodile begin to smile?”

    But the commotion has begun. Parents were withdrawing their kids from schools in Ondo State on Tuesday after it was rumoured that they were going to be vaccinated against some diseases, including monkey pox. The rumour mongers were at work in Kwara State yesterday. There was panic among residents when the false news went round that kids were to be forcibly vaccinated.

    I recall my undergraduate days in Benin City. I woke up one sunny morning after a hangover to get some water from the big drum we all fetched from in the backyard of my friend’s mother’s home. That simple routine suddenly turned into a screaming  and dashing flight back to the bedroom.

    As I dipped a bowl into the drum, a crocodile leapt up from the cubicle that housed the drum. I couldn’t wait to see that its huge mouth had been tightly held together by a thick rope. I flung the bucket and rushed in, panting.

    Roused from sleep in an unusual manner, my friend sat up and said: “Bob, wetin dey pursue you?” After catching my breath, I replied: “Ol’ boy, I found a crocodile in the backyard.” Emma was smiling. Softly, he said: “Oh. My mama wan make Olokun.” The crocodile was to be sacrificed to the river god to ward off evil and bring good fortune. I was stunned.

    In the heat of the ebola palaver, animals were indicted as the carrier of the lethal ailment. Hunters and bush meat vendors were sent out of business. When the noise subsided, we went back to our old ways. Were all the animals in the land vaccinated? Was it just a case of giving a dog a bad name to hang it?

    When the President returned from his medical vacation, he could not work from his office, which was to be renovated after rodents, cockroaches and their ilk had messed up the place.

    Even a presidential office could not command some respect from animals. The joke was all over the place that the man nobody could displace had been stopped by mere rodents.

    Who unleashed the rodents? The jackals and hyenas? I am surprised the Senate has not deemed it fit to probe this glaring executive dereliction. Are they waiting for a replay of George Orwell’s Animal Farm before moving?

    It is a busy season for our distinguished senators, I understand. Some are busy probing Senator Hamma Isah Misau’s  allegations of financial impropriety and concupiscence against police chief Ibrahim Idris. Others are threatening to probe the $25b contracts row.

    Even then, they need to spare a thought for the role of animals in our socio-political development.

    President Putin recently got a puppy as a birthday gift from President Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan, who grabbed the poor dog by the scruff and lifted it up. Putin cuddled the animal like a baby. A pro-Kremlin journalist, according to a Times of London report, contrasted the Central Asian dictator’s stern handling of the dog with the Russian leader’s softer approach.

    A radio analyst even saw an allegory before the Russian presidential election in March. He said: “Such a handover of the puppy from Asiatic cruelty to European tenderness can be interpreted as make the right choice and you will receive fatherly care, after all we could do it differently…  .”

    Former Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini had a pet lion. President Tito, formerly of Yugoslavia, kept a cheetah, among other animals.

    A friend sent me this last week: “Chicken pox, bird flu, lassa fever, ebola, monkey pox, python dance, crocodile smile; have Nigerians in any way offended the gods of the animal kingdom?”

    I really don’t know if we have betrayed our friendship with animals. But a piece of advice: Let our men of power begin to acquire pets. That way, animals may be kind to us, especially now when the best of our hospitals are broke, lacking cotton wool, syringes, hand gloves, bandages, and all such vital tools of medicine.

  • World Bank and Buhari’s other enemies

    World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim’s last week innocuous statement that President Buhari directed his Breton Wood  institution to focus developmental efforts exclusively in the north was all the ammunition the president’s other enemies needed for an all-out assault on his person and his government.  The denial by the presidency that the demand made on the World Bank was the “rebuilding of the beleaguered North-east” has been dismissed as an afterthought by those who have an axe to grind with him especially defeated PDP and its men who are at the receiving end of Buhari’s anti- corruption war, some restless office seekers and Christian warriors who want us to be wary of Buhari’s islamisation agenda. It was also an opportunity to once again regale us with stories of nepotism, marginalisation and domination of Buhari’s cabinet by Muslims, a claim the vice president, Pastor Osinbajo denied after pointing out that there are indeed more Christians than Muslims in the president’s cabinet. We are also told by tale bearers that Buhari as a former Fulani herdsman before Ahmadu Bello identified him as a candidate for the military and now as Nigerian President as well as a self-confessed proud owner of 500 heads of cows; he cannot but be associated with the dastardly acts of some Fulani herdsmen that have turned farmland and villages across Nigeria into killing fields. And how about the president’s silent support for Baru, the GMD of NNPC in his current face-off with the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, over contract award? The president, as a Fulani man cannot resist taking side with Baru, another Fulani man, the President’s political foes insisted. Drowning PDP held a press conference citing the President cover up of Baru’s alleged $25b contract as another evidence of what was dismissed as his selective anti-corruption war. This was coming long after Vice President Osinbajo had said there was no $25b contract award of any type contrary to the claim of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.

    All is fair in war as in politics; not even the advice of former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, who is not a fan of Buhari or any leader for that matter, against politicizing the discussion between President Buhari and Jim Yong Kim about ‘the prioritizing given to North-east’ as ‘reconstruction of post-conflict zone has often proved to be key for the rest of country’s growth and stability’ received any attention.

    Neither did Adams Oshiomhole, the immediate past governor of Edo State’s assertion that “It is a matter of fact that I (he) was present at the meeting of President Muhammadu Buhari with the World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim on July 21, 2015 at the Blair House, Washington DC where Mr President made the request against the backdrop of the devastation of the North-east zone and the need for international organisations to rise in support of the efforts of the Nigerian government in arresting the humanitarian crisis in that part of the country” succeeded in changing the mindset of those who believe Buhari is a northern irredentist is on a mission to subvert the interest of the south if he cannot immediately Islamise Nigeria.

    As evidence of his loyalty to the north as against his constitutional obligation as Nigerian President, Buhari’s political enemies also reminded us of his lopsided appointments and the domination of the security services by Muslim military officers of northern extraction. They did not forget to call attention to the president’s deafening silence on corruption allegation against Babachir Lawal, the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

    Our revered father, Pa Ayo Adebanjo was not one that will allow such an opportunity to go without taking a swipe at Buhari for whom he has nothing but contempt. Pa Adebanjo says by telling the World Bank president that more attention should be given to the northern region, Buhari has shown which section of the country matters most to him, insisting “President Muhammadu Buhari is president of the North and not president of Nigeria”. As a parting shot he said “The greatest mistake made was for Yoruba to vote for Buhari. The South-west is regretting voting for him”. He however did not say when the Yoruba who rejected his attempt to drag them to PDP and clueless Jonathan who after marginalizing the Yoruba that worked for his ascendancy to power for six years tried to ridicule Yoruba leaders with bribes in the run up to the 2015 election told him this. It is curious that Pa Adebanjo often forgets the warning of Awo, his leader who as far back as the 1940s said ethnic consideration or pressure from leaders would not sway the voting pattern of the Yoruba in favour of someone who has no agenda to improve their lives.

    Of all Buhari’s enemies, the World Bank as an institution is perhaps the most potent. It was the bank that worked hand in gloves with MKO Abiola and General Babangida to dump him during his first coming in 1983 as military Head of State for insisting Nigerians should starve if they could not produce their own grains and for challenging us look inwards instead of importing the labour of other societies while our own children roam the streets in search of non-available jobs. It is on record that to please IMF and World Bank, IBB and his group, following the removal of Buhari, introduced Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that led to the collapse of our budding industries and the flooding of our market with foreign goods.

    It is instructive that the same World Bank that never enforced devaluation of currency in European countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain and France during their economic challenges few years back, canvassed for the devaluation of the naira when Buhari came in 2015. They gave out bailouts to European countries facing economic down turn, but have for two years advised President Buhari against taking loans. Inability to borrow money to inflate the economy has the potential for social dislocations. If that is not happening yet, perhaps twisting what President Buhari said can quicken same.

    Finally, Buhari is haunted by his past as part of the military that fraudulently claimed to have sacrificed their present for our future but ended up destroying our structure and political socialization process.

    President Buhari like the rest of us may be a victim of Nigeria’s common affliction –love for our ethnic group and fierce protection of our religious freedom. But since these are virtues celebrated by the federal arrangement we pretend to practice, the President’s perceived weaknesses do not make him any less committed to our nation. If anything, President Buhari, the author of “Nigerians have no other country to call their own” has in spite of his personal weaknesses earned his place in history as one leader who is fully committed to making Nigeria a better place for our children.

    Fortunately for President Buhari, his position in history is not threatened by antics of his many enemies including mischief makers, discredited politicians and corrupt elements who as Oshiomhole said ‘are trying to twist, manipulate and politicize a patriotic request borne out of altruistic motivation’.