The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • They will paint your ugliness in beautiful English

    The random newspaper, television station and online medium become vessels to itinerant grim reapers as you read. Editors of powerful news platforms, reporters and digital/mobile journalists in particular, have become death’s minstrels. Like Ogege, the spirit with embroidered woe, they have turned serpents, sleeping in Nigeria’s undergrowth, to merge with the hue of the prevailing wild.

    They forget that when Nigeria eventually submerges in the mire of bestial elements, even the press will be cannibalised. Nonetheless, the local media, like global news agencies, serve as emissaries and enablers of the dark, vicious lusts and ‘murders’ committed by politicians, industry titans and multinationals. How? By ignoring their monstrosities and couching their ugliness in beautiful English.

    It is hardly surprising that the politician and magnate remain the subjects of Nigerian media’s perennial fascination. Of these lot, the coarse and ferocious, wanton and bloodcurdling, are gleefully celebrated and coated in ornamental language by the press. The average newspaper, TV station and online medium wildly celebrates the ‘achievements’ and ‘statesmanship’ of established and closet criminals in public offices because it is very profitable to do so.

    To the press, it never matters that a state governor diverted and expended public fund to ship cronies and political associates abroad, to witness his lavish wedding to a trophy wife. The media hardly cares that a governor would splurge on an insolent ward’s wedding ceremony, at home and abroad, at a time he has refused to pay workers’ salaries and improve infrastructure citing ‘economic recession’ as his reason.

    Very few journalists are indeed, worried, that Nigeria’s incumbent public officers, like predecessors, have fleeced the country to the bones, in the guise of operational budgets and emoluments. State fund, stolen and diverted by these elements would attain judicious use if applied to nobler constitutional projects, like the provision of crucial infrastructure, security, potable water, stable electricity among others.

    The media hardly cares that such money could have saved lives if used to repair bad roads or renovate moribund primary health care centres. Thus while poor, underprivileged electorate die in ghastly road accidents; while thousands of newborn breathe their last and their mothers’ extinguish to birth complications, the Nigerian press obsesses about the ‘sterling statesmanship,’ ‘compassion,’ ‘brilliance,’ and ‘influence’ of the men and women  responsible for their untimely demise.

    Save some very few journalists and media that actually care, the majority of Nigeria’s Fourth Estate do not give a hoot about dying mothers and infants in Nigeria’s hospital labour rooms and corridors of death. They do not care that while the citizenry’s beloved die prematurely in extreme and avoidable circumstances, most incumbent and former senators, governors, presidents and even local council chairmen, sponsor their trophy wives, daughters and daughters-in-law abroad, to give birth in safer circumstances.

    Rather than speak truth to power, characters that could be mistaken for kindred spirits with the viper, scorpion, dung beetle, and hyena are elevated, worshipped and celebrated as the rarest of gems by the Nigerian press.

    The media celebrates these incarnations of humanity’s debris because doing otherwise could be suicidal. Politicians own the media. And tycoons determine the news. They place advertisements and pay the salaries of the men and women by whose professionalism or otherwise Nigeria accesses her news and information needs. Thus the quality of journalism you get.

    It is foolhardy of anyone to expect a journalist who hasn’t received  salaries in eight months to be objective about a news story involving a commoner and a politician. The commoner will ignite his conscience with tears but the politician will silence it with hefty ‘brown envelopes.’

    It is deceitful to anticipate fairness, honesty, integrity and accuracy from mainstream and online media whose existence and continuity are determined by the whims of influential politicians and business moguls.

    But the Nigerian society demands purity, integrity and impartiality from the press all the same.

    Journalists are accused as partners in crime with the Nigerian ruling class. To a great extent, this is true. It is also true that the Nigeria gets the journalism it deserves.

    Norman Mailer jests that “Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.” This is often true. Sadly, journalists are still the butt of the most demeaning jokes and premeditated put-downs. Nobody thinks much of a journalist.

    In the estimation  of big business, the citizenry and ruling class, the journalist, whatever his designation or job title, is the manipulable pawn and necessary evil that has to be courted and tolerated. The descent and humiliation of the journalist still persists in the hands of his employer; salaries still range from N15, 000 per month at entry level to N100, 000 per month at managerial level in most media houses.

    This resonates badly for the country. The principles of fairness and social responsibility of the press require that the journalist who would adorn the cloak of defender of the masses’ rights should be upright and flawless in character, work and personal ethics. Such admirable traits are impossible with Nigerian journalists because due to their constant and methodical impoverishment by their employers, they entertain less scruples and eagerly sell their souls to devils among the political, business class for ‘brown envelopes.’

    Yet the society seeks fulfillment of tyrant fantasies. Such fantasies often vary from the destruction of an unpopular government or despot to a worn-out civilization. Reality however, affirms the duplicity of such mindset. In Nigeria, where voters are continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalises on obvious handicaps: their impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment, and overt sentimentality, it becomes increasingly difficult to nurture and enable a fair, vibrant press.

    Despite its faults, society conveniently picks on a scapegoat for its infinite timidity and cluelessness: the press. The journalist is thus expected to serve as the conscience and moral compass of the society, challenging the government and checking the excesses of the ruling class, selflessly and uncompromisingly.

    As utopian fantasies go, these are noble expectations of the journalist but the Nigerian society ignores its cultural shift from conventional morality to unbridled hedonism. It assumes, hypocritically, that the press will continually give it honest and developmental news even as every segment of the society strives to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s critical mob.

    The public, comprising big business, the government, and civil societies among other mob segments, vilify any journalist or news medium that seeks to educate and engage rather than entertain and perpetuate their biased definitions of reality. Several organisations are placing media advertisements and parceling expensive gifts to halt publications or shut down reportage that could hurt their interests even as you read.

    Contemporary Nigeria embraces the horrendous pageant that has turned news into paid publicity and mindless entertainment. In response, the journalist slips to survival mode and kowtows to lusts and vanities of modern, politically-correct society.

    Beneath the mindless glamour, cultural and ethical decline however, an insidious reality festers in the death of hope and incandescence of tragedy.

    At the centre of the turmoil is the journalist whose fate is so critically bound with the country’s.

    Rather than pose a challenge to the system that domesticates and enslaves him, he chooses the easiest way out and plays junkyard dog to tyrant cabals and the predatory bunch constituting the nation’s citizenry and political class. He assumes the role of a poseur and pretends to fight for the interest of the public. This sad charade will end badly for everyone.

  • One Nigeria

    E WENT DOWN this road 50 years ago following the secession of the east from Nigeria. But since the 1967 debacle, which led to the civil war, we have learnt to manage our differences, though with hiccups here and there. For years, the Southsouth, the northern minority and other ethnic nationalities which feel shortchanged by the system have been crying of marginalisation. Despite misgivings about their agitations in some quarters,  they have been careful to pursue their cause without seeking to break away from the entity.

    But, painfully, not so the cause for Biafra. The Southeast youths now agitating for Biafra do not seem to know what their forebears went through in the first coming of that putative republic. Biafra was an accident of history. It was a republic born in a hurry because its promoter,  the late Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, saw it as the only way to get what he wanted for his people. Biafra did not enjoy the support of many prominent easterners, who refused to be led by the nose by Ojukwu, but it enjoyed the support of those (many of them unenlightened)  who saw in Ojukwu a saviour.

    Biafra was bound to fail with or without a war. As much as Biafra was dear to Ojukwu, he knew that its fall after the war was the end of the matter. That was why he accepted fate and moved on with his life after the botched venture. But those who see him as an hero and want to build on that shaky foundation would not allow the ghost of Biafra to rest. They have been doing all they can to exhume the Biafran ghost and set the nation back another 50 years.

    Some of these campaigns did not start today. They started in the lifetime of Ojukwu whose support some of them sought in order to win the hearts of their fellow Igbo. The Biafra agitators knew that by linking him with their cause, their job is half done. Ojukwu, ever his ‘people’s general’, did not drive them away. He gave them his blessings and even took Raph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) under his wing.

    But, Uwazuruike misunderstood him. He went to town, claiming that the  ‘great Ojukwu’ has anointed him as the one to ‘’lead our people to the promised land of Biafra’’. Besides Uwazuruike’s group, others have also emerged to pursue the same cause. The most prominent of these groups are the Biafra Independent Movement (BIM) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). In the last three years or so,  the Nnamdi Kanu – led IPOB has stolen the show from others. IPOB is today the ears, eyes and mouth of the Biafran cause. The groups are today at war over  which of them is the authentic voice of this cause.

    Their leaders level accusations against one another at will at the detriment of their common cause. Tell me, how can the new Biafra be born in an atmosphere of fear, rancour and mistrust among leaders of its agitating groups? The much they can achieve is to get people to close their shops and sit-at-home to mark the anniversary of Biafra, which was declared on May 30, 1967, by the late Ojukwu. The celebration of its 50th anniversary last May 30, however,  touched the raw nerves of some Northern youths, who virtually declared war on them on June 6.

    Under the aegis of the Coalition of Northern Youths (CNY), the group gave South easterners in the north 90 days to leave the region. The demand, it said, was necessitated by the IPOB sit-at-home order which paralysed socio-economic activities in major cities and towns of the South east last May 30. The Federal Government and the Northern governors have since condemned the youths’ statement. Indeed, the statement is uncalled for.

    IPOB did not break any law by calling on easterners to sit-at-home on May 30. If it likes it can ask them to sit at home for eternity as long as it does not  force them to comply. Only those who wished sat at home. Nobody was forced to sit at home if he did not want to. But that is looking at it superficially. We all know how some of these amorphous groups operate and the coercive powers they wield. We know what they can do to get people to comply with their directives. Having said that, this does not in any way give any other group power to expel any ethnic nationality from one part of the country or the other.

    CNY did not think it through
    before issuing that ultima
    tum. As long as there are groups within a society, there will always be agitations. No group will like to admit that it is getting much from the society even where it is in power. It will always want more and that at the expense of those at the receiving end. The Igbo may have a case, but its youths must learn how to fight for a cause. IPOB cannot adopt the same tactics used by Ojukwu in the 60s to fight the same cause in these present times. IPOB should change tactics if it wishes to achieve results. Our unity is non-negotiable. We can restructure the federation if we wish, but we should avoid disintegration because that in the long run will not pay us as a nation. We should learn from the balkanisation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

    Our unity lies in our diversity and as they say, there is unity in strength. It is unfortunate that some eminent members of the society from the north and the southeast are backing their own. This is no time to play ethnic politics. At stake is our country and what we stand for as a nation. Let us, therefore, be united in condemning the activities of  CNY and IPOB wherever they threaten to destroy the social fabric.

  • Mounting problems in Nigeria

    When the Muhammadu Buhari government came to power, we were very hopeful that many our problems will receive disciplined attention. The problems were many. But the most serious was the insurgency in the North-east part caused by Boko Haram which the last government was not able to tackle because of rampant corruption which unfortunately had spread to the commanding heights of the armed and security services as revealed by recent revelations during the trials going on in Nigeria at the moment.

    The economy was also on its knees caused by the collapse of the hydrocarbon market globally and Nigeria’s mono-cultural economy which since the phenomenal rise in oil prices in the 1970S had been hopelessly dependent on rent collection and sharing of oil money produced by multinational corporations with little or no indigenous sharing in the technology of production and the knowledge of its marketing.   This problem was further compounded by low intensity insurgency or rebellion in the oil producing Niger Delta which apparently felt a sense of loss when the president, a native son, lost the 2015 election. This then led to a reduction in production below what OPEC allowed us to produce. With the collapse of the oil market and exponential increase in defence spending as a result of Boko Haram insurgency, Nigeria was faced with double whammy of a problem of financial impecuniosity.  This affected everything that needed funding like roads and railway infrastructure, inadequate power generation and distribution, transportation and aviation, education and health and day to day running of government and payment of salaries and pensions.

    Ordinary people did not know the enormity of the problems and even the political elite of the country felt coming to power by the APC was not more than a revolving door of politicians who were basically similar in the way they viewed politics from the perspective of personal aggrandizement. Many must have been shocked when they found out that it could not be politics as usual. The national currency plunged to the lowest level against major currencies; inflation went to high heavens because even the little manufacturing that was going on was hopelessly dependent on importation of foreign raw materials without any effort at backward integration. Our economy was based on mere buying and selling of cheap imports from China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam and luxury goods from Europe and the USA. To cut a long story short, Buhari came at the worst of times! He even confessed that he felt overwhelmed by the many problems that plagued the country.

    His initial approach was to ignore the professional politicians of even his own party and to rely for months on the civil servants whom he felt were apolitical. He has also been accused of nepotism in his choice of close advisers. He faced squarely the issue of driving away Boko Haram from the territories they occupied in Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa. He has largely succeeded in doing this by changing the leadership of the armed forces as well as the field commanders. He was also able to stamp his will on operations and this attracted international sympathy and support which were not forth coming during the Jonathan administration. Our immediate neighbours also reacted positively to Buhari because they knew his tough reputation. Of course Boko Haram may have been defeated and degraded but they are not finished yet. Nigeria for a long time to come will still be afflicted by the legacies of this incendiary movement.

    The problem of the economy will not be solved quickly and easily. Even if the attempt at diversification succeeds, the gestation of the seed of the process will take a long time before its manifestation. The country will need a strong, determined and honest leadership to drive home reforms .The approach will not just be fiscal and economic alone; it will have to be through political economic route. This is because there is a structural dimension to the problem. A situation of over administration and little production is not helping. But it will take political and constitutional will to tackle this problem. This is where there is a serious problem.

    The president’s health may have deteriorated over this welter of problems. This country has too much problem to be on political auto-pilot. When the cat in the house is indisposed rats will be free to run around says an African proverb. Since Buhari came  to power, the South-east which ran the country with Jonathan suddenly exploded under the leadership of angry young men one of who is Nnamdi Kanu who is suddenly being lionized and elevated to status of a hero even by established politicians. Here is a young man ranting about Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba and particularly Obafemi Awolowo who in death cannot reply but Kanu keeps saying Igbo cannot forgive his family.  How many fronts does this man want to fight and how many enemies does he want to make for the Igbo? One thing I resent is individuals claiming to speak on behalf of millions of their ethnic cohorts. It is a settled fact of our history that the years 1966 to 1970 or even the years 1961 to 1966 when the government of Western Nigeria became a football between the North and the East without anybody thinking of possible consequences were not our golden years. Yes millions of people died during the crisis. Many innocent Igbo people were killed in the northern pogrom and many innocent souls died in the civil war. But families of those killed in the first coup d’état , the Akintolas, Okotie-Ebohs , Abubakar Tafawa Balewas, Ahmadu Bellos , Ademuleguns , Shodehinde, Abogo Largemas, Kur Muhammad, Unuigbe, Adegokes  and the  Zakari Maimalaris also have reasons to be hurt. The point I am trying to make is that we need to bury the hatchet because there is enough blame to go round. We should not allow the burden of our history to weigh us down to a point of immobilism. This does not mean we should forget the past. Certainly we cannot do that. We must allow the history of the past to inform the present and to determine our trajectory for the future. This is why we must consciously design a political structure that must not marginalize any section or ethnic group in the country.

    Perhaps the reason why these fissiparous tendencies in the country have suddenly manifested themselves is because of the apparent loss of influence by the Igbos in the current dispensation. The cause of this is political having voted against the ruling party, they should not have expected to be at the table where political dividends are being shared by those with political investments. But this is where care should have been taken for a more inclusive government. The constitution has actually taken care of this because every state has at least a minister in the cabinet.

    What this country needs is development. I couldn’t be bothered if there are Yorubas in the government as long as I have good roads, security, electricity, jobs for the youth, good educational and medical institutions for all of us. It is our under development that is exacerbating our ethnic awareness and hostility to one another. In my life I have seen three French speaking Canadian Prime Ministers of Canada yet they number just about 28 percent of the Canadian federation. We play politics of poverty in this country. This is why as soon as we get political power we want to corner all the resources not for our ethnic groups but for ourselves. I hope one day our people will rise against those who use the strategy of championing ethnic interests for personal advantage and financial benefits.

    Finally it is clear that the courts have stymied the campaign against corruption. Should the government not try and bring a bill to parliament to introduce trial by jury of equals as they do in the USA even in murder cases? It will be interesting to see how those who are robbing the country blind will fare in a system where all corruption cases are tried by jury. We have serious problems but these problems are systemic; we can tackle them if we put in place structures that would go to the roots of the problems rather than the current emotional outbursts and hate campaigns and deliberate falsification and manipulation of our recent past. We must be careful not to allow ourselves to be led by the nose to an unfortunate crisis and avoidable conflict.

  • June 12, 1993: Saints and villains

    The declaration and celebration of last Monday June 12 as democracy day by the governments and the people of South-west states to mark the June 12, 1993 annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigerian mandate by General Babangida and some self-serving politicians offered Nigerians another opportunity to reflect on the heroic exploits of June 12 saints and the baleful legacies of June 12 villains.

    For those below 24 years of age who are too young to understand what June 12, 1993 stands for,  the date according to Joe Igbokwe  “reminds us of the most peaceful, freest and fairest election ever held in Nigeria since independence and celebrated and extolled by local, national and international observers and with the man who won the election and his deputy both Muslims; it was the first time in the history of this country Nigerians jettisoned both ethnic and primordial sentiments to elect leaders of their choice; there was no record of violence, intimidation, snatching of ballot boxes, multiple voting, rigging etc. There was no protest from any part of the country until IBB and his cohorts started brandishing ethnic cards to stop the silent revolution”.(Joe Igbokwe, Sahara Reporters  June, 2013)

    MKO Abiola as custodian of a pan-Nigeria mandate so freely given by enthusiastic Nigerians chose to make the supreme sacrifice rather than succumb to military intimidation. He was egged on by other principled Nigerians such as Abraham Adesanya, Adekunle Ajasin, Dan Suleiman, Commodore Ndubusi Kanu, and Bola Tinubu, Alani Akinrinade; among many others using NADECO as their umbrella body. They along with civil society groups openly challenged the desperate Generals on the streets of Lagos and in the international community. They constituted the forces which according to Senator Shehu Sani, “forced the military out of power and (later) rallied Nigerians to eject the PDP out of power.”

    Lined up against Abiola and his sympathisers were Babangida, Jeremiah Useni, Sani Abacha, David Mark who according to report allegedly threatened to personally shoot MKO Abiola if sworn in as president and General Oladipo Diya who while riding on the leopard’s back as Abacha’s deputy, had described the opposition NADECO as “Agbako”. The desperate Generals also had the support of notable Nigerians such as Obasanjo who said ‘Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for’ but went on to become the greatest beneficiary of the June 12 coup He was brought out of prison and imposed as president by the disgraced military to pacify restive Yoruba nation and other determined Nigerians that wanted the military off their back.

    Obasanjo, according to Chief Frank Kokori, former General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers who was prominent on the streets with NADECO members and civil society groups over the struggle for June 12 which he claimed “removed the military completely from governance in Nigeria”, unilaterally fixed Democracy Day for May 29 in collaboration with his military clique and former dictators who are still behind the problems of Nigeria” in order to bury June 12 1993.

    We can add Chief Ernest Shonekan who Babangida imposed as head of an illegal contraption called Interim National Government to upstage his fellow Egba man in the same manner Dr. Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi, was  used as a stop gap by Tafawa Balewa during his illegal declaration of emergency in the West to allow  Awo settle down in prison before installing S. L. Akintola, his estranged deputy and  the Hausa-Fulani preferred choice for the premiership of western region without election to spite the protesting Yoruba.

    We also have in the list, Arthur Nzeribe and his ABN (Association for Better Nigeria) who after being barred by the courts from campaigning for extension of military rule went on to secure a midnight judgment from the late Justice Ikpeme to stop the election. The midnight judgment given in spite of a decree precluding the electoral empire from litigation was one of the reasons pathetic Babangida gave during a laborious television broadcast to justify the annulment.

    On the list also was Bashir Tofa, the candidate for the National Republican Convention (NRC) in the 1993 Presidential Election. Tofa who before his endorsement as candidate had been campaigning for  extension of military rule  was Babangida’s last joker to hold on to power. He refused to concede defeat despite having been roundly defeated all over the country including his Kano base. Speaking to reporters during the 21st anniversary of the historic election, he had said “the June 12, 1993 Presidential election was a fiction and its anniversary not worth celebrating”.  For him, “Only those who don’t have anything to offer to this country to move forward can still be talking about June 12 Presidential Elections”.

    We can add to the list, Tony Anenih, the erstwhile PDP ‘Mr. Fixer’ who was recently retired from politics by Adams Oshiomhole, the immediate past governor of Edo State. There was also Tom Ikimi, the chairman of Babangida’s other decreed political party who by refusing to concede defeat as NRC chairman landed the position of a foreign minister under Abacha.

    And finally we can add to the anti-Nigeria list the current members of the military created ‘new breed’ political elite who have not only failed to acknowledge the immense contribution of MKO Abiola and others who laboured for the enthronement of democracy but have in the words of Senator Shehu Sani, gone ahead to “share oil blocks to themselves, share positions to themselves, share national honour to themselves.”

    But our youths must not despair. Abiola has not died in vain despite the institutional conspiracy by military and the new political elite to deny him recognition.  One proof of this was last Monday’s recognition and celebration of his heroic contribution to the enthronement of democracy by his people. That he lives in the heart of his people is all that mattered.  For Shonekan, the impostor and Chief Obasanjo, a former military head of state, a two term Nigerian President and a respected African statesman who craves for recognition by outsiders, Edmund Burke has an advice – charity begins at home. One cannot be a good representative of outsiders if he is not first a good representative of his people. This perhaps explains why for a long time to come, both will live in the shadow of MKO Abiola among the Yoruba people.

    Already Babangida, who prides himself as the evil genius, can read the hand writing on the wall. Today, very few remember his birthday which at the height of his power attracted as many as 200 pages of newspaper congratulatory advertisements. Fewer remember August 27, 1985, the date of his palace coup against Buhari which his palace jesters had placed ahead of October 1, 1960, the date of our independence. And while he held sway as the Maradona of Nigerian politics, traditional rulers from all the over 450 Nigerian nationalities were falling over each other to give him and his wife traditional chieftaincy titles while vice chancellors of Nigerian  universities tried to out stage each other in conferring honorary degrees on him and his wife.

    Unlike MKO Abiola, his victim, who lives in the heart of his people and admired not by a few Nigerians for his supreme sacrifice in the battle for the enthronement  of democracy, Babangida is derided  for institutionalising corruption, abridging our political socialization process and destroying, in the words of Obasanjo, ‘all the values we hold dear’. If he is remembered at all, it is by private jet-owning multi-billionaires he created at the expense of Nigerians who in recent times have been trying to humour him as he ages in solitude inside his 45-room hill-top Minna mansion.

  • Vengeance finds everyone

    This piece too, should infuriate you, if you are of the scholarly divide that celebrates insults to God as ‘rational’ exercise. I am not some religious fanatic, I simply appreciate the might and existence of Edumare. If you don’t,  it’s your grief, not mine. However, you may define this piece too as a ‘human right’ to vent by eloquence of thought.

    If you are a public officer of the crooked divide, this piece too, should displease you. If you are an esteemed scholar with god complex, this commentary may injure your pride. It is never my intent to glorify your politics or preferred notion of the intellectual. I will not patronise you.

    What could be wrong in wishing that the Nigerian ruling class experience catastrophe it inflicts on the citizenry via bad governance? Consider for instance, the sad case of a man who loses his wife and three children to a fatal road accident caused by bad road, knowing that the State governor had persistently and criminally refused to heed pleas that he repaired the badly cratered road; could it be wrong for such a man to tirelessly utter heartfelt prayer, that our Heavenly Creator rewards the governor with similar tragedy? Would it be wrong to pray that divinely inspired vengeance, scorn all anti-retributive fetishism and religious rituals by the governor, and wreak greater tragedy in his life?

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

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

    Modu was hasty and rough thus making her ‘first time’ bestial and replete with pain. She screamed in agony but Modu didn’t care. “The louder I screamed, the more violently he shoved into me until I passed out,” she revealed to me in a personal encounter.

    Thus at the tender age of nine, Maryam was violently used and sexually abused. When she could not withstand the misery of living as a sex slave any longer, she opted to serve as one of the terrorist group’s female suicide bombers. Consequently, she was dispatched with a bomb to neighbouring Cameroon. She was taken on a motorcycle to blow up any soft military target in Cameroon. But Maryam had other plans.

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

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

    Now 12 years of age, Maryam is yet to break out the jailhouse of her past. She is still the starry-eyed nine-year-old that got whisked off to Sambisa Forest, while her relatives and neighbours fell in a bloody heap, to the bullets of Boko Haram’s terror squads. Maryam relives the days she went without food because her insurgent ‘husband’ was too poor and lazy to provide her food. She remembers the excruciating nights that she laid captive and helpless under his massive bulk, while he violently plowed into her because she  ”was an unwilling bride.”

    When Maryam eventually discovers that men and women who were meant to ‘protect and serve her’ as all good leaders should do, were responsible for her misery, should she simply ‘forgive and forget?’  When she discovers that men and women in the immediate past presidency embezzled the £2.1 billion disbursed to procure weaponry meant to secure her release and that of the 276 Chibok girls, should she seek them out for a hug and heartfelt blessings?

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

    Some would claim that it is wrong to wish such retribution on innocent children of perceived bad leaders. They would counsel forgiveness saying: “Let the actual offenders be punished and not their bloodline.”

    I passionately object to such righteousness. Why? In a nation where rich, privileged criminals are given a slap on the hand and pat on the back, it is only just that offspring and wives of such criminals suffer same tragedies as victims of their inhumanity. After all, prosecutors have established certain governors, senators, presidents and bank chiefs along with their wives and kids.

    Just recently, the anti-graft agency confiscated 20 expensive automobiles from the  unemployed son of a military chief who is under inquiry for corruption. He is simply one of several rich, spoilt kids of the Nigerian ruling class misappropriating the wealth of the collective for the luxury of a few, privileged class.

    If the Nigerian leadership is just to the citizenry, the universe will in turn, be just to them. If public officers are honest, compassionate and enthusiastic in pursuit of the country’s progress and the citizenry’s happiness, may Edumare and His universe be just to them. May our Creator shower them with His infinite mercies.

    However, public officers responsible for the ceaseless disasters plaguing our lives, will get their comeuppance even as you read. Every president, federal minister, state governor, commissioner, legislator, council chairman, judicial officer and associate by whose greed, corruption and inhumaneness Nigeria careens in corruption while the citizenry perish in avoidable tragedies, will experience their due rewards, in time.

    State governors and senators for instance, may remain rich, privileged and aloof, while electorate families perish on bad roads and rural kids die for lack of adequate care, staff and facilities across Nigeria’s primary healthcare centres; very soon, they will watch their children and grandchildren suffer the same fate. Such is the working of divinely ordained retribution – I only give voice to the immutable.

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

    Again, self-righteous faithful and intellectual will condemn this because it is religiously or politically incorrect. They will advocate that only the offenders deserve punishment.

    To this, I would say: ‘What were our parents’ crime? What crime did Maryam’s parents commit, that made the ruling class treat her so?’

  • NJC’s affront

    Citing government failure  to take some suspended judges to court for over eight months  while  a backlog of cases piled up in their various courts, “ the National Judicial Council (NJC) early this week directed  some judges undergoing investigation or facing trial in courts to return to their duty posts.

    Government officials have been fuming over the NJC decision. The Special Adviser to the President on Prosecutions, Okoi Obono-Obla, informed  Nigerians that  the NJC is aware that the government has appealed in the case of  Justice Ademola  and of “the intention of the EFCC to file criminal proceedings against the other judges” and that the NJC took the action despite knowing that there are pending  “complaints, petitions from members of the public against these judges” only  gives  “the impression  that they (NJC members) are trying to protect some of these judges”.

    On his part, chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, Professor Itse Sagay, SAN, says the NJC has not used its discretion judiciously adding  that “The image of the judiciary is going to be severely damaged” by the  body’s action. Sagay also wondered if NJC ever bothered to consult. “with the anti-corruption agencies and the DSS, that arrested them in the first place?”  For a body that appears to be ready to protect the interest of its members as Sagay has observed, I think such a question is unnecessary. NJC has only exploited the indolence that has been generally associated with President Buhari’s ‘go slow administration’ that spent six months even when he was not sick to constitute a cabinet. Waiting for over eight months to take the judges to court after a sting action that led to the discovery of huge sums of money in their houses is all in character with an APC government that spent up to two years unable to constitute the boards of agencies of government it needs to prosecute its party policies. And equally working to the advantage of NJC is the endless and embarrassing inter-agency in-fighting and rivalry.

    The NJC and senior lawyers are widely believed to be behind the corruption of the judges’ .The NJC is also believed to provide a safe haven for the judges. In fact the DSS sting operation that led to the discovery of huge sums of money in the judges’ houses allegedly followed the failure of the former   Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, to act after one month on a letter detailing instances of criminal conduct by the judges. As the presiding chairman of NJC, he was said to have, refused to allow investigators to interrogate the judges.  It was also alleged in some cases, the NJC slaps corrupt judges with compulsory retirement but allows them to enjoy their loot.

    Justice Mahmud Mohammed, initially resisted government pressure and defied public opinion by refusing to suspend the affected judges. And when he eventually reluctantly “asked the judges to temporarily step-down from the bench pending determination of corruption allegations against them”, it was due to the pressure from the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA whose senior members openly boasted government would not be able to successfully prosecute the judges before any judge in Nigeria.

    Of course government cannot also pretend not to know on whose side the loyalty of Justice Walter Onnoghen was as vice chairman of NJC under Justice Mahmud. And if government had any illusion, they don’t need to wait for long”. Speaking during a thanksgiving service held at Methodist Church Nigeria, Diocese, Zone 3, Abuja, after his emergence as the substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria, he had said “The Judiciary is under threat. Judges and judicial officers, including myself are being castigated without giving opportunity to be heard, but God knows our heart”. His Senior Special Assistant on Media, Awassam Bassey, went on to issue a statement on his behalf to lament about media trial of judges and warning ‘politicians to desist from using the mass media to smear the good image of the nation’s judiciary in general, and the hardworking and honest judicial officers in particular.’

    It is however not an accident that the picture painted by the CJN is markedly different for that of the Acting President. Speaking  as the special guest of honour during the opening session of a ‘Conference on Promoting International Co-operation in Combating Illicit Financial Flows and Enhancing Asset’ in Lagos on Monday, Professor Osinbajo, also a senior lawyer  faulted the allegation of media trial insisting it is ‘corruption fighting back by  the treasury looters’ in order to legitimise their acts of corruption. He did not think there was anywhere in the world where the discovery of large sums of money in an air-conditioned room would not have made news headlines.

    Earlier, on Thursday last week, the Acting President, while receiving protesting members of the organized labour, had  also revealed alleged plots by some elements to wage war against the anti-corruption campaign of Buhari-led government. Nigerians that voted APC to power want solution and not lamentation about sabotage by the legislature or the judiciary. If APC does not know how to use political power, it can consult ‘clueless’ ex-President Jonathan, who in power ignored public opinion and sacked Justice Isa Salami for ruling against his party and went on to illegally remove the CBN governor for raising an alarm about possible theft of $20b from NNPC. He got away with immoral and illegal acts with the support of some fair-weather senior members of the bar who are also today on ground to defend those who have not been able to explain how billions crawled into their bank accounts.

    The point is if Jonathan as reigning democratic sovereign could deploy absolute power of the presidency to defend fraud and immoral act, how come a government of Buhari and Osinbajo who cannot be said to be clueless cannot with massive public opinion support, deploy the absolute power of the democratic sovereign for good of society?

    And for the benefit of those who have become slave to the rule of law, democracy empowers the democratic sovereign to deploy absolute power to solve society problems. Let us remind ourselves that there is rule of law in Russia where the democratic sovereign has by sheer intimidation forced all those who bought government companies without fulfilling the conditions for their sales to cede same back to government. There is rule of law in China where it is almost impossible to steal government funds without facing the consequences and of course, rule of law thrives in USA where bungling Trump, the current democratic sovereign, has fallen back on the democratic sovereign’s absolute power to fulfil his electoral promises to his far right conservative supporters.

    Those who must come to equity –  as the lawyers say even without believing it – must come with clean hands. Except in Nigeria, it does not happen in any democracy anywhere in the world that a tainted legislature or a tainted judiciary will dare the democratic sovereign.

    Nigerians want the acting President who while describing himself as a pastor a few days ago reminded Nigerians that no amount of prayers will solve our problem without action. In the age of globalisation, the ‘Ogbologbo” lawyer ex-President Obasanjo craved for can be sourced from Britain. And if our judges have decided to cast their lot with the bar and their clients holding our nation hostage, he has the permission of Nigerians to adopt the 1974 Buhari’s trick – crate and ship by air, some of the unrepentant corrupt politicians to Britain for the Ibori treatment.

  • Foreign policy in the service of domestic agenda

    Diplomacy as an art of inter-state relations started in medieval Europe when younger members of the royalty who did not have an appetite for soldiering found a calling in diplomacy  by representing the various crowned heads of European countries in each other’s courts. Since then, recruitment into the diplomatic corps has gone beyond royalty but the tradition of its roots still prevail in the ceremonies surrounding diplomatic posting, reception, departure and even the way diplomatic expressions and communication are couched. This is why up till today, ambassadors and high commissioners are addressed as excellencies as if they were heads of government.

    Technically speaking, heads of diplomatic missions represent not their countries but their heads of state. In other words foreign policy is the preserve of the heads of state. Foreign ministers, ambassadors and others serve as aids to the heads of state in the formulation and execution of a country’s foreign policy. Because of this personal nature of a country’s foreign policy, the head of state can manipulate a country’s foreign policy to suit particular interests sometimes not absolutely related to his country’s interest. This scenario is however rare. When there are problems at home, a country’s President or Prime Minister can divert domestic attention abroad and when such policies abroad are successful, it would bring glory to the country and pressure on government would be reduced.

    During the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in France after the regicide of the French Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte,  the shaky  Bourbon regime employed the search for glory abroad to divert French  attention from the failure and inadequacy of the regime at home by embarking on an African empire in Algeria. This policy associated with the France’s foreign minister, Prince Auguste Jules de Polignac only succeeded to a point before the reality of the failure of domestic policy led to the undoing of the regime and its eventual removal thus ending a regime that had lasted for hundreds of years. This failure of the French experiment has however not decoupled foreign policy from its use to serve domestic politics. This tendency became apparent during the period of Britain’s paramountcy in the world during the 19th century. The use of foreign policy especially what has gone down into history as gun boat diplomacy was particularly effective when the British shelled some Greek ports over a minor incident but blew up the incident to celebrate British power. The mid nineteenth century which was the age of European jingoism and imperialism was captured by the British Prime Minister Sir John Palmerston’s statement following the abuse of one Don Pacifico, a Portuguese of British nationality in   Greece in 1850.  He said “just like the Romans of old could say civis Romanus sum and expect the might of the Roman army to protect him, so should a Briton be able to say civis   Britanicus  sum and expect the long arm of the British navy to protect him”. Another example from England was when the Jewish prime minister of Great Britain Benjamin Disraeli declared queen Victoria Empress of India in 1877 in a move to pander to the vanity of the British people so that they could forget or ignore growing social problems and inequality in the country . All these preambles are done to give the idea that using foreign policy to serve domestic ends has a long history behind it .

    In recent times of the American century, every new American president has always found foreign intervention or foray into other peoples’ countries to be useful in announcing that a new sheriff is in town. From Truman to Trump, one can mention a few incidents of American demonstration of power and will in foreign policy. From the Korean War of 1953 when  Harry Truman intervened to stop the communist take-over of the Korean Peninsula, to   Dwight  David  Eisenhower’s interventions in  Iran, Guatemala and other South American countries under the so-called  policy of containment of communism. Kennedy’s policy of alliance for progress led to meddling in many South American countries with eventual unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the mission creep in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s full scale war in Vietnam and Richard Nixon’s extension of the Vietnam war to Laos and Cambodia. Even the apparently pacific natured Jimmy Carter had his debacle in Iran while Ronald Reagan had his hands full by bombing Libya, driving out of power of Noriega in Panama, invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada. Bush senior drove out the Iraqis out of Kuwait while Clinton went after Al Qaeda by bombing Sudan and getting rid of the Serbian dictator   Miloshevic while the younger Bush fought full scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and changing regimes at will.

    Obama while not starting his own wars expanded  the Bush wars before winding them down in Iraq and Afghanistan while the new Donald Trump regime felt compelled to flex his muscles by unleashing cruise missiles on Syria to demonstrate what he calls a strategy of peace through strength. The Trump administration facing all kinds of probes at home in connection with his presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia may constantly have to call on foreign policy to salvage his regime at home.  Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union has felt compelled to defend what their leaders call “Russia abroad” meaning defending the millions of Russians in the remaining 14 republics into which the Soviet Union broke into. Its dismembering of Georgia and annexation of Crimea from Ukraine were actions taken to assuage Russian nationalist feelings following the loss of its empire and to cover increasing economic problems at home. His Syrian involvement is to demonstrate nationalistic feeling of Russia still remaining a global player in world politics. The point being made here is that when a country is faced with challenges at home and decides to embark on some foreign activities abroad, its people would normally rally round the leader. The caveat is that such an adventure must be brief and successful. If it is too long, people will become disaffected and wearied. This practice of foreign relations being called to assist a government at home is not limited to big powers alone; even countries in the global power peripheries also indulge in it. The examples of Turkey fighting the Greeks over Cyprus or India fighting Pakistan over Kashmir or Ethiopia intervening in Somalia come to mind. In these days when soccer in particular has replaced military competition, people become patriotic supporters of their teams and indeed El Salvador fought a brief war over soccer with neighbouring Honduras!

    Somebody recently asked me why Nigeria has suddenly become mute in international affairs. We have our problem of confronting our own local variant of international terrorism in Boko Haram. Nigeria used to help stabilize other African countries from Tanzania in the 1960s to assisting the liberation of Southern Africa and helping in extirpating the racist and odious regime of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Our country was also the arrow head of ECOMOG that by and large, helped to pacify the terribly distressed countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and recently Guinea-Bissau and even Ivory Coast.  Nigeria sent troops to an international coalition to confront Al Qaeda in the Saharan nation of Mali. Recently, Nigeria provided leadership in forcing out the sit-tight Alhaji Yahyah  Yahmeh from his stranglehold on The Gambia. We have not tried to use these events to unify our people at home and to score political goals. Perhaps the largely successful Nigeria-led decolonization of Southern Africa leaves not much dramatic victories to be won. Our challenge is now economic development which rather than being dramatic can only be incremental  and sometimes imperceptible changes. Furthermore, the medical challenge facing our president presents a formidable challenge to activism abroad. This is because the presence of the president in inter-state relations can be most important and decisive. In spite of this challenge, the president has visited most countries in West Africa and also the critical countries of Niger, the Cameroon and Chad with which Nigeria is involved in the fight against Boko Haram.  It seems to me that Nigeria needs to emphasize more the international dimension of the Boko Haram conflict and therefore seek more international support and make more noise about fighting  on behalf of the international community because if Boko Haram is successful, it will have widespread ramifications in west and central Africa.

  • A register of ghosts

    It is the document on which candidates’ fate hangs. Known as the voter’s register, it contains the names of all eligible voters in the land. Eligibility is determined by age, which the constitution fixes at 18. Anyone under 18 cannot register as a voter. Where an underage registers, he is deemed to have committed an offence and he is liable to prosecution. Over the years, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the register’s custodian, has come under fire for filling it with fictitious names and ineligible voters.

    We have seen voter’s list with names like Nelson Mandela, Mike Tyson, Kofi Annan, who are not Nigerians. While those who registered in one part of the country found their names in other states; yet others did not find their names on the register at all. Our voter’s list is just that in name. It is nothing more than a sheet of paper stitched together by some people to fool us. INEC or whatever name it was called in the past, never got the voter’s list right. The electoral umpire seemed to take delight in filling the document with names of people supplied to it by those in power, who are bent on winning elections.

    If this was not the case, many who trooped out to register under the scorching sun or cold weather will not end up not finding their names on the list during its display. As much as the electoral commission tries to vouch for the voter’s list, evidence has time and again shown that there is something untidy about it. It is either the commission is colluding with some people to mess up the register or it is outright incapable of discharging a simple task. By this submission, I am not indicting the Prof Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC, but a general castigation of the commission over the years.  The problem with our voter’s list did not start today, so the prof and his men should not take the whole blame for it.

    But, can we trust him to restore our faith in the voter’s list? The register is crucial in the discharge of INEC’s job. Without a clean register, the commission may have failed in its first task of ensuring free and fair elections in 2019, which is just two years away. Painfully, the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) does not give cause for cheer giving what we are hearing about what transpired in Government House, Lokoja, the Kogi State capital. INEC is accusing Governor Yahaya Bello of double registration. The governor is denying the claim. He added for good measure that perhaps it was  his  ghost that was registered since he was out of the country last May 23.

    Ghosts have always found their way into the register long before Bello made that allusion and it is all the commission’s fault. The voter’s list will continue to be filled with ghosts as long as the commission is peopled by greedy officials. Registration for an election, which is a civic duty to be performed by a citizen, has been turned to a money making venture. It is where the big money is that INEC officials will go to register and re-register people, if need be,  under fictitious names. Little wonder some people today have as many as 100 or more voter’s cards, which become their meal tickets during elections.

    But, INEC can change things with the Yahaya Bello case. The governor, who registered in Abuja on January 30, 2011, was said to have re-registered in Lokoja on May 23, 2017, contrary to the electoral law. The law frowns at double registration, but allows a voter to transfer his registration from one state to another to ensure a sane process. Since the governor has denied the allegation, it behoves INEC to come out with its proof. But isn’t there a contradiction in Bello’s claim and his spokesman’s statement that “the governor’s effort to transfer his card from Abuja to Kogi State has not been successful, hence the need to get registered in Kogi State”?

    The likes of Fanwo should know that there is no excuse for breaking the law, no matter how highly-placed a person may be. The question is how could the governor be in Dubai on May 23 as he told reporters in Abuja last Friday and at the same time be in Lokoja ‘’to get registered in Kogi State’’, as contained in Fanwo’s statement. The onus is on INEC to clear the fog. Can it do that? Yes, it can if it has the photograph of the governor’s registration. How then did his name disappear from the list? That is a question for the registration officials to answer.

     

    Haba, NJC! 

    The National Judicial Council (NJC) is at it again. After its 82nd meeting which ended on June 1, it recalled six judges who were suspended in the wake of allegations against them. It noted that since their suspension, there has been a backlog of cases in their courts. Those recalled are Justices Inyang Okoro (Supreme Court), Uwani Aba Ali (Appeal Court), Adeniyi Ademola, Hydiazara Nganyiwa, Musa Kurya, all of the Federal High Court and Agbadu James Fishim (National Industrial Court). Of all the judges, only Justice Ademola has been discharged and acquitted by Justice Jude Okeke of the Federal Capital Territory High Court. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has appealed the verdict. The others are yet to be charged to court. So, many are wondering what informed NJC’s recall of these judges. Is it proper to recall a judge whose case is yet to be determined by the appeal court? A case that may even get to the Supreme Court. On what basis did it recall the others who have not even faced trial? Since it is an eminent body of judges, has the NJC tried and found them not guilty? Well, it should remember that it cannot sit as a court in that capacity.  The judges’ recall is hasty. It would have been better for the council to  await the appellate courts’ decisions on Justice Ademola’s case and also allow time for the others’ trial.  

  • Not too early to cry

    Not too early to cry

    MAY 29 is gone. Not so the deep emotions it evoked.

    Of all the Democracy Day goodwill messages, none was as touching as that issued by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the faction led by Ahmed Makarfi –many insist he’s a nice man in a bad company –  that is. It was a flashback to those good old days when life was like an endlessLagos owambe party, when the rich did not have to hide their wealth in cemeteries; when champagne flowed at parties as if it was rain water in June and former lords of the creeks became landlords of mansions, commuting in jets and partying like Hollywood stars.

    The message was as pungent as it was moving. Elegiac.  “APC has destroyed all we built,” one of the headlines screamed, quoting PDP spokesman Dayo Adeyeye’s acerbic statement to mark the occasion.

    Poor PDP. Nothing can be as painful as a legacy shredded like scrap paper. My sympathies.

    Consider one of the videos that made the rounds just before the 2015 general elections. It had a party scene in which the celebrator and his friends danced themselves into a frenzy. They sprayed dollar bills on their fellow revellers and the musician. At a point, they felt the confetti of dollar bills would not do; they started throwing up bundles of $100 bills from a steel box brought in by an aide. Soon the dancing floor was strewn with the  green back and the naira. The frolicking went on and on.

    Those were the days.

    To the well-connected, the dollar was the currency of first choice. Today, even factories are striving to keep their machines roaring as the exchange rate has refused to come down after being jerked up so violently by crashing oil prices.

    Isn’t this enough for the PDP, which superintended over high oil prices, more than $110 a barrel at a point, to look back and mourn its loss? Being human, the party’s loyal supporters and dutiful officials will surely have memories of those days when forex was not our problem but how to spend it. We imported toothpicks, handkerchiefs, eyelashes, eye shadow , eyeshades and such important goods.

    The other day when distinguished Senator Daniel Dino Melaye presented his book, “Antidote for Corruption”, there were few donors, despite the presence of an army of dignitaries, some of them victims of the war against corruption who should be  happy that at last a manual on the right way to wage the all-important  battle was finally available.

    Senate President Bukola Saraki bought copies for all 109 members at N5.5m. House Speaker Yakubu Dogara shelled out N18m for a copy for each of the 360 members. Can that be a reasonable  reward for such an intellectual exertion on a subject that has been such a difficult knot to untie even for renowned academics?

    In those good PDP days, the Senate President would have ordered copies for the Sergeant-at-Arms, all senators’ laundrymen, chauffeurs, stewards, gardeners and  just anybody who deserved to have one – in the national interest.

    The price?

    It would have been whispered in the author’s ears, lest the poor whom the lawmakers are dying to uplift feel offended.

    Instead of praising Melaye’s deep commitment to scholarship, many have been talking about the lexical shortcoming of the book’s title. Some, who like Alaba traders know little or nothing about our copyright laws, dismissed the work as a mere compilation of other people’s ideas. Others latched onto the debate to define corruption in contradistinction to stealing.

    One of such rationalisation: “Beat a Nigerian child. Console him/her with biscuits. Ask him/her: ‘who beat you?’ He or she will point to another person. That was how bribery and corruption began in Nigeria.”

    The other day when the Directorate of State Services (DSS) stormed the homes of some judges in the dead of the night, rousing their Lordships from sleep, there was uproar from some quarters. Don’t judges deserve some respect? Should they be hunted like common thieves? Who ordered the raids? Where is the separation of powers that we preach? Is this democracy? Don’t judges have a right to snore away the night after a hard day’s job?

    The operatives found troves of foreign currencies and huge sums in Naira.  The government hauled the judges before the courts. Some of them have been freed and restored to their offices. No apologies. No remorse by the DSS and any of its agents.

    In the days of the PDP, the thought of raiding a judge’s home, let alone seizing their hard earned hard currency, would have been considered sacrilegious, and would have attracted the highest sanction – like treason. If anyone dared to commit such an egregious abuse of the rights of their Lordships to earn, own and keep cash in whatever currency, the executive would have apologised profusely. Besides, adequate compensation would have been paid to the aggrieved parties. Not now.

    Oh, good old days.

    Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has approached a court to stop the DSS and the police from searching his house. Recall that His Excellency had to rush out of bed the other night to physically stop DSS operatives from storming a judge’s home. That heroic feat of protecting the right of a citizen was derided as obstruction of justice. They forgot Chief Wike is a lawyer.

    In those days he wouldn’t have needed the stress of filing an action. Who would have contemplated searching a governor’s home?

    When a court granted the former First Lady, Dame Patience “Mama Peace” Jonathan the right to her $15m accounts, the tension that had built up in the hearts of ordinary citizens melted like ice cream under the scorching sun. Relieved, Her Excellency hit the bank to withdraw some cash for a long overdue shopping spree.

    Unrepentant, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which insisted that the cash was a proceed of some unstated illicit undertaking, asked the court to stop her. It obliged.

    Only in the current atmosphere can such audacious affront happen. Not in the days of the PDP when the rule of law took preeminence over all other things and everybody was happy.

    Not even Dame Patience’s  passionate plea that the money was part of a fortune given to her by her aged mother could move the anti-graft agency. It had made up its mind that such a huge amount of money must have come from some crime.

    In its May 29 speech, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo urged Nigerians to make more sacrifices. Some cynical fellows who had taken up the unassigned role of public rights defenders tore at him. They sneered: “Sacrifices; what sacrifices? What else do they want, these change people? Haven’t we done enough?”

    Those were the objective critics anyway. The scurrilous ones recalled the good days of the PDP when “making sacrifices” had a meaning, when a former governor collected N4.6b for some spiritual exercises and nobody raised an eyebrow.

    Scarcity of funds never featured in the PDP’s deliberations. In fact, when prominent citizens raised the alarm that the economy was in trouble, the government, one of the most inventive that has ever taken office anywhere in the world, dug  deep into its bag of tricks, brought out some strange figures, juggled them and announced triumphantly that ours was the biggest economy in Africa. It called the magic “rebasing”.

    Those were the days when we had real experts. Take a bow Madam Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

    Before the Buhari administration took the reins, Boko Haram, the evil sect giving Islam a bad name, had already carved out of Nigeria its Islamic State. The Armed Forces were impotent. Soldiers were dying in hundreds. Civilians were murdered in an orgy of violence never seen in these parts. Funds voted for weapons were shared by PDP chiefs, their wards and friends. Anytime they ran out of cash, they rushed down to the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), which dished out funds in local and foreign currencies. Everybody was happy. Oh, the good times. Not anymore.

    Those who are lashing the PDP for crying too early, saying after all Buhari has done just two years out of his four-year tenure are sorely lacking in the empathy that the calamity that befell the party requires. Here was a party that boasted of being Africa’s biggest , a party that vowed to rule  for 60 years in the first instance and wowed us all with its vote harvesting gimmicks, now a shadow of its old self. A party wracked and wrecked by a feud that has turned friends into foes.

    I won’t join those castigating the PDP. It deserves our sympathy. Its leading lights should be allowed to mourn.   More tears gentlemen!

     

    NOT SO FAST, MAJOR

    After a short break, the Major Hamza Al- Mustapha (retd.) road show has returned. In Ibadan last week, the dreaded Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Gen. Sani Abacha (of dreadful memory) attempted to rewrite history by turning facts on their heads. He said he was bundled into detention because he had a video on the murder of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election – Nigeria’s freest and fairest ever – which was annulled by military leader Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Bababngida for no just reason.

    Nobody is fooled. The facts of the matter are clear. The charges are clear. Al-Mustapha, the prosecution believes, knew about the plot that led to the daylight murder of Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, the indefatigable defender of democracy.

    If Al-Mustapha has a box-office-hit -video, let him release it, if only to show that he is not a villain and a coward as charged. Otherwise, he should face his case forthrightly,  seek restitution and desist from offending people’s sensibilities.

  • Your Excellencies…death may come in your spittle

    Someday, you may choke on your spittle. You may die if you do. Death could come in your saliva. Your face will bulge with varicose veins straining to go ‘splat!’ in your head. In that moment, neither medicine nor the finest surgeon will be available to help you. Your money will be useless. Your power, ‘street credibility,’ thugs, charisma, will disappear in plain sight. Your concubines, trophy wives and sycophants will be unable to charm death. Many of them will be glad that you are dead.

    Whatever your degree of affluence, you will discover that you are worthless, like brittle toothpick in the paws of a mongrel. In split seconds, death will maul you the way boondocks crowd chew tinko (horse meat of the impoverished) they purchase with your hand-outs.

    You will remember the smile on your face and the sneer in your heart as you lured starving citizenry to sell their votes to you for a N500 hand-out, a quarter of rice and stale bread.

    Death will find you in common hours. And when it does, it wouldn’t recognize you as the powerful governor, senator, council chairman, vice president, president.

    Your title will be worthless and your name, insignificant, in the estimation of the one who would rid your pockmarked hide of your gluttonous soul. At death’s door, nothing else would matter. Your life will probably flash before you and you would relive for an instant, the most crucial aspects of your finished life. You will remember the monies you stole from public coffers at the expense of the electorate that voted you into power.

    You will remember your guilty and diabolic pleasures: the aides and concubines whose anuses you plowed for bewitched wealth; the newborn and seven-day-old infants whose heads and intestines you pounded in a mortar to make black soap and anti-death talisman. You will remember the sons and daughters you sacrificed or ‘used’ if you like, to ascend the ladder of man-made gods.

    You will remember the poor primary school kids you left at the mercy of nature’s wild elements – harsh sunlight, torrential rains and windstorms – because you had better things to do with State money, like the acquisition of mansions abroad, the seduction of a trophy bride or purchase of sinful pleasures.

    When death comes, you will remember the infant children, parents and youth whose lives never mattered to you even as they died in ghastly auto accidents on the cratered roads you refused to repair.

    Death will find you while you read commentary on your latest social and political theatric. The grim reaper will claim you while you exult in the praise of your fools and court sycophants; in that moment, you will find that you are the greatest of fools.

    The power drunk who dances to the hum of pain and symphony of grief of our devastated wastelands, did you think the music will never stop?

    When death comes, you will remember how paranoid you were. Then you will understand that had you being the statesman you promised and professed to be, you would have no need to be so paranoid and suspicious of everyone, even your own wives and mother.

    Even so, paranoia need not prevent a leader from holding down his job, taking rational, pro-citizenry decisions and conducting himself effectively.

    Mr./Mrs. Excellency, your crimes are so great that everybody casually assumes that you must in some sense have gone mad. You who steal billions from public coffers only to bury it in sewages, water tanks and crop farms excites the passing tribute of a sigh.

    At death’s door, you will lose the courage and deviltry by which you battled and conquered your most dreadful foes. You won’t have your great war chest and grand armies of thugs and corrupt law enforcers to command. At death’s stare, you will go blind in the face and your mind’s eye.

    You will understand why it was so easy for you to subdue political enemies and not the enemy within you. You will understand why you could contend with recalcitrant underlings, cantankerous wives, stubborn wards, treacherous aides and associates. You will understand why

    you could look on earthly tempests and not flinch. But you will never understand why death will take neither gold or silver to spare your life.

    Mr./Mrs. Excellency, there is no gainsaying that your life is the stuff dreams or the wildest fantasies are made of. You have grown from the desperate politician with tall dreams and modest wealth to become filthy-rich, power-drunk and self-possessed. You have become the titan who is quite successful at ‘cancelling out’ and overpowering other titans.

    Your virtues have turned to failings and you soar in a fetish cloud of lust and arrogance. As you exult with lust that will kill you, remember greater men and women who expired in the throes of fetishes like the ones that afflict you.

    Remember Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who collapsed, coughing up blood in 1925. The X-rays showed he had severe gastro-duodenal ulcer. Thereafter, ulcer pain was ever present. Then he suffered increasing insecurity, paranoia and finally became detached from reality. By late 1942, his mental health had caught up with him. All the bombast and pomp had gone. He had no reserve of courage or wile and he yielded to ulcer, deep-seated depression among others.

    The Greek war became his unmitigated disaster, the shame from which Italy had to be rescued by the Germans. Power intrigues with Germany quickened his latter descent. In July 1943, he was in effect, imprisoned by fellow Italians on the island of Ponza, then moved to a naval base in Sardinia and later to a ski resort. After Italy surrendered in September, Mussolini was rescued by a German SS glider team and flown to Munich. The Germans then returned him to Italy and installed him as the puppet dictator of the remnant Italian Social Republic.

    He was eventually captured and shot by Italian partisans near Como; his body was flung in the back of a truck and driven to Milan where, on April 29, 1945, it was strung upside down alongside that of his mistress in Piazzale Loreto, where 15 Italian partisans had been shot in August 1944.

    Mr./Mrs. Excellency, like Mussolini, the time for humouring yourself will soon be over. Although your circumstances differ from Mussolini’s, your end will come varied, like the whimpers and howls of  poor, helpless Nigerians, whose miseries never matters to you.

    The indices of your brutal end emerge but you are too blinded by power and ego to see them; there is widespread poverty and unemployment in the land; Boko Haram afflicts the northeast, herdsmen invade southwest and Biafra’s dead bones jut from the grave across the southeast.

    Death travels with the restive wind but you think you will escape its scourge by simply hopping on the next plane to join your families abroad. Hmmm…What if it comes in your spittle?