The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Logic of roads construction and maintenance

    The Federal Roads maintenance Agency (FERMA) placed advertisements in The Nation of Tuesday May 9 apparently to demonstrate to those of us who are asking if the agency has folded up or has been wound up by the federal government that created it that it is alive. This agency seems to exist in the minds of those who created it and in the minds of the hordes of civil servants earning their living without doing anything to justify the salaries being paid to them. Even the advertisement referred to is full of lies.

    The agency claims to be rehabilitating Ife-Ibadan “Express way”. I travel on this road every week and I can confirm no work has been done on this road. In fact, the approach to Osun River Bridge near Asejire is so bad that a few vehicles have plunged into the river because of the bad approach to the bridge. The road from Ikire to Ilesha is hardly motorable. I also noticed that what the agency calls South-west zone apparently does not include Ondo and Ekiti states whose federal roads have been abandoned and the people there left to their own fate and yet those neglected two states produce the bulk of the cocoa Nigeria still exports and from which some billions of dollars are earned annually.

    I recently travelled from Lagos to Sagamu following the blockade of the Lagos-Ibadan express way as a result of religious activities on the express way. I was sad about what I saw on that road. It is perhaps correct to call the “road “a bush path. Driving on the road was like driving on the moon. Yet this was the first road the British constructed in Nigeria. I saw thousands of trailers and other kinds of vehicular contraptions whose drivers took their lives in their hands to drive through the road. It took me five hours to ply a road of perhaps 60 kilometres. I kept asking myself – where is the federal government? Where are Lagos and Ogun state governments?  This Ikorodu-Sagamu road is so strategic to the economy of not only the South-west but the whole country. It is not just the economy that this road is vital to; it is also strategic in defence consideration. What if Lagos suffered a sea invasion and it was necessary to move troops from the hinterland to the coast in case the enemy blocks the express way?

    The major power generating station of Egbin is along this route. Sagamu is a major cement producing hub, necessitating movement of huge articulated trucks to and from Lagos for construction.  Ikorodu itself is a putative port waiting for development. There is an army barracks on the road as well and Ikorodu area has witnessed incessant attacks and challenge by terrorists in recent times. If one may say the area is part of the Niger Delta which is increasingly becoming the soft under belly of Nigeria. If all these are not enough to attract government attention, there are innumerable small factories of iron and steel makers converting used and discarded vehicles into useable iron implements. There are also secondary and tertiary institutions in the axis.

    Planning roads construction and maintenance should not be done haphazardly or merely on federal character basis but on its utility value to the economy and security of the nation. I know our resources are limited but this is why there must be some kind of rationalization in the use of these resources. I lived in Germany for about five years and as many people know, Germany has the best network of roads in the world. The famous Autobahn (express roads) run from north to south and from east to west. They were largely constructed like their old railways to move troops from east to west and vice versa to confront their enemies on two fronts. Adolph Hitler may conveniently be forgotten by the Germans and the whole world, but he left a legacy of these roads and the small affordable people’s cars (Volkswagen) to ply them. Walter Ulbricbht, the communist leader of East Germany (DDR) came up with the plastic car the “Trabant “in a miserable mimicry of the NAZI dictator. No one can deny that the efficient transportation network of Germany is a major factor in the economic miracle Germany witnessed since the end of the Second World War.

    The point I am trying to make is that roads construction reflect a strategist worldview and goals he hopes to achieve and not just constructing roads as social welfare scheme.

    We need to take a holistic view of our road network and seriously plan what we hope to achieve. I will give a few examples .There is a need to have four arterial roads running from north to south in this country. One road should run from Sokoto through Kotangora to Kaiama, Iseyin, and Abeokuta to the port of Badagry. Another road should run from Kano to Kaduna, Abuja, Lokoja, Okene to Benin.  Another should run from Abuja to Minna, Mokwa, Ilorin, Ibadan, Lagos while the fourth should run from Maiduguri to Yola, Jalingo, Makurdi, Ogoja to Calabar.

    Then there is a need for an East-West road from Lagos, Sagamu, Ijebu-ode, Benin, Asaba, Onitsha, Enugu, Aba, Port Harcourt. There is also a need for a coastal road from Lagos through Igbokoda, Warri, Yenagoa, Port Harcourt, terminating in Calabar. This may appear a gigantic order but it is always better to plan big. In China, the country initially relied on harnessing its huge human resources rather than its technological know-how to build roads, dams and houses. I do not see why with a serious government, Nigeria cannot do the same.

    We are told that we have a population of 180 million people. Of course, I remain sceptical about this apparently exaggeratedly fabricated figure! To challenge the demographic cheaters, those who inflate population of their states should be asked to mobilize such population figures for development. The factor of economic necessity rather than the nebulous federal character determining what roads to construct and maintaining should be paramount. If the federal government were to stick to this kind of strategic conception and planning, then roads construction and maintenance will begin to make sense.

    Other feeder roads will have to be devolved into the zonal authorities in a hopefully restructured Nigeria with devolved resources and responsibilities.  But in the meantime, something has to be done to fix roads that are vital to economic recovery. I do not see what will be wrong if Lagos and Ogun states governments were to collaborate in fixing this Sagamu – Ikorodu road and then jointly billing the federal government or getting private entrepreneurs in to reconstruct the road and toll it.  This terrible state of most roads in Nigeria would have to be addressed as a matter of urgency because as I write, people are dying on these dilapidated roads.

    This road master plan should go hand in hand with a new railway age in Nigeria in which road transportation should not be the major way of moving people and goods around the country. There is no major developing country that depends on one mode of transportation. If we are aspiring to be one of the 20 biggest economies in the world, we cannot be enduring this primitive and almost primordial transportation system that even our grandparents would recognize especially the fact that our roads follow the same footpaths established by our illiterate ancestors.

  • The evil creeks

    The  SEASHORE. Cool, breezy, breathtaking and picturesque. It is a sight to behold, with grains of sand stretching as far as the eyes can see. It is the ideal place to work, play, live and school. But not all can afford it. It is only for the affluent. But none can appreciate the real value of the seashore than a sailor, who virtually lives on water. Among the rich, there is a rush for a slice of the seashore because it confers class and prestige on them. You hardly find the poor there.

    But the world is an interdependent place, where the rich and the poor live together. As much as the rich wish to hide in their cocoon, nature still finds a way of bringing them together with the poor. The rich man cannot do away with the poor no matter his disdain for them. Though he lives in  a mansion, he relies on the services of the poor to keep his environment clean. This is why you find the poor among the rich in those upscale areas such as Oyinkan Abayomi Drive, Ahmadu Bello Way, Broad Street, Osborne Road, Bourdillon and so on and so forth.

    The seashore extends to hitherto remote areas, which are now developing into big cities because of the vastness of the lagoon. These days not only those who are stupendously rich own property around the seashore. Some upwardly mobile youngsters and greying men, who have been toiling for years count among those with property there. Schools, both public and private, are also springing up there. From the coastline of Arepo to Ikorodu, Epe and Lekki, these schools dot the landscape, with mostly the rich having the means to send their children there. Some indigent pupils also attend these schools, but they are few and far between.

    Because of the remoteness of these schools, they have become easy targets of those the police labelled as  ‘’kidnappers/pirates’’. In recent time, they have been invading some of these schools to kidnap pupils, teachers and principals. Last Thursday, they stormed the Lagos State Model College at Igbonla, Epe, and kidnapped six pupils. They would have gone with more if their boat had the capacity to contain their victims. For the impressionable young pupils, it looked surreal, but it was for real. Three days before they struck, the hoodlums had written the school that they were coming.

    True to their words, they struck and there was nobody to stop them. For those of us who went to boarding school, incidents like this sear our hearts. The boarding school is supposed to be a safe place for pupils, who live together as one family, no matter where they came from. Parents send their children to boarding schools to be trained to become better persons and to develop into men or women of their own. They do not do this because they cannot take care of their children at home. Their action may have been informed by what in local parlance is referred to as  the benefits of external training. As it is said, it takes a village to raise a child.

    There can be no better place to train a child among his peers than in a boarding school. For many parents, taking the decision to send their children to boarding schools is not easy. Perhaps, this is why many prefer the Unity schools to other schools. By committing their children to the hands of the school authorities, parents are unequivocally expressing their confidence in the system to guarantee the safety of those kids as long as they do not play truancy. If these kids had been kidnapped while on a frolic of their own outside the school, we would have thumped our noses at them and said serves them right. But six of them were plucked away from their dormitories at dawn with little or no security presence.

    The kidnappers had written that they were coming. What steps did the school take to stop them? Did they report to the police? What action did the police take on the letter? Was security beefed up at the school? Were policemen around on the day the kidnappers struck? As a government owned school, securing it should not be a problem, but it seemed it was from all indications. By now, the police and other security agencies should have become conversant with the mode of operation of these kidnappers, who have turned the creeks around the lagoon to their hideout. With all the facilities at their disposal, the security agencies should have by now cut the wind from these hoodlums’ sail.

    We cannot afford to continue to expose our pupils to the danger posed by these kidnappers along the Lagos/Ogun coastline. These kidnappers have become emboldened because our security agents do not appear to be a match for them. They come in with ease and leave with their victims with ease. They also collect ransom with ease. This is why some people are imputing that the kidnappers are in cahoots with the security agencies. That is hard to believe, but we are left with no choice as our security agencies are always caught flatfooted whenever these people strike. Are the security agencies and the kidnappers working together?

    If they are, what will the security agencies gain from such unholy alliance? Are we saying that it is impossible to secure schools around the seashore? If that is the case, it will be better the schools are shut until a solution is found to the problem rather than continue to expose the lives of these leaders of tomorrow to danger. May the Lord touch the kidnappers’ hearts to release the pupils unhurt.

     

     

    Where did you wed?

    When marriages take place at local governments’ registries, the couples believe that they are doing so at the right forum. Nothing can be farther from the truth going by the May 15 judgement of a Lagos High Court that local governments cannot conduct marriages, which fall under item 61 of the exclusive list of the Constitution. What this means is that only  the Federal Government or its agencies can conduct marriages. The exception are marriages under Islamic and Customary laws. By virtue of that verdict, all marriages conducted at local governments now stand on shaky grounds (you may describe them as sham if you like) except the couples move fast to do the right thing. And this, according to the court, is to return their marriage certificates to the local governments where they got married for the ‘’reissuance of the appropriate certificates’’ in line with Section 24 of the Marriage Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN), 1990. Ha! So, many of us have been keeping ‘’inappropriate certificates’’ all these years. Na wa o!

  • May 29 and national question

    As has been the practice since 1999 when Obasanjo and the military institutionalised May 29, as ‘democracy day’, a move many Nigerians believe is a subterfuge to wish away the crisis of nationhood they had heightened with their misadventure into politics in January 1966, the celebration came up once again on Monday. The periodic hollow ritual which unfortunately has no bearing with the nation’s struggle for participatory democratic process has also been dismissed by many Nigerians including civil society groups as a   a celebration of the perfidy and tragic consequences of 33 years of military misadventure that destroyed our multi-party system, our political socialization process  and our social organization leaving behind an unworkable unitary superstructure and a new breed of politicians that breed nothing but corruption

    Speaking at the interdenominational church service to mark the day at the National Christian Centre in Abuja four days ago, acting President Yemi Osinbajo urged Nigerians to make sacrifices for Nigeria’s greatness drawing a parallel between the Biblical story of the good Samaritan and our self-serving  politicians.  Apostle Popoola, the presiding apostle of the Word Communication Ministries and founder of Christ Family Assembly Churches, who ministered during the service however struck the nail on its head by reminding us that 100 years after the amalgamation of the North and the South, the country could not continue to blame the imperialists for our crisis of nationhood. His advice to government, which like its predecessors has continued to play the ostrich despite making resolution of the national question a campaign issue during the election campaigns, is a revisit of the 2014 National Conference report which made some attempts at addressing our crisis of nationhood.

    The Acting President must be reminded that our crisis of nationhood has nothing to do with the people.  President Buhari, his principal affirmed this much during last year’s celebration of the hollow ritual when he declared “Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous”. It similarly has nothing to do with the economy, one of the major pursuits of the Buhari’s government. Our major problem is politics. We cannot win the economic battle without first winning the political battle. An attempt to put the cart before the horse by our successive hypocritical governments since 1964 has only provided additional incentive for those benefitting from our nightmare to continue to hold the nation hostage.

    The successive military regimes in particular have since 1966 done everything including plunging the nation into an avoidable civil war that led to the loss of about two million lives except address the core issue of crisis of nationhood- which is about how our multiethnic, multi-cultural and multi religious society can live together in harmony and develop at their own pace without interference from the federating units.

    People and nationalities are products of their environments. The military and its apologists forget that Britain with hostile environment where life was once ‘nasty brutish and short’ thrives in the exploitation of weaker cultures using her wits, Germany on the culture of industry of her people, and France on her liberalism and celebration of the infinite goodness of man.  Run Britain, Germany, France, Turkey and Afghanistan with our own type of military imposed unitary constitution, with Turks and Afghans performing the role of local policing in Germany, France and Britain, what they will be confronted with is the same type of social dislocations currently afflicting our own multi-ethnic society. They will also have the equivalents of our self-serving warlords in Abuja who, answerable to none but to themselves came up with privatization and monetization; policies that allowed their members and their families to confiscate national assets built through the sweat and blood of the poor. There will be Afghan and Turks herdsmen who like our own Fulani herdsmen that justify killing, maiming and confiscation of farmer’s territories across Nigeria on the basis of a military-doctored constitution, will roam freely from Istanbul to Paris, tending their flock. Of course there will also be street hawkers turned millionaires to contest the ownership of the Queen’s royal palaces.

    However, to forestall culture clash, and prevent the chaos that have come to define our own co-existence since the deliberate sabotage of our independence constitution in 1962, Europe had after two devastating world wars resolved their crisis of nationhood by embracing federalism- a social philosophy which strives to liberate individuals and groups from the tyranny of the state and democracy, a governmental process or a method that guarantee self-actualisation of people within a community.

    President Buhari and the APC, if they wish to be remembered by history, still have two years to address the national question. All that is required is the political will. As a democratically elected President, Buhari remains a sovereign for the next two years. As a democratic sovereign in control of awesome apparatus of state power, he has a limitless power to implement his campaign promises He is unstoppable by political foes.

    Since democracy is nothing but a method that gives the sovereign a free hand to either deploy constitutional means, liberal strategies or even absolute power to effect changes in society, President Buhari and APC are not being asked to invent the wheel. They have examples of nations such as Malaysia, China, Russia, India and even the USA where reigning democratic sovereigns at different periods in their history adopted any or a combination of the above democratic methods they deemed appropriate for fulfilling their contractual electoral obligations to those who voted them into power. Such electoral promises include but not limited to liberating their people from poverty as we had in Malaysia, India, China or promoting political elite greed as we had under Bush that threw America into two avoidable wars  in order to create jobs by utilizing arms piled up in American warehouses; and Donald Trump whose chief economist, Gary Cohn told reporters after signing an unprecedented arms deal with Saudi Arabia that  ‘the goal of the $350b arms deal, is ‘to invest a lot of money in the US and have a lot of US companies invest and build thing over here”. It counts for little that the development will prolong the nightmare of people in the Arab world.

    The challenge of Buhari and APC in implementing their contractual promise to Nigerian electorate is not time. It is whether they have the political will.  The beauty of democracy is that Buhari as a democratically elected sovereign is invincible until he is replaced by another democratically elected sovereign.  It is only his successor who, if he has the support of the people, that can attempt to undo whatever Buhari decides to do within the next two years the same way Donald Trump is today trying to undo Obama policies such as ‘Obamacare’, Obama immigration policies, and his Middle-East as well as his NATO and climate change  policies, all within his first 150 days in office.

  • Better to agitate peacefully

    From various regions of Nigeria, ethnic nationalist agitations are popping up – some for rational restructuring of our federation, some for outright secession. The youths of our South-east and South-south lead in flexing their muscles and hitting out. The youths of South-west in their tens of self-determination organizations, tend for now to get busy refining their tools. In the North-east, the picture is confusing as ethnic nationalism mixes with religious fundamentalism and terror. The youths of the North-west who, some months ago, demanded the “termination of this failed experiment called Nigeria” are quiet for now because they are waiting to see what the return of federal power to their North-west will mean to their needs and expectations.

    Any kind of ethnic nationalist activity used to be taboo in Nigeria, and used to be treated as some sort of crime, mostly because of the devastating experiences of the civil war of 1967-70. But that has now changed considerably. Nigerians are becoming more and more aware of the legitimate rights of nationalities in the world. Rather than quit or decrease, ethnic nationalist agitations are likely to increase and become more widespread. Some of the peoples of the Middle Belt are already beginning to rouse themselves.

    And the reasons for all these are easy to see. Nigeria is grossly mismanaged and misgoverned. The poor governance has made abject poverty and deprivation the lot of most Nigerians. It has also turned all inter-ethnic relationships into hatred and hostility. Most   nationalities, large or small, therefore want some sort of change that will give them more control over their own life and affairs. Insistence on keeping the affairs of the country rigidly centralized is breeding desperation – and if no change comes in this soon, Nigeria could soon implode. Muscle flexing and threats by law enforcement authorities can avail nothing. Soon, even the very best of armies will be too weak to push back what the nationalities desperately want. In fact, whatever happens, some nationalities (most likely our largest nations, Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani, and some of our small nationalities too) seem very likely to become separate sovereign countries soon.

    In the circumstance, the only constructive plea that an elderly citizen like me can make to the angry youths of various parts of our country is to eschew violence, death and destruction in their agitations. Violence is no longer really necessary. Even seeking the separation of one’s ethnic nation from Nigeria does not necessarily have to be accompanied by violent riots, armed dissidence, destruction and death, and defiance of the law. The problem is that most ethnic nationalists are not aware that the Nigerian situation and realities themselves, as well as similar situations in many countries of the world, and the laws of the world’s international community, have pushed the Nigerian debate beyond the level of state authoritarianism and strong-arm measures, and have charted irrepressible legitimacy for ethnic nationalist activities and demands – even demands for separation.

    In a book which General Obasanjo wrote in 1998, the book titled This Animal Called Man, he suggested that the right to secede, and the procedure for peaceful secession, should be clearly stated in subsequent Nigerian constitutions – in emulation, according to him, of some clauses like that in the constitution of Ethiopia. That is the growing consensus among most leaders of the world today. We might add that those clauses in the Ethiopian constitution made it possible for formerly war-ravaged Eritrea to at last peacefully secede from Ethiopia.

    Then, in an important speech in Lagos in 2002, the veteran nationalist, Chief Anthony Enahoro, suggested that the right of secession should be enshrined in the Nigerian constitution, in agreement with Obasanjo’s earlier proposal, and in conformity with the laws of the UNO and the Organization of African Unity (now African Union).

    In addition, various other Nigerians have written books and articles, and made important public statements, on the issue. In a book which I published in America early this year – Coming Revolutions in Black Africa, I described what is happening in Black Africa – namely, that our ethnic nationalities are rising, and that the countries and boundaries created by European colonialism are coming under serious pressure.

    At the United Nations headquarters in New York in 2016, President Buhari, while answering a question which he was asked about the agitations of Igbo Nigerians for Biafra, stated that those agitating for a separate Biafra should, to be taken seriously, establish a political party to promote their demands. At home and abroad, President Buhari was understood to mean that agitations for Biafra are part of worldwide experience today, but that as long as the agitators for Biafra continue to go on wild or violent street demonstrations, confrontations with law-enforcement agencies, and defiance of the Nigerian state, Nigeria would have no other option than to send the law and law-enforcement agencies against them; but that, if they would adopt peaceful political means to promote their cause, Nigeria would respond to them by discussion and negotiation. In short, Buhari stated the laws as specified by the resolutions and conventions of the United Nations Organization. That is the open door for all ethnic nationalists.

    Professor Ango Abdullahi, speaking for the Northern Elders Forum in a public interview last month said, “…if Nigerians are tired of staying together, they should be prepared to accept divisions instead of remaining in agony and disappointment with one another. Every Nigerian should be able to speak his opinion about the state of the country…” Concerning the specific agitation for Biafra by a young leader named Nnamdi Kanu, Professor Abdullahi said, “…the issue of Biafra is all part of the discussion of restructuring Nigeria…Yes, if Biafra means negotiations, yes…If it means Igbo want to have a country of their own separate from Nigeria, it means a matter of discussion and we are prepared for the discussion”. Then he added the following crucial point about how people should handle the issues of ethnic nationalist demands: “If it is discovered that the law of a country is violated, that somebody has gone beyond his fundamental rights, the law is very clear on this. What perhaps government is concerned about is that violence was part of Kanu’s agitation, to realize his dream by force. I think that is what government is trying to tackle… So if Kanu is talking about Biafra, he is free to talk about Biafra and everybody is free to talk about his understanding of the Nigerian state. We are always talking that the Nigerian state is not working and (asking) how can we make it to work? And if the best option is to call for separate countries, why not?”

    Thus, the pointers towards peaceful ethnic nationalist activities, and even peaceful agitation for separation from Nigeria, have been open, and are open. But, unfortunately, most ethnic nationalist movements and leaders are still not aware of this and still prefer violent street riots, confrontations with law-enforcement agencies, illegal secret preparations for violence, and various acts of defiance of the Nigerian state and its laws. Instead of all these, the peaceful road is open.

    Various nationalist groups in the world have, in the course of the past century, employed violent means at various times for achieving their secessionist goals – the Scottish nationalists, Welsh nationalists, Northern Irish nationalists, Basque nationalists (Northern Spain), French Canadian nationalists. For some years, the Basque Nationalist movement, ETA, was rated as the most sophisticated terrorist organization in the world. None of these terrorist outfits achieved their purpose of separation, or even local autonomy, for their nations; all they succeeded in doing was to generate confrontations with the governments of their countries. The Scots and Welsh only began to achieve local autonomy in Britain when they changed to peaceful political methods – and they are now on the path to full independence. The same is true of the Basques in Spain and the French Canadians in Canada. Of course, our youths too are capable of peacefully pulling some of our nations out of the mess that Nigeria has become.

    Young nationalist agitators, being young, are naturally attracted to rough and tough activism against the country from which they want their own ethnic nation to separate. But even their best use of violence does not usually confer success on their cause. Here is a lesson for all our youths.

  • This is socially and politically incorrect…but you will say, ‘Amen!’

    I know. You know. We all know that nobody cares how brilliantly this article is articulated for or against the interest of the citizenry or the Nigerian ruling class. The jury will always be out over the perceived victimhood, tyranny, humaneness and monstrosity personified by the country’s citizenry and leadership. It depends what side of the divide you inhabit.

    Just like everyone else, you are inclined to protect the source from which your bread is buttered. You will defend the source of your ‘hard-earned’ or ‘ill-gotten’ wealth. It’s a human thing – a foible most are vulnerable to.

    Everybody pays lip service to ‘Change.’ Even President Muhammadu Buhari selectively effects ‘Change.’ He had good intentions no doubt, he is simply too flawed to prosecute a flawless anti-corruption fight. But this is hardly about the ‘true intent,’ ‘honesty,’ ‘noise’ and ‘posturing’ of Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign.

    Now that it is glaring that soapbox rant, contrived marches and social media protests will never be enough to save us from corrupt leadership and the rigours of the Nigerian wilderness, we could initiate action by chanting heartfelt ‘Amen’ all through this piece, while we plot to reclaim our nation from the predatory ruling class.

    I could advocate that we change our leadership at election time but our people have perfected the art of substituting tyrants with savages and vice versa. The youth dream of a revolution; they talk of ‘benching’ the incumbent ruling class with the spite of a serpent and the spunk of a fraidy-cat. As we have hordes of youth mooting a ‘take-over’ of government and advocating leadership by Nigeria’s youth, so do we have gangs of youth mounting the soapbox to rant and state candidly that, Nigeria is unripe for a youthful leader and youth-driven political platform.

    Some interesting character recently advised that rather than start a youth movement, the Nigerian youth should stage a hostile take-over of existing political parties – I wonder how the youth are expected to review and overhaul the cancerous bulk of existing parties’ predatory ‘philosophies.’ Too many of such arguments are brilliantly put together and published across the mainstream and new media by beneficiaries of the nation’s corrupt structures.

    Having acquired some wealth via patronage of the corrupt ruling class, they desperately model their existence after the vulgar lives and guilty pleasures of the same ruling class they once vented and spat at. Who cares how they made money or attained acclaim? Ki ‘won’ sa ti lowo as the folk artiste, 9ice, would say.

    This leaves us in dilemma. How do we identify youth by whose exploits and honest exertions Nigeria may progress and attain freedom from the predatory ruling class? This is conundrum for other fora but this minute, I charge you to chant ‘Amen’ with the passion you put in the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge,’ “Wehdonesir Challenge’ and so on…

     

    The citizens’ heartfelt prayer

    Eledumare o! The One who is never deceived by the furor of our hastily conceived citizens’ protests on Facebook, Twitter and the streets of Lagos and Abuja; the One who is never perturbed by the duplicity of our revolutionary slogans and feeble mass actions, our backs are no longer against the wall, we are crawling into the wall like irritating geckos.

    Our accidental revolutionaries, labour leaders and columnists of note are quietly eating up their words in the wake of ‘crucial’ meetings with the ruling class. They tell us to ditch the placards and save our chants till more auspicious hour. Whispers of currency smother our rant and revolutionary cry. At the end, everything remains the same. Our fates are bent and broken according to the whims of our predatory ruling class.

    Thus we seek the comfort of your infinite mercies against the scourge of merciless leaders and duplicitous, self-serving rights activists. We pray that you repay our leaders and their ‘influencers’ back in their own kobo. Dear Author and Finisher of faith, please rewrite our pitiful fates as the Christians pray. And even though “The pen has been lifted” as the Muslims say, kindly rework our fates as you do to your most favoured faithful.

    If our leaders are truly on the right path…if truly, they lead honestly and with unpretentious fear of You in their hearts, treat them the way you would treat your most favoured among humankind. However, if they lead us with disdain and deceit in their hearts, treat them the way you treated Abu Ashram and the Abyssinians when they rose against Mecca.

    Afflict their mansions to tear down the comfort they build to our discomfort. Upset their bellies and purge them of the provisions they gorge like gluttons. As we spend our finest moments in darkness, make their access to light a luxury of the past. Reorder their fates that they too may go to sleep and rise in everlasting darkness.

    Make their wives hiss and fret for want of fresh air like our wives do. Make their kids and grandkids flail and choke in the grasp of unforgiving heatstroke, like peasant kids do. Bless them with noontime heat and bedtime heat even in the rains. And every time they seek from you the mercy they fail to accord us, treat their prayers the way you would, the wantonness of the gluttonous and accursed. Make their prayer points and praise-worship trail off in confusion. Smite their patronising prophets till they become not much in sight.

    They claim that money they save from anticorruption campaign and fuel subsidy removal would be used to improve infrastructure, agriculture and health sectors; if they fail to live up to their words, make their kids expire to indecipherable sickness and malnutrition right before their eyes, like peasant kids dying in agrarian communities for lack of infrastructure, balanced diet and good primary health care.

    Deny their trophy wives and newborns of oxygen and the best medical care as they deny kids of poor folk breathing their last, while their mothers are still ‘pushing,’ in hospital labour rooms and corridors of death, nationwide.

    Bless their kids with gifts of patricide and mindless violence like they do to our jobless youth for political gains, every day. Turn their swimming pools to raging deeps to drown their progeny and trophy wives, like our clogged waterways do for lack of government intervention.

    Subject their lives and those of their loved ones to the elements of bad roads as they do to us. Blind their pilots’ to the safest course every time they flee our land for overseas medical checkup. Make their planes plummet to crash on humid rocks and plunge in the sea, as our beloved’s in the throes of bird-strike, and our dreams in the face of stillbirth.

    Let them not enjoy the fruits of their labour. Make their Ivy League educated wards eternal sources of their everlasting sadness. Make them the bad harvest of their inordinate lust for wealth at our expense. Despite their wealth, afflict them with the poverty of good health, peace and contentment. And for every one of them condemning this piece, we pray: “Faja’alahum ka’asfin m ma” kulin.” Amin.

  • X-ray of two years of Buhari administration

    I deliberately chose to use the imagery of an X-ray, a medical device used to ascertain the state of ones lungs and heart to discuss two years of the Buhari administration. An X-ray can show how healthy a person is and what has to be done to regain one’s health or perhaps show that one’s health is so bad that a surgical operation would need to be done to save the patient. In this case the patient is both Nigeria and to a lesser extent the APC as a party in government.

    Some two years ago many Nigerians, including my humble self, felt that our country was so badly governed that it had gone to the dogs so to say and we wanted a change. We were so desperate for a change that any alternative would have been preferred. Then came the bringing together of some disparate political groupings of the CPC, the ACN and a breakaway faction of the PDP. After serious negotiations it was agreed that General Muhammadu Buhari who had failed three times to be elected president should carry the flag of the APC against the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP.

    Buhari brought to the ticket a messianic figure especially among the poor particularly in the north the so-called talakawa and the intellectual elite in the south which felt Nigeria was too big and important to be led by a bumbling leader like Jonathan whose only qualification for the post was that he represented an ethnic minority as well as the oil-producing region of the country. The argument was that even if he represented those two important elements, he had demonstrated no capacity to benefit the region. All that he was doing was to open up the treasury to a minuscule of people from the oil producing region as well as other Nigerians grovelling before him to share the patrimony and treasure of the country. His regime not only shared the proceeds of the oil of the country, he also in the words of President Olusegun Obasanjo turned the tragedy of Boko Haram overrunning the north-east of the country into an ATM for those around him. Military procurement was turned into a free for all while the children of poor people who constitute the bulk of the army rank and file were sent poorly kitted sometimes without shoes and with weapons that would not fire to confront better armed Boko Haram insurgents. While this was going on he and his minister of Abuja shared between them hundreds of hectares of land for “agricultural purposes” in Abuja. One hopes that whatever can be forfeited to the people and government of Nigeria will be swiftly recovered from all those who have appropriated public property for personal benefit .Two years is long enough for us to begin to see the result of “change”. HopE deferred can lead to frustrations.

    Buhari promised to drive away Boko Haram from the north-eastern part of the country. I believe he has succeeded in this endeavour but more needs to be done. Boko Haram is still striking at it wishes in the North-east and the Chibok girls and other captured Nigerians are still in Boko Haram prison in the forest. Some people including government officials are allegedly feeding and feasting on the tragedy of the displaced and apparently abused victims of this terrible problem. About half a million children are said to be out of school and roaming around in the North-east. Unfortunately this will be the army of a future insurgency unless something is done. There is a need for coordination of federal, state and NGO’s effort in tackling the problem of the IDPS. It is haram for any individual or group to feed fat on the tragedies of others. There is a need for the army to make the final push aided by the police and all other security agencies to stamp out insecurity. Including cattle rustling and herdsmen menace all over the country. This is an area where this government has failed.

    The economy in the last two years has been in recession caused by external shocks and militancy in the Niger Delta as well as our country’s hopeless dependency on hydrocarbon exports.  It is hoped that the effort at diversification of the economy will work and that we will never again be held hostage by the international oil cartels and the militants in the Niger Delta. Our hope will be further boosted when the Dangote petrochemical industry in Lagos comes on stream late 2018 which will lead to national self-sufficiency in gasoline and other petroleum products currently being imported with foreign exchange which could have enhanced the value of our currency as well as used for highly needed imports that could boost our local productivity. This government must block forever all avenues for looting. This may require separate revenue courts to try by jury of ordinary people economic crimes. By doing so, the hordes of lawyers benefiting from the economic sabotage and misfortune of the country will be put in their places. This government must publish names and amount of money recovered from looters and money so recovered must not be lumped with general revenue but appropriated for special projects such as strategic roads and railways.

    The infrastructure of this country still needs much to be desired. Roads are bad.  Telecommunications are poor and inefficient and electricity is virtually non-existent in major urban area as well as in the rural areas of the country. We need 100,000 megawatts not the 3000 megawatts that have been available for the past decade without noticeable increase in spite of billions of dollars spent on the sector. There can be no industrialization without electricity. There is need to declare emergency in this sector and open it to the rest of the world with whatever incentive that is needed.

    Finally we have to X-ray the politics of this regime. I am sorry to say that it took the regime two years before waking up to the demands of those who brought it into power for board and other appointments. When it was done, the appointments went to the wrong people especially to remnants of the old discredited regime. This regime seems averse to benefiting from the intellectual elite particularly in the south. The regime can learn one or two things from Bola Ahmed Tinubu whose regime and subsequent ones in Lagos State have been rewarded by their co-option of this critical group into governance. Most of the beneficiaries of this regime were in the previous regime or stood askance when the campaign was on to dislodge the previous corrupt regime. It is also clear that President Buhari’s political horizon is not as wide as it should be. He has not made use of the best people in the country who supported the movement to remove the last regime. He should have used political appointments to build a unified and united APC whose supporters will be committed foot-soldiers of the party in 2019 irrespective of whoever is at the head of its presidential ticket. The president should also have used political appointments to lure into the party people who did not support him so that he can build a mass movement around the party. Disaffection with his government is palpable in the South-west where party people feel they have been dealt a bad hand. This government must hearken to the voice and desire of the people to restructure the country. If the question of restructuring of the country is an emotive issue, the issue of devolution of power and resources should not be. A situation in which civil servants ,teachers, doctors and public servants generally all over the country are being owed a year or even two years salaries has become untenable and an urgent necessity. From revelations in recent times, looting of the treasury is mostly concentrated in the federal domain where there is too much power and resources and little managerial capacity to handle so much funds. I am not saying stealing is not going on at states level but the incidence of roguery at the centre compels us to demand devolution of resources and responsibilities. All parts of the country will benefit from it and it should not be seen as a zero sum game by any part of the country. It is better to manage this kind of devolution from above than wait for it from below.

  • NEF ready for restructuring

    One of the most prestigious civic organizations of Arewa North, the Northern Elders Forum, has made a historic statement. Speaking to Daily Sun this past week, the spokesman for NEF, Professor Ango Abdullahi, former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, informed Nigeria and the world that the forum is ready for discussions over the restructuring of the Nigerian federation. He added, in fact, that NEF is even ready for discussion of the issue of Biafran, and any other, demand for separation from Nigeria.

    In the South, throughout the acrimonious restructure-or-not-restructure debate that has been going on since 1999, the general picture as seen by the peoples of the South has always been that the elite of Arewa North are all opposed to restructuring. The very history of how the federation was gradually distorted between independence in 1960 and 1999, and how all power and resource control in our country was pulled together under the federal government, justifies such feelings about the northerners among southerners.

    The leaders of the three regions of our federation had in 1957, after long and constructive negotiations, agreed to a rational federal structure giving the federating units of our federation the reasonable amount of autonomy that would enable them to develop their resources, and that would make it possible for the different peoples of our country to live harmoniously together as one country. That structure benefited all regions.

    But, as soon as some North leaders had found themselves in power in the federal government at independence in 1960, they had started to seek for more federal control over the regions. This had led them to launch a federally sponsored attack on the Western Region in 1962, resulting in the suspension of the elected government of that region and the general brutalization and pulling down of the region. When the federal authorities backed a blatantly rigged Western Regional election in 1965, most people of the region revolted, and the revolt ended in a virtual collapse of all governance in Nigeria, and in an ultimate military coup in January 1966. A counter coup, organized by angry military officers from the North followed in July 1966 – and thereafter, coup after coup followed, producing military dictator after military dictator from the North, each of whom found ways to pull power and resource control to the federal centre, thereby gradually reducing the federating units of our federation to impotent entities.

    The northern political elite gloatingly welcomed these developments, and a sort of plot evolved between them and northern military officers to give the federal government an all-controlling power over Nigeria. The coming, from about 1970, of increasingly large revenues from the mineral oil of the Niger Delta added greatly to the North’s incentive to centralize all resource control. In 1999, the last of the northern military dictators enshrined all the centralizing developments in a constitution for Nigeria. And that constitution was strongly welcomed by the northern political elite – and stubbornly defended since then by them.

    Virtually all persons and organizations of note in the South have spoken up in support of a restructuring of the federation. Almost all demand a return to the 1957 federal arrangement. More and more have been saying in recent times that further delay in restructuring the federation could, or even would, break up Nigeria. In this atmosphere, some citizens of the Igbo South-east revived demands for a separate country of Biafra and quickly attracted larger and larger followings. Some citizens of the South-south followed suit, and some of these are employing violent means to press their demand. In the South-west, tens of “self-determination” groups have emerged, many of them with many thousands of members, and most of them committed to working for a separate Yoruba country out of Nigeria. In the Middle Belt, many youth groups have emerged too, generally committed to the defence of their peoples against political and terrorist pressures – and more and more of these are speaking the language of separation from Nigeria also. Thus, as things stand today, Nigeria does not appear to have much time. The imperative now is simply this: “restructure now or break up”.

    Therefore, Professor Abdullahi’s assurance to the rest of us that his prestigious group of Arewa elders does not oppose restructuring but positively welcomes discussions over it, creates a sudden shaft of light.  He says, “Well, if you read our communiqué in Kano recently, we categorically stated that the Northern Elders Forum is prepared to engage in any discussion with any group that is supporting restructuring of Nigeria, so, this means that we are fully supporting restructuring”.

    Concerning the specific agitation for Biafra, Professor Abdullahi said, “You see, the issue of Biafra is all part of the discussion of restructuring Nigeria…Yes, if Biafra means negotiations, yes.  It’s all a matter of discussion, if it means Igbo want to have a country of their own separate from Nigeria, it means a matter of discussion and we are prepared for the discussion”.

    He also has positive things to say about separation in general. He says, “…f Nigerians are tired of staying together, they should be prepared to accept divisions instead of remaining in agony and disappointment of one another…You see, what I am saying is that every Nigerian should be able to speak his opinion about the state of the country…”.

    Then he adds the following crucial point about how people should handle the issues of Nigeria’s future. He says, “If it is discovered that the law of a country is violated, that some somebody has gone beyond his fundamental rights, the law is very clear on this. What perhaps government is concerned about is that violence was part of Kanu’s agitation, to realize his dream by force; I think that is what government is trying to tackle to my understanding. So if Kanu is talking about Biafra, he is free to talk about Biafra and everybody is free to talk about his understanding of the Nigerian state. We are always talking that the Nigerian state is not working and how can we make it to work? And if the best option is to call for separate countries, why not?”

    The historically important purport of Professor Abdullahi’s statements is that we Nigerians can, by discussion, decide the future of our country. That comes from an understanding of the fundamental facts of our country’s existence. Our country is made up of many different nations, each living in its own homeland, each possessing and cherishing its own culture, each endowed by its creator with its own sovereignty, and each hugging its own pride about itself and its ways. If some act of history happens to push all of these nations together under one common sovereignty, that act does not, and can never, eliminate each nation’s right to its original sovereignty. That is why every known multi-nation country in history, and every known empire ruling many peoples together, no matter how long it existed, ultimately broke up. That means that we Nigerians must reckon with the basic inevitability of Nigeria’s dissolution.

    Naturally, the urge of separation from a multi-nation country tends to be stronger in a larger nation than in a smaller one. The Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa-Fulani, each numbering about 50 million in population, are three of the largest nations in the world. Even with the best of good intentions, each of these three nations is very unlikely to remain for very long in a multi-nation country like Nigeria. If any of our three giant nations now shows impatience about its being part of Nigeria, we must not judge or treat it as if it is doing something wrong, something reprehensible. That is what nations as human groups do all over the world. Our other, smaller, nations will come to the same behaviour sooner or later too.

    For a multi-nation country, a federation is only a palliative – and palliatives are, by nature, only temporary. A unitary arrangement is an aberration, and aberrations tend to quickly self-destruct. That means that if we hold on to our present unitary arrangement, Nigeria will break up very soon.

    Still, we must thank Professor Ango Abdullahi for throwing in a shaft of light at this dark moment in Nigeria’s history. Whether we choose restructuring or breaking up, we know now that doing it with violence is uttermost folly. The future of our kind of country is pre-determined by forces beyond our control.

  • A season of parties

    A season of parties

    It has been a season of revelry.

    Minna was throbbing with the rich and the powerful on May 13. So was Lagos where the pulsating rhythm of the state’s 50th anniversary flowed into other jollification, including the society wedding of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s son. Abuja was also in a party mood; former Edo State Governor Lucky Igbinedion turned 60. Deputy Senate President Ike  Ekweremadu  clocked 55.

    Minna snatched away the prize for hosting the biggest of the parties, not because of its lavishness and grandeur, but for the  impressive congregation of the crème de la crème of politics and power. A mixture of grandees and prominent personalities – in business and the professions.

    That was only to be expected at the wedding of former military president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s daughter Halima.

    The array of private jets that landed at the city’s airport was breathtaking. For days it became the subject of gossip in the social media. With such men of means, why do we have so much poverty with us? Do these people live among us?

    Some of the comments were lurid; others lucid. For how long are we going to begrudge our men of affluence, their taste and style?

    Anyway, that isn’t the story. Just consider the A class guests list and the sitting arrangement. The chance meetings. Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan shared the front row with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. They sat beside each other.

    I do not know if they had met since the 2015 election, which then incumbent Dr Jonathan lost. They exchanged greetings quite all right. But banter? What was going through their minds as they maintained their straight faces. Those occasional smiles were about other matters at the party, I bet.

    What would Dr Jonathan have loved to tell Tinubu, the architect of the coalition of progressives that dealt the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) its most devastating blow ever?

    “Were you fair to me? Are you pleased with the situation of things now? Why didn’t you help me? What exactly did I do wrong? They said I didn’t fight corruption and I tried to educate them; corruption and stealing are two different issues; we don’t have to mix them. Now you can see how complex the whole thing is. I won’t criticise anybody o, but is this the change you envisioned?”

    “Thank you, your Excellency. We had to do what we did to save everybody, including you. To have allowed the nonsense to go on endlessly would have amounted to a class suicide. It had to stop. No apologies.”

    Former Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff and his rival Ahmed Makarfi were there. Both are leading the two major factions of what is left of the PDP. They shook hands and smiled. What was going on in their belligerent minds?

    “You’ll soon see yourself, yeye man; the Supreme Court will deliver the hammer blow.”

    “You can’t chase me out of a house that  others and I sweated to build.”

    “We’ll see what you’ll do after this case. We’ll see the man who has the people’s support.”

    “On the rule of law I stand. You people invited me to save the party and you decided to dump me. Just like that.  No. Nobody can use me. I’m too big for that.”

    Former Niger State Governor  Babangida “Servant Leader” Aliyu, fresh from a brief detention, was there. He was all smiles, perhaps to tell his adversaries whose efforts have landed him in court for alleged corruption, that he wasn’t finished yet. Talk of resilience. Did he pump his successor Abubakar Sani-Bello’s hand? What kind of meeting was it? Warm? Cold? Felicitious? Convivial?

    This is the first time in a long time that former First Ladies Turai Yar’Adua and Dame Patience “Mama Peace” Jonathan have had the unusual chance of sitting next to each other. When last did they meet? What did they talk about? Was it just the usual “good to see you again”? Did the Abuja land dispute in which they tore at each other like some prized fighter crop up?

    Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai was there. So was Senator Shehu Sani, his arch-rival and critic-in-chief. Did they exchange pleasantries? Both were photographed – separately – smiling broadly. The two prominent citizens have been locked in a bitter war of wits over the governor’s style. Sani was once suspended for anti-party activity, but the senator would not keep quiet. He keeps hurling invectives at His Excellency, overstretching his capacity to tolerate dissent

    Former Kano State Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was there – red cap and all. Did he run into his successor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje? Interestingly, Ganduje would not drop the red cap, the symbol of Kwankwasiyya, the political movement nurtured by the former governor, even as both politicians are holding each other by the throat over the control of the state’s politics. In Kano, it is Kwankwasiyya versus Gandujiyya. And there they were, the two leading lights, partying.

    It was perhaps Abdullahi Dikko Inde’s first outing in a long time. The former Customs chief had disappeared from the social radar after some yet unproven allegations of serious fraud.

    Right there in Minna were men who have played major roles in the Nigerian story – from the military era to civil rule. They symbolise our success and failure, our defeat and victory, our heroic struggles and villainous enterprises, our gains and pains.

    From Minna, the party moved to Lagos where former President Olusegun Obasanjo hosted a colourful wedding for his son, Olujonwo and Tope, daughter of frontline businessman Chief Adebutu “Baba Ijebu” Kessington.

    There were governors and former governors, foremost businessmen and traditional rulers. Chief Olabode George was there. “O, he has settled with Baba,” a colleague screamed upon seeing the photograph of the PDP chieftain and his wife Roli at the wedding.  Beside George sat Makarfi, cool and composed as usual. Then somebody asked: “Where is Sheriff?”

    Former Governor Gbenga Daniel was also there, all smiles. And so was Dr Doyin Okupe, Obasanjo’s former spokesman who once fell out of favour. “Okupe? Baba has really changed; he is magnanimous now,” a guest remarked.

    Chief Lucky Nosakhare Igbinedion’s 60th birthday party in Abuja was nothing close to those fairytale birthdays of yore that the family patriarch Chief Osawaru Igbinedion celebrated on at least three continents. In New York, Johannesburg and, of course, London.

    Apparently in the spirit of the recession and in line with the body language of the present administration, Lucky Igbinedion decided to celebrate his day in Abuja.  A touch of modesty there.  Those he thought  he had lost some weight – in cash – got the message.  How wrong they were!

    The celebrator, decked out in an all-white Bini outfit, , fire-red beads dangling from his neck and his trademark heavy moustache lush as ever, was in a festive mood.

    “So, Lucky is now 60,” a colleague said, wondering how old the former governor was when he ruled Edo State. The cynical fellow recalled how Chief Igbinedion mounted the podium to campaign for his beloved son in whom the people had apparently lost confidence.

    The old man saved his son’s shot at a second term when he told a cheering crowd of supporters: “Una say Lucky fail, Lucky fail. Yes. If your pickin fail for one class, he no go repeat?”

    The message hit home. Igbinedion got another term. He was later to be convicted for corruption and ordered to pay a hefty fine.  Action man that he is, he simply strolled to his car, opened its trunk, dug out the cash, paid the fine, and walked away a free man.

    At the Abuja party was Chief James Onanefe “Ogidigboigbo” Ibori, who has just finished doing a term in London. He was the toast of the show, I am told. Everybody wanted to shake his hand. But for the fact that it was well advertised as Igbinedion’s birthday, the event would have been mistaken for one of those parties to welcome Ibori from the London trip – his longest and, definitely, most memorable ever. Only two days ago, he was awarded a staggering sum of one pound (N483) damages against the UK authorities for a two-day illegal detention after his release from jail. Justice – at last.

    Unknown to many, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark had been preparing for his 90th birthday. Today. He took some time off the planning the other day to throw a jab at Obasanjo over some aspects of Segun Adeniyi’s books, which he felt the former President influenced. Obasanjo, a master of repartee and put-downs, simply ignored the Ijaw leader.

    The merrymaking goes on – recession or no recession.  Will they ever spare a thought for the poor?

     

    The coup talk and all that hysteria

    It is reassuring that the military came out yesterday to say that there are no plots to roll out tanks and halt our democratic march. Chief of Army Staff Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai’s warning to officers hobnobbing with politicians was nothing out of the ordinary, the Defence Headquarters said.

    But why did the clarification come this late? Was somebody flying a kite?

    I gather from knowledgeable sources that the mammy market has not recovered its  rhythm since the Gen. Buratai warning shot.

    With the clarification, we can safely and merrily return to sharing bowls of steaming-hot peppersoup with our military brothers.

    All’s well that ends well.

          

     

     

  • Kachikwu’s tales and DSS shadow-boxing

    Amidst gloomy stories such as ‘$480b stolen from Nigeria between 1960-2004’, (Chatham House report); ‘$182b lost through illicit financial flows between 2005-2014’, and other stories of billions allegedly traced to former chieftains of NNPC or abandoned at airports or Bureau de Change, the tales about NNPC’s giant strides and its achievements by Ibe Kachikwu, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources ought to have come as some sort of relief to Nigerians. Speaking as a guest on a BBC Hard Talk in London only this Monday, the minister had assured Nigerians of self-sufficiency in the local refining of petroleum products by 2019. The refineries that were down before they came on stream two years ago, according to him ‘now produce about seven million litres a day’. Besides removing and renegotiating cash call deficit of over $6bn and moving NNPC into a profit-making organization for the first time in our nation’s history, he also announced the ‘signing of an agreement with the international oil giant, Agip, for the firm to build a refinery in Nigeria’.

    Undoubtedly, Kachikwu and the Buhari administration deserve commendation for the successes he claimed they have chalked up in the last two years. Unfortunately this however has been marred by the news of the arrest of Ifeanyi Uba, the chairman of Capital Oil and Gas Limited by DSS over an alleged theft of N11b worth of fuel deposited in his depot by NNPC. For many Nigerians, the development was enough evidence that the battle of NNPC often regarded as the most corrupt institution in Nigeria is yet to be won in spite of Kachikwu’s celebration.

    A statement by the spokesman for the DSS, Tony Opuiyo, claimed the arrest of Ubah was sequel to his alleged engagement in acts of economic sabotage which include stealing, diversion and illegal sale of petroleum products stored in his tank farm by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The DSS spokesman also affirmed that “it has been established that the products stolen amount to over N11bn. However, an unnamed  senior official ‘s of Ubah’s Capital Oil and Gas Ltd was reported to have said  the DSS was being economical with the truth as to the actual transactions between Ubah’s company and NNPC. Unfortunately with the baleful legacies of NNPC, it is doubtful if many Nigerians will swallow the DSS story that Ubah “stole and diverted petroleum products stored by the NNPC in his depots” without the collusion of NNPC officials, if that ever happened.

    But beyond this, what will be of concern to many Nigerians is the prospect that Kachikwu’s advertised successes  and others that will be chalked up  before 2019, may have no effect on the lives of ordinary Nigerians  if the nation is still going to be held hostage by tank farm owners after Buhari’s four years government of change. Nigerians have not forgotten that owners of tank-farms and their friends, the tanker owners were linked to the vandalisation of the over 400 kilometres of pipeline put in place by Obasanjo before he left office in 1979. If NNPC is unable to maintain the massive tank farms government built in Ikorodu or build new ones, undertakings that are much easier to accomplish than managing refineries, Kachikwu’s tales of giants stride made in local refining of petroleum products are not likely going to amuse Nigerians.

    Nigerians also remember what was in place when Obasanjo was sworn in as president in 1999. There was the NNPC Act 1977 which saddled the Minister of Petroleum with the responsibilities of “regulating and fixing petroleum product prices and supervising the MPR/DPR that has sole regulatory authority over technical standards, refining, and logistics in the sector”. There was also  the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) which was set up in 1988 by his predecessor to “profitably and efficiently market refined petroleum products in the domestic as well as export markets, especially in the ECOWAS sub-region, provide marine services and also maintain uninterrupted movement of refined petroleum products from the local refineries.” Then following the swearing in of Obasanjo, artificial fuel queues sprang up overnight in our filling stations. Lawmakers who publicly complained they needed to recoup the expenses incurred in running for elections by selling their personal houses outwitted Obasanjo who was stampeded to set up the PPPRA through a bill, debated and passed within three months. Its mandate which was not markedly different from those of the two existing Acts was to “liberalise the downstream sector of the petroleum industry, privatise the refineries, deregulate and liberalise the imports of petroleum products and, generally, make the products available at reasonable prices”.

    It was obvious PPPRA was set up primarily to serve the interest of the new power wielders in Abuja and as it turned out, the new inheritors of power ensured the first recorded achievement of PPPRA was its fraudulent claim that it spent N2.1 trillion on phantom subsidy in 2011, a figure brought down to less than one trillion in 2012 following protest by Nigerians. Then there was the theft of N1.7 trillion according to House Committee probe report, in 2011 during the tenure of Ahmadu Alli, as chairman of PPPRA. It was perpetrated by politicians and their fronts who according to Audu Ogbe, a former PDP chairman, “never imported a bottle of fuel”. The body also went on to increase the number of fuel importers from less than a dozen to 128 as patronage to politicians and their fronts. We can also add PPPRA’s fraudulent claim that the nation consumed 60.25 million litters in 2011, a figure that also went down to 39.66 litres in 2012 followed intervention by the Lower House.

    Besides the overlapping functions of PPMC and PPPRA, it is obvious from the above that the stakes are very high for so-called beneficiaries of deregulation in the oil sector who in the last 16 years have instead of building refineries, chosen to fall over each other in erecting the largest storage facility in the world and rent same to NNPC. PPPRA which  has demonstrated greater commitments to importation of refined petroleum products as against making our own refineries work depends on the storage facilities of members of Depot Petroleum Products Marketers Association (DAPPMA) (Obat Petroleum is reputed to have the largest and most modern storage facilities in the world). It also patronises Independent Marketers Company (NIPCO) that has invested billions in storage facilities and a jetty in Apapa. It also relies to some degree on the services of Oando and Zenon petroleum companies that jointly control over 200 trucks and a jetty owned by Zenon.

    The stakes are too high for those who have made huge investments on tank farms and live as parasites in the last 17 years. They will remain hostage takers long after the expected Kachikwu’s attainment of self -sufficiency in local production. Since this cannot be wished away, Kachikwu and the government must find the political will to negotiate with these determined and unrepentant hostage-takers. The ongoing shadow boxing between DSS and Ifeanyi Ubah while NNPC behaves like an unconcerned onlooker, is enough evidence that the government has very few choices.

  • Coup, in this age?

    In the past, the public got to know of any problem within the military when the offenders were being executed. In the military, the punishment for any crime against the state was death. The military does not joke with its stability. This is why any rumbling is quickly put down before it snowballs into something else.  Officers and soldiers know that their loyalty to the state, especially the Commander-in-Chief (C-i-C), must not be called to question. Once a soldier’s loyalty is in doubt, he is a goner. Loyalty must be total; there is nothing like partial loyalty, which is the same as being disloyal.

    There is no room for warning once a soldier crosses the line. The rules are rigid and clear. Discipline is the keyword. A soldier must be disciplined through and through and this must show in his conduct. Whether in and out of the barracks, he must reflect the military discipline. This is why soldiers are one of a kind. They are not like civilians because they live a regimented life. Soldiers are the soul of a country because they stand as its bulwark against external aggression. But some of them have sold their souls to the devil because of a mess of porridge.

    Those are the ones who connive with all sorts of character to do the unthinkable – the takeover of government. Soldiers are not trained to be coup plotters. But at a time, it was the in-thing in Nigeria for soldiers to stage a coup. They carry out the illicit act at times with the help of outsiders, that is non-soldiers. But, most times, it is a plot by soldiers working with some of their superiors. Nigeria has had its fair share of coups beginning with the first military putsch of January 15, 1966. Six months later, there was another coup, which brought in then Lt Col Yakubu Gowon as head of state.

    By now, we should have outgrown coups. Our military should not at this age and time be talking of any plot to take over government by any other means except the ballot box. By Monday, the Buhari administration will be two. Although President Muhammadu Buhari does not enjoy good health, that should not be enough reason for some people to want to use the military to force him out. Why are those people in a hurry to shoo Buhari out? Is it a constitutional offence for the president to fall ill? The Constitution does not say that the president is a super human being that he cannot fall ill. What it frowns at is where the president is incapacitated by his illness that he cannot do his job. To avoid having a lame duck president,  it makes provision for the vice president to take charge in acting capacity and not as “coordinator of government affairs”.

    Those thinking of removing Buhari through coup do not love this country. They must have something to hide; if not they will not be talking of a coup when we have a president who is on a mission to rescue the country, his health permitting. If they are not satisfied with the president’s performance, all they need do is wait for another two years to exercise their franchise to vote him out. Anything short of that will be breaching the Constitution, which allows the president to hold office for four years at the first instance. Assuming that the president is not performing, which is even not the case in this instance, is it the covert plot to remove him the way to go?

    Many of our politicians will never learn. They are always looking for the easy way out of any challenge without giving a second thought to its fall-out. We were in this country when some politicians invited the late Gen Sani Abacha to take over from the contraption called the Interim National Government (ING) and hand over to the late Bashorun M.K.O Abiola, who won the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The late Abacha took over power and held on to it until he died. Unlike 1993, we are not in any crisis now. So, why are “some individuals approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons” as stated by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai last week.

    The “undisclosed political reasons” is euphemism for a coup. The army chief knew what he was saying when he raised that alarm. We are lucky that we are no longer in the era of the military where anything goes, otherwise, some people may since have been arbitrarily arrested and court-martialled for treason. Coup, pustch, forceful take over of government or whatever name it may be called, is no longer fashionable. At least, not in this era of advanced technology. If soldiers gather anyhow these days in beer parlours to drink and take pepper soup, ala the coup theory propounded by that fine police officer, Alex Ogugbuaja, before they know it, they will find themselves on social media with details of what they are doing.

    How can any sane person even think of holding talks with soldiers for ‘’undisclosed political reasons’’ in this age when nothing is no longer secret. Gone are the days that Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd (NITEL), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) facilities can be shut down by a bunch of soldiers to facilitate the forceful take over of government. Before they strike now, they would have been caught and made to face the consequences of their action. But this matter should not be allowed to end like this. The military should ferret out those trying to compromise its men and bring them to book. It should however not be a witch-hunt of opponents of the government.

    If we allow this matter to die without investigating it to logical conclusion, we may be leaving fire on our roof to go to sleep. How are we sure that these people will not make another move? We should not fear their gathering, though, because it will be in vain. Whenever they gather to plot against the people’s will, they will fall for the simple fact that coup is an idea whose time is gone.