The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

The best of 2016 (II)

The temptation to veer away from the subject is very strong.

There are other equally important and urgent matters. The “silly” kerfuffle over President Muhammadu Buhari’s health; Southern Kaduna ; kidnapping ; and the stubborn recession that has hurt so much. United States President Donald Trump is signing executive orders with the alacrity of a baker churning out hot, oven-fresh loaves.

I shun the urge to dwell on these. Otherwise I will be committing that terrible sin of which our ever-considerate leaders have been battling to wean us – ingratitude. So to recognitions I return, lest our compatriots who last year exhibited extraordinary commitment to building an ideal polity feel ill-motivated to do more.

The commotion over MMM seems to have subsided. The facilitators of the Ponzi scheme reopened after a short break during which many hearts were broken. At least a suicide was reported. Many lost a fortune.

MMM could have easily won the Scam of the Year award, but for the ingenuity of two Chinese dudes who set up a fake Trinidad and Tobago embassy in Ejigbo on the outskirts of Lagos. They ran the racket with two Nigerians. They made a fortune as Nigerians, many of them seized by a terrible sense of economic persecution, struggled to flee this country.

By the time the police moved in to smash the gang, their dubious enterprise had brought many travel-hungry Nigerians to grief. It was too late to recover the hefty visa fees they had paid. Without question, that was the Scam of the Year.

When will the suspects be charged to court?

She is perhaps the only one with such a terrific grass-to-grace story in the history of bread hawking. A photographer with a talent for discovering talents found her, her wares balanced delicately on her head, resting on a long peacock- neck. The photographer clicked away. No particular interest. Just another object.

Not quite. The story changed as T.Y. Bello went through her work and found the girl with a tray of loaves too much to ignore. She should be on the catwalk, not on the walkway, hawking, she thought.

And so the search began for Jumoke “Oniburedi” Orisaguna.. Fame and fortune found her. New dresses, a new apartment, endorsements, nice jewellery and all the accouterments of a celebrity. Thanks to the Agege bread hawker who hit it big, bread hawkers no longer wear those drab and drossy wrappers.

They hit the street in fanciful jeans trousers with torn patches on the hips and psychedelic tops, eyelashes, eye shadow, eye shade ,fixed nails, lipstick and all that. A fellow was asking the other day: “Is this why bread is so expensive now?” I do not know. All I know as an indisputable fact is that Jumoke is Model of the Year.

The weeks preceding the November 26 Ondo State governorship election were full of anxiety. It was a time of uncertainty for either of the two leading candidates – Olusola Oke of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and Rotimi Akeredolu, who flew the flag of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The fate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Eyitayo Jegede was hanging in the balance. He was caught up in the internecine war between Senator Ahmed Makarfi’s and Senator Ali Modu Sheriff’s factions for the control of the party.

On the day of the election, supporters of one of the parties whispered into the ears of would-be voters: Dibo ko sebe (vote so that you can make some stew). It was a new variety of the much celebrated “stomach infrastructure”, the type that has turned Ekiti into the envy of all states. It worked like magic. The Slogan of the Year, no doubt, is dibo ko sebe. Will the inventive fellow behind this step forward?

When former PDP spokesman Olisa Metuh was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly collecting N400m from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), he cried that it was a case of persecution. According to detectives investigating the matter, he wrote all he knew about the deal that fetched him such a huge cash.

Convinced that they had got a prima facie case against him, the detectives asked Metuh to sign the statement he had written. The chief collected the papers, but to the amazement of his interrogators he suddenly shredded them so that there will be no shred of evidence to nail him. The flummoxed officers rushed to wrest the papers from Metuh. Alas, they were too slow. He had tossed them all into his mouth. He was chewing away as the officers watched in utter helplessness.

Metuh, who once collapsed in court, has been quiet since he won his battle for bail. While we await the verdict of the court on the allegations against the voluble politician, there is no argument that his show at the EFCC won the Oddity of the Year.

Considering his magical ride to the top – no fewer than 15 senior officers were unceremoniously retired to pave the way for his ascension -, Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris Kpotum could easily have snatched away the Policeman of the Year trophy. He won’t. Many other officers were outstanding at their beats.

Step forward the former Divisional Police Officer (DPO) of Surulere, Lagos Mainland. The story is still fresh of how he once led his men on a patrol. They found five men waiting for a roadside food vendor to prepare Indomie for them so that they could eat before going home to sleep.

”What are you doing here?” the police chief yelled at them.

”We are waiting for food,” the men replied in a calm, subdued voice with a tinge of incredulity.

“Why didn’t you eat at home? You’re under arrest,” the officer snapped.

The five guys were hustled onto a police van, driven to the station and dumped in a cell. They were branded robbery suspects. The next day when the police chief asked them to be brought out for questioning, he found that some of them were bearded.

“Ah Boko Haram!” he screamed.

Needless to say, the suspects put in some efforts to secure their freedom.

Who else if not this dutiful and diligent officer should be Policeman of the Year?

Before they feel neglected and accuse me of being disrespectful to protocol, let me quickly recognise our governors. I must confess that this was a close race. Take a bow Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti State. The chief apostle of the vote harvesting strategy called stomach infrastructure recently shocked his envious traducers who thought the programme had eventually collapsed as they had predicted. Fayose, in a creative response to the so-called herdsmen’s menace, formed the Grazing Marshal and empowered its officers to go after cows, kill them and share the meat. He personally partricipated in some of the operations.

A man of action, he once went to the Assembly with his own gavel to pass the budget he had brought to be laid on the table. His last appearance at the Assembly, also to submit the budget, saw him decked out in military camouflage. But Fayose narrowly missed the title, despite his executive stunts.

Rivers State Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, I am told, is a jolly good fellow. His opponents disagree. They keep on taunting him with the fact that many died in the election that brought him to power. They accuse him of threatening to kill electoral officers if they would not help him rig the last legislative rerun. He has just announced that his former police guards who were dismissed for alleged illegalities were actually fired for not aiding his assassination.

Ever so dutiful, in the dead of the night and against all odds, he had gone to stop Department of State Services (DSS) officers from arresting a judge. If it is all about drama and hell raising, Wike would have been handed the trophy, but it is much more than that.

Another contender is Kogi State Governor Yahaya Adoza Bello, the one who was vaulted onto the much-coveted seat after the All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership handpicked him to replace the late Abubakar Audu who died just before his victory could be announced. More than one year after, his critics are still attacking him virulently.

They say he is yet to tar any road, as if road tarring is all that a governor is elected – or selected – for. The other day I saw His Excellency’s picture splashed on the front page of a national newspaper. He was wearing a fez and a road safety jacket over his kaftan. He had braved the scorching sun to distribute handbills urging motorists to drive safely. With that act, Bello has excelled in community service.

There is also Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the tempestuous and abrasive “accidental civil servant”. Ever since he began his governorship journey, it has been one bloody crisis after another. There have been many communal clashes. He fought beggars. He demolished homes. Then, the Shites’ clashed with the army. Many died. And now the Southern Kaduna killings, reportedly by herdsmen whom the governor claimed to have paid handsomely to stop killing.

It has never been this bloody in Kaduna, many insist. Another governor would have thrown up his hands in surrender. Not El-Rufai. He remains as cocky and inscrutable as ever. He keeps threatening to prosecute those behind the killings even as blood continues to flow.

For his seeming imperturbability, El-Rufai is Governor of the Year.

February 2, 2017
The creeping insecurity

On Friday January 20, I was traveling from Ibadan to Lagos when others and I ran into what seemed to be armed robbery some kilometres on our approach to old Ogere toll gate. The time was half past five (5.30pm) in the evening. From about 100 meters to where the shooting was going on, we saw cars, trucks and tankers turning back to face us and we too quickly turned colliding with each other as we struggled to reverse and turn back. After some anxious moments, we could not move and like sheep, we all waited to be slaughtered. After a while, vehicles from Lagos suddenly started moving on their way to Ibadan and beckoned to us that all was clear. The only evidence of what had transpired that I saw was an old Toyota estate that was riddled with bullets. Who were these marauders? Only God knows. Later the following day, I heard that they were the proverbial herdsmen. I won’t bet on it unless I had concrete evidence. I say this because before the menace of these so-called criminal herdsmen, I was in November 1995 shot at towards the approach to the Sagamu junction on my way to Lagos. The following year at the Ibadan end, a huge stone meant for my head shattered the windscreen of the Toyota Camry I was driving. I remember Sunday my personal assistant screaming at me saying “ Oga no stop” to which I angrily replied “Na today de born me?” Since that incident the Ibadan-Lagos express way has been reasonably safe. I can say this because I travel on the road quite regularly. However may be I have been lucky because I have heard my friends tell me their harrowing experiences on the road. I have always tried not to travel too early in the morning or late in the evening. My golden rule is to sleep in whatever town I find myself at six o’clock in the evening. The problem now is that our country is becoming unsafe no matter where you are.

I remember with nostalgia several trips either from Ibadan to Jos or from Maiduguri to Lagos or from Lagos to Calabar and on to Jalingo, Yola and Maiduguri, Kano, Zaria, Kaduna, Tegina, Kontagora, Jebba, Ilorin and finally to Ibadan. I did some of these trips alone or with my wife and children just soaking up the beauty of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. Those were probably the golden years of Nigeria. I can attest to the beauty and goodness of the ordinary Nigerian. He was not envious of other people neither did he covet what others had. He just wanted to be left alone to eke out a precarious living as a farmer or fisherman. When I read about the Boko Haram tragedy, I weep because I know the terrain where the bombing and fighting is taking place and I fear some of my former students in the universities of Jos and Maiduguri may have fallen victim of the insurgency in some parts of Plateau, Bauchi, Yobe, Gombe Adamawa, Taraba and Borno itself

Some three or four years ago, a friend and colleague of mine from Bauchi State told me he was going on a flying visit to Azare. Knowing the terrain, I told him to go to Jos and then Bauchi and then to Azare. He laughed and said that would be suicidal of him to take the road to Jos because on seeing him, a Fulani man, the local people would kill him because of this he said he would drive to Kaduna then Kano and from there to Bauchi. This was some kind of Israelite journey. To be sincere, I did not know things were this bad. Now even driving from Abuja, the seat of the federal government to Kaduna has become problematic because I am told the road is infested by all kinds of highway robbers and ethnic militants. The picture is not good at all. The north-east is not safe because of Boko Haram. The Delta is unsafe because of Niger – Delta militants. Cattle rustlers are making the north-west problematic, the Biafra militants are challenging government’s hold on the south-east. The Fulani herders are making life difficult in the north-central zone. It is only a matter of time for peace to disappear in the south-west. The area is now under threat of Ijaw militants from the Niger Delta and herdsmen from the north. The picture of countrywide insecurity is complete. In this kind of environment, we should forget about foreign investment without which the problem of unemployment will become more acute.

What is responsible for this? The first answer is poor policing. The centralized federal police has failed and states or zonal police should be encouraged. This will be local people who would know the terrain, the language of the people and who will be able to collect information and intelligence unlike the Abuja police that suffers a disconnect with the people they are policing. Secondly, we have to find a way of devolving political and economic power from the centre to the states /zones. This country cannot be successfully run by a poohbah from Aso Rock The wretched states that cannot pay workers’ salaries have exposed the futility of state’s creation and we must consequently revert to viable and sustainable regional or zonal governments . Thirdly, the present government must seriously set in motion a process of designing a social welfare package for the poor and the unemployed. The present plan to give N5,000 monthly to the abjectly poor must be broadened to include the unemployed, the infirm and the handicapped. I find the plight of cripples lying across highways risking their lives while begging dehumanizing. It cheapens life in my view. A country is judged by how it treats its dead and its handicapped. We are failing on both scores.

If everybody is made to partake in the commonwealth of Nigeria, anti-social behaviour will be reduced. Fourthly, we must create jobs through direct state intervention. There is so much to do in this country that I find it galling to be told there are no jobs. We need to build railways, roads, sea and airports, schools and universities, hospitals, homes, factories and farms and many other social infrastructure. We can print money, which will lead to inflation but this will be taken care of by the value of the labour of millions of people building the country. Some of the cost can be recovered through reduced corruption or no corruption at all. We can also reduce the yawning gap between the salaries of those at the top and the slave salaries being paid to the poor. We can also downsize the bureaucracies and deploy those who are willing and able to work to fields and factories of production. Fifthly, we must take a second look at the transhumance that is at the root of herdsmen/farmers problem. We must collectivise, with all the problems it will involve, the activities of herders in ranches so as to prevent these constant clashes that are destroying our country and exacerbating inter-ethnic conflict. Every effort must be made to affirm the rights of indigenes to their land whether in the country or in the city. If land is needed, it must be acquired within the context of a willing seller and a paying buyer. My assumption is that all Nigerians have ancestral land and it will be unfair to deprive any one of his God-given right to the land of their forefathers.

In the interim, before constitutional changes can be effected, the Nigerian Police must take the following steps. Highway patrol in shifts of six hours duration in a 24-hour unbroken chain must commence on all federal high ways and major cities. This is what the thousands of cars donated by the states to the police are meant for and not for convoys accompanying police officers wherever they go. All guns in the hands of unauthorized people, including herdsmen must be retrieved and called in. If this is not done quickly, it will give fillip to those advocating strategy of the grave by asking everybody be allowed to carry arms as they do in America, I say God forbid. There ought to be a federal law imposing life imprisonment for crimes of kidnapping, highway robbery and assassination.

Finally our religious leaders should be charged to admonish all their followers to respect the teaching of their religions as to the sanctity of human life. Anybody going out of this narrow path should be dealt with expeditiously by the state. The capital punishment imposed on people who commit these crimes by Lagos State should be adopted by the federal government. Punishment must be sure and swift. This is the only way we will put an end to a state of countrywide insecurity where life is becoming nasty brutish and short.

February 2, 2017
Kayode Fayemi…The devil’s in his details (1)

The wound-like rawness of Kayode Fayemi’s words indicates that somewhere within his privileged bulk, a humane realist lurks. The Minister of Solid Minerals’ jarring speech to recent graduands of the University of Lagos is widely interpreted as a spectacle of conceit and insensitivity to Nigeria’s shortchanged, underprivileged youth. I disagree.

Of course, the former Governor of Ekiti betrays insensitivity, sloppiness and entitlement mentality characteristic of Nigeria’s ruling class. But while this may pass as yet another intrusion of unfair generalisation or political stereotype in the estimation of Fayemi, he has done too little to establish himself as a deviant from Nigeria’s decadent political culture. This is understandable.

Fayemi, despite his impressive academic and professional record, bathes in the slurry of Nigeria’s murky politics when need be, it would seem. For instance, in the political news feature, ‘Money and Violence Hobble Democracy in Nigeria,’ New York Times’ Lydia Polgreen, on November 24, 2006, portrayed Fayemi’s governorship aspiration thus: “Mr. Fayemi’s campaign treads the treacherous middle ground between the high road, on which pro-democracy advocates have traditionally marched directly to defeat, and the bruising, money-driven politics that dominate Nigeria’s electoral contests.

“On a recent campaign swing, he handed out nearly N500,000, or $4,000, in a single day. He estimates that winning the election will cost him $4 million, a sum he has raised from allies and friends in Nigeria, as well as from his contacts in the West.

“After one rally, as Mr. Fayemi tried to leave town, a fracas erupted among some youths who crowded around his car. A dozen young men began arguing with one of his aides and blocking the car. Apparently the campaign had given money for a local youth wing to a man no one could identify, and he had absconded with the cash. Mr. Fayemi would need to pay them again, the young men explained, surrounding his car as they pressed their case. Mr. Fayemi threw up his hands. “This is what we live with,” he said.

The aide argued with the young men, but their mood darkened as the dispute stretched for several minutes. Finally, Mr. Fayemi relented. “Just pay them,” he said. The leader of the young men seized the stack of cash, carefully counting the notes in the glow of the car’s headlights: N10,000, or about $80. Once he confirmed the amount and nodded his assent, a cry went up.

“Excellency, Excellency!” the young men shouted, using the honorific for governors, opening the cordon and allowing Mr. Fayemi’s car to pass through.

“This is our politics,” Mr. Fayemi said, an edge of disgust in his voice. Such payoffs clearly make him uncomfortable, but he said he hoped that the ends would justify the means.

“Money,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the language of Nigerian politics. As much as you want to get away from that, you also have to be mindful of those short-term things you must do.”

Fayemi eventually became Governor of Ekiti State but Polgreen’s analysis of his personal ethics and political culture offer sullied portraits of his psyche. It symbolises his decadent flirtation with the youth and professed disdain for money-driven politics in one breadth. But this is certainly a discussion for another forum, another day.

This minute, Fayemi may be applauded for his profound admonition to UNILAG graduates and Nigerian youth in general. In a lecture titled: ‘The Successor-Generation: Reflections on Values and Knowledge in Nation Building’ at the 2017 UNILAG Convocation Lecture in Lagos, Fayemi, an alumnus of the school said to graduands: “Don’t think you are entitled to a job, just because of your parents’ influence or what they have. Don’t think things would be all rosy because you graduated from UNILAG with good grades. Be prepared for surprises and disappointments because life is bound to hand you a couple. The only guarantees you have in this life is what you do for yourself with the grace God has bestowed on us all.

“We need to get off our high horses, quit whining and start doing — for ourselves and for our country. If something angers you so much, instead of whining, think hard about possible solutions and do something about it.”

The media, in reporting his speech however, sensationalised it, casting ambiguous headlines weaponised as click-baits on news portals and social media. The tenor of some headlines portrayed Fayemi as an unfeeling symbol of the incumbent ruling class. “Quit whining, nobody owes you anything” intones one such headline.

Predictably, several Nigerians decided to shoot the messenger and ignore the message, thus committing a piteous form of ad hominem with juvenile relish and unabashed recklessness.

Yes, Fayemi symbolises yet another hodge-podge of haughtiness and entitlement from Nigeria’s over-indulged ruling class but this hardly takes the depth out of his admonishment to the youth.

Within the gamut of bitter criticism and scornful reactions to his speech, there is shamefully no true and absolute account of things except the reality and absolutism of the biased and duplicitous. In the flurry, no one is paying attention to Fayemi’s actual message.

The Nigerian youth are indeed handicapped by piteous streaks of entitlement mentality. ‘But isn’t that the affliction of youth of all epochs?’ Some would argue; notwithstanding, Fayemi’s advise to the youth addresses their most bothersome issues.

The youth truly need to quit whining and seize their destinies in their own hands. They can’t keep blaming government for their shortcomings and every inconvenience suffered by them while they do nothing to salvage the situation.

Agreed, their travails cannot be divorced from the hackneyed excuses of inept leadership, policy failures, substandard education and unemployment, the youth owes it to themselves to better their lot often at progressive costs.

It is painful to watch Fayemi’s ruling class exhibit unpardonable disconnect from the citizenry’s travails. They counsel perseverance while they dwell in luxury often acquired at the public’s expense. They send their children to school overseas to avoid the vagaries of Nigeria’s underfunded and substandard education sector while children born outside their bracket of privilege are condemned to a life of substandard scholarship, policy failure and neglect. It takes ingenuity and determination for the latter to make the most of the country’s disconcerting educational experience.

Add this to a comatose health sector, insecurity, unemployment and parlous infrastructure and you have a perfect recipe for disillusionment. At the backdrop of this rot, the youth stew in crime, ignorance, low self esteem and corruption.

The biggest misconception nurtured by contemporary youth is that a hero or heroine will someday emerge from thin air, to liberate them from the clutches of the oppressive ruling class. This lust for heroes and gods illustrates a fable. It is not of latent strength but disintegration. It reveals the weakness and shallowness of the Nigerian youth’s awfully preadolescent mind. It reiterates a very shrill cry for help that’s at once indolent, self-seeking and infantile.

A jarring lack of progressive values and sense of self-worth further reduces the youth to easy marks to the predatory ruling class and suspicious revolutionaries. Fayemi aptly advocates self-reclamation, perseverance, thirst for knowledge and excellence. He reveals his ascent the ladder of success via devotion to scholarship and honest toil. He was never wrong to advocate a commitment to the collective good in pursuit of self-actualization.

The youth should ignore spurious plots of his alleged tactlessness and insensitivity to their plight. There is no gainsaying Fayemi’s ruling class constitute Nigeria’s greatest albatross but will the youth adapt his ‘progressive’ blueprint to neuter him and his ilk? Their piteous sense of entitlement and acute bigotry should yield to the influences of education, humaneness and culture.

January 27, 2017
Kudos to PMB on the Gambian problem

When our late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who doubled as our foreign minister for a while said in October 1960 at the United Nations General Assembly plenary session that our country will protect the interest of the black man wherever he may be, people felt that this was an unrealistic ambition. Sir Abubakar, as we all know, was not given to making statements without having ruminated seriously upon it. He came to this conclusion because of the pain most African leaders felt about the humiliation of the black man in the hands of largely racist colonial governments in Africa at that time. This was also the onset of the Civil Rights movement in the USA when dogs were unleashed on blacks justly demanding to be treated as human beings. The most galling of these indignities was in Southern Africa stretching from the then Belgian Congo to the Afrikaner controlled Republic of South Africa where blacks were herded into the so-called Bantustans created to emphasize the division of black South Africans along tribal lines in an attempt to weaken the wind of change which the British Prime Minister had said was blowing through the whole of Africa which the colonial regimes must take note of so that they are not caught unprepared when the wind would become an hurricane.

It was in the light of this political ferment that Sir Abubakar committed Nigeria to supporting all black men struggling justly to be free. This speech from a conservative leader of the most populous Black Country whose friendship was highly valued in the Cold War years of the struggle for world supremacy between communism and capitalism must have shocked policy makers in the West. From that time onwards till today, the foreign policy of Nigeria has not deviated from protecting the interests of the black man. Nigeria may be careful about meddling in the affairs of the historic black diaspora in north and South America and their struggle for equality. This is because our leverage on the powerful countries of the United States and Brazil is rather inconsequential. But in the Caribbean islands, Nigeria has played significant roles there particularly in its high profile diplomatic and cultural presence in such countries as Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The point I am making is that Nigeria has been consistent in batting for the black man as much as its economy will permit. Nigeria bore almost 35 percent of the budget of the liberation committee of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) resident in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This was apart from direct financial and military assistance to national liberation movements of various countries from those of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. One of the first international roles of independent Nigeria was participating in UN peace-keeping in the Congo in 1961. We must not forget the burden which Nigeria happily bore in the cause of African liberation and which it continues to bear in its disproportionate budgetary support for the African Union even today.

In recent years, there have been attempts to refocus Nigeria’s foreign policy away from political consideration to economic issues now that the continent is largely free from overt political domination. But one thing that has remained is our country’s role in the lives of black people particularly in West Africa and the continent as a whole.

Defence of democratic regimes is now part of Nigeria’s foreign policy goals. Even during military regimes, Nigeria continued with this policy while critics said Nigeria was defending a system of government denied to its people. This embarrassing situation must have hastened the reluctant exit of the military from the seat of power in 1999.

When “civilian” government headed by Obasanjo came to power in 1999, it was natural for it to continue to embrace the new doctrine of supporting democratic regimes in addition to defending the interests of the Blackman worldwide. This informed President Olusegun Obasanjo’s intervention in Togo, São Tomé and Principe, Guinea–Bissau, Liberia and to a certain extent in Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Sierra Leone just to ensure through preventive diplomacy, that the region did not dissolve into avoidable fratricidal conflict as before. What informed Nigeria’s policy was trying to put out the fire in the house of your neighbours before being consumed in the conflagration when the fire spread to one’s house. In other words, the policy is not simply based on altruism but enlightened self-interest. This preventive diplomacy will continue to operate no matter who is in power in Nigeria. Of course this assumption is based on peace in Nigeria as well as a strong economy to back its foreign policy. The populace would also need to be carried along so that nobody grumbles about domestic problems being left unattended to while the country is busy pacifying other countries that may be distressed in the region.

When the situation in The Gambia with a population of about one and a half million people and combined armed and police force of about 2400 deteriorated following the refusal of its sit-tight President Yahya Jammeh to vacate his position, Nigeria had to step in. President Yahya Jammeh has ruled the small country sandwiched within Senegal for 22 years after overthrowing its president, Sir Dauda Jawara in a coup d’état. A presidential election supervised by his government was lost and a new man Adama Barrow won the election. Yahyah jammeh admitted defeat for some days and later began to find excuses to remain in power. The ECOWAS leaders met in Abuja and issued an ultimatum to Jammeh to step down. Two countries were critical to this decision. These were Nigeria and Senegal. Once Buhari showed leadership in spite of the problems at home, Senegal showed resolve and the others followed. To ensure global support, Nigeria led others to secure UN Security Council support. President Buhari after three trips to negotiate with the recalcitrant Jammeh sent first a naval frigate to cruise around the coast of the country as a precursor of proposed combined military operations involving also the army and the Air Force; then he sent a detachment of Nigeria Air Force. A Hercules C130 moved about 800 troops to Senegal while Nigerian planes put pressure on the recalcitrant Jammeh by buzzing the capital of Banjul to show resolve and determination. What followed was expected. The Chief of Staff of the Gambian army, General Ousman Badjie issued a statement that his troops will not fight his West African brothers and subsequently pledged his loyalty to the new President Adama Barrow who had earlier on been sworn in in the Gambian embassy in Dakar, Senegal. By this time, the troops ready to strike had been bolstered by a token company of Malian troops. The fate of Jammeh was in the balance. He was offered asylum in Nigeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Guinea. He apparently chose finally to go to Equatorial Guinea where he shares sit-tight political consanguinity with the Equatorial Guinean President Tewedoro Macias Nguema who has been in power in the oil-rich country for decades. Buhari must ensure Jammeh signs a guarantee of non-interference in the affairs of The Gambia and Senegalese and Nigerian troops should remain in the country to ensure peace and security while removing from command positions all Jammeh’s appointees.

Buhari has resoundingly won his first foreign policy challenge and he deserves our congratulations. I was disappointed that some members of our Senate did not rise to the occasion. The criticism of Buhari by senators Ike Ekweremadu and Chukwuka Utazi for sending troops to The Gambia without Senate approval is totally unpatriotic and uncalled for. The intent of the constitution they quoted is not to tie the hands of the president in foreign policy emergencies but to ensure that Nigeria does not declare wars without Senate approval. No war broke out in this case and the AMERICAN example which some of these people always quote permits the president to seek approval post troops’ deployment in case of crisis necessitating quick action. It is not in the interest of Nigeria to belittle the effort of the President and to deride him when celebrations are called for.

January 26, 2017
The Rann tragedy

BORNO STATE has been through a lot since the war against insurgency started about eight years ago. The war was preceded by the dastardly activities of Boko Haram, which believes in the use of force to pursue its agenda. Villages have been razed and thousands displaced from their homes. Today, many internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps dot the landscape of the state. Some of these camps can be found in the neighbouring Adamawa State and other parts of the country.

The Federal and Borno State governments are working round the clock to get these people back to their homes. Towards this end, many of the ravaged communities have been rebuilt by the indefatigable Governor Kashim Shettima, who also directed local government chairmen to live among the IDPs to enable them have first hand knowledge about their needs. The Boko Haram insurgency has virtually crippled Maiduguri, which is the epicentre of the sect’s activities, and environs.

Borno can never be the same again, no matter what the Federal and state governments do to rebuild it. The state, like a burnt palace, will eventually wear a new look and become more beautiful, but there will always be something missing from it all – and that is the cherished relics of the people which can never be replaced. What about the lives lost? What about those maimed and raped? What about the minors put in the family way? But Shettima is striving to make the people forget this ugly past and look to the future with hope that things will be better.

The IDPs camps have since become home to many, who lost everything to the Boko Haram insurgency. To mitigate their pains, Shettima is holding council chiefs responsible for their well-being. For the IDPs to feel the impact of government, he directed some local governments to maintain secretariats in their camps and also station officials there. Bama, Kukawa, Gwoza and Marte councils today run two secretariats – one in their headquarters and the other in the IDPs camps in line with the governor’s directive. Three others operate satellite secretariats in the IDPs camps in Maiduguri because of the ongoing military operation there.

‘’We will not have good reason to hold chairmen accountable if we sent them to their local government headquarters only whereas they have majority of their people in Maiduguri’’, Shettima said, adding : ‘’I will hold council chairmen responsible if I hear any complaints about shortages or lack of foods, water, access to primary healthcare and absence of teachers at any IDPs camp unless it is evident that they had made frantic efforts to bring such cases to the notice of the appropriate authorities. Chairmen must come up with rosters that would ensure deployment of their officials to all camps on rotational basis and anybody whose turn it is must be stationed at the camps…the presence of government officials in IDPs camps will help build the confidence of IDPs as they go through their healing process’’.

The IDPs have gone through trauma from which many may never recover. What they went through in the hands of Boko Haram will live with them forever. They may find it difficult living like refugees in their own country, but they have no choice than to make do with what they have. There are millions of their compatriots who are not displaced, but do not have a roof over their heads. Having lost everything not because of their own making, the state is duty bound to come to their aid, help them to pick up the pieces of their life and gradually reintegrate them back into society. The idea of IDPs camps is not to turn those places into their permanent abode, it is a temporary sanctuary from which they will leave for the accommodation to be provided by government or good spirited Nigerians.

The IDPs are already in a pathetic situation. Their case was compouded last week with the accidental bombing of an IDPs camp in Rann in Kala Balge Local Government Area of Borno State. Many of those killed were charity workers and civilians. Some soldiers were among the casualties. No matter how well planned a military operation may be, if an accident is going to happen, it will happen. Even the best armies in the world also experience such accidents once in a while. The Rann bombing was not premeditated; it was something that happened in the course of an operation to flush out Boko Haram insurgents suspected to be hiding in that place.

The Air Force with all it has been doing since the war against insurgency started cannot with its own hands wipe off the gain so far made. It is with its help that Boko Haram was dislodged from Sambisa Forest last December. So, the Air Force would not deliberately bomb a place inhabited by civilians even if it has all the intelligence in the world that Boko Haram members are there. In military operations, there is what is called collateral damage. Unfortunately, the bombing of Rann falls into this categorisation. It was an unforeseeable occurrence which is inexplicable. How do you explain the bombing of an IDPs camp, which is under the protection of the government?

But something must have led to the bombing. What is that thing? Who gave the Air Force information that led to its bombing of the camp? Is the source credible? Has he ever given information to the military that helped in the war against insurgency? Was the source not aware that Rann harbours an IDPs camp? Does the military cross check such information before carrying out an attack? Couldn’t the pilot have distinguished an IDPs camp from insurgents territory? The questions are many, just too many. And answering them sincerely will ensure that such a tragedy does not recur.

Dictators gone forever

AWIND is blowing across Africa and it is the wind of redemption. Long condemned as the continent of bad, inept and rogue leaders, Africa is fast redeeming itself in the eyes of the world. It is no longer the region of sit-tight leaders. Those days when a leader will decide not to leave office after losing election are gone for good. Last December 1, former The Gambia dictator Yahya Jammeh lost the presidential election to Adama Barrow. He initially conceded defeat, but later changed his mind, alleging that the election was not free and fair. He filed a petition at the Supreme Court in order to stall the January 19 inauguration of Barrow. Despite all his tricks, the Supreme Court refused to be used to thwart the people’s will. His deputy and some of his ministers also dumped him when they saw the handwriting on the wall. His defence minister told him pointblank that the military would surrender if the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) forces entered the country. Jammeh, who was talking tough that ECOWAS could not dictate to him, quickly changed gear and fled into exile on Friday night, ending his 22 years misrule of the tiny and impoverished country. May other dictators still tormenting the continent go the same way soon.

January 26, 2017
Travails of El-Zakzaky

Governments, saddled with the responsibility of protecting the interest of the noble, the ignoble and the insane who engage in activities that often defy reasoning, are constituted by ordinary men. For this reason, they are prone to political crime. Their arduous task is not made any easier by the fact that these ordinary men are not immune to the deep-seated prejudices of their group. The result is that quite often, private interest is substituted for public interest.

To many critical minds, the ongoing war against El- Zakzaky and his Shia group viciously waged by state actors who happen to be members of the predominant rival Sunni Islam, the medium is the message. It is believed Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Umaru Yar’Adua and now Buhari under whose administrations El Zakzaky and his Shia Islam group have experienced some form deprivations cannot be independent arbiters. There are just too many coincidences to invalidate such a conspiracy theory.

Let us first trace the Sunni and Shi’a political rivalry back to Saudi Arabia tribal groups put together as Islamic state by Holy Prophet Mohammed and the war of succession that followed his death in 632 A.D. Available literature has shown that in the ensuing war of succession, the Shi’a made up of Prophet Mohammed’s family and the Muhajirun, supported Ali Ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and son-in-law as his authentic successor while the Sunni, predominantly made up of tribal leaders of Mecca and Medina who were initially opposed to Prophet Mohammed insisted the Prophet died without appointing a successor and proceeded to vote for Abu Bakr as the new Caliph to head the Islamic state. Beyond politics, what separates the two warring groups are a number disputed Hadiths relating to aspects of prayers and marriage. Therefore, that the war has gone on for about 14 centuries despite the fact that there is no serious disagreement on theological teaching only confirms it is all about politics rather than quest for salvation of souls.

Nigeria where over 95% of Muslims faithful belong to the Sunni group did not get entangled in the endless battle until mid-80s when Ibrahim El-Zakzaky probably of Ebira ethno-linguistic group, born in Zaria, formerly known as Zazzau, one of the original Hausa states that embraced Islamic religion in mid 1450s, long before it was captured by the Fulani jihadists in 1805, introduced Shia Islam to Nigeria. Just as it was in the early days of the rivalry in Mecca, El Zakzaky and his Shi’a group drew most of their support from the poor and the disadvantaged indigenous tribal groups in the north. And just as in Saudi Arabia where the political actors hide under the state to wage a proxy war against Shia states like Iran, the belief is that political state actors in Nigeria have on behalf of the dominant Sunni Islam, waged a proxy war under the guise of protecting the Nigerian society from El Zakzaky’s dangerous religious teachings.

And what are these dangerous teachings? As defined by the state actors, they include El-Zakzaky and his Shi’a Islam group’s claim that ‘sovereignty lies only with Allah’, their call for a stringent application of the Islamic law and their yearning for a theocratic state patterned after post- Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution Iran. But to many objective observers, these so-called dangerous teachings are not any more inimical to the health of our nation than the pronouncements and actions of prominent mainstream Sunni northern Muslims including governors who sent hundreds of northern youths for religious indoctrination under Bin Laden while he took political refuge in Sudan.

It is also debatable if El-Zakzaky is any more dangerous than Senator Ahmed Yerima, who as governor of Zamfara, one of the poorest and educationally backward states in the federation, assembled prominent northern Sunni Islam members along with ambassadors of Muslim nations who hailed him as he hilariously launched what President Obasanjo then described as ‘political Sharia that will soon fade away’. Yerima’s action, more than El-Zakzaky’s cravings was a direct assault on Nigeria constitution and a threat to the unity of the country as it led to massive demonstrations and killings of hundreds of people in Kano, Kaduna and a few other states in the north.

To deny the possibility of the state proxy war on behalf of dominant Sunni in Nigeria is to deny the fact that Sunni Saudi Arabia is waging a proxy war on demonized Shia Iran long after it was established by the international intelligence community that the former which pretends to fight God’s war is a fertile breeding ground for radical Islam and by extension global terrorism.

But perhaps what has made the argument of the state and its actors about protecting our nation from the dangerous teachings of El-Zakzaky and his Shia group more tenuous has been the various pronouncements by the judiciary since the travails of El-Zakzaky began during Babangida regime in the 90s, all of which contradicted the state claim that he constitutes a danger to society.

El-Zakzaky’s latest victory and the judicial pronouncement came after one year in detention without charges. Arrested by the military on December 14, 2015, and detained following a clash with the military during which about 347 members of his Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) were killed, he approached the court through his lawyer, Femi Falana to demand for his freedom. Rejecting submission by Tijjani Gazali, the SSS lawyer, that “decision to hold the Islamic cleric and his wife for their safety was not based on law,” Justice Gabriel Kolawole, ordered El-Zakzaky’s release saying, “I have not been shown any incident report or any complaint lodged by residents around the neighborhood that the applicant has become a nuisance to his neighborhood.”

Long before this victory, El-Zakzaky had back in 1996 after a protracted judicial battle secured another landmark judicial victory over General Abacha who had ordered his detention in February 1996 for causing public disaffection against his military junta.

And it is also on record that while the April 21, 1998, Muslim Brotherhood’s violent protest against the arrest of El-Zakzaky’s wife and children failed to secure their release, it was the court that later ordered the release of Zeenah, El-Zakzaky’s wife, her six children along with eight other women detained for insulting Abacha. Again when the Abdulsalami regime failed to extend the general amnesty enjoyed by many Abacha detainees to El-Zakzaky in August 27, 1998, following Abacha’s death, the judiciary ordered his release. It is safe to conclude from this string of judicial victories that contrary to the claim by the state, the judiciary does not consider El-Zakzaky a danger to society.

El-Zakzaky has not denied his preference for a more stringent application of Islamic legal system or indeed the establishment of a theocracy modeled after Iran, but he has insisted “Our weapon is positive reasoning, truth and good conduct. Guns are for the reckless and foolhardy. We have been conducting our affairs peacefully, calling people to the truth for the last 36 years… We save lives, not kill them.”

Since the judiciary has consistently insisted that El-Zakzaky and his Shia group are not a threat to the country’s security, the state has to provide proof to invalidate his thesis that he and his group are victims of religious intolerance that have come to define the once-celebrated ‘one north, one people’ since the assassination of Ahmadu Bello in 1966.

January 26, 2017
Towards a true ‘party of change’ for Nigeria

Recently, I wrote that Nigeria does not want another mega-party, but a true party of change. I added that our politicians who had recently tried to create a party of change, though they had put enormous good intensions, energy and resources into the effort, had made crucial mistakes, including the mistake of not negotiating thoroughly with groups inside the group. Since then, I have given some more thoughts to this matter.

First and foremost, a true party of change must be a party of ideas and programmes. Its agenda must state clearly how the Nigerian federation will be restructured, and what the principles, process and time-table for restructuring will be. It must include programmes for change in all sectors of the Nigerian economy (modern agriculture, rural development, modern job skills development, entrepreneurial development, infrastructural development, educational improvement and expansion, small business development, business assistance programmes, export promotion, urban renewal, fiscal policy, cast-iron protection for public treasuries and bank accounts, systematic inclusion of the Nigerian Diaspora in Nigerian development, etc). It must include protection of the integrity of various regulatory agencies (Police, Electoral Commission, Judiciary, the Civil Service, etc) to enable them to do their duties properly. It must also include sincere plans for returning Nigeria’s elections to orderly, free, fair, peaceful, democratic exercises. And it must include a no-nonsense programme for eliminating public corruption. Very importantly, since sections of the leaders in the new effort will need to negotiate certain critical issues among them, the agenda must include assurance that this will be done in unalloyed interest of Nigeria, and in the open sunshine, and how the agreed details will be made spring-clear to all Nigerians.

In yet one more direction, the true party of change must lead Nigeria back to sanity. In modern democratic systems, the well-established practice is that members of political parties own and control their parties, and politically active members have voices in the affairs of their parties. By and large, this was the kind of parties created by our founding fathers in 1951 – AG, NCNC, NPC, NEPU, etc. Individual members of each party bought inexpensive party membership cards as proud proof of membership – and such cards were usually renewable annually. Members attended party meetings at their own expense at all levels, and did not expect money from their party or party leaders. Persons who got elected or appointed to public positions on the platform of their party paid into the coffers of their party an agreed small percentage of their salaries from those positions. Rich members might donate large sums of money to their party, and a government controlled by a party might employ its power to find money for the party, but even the smallest individual member was able to enjoy the pride that he was one of the persons financially supporting his party’s existence and strength. Parties had executive committees at local, state and national levels, and such bodies were respected within the party. Parties also had independent party financial accounts, as well as party secretariats, and paid party officials earning their salaries directly from the party accounts. Party constituencies responsibly nominated their candidates for elections to all levels of government. All these contribute to making political parties democratic in their structure and activities, to making party leaders respectful and responsive to party members, and to making governance democratic.

Change must include a return to this kind of sanity. The party of change must not only conscientiously organize and run itself along these norms, it must promote the establishment of these norms as the legally binding standard for political parties in our country. It must also commit itself to promote strict laws and regulations directed at making Nigeria’s politics responsible, oriented towards ideas and serious debates, and respectful of law, order and public peace. It must also commit itself to legally and truly eliminating from Nigerian politics such destructive practices as the use of thugs in politics, the amassing of armies of thugs by politicians, and the payment of citizens for attendance in political meetings. And it must advocate for legal provision for regional parties that choose to focus attention on the development of their particular regions.

Parties of change like this have been done before in Nigeria, and can be done again. Intrinsically, the pre-independence political parties (AG, NCNC, NPC, NEPU, etc) were, to varying extents, parties of change, parties with ideas and programmes of development, parties under pressure to show that they could develop their country better than the British had been doing, parties which, to varying degrees, tried to organize and operate as parties of the people. To varying extents, these parties generated serious development and progress in their different regions of Nigeria in the 1950s. These progressive tendencies were strongest in the Western Region and in the Action Group which originated in the Western Region – part of the reason for his being that such progressive traditions had been well established from ancient times in the political life of the Yorubas of the Western Region. Also the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) founded in 1978, was a big improvement on the progressivism of the AG. Even though the UPN suffered hostility from the military dictatorship of the years before the 1979 elections, the UPN was phenomenally successful at mobilizing membership and support all over Nigeria because of its thoughtful development programmes and its well-known sincerity. And then, though the UPN was robbed of success at the presidential election of 1979, it easily swept the South-west, and it gave to the states of the South-west the highest quality of governance and development in Nigeria in 1979-83.

In country after country in today’s world, parties of this kind have been known to change the directions of their countries astoundingly for the better. In Ghana, in the years of Jerry Rawlings’ second coming (as a civilian politician elected as president in 1991), his most important gift to his country was that he reorganized his ruling party and his country’s politics along these lines – and that is when Ghana began to emerge from disorder and poverty into the sustained progress that the world is commending today. Lee Kwan Yew, the man who pulled Singapore out of abject poverty and made her “Asia’s success model” in only a few years in the late 1960s, achieved his miracle by first reordering his party and his country’s politics in these ways. Korea was devastated and split in two (North and South) by the Korean War of the 1950s. After some more years of uncertainty, South Korea bravely reorganized its political life along these lines, and it is therefore a successful country today. In contrast, North Korea chose a communist dictatorship, and it is therefore still a desperately poor country – a country that is trying to divert attention from its internal hardships by rowdily threatening the peace of the world. And yet others are Slovakia and the Czech Republic, after these two peacefully agreed in 1991 to dissolve the joint country of Czechoslovakia into which European powers had forced them in 1918. By organizing their political lives sensibly along these lines, the two countries are among the most successful economies in Europe today.

The emotional support for a party like this is potentially overwhelming today in Nigeria. In the disaster facing Nigeria, there are countless Nigerians, high and low, who would support serious and sincere efforts to save their country. Most Nigerians are shocked, embarrassed and pained by the sordid poverty, corruption, confusion and instability of their naturally rich country, and the irresponsibility and rapacity of their country’s leaders. When the aged statesman, Maitama Sule, recently called for a revolution, he was speaking for most Nigerians. The critical population mass exists for an invincible mass movement for grabbing control of Nigeria from those who see politics as a means of amassing personal wealth and those whose mission in Nigerian politics is to impose and expand their own ethnic nation’s domination over Nigeria. Very many prominent Nigerians demand restructuring of the Nigerian federation so that Nigeria may become efficient for development and for harmony among Nigerian peoples. Many of these are warning that delay in restructuring could destroy Nigeria. Most Nigerians believe that widening regional autonomies (to empower each section of Nigeria to develop its resources and curb poverty among its people) could bring to an end even the most extreme demands for secession. The masses of Nigeria’s unemployed youths, the millions of Nigerians who are poor, hungry and destitute, the majority of Nigerians who hunger for basic safety and security and who daily suffer from failures of electricity, clean water, and public administrative services, are desperate for change. The door seems wide open for a true party of change.

January 26, 2017
Expensive faith

Last year, bitterness was dressed up as a garland of flowers and handed to Goodluck Jonathan, piecemeal, calculatedly; till he got utterly swamped by its scent. Some dandy ‘priests’ sold him a

triumphant tale of success at the March 28, 2015 presidential election. Their prophecies were convincing. They leapt from forked tongues with extraordinary spunk and fire, seducing the former president and ensnaring him to bogus plots that reality shut out at birth. The prophets lied. Jonathan lost the presidency to Muhammadu Buhari.

Faith destroyed Goodluck Jonathan. Faith in spurious prophets to be precise. His hankering for unearned ‘grace’ and ‘glory’ ensnared him in a futile, mischievous plot, invented to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Goaded by flawed belief, the former president committed series of flawed actions that eventually showed him up as a pitiful hostage to lust and emissaries of mammon.

At his defeat, Jonathan awakened to a rude shock: “The prophets lied.” While rumours of a ‘N7-billion-booty-for-heavenly-grace’ rent the air, Jonathan grudgingly accepted that he had been fleeced in an elaborate con reminiscent of Christian Andersen’s timeless plot of the fabled emperor’s invisible garment. Having discovered Jonathan’s lust for power to be irrational and naked, the swindlers sold him a curious talisman for victory, the Most High’s ‘grace.’ But Edumare’s ‘grace’ is never for sale. Hence Jonathan, like the fabled emperor, walked naked in the political square; stripped of glory, passion, integrity and belief in the false ‘prophets.’ The invisible ‘grace’ they sold to him was never of Edumare’s infinite mercies. Eventually, Jonathan did what a man and good sport should do, he accepted defeat and made that ‘epic’ phone call to Muhammadu Buhari.

In Jonathan’s tragedy subsists timeless lessons for the intuitive. Will Nigeria’s youth emancipate themselves from the shackles of their spiritual daddies and mommies before they suffer worse fate than Jonathan? This applies to both Christian and Muslim youth that are persistently swamped by vapid mysticism, brainwashed and domesticated like dogs on a leash via a curious doctrine that preaches a conflicting canon of Puritanism for faith and profit.

This dogma is advanced principally by the nation’s Pentecostal pastors and even rogue Muslim clerics. The latter, having witnessed the stupendous wealth enjoyed by their Christian peer, have resorted to equally desperate means to attain heavenly ‘grace’ and bounties.

By their gospel, worldly success has become the major indicator of spirituality and “God’s grace” hence their subjugation of the divine spirit of the soul to the pursuit of riches. Thereby, they succeed in brainwashing daily, their oft submissive and unassuming “fishes” and flock, mostly youths, turning them into hapless preys in their pursuit of material wealth and paralysis of asceticism.

In the mix, it becomes very easy for politicians to co-opt the help of these false prophets to brainwash and mislead the youth in the pursuit and attainment of their selfish political ends. It is undoubtedly easy for so-called General Overseers (G.O) to instruct his ‘fishes’ and ‘flock’ to lean towards a particular power bloc and cast their votes for a particular politician irrespective of the recipient’s qualification for such benefits.

Strange thing, faith. It has wiggled its way to befuddle and rob too many Nigerians clear of substance and reality, till they become not much expression in sight. In pursuit of salvation and “His Grace,” the faithful “believe” quite laxly and live less humanely, even as their passion pales as their faith increase, by their pastors’ “holiness and grace.”

It doesn’t matter that the truths the preachers preach, as their deeds, reveal an insufferable perspiration towards ridiculous and yet shared goals: a mansion, a choice car, a huge bank balance and an intimidating fortune with limitless possibilities to exploit.

But if no one could read in between the lines, at least everybody gets to see truths they incessantly bandy in dazzling and yet ugly manifestations. By their lifestyles, their truths are at once disputed no sooner than they speak it: expensive suits; huge, bullet-proof black jeeps with sirens to announce their presence; well appointed mansions; trigger-happy armed escorts and a wanton lust for the fleeting epitomize their righteousness and grace.

In essence, their messages revolve around wealth. To the poor, they offer deliverance and the banishment of poverty. To the rich, they offer salvation and the perpetuation of wealth undiminished. It doesn’t matter how the latter come by such wealth. It doesn’t matter if in acquiring such wealth, they keep the Commandments of God. What matters is for both the poor and the rich to “sow seeds” in the name and temple of God.

Everybody affects the transcendence of faith but nobody wishes to fulfill the demands of faith. The pastors lied; true devotion demands total abhorrence of the worldly and steadfastness in faith. But what is faith? What manner is everyone’s faith? Kind of a trick question, isn’t it?

Nobody wishes to observe the rigorous dedication and humaneness characteristic of faith. Everybody wishes to eat their cake and have it. That is why some desperate bank chiefs could indefatigably steal from poor, struggling publics to indulge their wantonness and yet scurry to their pastors to purchase absolution and a first class cabin to Paradise at offering time.

And that is why our equally errant and desperate pastors always manage to “intercede” on their behalf in the presence of God that he may for their sake, disable his Commandments and forgive his “children.”

Ill-gotten wealth acquires superfluities of “His grace” only. Money is never required to hinder retribution and acquire salvation. Why scurry downward to our dullest perception always and praise it as “wisdom?”

The gospels being appreciated rob too many of intellect and thought. That is why they are inclined to categorise men who are one-and-a-half-witted as geniuses despite their disabilities because they have been brainwashed to appreciate only a third-part of their wit.

The gospel of prosperity-at-all-costs wholly negates the doctrine of control by conscience which requires rigorous honesty and fastidiousness. In simple terms, the Nigerian cleric vehemently contradicts and rejects the ascetic view that covetousness and lust for material wealth should be shunned as preached by the valid and true scriptures.

Equally duplicitous and yet vulnerable to deceit, these loyal congregants pander to their gospel of prosperity thus substituting simplicity and honesty with a new brand of spirituality that invests materialism and covetousness with high moral significance.

Both clerics and adherents rampantly engage in capitalistic pursuits not only for the expediency of making a living but in the expectation that such activity would amass for them a fortune. In this regard, they recklessly pray and intone: “It is my right to be rich! Heavenly father, you have promised me so! I bless you father because I am rich!”

A major effect of this belief is that the modern faithful seeks to accumulate wealth with an earnestness of purpose that ridicules the very foundations and admonitions of faith as illustrated by the case of few notable bank chiefs who were recently sacked and prosecuted for gross acts of financial fraud and abuse of office by the EFCC.

Such an approach to monetary gain is strikingly encouraged by their uniformly fraudulent, greedy and indulgent pastors whose gospel of materialism constitutes a moral habitus that burdens the seeker and possessor of money with a bandit’s obligation towards his loot.

Thus today, we have celebrity pastors ogling wealth like a filthy fantasy. Today, we have such pastors buying up every available hectare to build ostentatious worship houses and schools far out of reach of the commoner.

January 20, 2017
Nurturing our own Joe Biden

The modesty, integrity, selfless service as well as the quality of leadership provided by Joe Biden, the outgoing American Vice President has been wildly celebrated by the social media in the last two weeks. The tragic death of his son, a veteran of Iran war and a former Attorney General of his state of Delaware in USA provided an opportunity for the celebration of his unique qualities and the quality of responsible leadership he offered his people. Biden, we are told was elected into the American Senate at 29. And for the next 35 years, he daily went from his Delaware home to Washington DC by train to perform his duties. Then tragedy struck. His son was diagnosed with cancer. He was about to sell his only house to supplement the treatment of his sick son, when Obama came to his aid by making contribution from his personal savings. Unfortunately Biden’s illustrious son did not survive the cancer scourge. Joe Biden, we are reminded will return by train back to his native Delaware on January 20 after serving as vice president of the most powerful nation on earth for eight years.

The Biden narrative was probably to draw a parallel between American democracy that produces men of solid character that can be counted upon to provide selfless and responsible leadership and our own variant of democracy that has produced many leaders without character who have since the beginning of the second republic betrayed the trust of the people. Since those behind the Biden story were trying to provide a parallel between tales of responsive and responsible leadership in the US and our nation where leaders believe and behave as if they are doing us a favour by serving us, the well-circulated Ajimobi of Oyo’s story of ‘ I am the constituted authority’ and the scandal of how our Abuja power wielders between 2009 and 2016 frittered away about N7b in the guise of providing residential mansion for our own vice president which hit the social media immediately after the Biden narrative last Monday provided just that.

Unlike Biden who hops into the train every day to perform his assignment in Washington, the account was that government desirous of building a befitting mansion for the then VP, a man of means who had piled up great fortunes as an architect and later a contractor to northern state governors with string of houses in Abuja and a personal jet long before owning one became a fad among the then ruling PDP leading lights, a contract was awarded. After N6.215 had been paid to the contractors, the then Minister of the FCT, Senator Bala Mohammed, in 2012 submitted a request for additional N9billion, after his initial N13b variation was greeted with public disapproval. Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) later scaled down the figure to N6billion. Herman Hembe, chairman of the House Committee on FCT claimed that while 87% of the amount had been paid, only 50% of the job has been executed. The mansion, we are told, will include a N258m house for the VP’s ADC, N228m house for his security officer, a N95m mosque, an N84m church, a N84 boys quarters, N114m security quarters, N55m gate house and N1.7 billion infrastructure. The abandoned mansion, we have been reminded is one of about 19,000 abandoned projects requiring about N12 trillion to complete.

And come to think of it, unlike Biden who apart from being the president of the American Senate, steps into the office of President if the president is out of Washington, the office of Nigeria’s vice president is superfluous. His allotted functions such as membership of the National Security Council, the National Defence Council, Federal Executive Council and chairman of National Economic Council are at the behest of the Presidency. Nigerians have not forgotten how President Obasanjo chased Vice President Atiku out of Aso rock and out of his official residence or how Yar’Adua’s wife, his son-in-law and James Ibori, then governor of Delta State took over his presidency following Yar’Adua’s illness until Pastor Tunde Bakare and his group forced the National Assembly to come up with the ‘doctrine of necessity.’

The Biden narrative also reminds Nigerians how the federal government, through the FCT in 2013 budgeted N50b for designing and constructing of residences for Senate President David Mark, his deputy, Ekweremadu, Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, his deputy Emeka Ihedioha.

The story was that under the dubious government monetization policy, some of these officers bought their residences. The government did not think it owed Nigerians who were then called upon to foot the construction of new mansions any explanation as to what became of the proceeds of the sales of the old mansions to their occupiers. We were similarly not told how much the then Senate President and the current one, who recently moved from his Maitama private residence to the Senate guest house, were paid for the pains of residing in their personal houses to serve us.

And talking of Biden going by train from Delaware to Washington, also reminds us how Senate President Saraki recently added a sleek Mercedes state-of-the-art limousine to the Senate President’s fleet. But that was not until he had in spite of unfavourable public opinion expended about N3.7b to procure state-of-the-art Toyota Prados for senators who had shortly before then given themselves personal car loans.

And finally, the Biden narrative also reminds us of the battle between Ibrahim Idris, the current IG who accused Arase, his predecessor in office of departing with 24 vehicles including two official bullet proof BMW cars apart from four vehicles he was entitled to take away with him on retirement. Arase denied the charges but not without, in a reportedly written letter to Idris, revealing how two past police chiefs left the office of IG with 22 cars.

Since Nigeria literarily copied the American constitution with slight modifications, the difference between responsive and responsible leadership by American politician like Biden can only be attributed to existence of solid institutions and the American political socialization process. Moulded by the American socialization process, Biden couldn’t have been anything other than Biden even if he had wanted to. No one assumes leadership position by accident. America is unlike Nigeria, where an Obasanjo will literarily climb the palm tree from the top to become president of a federation without a political base; where Atiku Abubakar, or Namadi Sambo will become vice presidents on account of the financial muscle they wielded within PDP; or where Jonathan would move from obscure position of an Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC) Assistant Director to the presidency or an Osinbajo who would by Bola Tinubu’s nod become vice president.

While in the American system, the centre cannot spend the money it does not generate; our own constitution has no provision for a residual list. The centre fixes minimum wages for Lagos and Kebbi and Ekiti and Rivers. Whereas when minimum wage was introduced by the Western Region in the fifties, the northern and eastern region that could not afford it did not bother to replicate it in their regions. When ‘free education’ indirectly funded by heavy taxation of the adults and cocoa farmers was introduced by the Western Region after an initial attempt to derail it by the NCNC, the opposition party in Ibadan failed, it embarked on its own short-lived free education programme in the east. The north did not pronounce it as a policy.

As long as continue to reject call for restructuring preferring the current military ‘unitarism’ which allows an unproductive centre to determine the fate of other federating units , our own equivalent of Joe Biden will continue to be the Atiku Abubakars, Goodluck Jonathans, David Marks and Bukola Sarakis.

January 19, 2017
Ebonyi’s governor’s sharing of the state’s riches

I read in one of our national newspapers, a statement attributed to Governor David Umahi that plans are on the way to pay “monthly stipends to former lawmakers and local government chiefs in Ebonyi State”. He went on to say he would send a bill to the House to this effect. His press secretary Emma Anya quoted the governor as saying “my aim is to carry everybody along especially the political class, that’s why I will be approaching the House of Assembly to ask for approval so that those legislators who are not on seat now and former local government chairmen can continue to be paid. I believe this is how we can get them to help in developing and creating wealth in our state”. I felt very sad about how low we have descended in this country that we have a governor who thinks this way. How does paying ex-legislators help to develop and increase the wealth of a state as suggested by the governor? What does he mean by “political class”? Is there such a thing sociologically speaking? A group of freeloaders cannot constitute a class. This kind of thinking shows our buccaneering approach to politics. Politics is regarded by some Nigerians as their own farms where they go to harvest. They sometimes do this on farms which do not belong to them. This is the way I see this “Ebonyi formula” of sharing the commonwealth among a few people while the vast majority of the people are suffering. This is why our youth are okada riders and politicians. When one goes to the village and meets a young man and he is asked – “young man what are you doing for a living?” – the answer is “I am into politics” as if politics is a job or a professional calling and not just a call to serve. And this is why the approach in Ebonyi to sharing the state riches among politicians is so wrong that it deserves to be challenged. This sharing is planned for one of the poorest states in the country. It raises the fundamental question of what platform or manifesto was this man elected? Is paying all politicians who had previously held office part of his manifesto or that of his party? This kind of irresponsible behavior justifies the call from Chief Emeka Anyaoku that these so-called states should be scrapped so that we can return to regional governments that served our people very well and threw up people knowledgeable in the art of government and not village champions as we have today. It is also because we practice this form of centralized federalism in which states that have no resources at all can share in the wealth generated and derived from other parts of the federation and are therefore not accountable to their people or to anybody about how state funds are spent. If we have fiscal federalism and Ebonyi revenues are derived from rice farmed by poor people using ancient tools of hoes and cutlasses, their government would think twice before abandoning the people to pay stipends to politicians who previously held office on the grounds that the transient governor wants to carry everybody along. If we do not stop this practice in Ebonyi, it will create precedence and every state including the centre will follow suit and begin to pay anybody who had previously held one kind of office or the other. It will spread to all former board members at state and federal level, all former chairmen of boards, all former non-career ambassadors and so on. Sometimes ago, some members of the National Assembly asked that their members be granted immunity and be paid for life. I do not know whether this suggestion has been surreptitiously passed since the legislative budget at the federal level is shrouded in secrecy. To imagine these ridiculous suggestions are coming during recession when there is just no money anywhere, one wonders what our politicians will do when we come out of recession. Nigeria carries the victor ludorum as the country with the highest percentage of its budget going to administration. We are totally over governed with 774 local government administrations 37 states administrations that is including the federal capital territory and of course the elephantine federal government . We are so over administered that there is no money left for development. Our rulers at all levels get away with murder so to say.

It is because we as a people without protest have accepted the humongous golden handshakes and allowances being paid to all former chief executives and their deputies at the federal and state levels that our politicians want to take us for a ride. In Akwa Ibom, former governors are entitled in cash and other allowances well over N100 million a year. Less endowed states are not far behind. Recently Edo State government is planning to spend N300 million to build houses for the former governor and his deputy. Presumably, this largesse will be extended to all former state chief executives in the same state. This is also the practice across the whole country. I am really sorry for this country because one wonders where we learnt this from. Is it also borrowed from the American system? Our people unreasonably point to America when they spring this corrupt practice on us. First of all, this does not happen in America. Secondly, Nigeria is not America. The entire budget of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not even as big as that of New York fire department. We should stop comparing ourselves with America and face squarely the fact of our underdevelopment. Sometimes the action of our governments suggests that we are not only physically underdeveloped, we are also cerebrally and mentally under developed. This is the only way we can understand the poorest state in the South-east of Nigeria and one of the poorest states of the federation planning to start paying former office holders in the state when they are not holding pensionable jobs. This action will be outrightly illegal and could constitute a threat to public order and security if the common people were to challenge the government for its insensitivity.

I pray that the audit departments at state and federal levels should be well staffed and should be made aware of their responsibility to stop any errant governor from frittering away the riches of the state on frivolous grounds not provided for in the constitution. The public, the press and NGOS in the country should wake up to protect public interest so that what belongs to the commonwealth of Nigerian peoples at federal and state levels are not appropriated by a few . Democracy is not government by politicians for politicians.

January 19, 2017