The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A tribute to Olujimi Jolaoso OFR (1925-2016)

    A tribute to Olujimi Jolaoso OFR (1925-2016)

    Last Friday, November 11, Ambassador Olujimi Jolaoso, one of our most distinguished and accomplished career diplomats, was laid to rest in his hometown, Orile Ilugun, in Ogun State. News of his death in Lagos on September 25 was received with shock and sadness by all his friends and former colleagues in the Nigerian diplomatic service. He was 91, but we had always thought of him as being ‘immortal.’ Some of us were at his residence on August 19, barely a month before his death, to felicitate with him on his 91st birthday anniversary. Even though he was ailing, he seemed to have recovered and was in good spirits. We had all hoped that he would be here with us for a few more years. Such was his immense stature and the personal esteem in which we held him. Among his former diplomatic colleagues his huge physical presence was always reassuring. He inspired a generation of younger and capable Nigerian career diplomats. His departure is a terrible blow to our country, his family, his former colleagues and friends.

    Personally, my long and memorable professional association with Ambassador Olujimi Jolaoso goes back to 1964, soon after I entered the Foreign Service, on graduating from the University College, Ibadan. I had known of him by reputation as a former highly respected school teacher, a great sportsman, and a former distinguished Chief of Protocol in the Foreign Ministry, at Nigeria’s independence in 1960. But I had never met him until I had cause to call on him officially on a small official matter one Saturday afternoon in October, 1964, at his official residence at Cooper Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. He had just returned home on posting from the Congo (Leo). I had looked forward eagerly to our first meeting but I was a little nervous as, in those days, senior colleagues were held in awe. Rank mattered a lot among diplomats, including Nigerian diplomats. The first thing that struck me was how clean his Ikoyi premises were. And when he came down with his wife to receive me, he put me completely at ease at once and talked to me, over drinks, about the Foreign Service. Unlike many of his colleagues that I had met in the Foreign Office, he was not stiff, stuffy or overbearing. He immediately left me with a favourable impression as an immensely agreeable and friendly person; a gentleman of pleasant and graceful manners. Mrs. Jolaoso, who received me equally graciously, complemented him in their friendly disposition to me. They were always gracious hosts to their numerous friends and former colleagues. Over the years Ambassador and Mrs. Olujimi Jolaoso treated my wife and I with the same unfailing courtesy and warmth whenever we visited them at home, even after we had both retired from the Foreign Service. He was a man you could trust completely, one in whom you could repose and share confidences. Though he was not exactly an extrovert, he was charming and sociable. He had friends from diverse backgrounds and professions. His great tact in dealing with people made this possible. He hated to cause offence to anyone unnecessarily. He was never self righteous and said very little about himself despite his impressive personal accomplishments.

    I was to spend over 20 years with him as a junior colleague in the Foreign Service. Over the years I grew to respect and admire him even more for his diligence, professional integrity, patriotism, fierce loyalty to his friends and colleagues, and a profound sense of decency and fairness, attributes that, regrettably, are in short supply in our country today. He seemed to rise above the petty bureaucratic squabbles in the Foreign Ministry. Twice, he got some absurd and irritating postings, intended to dampen his spirits, but shrugged them off. He did not even mention this in his memoires. Unlike some of his colleagues in the Foreign Service he never fought to advance his own personal or professional interests through intrigues, but would not hesitate to fight for a worthy cause in the professional interest of the diplomatic service, of which until the end, he remained very proud. He was disdainful of tribalism, and when this bugbear began to rear its ugly head in the Foreign Service it saddened him terribly. He would have no truck with it. He was married for nearly 60 years to a graceful lady from Ibusa, in Delta State, and spoke the Igbo language very fluently.

    In whatever capacity he served in the diplomatic service, at home and abroad, he always wanted the best for our country, Nigeria. But that vision of a truly professional and competent Foreign Service, one based solely on merit, was not one that many of his colleagues shared. Some of them ruthlessly pursued their personal career advancement and cared very little about the future of the Foreign Service. Wherever he found himself in the diplomatic service Amb. Jolaoso insisted on the highest possible professional standards. He disliked humbug and sloppiness of any kind. He was taciturn and reticent. He hardly ever betrayed his emotions. I never once heard him speak ill of his colleagues. Whatever their personal differences were, he never ran them down or sought in any way to denigrate them. As for his junior colleagues, some of whom he had taught at school, he was always solicitous of our welfare, gracious to us, and, if he could help it, would not allow any one of us to be treated unfairly. An urbane, cultured and immensely confident man, he recognised and encouraged merit among his junior colleagues. This was because his own illustrious career in the Foreign Service was based entirely on his personal merit.

    Ambassador Jolaoso was a man of great character, an icon in the diplomatic service, widely admired by those who were privileged to have known him and worked with him. He was an outstanding public servant in our country, Nigeria, first as an Education Officer, and later as a foremost diplomat, who, in the course of a long and distinguished career, served as Chief of State Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Deputy High Commissioner in London, Charge d’Affaires in the Congo (Leo), Consul General in New York, Ambassador in the Federal Republic of Germany, Ambassador in Liberia, and finally as Ambassador in Washington, the USA, the last of his plum diplomatic postings.

    His illuminating dispatches from all his diplomatic posts were of the highest quality and always a delight to read. As he showed in his memoires, In the Shadows, a diplomatic and literary classic, he was a master of ‘diplomatese’ and of the English prose. As an undergraduate, he had won the Faculty prize in English at the then University College, Ibadan. His style of writing was simple, witty, precise and elegant, perhaps the best in the Foreign Service. One Foreign Minister, Dr. Okoi Arikpo, enjoyed reading his dispatches so much that he recommended his style to all Nigerian diplomats. He ended his successful and glorious diplomatic career as a Director-General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His contribution to the growth and development of the Foreign Service was immense, as was his kindness and encouragement to younger colleagues who will always remember him as their friend and mentor. After his retirement, he was a foundation member and later served as President of the Association of Retired Career Ambassadors of Nigeria. (ARCAN), to which he made an outstanding contribution.

    Ambassador Olujimi Jolaoso was educated at the Igbobi College, Yaba, (1939-44), the Yaba Higher College, (1946-48), the University College, Ibadan, (1948-52), the Institute of Education of the University of London, (1953) and the Queen’s College, Oxford. (1959) for his mandatory Foreign Service course.

    He was blessed with a loving and adoring wife, our dear ‘Auntie Marcie’, whom he married in 1957, two adorable sons, Abayomi, and Bankole, and several grandchildren. My wife, Bose, and I extend to the Jolaoso family our deeply felt condolences on the passing on of Ambassador Olujimi Jolaoso, OFR. We pray God to console them and grant them the grace and strength to bear this sad and irreparable loss.

  • Dino Melaye and culture of sharing

    After a critical examination of Dino Menaye’s interview in The Punch of November 6, titled, ‘selling my cars will not end recession, I have ordered for more’, in which he talked extensively about his goals in politics, the future of our youths, his wealth and weakness for cars, one cannot but come to the sad conclusion that we are probably expecting Melaye and all those below the age of 50 in charge of our affairs to give what they don’t have.  He, like many of his age, is a victim of military internal colonization that derailed our political socialization process which was replaced with a ‘‘culture of sharing’ of spoils of war after victory. The fault is not in them but in their stars.

    It was not a surprise therefore that Melaye in the said interview first celebrated in full measures his successes  measured  only in terms of his collection of luxurious cars which social media listed as including  a Lamborghini, Porsche and a Rolls Royce estimated to cost $450,000 (N89.5) million and, a new 2015 slingshot . Of course he also added a number of Abuja houses he claimed to have built before his inauguration as senator.

    Neither was it a surprise that when he was asked about his goals in politics, he without much reflection said he was “in politics to make sure that the youths of this country get their fair share in power sharing and resources of this country”.  He momentarily forgot we live in the same world where  John Kennedy,  the 35th President of United States once asked the American youths not to ask for what America can do for them but what they can do for their country, and that Kennedy’s forbearers, ( Thomas Jefferson  33, Alexander Hamilton 21 and James Madison 25) jointly put together The federalists and Democratic Republicans, the precursor of today’s Republicans and Democratic parties as modernizing agents before their declaration  of  Independence in 1776.

    Neither did Melaye, 42, obsessed with luxury cars remember that when NEPU was formed in 1950 by eight  young Hausa-speaking radicals, Aminu Kano was only 30 and Sa’adu Zungur 37;  that when AG  was formed on April 25, 1951with its motto  “unity through federation” and freedom for all”, Bode Thomas was 32, Williams 31, Awo 42 and Ajasin 43 and that when  (Jam’iyyar Mutanem Arewa,), Northern People’s Congress(NPC) was inaugurated in September 1951, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa the chief motivator was 39, Ahmadu Bello 41, Dr R A B Dikko 39,  and Yahaya Gusau  36.  Perhaps it will humble Melaye if he understands that some of these youths who put the nation before self had the opportunity of enjoying life to the fullest if they chose to. Thomas, William and Aminu Kano were children of aristocrats of their time. In fact Aminu Kano had to resign from government job in Sokoto to nurse the young party in Kano in order to differentiate it from other parties whose sponsors according to him only wanted power.

    Almost 70 years after Nigerian youths dedicated themselves to building political parties as modernizing agents while others wrote books about ‘Path to Nigeria Greatness’, Melaye when asked why he decided to sacrifice the interest of the party to please Saraki his friend, said “the party to me is just a vehicle for winning elections because no political party in this country is ideologically based”. We don’t need to search far as to why Saraki and Melaye saw nothing immoral in dumping the then sinking PDP after using it as platform to win election for APC just as they saw nothing wrong in trading off the victory of APC for Senate Presidency.

    Melaye who as an indigent student rose to become student union leader and later NANS president at ABU all of which influenced his appointment as a special assistant on youths, a position that gave him a breakthrough into national politics did not ascribe his sudden rise politically to hard work but says “I give all honour, glory and adoration to the Almighty God who has supreme control over the universe. I want to believe that God is the ultimate reason for where I am today”. That may well have been true. But telling his story of grass to grace and acknowledging the intervention of those God sent to open ways for him would have made more positive impact on our disillusioned youths.

    And as for the source of is stupendous wealth at such a young age, all he had to say was “”I am a transparent Nigerian”   adding ‘For a man who buys very expensive cars with his name labelled on the number plate, it is enough to tell you that he is clean’; The houses I have in this city (Abuja), I acquired before being sworn in as a senator. Hard work pays and the Holy Book says God shall supply my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. My source of wealth is heavenly, my purse is divine and it won’t dry up.’

    Again, almost 70 years after our youths made a clear distinction between service to God and service to state which yielded a bountiful harvest, Melaye and his other military ‘new breed’ politicians for whom sharing is the prevailing value, want our youths to accept the way to a secured and prosperous future is through prosperity prophets and Muslim clerics that promise miracles and break-through. They conveniently ignore God’s admonition that we must live by our sweats.

    Beyond fighting corruption, I think government must also now embark on a battle to let our youths appreciate the value of sacrifice and hard work while pointing out to them  the real threat to their future include   the military created ‘new breed’ politicians who after fraudulently confiscating our national assets embarked on asset stripping, derailed the  rural electrification programme, executed the theft of N1.6 trillion fuel subsidy scam and periodically masterminded budget padding.

    Sensitization of our youths has become more pressing because Nigerians are no more shocked that the ‘culture of sharing’ has become the prevailing value among our new generation of leaders. Vice President Osinbajo recently observed that in other societies, the idea of Generals, journalists and politicians sharing billions meant for arms at period soldiers were unable to defend their barracks let alone stop the mindless killing of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram insurgency, would have forced people to the street in protest. Not even the alleged confession of a former Minister of Defence that he ‘misapplied’ funds earmarked for arms to rig election in Ekiti and Osun states has attracted a whimper from students.

  • Hostage to power (1)

    •(Intrigues as Gov. Amosun neglects Ogun State’s death roads)

    Ibikunle Amosun’s dalliance with power projects comic ironies. At his first pilgrimage in its shrine, he was robed and mitred as a messiah. But few days to the end of his first term as Ogun state governor and at the beginning of his second spell in office, he yielded to that proverbial mutation that remains the tragedy of many a Nigerian politician; almighty Senator Ibikunle Amosun a.k.a SIA got domesticated by power.

    Like too many of his peers, the executive governor of Ogun State, ceded sovereignty to power thus he was fatally crushed; like the court jester who dared to joust with a palace guard. Power is indeed seductive. Falling beneath its sway, Amosun lost control. He got tamed and undone by its beauty, like Achilles over Penthesilea and Obakoso over Oya. Mischief makers would say he emasculated himself sipping excessively from the bittersweet nectar of power. Did he?

    Aides of Amosun would argue otherwise. They would say Amosun plays master to power. They would describe him thus: “Amosun, like our revered sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, is a man that is conscious of his place in history. People like that are men of vision.”

    No doubt, Amosun is no stranger to power. He was elected Senator for Ogun Central district  in April 2003. In April 2007 he made an unsuccessful bid to be elected governor of Ogun State. He vied for the position again in 2011, and this time, he was elected on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). He currently observes his second term on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). You could be forgiven for thinking Amosun is no political neophyte but somewhere along the line, he got enfeebled by power. This sudden change, paralleling the finale of his frail leadership, has become his life pattern. It shades his history with a dark tan.

    Nonetheless, zealous underlings would describe Amosun as the best thing to happen to Ogun State. They would stress that he is a man of uncommon mettle and foresight. Anthony Storr, late British writer and psychiatrist would term this one of the many delusions that render Ogun state’s ugly reality justifiable for Amosun’s zealots, and as such, jealously defensible against all assaults of reason.

    Under Amosun’s government, calamity and death runs Ogun roads amok. Like blood-dimmed tide loosed upon a grassy plane, tragedy splashes about the ‘Gateway State,’ drowning lives and innocence in a passionate, intense swirl of ghastly auto accidents.

    The world would never forget in a hurry, the poor, helpless souls that thrashed out and gave their final gasps in grotesque, bloody accidents on Ogun’s bad roads – on Amosun’s watch. Omolade Ogunnoiki, 17, was a 100 Level History student of Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU). Together with her friend, Funmilayo Pampam, 18, and Olatunji Dairo, a 2014 Physics graduate of OOU,  she was crushed to death. They were casualties of an auto accident involving a truck carrying an unlatched container and their Lagos-bound passenger bus, on the Ilishan- Sagamu highway in Ogun State. The accident claimed nine other undergraduates and the  driver of the bus.

    Omolade and Funmilayo probably nursed dreams of greatness. Dairo too. Their parents laboured to educate them,  they wished they would grow to become the pride of their families and their comfort in their twilight. As you read, those dreams lie six-feet under red earth, with the crushed teenagers and Physics graduate. In bid to avoid bad portions on the road, the driver of the truck reportedly drove against the traffic until its container fell off its hinges, crushing to death the two friends, Dairo and nine other OOU students. At the time of their demise, Ogunnoiki and Pampam were 17 and 18 years old respectively.

    Cut to a hodgepodge of mutilated and bloodied innards at Owode-Ijako junction, Ogun State: a beloved wife and mother, departed home with her three children only for them to be brought back as mangled corpses to the deceased’s husband. The victims perished in an accident caused by bad portions of Owode-Ijako junction. Lest we forget Baba Prince, the septuagenarian who was brutally crushed and torn to pieces, by a reckless truck driver who veered off the road to escape a deep crater, at the deadly Owode-Ijako junction.

    Overzealous aides would rail against this piece and many others. They would call it a ‘tiresome campaign’ that should be done with already. They would wonder why this page contains yet another account of bloodshed and deaths on Ogun State’s cratered roads. Some would term this an affront to “His Excellency,” an inexcusable slight to a man who truly loves and values the lives of Ogun citizens.

    If Amosun truly values the lives and safety of the people of Ogun State, he will stop ignoring the incessant deaths and bloody accidents caused by craters dotting the state’s famished roads. If Amosun truly loves the people of Ogun State, he would stop ignoring the misery and tears of parents and grandparents dying like stray fowls even as they experience the untimely deaths of their sweet, innocent children, on Ogun’s bad roads.

    He wouldn’t be having a blast expanding his mansion and beautifying it, while the citizenry’s infant sons and daughters are crushed to death at Owode-Ijako’s cratered junction. He wouldn’t scoff at news of the hot death suffered by the young native, who got burnt in a fire that started from a fallen tanker and extended from Owode-Ijako junction, into his home.

    If Amosun is truly the people’s messiah, he wouldn’t ignore the death traps on Ijoko, Agoro, Ijako, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ilepa, Lafenwa and Itele roads. He would stop ignoring the bloody ravines dotting Alade, Elekunmefa, Imise, Onihale, Singer, Iju, Lusada, Atan-Ota and Igbesa to mention a few. At Toll-gate junction, Joju, Temidire and environ, mucky pools still stagnate in perilous craters along the bypasses because these scenes of deadly accidents are inconsequential to Governor Amosun.

    Eighteen pages of hastily placed advertisement couldn’t drain the ink of this writer’s pen. It is an open secret that The Nation was never deemed worthy of advert patronage by his government until this column started to project the ugliness of his administrative incapacities.

    Journalists and media houses should never stop reporting the carnage on Ogun State’s famished roads, on Amosun’s watch. Let journalists be guided by the rhetoric: “If I lose my wife, children and grandchildren to accidents on Ogun State’s famished roads, what would I do?”; “If Omolade 17, Funmilayo, 18 and Dairo were my children, would I hail Amosun?” And shall we excuse Amosun’s neglect of Ogun’s death traps simply because they are ‘federal roads?’ Why can’t Amosun take lessons from Governor Akinwumi Ambode on how to rehabilitate bad ‘federal roads?’

    And would all of Amosun’s underlings, loved ones and associates excuse his continued neglect of Ogun’s deathtraps, if they had lost wives, husbands, grannies, infant sons and daughters on those bad roads?

    Now that Governor Amosun has mastered the fine art of ‘buddy sessions’ and ‘political statement’ with President Muhammadu Buhari on social media, will he urge Buhari to assist with the challenges that actually matter?

  • Enter President Trump

    Enter President Trump

    After their most divisive campaigns ever, Americans went to the polls Tuesday. They chose controversial businessman Donald Trump as their president.

    The new president has his job well cut out for him. The battle is over; the war lies ahead. The main headache is how to unify a country torn apart by xenophobia, its cherished values desecrated.

    Trump knew what the majority of American voters wanted. He gave them a song: “We will make America great again”. Many were sold out to the sentiment. They plunged headlong into the emotion. Reason was thrown out of the window. Ah; the limits of intellect.

    Suddenly, experience, an age-long asset, became a liability  that had lost its weight on the scale of credibility. Morality lost its place. Many felt the race was over, with all the salacious expose on Trump’s denigration of womanhood – he joked about grabbing women’s bodies. Besides, some women went public with how the Republican candidate harassed them sexually.

    TV reality show contestant Summer Zervos cited a 2007 incident. She claimed that Trump kissed her , touched her breast and tried to get her to lie down with him on a bed during a job hunt. “He put me in an embrace and I tried to push him away. I pushed his chest to put space between us and I said, ‘Come on man, get real’. He repeated my words back to me, ‘Get real’, as he began thrusting his genitals,” Zervos said.

    She was in tears. Beside her was celebrity attorney Gloria Allred at a Los Angeles press conference. “I wondered if the sexual behavior was some kind of test and whether or not I had passed,” she said.

    Trump denied it all. He said he could vaguely remember Zervos as one of the contestants on “The Apprentice” over the years.

    The Washington Post published a video account of a woman who claimed that Trump put his hand under her skirt. To American voters, it was all bunkum. Not even the sudden appearance of a video with the candidate surrounded by some women dressed like strip dancers hugging him and he grabbing them excitedly below the waist could sway the die-hards. They said so with their votes.

    Before the election day, many had demonstrated that they would either sink or swim with Trump. At a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, a woman wore a T-shirt with the inscription, “Trump can grab my… “ , with an arrow pointing to her crouch.

    Trump promised to build a wall to stop Mexicans crossing into the United States. Mexico, he said, will pay for the job. He never hid his disdain for Moslems and would send back home Africans as well as other immigrants.

    The bookmakers were right not to have given Trump much chance. It turned out that they were wrong. Damn wrong. But that is the beauty of democracy. The majority carried the day.

    I wonder the kind of greatness President Trump will bring back to his America in a delicate world that requires so much wisdom, political deftness and intellect. Racism? Empty machismo? Misogyny? The future seems to be so uncertain in the hands of a president who seems to be unprepared for this all-important job. America is likely to be isolated in a world that looks up to it for leadership. The business Trump has promised to protect is likely to suffer in the stifling environment. The stock markets were down immediately the news broke that Trump had won the election.

    Perhaps Clinton would have made it if there was no “official conspiracy” as seen in the FBI’s suspicious probe of her emails, an exercise that portrayed her as careless and unreliable. There was no problem with the probe, but the popular thinking was that the timing was wrong, thrown in when the polls showed that she was set to win. It was a blow below the belt.

    Some Americans launched a protest. They burnt the American flag and screamed: “He’s not our president.” Nigerians were laughing at them. They should have understudied the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), they said. There should have been an Elder Godsday Orubebe storming the hall to stop the announcement of the result of the election and screaming like a hungry hyena: “Jega, you have been compromised. We no longer have confidence in you!”.

    The election, said a cynical fellow who claimed to have followed it all, ought to have been declared “inconclusive” as soon as Trump won in Florida. A Clinton supporter should have rushed to court to obtain an injunction barring the authorities, their agents, officials, privies or whosoever has any business with the results to stop the announcement henceforth. Thereafter he would have proceeded to another court of competent jurisdiction to obtain a perpetual injunction stopping Trump from ever running again.

    Millions of Nigerians stayed up all-night, glued to their television sets. It was as if a Nigerian was on the ballot. They were eager to be part of history.

    Many were battling to draw a parallel between the American experience and the Nigerian situation. One would have said they were miles apart, but for Trump who dragged it all into the gutters. Even before the first ballot was cast, he had sworn that he would only accept the result on one condition – if he won. Besides, he alleged that there were plots to rig the election for his opponent.

    As the polls got underway, Trump went to court to challenge the extension of voting in Nevada. Too late, many said. In Nigeria, a serious candidate would not have waited for voting. He would have several weeks or months earlier rushed to court to stop his opponent for some inconsequential or perceived errors in the opposing party’s primary election.

    There were no incidents of ballot box stuffing or snatching. The lists of voters were not doctored. Besides, when computers malfunctioned in Utah, nobody cried that they were being manipulated. In Nigeria, that would have been a major issue. The other time when former President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife could not be accredited early, PDP chiefs alleged that using the card reader was all part of a grand plan to rig the election. “How could the machine have malfunctioned when the first family were set to be accredited. Na wayo,” they cried.

    Some Nigerians were even grumbling that the American election was dull. One said:”What kind of election is this o? It is very boring. No Trump rice. No Clinton salt, no recharge card. No Ankara. No fish. People are just waiting on long queues; no ‘see and buy’ cash  and no ECOMOG. Na wa o.”

    Others were busy imagining what would have been on the minds of prominent Nigerian politicians if the stage had been here, with the news channels churning out the results. In the social media, there were flashbacks to the 2015 general elections. “As we speak now we are winning in 23 states and we have 64 per cent while the APC is winning in 14 states and has 36 per cent. The results are subject to confirmation… . However, we are certain of what we are saying because we have information from our agents in every polling unit nationwide. No one must test our will by attempting to change these results… .” That was the Jonathan Campaign spokesman Femi Fani-Kayode when it was as clear as the day that the PDP was losing the battle.

    There were suggestions about what some prominent Nigerians would have said. “All the bad things said about Trump were exaggerated” – Dr Goodluck Jonathan. “Trump is already winning. Rig this election and rig your life” – Nyesom Wike. “We will hold Buhari responsible if Trump fails” –Fayose. “I have no money to refund to Clinton. I have spent everything on publicity” – Raymond Dokpesi.

    Prof Wole Soyinka was said to have promised to tear his green card, should Trump win. That brought back memories of former President Olusegun Obasanjo who directed somebody to tear his PDP card publicly. “E bami ya welewele” (shred it well), he told the fellow as the small crowd of his supporters sang a dirge for the party. Will the Nobel laureate carry out his threat or listen to those who are saying he should never bother about this “American wonder”? He does not need to.

    Clinton has conceded defeat. She has congratulated Trump. She has praised her supporters, telling them all not to be discouraged and to see themselves as members of the American team. Obama also said Americans should not see themselves as Democrats or Republicans but Americans. That is the spirit.

    But the question remains: What kind of president will Trump be? May God bless-sorry, a slip-help America.

  • A soldier’s soldier

    It is rare in this part of the world to praise military and police men because of how we perceive them. Frankly speaking, they are the architect of this problem. Our soldiers and policemen see themselves as superior to others. They believe that they are above those of us the soldiers like to call “bloody civilians”. They call us “bloody civilians” because they carry the guns bought for them with tax payers’ money. This is why there is no love lost between them and the people.

    This is, however, not to say that all uniformed men are bad. There are men of honour and integrity among them; men who will lay down their lives for their fellow men;  not only for their country which territorial integrity they swore to defend. But the few bad eggs in service are rubbishing the good done by their conscientious colleagues.

    A lot of privileges come with being a military personnel and one of these is that soldiers live on the state. They are catered for by their country because they have signed off to defend it with their sweat and blood. Many of our soldiers and even officers have come to see these privileges as given. This is why they will board commercial buses and claim to be “staff” to avoid paying the fare. Often times, this has led to squabbles.

    We look at our soldiers and officers from the prism of the shameful conduct of some of them that fight in public or beat up women in traffic. That, of course, is not the face of the Nigerian soldier. The face of the Nigerian soldier is the one who does exploits on peace missions; who fights without yielding ground to the enemy in the theatre of war; who stands by and with his colleagues in the trenches; who looks out for others before himself no matter how difficult the terrain may be. To be an officer and a gentleman, you must first be a good soldier.

    Leadership is a trust and you can only earn your subordinates’ trust if you lead them well. There are many leaders whose subordinates can even abuse to their faces. Only a few can earn respectable remarks from their subordinates. In the military, which runs a command structure, leadership can be a burden, at times, because the lives of the rank and file are in the hands of the commander. This is why in some cases we have heard of subordinates revolting against their commanders, especially on welfare matters. A commander may be good in leading troops and may not do well in taking care of his men’s welfare.

    But blessed is the commander who can marry the two. He will be the pride of his troops, who will do anything for him. A commander who will live and die for his men will always be their beloved. But the love of money and the good things of life have made many of our officers to derail. They cut their men’s allowances and still expect them to be loyal. If they were in their men’s shoes will they be loyal? I have followed keenly reports of the exploits of the late  Lt Col Muhammad Abu-Ali, who was the Commanding Officer, 272 Special Forces Tanks Battalion in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital. His men have been eulogising the Sarki Yakin (chief warrior) just as the army too has been singing his praise. The slain officer was a soldier’s soldier, going by their accounts. He was an officer who risked everything for his men. To him, his life did not matter, but that of his men.

    This is why the late Lt Col Abu-Ali was always found in the thick of battle. He was in the hottest spot and never sent his men to where he could not go. There was no front too tough to scare him; even when his men pleaded with him not to go, he ignored them. His refrain in such circumstances, which may well become his epitaph, is : “Gentlemen, stay alert and be alive, and be prayerful. I don’t want any of my soldiers to be injured or lose his life in this operation, and if at all someone may go down, let me be the one”. Why won’t such an officer be the darling of his men? The late Lt Col Abu-Ali showed leadership in the face of death. He did not hide behind his troops, he was in their front.

    As young as he was, he was not scared of death; rather, he scared death. Did he really fall in battle or was he sold out by those envious of his reputation? Men like him will surely have enemies within the service because of the way he related with his troops who he took as members of his family. He knew the secret of fighting which many of his colleagues probably did not know and that is – to fight well you must put your troops at ease. His men were at home with him. He was not an oga that you could not walk up to, to discuss your problems with. He was so open because he had no skeleton in his cupboard. He earned his spurs fighting Boko Haram, chasing members of the sect from one corner of the Northeast to the other.

    He was spotted by his bosses. ‘’Seest thou a man diligent in his work? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men’’, says the scripture. The late Abu-Ali stood before kings when he earned rapid promotion from major to lieutenant colonel for his bravery. At his nocturnal decoration by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, on September 9, 2015 at Gamboru Ngala, the border town with Cameroon , his men went wild with joy. They lifted him off the ground dancing and singing his praise. They were happy for their oga. But in the crowd may have been people who were envious of this gallant soldier’s meteoric rise. They may have been the ones who plotted his killing in battle last Friday. His death is the nation’s loss. Whoever thinks he has gained from Lt Col Abu-Ali’s death is only deceiving himself. That person does not love our country. For his information, soldiers like Abu-Ali do not die because their legacies will live forever.

    Officers like him are rare to come by and when they come, we must do everything to preserve them. The army saw his potential early and encouraged him by giving him rapid promotion, but death struck when he was yet to be in full bloom. It is understandable if the army is pained by his death. No institution worth its name will want to lose a good officer. No; never. If a probe will unravel the circumstances of his death, so be it in order to prevent the untimely death of other equally good officers. There is more to Abu-Ali’s death than meets the eye. To buttress my point, we do not have to look further than Gen Buratai’s statement that  Abu-Ali’s death ”will be an eye opener” if the utterances of some individuals and organisations are scrutinised. We owe it a duty to his memory and to his family to ensure that he does not die in vain.

    My heart goes out to Abu-Ali’s widow and his children. May God give them the fortitude to bear this loss. Adieu, Sarki Yakin, the people’s commander.

  • Nigeria: Time to ponder the realities

    The popular children’s story, “The Blind Men and the Elephant” is soberingly close to the relationship between Nigeria and the various nationalities (or peoples) that make up Nigeria. Each Nigerian people perceived, and proceeded to mould Nigeria, in their own way. The British nation too, the nation that created Nigeria, did the same, with the result that, at independence, they left Nigeria packaged as a troubled country that would be impossible to manage. In short, many nations – the British, the Yoruba, the Igbo, the Hausa-Fulani, and nearly 300 other nationalities – when faced with Nigeria, formed, like the blind men in the story, their different perceptions of Nigeria and have resolutely kept trying to impose those different perceptions. This state of affairs was destined from the very beginning to determine Nigeria’s history. It has determined Nigeria’s convoluted and sad history.

    Of the Nigerian nationalities, the three largest and most influential, and the three most responsible for the making of Nigeria’s direction, are the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba and the Igbo. Another people, the Ijaw of the Niger Delta, are much smaller than each of these three, but because nature packed the Ijaw homeland with petroleum (the most important resource in modern world economy), their stature in Nigerian affairs has been big too. It is therefore the divergent perceptions of Nigeria by the British, the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Ijaw, and their divergent responses to Nigeria, that have shaped Nigeria’s endemic pattern of instability and conflicts – resulting in turning this naturally rich country into a land of frightful and perpetually worsening poverty, corruption, and conflicts, a country that must wage bloody wars to remain one. It is not merely because Nigeria is made up of many nationalities that it has evolved into an unworkable country. It is because these main builders of Nigeria (the British, the Hausa-Fulani, the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Ijaw – as well as the other nearly 300 Nigerian peoples) have never jointly invested serious and sincere effort in the critically important task of harmonizing Nigeria’s profound differences.

    The differences are not merely ethnic and linguistic. They are also products of deeply divergent histories. Historically, the Hausa people were one of the three largest peoples of tropical Africa – the other two being the Yoruba and the Igbo. Exposed to Islamic influences penetrating from North Africa since as early as the 8th century AD, the Hausa people and their kings were mostly Muslims for centuries before the 19th. In the course of the 18th century, a mostly nomadic people, the Fulani, migrating from the grasslands and Sahel of West Africa, spread out into Hausaland.  In the first years of the 19th century, an Islamic reform movement arose among the immigrant Fulani, and started a Jihad (holy war) against the old Hausa kingdoms. The Fulani were, in comparison with the Hausa, very few. But, by winning large numbers of Hausa folks with the message of Islamic Reform, the Fulani Jihad overthrew the Hausa kings and replaced them with Fulani men, with the title of Emirs.  Hausaland thus became a Fulani Empire, fervently Islamic and seeking to expand its kind of Islam, as well as its Fulani political rule, to the homelands of neighbouring non-Hausa peoples.

    Beyond the eastern borders of Hausaland, the Kanuri and related peoples had long been strongly Islamized peoples. They defeated the Fulani attempts to conquer them, and they thus remained under their own ancient rulers.

    The broad Middle Belt south of Hausaland was inhabited by many small peoples. The Fulani rulers of Hausaland launched intensive attacks to conquer, destabilize, or even to destroy these peoples. Some of the peoples sought peace by accepting Islam, but that hardly stopped the attacks. These fierce attacks were still going on when Christian influence reached these territories. Many of the peoples accepted Christianity. And then, British colonial rule came over the whole large country that was later (in 1914) to become Nigeria.

    South of the Middle Belt, especially in the western parts of the South (the homeland of the Yoruba), Islam had come at about the same time as it had come to Hausaland in about the 8th century but, on the whole, Yoruba conversion to Islam had been relatively small. In the course of the 19th century, internal political developments in Yorubaland resulted in the emergence of a strong Yoruba Islamic centre in the Yoruba city of Ilorin. Attempts by the rulers of Ilorin to spread Islam by force into the rest of their Yoruba homeland was decisively defeated by other Yoruba. Thereafter, Islam peacefully spread, becoming considerably strong in various parts of Yorubaland by the late 19th century. In the territories east of the Lower Niger, (the homelands of the Igbo and neighbouring peoples) the influence of Islam was almost non-existent.

    From the 1840s, European Christian missions of various denominations began to bring the message of the gospel to these Southern and Middle Belt lands. Penetrating from the coast, they gradually expanded into the interior. With Christian churches came schools and Western education.

    Churches and schools immediately became most widespread in the South-west (the homeland of the Yoruba people). The cause of this is that Yorubaland was the most urbanized country in all of tropical Africa. For nearly a thousand years before the 19th century, the Yoruba people had evolved a rich urban civilization, with sizeable towns flourishing at short distances from one another all over Youbaland. Churches and schools quickly mushroomed in the Yoruba towns. By the 1860s, Yoruba families were already beginning to send their children to institutions of higher education in Europe, and a literate Yoruba elite and professional class (of doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, writers, surveyors, etc) was emerging. Yorubaland’s first newspaper was born in 1859 in the city of Abeokuta, and others soon followed in other towns. When the British created Nigeria in 1914, the Yoruba part of Nigeria was considerably ahead of the rest of the new country in modern transformations. For instance, no other Nigerian people produced a university graduate until the mid-1930s. Islam and Christianity were strong in Yorubaland by 1900. But the Yoruba people have a unique ancient tradition of religious tolerance and accommodation, and, as a result, Christianity, Islam and the traditional Yoruba religion co-existed harmoniously in Yorubaland (even in Yoruba families). Yoruba people of all religions embraced Western education, thereby turning their country into the most literate part of, not just Nigeria, but tropical Africa. In the 1950s, the last years of British rule, under the system of limited self-government preceding independence, the Yoruba established free education in their part of Nigeria – the first African people to take such a step.

    Furthermore, in the traditional government of Yoruba kingdoms, in the context of Yoruba urban civilization, there had long existed many democratic institutions and tendencies – such as selection of kings and chiefs by their subjects, provisions for the peaceful removal of unpopular rulers,  institutions commanding the power to moderate the conduct of rulers and influential citizens and to penalize any of them that was guilty of errant conduct, citizens’ associations with institutionalized influence on the processes of governance, the right of all to voice their opinions (to “contribute their wisdom”) freely, the practice of forming factions and of lobbying rulers,  the right of peaceful protests, etc. In contrast, the large Igbo nation traditionally lived differently from the Yoruba, without a widespread urban culture, or centralized political systems.

    In the course of the first three decades of the 20th century, Western education grew fast in the rest of Southern Nigeria too, especially in the homelands of the Igbo and the Ibibio peoples. By the mid-1930s, the Ibibio and Igbo, and some other Southern Nigerian peoples, began to produce literate elites.

    In contrast to these educational and occupational transformations going on in the South and, to a lesser extent, in the Middle Belt, the strongly Islamic Hausa-Fulani North rejected Christian influence and showed apathy to Western education as well as to modern occupations. Furthermore, the system of rule which the Fulani Jihad had created here was one in which the Fulani, though much fewer than the Hausa, were simply the aristocratic ruling elements over the large mass of Hausa people – a system which the Fulani feel duty-bound to spread over all the peoples of Nigeria.

    Did a vast country so ethnically, linguistically, culturally, religiously, politically, and historically divided and divergent, with so many scattered traditions of conflict possess the elements and prospects for one country? Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister from 1952, said more than once that Nigeria’s unity was merely British intention for us, and that the factors for such unity simply did not exist. Now that we have tried Nigeria for over a whole century, what do we think of Balewa’s words? Isn’t it instructive that we still have not found how to live harmoniously together, respecting one another, sincerely wishing one another well, and providing for the happiness of all? Isn’t it important that we are still fighting, and still threatening to fight and destroy, one another? It is worth thinking about.

  • Tinubu and the burden of history

    Last week on these pages, we made reference to the shadowy ‘Kaduna Mafia’ believed to have remotely run Nigeria with a pan-northern agenda since 1966. It is believed that the group imposed Obasanjo in 1999 despite his rejection by his Yoruba people at the polls. One proof of this was Obasanjo’s refusal to revisit the issue of restructuring after articulating same as possible answer to the ‘national question’ in some of his books. Besides the consensus among Nigerians is that fiscal restructuring that allows federating units to keep 50% of what they generate will go a long way in addressing our crisis of nationhood.  Unfortunately we continue to live a lie as a federation which Chukwuma Soludo, a former CBN Governor recently pointed out is the only one of its kind in the world where the centre allocates funds it does not generate to sub units it does not control.

    As we also observed , Buhari could not have been part of this shadowy group since it was the suspected members of the group that removed him from office, incarcerated him for three and half years and later derailed his first three attempts at the presidency until Bola Tinubu’s master stroke. Bewitching the South-west and some restive groups in the country with ‘restructuring’, Bola Tinubu in 2014 carried Buhari on his back around the country proclaiming him as the answer to our crisis of nationhood the same way powerful nations like Britain France and USA at different times in their history reached out to their tested retired Generals when their survival was threatened. Many Nigerians took Tinubu’s statement as commitment to restructuring. Buhari and APC thereafter won with a change manthra.

    For his exploits, it is believed Tinubu, the ‘jagaban’ of Nigeria politics was compensated with Buhari’s ceding of key positions in his government to ‘Tinubu Mafia’ in Abuja. A leading member is Vice President Osinbajo who only last week publicly acknowledged he was a nominee of Tinubu. The president we are told has absolute confidence in him. There is also Raji Fashola, Tinubu’s former chief of staff. He was not ashamed to admit Tinubu was his godfather. He went as far as the United Nations headquarters in New York to inform the world that Tinubu made him governor. As Buhari’s foreman, he controls a number of ministries including Power and Housing. There is also the Lai Mohammed, Buhari’s chief image launderer as Minister for Information and Culture. He was once Tinubu’s chief of staff. He graduated from ACN spokesman to APC information propagandist before emerging as member of Buhari’s inner circle. Of course there is also Kayode Fayemi whose alleged imposition by Tinubu in Ekiti led to a ‘Tsunami’ that tore Ekiti ACN apart with aggrieved party members joining PDP. There are other Tinubu protégés like Femi Ojudu, Abike Dabiri and others in the inner circle of Buhari’s administration. Tinubu as a talent hunter no doubt has confidence in all his products.

    But long after Buhari has handed over critical ministries needed for the success of his administration to ‘Tinubu Mafia’, in order to have time for the battle of his life-war on corruption, fifth columnists who weep louder than the bereaved saw only strained relationship between Buhari and Tinubu. What they have however overlooked is that Tinubu is not immune to the usual vagaries of resourceful politicians who are often misunderstood by the society they are called upon to serve. In most cases they are regarded as venal men who easily sacrifice honesty and probity in pursuit of naked ambition. They daily suffer from betrayals and intrigue of party members who are prepared to trade public interest for personal or group interest.  Yet the survival of society as an organized group depends on the versatility and brinkmanship of politicians like Tinubu.

    And for the mischief makers who are not socialized within the Yoruba culture, disagreement on approaches to set goals between fathers and sons in the face of new realities is an acceptable norm. That in any case was how Tinubu himself achieved the goal that had eluded his fathers for half a century. Although the Yoruba culture impresses it on everyone that a child brought to the world who does not strive to be better than his father is brought to the world in vain, children are also warned that ‘a river that forgets its sources soon dries up’. The empires of Oyo and Benin had their roots in Ife and up to the early 1940s the maximum rulers of both empires took oath of allegiance to Ife before mounting their thrones and had a part of them buried in Ife when they joined their ancestors.

    Tinubu has too much stake in the survival of this government to be detracted by those who do not mean well for the government and those who want relevance after rigging election with slush funds from ‘Dazukigate’. With APC in apparent disarray with no coherent policy on any issue, with the governors collecting security votes, riding bullet proof cars instead of made in Nigeria 405 Peugeot cars and APC lawmakers  neck-deep in padding scandal, what the nation expects of Tinubu is politics of ideas and not politics of ‘who gets what when and how’. The starting point as this column suggested when APC was first inaugurated is building the party into a modernisisng agent. This is not a task for Buhari who probably see it only as a vehicle for winning election to implement his pet project of war on corruption to free millions of Nigerians from economic bondage.

    Besides, this is the first time the Yoruba mainstream political orientation will feature in national politics at the federal level. With the control of key ministries that can make or mar Buharis’ administration controlled by Tinubu Mafia, I think Tinubu’s only  task at the centre is to drive it home to those he had groomed  that the failure of Buhari’s  government is not an option for him and for the Yoruba nation.

    I think the focus of Tinubu should thereafter shift to the South-west where with exception of Lagos and Edo, not much seems to be happening. An area that was once the pacesetter in the 1950s has ceded pride of place to other areas. Salaries of workers have not been paid for months. There is virtual collapse of the education and health sectors while the whole areas suffer from infrastructural decay. The South-west cannot feed its citizens while those who should be in farms constitute themselves into ‘area boys’, terrorizing citizens in town and villages while governors cruise around in armoured cars.

    And finally, I think Tinubu should henceforth surround himself with a think tank of independent thinkers and not office seekers to avoid a repeat of Ekiti tragedy and the do or die battle currently going on in Ondo State between well known members of his think tank. In the final analysis, it is his service to his people that will determine his place in history. If Awo his role model is today worshipped at home and described as ‘the best president Nigeria never had ‘ by outsiders, it is on account of lives he touched at home.

  • Trump’s victory and end of American century

    In a stunning and unexpected victory over Hilary Rodham Clinton, Donald Trump is going to become American president in January 2017. The significance of this victory is going to be immense. It is going to mark the end of the AMERICAN century. The rest of the world is not going to accept American leadership any more. This leadership was not based on military and economic power alone but on the moral exceptionalism that America has come to symbolize if not domestically certainly in international relations.

    Trump campaigned on tearing into pieces international treaties  that bound America with her allies in NATO, NAFTA, the WTO and APEC as if they were chiffons de papier – mere piece of paper. He said he will build a wall to separate the USA from Mexico, perhaps he will build one to separate Canada from the USA as well. He will raise tariff against Chinese goods  and possibly tear up all the carefully negotiated WTO regime and embark on mercantilist trade wars with the rest of the world in order apparently to build fortress America. He forgets that free trading nations hardly fight against each other and that trade wars are precursors of real hot wars. It will be interesting to watch the rest of the world’s reaction to Trump’s threat.

    The Chinese for example can surrender the trillions of USA bonds for cash which will not only reduce the dollar to mere paper but will also end the dollar as a reserve currency  in what people have called dollar imperialism in the post Second world era since 1945. The only problem with this is that the whole world will suffer because globalization has brought the global economy intricately linked together .

    The Russians have been calling for a second YALTA apparently to partition the world into two spheres as happened towards the end of the Second World War. It seems ignorant Trump agrees with this forgetting that China is a major power that can not be ignored. The meaning of this is the end of USA as the numero uno among the powers of the world. The USA may yet need  the support of NATO which Trump has rubbished by suggesting each member must pay for American protection. Indeed Trump wants Japan, South Korea and presumably Germany that has enjoyed the American nuclear umbrella to become nuclear weapon states in order to protect themselves without counting the dangerous cost this kind of policy will  impose on the world.

    Donald Trump wants America to withdraw from the world  and concentrate on making America great again. If he knows a little bit of history, he would remember that isolationism did not spare America from entanglement that led it to fight in the first and Second World Wars. American withdrawal from global politics will actually create a vacuum which Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin will happily fill. The Chinese will have a free hand in Asia and by the time Trump’s first term as president ends, it will be too late for America to change course. His victory will present Europe a dilemma of either to distance itself from the Trump embarrassment or embrace a man whose politics Europe will find difficult to understand. Trump represents a bull in a china shop which if not restrained would break a lot of things and  like Samson bring the house on  his head and on others.

    At home Trump says he is going to rebuild American armed forces to make them the best and the strongest in the world.  Is this an implied acceptance of America’s weakness in spite of a military budget that is double that of China and Russia put together? He has to be reminded of the domination of AMERICAN politics by the military industrial complex which General Dwight Eisenhower warned his country about in 1956. Trump’s victory is going to  exacerbate race relations in the USA. His unqualified support of police killing of Black Americans is not going to resonate well with blacks. His years of putting down the only black man ever to be President of America will not be quickly forgotten by blacks who now have their backs to the wall. Neither will the branding of Hispanics as rapists and criminals will be forgotten when the ashes of this unusual elections characterized by Trump hurling insults at those on his opposite sides be forgotten either. He has won a poisoned chalice of a totally divided America. His campaign of law and order are coded words for killing of blacks and we in Africa will not watch this without protest. His antagonistic tendency to Islam will cut America off from more than a billion people in the world. Unless he reverses course, America will be weakened internally and externally. This election is an affirmation of deep seated  American racism, islamophobia and misogyny. The world will be watching .

  • Amosun’s ‘Gateway of shame’

    •Yet another reminder to a bungling governor

    Lies are the oxygen of Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s ‘Change.’ This time last year, the governor’s media aide called to plead on his behalf. He said the governor has promised to hearken to his people’s cry and make the state more habitable for them, in the spirit of good governance. But Amosun seems incapable of ‘Change’ and good governance. Hence his jarring mediocrity and excruciating performance. Amosun has mended some roads, built new ones and constructed bridges. Among other schemes, he has initiated a ludicrous 15-unit model school project. But tempting as it is to paint a glowing portrait of his administration, the purpose of this piece is to draw his attention to the maggots of neglect, arrant duplicity and underdevelopment still infesting his government and the state, like a mind tumour.

    Tumour has been known to cause its victims to hallucinate or descend into psychosomatic degeneration until death, particularly if located in the brain. But Governor Amosun of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has never been diagnosed with any such affliction, physically or metaphorically but like an ill-fated administrator, leading a government afflicted by nerve and ideological tumour, Governor Amosun is incapable of fulfilling the promise of his party’s philosophy of ‘Change.’

    This moment, Amosun’s version of ‘Change’ resonates as a corny phrase he had to chant to achieve an epic sweep at the polls. No doubt, it worked for him. After all, he remains His Excellency, Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State for a second term. It’s however, interesting to see him  bluster through his second spell in office, chanting ‘Change’ yet denouncing it in conflicting tenor and undertones.

    Amosun camp parades him as the people’s governor, a humane leader, yet he is stonily deaf and conveniently blind to the townships’ grief and the peasants’ sighs. There is a death trap at Owode junction, just before you get to Ifo; recently it claimed lives and property in ghastly vehicle accidents. And poor, helpless residents of Ijoko, Agoro, Ijako, Iyana-Ilogbo, Ilepa, continually die, slowly and accidentally, from the perils of plying their muddy and badly cratered roads.

    There is devastation in Alade, Elekunmefa, Imise, Onihale, Singer, to mention a few and to residents and traders of Lusada, Atan-Ota and Igbesa in the Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of the state, the roads leading to their communities are nightmarish and inimical to growth.

    At the point where the Lagos ghetto of Ayobo meshes with Ogun state, a hideous kind of filth palpitates. There is ugliness in Lafenwa, Aiyetoro, Olugbode and various communities along Itele road. More roads present an eyesore at Oju-Ore, Ilo-Awela and Oke-Aro. At Toll-gate junction, Joju, Temidire and environ, mucky pools still stagnate in devastating craters along the bypasses because these hotspots and scenes of multiple deadly accidents are allegedly inconsequential to Governor Amosun. Really?

    Lest we forget the people of Ewekoro who are dying slowly from the dangerous fumes persistently discharged into their communities by neighbouring multinational cement company, LafargeWAPCO Plc. Persistent reportage of LafargeWAPCO’s dangerous commercial activities in the area have been randomly scorned and condemned by the incumbent government of the state in the past, until a five-part series by The Nation spurred the government to stage a theatrical intervention that has so far, produced a remedy that barely addresses the health and developmental challenges incited by LafargeWAPCO in the area.

    A certain Barr. Taiwo Adeoluwa, who identifies himself as Secretary to the Ogun State Government, in an article published on September 5, 2015 by online medium, Opinion Nigeria among others, enthused that: “Of course, it is impossible to list the achievements of our government within this limited space. I must add that, Amosun, like our revered sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, is a man that is conscious of his place in history. People like that are men of vision who will devote their all to the welfare of their people.”

    Governor Amosun is incapable of living up to the full measure of Adeoluwa’s hyperbolic cant. It’s about time the governor and his peers, stopped misappropriating substance by channeling it from the exploits of late Obafemi Awolowo. Is it so hard for Governor Amosun to become an icon by his own terms? It needn’t be too difficult for him to aspire to greatness by his handiwork, good deeds to be precise. Until then, no quality of spin or PR blitz would dull the jarring notes of sorrow and the portraits of death presented by Ogun State’s neglected townships, on his watch.

    It is even more heartbreaking to see schools in the state deteriorate rapidly. Governor Amosun will do right by devoting greater attention to public schools on the decline. Consider for instance, the sad case of Salawu Abiola Comprehensive High School (S.A.C.H.S), built in 63 hectares of land in Osiele, Abeokuta; it is ironical that Governor Amosun continually commemorates the life and death of the school’s founder, late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (M.K.O) Abiola on June 12 of every year, even as the school founded by the late politician and philanthropist, withers away in abject neglect.

    It need be said that while Abiola was alive, he traveled with friends and family on his birthday, August 24th of every year, to celebrate with students of the school. That day also happened to be ‘Abiola Day,’ a day set aside for rewarding outstanding students of the school with prizes.

    As you read, S.A.C.H.S is virtually dead. The hostels are derelict and the classrooms and school laboratories are severely impaired. Yet Amosun plays to the gallery, celebrating Abiola’s life and politics every June 12.

    There are other public secondary schools like S.A.C.H.S deserving Governor Amosun’s urgent intervention. While alumni of Abeokuta Grammar School, Baptist Boys Secondary School and African Church Grammar School (of which Gov. Amosun is an alumnus) to mention a few, have been staging progressive interventions to rescue their alma mater from neglect,  S.A.C.H.S alumni have fared terribly in this respect. The latter’s intervention would have been a saving grace for the school since the Abiola family apparently considers it the government’s burden, and Governor Amosun conveniently neglects it and other diminishing schools, to actualize his mega-schools fantasy.

    “Hundreds of school buildings have been renovated, but the governor will not waste the scarce resources of the state to maintain buildings that ought to be demolished…We will not deceive our people with cosmetic changes,” stated Adeoluwa in his fawning piece on Amosun’s model school project. No doubt, Adeoluwa and his principal, Governor Amosun, need to visit S.A.C.H.S, Egba High School, Egba Odeda High School, Methodist Grammar School, Arigbajo, and other schools within Abeokuta, Ijebu and the outskirts of Ogun State to determine if they are actually worth saving or not. So doing, both Amosun and his underling may see the error, wastefulness and pitiful grandstanding in expending millions of tax payers’ money on building new ‘model schools’ while several schools in the state suffer excruciating decline.

    No one wishes that Governor Amosun deceives the citizenry with what he and Adeoluwa considers “cosmetic changes” but since he is been paid handsomely with tax payers’ money for running the state, he is duty bound to provide cost-effective education with justifiable infrastructure, good roads and safety of lives and property in the state. It is a way to fulfill the promise of “Change” we can believe in and prosper by, that he made to the electorate at election time.

  • The Jonathan theory

    Poor Dr Goodluck Jonathan. I pity our former president; he is ill at ease because of what is happening to some of his aides, especially Colonel Sambo DasukI, who has been answering questions from detectives over the $2.2 billion arms cash. As National Security Adviser (NSA) under Jonathan, Dasuki was the be-all and end-all on security matters. Whatever he said was final. Everybody in government kowtowed to him. The ministers, the special advisers and military chiefs et al were at his beck and call.

    Dasuki was larger than life. Who wouldn’t if he had the sort of money the former NSA had to play with. The Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), which he headed was an exchequer of sorts; it was the war chest of the Jonathan administration. The office funded everything – from the buying of stationery, rams, rice, campaign tools to payment of school fees, hospital bills, salaries and furnishing of offices.

    His office was a clearing-house. Top government officials walked in there, picked their own share of the cash and left. This was the practice for the three years he held office. Trust public officials, they swarmed his office like bees because of the free money. Was he generous? Because it was not his, he dished out money as if it was going out of fashion. Dasuki became a tin god overnight. Those who wanted favour from him deified him. But nothing lasts forever.

    Jonathan lost the April 28, 2015 presidential election and the cookie crumbled. Then came the day of reckoning. Dasuki was pulled in to give an account of the money allocated to his office. $2.2 billion was earmarked for the purchase of arms, ammunition, vehicles, aircraft, vessels and other weapons of war in the fight against Boko Haram. Up till today, he has not given his interrogators an accurate account of what he did with the money. He has since said that whatever he might have done he did with Jonathan’s authority. In effect, he is saying that he gave out the cash to all the ministers, advisers, defence and service chiefs who came to his office with Jonathan’s approval.

    Did the former president okay those disbursements? This is the question Jonathan must answer sincerely. In the past, he dodged answering the question probably because he knew that there is no way he could do so truthfully. But, last week in London, he finally stopped hiding behind a finger. Delivering a lecture on Youth Entrepreneurship at the Oxford Union, Jonathan absolved Dasuki of stealing the $2.2 billion. Then what did he do with the money? Hear Jonathan : “They said the National Security Adviser (Sambo Dasuki) stole $2.2 billion. I don’t believe somebody can just steal $2.2 billion. We bought warships, we bought aircraft, we bought lots of weapons for the army and so on and so forth and you are still saying 2.2 billion; so where did we get the money to buy all those things?”

    That is precisely the issue – “all those things that were bought” – where are they? By now, Dasuki, who has been in detention for months should have shown his interrogators where the equipment are. He cannot do so because nothing was bought. There is proof to that effect. Many officers and soldiers refused to go and fight Boko Haram because they were not given arms and ammunition. Their superiors wanted them to confront the insurgents with bare hands, but they declined and were court martialled by those who are today being interrogated for mismanaging the $2.2 billion. Since Jonathan knows more about this matter as he was then the president, he should be invited to shed more light on it.

    He has joined the fray with his comment, which shows that he was aware of what was going on. His intervention is, therefore, critical in the resolution of this matter so that the innocent are not punished. Who knows, those we thought might have stolen the money may not have done nothing after all by the time we hear from Jonathan. Dasuki might have been carrying out instructions for all we know. Let us hear from Jonathan again : “Yes, there were some issues. Yes, there are still corruption issues but some of them were overblown. I’d say exaggerated and they give a very bad impression about our nation. You cannot say the national security adviser stole $2.2 billion. It is not just possible”.

    Where then is the money that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is looking for? Or what did the Jonathan administration do with the money since the former president’s claim that it bought warships, aircraft and lots of weapons with the cash has been debunked by military sources? According to the sources, the weapons bought by the Jonathan administration were “unserviceable” and “useless”. They stated that the administration bought three fairly used (Tokunbo) Alpha Jets and two helicopters  for the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), adding that the jets were “not worth anything because they were not weaponised and the helicopters were cannibalised”.

    It will be interesting to see Jonathan testify in court for Dasuki. But will his evidence stand in the face of the rebuttal of his claims by military sources?

     

    Pound of flesh

    At last, the National Assembly had its way. It has amended the Code of Conduct Bureau/Tribunal Act,  investing itself with powers hitherto belonging to the President. Many believe that it took the action because of its Chairman, Dr Bukola Saraki’s case before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). Saraki is being tried for alleged assets falsification at the tribunal. Since the case began, he has put up an attitude, which watchers see as unbecoming. They say the Senate President portrays himself as if he is above the law. Saraki’s trial has been dragging because of his numerous applications before the tribunal. The matter has gone to the Supreme Court and back, yet the substantive case is yet to be settled. The lawmakers are not happy with the CCB/CCT Act because they believe it gives too much powers to the President. What powers are we talking about? These are powers which they believe make the President use the law to oppress them. But is that possible? Having had its way, can the Senate stop the trial of any of its members caught under the law? The truth is it cannot. The best thing for any public officer is to avoid acts which can bring him in collision with the law. Anything short of that will be begging the issue. As Senator Yahaya Abdullahi said : “To remove a whole President, who has equally been elected by the country is wrong. You cannot approbate and reprobate; this substitution of the President with the National Assembly is wrong…” Need we say more?