The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable? – 2

    Here is my second response to President Buhari’s statement that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. When he made that statement, he was obviously worried about the potent threats to Nigeria’s unity arising in various parts of Nigeria. He was saying in effect that he would not let Nigeria’s unity be renegotiated under his watch – that he would hand Nigeriaintact to his successor. It was a statement of intent, the kind of statement to be expected from any president.

    However, since President Buhari made that statement, some persons and groups have echoed him affirmatively. They say yes, Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. What these people seem to mean is that, fundamentally, and by certain immutable laws, Nigeria’s unity is sacrosanct, immutable, untouchable – that under no circumstance can Nigeria be dismembered or dissolved. Whoever says this is wrong, flatly wrong. And if the president shares their meaning, he too is very wrong.

    There is no country on earth that is beyond being dismembered or dissolved. Throughout human history, countries have arisen, flourished, and then lost some parts, or broken apart. Countries that are made up of different nationalities, with the different nationalities possessing their different ancestral homelands in the same country, are particularly likely to lose some of the nationalities over time or to break up. It is common human experience that every nationality (or “tribe), no matter how small, is imbued with a fundamental desire and urge to control its own life and determine its own destiny. That is why every multi-nation empire or country in history, no matter how powerful or how long-lasting, breaks up in the end.This universal human experienceis being enacted todayon all continents of the world. No country is above it.

    See what has happened in our world in the course of only the past century – indeed, in the course of only the past 30 years. By 1900, two large and powerful multi-nation countries – theAustro-Hungarian Empire and the Turkish Empire – dominated the map of most of Europe and the Middle East.By 1918, both had broken up.In both cases, though a major Europe-wide war provided the occasion for the breaking up, the powerful and fundamental cause of the breaking up was the desire of the many different nationalities to governthemselves and determine their own futures.

    With the breaking up, many new countries immediately showed up on the world map – Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and many others. Of these new countries, some (like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and others) still contained some different nationalities. In about 1990, each of such countries broke up, and their different nationalities became separate countries. Yugoslavia broke into seven new countries – Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Kosovo. Czechoslovakia broke into two –Czech Republic and Slovakia.

    For most of the 20th century, another large European country, the Soviet Union, was one of the most powerful countries in the world. It contained the large Russian nationality and many different smaller nationalities. In about 1990, this powerful country suddenly broke up into 13 different countries – Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The small country of Georgia contained the Georgian nationality and two tiny nationalities (Abkhazia and South Ossetia). Both soon separated from Georgia.

    All over Europe, any country that still includes two or more nationalities today is in trouble, because their different nationalities are agitating for separation. In Spain, the Basques and the Catalans want to separate from the Spaniards and have countries of their own. In Belgium, the Fleming and Walloon nationalities are talking separation. In Britain, the Irish separated in 1921 to have their own Irish Republic; and the Scots and Welsh are close to doing that now.

    In Asia, soon after the independence of India in 1947, the peoples of northern India separated and formed one country called Pakistan; and then, eastern Pakistan separated and became the Republic of Bangladesh. China is increasingly facing agitations for separation by its small nationalities – the Uighurs of Xsinjiang, Manchurians, Lower Mongolians, and Tibetans.

    In the Indian Ocean, the small island country of Sri Lanka consists of two nationalities – the Tamils and the Sinhalese. Since independence, the Tamils have been struggling to have their own separate country.In Indonesia, East Timor broke away in 2002 and became the Republic of Timor Leste, and many other small nationalities are also demanding separation – namely, Aceh, Riau, Ambom, Irian Jaya, and Madura.In America, French Canada is struggling to separate from English Canada and become a separate country.

    InBlack Africa, each of the countries, as created and structured by European imperialists, defies order and stability. Each combines many nationalities; each has boundaries that split up nationalities; each, in its internal structure, refuses to accord respect to its many nationalities.And unfortunately, the leaders of the various nationalities have generally proved wanting in clearly stating the real desires of their peoples.The result has been that most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are reeling in chaos, conflicts between nationalities, rigged elections and violent protests, primitive attempts by some nationalities to dominate others, violent overthrows of governments, destructive corruption, civil wars, acts of genocide.

    In the light of the worldwide needs and demands for self-determination by nationalities, the world has had to create order – to protect every nationality. The General Assembly of the United Nations Organization adopted a “DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES” which affirms the right of every “indigenous people” or nationality to determine its own political status freely and in peace.  Its Preamble states as follows:” – – the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenant onEconomic, Socialand Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, affirm the fundamental importance of the right of self-determination of all peoples, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. And its

    Article 3 then affirms: “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

    The DECLARATION emphasizes that indigenous peoples exercising or seeking to exercise their rights of self-determination may not be subjected to discrimination by the countries to which they currently belong, may not be subjected to any kind of violence, may not, individually or collectively, be denied their human rights or denied justice, may not have military action brought upon their territory without their consent or request, may not have their democratic rights of association or of expression interfered with, etc.

    All countries of Africa are signatories to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But in addition, the African Union (AU) has a charter on this matter – the African (Banjul) Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Its Article 19 states:”All peoples shall be equal, they shall enjoy the same respect and shall have the same rights. Nothing shall justify the domination of a people by another” And Article 20:1 affirms:”All peoples shall have the unquestionable and inalienable right to self-determination”.

    Nigeria is a signatory to all these international laws; Nigeria is bound by them, andno Nigerian law limits, or can limit, their effectover Nigeria. It is therefore not true that Nigerian nationalities are barred from seeking separate countries for themselves out of Nigeria, or that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.

    The combination of prevailing realities in our world points to the probability that agitations for separation from Nigeria would increase in number, intensity and skills, and that Nigeria would ultimately break up. The horrendous misgovernment of Nigeria reinforces that probability.

    If President Buhari is serious about preserving Nigeria as one, what he has to do, in addition to his anti-corruption war, is to lead Nigeria to restructure its federation, restore to each people the control of their resources, empower each state to fight poverty and disorder competently, cut the Federal Government to a much smaller size, and stop the perpetual strategizing of one Nigerian nationality to hurt and dominate the others. Nobody who leaves these undone can succeed in keeping Nigeria one – even with the best of military capabilities.

  • Melaye: Limit of reckless bravery

    Senator Dino Melaye likes to celebrate his audacity. His recent press conference arranged to deny his alleged verbal assault on Senator Oluremi Tinubu and put the encounter between the two distinguished senators during their executive session on 12 July 2016 in perspectives provided just another opportunity to once again celebrate his audaciousness. “I have never been a coward; I will never be. I fight my battles alone and I stand by it and there is nothing I say everywhere that I cannot repeat everywhere”, he boasted.

    But why repeat the obvious, if you believe yourself – some will ask? Nigerians, if Melaye wants to know, understand his reckless bravery finds expressions in acts such as abandoning the business of lawmaking to accompany Bukola Saraki’s wife to honour EFCC invitation, mobilizing 84 ‘like minds senators’ to intimidate the judge of the CCT before whom Saraki is facing charges for alleged false declaration of assets and raging and threatening the executive on the floor of the Senate over the arraignment of the senate leadership for alleged forgery. Of course, we also know his alleged unrestrained tirade against Senator Tinubu during the executive session of the Senate on July 12 was in pursuance of the same objective –celebration of audacity.

    From Melaye’s account, we now know the executive session was designed to cut deals. He admitted that  in spite of police investigation which confirmed that there was indeed a forgery of the senate rules, a development that has led to the arraignment of the leadership of the senate along with others,  he was trying to pacify  ‘all those who have gone to court should go and withdraw their names from court and that if  at the end of the day those who refused to withdraw their names from court, we should penalise them by suspending them”. He anchored his argument on the fact that there was already a Senate resolution saying its papers were not forged. But he did not tell the public whether the resolution was passed before the alleged crime or after the police investigation and arraignment of suspected culprits. If it was passed after the event, he did not say whether it has a retroactive effect.

    Similarly, from Melaye’s account, it doesn’t appear Senator Tinubu was initially opposed to the deal but only became irritated by Melaye’s threat to sanction those who do not support the planned cover up. She stood up not exactly to distance herself from the deal under discussion but to warn that while they were trying to find ‘solution’, Melaye had no right to intimidate any senator with suspension threat.  “I’m just wondering”, Tinubu was reported to have said, “whenever Senator Dino Melaye speaks in this chamber, he is always threatening people and behaving childishly. This thug must be tamed.” When Melaye reacted by saying she was stupid, she retorted by calling him a dog. And ‘when I stood up and I reacted…’ Melaye continuing the narrative, ‘she went on shouting ‘thug, dog, thug dog…” In the melee that followed, the deal as well as Melaye was undone.

    Now no one is listening to Melaye’s ‘It is fallacious, malicious and a lie that I said I will impregnate Remi Tinubu. Biologically it is even impossible to impregnate her because she has arrived menopause…’  ‘How can you say you want to beat somebody and at the same time you want to impregnate the person…does it make any logical sense?’ – the embattled Melaye seeking understanding of the reporters asked. No one seems to believe him. Then as an afterthought he added: ‘I will continue to uphold the culture the tradition, the values of the Kogi West Senatorial district and I will not abuse it.’ The closest response to that sober undertaking was Kogi West Youth Leaders Forum’s denunciation of his verbal assault which they described as “embarrassing, irresponsible, uncultured and unguarded utterances which have become utterly unbearable to the good people of Kogi West who he unfortunately represents in the Senate.”

    Osun women have joined the anti-Melaye crusade. All Progressives Congress (APC) women in Osun last week issued a statement to say “Senator Melaye’s attack and threat to beat up Senator Tinubu and impregnate her were uncouth, indecent, demeaning, humiliating, sexist and criminal.” They also say it is a violation of the provisions of the Violence against Persons Act of 2015. There was also a woman’s right advocacy group- Amazons for Change that described Melaye’s verbal assault as “the worst conduct in the history of the Nigerian Senate”. They did not forget to call the attention of the public to what they described as Melaye’s “recent uncouth remarks in reference to Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s wife.” There were protests from Ondo women and a group has come out to warn Melaye against stepping on any part of Yoruba land. There have been reactions by Nigerians from all parts of the world. They all agreed with Senator Tinubu that Senator Melaye must be caged.

    There are two lessons to be drawn from this tragedy. Our new insight into how the 8th Senate is run has now confirmed our worst fears. The Senate whose leadership by their own accounts emerged in an inelegant way has been sustained through self-help using strategies popularised by thugs or Lagos area boys. When Saraki’s wife was invited by EFCC for questioning, the Senate quickly passed a resolution protesting the harassment of wives of their senators.  When Saraki was dragged before the Code Of conduct Tribunal for false declaration of assets, the Senate’s response was a vote of confidence on their leaders. They followed that up by trading the senate chambers for the CCT ostensibly in solidarity with Saraki when in fact the action was meant to intimidate the judge. And when that failed, petitions emerged to show the judge was ‘corrupt’. The Senate then usurped the duty of EFCC and summoned him for a questioning, fixed on a day he was scheduled to preside over Saraki’s case.

    Senate’s response to the ongoing forgery case has not been different. A vote of confidence on those accused of alleged forgery, some theatrics on the floor of the Senate where brave Melaye argued that if the Senate rules were forged, it meant the confirmation of the AGF, the service chiefs and the passage of the budget stands invalidated. When that crooked logic did not impress anyone, they summoned the AGF to come and defend his actions. And when the July 12 executive session failed to seal a deal after a retroactive Senate resolution to cover an alleged crime, they threatened impeachment of the president.

    In other words, the leadership of the 8th Senate acquired through self-help strategies of area boys or what legendary Fela described as ‘Igboju pass power’- (reckless bravery) is managed through bully and blackmail. It is perhaps only in Saraki’s Eighth Senate that those accused of criminal activities, rather than clear their names would turn around to threaten those who do not want to commit perjury with suspension.

    The second take away on the lighter mood was how audacious Melaye was finally undone.  He forgot that man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man (Corinthians 11.9). He forgot that a woman is equipped with a complex analytical mind that enables her subdue any man no matter how audacious. All Senator Tinubu did to cut Melaye to size was launching from her bag of verbal arsenal an appropriate answer to Sigmund Fraud’s age long question of “what is on a man’s mind” at irrepressible Melaye and he was undone. Now am sure he knows no man ever wins a woman’s war.

  • Survival (and investment) tips for these times

    Survival (and investment) tips for these times

    These are busy times for financial analysts and investment consultants. Oil prices keep tumbling. The capital market is battling to retrieve its reputation as a sure haven for investment. Budgets are being battered by the reality of the day. The rich are grumbling and the poor are crying. The Wall Street’s wall has indeed fallen flat.

    The wealthy and mighty get tight-fisted. They even fire their employees in a desperate and deft cost cutting move. Yet there are those who will be seeking new havens into which they can pump their fortune.

    In such an uncertain situation, the field becomes an open arena of hyenas and all manner of gangsters, tricksters and pranksters posing as financial engineers. Trust “Editorial Notebook” to weigh in at such perilous times. Here, therefore, are some survival and investment tips. It is all in line with this column’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and in the true spirit of good citizenship. Let’s get cracking.

    There have been reports of some of our compatriots acquiring large expanse of land in Abuja and other places, ostensibly for farming in response to the huge admonition to join the battle for diversification of the economy. Farming, we have been told, is in such cases a mere subterfuge. The real motive, we have learnt from a top source, is to build deep down in the heart of the farm a huge vault in which hard currencies are stashed away, away from the ever-prying eyes of Ibrahim Magu’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and lily-livered bankers who can’t keep a secret.

    Yes, banks don’t keep secrets. You deposit just a few billions and before you sign the teller they have leaked the small transaction to the EFCC, which expects you to be able and willing to explain how you came about the cash as if it is some forbidden substance, such as heroin.

    You don’t have to bury your hard earned money in the farm; that is crude. Neither do you need to build shopping malls and filling stations in your wife’s name. No.

    Britain seems to have buried its lofty idea of building a world class prison in Nigeria where our compatriots who have fallen foul of that country’s law could be brought back home to serve their term. The plan is to have such a facility in a quiet area. It will be air-conditioned, with sporting areas as well as food canteens that can compete with the best hotels in town, its chefs certified by some of the best hands in the trade. There will be giant television sets so that interested inmates do not miss the premiership and other shows, including the latest Nollywood movies. Clinics will be well stocked with good drugs, not the expired stuff you encounter all over the place. There will be doctors. That was the glamorous picture they painted for us.

    Why not invest in such a facility and turn it over to the government, which will most likely cry out soon that it cannot cope with the huge army of would-be convicts that are likely to arise after the conclusion of the numerous corruption cases that are in court? It is called Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT).

    The government, I can bet, will jump at such a plan, which will free its dwindling funds for other critical areas, such as the bad roads and unsightly airports.

    The Prisons will no longer need to hire vehicles to convey suspects to the courts. A little bird tells me that should plea bargaining fail to resolve many of the corruption cases in the courts, it will be time to concession the prisons – just as we have done with some of our key roads.

    An investment in a world class hospital won’t be a bad idea. Since the renewed anti-corruption war, there have been many complaints by some prominent suspects who claim to be suffering from one condition or the other. The ailments go by some esoteric names, such as sinus bradycadia. Incidentally, many of them were not diagnosed here in Nigeria where the facilities are lacking.

    Should plea bargaining become a hard bargain, many of our Awaiting Trial (AT) big men may decide to check into hospitals for a long rest, believing that time will strip the anti-corruption war of its bite. They will pay a fortune for such facilities that are comparable to the five-star hotels to which their lives have been conditioned. Sure they will.

    If the Dr Goodluck Jonathan administration had not been truncated by popular will, one of its key projects would have by now become a favourite of every household. Besides, it would have saved the treasury so much in foreign exchange. Will somebody invest in cassava bread?

    Many Nigerians seem to have suddenly realised that there is no need rushing overseas for summer holidays. The exchange rate has dampened the enthusiasm of many for the yearly ritual of summer travels. But airlines need not fret over the seeming low patronage. They can deploy their small  and old aircraft, create an artificial shortage of seats on their flights, offer some nebulous discount and, thereby, lure as many as possible to take to the sky again.

    As the wealthy need investment tips, so do the poor need survival tips. What with the failure of “stomach infrastructure” as state policy and potent weapon for votes harvesting. We have seen through it all, some people seem to be saying now as they sneer at those who lulled them to sleep with chicken and rice while they stuffed their vaults with the people’s cash.

    It is not compulsory to eat three times a day. Besides the fact that it is economical to cut down on food, we are told it is healthy. Reduce meat, especially beef. No more cow leg, roundabout and such tantalising stuff. Drink more (pure) water at the local buka.

    When you are done, don’t forget to grab an extra toothpick. Put it away in your pocket. When you step out of the canteen, pull the little stick out, put it in your mouth, strike it gently with your teeth and bite it intermittently. That way you announce the fact that you still feed well despite these hard times.

    With little hope that the electricity situation will improve – attacks on gas pipelines, controversial billing systems and all that – you can set up a mobile phone charging centre. Get a small power generating set, the type derisively called I beta pass my neighbour. It is cheap to fuel. No need for a shop. Just go to places where the power crisis is at its worse. Put the machine on your head. Without saying a word, a crowd of eager telephone users will mob you. You can then charge appropriate rates and smile all the way home.

    You will, in no time, discover that this is better than football betting, the Baba Ijebu type in which many have, strangely, found some succour. Now that commercial motorcycles (okada) are becoming endangered – no thanks to criminals who deploy them in their nefarious activities – it is time you learnt how to walk. Doctors say it is healthy. Those guys who trekked several kilometres to Abuja to mark President Muhammadu Buhari’s victory in the April election sure know their strategy. They will never feel the impact of the high petrol price. Besides, don’t doctors say it is healthy to walk?

    A cheeky fellow was asking the other day if people would still like to trek and scream Sai Baba! Will they?

    Feel free to use these success tips. They are free. You only need to acknowledge the fact that you got them from here when you hit it big. Best.

     

    Turkey’s future

    It is sad that Turkey’s political situation has snowballed into a major crisis. The world has united behind Turkey not because Tayyip Erdogan has been such a wonderful man – some insist he is a budding dictator – but there is a global revulsion against soldiers running governments.

    Erdogan has hastily blamed it all on the respected moderate Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is on self-exile in the United States. Gulen, who denounced the failed attempt and reiterated his belief in democracy, thinks Erdogan may have plotted it all as a trap to smash the opposition.

    Most of the soldiers deployed in the so-called coup were merely told that they were going on a military exercise. As of the last count, Erdogan has sacked more than 8000 across government institutions. More than 7,500 have been arrested and 15,200 fired in the Education ministry. That is not all. In the Judiciary, 2,700 have been given the push; 140 Supreme Court members arrested and 1,577 deans of private and public universities asked to resign. There are more casualties.

    The death penalty is being considered for the soldiers who are suspected to have been part of the failed coup.

    The world should keep an eye on Turkey to ensure that Erdogan, who has taken over newspapers and jailed journalists, does not use this bloody chance to kill the opposition and become a true dictator.

  • Monguno: A decent man finishes his earthly work

    In Kanuri culture, the word shettima signifies learning and leadership. Although nowadays it can just be a name parents give to their children but in the past it was a title conferred on scholars or leaders. It has the same meaning with the Arab sheikh or Sai’d or Syed. Among the Mandinka speaking people, the word Sekou, like in Sekou Toure connotes the same meaning. During the first republic there were five politicians that dominated the politics of Borno. The numero uno among them was Shettima Kashim Ibrahim (Sir Kashim Ibrahim), the first central minister of education in the early 1950s who later became governor of Northern Nigeria after independence. He was the first indigenous education officer in the north of Nigeria and it was him who largely recruited the other Kanuri leaders and ensured they went to school at the expense of the local government. The four other Kanuri leaders were Waziri Ibrahim who served as minister of economic development under Sir Abubakar and later leader of the Great Nigeria Peoples Party during the 2nd Republic who was noted for championing the idea of “politics without bitterness”. He later married the first daughter of Sir Kashim Ibrahim. Then there was Zanar Bukar  Dipcharima,  a flamboyant politician who was also in Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s independence cabinet. Then there was Ibrahim Imam who was leader of the Borno Youth Movement who later allied with the Action Group of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the politics of the First Republic and finally, Shettima Ali from the village of Monguno not far from the shores of Lake Chad where Kanuri culture was at its purest. All these people dominated the politics of Borno for years  and stabilized the place to the extent that it was one of the most peaceful divisions in the North of Nigeria. Although in the 1950s when there were problems in Borno, Sir Kashim Ibrahim left his ministerial post in Lagos to become the Waziri of Borno and rooted out all signs of dissidence and disaffection. Borno was the first place to be islamised in Nigeria and it was from there the rest of Muslim Nigeria got its light. The Kanuri are justifiably proud of their contribution to ancient and modern history of Nigeria. It is therefore a sad thing for many people to see Borno descend to this abysmal level of terrorism of the Boko haram insurgency.

    Alhaji Shettima Ali Monguno epitomized all that was good about Borno culture and civilization. Like any young man in the 1960s the name of Shettima Ali meant only one thing to me, this was that he was a member of the Northern People’s Congress which was antithetical and opposed to the Action Group of which my own brother was one of its leaders. Several years later, his name came up when I was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lagos. This was in 1976 when the awards and ceremonial committee of the university came up with names of people to be awarded honorary doctorates of the university during our convocation ceremonies. I was an elected member of Senate. In those days, we normally supported whatever our vice chancellor the late Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi brought to Senate. Professor Ajayi was not only my teacher, he also held the key to my future progress and promotion in his hands. So it was suicidal to frontally confront the vice chancellor. I do not remember what happened to me but I put up my hand to say Senate should reject the nomination. I had nothing against him but against the regime of General Yakubu Gowon which had humiliated university teachers by evicting us from our flats for declaring industrial action against the government because of poor remuneration. Secondly it was our perception that none of the people in that government particularly a man who for years was minister of mines and power which supervised the petroleum in industry could be awarded a honorary doctorate for honesty as the citation stated. We said how could anybody pronounce another honest when he had no access to intelligence report. I was supported by my fellow elected members of Senate and surprisingly by Professor Lallage  Bown, a British professor who was very close to our vice chancellor  who argued that she was always surprised that Nigerian universities did not find any of their fellow academics  suitable and deserving  of award for honorary degrees. Professor Ajayi, tongue in cheek then asked me to make a nomination and I said “Mustapha Adeoye”. And he said who was that and I said “The leader of the Agbe Koya “ a group  of farmers in western Nigeria rebelling against taxes and neglect. That led to much laughter and the nomination was withdrawn.

    I now regret this for many reasons after I had had opportunity to know Shettima Ali. First of all, I can say that politicians of the First Republic were largely clean and honest. After writing biographies of Chief S. L  Akintola, Chief F.S Okotie-Eboh and Sir Kashim Ibrahim, it is quite clear to me that the leaders of the First Republic were not correctly portrayed in existing literature which simply parroted the  unproven allegation  of the military that overthrew the civilian administration of the First Republic. Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Sir Kashim Ibrahim had no houses in 1966 and the Prime Minister and the Premier of the North who were killed could not have been guilty of corruption.

    I got to know Shettima Ali intimately from 1978. He was then the pro-chancellor and chairman of council of the University of Calabar and I was Director of the Nigerian Universities Commission office first in Ottawa and later Washington DC. Most of the then new universities came abroad to recruit staff. Shettima Ali was also a member of one committee or the other in the United Nations. He was therefore a regular visitor to New York and Washington DC. I remember welcoming him sometimes at the airport and as he comes out of immigration he would be carrying his brief case and I would ask him where his box was and he would smile that he never travelled with suitcases. He would explain that he always travelled with his trademark dark long kaftan, under wears, and toilet bag in his brief-case while wearing another dark kaftan. He told me whenever and wherever he arrived, he would send to laundry what he was wearing and change to the clean kaftan in his brief case. He jokingly said no one would know how many clothes he brought abroad and that he did not come out for fashion parade. I found this extremely humble and ennobling from a man who had occupied many positions in our country including being president of OPEC at one time or the other. He never threw his weight around and if he waited to be brought to the office and the driver was late he would show up in a taxi. Everything about the man was different from the way lesser Nigerians behave while in public office. One day I raised the issue of corruption by public servants and he agreed that the level must be brought down. He then told me that the only property he had outside his simple house in Maiduguri was a house in Lagos. He told me he was sold the land as a member of the cabinet during the Gowon regime and he kind of forgot about it until a friend asked him whether he had built on it. He said he told his friend he had no money. This was the minister of petroleum! He said he was then told he could give the land to a contractor who would then build on it, use it and after about 20 years transfer it to him. He said for that advice he would not have owned any property in the then federal capital after almost two decades of service in government.

  • Are the gods angry?

    Who is safe in the country today? With what is happening nationwide, it seems nobody is safe except those in power. Even at that how safe are they? Most of them move about with a busload of security men, carrying guns and bombs when we are not at war. Those who can afford it hire private guards and arm them to the teeth. With their money, they secure their lives, yet they are not safe too. They are not safe because they cannot move about freely like you and I . They know the consequences of trying to walk on the streets alone.

    They cannot engage in the leisure of a stroll. To take a stroll could amount to ending up in the lair of kidnappers. For every Nigerian, whether young or old, rich or poor these are not the best of times. These are times that try the souls of men. Every day we are confronted with evil not only at night but also in the day time. The evil doers no longer strike under the cover of darkness; they have become so daring that they strike under the brightness of the sun. To them, there is no difference between sunshine and darkness.

    It was in days past that daylight frightened evil doers; these days, it emboldens them because they control the instrument of fear – arms. It was the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe that said only a mad man will argue with the man with a gun. How true. Only God knows where they get the guns from. The worrisome thing is that those carrying these guns are teenagers, young boys barely out of school, but who have chosen the world of crime. Under the guise of unemployment, they have turned themselves into criminals. They engage in everything evil, believing that, that is the easiest way to wealth. Unfortunately, many of them are graduates. Instead of using their knowledge for the betterment of society, they are using it to kill, maim, rape and kidnap.

    There is no part of the country where they are not found and they go by all sorts of fanciful names to instil fear in people. ‘’Fear’’, the legendary novelist James Hardly Chase said, ‘’is the key that opens the wallet of the rich’’. Fear no longer only opens the wallet of the rich but also of the poor. These young marauders do not distinguish between the rich and the poor when they strike. To them, everybody is fair game. It is after they have struck that they look at the size of their victims’ purses. May we not walk on the day the road is famished. This is the prayer we all say daily before leaving home. But the thing is evil no longer waits for people on the road, it stalks them at home.

    The other day at Arepo in Ogun State, a family was having a quiet time at home when its generator suddenly went off. The father asked the son to go and see what happened. The next thing he saw was his boy being led back into the house by some gunmen. They fled with the poor man through the river behind his house. The abductors were said to have called to demand N10 million ransom from the family. I cannot say if the family was able to raise the money, but it has been over four weeks since the incident happened at the Orange Estate. Since then, a combined team of soldiers and riot policemen has been deployed in Arepo. With their presence there has been some respite in the community, but for how long will we know peace before the hoodlums return?

    We used to be troubled by pipeline vandals before kidnappers and assassins took over. Some weeks before the aforesaid kidnap, a man was killed as he returned home from vigil. In Ondo State, a monarch was kidnapped last month in his palace. Last Monday, the paramount ruler of Bokkos in Plateau State was killed by hoodlums. Things that were unheard of in the past are now happening across the country. Monarchs that are deified by the people have become easy prey to kidnappers. It is taboo to speak ill of traditional rulers not to talk of snatching them from their palaces. All these are now in the past as these scoundrels are no respecter of persons and institutions. To them, there is no difference between a monarch and a serf. They give them the same treatment without giving a hoot about the status of the monarch. Are they not inviting a curse on their heads with their own hands? Do they really care? I do not think they do because if they did, they would not be snatching monarchs from their palaces.

    Last Saturday night, they struck at Iba and took away the Oniba, Oba Yushau Goriola Oseni, from his palace. The monarch was in his room with his wife when they arrived. Their noise attracted him and the olori and when he came out to see what was amiss, they bundled him away. They fled through the bush path behind the palace. His family has been waiting to hear from the abductors to know what they want. But they have kept the family in suspense. They are playing the waiting game; they know that the family will be anxious to hear from the kabiyesi and also from them, especially on what they want. What will they want if not money? Why don’t they just come out and make their demand and put the family’s mind at rest?

    Why is all this happening? Did we offend the gods? According to the sage, when a child trips, he walks on; but when an elder stumbles, he turns back to ascertain what is wrong.  Why are the gods angry with us? What will they take to forgive us? We need to make propitiation to stop these sacrilegious acts happening across the country.

    For how long will we be under the mercy of hoodlums who have made our lives miserable? If they can go into palaces to kidnap kings, what becomes of those of us who are not royalty? It is sad that these boys breach our security at will. At times, they strike right under the nose of security men and get away. This is why they have become terror in the land and believe that they can take out their target at anytime without coming to harm. It is in a society where there is no law that there is no crime. In a society full of laws like ours, criminals should have no place. So, Acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris has a herculean task to rid society of these boys.

    Idris’ job is cut out for him. He cannot be in office and hoodlums will be terrorising the people of the country he is mandated to secure. It is not an easy job, but it is one that he must discharge so that the hoodlums will know that there cannot be two masters in a ship. The new sheriff in town must prove to these hoodlums that he is equal to the task. As the IGP, our safety lies in Idris’ hands. Will he watch and allow hoodlums to finish us off?

  • These organs will kill us

    •(The curious tragedy of the Nigerian executive and legislature)

    There is a joke in moral circuits that when brigands and outlaws copulate, their incestuous liaison produces the lawmaker – the Nigerian lawmaker to be precise. If you would excuse the ribaldry therein, you would find that the contemporary lawmaker hardly epitomises unimpeachable humaneness and civilization which are prime essentials of the legislature. Neither does the legislative chamber symbolise the conurbation of nationalism, detribalised evolution, altruism and high art oft associated with evolved species of humankind.

    In Nigeria the lawmaker sticks out like metastasized tumour; a priapism of vice and nuisance to be endured, like varicose veins or ethno-religious bigotry.

    A surfeit of base politics and exaggerated high jinks perpetrated on the floor of the country’s Senate and House of Representatives further establishes the National Assembly as a coven of adult delinquents.

    One week after a male senator was forced to apologise to his female colleague for dealing her a blinding slap, a chairman and deputy chairman of a House of Representatives committee got locked in a fight with the deputy chairman, a woman, dealing the chairman several blows.

    The latter completely lost his balance as the impact of the assault from the heavily built female legislator shattered his eye glasses to smithereens and left him with a bloody eye. Pandemonium ensued when he tried to retaliate but he was prevented by their colleagues who formed a ring around his female aggressor.

    Cut to another hodgepodge of members of the Federal House of Representatives embroiled in a free-for-all fight, street-brawler style. The lawmakers engaged in fisticuffs on the floor of the house as members opposed to the embattled speaker of the house at the period, tried to introduce a motion for his impeachment over corruption allegations. Parties loyal to the aggrieved rebels pounced on them and they exchanged blows to the amusement of the world.

    Six years after the disgraceful incident, one of the major characters whose dress was torn to shreds as he got beaten to a pulp, has made the news again. The controversial senator’s name will not be mentioned on this page lest it desecrates this column and offends the sensibility of decent folk. The hilarious character in a fit of decadent rage allegedly threatened to beat up and impregnate a fellow senator.

    At the backdrop of these shameful proceedings, you could be forgiven for likening the National Assembly to a mental asylum – apology to sane, decent folk in therein. There is no gainsaying the fact  that the upper and lower legislative chambers move epic clowning, violence and tomfoolery into the open air of gangsterism and psychosis – while the world watches.

    In the National Assembly, institutions and culture fade into irrelevance as the ‘honourable’ legislators mutate into insuperable problems of the country and impediments to progress; more worrisomely, they are currently engaged in feverish quest to tame and woo the executive into a romance of mutually rewarding incestuous relations.

    But President Muhammadu Buhari would have none of that; the retired General from Daura, Katsina, nurtures a different view of governance. He would rather stick to his carrot and stick approach. Mr. President derives greater comfort perching on a three-legged stool of contrived supremacy and invincibility to onslaughts by antagonists in the Judiciary and the country’s Eighth National Assembly.

    Buhari seeks to eradicate diseased plants from the nation’s fields of enterprise even as he sows sickly seeds under the roof of the Nigerian barn house. Crucial appointments he made and wanton concessions he approved of, apparently in the spirit of political expediency, ultimately neuters the impact of his anti-corruption crusade. And his antagonists in the legislative and judicial arms of government are ever quick to finger the specks in his eyes.

    Now a desperate thing has happened; gangs of hoodlums masquerading as the country’s esteemed lawmakers and custodians of morals and culture, are threatening to impeach President Buhari – simply because he seeks to unmoor their holy place of sleaze from the country’s bastion of law and ethics. Lawmakers loyal to the embattled senate leadership consider the ongoing trial of  the leadership, a slight on the honour and the integrity of the country’s National Assembly.

    Many of the aggrieved lawmakers claim President Buhari is trying to tame and pocket the National Assembly. They believe he seeks to castrate them and place them on a leash and thus turn them into glorified slaves and puppets in cassocks of nobility.

    According to them, Mr. President should desist from his quest to unseat the incumbent senate leadership. A slight on one is a slight to all, alleges the upper and lower legislative chambers.

    Perhaps if the National Assembly had overtime established itself as a body of honourable men and women truly involved with the citizenry and attuned to their pains, needs and fundamental human rights, the Nigerian electorate may be more sympathetic to their cause. But is the senate leadership truly innocent of the charges leveled against them? Are the characters involved truly deserving of the citizenry’s empathy, respect and protection by the same law they allegedly flouted?

    There is no gainsaying the National Assembly is currently infested by shades of poorly, self-centred characters thus the nation’s hope rests on the Executive and Judicial arms of government – the Presidency in particular as most state governors personify the worst of Nigeria’s political predators. Buhari and his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, cut a portrait of hope and prosperity for the nation given both men’s alleged and fairly established distaste for corruption and their predilection to truly serve.

    But this government still rides on a great deal of presumption and moral baggage. While Buhari signifies hope, prudence and inestimable opportunity for redeeming our badly worn and bastardised social and political institutions, his team becomes the bane to the successful attainment of our ideal state.

    Buhari himself is conflicted in personal and administrative ethics hence the catalogue of failures and inaction already listed in his wake. For instance, he is being accused of nepotism. His recent employment of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) scribe as boss of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is termed one such piteous decision. Will Mr. President survive his current rut?

    His ministers are dubious change agents feigning his moral and growth crusade. Like many state governors and lawmakers operating on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), they epitomise a moral, philosophical duplicity. They negate and reject the strife of contraries by which true, positive ‘change’ evolves.

    President Buhari of course must be aware of this bitter reality. If he isn’t, then he must be truly naive and incapacitated by his overwhelming desire to grow bananas out of a pine tree.

    As it is now, the Nigeria is caught in the vortex of dysfunctional public institutions and organs of government. The executive and legislature crush the hope of the citizenry and stifle the birth of progressive vistas of the future, in a cycle of incestuous cannibalism enacted by male and female tin gods, who attack and retreat in obsessive rhythms of attack and counter-attack, victory and defeat.

    In the crushing, bloody symbolism, the Nigerian citizenry is cast as a babe, persistently dragged, and violently exchanged by ogres who nail her down upon a rock, bind iron thorns around her head and waist, pierce her palms and feet, and cut her heart out to make it feel the heat and frost of their inordinate hankering for riches and bloodlust. The executive and legislature live on the shrieks and cries of the babe. They nourish from her blood and forcefully suckle from its unformed tits.

    It’s about time we reversed the cycle.

     

  • Iraqi war and Chilcot report

    The media in the UK is awash with news and commentaries about the report of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq 13 years ago on the ostensible grounds that the Iraqi president, Saddam Husain was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). We all know that the intelligence report presented to both the American and British publics was fabricated and false. I can still see in my mind’s eye, General Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State  waving a piece of paper in the UN Security Council (UNSC) in which it was allegedly stated the volume of uranium imported from the Republic of Niger and with which Saddam Husain was planning to make nuclear weapons. A UN weapons inspection team was sent to Iraq but found no evidence. George Bush, the American president supported by Vice President Cheney, Wolfowitz, General Schwarzkopf and the defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the so-called new conservative group were determined to go to war to illegally remove a sitting head of state based on spurious grounds that Iraq was trying to develop weapons of mass destruction. In order to make the invasion look like an international operation in consonance with the UN idea of collective security, the United States government got the unquestioning support of the British government led by Tony Blair. Public opinion in the UK was against the war. A demonstration of about one million people converged on Hyde Park to try to prevail on the government not to join the war. Even the governing Labour Party was split down the line but the then Prime Minister Tony Blair apparently operating with the spirit of special relations withthe United States was determined to demonstrate more loyalty to the USA than to the British electorate.In actual fact, the reason for war was more personal to George Bush who felt Saddam Husain planned to kill his father. Secondly after the 9/11 attack on the most important  American institutions like the World Trade Centre in New York,the Pentagon in Washington DC, failed attempt to bomb the White House,the American government was looking for a way to demonstrate power to impress the American people. In spite of the fact that almost all the 19 members of the Al Qaida group involved in turning civilian planes into weapons of war and terrorism that killed about three thousand people in the USA were Saudis, America decided to visit their sins on hapless Iraqis. Reasons were cooked up and an assemblage of the willing was put together to support American invasion of Iraq.

    It is now academic whether the decision of the British to join the invasion was as significant as the British public is now being made to think. I am personally convinced that the Americans were determined with or without Britain to go to war.The war was a mistake no doubt about it and the consequence of the war has left the world unsafe and dangerous. The British are now up in arms against Tony Blair for causing the deaths of 170 soldiers while not recognizing the250 thousand civilians who were incinerated through carpet bombing and the use of indiscriminate force against a legitimate government that posed no threat to the USA and Great Britain. Iraq was destroyed. Saddam Husain and his sons and grandson and several members of the Baathist party were killed. The most stupid thing the invaders did was the dissolution of the Iraqi army and all its security forces and the promotion of Shiites to replace the Sunnis who under Saddam Husain were the dominant force in Iraq. They may have been driven by the ideals of liberal democracy but the Middle East as it has now been realized is not the place to experiment with democracy.The consequence of the war is the destruction of the entire Middle East. The same thinking that outsiders have the right to dictate to other countries how to run their countries is still prevailing in the chancelleries of most countries in the West. This was what led to western instigation of so-called Arab Spring the result of which was the intervention in Libya, the support for rebels in Syria,  Oman,Yemen ,Tunisia even Algeria. Only Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and theEmirates were spared from western meddlesomeness. The question to ask is whether the world is safer today than in 2003 when this whole thing began. No part of the world is safe today. The recent attack on the prophet’s mosque in Medina shows that no place is safe or sacred from attack by these non-stateactors.

    Our own problem in Nigeria with Boko Haram is not unconnected with the NATO intervention in Libya which led to the killing of a sitting head of state and the dispersal of a stockpile of weapons across the Sahara desert being used by Al Qaida in the Maghreb, Al Qaida in West Africa and Al Shaba in the Horn of Africa.The African Union tried to persuade NATO not to get involved in Libya but they were brushed aside. I am not proud that the Jonathan administration connived with the West in its intervention in Libya.

    Intervention in Libya took place under the Obama and Cameron administrations. This is why the Cameron government understands the predicament of Tony Blair who is being threatened withprosecution by families of soldiers who died in the Iraqi war. Some are even asking that he should be dragged before the International Criminal Court in Hague in Holland. I am afraid Tony Blair will be protected by the Anglo-Saxon establishment in the UK and the USA .The kind of public opprobrium Tony Blair is being subjected to compares sadly with the almost total acquiescence and approval for George Bush in the USA. This shows the difference between American and British politics. British politicians are more accountable to the public because of the parliamentary system in which members of cabinet are subjected to questioning during debates and question time in parliament. The American system epitomizes more the Montesquieu’s idea of separation of power and the cabinet is not directly answerable to Congress except during special hearings in Congress. Perhaps the most important thing is that the USA is a world power and not answerable to any power but itself. American deference to the UN is a matter of convenience. Of course Russia also only pays regard to the UN when its own national interest is notinvolved.

    Unfortunately one of the recent tendencies in international relations is for powerful countries operating either under UN auspices and cover or even without it to take unilateral action against those they have problems with.This has led to most countries that feel threatened now to resort to nuclear armament as a deterrent as is the case with Israel, Pakistan,North Korea and clandestinely Iran. In all this, it is the poor people who suffer. One of the double standards people allege in the case of the Iraq war was that unlike post Second World War Germany and Japan, no thought was given to post conflict reconstruction in Iraq. We now have a situation in which a country with an old civilization has been destroyed and the contagion has spread to Syria with her own old civilization destroyed and the rest of the Arab world and other countries in the world living in fear of non-state terrorism whether in the garb of Islamic State (IS) or various variants of Al Qaida and theiraffiliates. In the meantime the world has witnessed massive migration and dispersal of people not seen since the Second War. Millions of Arabs have been reduced to beggary, destitution and even prostitution. Europe has also witnessed instability as a result of massive migration causing disaffection in many countries in Europe and leading to the rise of right wing fascist parties or tendencies in France,Hungary Britain, Slovakia, TurkeyGreece, Germany and Austria that have borne the weight of these migrations. The recent BREXIT vote in Britain is directly related to the possible fear of migration from Turkey and the rest of Europe. These are difficult times. The future political development of the world is pregnant and no one knows what it will bear.

  • Nigeria’s unity not negotiable?

    President Buhari says that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. He means, obviously, that Nigeria must never be dissolved and that no nation that is now part of Nigeria can ever take leave of Nigeria and become a separate country. Well, we must concede that he is saying what a Nigerian president is supposed to say. It is inconceivable that anybody who happens to be the president of any country would say that the country he presides over could break up. No way.

    However, when a president says that his country’s unity is not negotiable, the world has a right to ask him what he intends to do to preserve his country as one. That question is particularly apt if the country is swaying on the verge of breaking up. Nigeria is manifestly swaying today on the verge of breaking up. There is not much of a doubt about that. One only has to take a look at the trouble spots across Nigeria to see this most clearly.

    Take the Igbo South-east. Many Nigerians are used to assuming that the Igbo people are not really serious about Biafra – that the Igbo people are too attracted to (and too spoiled by) the benefits of Nigeria to act definitively to break away from Nigeria and start a separate country of their own. But, today, that assumption about the Igbo no longer stands as solid as before. The many Igbo organizations clamouring for Biafra, the increasing numbers of youths, older adults, and organizations involving themselves, and the fervour, passion and political skill they are increasingly bringing into the struggle (both at home and in the wide world), allseem to point to one probable outcome – namely, that Biafra could indeedbecome a reality someday.

    Take the Niger Delta. Many Nigerians also commonly assume much the same kind of things about the peoples of the Niger Delta as they do about the Igbo. But it is critically important that we should assess the Niger Delta situation correctly. When Isaac Boro started the Niger Delta fight against Nigeria in the early 1960s, he was leading only a handful of passionate youths like himself. His chances of succeeding against the power of the Nigerian Federal Government were nil. Today, with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), and some other less known Niger Delta militant groups, the story is totally different. There are not many other separatist groups in the world today that command the same magnitude of weaponry and financial resources that these Niger Delta groups command. It is very little known to Nigerians that, under the amnesty programmes of succeeding federal governments, many thousands of Niger Delta youths were able to go abroad to acquire various kinds of training in weaponry, combat, and the flying of aircraft.

    In short, Nigeria is being confronted in the Niger Delta today by a series of considerably capable military outfits. These boys are superior to Boko Haram in many respects – and Nigeria has been fighting Boko Haram with only little success since 2009. Also, though the North-east does feature a lot of geographical difficulties for the Nigerian military, such difficulties are minor compared with those of the Niger Delta. To attempt to subdue the Niger Delta, the Nigerian military must be ready to fight endless amphibious battles – against people who are seasoned inhabitants of the creeks, lagoons and swamplands of the Delta. It is in the light of these tough realities that President Buhari has wisely suspended military campaigns in the Niger Delta and chosen to urge various citizen groups to appeal to the Niger Delta militants for peace.

    Moreover, unfortunately, if more serious war were to come, Nigeria does not now command the alliance that fought against Biafra in the civil war of 1967-70. It is no longer possible for Nigeria to amass the hordes of Middle Belt and Yoruba soldiers that won most of the victories of that civil war. The Yoruba and Middle Belt peoples have found that there is hardly any benefit for them in fighting for Nigeria. All the policies put together by the military regimes since 1970 with the support of theArewaNorh elite,all the centralization of power and resource control and its outcome in horrible poverty across Nigeria,  all the federal attempts made to suppress most other peoples of Nigeria and their cultures, all the strange claims of the Arewa North  elitefor sole control of Nigeria’s federal power, all the religion-based killings of Southerners in parts of the North, all the aggression against the peoples of the Middle Belt and the threats against the Yoruba and other peoples of the South, all the weird happenings ofBoko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen’s killings and destruction in the Middle Belt and the South, all the apparently perpetual strategizing to hurt the peoples of the Middle Belt and the South – all these have fragmented Nigeria beyond measure. A country of many peoples like Nigeria can only be sustained by mutual respect, by a common sincere desire to prosper together, and by a general agreement to obey the agreed rules of co-existence. Unfortunately, Nigeria has been trying hard to forge unity through the weakening (and even destroying) of its various peoples, and has been bruised through impunity after impunity. The sense of “common country” has been vitiated.

    Since Buhari has said that the unity of Nigeria must remain, we must understand him to mean that he intends to take steps to mend the wounds of Nigeria in order to ensure Nigeria’s continued existence and unity. We must therefore ask him what the steps are that he intends to take. Until now, over a year since he was sworn in as president, he has said not a single word about such steps.

    Countless Nigerians, from all parts of the country, have been clamouring for a restructuring of the Nigerian Federation – to the ends that viable states might be created, andthat much of the powers and resource control perversely crowded into the hands of the Federal Government be devolved to the federating units in order to empower the federating units to promote socio-economic development again, fight poverty, and restore hope to Nigeria. His answer to these demands has been that restructuring is a no-no with him – even though his election campaign promises had included restructuring as an important piece in his Change Agenda.As blood has been continually shed in most parts of Nigeria by well-trained Fulani herdsmen and foreign Libyan mercenaries all armed with highly sophisticated weapons, President Buhari has chosen not to speak to Nigeria, to explain what is happening, to elaborate what the Federal Government of Nigeria intends to do about it, and thereby to allay the fears of Nigerians. On the contrary, reports keep circulating that the Federal Government is intent on getting state governors across Nigeria to grant land for so-called “grazing reserves” for the Fulani herdsmen, even though most Nigerians are expressing  fears that those grazing reserves are yet another plan aimed at hurting various Nigerian peoples. Finally, from most parts of Nigeria, the protest has been loud that President Buhari’s appointments into his government, especially his appointments into the security forces, have given undue emphasis to his North and even ignored some other parts of Nigeria, but his response has been to continue to do more of the same.

    From no more than the above, it seems very unlikely that the Buhari presidency will do much to redirect Nigeria away from dismemberment or breaking up – and that would be a pity. Of course, he might intend to use force to keep Nigeria together – but, given the realities of our times, that is a step with very doubtful outcomes. And, in any case, what sort of unity can exist in a country that is kept together by wars and the military conquests of its various peoples? If it comes to that, how many Nigerian peoples, large or small, look like weaklings who will surrender perpetually to armedforce – force by either the regular Nigerian military,or force by irregular militias and Mujaheed in such as Boko Haram or the armed herdsmen and their Libyan mercenary support? No, it is to be hoped that President Buhari will yet choose other paths that can lead to sure and sustainable unity for Nigeria.

  • PENGASSAN’s insensitivity

    Coming at the time ordinary Nigerians are going through a period of unprecedented hardship, the ongoing strike by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) is one strike too many. It is not only insensitive but inhuman. The absence of oil Petroleum Equalisation Fund workers  to certify all bridging vehicles at depots in Apapa will most likely create more hardship for consumers outside the South-west including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory where fuel queues were reported to have resurfaced last week. Of course for self-serving PENGASSAN and its members, that development called for nothing but celebration. And that was exactly what its spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojugbana did when he spoke of ‘total compliance with the strike by workers of government agencies such as ‘Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEFMB) headquarters’. He did not forget to add that ‘there was also compliance by PENGASSAN members in NNPC office, Shell, Total, Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC) and Lagos where even those at the jetties and other critical sections where crude are lifted also abandoned their duty posts”.

    It wasn’t as if PENGASSAN and its men have ever been known to fight on the side of the people. Except for the brief period it stood by the people during the resistance against military tyranny following the annulment of MKO Abiola’s victory in 1993, a support greatly influenced by the personality of Kokori, the body has always fought to protect the narrow and selfish interest of its members. As it was in the past when they threatened or actually held the nation to ransom over mundane issues such as ‘non-creation of new jobs, delayed payment of ‘accrued deferred benefits’, discipline of erring branch chairman and casualisation, their current strike is all about PENGASAN and not Nigerians who are today paying for the consequences of massive corruption in the oil sector in which PENGASAN members cannot claim to be bystanders.

    And what are their grievances? They include: ‘Forceful co-option of government agencies in the industry into the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS), loss of jobs by PENGASSAN members including “key union officers and national officer” due to downsizing by some employers such as Fugro, Universal Energy, Frontier Services and Petrostuff’.  This was followed by some strange demand to be met within seven days. They want government ‘to end anti-labour practices by employers’ at a time millions of Nigeria are without work while a few employed even by government, are owed  areas of salaries running to many months. They also want government to decree industrial harmony between their members and ‘H15, IEME Chevron, Universal Energy, Tecon and Avion Oil and Fugro by prevailing on these companies to reverse recent retrenchments”. And finally they want government to address the problem of ‘funding/cash call arrears, provide feasible guidelines to clear all outstanding payments and evolve a pragmatic system of funding the Joint Venture (JV) operations.”. They knew why government has not met those obligations but by choosing to embark on a strike which will further damage an already prostate economy, they made it clear they are not obliged to be government ally in its battle for economic recovery.

    And I think they are right. The buck stops on the President’s table. That PENGASSAN whose members played pivotal role in the monumental corruption that took place in the oil sector is still in a position to inflict further hardship on Nigerians is the fault of a President who perhaps haunted by his past has chosen vacillation over governance and politics. Under presidentialism, the president and his party are to populate the over 500 small governments that are needed to implement their party manifesto. But after a year of government of change, many of these small governments including those PENGASSAN is now using to inflict further injury on Nigerians are still manned by those who want to continue business as usual.  For instance not a few Nigerians are wondering what we are still doing with equalization fund policy and those who exploited the policy to perpetrate fraud long after the total deregulation of the oil sector.   Before deregulation, Nigerian knew the equalization fund was a fraud. Fuel was never at any time sold at the same rate in Ilesha, Enugu or Sokoto as in Lagos. It was a federal government policy designed not to remove the pains of ordinary people but to empower party loyalists.

    At a time the federal government was paying billions as equalization funds to some influential people where some individuals controlled as many as 500 trucks, some of which were allegedly deployed to smuggle subsidized fuel across the borders, farmers from  onion, beans and yam producing zones of the north transported their farm products to Lagos market without equalization subsidy. Oshogbo traders were in Maiduguri and beyond to procure items while northern traders could be found in the remote parts of the south-east to procure what their customers needed. This was the pattern of trade between Nigerians long before amalgamation and long after independence. Multinationals such as UAC, Cadbury, Liver Brothers, Nigeria breweries etc, have their distribution network for their goods. Equalisation fund in the oil sector was a political elite-inspired policy designed to defraud the people.

    The policy thrust behind the creation of PPPRA was not different. It was set up specifically by those who wanted to recoup their expenses after publicly claiming they sold their private houses to contest the 2003 election. The bill was passed within three months. And as expected,  ‘PPPRA with a staff of 249, supervised by an unwieldy 22 man strong board, earning scandalously whopping salaries and allowance of N57.9billion per annum’, has  served only the interest of those who set it up. In 2011, under Dr.AhmaduAlli as its chairman and Alison-Madueke as supervising minister, the number of fuel importers moved from about half a dozen to 128. In 2011, the body put consumption of fuel by Nigerians at 60.25 million litres. But a House probe which confirmed that PPPRA presided over the theft of N1.7 trillion by PDP stalwarts, their siblings and their fronts in 2011 was to later put the actual 2012 consumption at 39.66 litres.

    As it turned out, the desperate men who created PPPRA in 2003 merely duplicated the functions of Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, (PPMC) set up in 1988 to “profitably and efficiently market refined petroleum products in the domestic as well as export markets, especially in the ECOWAS sub-region, provide marine services and also maintain uninterrupted movement of refined petroleum products from the local refineries.” Even if President Buhari is not aware of the above, the deregulation of the oil market with kerosene selling at between N220 and N300 as against government post regulation fixed price of N83,without a whimper from PPPRA makes the scrapping of the body along with much abused equalization funds and others so recommended by the Oronsaye’s report more imperative.

    One of the reasons Nigeria voted President Buhari was their confidence in his ability to make our refineries work and stop the haemorrhage in the fuel sector. And if PENGASSAN men in Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NNRA), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) and the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEFMB) headquarters’ as well as NNPC and Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC), who want business to continue as usual are the reasons he will fail Nigerians, it is time he stops vacillation and got them off his back.

  • A preacher’s path

    Itinerant preaching did not just start today; it is as old as time. You may have come across these itinerant preachers in your neighbourhood as they go about doing their thing, inviting people to the Way. You may not like them, but you cannot hate their messages – if you care to listen. Most times, we are in a hurry, either rushing to work or dashing out to keep that important appointment that we do not have the time for these preachers. With a bell in hand, a megaphone and a Bible, they trudge the streets on evangelism.

    To them, it is all about propagating the faith so that the work of “our Father who art in Heaven” can be done. They do the work zealously. They do not care if their words sear souls. That is the purpose, anyway, so as to get ‘’the lost sheep’’ to change their ways. The Good Book says there is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus. According to the Bible, he is the “way, the truth and the life”. The preachers’ job is to call people to this Way. Having given their own lives, these preachers believe that they owe it a duty to ‘’save’’ others to free themselves from guilt.

    They are only acting according to God’s admonition in Ezekiel 33 : 8-9 : ‘’When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it, if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul’’. The itinerant preacher perceives himself as winning souls for God; this is why he uses the Word to captivate his listeners.

    Whether in the morning or in the evening he has his job cut out for him. ‘’Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’’, he cries to our hearing, but how many of us listen? These days, the itinerant preacher is no longer a lone voice in the wilderness like in the days of John the Baptist. They abound everywhere in the country as they have gone into the world, as directed by Jesus,  ‘’to preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth…shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned”. The itinerant preacher is not on a frolic of his own, but carrying out the Lord’s commandment.

    We may despise the preacher, but we cannot disdain his or her God to whom we owe the essence of our being. In the free world we are today, we need the itinerant preacher to awaken us; this does not mean that atheists will cease to exist. But by hearing the word of God, their hearts might be touched and they may give their lives and end up being another Apostle Paul. According to the Bible, we can never say who will enter the kingdom of heaven. Many of us going about wearing our faith as a badge of honour may end up not making it, while latter day converts or even sinners, who repent at the last minute, like the thief on Jesus’ right hand on the Cross of Calvary, may enter God’s Kingdom.

    Through their work, the itinerant preachers are trying to get us to lead a righteous life. But many of us tend to see them as irritants, who disturb our sleep early in the morning or our rest in the evening with their ‘unsolicited’ preaching. ‘’Didn’t the Bible say they should shake the dust off their feet in homes where they are not welcomed?’’ some would ask. The truth is by standing on the streets to preach, they are not in anybody’s home. The public space belongs to them just like any other person. So, we should learn to tolerate them.The problem is we are intolerant when it comes to religion. We always want to have it our own way when religion is at the heart of the matter. The Muslim is intolerant of the Christian and vice versa.

    It is this intolerance that led to the dastardly killing, last Saturday,  of Deaconess Eunice Olawale during her daily “Morning Cry” preaching in Kubwa, a satellite town in Abuja. What could she have done to have warranted been killed in cold blood a few metres away from her home? Was her preaching disturbing anybody? Did such people complain to the community development association (CDA) so that she could be called to order? But no matter how some might have felt about her preaching, killing her was not the solution. Her death will not deter other preachers. Rather, it will embolden them.

    By killing Mrs Olawale, her killers have made her a martyr for Christ. She died doing what she believed in – winning souls for God. I know some would have been touched by her preaching and saved. These ones will always pray for her whenever they remember what she did in their lives. Deaconess Olawale may have died young, but it is not how far, but how well. She fought a good fight and ran a swift race in the Lord’s vineyard and a crown of glory is surely waiting for her. As the Bible says, those who die in Christ are not dead, but sleeping and will rise with Jesus on the Last Day.

    Deaconess Olawale’s death is a challenge to the police. The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Police Command must do everything to bring her killers to book. Someone must have seen or heard something that fateful day. It is the job of the police to ferret out such people so that they can get a lead to crack this case. Acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP)  Ibrahim Idris, who assumed duty last month, should also see it as a top priority case, which will define his tenure in office. If he cracks this case, it would earn him kudos and pave the way for his success. If he does not, it would be what he will be remembered by long after he has retired. The police chief should not allow the voice of the ‘’Morning Crier’’ of Kubwa to be stilled without justice being done.