The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Chibok girls, two years on

    Anniversaries are important dates celebrated to mark significant events. Couples celebrate their wedding anniversaries. Children mark the death anniversaries of their parents. Monarchs celebrate their coronation anniversaries. Companies, schools and related businesses celebrate the anniversaries of their formation. First birthday anniversary; a company’s 10th anniversary; a school’s 25th anniversary; 50th and 100th birthday anniversaries are, in most cases, marked with fanfare because we consider them as special.

    But, there are some anniversaries that we recoil from celebrating because we do not wish to remember them. We want to forget such events and, if possible, we wish that they never happened. Anniversaries that evoke bitter memories are no anniversaries, but we still remember the events that happened on those dates to see what can be done to ease our pains.

    Two years ago, we were hit by a thunderbolt when over 200 pupils of Government Girls Secondary School (GGSS) in Chibok, Borno State, were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in the wee hours of April 14. Since their abduction, many theories have been propounded about their whereabouts. As at today, we cannot say categorically where these girls are. The fact is, as President Muhammadu Buhari said in his maiden media chat, there is no intelligence report on where the girls are being kept. This has provided some unscrupulous people an opportunity to defraud the government.

    Knowing that the government is desirous of bringing back the girls, no matter what it takes, they have been coming up with tales about where the girls are and promising to get them released if the price is right. The Jonathan administration fell prey to such confidence tricksters, who have also tried to play a fast one on the Buhari administration. The Chibok girls’ abduction remains a slap on our face. As the girls mark two years in captivity, chances of their being rescued are getting slimmer by the day. Nothing will gladden the hearts of  Nigerians more than these girls being rescued intact. But the truth is that may not be possible.

    When former President Olusegun Obasanjo said some weeks ago that the girls may not be rescued intact, many wanted him skinned alive. As a former president, Obasanjo must know what he was saying. He may be privy to certain information that we do not have. Obasanjo would not have spoken that way if he was not in the known of certain things. We should not crucify him for what he said. What we should do is to see how these girls can be brought back no matter what it takes. Boko Haram must not be allowed to win this war; otherwise we will be doomed.

    It may not be possible to rescue the girls intact because we cannot say for sure if Boko Haram is still keeping all of them together. The insurgents knew why they kidnapped the girls and they will stop at nothing to ensure that they remain in the sect’s custody. The insurgents may not be as daft as we think. They know that as long as these girls are with them, they have a bargaining power. This is what they have capitalised on in the past two years to swindle the government. If that is the price we have to pay to rescue the girls, why not? But are the insurgents ready to let the girls go after they get what they want?

    In the past 24 months, the group has been playing on our collective intelligence over these girls’ matter. Today, it is that they are in Sambisa; tomorrow, it is that they have been moved to God knows where. Where really are the girls? This is the game being played by the insurgents to throw investigators off their trail. The latest talk in town now is of the phone calls being made to some of the girls’ parents from their daughters’ lines. The parents were said to have missed the calls, but on seeing that they were from their daughters’ lines, they called back. And what did the receivers tell them? Some were told that the girls were now in Ondo and Cameroon. Others were told not to call the numbers again or they will be killed.

    Are we sure that those calls emanated from Boko Haram? Were they not prank calls just to set the girls’ parents’ blood on the rise again? Boko Haram knows that it is another anniversary of the girls’ kidnap and that there could be no better time than now to make such calls apparently to raise the hope of their release. Having studied the situation critically, I do not think that Boko Haram is going to release the girls just like that. It is painful though, but that is the truth. Let’s face it if Boko Haram ever wanted to release these girls, it would have done so since. Boko Haram was not ready yesterday; is not ready today and will not be ready tomorrow to release these girls.We have to force it to do what it does not want to do.

    We have to fight to get the girls back. By fighting, I mean we have to flush Boko Haram out of Sambisa, if that is still its operational headquarters. With ties to  the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Boko Haram may have changed base with money and materials from the global terror group to which it pledged allegiance last year. From what we have seen so far, it has also changed tactic, with the way it is using some of the girls as suicide bombers. One of the girls who escaped from its den told the Cable News Network (CNN) that some of them volunteered to be suicide bombers with the hope of escaping. Fati(not her real name), according to the CNN, painted a picture of life in Boko Haram camp.

    Fati said they were abused and tortured. The girls, she said, had no choice than to do the bidding of their captors in order to save their lives. So, the girls opted to be suicide bombers, hoping to see soldiers that they may run to during the deadly mission to facilitate their escape. Just like their parents and their compatriots, the girls do not like the life they are being forced to live now. They look up to us to rescue them, but so far, we have failed them. When these girls were abducted in 2014, we never thought that two years down the line we will still be struggling to get them back.

    Like Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima, I strongly believe that these girls will be back, but we will have to fight Boko Haram to bring them back.

  • Saraki’s real enemies

    For Bukola Saraki, who like his illustrious father, is a successful trader and peddler of influence, nothing is impossible. He has never experienced failure.  But now buffeted by one misfortune after the other, it seems his first taste of failure is not too far away. Unfortunately, instead of looking at himself on the mirror to see how his past has come to haunt him, he has continued to attribute his current travails to his political detractors especially his party leaders and elected colleagues who publicly disapproved of the underhand tactics he employed to emerge as Senate President.

    His trial after his controversial emergence as Senate President started with observation by his colleagues in the Senate that the Senate amended rules employed for his election  was forged, a claim confirmed by the police after investigation. That was quickly followed by the invitation of Toyin, his wife for questioning by EFCC over her handling of some contracts while her husband held sway in Kwara as governor. But this didn’t appear to have anything to do with Saraki’s aggrieved colleagues as the invitation according to EFCC was on the strength of a petition by Kwara PDP alleging unwholesome practices. And  Saraki  himself was soon to be dragged before the Code Of Conduct Tribunal for prosecution over ‘13 counts of false and anticipatory asset declaration which he made at the beginning and at the end of each of his two terms as governor’. Here again, as the commission has pointed out, the action was on the strength of ‘several petitions from various groups including  ‘Kwara Freedom Network’, all bordering on abuse of office, misappropriation of public funds and money laundering’.

    And when the case finally opened last week, the commission disclosed it found document from Saka Tinubu Saraki’s office containing the list of properties he allegedly “purchased from Presidential Implementation Committee on Government Properties and some that were bought from the Central Bank of Nigeria”. Michael Wetkas, a detective with EFCC told the tribunal how Saraki as governor diverted Kwara State government funds to pay loans he took to buy the properties. The commission also claimed Saraki paid back the loans with Kwara State government’s fund through his aides, one of whom lodged between N600,000 and N900,000 in the former governor’s account 50 times on a particular day. And when Saraki, a veteran deal maker finally takes the defence seat, it will be interesting to see the weight he will attach to ‘political detractors.’

    Wetkas last Wednesday also told the tribunal that ‘Saraki collected salary as the governor of Kwara State for about four years after completing his second term in 2011’, a charge the Secretary to the Kwara State Government, Alhaji Isiaka Gold, has denied insisting Saraki was only collecting a pension of N578, 188.00 which increased to N1, 239,493.94 monthly from October, 2014 as other past governors in the country.” Until the tribunal says otherwise, we have no reason to doubt Mr. Gold’s claim.  But if it is insensitive for a former governor-turned-senator to collect N1.2m as pension along with a senator’s huge salaries said to be highest in the world, Saraki alone bears the moral burden.

    But Saraki’s long and harrowing Wednesday did not come to an end until Wetkas had presented documentary evidence showing that “First offer letter by the Presidential Implementation Committee to buy  the  property at 15A and B McDonald Road, Ikoyi, which Saraki claimed to have  bought through Carlie Investments Limited in March, 2000, was dated November 23, 2006.’ And if the tribunal eventually finds that to be true, how can APC and some of its elected senators who were themselves victims of Saraki’s most audacious deal of his political career-trading away his party’s victory, be held accountable for a deal Saraki struck 15 years earlier?

    But Saraki’s witch-doctors are at liberty to say anything no matter how asinine in order to earn their pay. If they insist Buhari, Oyegun, Tinubu and the Unity Forum senators are behind Saraki’s travails, an offshore dimension was introduced last week.  A German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, identified  four assets ; Sandon Development Limited, a vehicle used in acquiring a property on 8 Whittaker Street, Belgravia, London, in 2012;  Girol Properties Ltd, which was registered on August 25, 2004 (a year after Mrs. Saraki’s husband became governor of Kwara) in the British Virgin Island (BVI); Landfield International Developments Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands on April 8, 2014, with  Mrs. Saraki as sole shareholder; and Longmeadow Holdings Limited,  which Saraki claimed belonged to  his wife’s rich and famous family, were actually his and were only held in trust for him by his wife.

    And now for those who talk of witch-hunting, our people have said if there are no cracks on the wall, there will be no hiding place for a lizard. A witch has always been suspected to be on the prowl since 1990 when Saraki allegedly got involved in an N9b deal which eventually led to the collapse of Societe Generale, a bank in which his father held controlling shares, and in 2009 when Erasmus Akingbola alleged that Saraki’s multi-billion naira deals contributed to the collapse of his bank.

    I am not persuaded anyone should weep for Saraki because God Himself decreed we must reap what we sow. Saraki sowed the wind and he is now reaping the whirlwind. That he is haunted by his past is the truth he and some other fortune-seekers in the Senate have tried to reject. It is not an accident that the petition against Saraki, like the one against his wife, emanated from Kwara long before Saraki’s June 2015 deal. Authors of the petitions have owned up and in fact thanked EFCC for acting in the interest of the exploited people of Kwara. That he had to be whisked away by the police from stone-throwing juveniles in Ilorin praying ground during the last SALLAH celebration was enough evidence to show that the exploited citizens of Ilorin who assemble every year and made to struggle for a few naira notes thrown at them have become disillusioned. Kwara is an area Oloye Saraki, Bukola’s father had treated like a personal fiefdom for over 50 years before his son, a more vicious business man who bulldozes everything on his way, forcefully seized it, sending his father to untimely retirement, and some will say death.

    If I am therefore asked, I will say Saraki’s enemies are not his political distracters. Saraki’s first enemy is Saraki himself. We can then proceed to add others like his friends who argue from both sides of the mouth claiming, ‘Dr. Saraki will not allow any distraction to take him away from Presidency of the Senate since an accused person is presumed innocent until he is found guilty’ while insisting Danladi Umar, the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal cannot try Saraki because he has petitions filed against him at the House of Representatives and the Senate. Others include his unpatriotic ‘like mind senators’ who because of their greed wanted to make Nigeria ungovernable for Buhari by ‘stealing’ the deputy senate presidency which by convention belongs to the ruling party.

    And finally we can add those who accuse a section of the media of being anti-Saraki and of helping Buhari to fight his anti corruption war ignoring the fact that there is no society where the press is neutral on social issues. They conveniently forget that not too long ago, another section of the press celebrated economic vampires, substituted Shettima’s truth with Okupes lies about the state preparedness of the military and for a price, provided platform for criminals and also justified Saraki’s perfidy with specious argument that he was protecting Buhari from the overweening influence of Tinubu and the Yoruba.

  • Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and the burden of genius (2)

    •(Intrigues as petroleum minister grapples with challenges of office)

    Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu is a supporting actor in President Muhammadu Buhari’s ‘change’ fiction or drama of ‘change’ if you like. At a glance, he seems an ideal ambassador of ‘change’ but has he the political and ideological bent to actualise Mr. President’s anti-corruption crusade in the oil sector? Has he the nerve to turn his office into something more than an economic labyrinth and political jailhouse? If he fails, his name and reputation will suffer for it.

    There is no gainsaying the Nigerian corridor of power is booby trapped to thwart genius. A rabble of genii has fallen in recent past to her decadent pleasures and cruelties. By their deeds, they become a profanation of sterling stewardship in public office. After Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Reuben Abati to mention a few, one gets the feeling that entrusting a genius with a Nigerian public office is an exercise in futility. It’s akin to tying the Mediterranean with palm fronds for storage against drought.

    Time was, when the argument was entirely against the ‘system’ thus making a case for the genius. But a new school of thought emerges and it advances the perspective that the genius should no longer be let off the hook by the simple technicality of his perceived powerlessness against a corrupt system and hostile work environment. That is simply one way to look at it and it is a grossly skewed portrait of the status quo presented in defense of the genius.

    Managing a public office is no walk in the park, particularly in Nigeria. Yet the Nigerian genius with an Ivy League education and impressive track record eagerly accepts to serve the country, with promises of hope and positive change. It is always fascinating to see such individuals however, morph into grotesque apparitions of the patriots they were meant to become. Annoyingly, they do so with unpardonable cheek and a swivel-it-finger-in-your-face stance.

    Kachikwu should be different. He should be that interpreter of ‘change’ who keeps his wits about him. He shouldn’t fall to the lure of the decadent and all powerful ‘system.’ Can he?

    His predecessors suffered irreparable loss of self. Kachikwu shouldn’t. Avarice, extreme confidence and god-complex are familiar hyper-states that destroyed preceding genii. These familiar evils stifled their minds and enslaved them to vulgar luxury and other unimaginable obscenities. Lots of promising folk have extinguished in name and status on this charred, crimson path. It takes a man of unusual integrity and strong personality to tower above such decadence.

    In the unfolding drama of ‘change,’ greed is the depravity that Kachikwu should shun. The ‘young oil Turks’ and the aging cabal dominating the oil sector have overtime, evolved an enduring culture of acquisitiveness, self-centeredness and mediocrity as the benchmark of stewardship and moral fibre in the sector. With the connivance of the immediate past administration, they created and sustained a daemonic lyre of gluttony and lust as the language of transaction and service in the oil industry.

    Consequently, the need for competence and accountability was serially altered into an imperial hankering for unearned dividends and mechanised pilfering. Public service in the oil sector thus split in two, taking on the forms of a vulgar gladiatorship by perverse civil servants and leisure-class banditry by aberrant oil magnates.

    At the twilight of the last administration, Nigeria came face to face with the garish licentiousness and dishonesty of the characters that ran the oil industry aground. President Buhari swore to retrieve the country’s looted funds from these bandit breed. To this end, the nation is treated to a tragicomedy of the feverish hunt and prosecution of culprits at home and abroad. While it is too early to give the president kudos for operationalising his anti-corruption crusade beyond platitudinous jingle, one cannot but appreciate the haunted glares of the culprits as they scurry for safe havens abroad, their trails littered with their plundered and pasty spoils.

    Kachikwu had better take in the imagery of nemesis and remorse. Let it guide him as he serves as the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

    Lest we forget Kachikwu’s assurance to Nigerians that although the challenge of cleaning NNPC will be a bumpy ride, it will be exciting. He promised that it will eventually yield positive results. Positive results for whom? It’s about time the NNPC boss understood that Nigerians are more aware and interested in their affairs. Nigerians are paying his salary and they deserve more than his subtle retractions and fragile excuses.

    Until the lingering fuel scarcity became the plague of the country, fuel was being sold at N86.50 per litre. That pleasing reality eventually morphed into a grisly and enduring nightmare. Nigerians expect him to evolve a regime that would make fuel more affordable to the citizenry and eliminate insititutionalised corruption in the NNPC. Nigerians expect him to furnish the country periodically, with details of the workings and actual proceeds of the oil industry. It is not only the president that he is accountable to in such respect. There are a lot of other products refined from the nation’s crude oil; in the spirit of accountability and his touted love of transparency, let Kachikwu furnish Nigerians with transparent account of the workings of the oil corporation periodically. Nothing should be done in secret anymore.

    It’s about time Nigeria stopped watching helplessly as her public officers, NNPC top executives inclusive, meet with oil magnates in hotel lounges and suites abroad – I hope Kachikwu really understands this. Any such meeting done in secret with a select few often reek of suspicious or malicious intent against the progress of the nation’s oil sector and the country in general.

    It could be rewarding fellating Kachikwu’s ego but that would be disastrous to his persona and career as a public servant. Nigeria needs Kachikwu to evolve and uphold professionalism and a moral culture impervious to degeneration and machinations of the oil industry’s bogeymen.

    If Kachikwu succeeds at his current brief, the ricochet of his exploits would serve a greater purpose than justifying President Buhari’s second term agenda, if actually the president nurtures any such ambition. Besides ameliorating the pains of the citizenry, his sterling success and patriotism at his job, will stand him in good stead for more significant leadership role in future. Kachikwu needs to evolve an enduring moral code unyielding to any baggage from his past – if any such baggage actually exists – and amenable to higher responsibilities in future.

    Agreed, moral codes could be somewhat obstructive, relative and counter-productive, particularly when pitched against a vicious circle of leeches and reprobates but ultimately, moral codes are of inestimable benefits to civilisation. Without them, we are vulnerable to the degenerate barbarism of gluttony, amorality and wanton tyranny of the self-seeking and covetous. It was a lack of moral code and personal ethics that ruined the names and reputation of immediate past genii in Nigeria’s power circuits.

    Picture a future with an unsullied Kachikwu, Okonjo-Iweala, Babatunde Fashola, Reuben Abati and their likes in sensitive public offices and as drivers of the Nigerian State. Imagine a future whereby such men and women are peacefully ushered off the corridors of power after meritorious service in the interest of the collective – that would be a future to die for no doubt.

    Kachikwu should understand that public service and valour need to be humanely planned, not cashed in upon or taken advantage of with a haughty smirk and condescending smile. There are all sorts of questions and consequences to ponder before the Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, adopts his next economically or politically expedient measure.

    Let’s hope Kachikwu understands that at the end, he would be judged by how adroitly he scorns or tones to minimum, the arrogance implicit in leadership and the corruption characteristic of power. Right now, Kachikwu is too ordinary. Nigeria needs him to be extraordinary.

  • Taming Fayose and the judiciary

    Fayose has become not just an Ekiti nightmare and a national embarrassment but also a bad advertisement for the country in the international arena. Speaking recently during an intellectual engagement, at the University of Lagos, a visiting US scholar instinctively said America has its own equivalent of Fayose in Donald Trump, the Republican front runner in the November race for the White House. Both are easy preys to political enemies that have variously described them as ‘vacuous, rabid, hallucinating, lacking in depth, and having an infantile mind’. Substituting notoriety with popularity, Fayose often takes impetuous decisions such as dancing naked on the street without him realizing it.

    Last Wednesday was one of such occasions when Fayose during a workshop to promote women participation in politics, said without feeling – ‘I don’t know if there are missing girls. It is a political strategy, because I don’t think any girl is missing. If they are missing, let them find them’. As far as he is concerned, the Oby Ezekwesili-led #BringBackOurGirls campaigners that drew the attention of the international community to the plight of the abducted girls, are office seekers.  But what was galling, was that this was coming only two weeks after a high ranking British foreign service official disclosed that the abducted Chibok girls were indeed sighted inside Sambisa forest few days after their abduction.

    But first who is Ayo Fayose who was first foisted on Ekiti by Obasanjo in 2003? Before he was impeached in 2006, his tenure was marked by unprecedented level of violence resulting in the assassination of some prominent Ekiti sons. He later confessed, he ‘had to flee, (some claimed in the booth of his car) with all his ‘property left in the Government House’. He was apprehended by the EFCC and accused of financial mismanagement along other criminal charges. And  in his own words, “During the seven and half years of political wilderness, I was taken to court over what I knew nothing about 59 times, aside the 45 days I spent in Ikoyi Prisons during my trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)”. In 2011, he lost a senatorial election contest to Babafemi Ojudu with a margin of over 30,000.

    But the turning point came in 2014 when he allegedly received $2m from ex-President Jonathan to outwit his other PDP candidates in their party’s primaries.  And for the ‘coup against the Ekiti’, according to Dr Temitope Aluko, his alter ego and self-confessed partner in crime, ex-President Jonathan provided $37m  and  ‘1,040 recognised soldiers and another batch of 400 ‘unrecognised soldiers’ brought from Enugu in addition to  44 special strike teams brought in (with) Toyota Hilux buses from Abuja and Onitsha.’ The April 2014 battle was led by the then Minister for Police Affairs Adesiyan, Musliu Obanikoro, junior minister of defence, Brigadier General Aliu Momoh  with another contingent of 12,000 mobile police men, 26 sniffer dogs,15,000 NSCDC personnel’.

    It is on record that as governor-elect, he was accompanied to court by thugs who beat up the judge presiding over his eligibility case. He also employed the services of the thugs to chase 19 elected members of the state House of Assembly out of town while he ran the state with seven PDP members. His hand-picked cronies went on to win the subsequent election into the state and national houses of assembly having driven serious contenders out of town with the help of thugs. The opposition went to court to contest Fayose’s election on the basis of his constitutional banditry, his status as an impeached governor, and the use of military to win the flawed election. The Supreme Court however upheld Fayose’s election.

    In his inaugural address, Fayose offered ‘peace, prosperity, and progress, employment, food, and stomach infrastructure’. You can put tar on the road but if I don’t have a car and I’m hungry, then that tar is meaningless’. And in pursuit of his government policy of stomach infrastructure, he eats ‘boli’ roasted plantain and drink agbo ‘jedi’, (native concoction for pile) on the streets with his grass root supporters. Last December, he directed all civil servants across the state to come to Ado Ekiti for some cups of rice and chicken. Many spent a whole day only to receive chicks instead of chicken. Today, a state that introduced N5, 000 social welfare packages for the elderly under Fayemi is battling with unpaid five months salary arrears.

    Fayose has always tried to divert attention through repeated attacks on the person of President Buhari who has so far ignored his asinine theatrics. Perhaps the search for attention explains Fayose’s ill-adviced decision to play politics with the abducted Chibok Girls which has become a national tragedy. The irony is that like those PDP stalwarts that shared $2.1b loan earmarked for military hardware to fight the insurgency, Fayose who allegedly got $37m and about 30,000 security personnel to rig the 2014 election at a time our ill-equipped soldiers could not even defend their own barracks is culpable for the abduction of these innocent children.

    But who is to tame Fayose with the Supreme Court saying its hands are tied by its earlier flawed ruling despite the fresh evidence that showed the 2014 election was a sham (the military authorities retired Brigadier Momoh who anchored the rigging of the 2014 Ekiti election)? The buck stops on the table of Buhari and his APC- a party in government but not in power.

    The model builders that came up with the doctrine of ‘separation of powers’ spoke of ‘checks and balances’; but the theory in truth was designed to be a balance of terror. Both the legislature and judiciary are institutional tools which the executive as temporary custodian of state powers needs to manage society for good or bad over a given period often specified by the constitution.

    In the last 16 years, PDP as the ruling party has been able to use the judiciary as an accomplice in their members’ betrayal of our nation. Either in the electoral theft of opponents’ mandate, the collapse of banking sector and the stock exchange, oil subsidy fraud and the mismanaged of the privatization process, or the systematic looting of the nations resources, the judiciary played a supportive role. With the introduction of plea bargaining by the judiciary, enemies of state emerged from temporary detention to become governors, senators, king-makers and god fathers. Those the PDP power wielders could not bend in the judiciary, they break. Thus we had a Justice Isa Salami who was unjustly suspended and prematurely retired for ruling against PDP in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states.

    Besides the bizarre Supreme Court ruling in Ekiti and Rivers which seem to literarily challenge the people to embark on self-help, the judiciary appears not to be enthusiastic about the executive’s current war on corruption.  For instance all that was asked of Bukola Saraki, the Senate President was to defend himself against allegation of false declaration of assets. But this he has evaded in the last eight months with the connivance of the judiciary that has tried to undermine the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) of 2015. The judiciary behaves as if it is not vulnerable.

    That the tail is now wagging the dog with the likes of Fayose saying Buhari and APC have no capacity to rule, is the fault of President Buhari and his APC. The executive’s control of the awesome apparatus of state power is a reminder that the doctrine of separation of powers does not envisage the judiciary or even the legislature acting as if they are answerable to none.  If President Buhari and Odigie-Oyegun, the APC chairman, unfortunately, both non politicians, are however having problem as to how to wield power, they can consult Obasanjo, Jonathan, his godson and their PDP or create time to read Niccolo Machiavelli the founder of modern political science for his advice on the brutal reality of building a state. It is an affront for those who ought to be behind bars to test the resolve of custodian of state power.

  • Ambassador Sanu at 86

    Ambassador Sanu at 86

    Ambassador Olu Sanu, one of Nigeria’s most accomplished career diplomats, turned 86 on March 24. To mark the occasion, he made a public presentation of his eagerly awaited memoires, titled, ‘Audacity on the Bound; A Diplomatic Odyssey’ in Ibadan, his home town, on March 29, which was my own birthday. I had the privilege of reviewing the book. There was an array of dignitaries at the presentation, including his numerous friends, former professional colleagues and admirers from all over the country. These included General Yakubu Gowon, Chief Emeka Anyaoku (the Chairman), Alhaji Femi Okunnu, Alhaji Ahmed Joda, Chief Philip Asiodu, Amb. B.A. Clark, Amb. Tayo Ogunsulire and several of his former colleagues in the Nigerian diplomatic service. Their royal highnesses, the new Olubadan of Ibadan and the Alake of Egbaland were also there. It was a proud day for him and his family. To have written such excellent memoires at 86, mostly from memory, is a remarkable feat. His exceptional and hugely successful diplomatic career saw him serve as Ambassador in Addis Ababa, his first, Brussels (EEC), Washington (twice, first as a desk officer), China and Australia where his distinguished diplomatic career ended suddenly after 26 years of meritorious service to our country.

    Amb. Sanu received his secondary education at Ibadan Grammar School, and his university education at Howard and Harvard Universities in the US. He joined the new Foreign Service in 1958, after a year in the civil service of the old Western Region as an Assistant District Officer (ADO). He was not too happy in the Western Region. With a double masters’ degree in Economics and Public Administration from the prestigious Harvard University in the US, he felt he deserved better than being posted as an ADO to Ubiaja, a Western Region outpost in those days. In fact, as he writes, he was only grudgingly offered appointment as an administrative officer in Ibadan after a long, difficult and disagreeable interview.  His recruitment into the Foreign Service in 1958, in the second batch of such recruitment, provided him with the opportunity to show his intellectual and diplomatic mettle later in his distinguished diplomatic career. He says he was interviewed by Sir Samuel Manuwa of the Federal Civil Service Commission for only 15 minutes and was promptly offered appointment.

    Within two weeks of his appointment he was posted to the Nigerian Liaison Office in Washington for training. Nigeria was still a British colony and did not then have a full fledged Embassy in Washington. That was how his diplomatic career began. Now, only a few years after Howard he was back in Washington, this time as a full-fledged Nigerian young diplomat. He was at the new Nigerian Embassy in Washington when our national flag was hoisted in the Chancery on October 1, 1960. It was a proud moment for him and our country.

    At the Washington Embassy, he did so well that he earned the respect of his superiors as a promising young diplomat. But he soon got into trouble with the Foreign Minister, Jaja Wachuku, and his Ambassador in Washington, Chief Udochi, when he sent a report home that the Nigerian Economic delegation of 136 to Europe and North America, headed by the Minister of Finance, Chief Okotie-Eboh, was too large and wasteful. His report was audacious and right, but it was unsolicited and not the kind of advice needed or appreciated by his superiors. As punishment, he was posted from Washington to our Permanent Mission at the UN, then headed as PR by the legendary Chief Simeon Adebo.

    At the UN Chief Adebo read him the riot act and put him firmly in his place. But he also recognised his potential and exposed him for the first time to multilateral diplomacy in which he later became pre-eminent. He was assigned to the 5th Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), one of the most powerful committees at the UN. It was in this committee, made up mostly of Ambassadors, that budgetary issues at the UN are debated and determined. Amb. Sanu did so well in this committee that the UNSG, U.Thant, appointed him a member of the “Committee of 10 Wise Men’ set up to advise the UNSG on the administrative reform of the entire UN system. Chief Adebo was so impressed by Sanu’s diligence that he recommended him to Mr. Bode Wey, Secretary to the Prime Minister, for appointment as one of three Permanent Undersecretaries to assist Mr. Wey in the Cabinet Office. It was a mistake on the part of Chief Adebo. Great men make mistakes too. In anger, Mr. Wey who, as Secretary to the Prime Minister, was nominally Chief Adebo’s superior, got Sanu recalled from the UN and appointed the Chief of Protocol in the Foreign Ministry. It was a posting he did not like as it could be demeaning on occasions. But when Mr. Wey resigned in disgust in 1966 following the second military coup that brought General Yakubu Gowon to power, the change paved the way for Sanu to go to the Cabinet Office as one of three Permanent Undersecretaries.

    It was at the Cabinet Office that General Gowon, the new military head of state, who was good at spotting talent, discovered Sanu.  He promptly appointed him Ambassador to the OAU and the Court of Emperor Haille Selasie in Addis. This was during Nigeria’s civil war and Gowon needed a strong, versatile and steady hand in Addis to counter the powerful Biafran propaganda in the OAU. Amb. Sanu proved to be competent. Gowon sent several powerful delegations to Addis which included the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, federal commissioner for Information, Alhaji Femi Okunnu, federal commissioner for Works, Chief Philip Asiodu, permanent secretary, Mines and Power, Mr. Allison Ayida, permanent secretary, Finance, and Alhaji Ahmed Joda, all of whom  lent their enormous weight and experience to Amb. Sanu’s diplomatic efforts. In addition to his activities at the OAU, Amb. Sanu also collaborated with Professor Adebayo Adedeji, who was then the UN under secretary general for the ECA in Addis, to produce the Lagos Plan of Action, which was adopted by the OAU as an alternative economic strategy for growth in Africa. As a prescription for growth it was a masterpiece.

    It was from Addis that General Gowon again appointed him as Ambassador to Belgium and the EEC, succeeding the legendary Dr. Pius Okigbo. In Brussels, despite strong opposition from France, he was elected by the 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries as their leader in the complex and difficult negotiations that led to the conclusion by the EEC and the ACP of the Lome Convention. It was the first time in multilateral diplomacy that this kind of economic agreement and relationship had been successfully established, after 18 months of gruelling negotiations, with the powerful EEC countries. As he writes in his memoires it was the highlight of his diplomatic career. It earned him global respect as a multilateralist in diplomacy. Again, General Gowon reassigned him to Washington as Ambassador. Soon after General Gowon was toppled from power. His tenure in Washington was brief, but he managed to assuage deep US irritations about Nigeria’s policy in Angola where it had recognised the MPLA government there. Following the fall of Gowon from power, Ambassador Sanu was recalled to the Ministry where he served as head of the international organisations department. (IOD)

    After two years at headquarters in Lagos, the Obasanjo/Yar’adua military regime appointed him Ambassador to China and North Korea. He writes that he considered the posting punitive, as China was regarded as a hardship post. But undaunted, he worked very hard to promote economic cooperation between Nigeria and China which was making steady strides in the modernisation and transformation of its economy. Sadly, his efforts were undermined by his own government which was not really keen on fostering economic relations with China. Several official delegations went to China, but only as tourists, and not really to concretize economic agreements reached with China. He was frustrated but after some three years he was posted to Australia.

    At the time, he did not realise that Australia was going to be his last diplomatic posting. He was sent there ahead of the Meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government which President Shagari was to attend. As usual, Nigeria embarrassingly sent a delegation of over 130 even though the Australians had informed all participating countries that only five delegates from each country would be provided with the usual courtesies. Suddenly, and without any warning, query, or misdemeanour he was sent what he calls ‘a laconic letter’ from the Ministry that he had been retired from the diplomatic service by the new Buhari military regime. Altogether some 86 Foreign Service Officers, including many distinguished Ambassadors were peremptorily sacked.

    After his painful exit from the diplomatic service, he was appointed a Fellow in International Relations at the University of Ife, under a grant funded by the Ford Foundation. He was there until 1990 when an internal dispute in the Department of International Relations forced the Ford Foundation to withdraw its generous grant. He was promptly appointed by General Babangida as his special envoy to the Sudan six years after he was retired from the diplomatic service. When he was retired at 54, after 26 years in the Foreign Ministry, he had no house abroad, or in Ibadan, his home town. He had to start all over again. He has in the intervening years devoted his services to Ibadan where he is highly respected as a community leader. He has been happily married for decades with adorable children and grandchildren.

     

    My best wishes to him and his family.

  • Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and the burden of genius (1)

    •Intrigues as Petroleum Minister grapples with challenges of office

    In few months, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu will be seen as a national boon or disaster. He will be hailed as a round peg in a round hole or tirelessly maligned as the fig that lets down the leaf; the affliction that has to be concealed or expunged. Until then, Kachikwu will stew in metamorphosis. The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) dissolves into multiple identities characterised by the oil industry’s familiar bogeys, even as you read.

    His transformation is akin to Daniel Orowole Fagunwa’s mythical forest ghommid’s. Other beings pass through him  as if he were a wraith. He is like Fagunwa’s ghommid, who transforms into a tree, an antelope, a raging inferno, a bird, water and a menacing snake. While Fagunwa’s mythical creature assumes more or less the characteristics typical of its new category of being, Kachikwu struggles to preserve his individuality, mostly the capacity to think and act humanely, against the power and intimidation of Nigeria’s oil cabal.

    Yes, Kachikwu, despite his brilliance and touted vigour, may hardly be a match for Nigeria’s predatory band of oil Turks and cliques in the energy sector. But his office demands that he assumes a front, thus his frantic posturing and pretension to purpose and valour. It would be delightful however, to see Kachikwu succeed where his predecessors failed woefully but he needs generous doses of forthrightness to do that. He needs to be a man or the best form of public servant that his employer, President Muhammadu Buhari, wants him to epitomise. Can he?

    Despite his initial braggadocio or what is known in street parlance as Initial Gra Gra (IGG), Kachikwu seems woefully handicapped to effect the needed turnaround in the nation’s oil sector. Perhaps he isn’t, he simply glamourises the knack for making ill-advised commentary and pledges before assessing his capacity to withstand backlash and deliver on his words.

    Take for instance, his circus acts in the nation’s oil sector – his recent “I am not a magician” riposte to Nigerians groaning under the weight of the lingering fuel scarcity predates a recent report by The Cable, an online medium, that credited Kachikwu with the information that the nation’s refineries are working at 30 percent capacity as against the minimum 60 percent required to generate profit.

    He was quoted thus: “Personally, I will have chosen to sell the refineries, but President Buhari has instructed that they should be fixed. After they are fixed, if they still operate below 60 per cent, then we will know what to do…The 90-day ultimatum for the refineries to be fixed will end in December and Port Harcourt Refinery looks like the only one that will meet the deadline, but we will wait and see what happens at the end of the 90 days.”

    It is over 90 days and if you take the pains to skim over the folds of officialese and doleful cliffhanger nuggets contained in his disclosure, you just might find that Kachikwu may have tacitly prepared our minds for one of his several failures or his only failure perhaps. Earlier, he said that in view of the nation’s low refining capacity, there was need to establish more refineries in the country. “I am pushing to build new refineries next to our existing plants in order to boost the nation’s refining capacity for the common good,” Kachikwu stated, explaining that the new refineries will be developed by private investors and that NNPC will simply provide them spaces close to the existing refineries to enable them share key facilities such as pipelines and storage facilities.

    If you consider this in light of his alleged preference for selling off the refineries, you could be forgiven for getting lost in the NNPC head honcho’s maze of double speak and embarrassing retractions. Following his recent cancellation of the oil swap deals instituted by the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and his Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, the NNPC boss did a cartwheel to tactfully rescind his decision.

    Apologists of Kachikwu claimed he was only doing the president’s bidding but critics of the NNPC boss earnestly aver that President Buhari couldn’t have taken the decision without the knowledge and approval of the NNPC boss. Whatever the case, Kachikwu is either a talisman that the presidency reckons with or a human sound bite employed to unquestioningly rubber-stamp Mr. President’s caprices. Is he?

    It would be recalled that major oil tycoons became jittery and desperate to save their businesses in the wake of the NNPC’s cancellation of Offshore Processing Agreements (OPAs) and Crude Oil Swap (COS) deals entered with them. This was because their businesses plummeted in the absence of the several shady deals entrenched by the immediate past corrupt regime. Likewise, the federal government placed a ban on 113 oil vessels for perceived infractions. The presidency has since lifted the ban on the 113 tankers and the NNPC has tacitly reinstituted the controversial OPAs and COS, it would seem.

    Earlier, the Ahmed Joda-led Presidential Transition Committee had recommended to President Buhari to carry out a comprehensive audit of all OPAs and COS deals entered by the NNPC. The committee said the audit would help government identify and claim any reimbursements for excess crude oil lifted under the controversial OPA and swap arrangements to establish the quantity of products delivered based on a fair and transparent audit process. Kachikwu subsequently hinted that all Production Sharing Contracts, (PSCs), Joint Venture Contract Agreements (JVCAs) and all other contracts between the NNPC and its various partners would be reviewed to reflect actualities in the global oil and gas industry. He stated that as part of the measures to optimise the marketing of Nigeria’s crude oil and secure new market potential, the number of off-takers for the proposed 2015/2016 term contracts, which would emerge after a planned rigorous competitive bid had been pruned from 43 to 16. The corporation however, extended invitation to few oil companies affected by the cancellation of the deal.

    Despite Kachikwu’s show of running the process in the spirit of transparency, fears abound that the he is impotent against the intimidating clout and pressure from certain quarters that he favoured the same corrupt oil firms responsible for the misfortunes bedeviling the nation’s oil sector.

    Given his sterling achievements in academia and the private business sector, Kachikwu seemed every inch capable for the onerous task of sanitising the grossly corrupt and ailing oil sector, at his appointment as Minister of State, Petroleum Resources and NNPC boss. A doctor of Law, Kachikwu graduated with distinction from the University of Nigeria (UNN) Nsukka and he was the best graduating student from the Law School, winning seven of the available nine prizes in 1999. He holds the LLM Harvard Distinction and was best graduate in 1980 with specialisation in Energy, Petroleum Law and Investment. Kachikwu has more than 30 years experience in policy- making positions in the petroleum industry serving in various capacities thus he seems well equipped for the job but for a snag, he is a Nigerian genius.

    Nigerian genii seldom fluorish in public office. Ultimately, they serve as puppets or impractical characters enabling the greed and mediocrity of their principals or associates in corridors of power. Kachikwu, like such genii, has betrayed little character or justifiable individuality so far.

    However, in the wake of his controversial “I am not a magician” statement and his subsequent apology, Nigerians, despite their impatience, need to exercise greater patience with him. His high office couldn’t have obliterated his fabled genius, as it did, the smarts of his predecessors after all.

    Yet if a public officer truly reflects the character of his principal or employer, the presidency becomes the teat from which Kachikwu sucks his new identity. The impact so far, has been enlightening. Nonetheless, Kachikwu is either a failure or success in process.

     

  • Not the Buhari identity

    There is hardship in the land today, let us not mince words about it. And the suffering majority is angry; an anger borne out of hunger and frustration. Nigerians did not expect what they are getting from the present administration. They knew that things were bad, terribly bad before the last presidential election, but they were hopeful of a better tomorrow under a new government. So, they went for change, coincidentally, ‘’change’’ was the slogan of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which wrested power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    The people did not expect things to be rosy under the APC government from day one, but they did not also expect that they would be called upon to make more sacrifices before things got better. To be sincere, Nigerians have made a lot of sacrifices in the past. While their leaders were stealing the nation blind, they were living and sleeping in hunger. Many families were virtually fasting daily because they could not get food to eat.

    Nigerians voted for President Muhammadu Buhari to wipe away their tears. After much suffering under successive PDP administrations for 16 years, they were looking forward to things being different under Buhari. Things may yet be different under this administration, but so far the suffering is something else. There is nothing cheery about what the people have been going through in the past 10 months. It is as if nothing has changed in terms of the government in power. Why are things so hard? When will they get better?  Are we still under Jonathan?  Some are wont to ask. We are not under Jonathan. But, if we are to believe the present government, we are still suffering from the mess it left behind.

    The suffering masses are bearing the brunt of this mess. They have been wondering whether they made a mistake by voting for ‘’change’’. They have been criticising the government for not improving their lot despite its election promises. They have become tired of hearing that the Jonathan administration left behind a mess. They already know that; they are only interested in what the Buhari administration is doing to clear the mess.

    The economy keeps going down, with the exchange rate of about N300 to the dollar, caused by the falling oil price. The industries are not running at full capacity because of unstable power supply and what some have termed harsh foreign exchange (forex) policy and to compound it all is the biting fuel scarcity. In the past three months, motorists have been going through hell trying to get fuel for their vehicles. In a society where electricity is unstable, you can imagine what many are going through to get fuel to power their generators at home and in their small shops.

    Many of these budding entrepreneurs, such as barbers, welders, fashion designers and printers have folded up because of light. Where will they get money for fuel when business is not booming? The fuel crisis was never this bad even under the worst of administrations. In the tense days of the late Abacha when Nigerians were going on strike almost everyday the fuel crisis was not this menacing. Even when we went on strike over the fuel price hike under Jonathan the situation was not this serious. Today, marketers are also blaming the ‘harsh’ forex policy for their inability to import fuel, leaving the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to carry the whole weight of the problem on its head.

    When will respite come? May? No, not again, says Minister of State for Petroleum Dr Ibe Kachikwu, who has now changed it to April7. So, in the circumstance, our suffering and the long queues at filling stations continue until  then. For now, the government should put some palliatives in place to cushion the people’s suffering. At least if fuel scarcity is not going to end soon, the government should do something about power supply. It should let there be light so that we will no longer rely on generators, which require fuel to run, for domestic and business uses. It is sad seeing Nigerians on queue at filling stations with generator fuel tanks because the outlets are not ready to dispense petrol in jerry cans.

    They sell the product at an exorbitant rate of N150 per litre yet their pumps do not measure up. The pumps have been tampered with to shortchange customers. What people are buying is less than what is being sold to them. Almost all the filling stations are guilty of this practice and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) is looking the other way or pretending not to know what is happening. DPR knows what is happening, but it cannot act because some of its top officials are part of this huge scam. All the filling stations have made a killing from this fuel scarcity and their prayer is that may it never end.

    The government must come to our rescue before these Shylock marketers and dealers finish us off. At the end of the day, it is the government, especially the president, that will carry the can for what is happening and not these people who believe that they are in business to profiteer. The earlier the government did something the better. Mercifully, President Buhari knows that the people have been criticising his administration for not meeting their expectations. He has promised that in the next three years they will see wonders.

    We believe him, but he should know that his first year has not been impressive. Will this be the face of his administration? I do not think this will be the Buhari identity. Having said that, the president must convince Nigerians that he is equal to the task at hand.  If he must know, many have given up on his administration  because, according to them, morning shows the day. So, the sooner he delivers on his election promises the better for him and his party. Otherwise, there is political danger ahead!

  • A sure antidote to peace

    A sure antidote to peace

    Those who accuse the police of being rude and crude should now be swimming in their senseless obstinacy. Why can’t we, for once, give them the credit they deserve?

    Consider their recent breakthrough which nobody, including the authorities and those fastidious fellows who hide under all manner of nomenclatures, such as social critic, columnist and activist, to scold and scorn the police, noticed. It is yet to be acknowledged, let alone commended. Even the media have failed to herald it with the publicity blitz accorded such revolution in better climes.

    The police have eventually found an answer to the disruption of public peace which plagues our polity, rendering all efforts at good governance a futility and giving our patriotic public officials nightmares.

    Abusing a public official – name calling, sneering, mocking and disparaging – by making remarks the police believe to be uncomplimentary about him or her can cause a breach of the peace, the police have just discovered. Stop such abuses and what do you have? Peace. Peace and peace.

    To test the efficacy of this landmark theory, which has been hailed for its profundity in intellectual circles, the police have bundled Citizen Deji Babington-Ashaye, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporter, before a magistrate in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, charging him with intent to disrupt public order by calling the distinguished Senator Kashamu Buruji “a drug baron and jail breaker”.

    Babington-Ashaye, the police said, conducted himself in a manner that could lead to a breach of peace by using offensive words on Kashamu on a PDP WhatsApp group called “PDP match to victory”. He reportedly committed the said offence between March 13 and 14 at a location opposite the Community High School, Ogere Remo, according to the prosecuting officer, Sunday Eigbejiale, who claimed that the accused also challenged Kashamu to travel to the United States. Babington-Ashaye pleaded not guilty to the charge. He was granted bail and the matter was adjourned till March 30.

    Ever since this matter went to court, there has been peace not only in Ogun East, the constituency of the distinguished senator, but all over the state. Now, people are aware of the grave legal and security implications of “using offensive words” on a public official.

    Apparently confused about the workings of the new formula, which a police source told me would be deployed in all the other 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a student was asking me the other day to explain the connection between the senator’s private and personal peace and that of the state. He asked: “Couldn’t the senator have sued for libel? Is defamation an offence against the state? Is it criminal? How can abusing a senator or any public official spark a breach of peace?”

    Not being a law enforcement officer or a legal expert, I could only try to explain to the fellow how it all began. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) actually attempted to seize Kashamu and repatriate him to the United States to, according to the agency, answer for alleged drug offences. Kashamu locked himself in, defended his innocence and screamed that he would rather commit suicide than allow himself to be bundled onto a plane and freighted to the United States.

    The matter went to court and the NDLEA was asked to follow the due process, after it pleaded that it had the right to seize Kashamu and repatriate him to the United States where it said some unnamed accomplices of his had been jailed. The senator said in actual fact there was a case, but it had been tried in Britain and he had been exonerated. I am not the “Alhaji” they are looking for, he told the world. If there was such a person, he was quoted as saying, it was his brother who died and was buried a long time ago.

    Now imagine what havoc would have been caused if the police had allowed Babington-Ashaye’s defamation to stick. Will Kashamu’s constituents allow their distinguished senator’s character to be so hacked in such a merciless manner without rising up in arms? Wouldn’t a war have broken out if the police had not moved that fast?

    Why should Babington- Ashaye call Kashamu a drug baron and expect the police to stay calm, knowing that this could be a serious indictment on the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if it was allowed to fester?

    Does a citizen’s right to free speech include the right to heap insults on a senator, knowing that such insults could breach the peace? Is it not taking free speech to a ridiculous level when a constituent or any person for that matter, no matter how important, tells a senator where he should travel to?”

    All those senators who have been unjustly maligned can now rejoice. The police, I am told, will soon press this innovation to their service so as to convince those who may think the action against Babington-Ashaye is a flash in the pan.

    To be counted among such lucky lawmakers is distinguished Senator Dino Melaye, who has been lampooned as a spendthrift and an irresponsible man on account of what they call his “inability to keep a decent matrimonial home”. The police, I am sure, know the implication of allowing such a character assassination to go unchallenged.

    What was Melaye’s offence? He expounded a powerful theory that only years of research by social science giants working under the best of conditions could have produced. He said he had discovered that to save the naira, the symbol of our economy, we should not just embrace local goods and services, we should marry “made in Nigeria” women.

    The innuendo, said his critics, was unambiguous. He was accused of disdaining the respected Edo State Comrade Governor Adams Oshiomhole whose charming wife Iara is from Cape Verde.

    Melaye was savaged from all sides. He was reminded of his crashed marriage and what they called his champagne life of wine and women. Peter Okhiria, the governor’s spokesman, hacked him down. He said: “The liberty of free speech guaranteed in the hallowed chambers does not impose lunacy on anyone to disparage other Nigerians. He is a man known for his vainglorious rodomontade and the childish display of his ostentatious lifestyle, which complement his love for foreign items.”

    Okhiria called Melaye “a court jester” who is “tactless”. “We advise that Melaye should mend his ways with his ex-wife and concubines,” he admonished  the senator.

    Now, let’s imagine the police not acting on these scurrilously seditious comments. Won’t the good people of Kogi West, whom the senator represents, rise in defence of their beloved one? Won’t there be a breakdown of law and order?

    A source has just told me of plans to deploy the new formula against those who still deride the distinguished Senator Sani Ahmed Yerima, the former Zamfara State governor, for his conjugal adventure with a girl they still describe as a 13-year-old minor, several years after the ceremony.

    Why refer to a matter that could not be prosecuted even when it was very hot? The other day when the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) brought the former governor to court for allegedly diverting N1 billion meant for the repair of a broken dam, there were suggestions that he should be tried under the Sharia law, which he introduced as governor. The insinuation was not lost. Should Yerima be convicted, he would have his arm chopped off. Yerima’s supporters were enraged. The ICPC officials had to be hustled out of the area by heavily armed security men.

    With the new formula, such an uprising of an otherwise good people provoked by a verbal assault on their dearest one will be prevented and public peace and order will be assured. Not so?

    Just before the Rivers State rerun, Governor Nyesom Wike was being disparaged as one who rode to power on broken limbs, his election a blot on the political landscape. He swam onto the seat in the blood of innocent people, some said. Others, who obviously are His Excellency’s bitter political opponents, were just short of describing him in such sacrilegious terms as “a cultist” and “father of militants”, particularly when a man was beaten up and burnt alive.

    Sending some of those suspected to have launched such verbal assaults  before a magistrate will surely ensure that the peace so much desired by all is installed.

    Nor should Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose bother any more about those who describe him as a “former bus conductor”,  “stunts man” and “failed chicken farmer”, and his popular “stomach infrastructure” policy  a mere deceit. The law will now take care of such felonies.

    For two weeks, the social media have been awash with the news that Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai slapped his deputy, Mr Bala Bantek. His Excellency said yesterday that it was all lies.

    The aim of this “wicked’ rumour”, obviously, was to disrupt the state’s peace, which the law on illegal preaching is supposed to keep and distract His Excellency from his interesting spar with Senator Shehu Sani. Has any governor ever slapped his deputy? The purveyors of this seditious rumour, I am told, will soon be taken before a magistrate.

    Now watch out, all those whose pastime is to ridicule our public officials in the social media – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, BlackBerry and others – there will be no hiding place any more. The police will be busy combing such sites for deriding comments on public officials which can cause a breach of peace.

    Ever seen a more revolutionary crime prevention device?

  • Lagos-Ibadan expressway is jinxed

    The rains are here. Thank God. The heat was becoming unbearable and many times I thought perhaps I was in hell because hell cannot be hotter than this. I hope America will experience the same kind of heat we had this year  in Nigeria to shut the loud mouths of those members of the Republican Party who deny the scientificity of global warming. Throughout the dry season from December 2015 to March, many of us anxiously looked forward to substantial work being done on the Lagos – Ibadan expressway. But alas nothing was done and hundreds of people are still dying needlessly on the most travelled road in Nigeria. Even if our government does not care for the people using the road, it should be concerned about the economic damage this bad road is doing  to the country. This road is the artery connecting the major port of Lagos which is also the economic nerve centre of the country to the north and other parts of the south of the country. Rudimentary knowledge of economics would indicate the fundamental importance of transportation in the life of a country. A country that is not in constant movement is a dead country. In our situation where we do not have railways, and where there is only primitive use of water-ways and our aviation leaves much to be desired, we just cannot do without tolerably good roads.

    We have been given some reasons for this delay ranging from various lawsuits in the courts to the need to secure adequate funding. The way things are going on in this country, we may die under the weight of irresponsible litigations. As for the lawsuits, there is need for out of  court settlement. The owner of the company suing the government is a well known patriot. Certainly, he will not like to be associated with a situation that has led to the death of many innocent struggling Nigerians whose only crime if crime it is, is that they  are struggling for their economic sustenance through the use of this jinxed road. This trajectory of out of court settlement must be embarked upon immediately. It is not one of these issues that must be allowed to linger on indefinitely. We just cannot wait. Any further deaths on the road is blood in the hands of those who should fix the road. If out of court arbitration fails, this government should be strong enough to damn the consequence in the public interest. I mean heaven will not fall! The government which owns the land should declare the company a trespasser and build the road. Enough of Turenci!

    I do not know how difficult it is for this government to borrow money for high priority and urgent infrastructural development. I am sure a loan can be easily syndicated through a consortium of banks that are daily declaring humongous profits. Funding a project like this should be regarded as part of their corporate social responsibility and support for  national economic recovery. If banks for whatever reasons would not lend to government, then the pensions commission should be approached to invest part of the trillions of Naira pension fund on the project on purely commercial basis. Their investment would be recovered by tolling the road and giving the power to collect the tolls to reputable banks rather than to government agencies to avoid sure and certain embezzlement.

    In a depressed economy like ours, road construction may actually be a panacea for employment and joblessness. In other words, we can kill two birds with one stone. I am therefore suggesting to this government a policy of country-wide road reconstruction as a way of reflating the economy, using if necessary, local banks as funding agencies and making sure all the roads are tolled. Priority roads all over the world are built and maintained in this way thus ensuring that road users pay for construction and maintenance of national highways. What Nigerians want is functionality of infrastructure. When available our people are prepared to pay for services. In the process of constructing these roads, young Nigerian civil engineers must be allowed to work along with whatever companies are given the contracts so that in future there will be a pool of people knowledgeable in road maintenance. The time has also come when we should begin to use interlocking cement and stone blocks in making critical roads to ensure  that they last long. This  policy  easily recommends itself because of our recent self-sufficiency in cement, thanks in this respect to private entrepreneurs like Dangote and Lafarge. I have said it before and I will say it again: one of our problems in Africa is that we are slaves to economic  orthodoxy. If something has not been done before, we are not prepared to try it yet the only way we as a country can make a mark in this world is to travel  the path least travelled. The greatest resource a country can have is its people. If well trained, they can be mobilized with committed and dedicated leadership to take their country to the highest point of development. We cannot say we do not have sufficiently well trained people to accomplish this rudimentary work of road construction.

    An  American academic colleague of mine  wondered recently  why Nigeria  does not have functioning infrastructure, railways, roads, reliable aviation, regular power supply and things that work generally considering the fact that there are Nigerians in the USA helping to build power stations and pipelines carrying fuel  across the country and also participating in the space projects. Nobody has an answer to our situation of arrested development. As I write this, there is pitch darkness where I am. The generator has broken down as any mechanical thing  is bound to do and the so-called privatized power companies have failed to generate and distribute power to my area of the country. Sometimes I worry if my grandchildren will in future be writing about power  after I would have passed on. There is no serious indication that this will not be the case unless God has mercy on us.

    I beg the people in authority to rise to the occasion and reconstruct this Lagos -Ibadan road and stop the carnage. I hope we do not get to a stage in this country when out of our collective frustration, citizens may be forced to take those responsible for this carnage to the world court to face charges of deliberate and premeditated murder of members of the traveling public.

    This article was written before the ghastly accident that took the life of Miss Rosemary Asuquo Nkanta an angel if ever there was one. This innocent soul came all the way from Jos where she was on the NYSC to join her former colleagues in REDEEMER’S UNIVERSITY  in FEAST of PRAISE (FOP) She was on her way to Lagos to fly back to Jos. She never made it. She was involved in an accident that took her life  near Sagamu.  She graduated First Class last September. The Nigerian condition killed this innocent soul. May God forgive all those who were directly or vicariously responsible for her death. Adieu Rosemary. May God condole your parents and all your friends and teachers at Redeemers University. You were one in a million.

     

    Corrigendum 

    My article on the Polisario Front last week contained an error. Instead of UNITA I wrote SWAPO. The Nigerian General who commanded UN troops  was Major – General Chris Garba. I omitted his first name.

  • Nigerians want Buhari to be magician

    For the benefit of Ibe Kachikwu and other ministers who do not know how their cars and generators are fuelled, let me relive my experience in the filling stations between Thursday and Sunday last week. I had missed Dr. Kachikwu Wednesday’s ‘I am not a magician capable of conjuring the availability of fuel’ because I left Lagos early to attend the inaugural lecture of a colleague at Babcock University.

    On Thursday morning, I opted to return home and work from my library after almost three hours of fruitless effort to join Lagos-Ibadan express road through Otedola estate gate as a result of traffic gridlock created by those engaged in panic buying of petrol and possible sabotage by independent oil marketers trying to exploit Kachikwu’s gaffe.

    But the option of working from home was aborted by lack of electricity. I then chose to walk across to a nearby filling station with a 10 litre keg. What I ran into was a fierce battle between motorists, hundreds of men and women with kegs and others with their generators. Disappointed, I returned home opting to sit in front of the house since staying inside was not a choice because of the heat. My experience on Friday and Saturday was not different except that on Saturday, some gun-wielding policemen had joined the desperate crowd.

    Initially I thought they were drafted down to provide order but it turned out they were also in search of fuel for their patrol vehicles. Relief finally came for me on my way from Mass on Easter Sunday. I got fuel into the car after about two hours on the queue but the station manager insisted he had an order not to sell into kegs. We moved to the next filling station where a young nursing mother I later discovered was a reporter with Radio Nigeria fought her way through the crowd to drag the station manager down from his office. She got 20 litres for herself and 10 litres for her senior professional colleague.

    As we moved to where we parked our cars, a young woman with about four months old baby pleaded with the Radio Nigeria reporter that she also be introduced to the station manager who had by then escaped from the surging crowd. But sighting the reporter’s baby in the car, she reached for her bag of wits and said all she wanted as dowry for her cute baby girl was 10 litres of fuel. The two nursing mothers were still engaged in serious haggling as I drove off. This sobering experience exemplifies what ordinary Nigerians are going through all over the country where pump price of a litre of oil is reported to range between N150 and N170. Whereas before what Bola Tinubu described as Kachikwu’s flippancy and as arrogance by some others, it took less than an hour to fuel your car at petrol filing stations and with a tip of about N200, your jerry can be filled up.

    But it is now pure academic whether Kachikwu’s indiscretion fuelled the current panic buying by desperate Nigerians or created an atmosphere for sabotage by independent marketers who had publicly claimed government foreign exchange policy which limited the share of their members importation to 20% compared to NNPC’s 80% would not provide succour for Nigerians since their members control all the storage facilities needed by NNPC. The buck stops at the table of President Buhari who appointed Kachikwu who the APC National Vice Chairman, South-south, Prince Hilliard Eta claimed “ ‘has not entirely cast off the orientation of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP where he was”, and, who the Trade Union Congress’ (TUC) has advised to resign honourably. It is on record that Kachikwu, since his appointment, has made a number of controversial pronouncements that were out of tune with APC policy statements.

    It is however a strange coincidence Kachikwu’s greatest supporters in his current travails are the likes of Chief Ebenezer Babatope, PDP BOT member, and Niger Delta Indigenous Movement For Radical Change, NDIMRC as well as NNPC which claims to be ‘working with Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), oil majors and over 1,000 NNPC staff, nationwide to ensure we overcome the obstacles in the distribution of the petroleum products’.

    But what is not in doubt is that Kachukwu, who like Okonjo-Iweala, is a creation of the media which often erroneously believe success in the private sector will necessarily translate to success in government. But such comparison can be odious. In the World Bank as in Kachikwu’s oil multinational company, decisions are collegiate.

    Matters are not helped by the fact that those the media oversell often become arrogant. Okonjo-Iweala, a creation of the media, who was said never to have read economics as a first degree insisted on earning salary denominated in dollars before accepting Obasanjo’s ministerial appointment as minister of finance. She resigned when she was deployed to another ministry. And it will be recalled how she arrogantly talked down on protesters of fuel subsidy removal informing the uninformed Nigerians why government owed it a duty to pay those who spent their money to supply fuel to government.

    It turned out she was paying those who allegedly forged papers to collect about N1.6 trillion from government. The story with import waivers was not different. Under the watch of Okonjo-Iweala, who with the media never did wrong as minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, the CBN was turned to an ATM machine by President Jonathan and the office of the National Security Adviser became a piggy bank for PDP dealers and wheelers. President Buhari however now has an opportunity to prevent the emergence of another arrogant media created Okonjo-Iweala who thinks Nigeria owes him gratitude for agreeing to serve.

    As for the independent marketers who were in disarray after Buhari’s election but now insist government policies cannot work without them, I have searched without finding their contributions to the economy.

    They collect our scarce foreign exchange to import fuel at a mark-up price; the Nigerian taxpayers foot the cost of demurrage in case of unexpected problems in the ports. And when government delays payment, taxpayers are called upon to defray interests they incurred in their banks. In the circumstances, one does not need to be a World Bank expert to know that those who fry and package plantain chips and their counterparts in the pure water business contribute more to the economy than those who have become a leach on the economy.

    Nigerian miracle seekers voted Buhari because they wanted him to perform magic. This is not an impossible task because modern human management itself is a science governed by the same scientific laws which many consider as magic. Buhari therefore doesn’t need to be reminded by the Trade union Congress (TUC) that those who claim not to be ‘magicians capable of conjuring availability of fuel’ cannot help him fulfil the aspirations of miracle seekers that voted him into power.