The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  •  The other Ese Orurus

    It took the case of Ese Oruru to open our eyes to the sordid act going on in some parts of the country. It is something that many will never believe can happen in our country. But, it did and from the look of things, it has been going on for years. The affected families could not talk because the system stilled their voices. The best they could do was to blow ‘’muted trumpet’’. Where they lodged complaints, they were denied fair hearing – at police stations, emirs’ palaces and Sharia commissions.

    The families were alone, all alone. Some are still alone today despite the public outcry over Ese’s case. Ese is lucky; she has since been reunited with her family after a seven-month sojourn in another land. She was allegedly abducted from Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, taken to Kano, converted to Islam and married by his suspected abductor, Yunusa Dahiru popularly known as Yellow. Yellow was a regular face at Ese’s mother’s canteen where he and his friends hanged out.

    It is not impossible that he might have developed interest in the  girl there. But as a much older person, he should have known that Ese, who was then 13, is not ripe for an affair. But he was overwhelmed by what he wanted to eat. Using guile and subtlety, he tricked the girl out of Yenagoa and took her to his Tofa hometown in Kano State. His parents rather than ask him how he came about the girl when they were not married kept quite. They were happy that their son has brought a ‘wife’ home. Just like that; is that how to marry? If Ese were to be their daughter would they have been happy if a man took her away like that?

    Yellow, who appeared in court on Tuesday, is claiming that he and Ese are in love. Well, at 18 since that is the age he is claiming, he may know the meaning of love. Besides, he is street wise since he has been fending for himself out there in Bayelsa far from his Kano home state, where his parents live. Ese cannot be said to be as smart as Yunusa and as such she can easily fall prey to his antics. She may have been attracted to fine boy Yellow without knowing what she was getting herself into. Can that be said to be love? This is why parents, especially mothers, should keep an eye on their daughters. I believe that Ese’s mother should also share in the blame of what happened to her child. Yellow has even indicted her with his claim that she was aware of his affair with Ese

    We cannot run away from the religious, ethnic and cultural dimensions of this abduction saga. The culture of Bayelsa and Kano is different. Bayelsa is predominantly a Christian state; Kano is mostly populated by Muslims. In the former, minors are not given out early in marriage; in the latter it is the norm to get girls married at a tender age.  Former Zamfara Governor Ahmed Sani Yarima, who introduced penal Sharia law in his state in 2000, showed the world that there is nothing wrong in marrying a minor when he took a 13-year-old Egyptian girl for wife over five years ago. His action generated controversy, but he got away with it.

    He knew that he could not have tried that nonsense in Egypt without paying dearly for it. This was why he brought the girl, whose father is his driver, to Nigeria to consummate the marriage. Yellow was only following the footstep of northern leaders like Yarima, but unlike his role model he lacks the resources to satisfy his lust. Only few northerners will see something wrong in what Yellow did because majority of them are involved in the practice. So, why won’t Yellow’s father defend his son and declare that ‘’Ese is in love with my son”. Love? What does a 13-year-old girl know about love?

    Ese epitomises other girls who have suffered similar fate and are being held against their parents wish in Kaduna, Bauchi and Zamfara states. 16-year-old Ifeoma Nichodemus was abducted in Zaria, Kaduna State, in May 2014 by a neighbour, simply named Abdullahi. She has been renamed Aisha. Blessing Gopep, 13,  was abducted in August 2015 by two men, simply named Iliya and Umaru in Bauchi. She now bears Mariam. Linda Christopher, 16, was abducted by a man named Shagari in November 2015 in Bauchi. She is now known as Aisha. 13-year-old Progress Jacob was abducted last January by one Musa in Bauchi. She has been renamed Aishat. Lucy Ejeh was abducted at 15 in October 2009 by one Awaisu in Zamfara. She has been renamed Lewusa. Now 20, Lucy has spent five years in a strange territory without her parents’ consent.

    These are the cases we know of because the families have been emboldened to come out following Ese’s case. Many more may still be out there that we do not know about because their families may be shy to come out and tell their stories. These girls deserve their freedom too, just as Ese and 15-year-old Patience Paul, who has been let go in Sokoto after being held for six months. This thing did not just start today. According to Kano State Chapter of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Chairman Bishop Ransome Bello, it has become a ‘’regular occurrence’’ that Christian leaders have resigned to fate.

    It is sad that a thing like this is happening in our country and right under the noses of some of our leaders, who are now feigning ignorance. If the media had not latched on to the Ese case, it is possible that she may still be in Yellow’s home today.

    There is no other name to call this practice than indecent, barbaric and bad. No religion supports the abduction of a minor for marriage because marriage is a union of two consenting people. Northerners may be in support of this indecent practice because it favours the region in the sense that its boys are winning more converts into Islam. But how will they feel if their girls should start to abduct boys of other faith and bring them home for marriage? Will they accept such boys as their in-laws and allow them to stay in the family home? In this wise, I know that what is sauce for the goose will not be sauce for the gander.

    If they cannot bear to see their girls bring those they refer to as kafir home for marriage, why then are they comfortable with their boys doing to others what they would not want done to them?  The  media has not done anything bad in its handling of this matter because there is no way it could have done its job without stepping on powerful toes;  the toes, that is, of those that did not want the story out.  The fact is the North must rise as one to stop this indecent practice of snatching little girls and forcefully converting them to Islam before marriage. Force, the Yoruba say, is not applicable in buying and selling

  • PMB: Don’t we need to tackle these corruption pillars right away?

    President Buhari’s War on Corruption is starting a revolution in our land. Of course, most Nigerians are still sceptical, but the President’s resoluteness is gradually building trust, and even excitement. It is becoming believable that large numbers of the leading citizens of our country are likely to hear the prison doors slam behind them – for abusing our people’s trust and brutalizing our country. Panic is growing among the most influential and most powerful men and women of our land, and the euphoria of owning enormous bank accounts (and cash warehouses) of stolen public money has turned into a nightmare.

    But how can the war against corruption be possibly won if certain factors in our practice of politics remain unchanged? I refer to the use of huge amounts of money by our politicians in all aspects of politics. We have reached a point where every politician must somehow bring incredible amounts of money into politics, and spend incredible amounts on politics on a daily basis, with the assurance of earning bountiful profits therefrom. Politics is no longer about serving the people and the country; it is about money – about being able to find the money to stay in the game, and about coming out at the end with indefensibly large fortunes.

    Things were not like this before – at least, until as recently as the last years of the 1990s. When my people sent for me to come home from University College Ibadan in 1964 to stand election to become their representative in the Nigerian House of Representatives, they knew that I was only a Graduate Student and that I had no money, and indeed no assets, anywhere (besides a used Volkswagen Beetle which I was using for my Ph.D. research).Yet, when I sent back home to say that I could not face an election because I had no money, they got angry with me – and they forgave only when I went home, penitently apologized, and surrendered to their will. They said I didn’t need any money – and I hardly spent any. Yet, I was winning the final contest very grandly until the party I belonged to decided that we should boycott the election because of the massive rigging going on in some other parts of Nigeria. In 1979, I won the election to the Nigerian Senate with almost no money. In 1999, one my young close friends won election to the position of governor upon only a meagre budget. These experiences were by no means unique; they were more or less general.

    Unhappily, things have changed totally in the past 15 years. The whole electoral process has become so viciously corrupted and monetized that no politician can now win his party’s nomination without vomiting a whole fortune, and every candidate for the final contest in any election must borrow or steal enormous fortunes to be competitive at all. One of my”sons” had to borrow N450 million to win a senatorial seat. Another worked through his businessman brother to raise N700 million, mostly by borrowing, to win a senatorial seat. One father in a South-west state is said to have sold his house to help his son win his party’s gubernatorial nomination. Unfortunately, his son lost to another candidate who could wield a larger arsenal of cash. These experiences are by no means unique; they are common in virtually all parts of Nigeria.

    The typical Nigerian elected public official (at federal, state or local government level) is therefore not a public servant at all. He is a greedy, money-grubbing, money-stealing, monster. He is desperately driven by the urgency to pay the debts he contractedfor gettinginto the position he occupies – and then return home stinking rich. This is his real full-time job; his duties as a legislator or executive public official are, quite often, entirely secondary. And this is a very major pillar of Nigeria’s public corruption. It is the reason why members of the Nigerian government at all levels go to great inventiveness to find ways to get big shares of public money. It is also the reason why they must give their subordinates and officials sumptuous accesses to public money. In effect, the Nigerian president, governor or local government chairman is a coordinator and purveyor of theft and corruption. Nigerian legislators must claim a phoney “sovereignty” for the legislative body they belong to – because they need to be able to corner off much of public money for sharing among them. It is in this way that corruption became the foundation of Nigeria’s culture of governance.

    But that is not all. As the widely impoverished Nigerian populace became aware of the great wealth being stolen by their public officials, they gradually became adepts at taking some share of the stolen money. Every public official is therefore forever confronted by his constituents for money and financial support – money for basic feeding of their families, for paying children’s school fees, for paying hospital bills, for meeting funeral expenses, wedding expenses, travel expenses, ritual expenses, etc. Among the impoverished elite, most have learned to live (and even to become rich) on “dignified” handouts by public officials. As for the impoverished masses of the people, there is no time or place for dignity – and their demands for money from their public officials can often be quite brutal. A local party dignitary forced his legislator to buy him a used car; four weeks later, he was furiously angry with the legislator – because the legislator had meanwhile not given him any money for four weeks! It is that brutish.

    Still, that is not all. Political meetings are the main vehicle of the democratic political process, and such meetings are supposed to be gatherings of independent citizens coming together to consider the affairs of their groups or parties, communities, districts, states or country. But in the sickening slush that Nigerian politics has become, political meetings have become big money affairs. The party or leader or representative that calls a meeting must now put up enormous amounts of money to underwrite it – in various handouts to each person who comes: travelling money, feeding money, lodging money (if the meeting spills from one day to the next), pocket money to return home with. Nigeria hardly ever experiences today the kind of political meetings that my generation of political activists knew –gatherings of independent and self-supporting citizens, proudly coming to hear, express their minds, and contribute. Even the smallest political meeting of today demands a mighty budget and puts a big financial burden on the politicians.

    So, each politician or elected public official spins constantly in a whirlwind of frenetic material and financial demands and, therefore, his need for stolen public money becomes larger and larger and more and more pressing. It is to be wondered how our present legislators are coping with the changed situation being created by the Buhari War on Corruption. These men and women entered, as usual, into huge debts to win elections in 2014 -15, hoping to have access as usual to vast amounts of stolen public money. But now the Buhari revolution is frightening people away from stealing and sharing public money. How will these men and women fare?

    In summary, the Buhari presidency must delve right-away into this problem of political monetization with a view to curbing it. Otherwise, it will be impossible to carry through with the War on Corruption. In many countries, there are laws controlling and limiting electoral expenses, and laws making it compulsory for electoral candidates to disclose to the electoral officials the money they have raised for elections (and the givers) as well as the accounts of their electoral expenses. In many countries also, the amount of money anybody can give to a politician or public official, or to an electoral candidate, is stated under the law. And in many countries, it is a crime for an electoral candidate to give any money or gift to potential voters. I am not necessarily advocating any particular law. All I say is that we cannot possibly leave our present situation unchanged while claiming to be fighting a War on Corruption. President Buhari needs, urgently, to act about these realities.

  • Aso Rock as a sort of Mecca

    Aso Rock as a sort of Mecca

    The social diary of the presidency at Aso Rock, the official residence of the head of state, is quite formidable. Since coming to power last year, President Muhammadu Buhari has spent a lot of time receiving both local and foreign visitors at his official residence. Hardly a day passes without some important and not so important guests calling at Aso Rock. In the case of foreign visitors, particularly his counterparts from foreign countries, it is perfectly understandable that the President should receive them personally when they visit Nigeria, either at Nigeria’s invitation, or at their own request. These visits are usually profitable to both sides. But that is not quite the case with local visitors to Aso Rock, some of whom are not really needed or wanted.

    Usually, these calls are intended either to congratulate President Buhari, or to express the august visitors’ support for the new government. In most cases these local visits to the President at Aso Rock are used to request from the President personal favours that are not necessarily in the interest of the country. In this respect, one might mention oil blocks, huge contracts and choice land that, in the past, were casually given away by the presidency to the visitors after such visits. Official advisers to the President are not usually present on such occasions to offer the President any advice.

    Virtually, all former living heads of the federal government, military or civilian, have made courtesy calls on Aso Rock since President Buhari came to power. These include Jonathan, Obasanjo, Abdulsalami and Shonekan, with many of them visiting the President several times. I am not sure whether Gowon should be included on the list of former heads of the federal military government that have since paid a courtesy call on President Buhari. The only former military head of state who has so far not visited Aso Rock to express his solidarity with the Buhari federal government is former military President Babangida. Obviously, he is not yet welcome in Aso Rock. It was he who deposed Buhari from power in 1985.

    In some cases, when these former heads of the federal government visit the President, they are usually accompanied by foreign CEOs of local or foreign companies in which the visiting former heads of state may have some financial interests. This is morally unacceptable as Nigeria’s economic and financial interests may not possibly be served when foreign CEOs of companies are taken directly to see the President. In such a case, it is unlikely that Nigeria’s true interests are being served. This practice is the source of much of the financial scandals that have been unveiled in recent years in our country, such as Halliburton and Siemens, in which our country was simply ripped off. The Jonathan presidency was undermined by these social visits from his cronies that eventually led to the frenzied and vast sharing and looting of public funds. During Obasanjo’s presidency, a certain Uba, little known and politically obscure then, could even brag publicly that he was often received in the President’s bedroom.

    Not to be left out of this unnecessary pilgrimage to Aso Rock are the bishops, the senior clergymen of all denominations, and the senior Islamic clerics. To this list must be added the various traditional rulers, except the Oba of Benin, the Awujale of Ijebu land, the Owa of Ijesha land and the Alaafin of Oyo, who traditionally hardly ever venture outside their domains.  And this is why they are respected and held in high esteem by the public. It is ungainly for traditional rulers to beat the doors for admission into Aso Rock merely to seek personal favours from the presidency. Even the newly installed Ooni of Ife has paid the President a courtesy visit. Even men of letters, academics, vice chancellors, heads of professional associations, all seek to visit the President. I am not sure that even Professor Wole Soyinka has not yet felt obliged to visit the President despite his well known disdain for the ‘establishment’ and the power elite. It is as if the President has nothing better to do than to spend valuable time receiving visitors.

    It is perfectly understandable that when a new government is elected, the entire ‘establishment’ should wish to reconnect with it immediately. In the Nigerian political setting, it is vital for members of the ‘establishment’ to remain in the ‘magic circle’ where important political and economic decisions are taken, regardless of their true political persuasions, or lack of any. To be left out of this ‘magic circle’ can be politically and economically costly. And the fastest way to reconnect is to wangle a visit to Aso Rock. Such visits, which are usually given much publicity in the local press, are also used, or misused, to lead the public to believe that the visitors are in good standing in the seat of power, even if they are not. Being seen publicly with the President can yield valuable political and economic dividends for the visitors.

    To some extent the doors of Aso Rock should be kept open to those who have legitimate reasons to wish to see the President. There is considerable advantage in running Aso Rock, the President’s official residence, in an open manner, as both a national institution, as well as the official residence of the President. An accessible and open presidency is good and healthy for the country as this promotes a ‘corporatist’ style of government in Nigeria, one in which all interests are taken seriously and are involved in vital decision making. An open and all inclusive government is far better for Nigeria than one dominated by parochial and other selfish interests that do, in fact, hurt the country.

    Having said this, I do believe, however, that the time has now come when the President should discourage too many visits to Aso Rock, except by those that he really considers are useful to his government and the country, and whose advice or views are really needed. If the President wants to invite anyone to Aso Rock, they are only a phone call away. He has the facility to reach anyone in the country that he wants to talk to. President Buhari is faced with so many political and economic problems that he needs all the time he can find to address these problems. Too many calls on him in Aso Rock are a waste of time and should be discouraged. His social diary should be well managed to enable him concentrate more on the grave challenges facing our country. He should be mindful of any form of cronyism in his government.

  • President Buhari needs help

    In less than three weeks, it will be a year since Nigerians vengefully voted out President Jonathan  for presiding over the pillaging of our country, confiscation of our patrimony, unleashing  Boko Haram and Niger Delta insurgents on Nigeria and running a government of ‘delegation by abdication’; a president who was never really in charge. But nine months into APC administration, many are saying as against governance, what they see is creeping dictatorship and offensive indolence from a government of a party dominated by young and vibrant intellectuals from whom people expected nothing short of miracles.

    The leadership of APC, an amalgam of the fine and the ugly, unfortunately underestimated the level of mischief of some of its members and the desperation of its defeated PDP opponent. Determined to destabilise APC, they embarked on a mission of creating a ‘Leviathan’ out of politically naïve Buhari. It was not an accident that it was a PDP stalwart, Shamsudeen Usman, a Minister of Finance and National Planning at different times that first reminded Buhari that the contribution of Tinubu and the Yoruba to his victory was over-exaggerated.

    Suddenly Buhari who contested with Dr. Chuba Okadigbo as running mate in 2003 and lost; in 2007 with Edwin Ume-Ezeoke who after losing abandoned him to join the ruling party describing Buhari as ‘having no electoral value in ANPP’; and a man who contested with Tunde Bakare in 2011 and lost but won in 2015 using the APC platform was described as an asset to the party that made him president after his fourth attempt.  PDP sympathetic newspapers lionized Buhari and demonized Tinubu and went ahead with crooked logic that Saraki’s treachery against APC was to protect Buhari from the overweening influence of Tinubu.

    And when Pa Akande called attention to the despicable activities of some self-serving northern elite who love neither Nigeria nor Buhari, the conversation became bizarre. What do the Yoruba want, they asked on the pages of their papers. Suddenly we were told, Bukola Saraki, whose father not too long ago publicly admitted he was a descendant of Fulani migrant from Sudan, is Yoruba. Toyin, his wife we were reminded is also Yoruba. What else, they asked, do the Yoruba want in Buhari government in which Professor Yemi Osinbajo, a Yoruba man is the vice president.

    Slowly and steadily, those who tried to frustrate the emergence of Buhari as president soon created a Leviathan out of him. Buhari, a man with heart of gold who learnt very little from intrigues of politicians in his ANPP days probably believed those who claimed they were protecting him from the overweening influence of Tinubu and APC. Lionised, he was to declare at his inauguration: ‘I belong to no one’. He went on to declare he was ready to work with anyone who emerged as leader of the National Assembly, thus shooting himself in the leg as that paved the way for its take-over by PDP men in APC cloak.

    As against a think tank, Buhari like all oligarchs surrounded himself with short-sighted people who are more interested in protecting what they think the north is currently benefiting from our federation, the only one of its kind in the world where according to Soludo, ‘the centre doled out monies every month to Local Councils that are not accountable to it’. Surrounded by those subservient to him while distancing himself from the party oligarchy that can question him probably account for the paralysis or what critics describe as indolence. For instance, it took Buhari about six months to constitute a cabinet.  And now nine months after inauguration, over 500 small governments that in reality drive activities of government are in the hands of PDP appointees who do not share APC philosophy. Add that to the fact that nearly all the chairmanship of critical committees of the National Assembly are controlled by PDP.

    All the university boards with the exception of the 11 new ones where even the president’s recent intervention was mismanaged by his subservient kitchen cabinet are still in the hands of PDP sympathizers. Professor Jerry Gana who has been in government since 1984 who donated N5b on behalf of his unidentified friends to Jonathan’s re-election bid was in University of Lagos over the week end to pontificate. Omeri, Stella Odua’s deputy as chief mobiliser of Jonathan election, a man who worked hands in glove with the likes of Dasuki trying to sabotage the 2015 election was in government until recently. Even for its symbolism, people like Gana and Omeri ought not to be seen representing APC government of change.

    It is probably because everyone is watching the body language of the Leviathan while governance receded to the background that accounts for the re-emergence of fuel queues, with independent oil marketers impetuously declaring on television that NNPC importation of 80% of fuel will not solve our problem because NNPC has no storage facilities, long after Nigerians expected Buhari to have ended such national embarrassment. It probably explains the inability of Dr. Kayode Fayemi of solid minerals ministry to act on the scandal that was the sale of Ajaokuta and call the bluff of some Indians currently holding the country to ransom. It is the only plausible explanation for why Fashola (the president foreman) think building toll gates and increasing electricity tariff take precedence over supply of prepaid meters or informing the public of the obligation of the 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to consumers after negotiating tax free ‘importation of gas-related machinery and equipment’ and bail out of more than half a billion naira with the last administration. And finally, it is perhaps why Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture has been going around doing the job of EFCC and that of the president’s Senior Special Adviser on Information, telling us the number of those in court facing EFCC charges and defending the president’s trips abroad instead of focusing on just the culture component of his ministry which has the potentials to generate billions in foreign exchange for the country.

    It is apparent every APC member seems to have been bitten by the ‘Leviathan bug’. No one, including the party oligarchy has been able to look at Buhari in the face and tell him the truth. Must the President spend all his time travelling now because we have problem?  Obama inherited two wars and a debt of 16trillion dollars piled up by his predecessors. He sat back at home and did the job. In our own case, our foreign debt is only about $10b. This cannot be a death sentence for a resilient people made up the good, the bad and the ugly that has stolen about $200b kept in already identified banks in the Middle East, Europe and Americas. Outside of Buhari’s first round of foreign trips to the US, UK, Germany and France to thank their leaders for their contribution to our peaceful transition, all other foreign engagements can be handled by our foreign minister whose name unfortunately few Nigerians can remember. And no one has asked the president why he needed more than nine months in office to fulfil his campaign promise of selling off the inherited Presidential Fleet of 10 aircrafts or convert them to form the nucleus of a national carrier and save the country of billions we lose to foreign carriers.

    And what is the way forward since failure is not an alternative? I think Buhari needs help. Modern government is a science and democracy is a game of consensus and compromise where delegation without abdication has been found more productive than centralization which produces nothing but paralysis. Tinubu should tell the president the secret of his success in Lagos. Buhari should allow young people trained in science of modern government run the show while he provides cover with his integrity and honesty, virtues Nigerians know he has in abundance but which they are aware are not enough to make him a successful president just as they were not enough to win him the presidency during his first three attempts.

  • Nigeria in the African and global system

    The rise of African nationalism culminating in the emergence of independent African states in the 1960s and beyond was rooted in Pan Africanism (Immanuel Geiss and Ayo Langley). It is therefore not surprising that when Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who doubled as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister spoke in the UN in October 1960 about Nigeria defending the rights of all black men wherever they may be, he did not speak out of context. Whether Nigeria had the wherewithal to do this at that time or at any other point remains a moot point. What is important is that Nigeria put the world on notice that it had to be consulted and taken into consideration and confidence when the interests of the black man at least in Africa was being discussed and decided. The rest they say is now history. Whether in the Commonwealth, O.A.U, Non-Aligned Movement and at the UN, Nigeria was vociferous in championing the cause of the black man and the African. Perhaps it is in the area of foreign policy that Nigeria since independence has made considerable success in the elimination of the two evils of colonialism  and racial discrimination in  Africa and settlerism and racism in  Southern Africa in particular .,

    But after this success what next? What we now have to do is how foreign policy can be made to secure the cause of economic development at home and shared prosperity in the African continent. Of course we all know that there is a strong nexus between domestic and foreign policy. Unity and strength at home will translate into a dynamic foreign policy. This is why it is necessary for Nigeria to have a strong economy at home as well as political stability built on appropriate structural reorganisation of the country. A powerful Nigeria would definitely have influence not only in Africa but in the whole world.

    In recent times, we have focused our foreign policy on the support for democracy in Africa and promoting foreign investment in our country under the rubric of what we now call economic diplomacy. Nigeria in recent times has also been seized with the question of peace and security in our region based on shared prosperity and common vision of the future. This calls for West African and African economic integration. But the process has been slow because of lack of complementarity and symmetry in African economies. ECOWAS since 1975 has not moved beyond pious declarations about goals and aspiration. This is because the burden of leadership is apparently too heavy for Nigeria alone to bear. It seems Nigeria alone is not ready to carry the weight of economic support for the other impoverished West African states. If Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Senegal can pool resources together, they may be able to facilitate the emergence of a strong West African economic union and possible common currency with all the difficulties associated with such a bold venture bearing in mind that the Euro, the living example for a West African currency, is facing serious and discouraging problems.

    Nigeria in recent times has not been as assertive as it used to be because of serious problems of disunity at home and political instability manifesting in the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east, the militant economic insurgency in the Niger Delta and in recent times the Biafran demonstrations calling for the rebirth of a moribund republic whose corpse was presumably laid down in 1970. Whatever problems Nigeria may have do not signify the irrelevance of our country. Even the downturn of the economy and the decline of the Naira do not mean the status of the country as an African power is at end. The country still has vast arable land, vast human and mineral resources and competent and abundant manpower and ability to deploy military power beyond its frontiers. In recent times, Nigeria provided assistance to Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, the Ivory Coast and Liberia in the restoration of peace in these countries. This is a manifestation of what Nigeria can still do in spite of whatever difficulties it faces at home.

    We have always worried about what we call post-conflict dividends. What we mean by this is after assisting African states to solve their problems, the question of what benefits accrue to us become relevant. But this question is loaded because of the possible feeling of Nigerian imperialism by sister African states. The image of the ugly Nigerian in the same way of the ugly American or ugly German as perceived by those who chaff under the weight of influence or power of a neighbouring big power must always be in our minds. Nevertheless Nigeria feels it can be a win-win situation. This was why in the 1980s and 1990s, our government encouraged private entrepreneurs to take advantage of economic opportunities in such places as Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone after the conflicts in those countries. What is lacking is that we have not always put in a word or two with the governments of those countries on behalf of Nigerian private enterprise. Nigerian banks are now everywhere in West Africa and in some East African countries making contribution to economic development of those countries. In recent times the Dangote group has done more than any group to put into practice what we called economic diplomacy by its vast investment in African countries.  The GLO Group has also followed suit especially in its involvement in the telecommunications and oil industries in a few African countries. In other words, foreign investments can cut both ways. We should encourage our indigenous companies to invest in foreign and particularly African countries and make money while we also welcome foreign companies into our country. Since the 1990s we have always challenged new envoys posted out to foreign missions to seek for foreign investment to Nigeria. Results have been patchy but every Nigerian head of mission knows he/ she will be judged by the foreign investment flowing into Nigeria during his or her tenure.

    Our post-apartheid policy has also seen considerable one way investment of South Africans in Nigeria; what we need to do now is to encourage Dangote and others to get involved in the South African market.

    On the whole our foreign policy is transiting from political obsession to economic reality. This therefore is the challenge facing the   formulation and the execution of our foreign policy. Increasingly there is going to be greater challenges of economic development, fight against   and containment of   terrorism, internal political instability which our foreign policy will have to take into consideration, but our ultimate goal should be to make Nigeria the Japan of Africa and our success would attract notice by the whole world and whatever role is derivable from our power will be easier to achieve. Pious hopes alone would not do. What will facilitate greater role for us in the international arena is the power – both economic and political that we have. In this regard Nigeria needs to cultivate the Nigerian Diaspora as well as the black Diaspora. In doing this we can harness their considerable economic resources for investment and political support along the lines of Israel and its Jewish Diaspora. We must also let all Nigerians know that they are all ambassadors of our country. This will demand that all Nigerians should be of good behaviour where ever they may be. Involvement in crime, such as human and drug trafficking as well as terrorism will destroy all the gains and aim of our foreign policy. Foreign policy is therefore too important to be left to political and diplomatic corps alone. We are all stakeholders.

  • Ode to Iya Legun

    Dear Great – Grandma,

    Forgive me for thrashing the bucket you bought without pricing, the earthenware you dusted free of cobwebs and the excesses you obliged me. Another year has passed but I hope it’s not too late to find my voice in the folds of your silence and among other things, acknowledge the gift of the weaning years.

    I remember the two great gourds from which I nourished like a drunk. It was in those days when papa was a god and mama was an angel; when heaven was, sneaking to your eko and gbure while Alhaja kept the flies away from our rice.

    I remember Christmas in Itoku when Iya Onigaari could still see us. I remember our trips down to the cathedral in Isale Ake, where we sang hymns in harmony with the Anglican choir. Those were the better days. Now our lives are very complicated. We have grown from kids with bright future to people who should be living their future and making the best of it. We get mad when we think we are not living the life of our dreams and we get lost when we think we are.

    While we fret, we do not worry about what we have done with the world you left us nor are we bothered about what state we would be leaving it for our children. You counted your destiny in moons and seasons, we measure our lives against mishaps in passing seconds. Our roads are still death-traps and the roof still crashes on our children during lessons, across the boondocks where trodden kids resume to learn with tears and inverted joy, every day.

    Too many of us got extinguished in split seconds, on the watch of Goodluck Jonathan the ‘meek’ and ‘timid’ President that perverted our luck. Now, we are in the era of Muhammadu Buhari and our hearts still hang in our mouths, like crushed porgies on ice or the proverbial trout wriggling in the beak of the starving pelican.

    It is the season of the holocaust. The drizzle at dawn has harvested the unripe cobs and mother earth writhes in painful throes of a belated abortion. Daylight jostles with the darksome splendour of our might and Nigeria capitulates in obeisance to the demonic stance. Little wonder we suffer terrorist attacks, religious bigotry, racial profiling and so on.

    Thus is our new awakening; we have found fresh joy in knowledge that comes with a dark shade but you spoke of knowledge in glowing terms. You said in pursuit of enlightenment, it is alright to be connoisseurs of facts and random sentiments, but only if we drink from the brightest springs. We have drunk water from an unnamed stream and our lives have become tragicomedies in process. Guess you see us as we feed our inner demons by gorging on other people’s demons.

    Your fables, folklores and colourful tales on moonlit nights are passions lost on us and our children. The new dawn you extolled as our brighter future is radiant with moonshine. Some of us labour daily to turn it into the triumph you swore it would become but many more among us struggle to turn it into everlasting dystopia.

    Now everyone lives the lie that’s marketed to us on TV. In any case, you wouldn’t understand the thrills and frills; you wouldn’t understand the toll and flicker of ravenous klieglights, the vanity of our ‘Reality Shows’ and the price we have to pay for glamour.

    The price of living has become very steep. Very few of us can afford three square meals and our mores of morality are accommodating greater excesses by the day.

    I remember the harmattan of 1984 when your favourite grandson bought a new Volkswagen Beetle car. It cost just N3, 000 and we all pranced and danced about it in joy, stealing for the fleeting second when we could cop a feel of the dazzling piece of steel. You said it was a gift from Eledumare. Today, no one prays for such heavenly gift.

    Everyone wishes to drive the big man’s car. We all want to live the big man’s life. And we are prepared to do so even if we have to sell our souls at the crossroads of vanity, to the devil. So I hope you understand even if many of us do not; why the congressman obtains the commoner’s vote with a dazzling smile only to bargain his fate away with a toothy grin in fits of greed and conceit in the legislative chamber.

    I am sure you understand even though it befuddles us still, why the orphan is always left to his own devices and the widow’s cry is forever smothered in the raucous din of greedy kin.

    Like heat-maddened summer flies, we swarm towards annihilation, armed with lust, gluttony and a yearning for the good life. I guess you have heard of the human parts dealer, the street prostitute, the corrupt policeman and the duplicitous journalist. Guess you’ve heard of the scheming evangelist, the unrepentant Reality Show contestant, the disillusioned student and the starving, idle graduate patiently biding his time for the nanosecond when his fortune will change and he would become the devil’s chosen one in the workshop of the idle.

    Everything you feared has come to pass; the white man’s civilisation is a double – edged sword. It cuts both ways. We have survived the curiosity and covetousness that made your generation barter our youth, our pride and future for the novelty of looking glasses and silver chronometers into the century that spliced the genes, separated the atom, probed the psyche and cloned a sheep. Today we incline towards more devious enterprise, like the mutilation of humaneness for the love of a buck.

    We have risen from the ashes of our misadventures in military dictatorship, civil war, aviation and space technology, nuclear democracy and perverse sexuality, into a scarier millennium. Now we sit faithless at bare tables, cursing our luck and cursing the times. We wonder if our children would have better lives.

    We wonder if the future of our dreams will ever come. I hope it does. And if it doesn’t, I will seek the comfort of your wise cracks from dawn through dusk. I will remember your sudden heaviness at every sunset and the weight of your silence as we swallowed your maize morsels with gbure.

    I will live for those moments when you sat on goatskin to mutter heartfelt prayers and our mothers rejected the part where you wished that their husbands married a second wife. Even Abewo worries I might take a second wife, many decades after your heartfelt prayer.

    I will remember your silences so that I can speak them. If I could do so perhaps I would understand my deepest scruples and rediscover the essence in your definition of humaneness and life.

    In my confusion, I hasten to your bedside seeking the eloquence of your headrest. I reach for the balustrade that cushioned your deadly falls as you stubbornly made your way to and fro our neighbourhood bath.

    An intuitive fellow once said that there is no life so pure it can thrive without its incarnations. Papa is still a god. Mama is still an angel. But will memories of yesterday comfort the reality of today?

    Still, you refuse to rise from your slumber. Iya Onigaari has stopped groping in the dark. She finally discovered the path that leads to yonder. And those of us left behind grovel in the ruddy radiance of a tyrant eternity.

    I long for your “good old days.” I would like to know you once again over your chipped plates steaming with wheat.

  • Hot vacancies

    Hot vacancies

    Let us get it right from the outset; this is not about those fake jobs advertised by genuine scammers in high places and other predators who have taken advantage of the harsh economic climate to fleece our large army of traumatised job seekers. No.

    Nor is this about the multitudes many thought the Muhammadu Buhari administration was planning to put on the monthly N5,000 dole. The government has explained that the handout is for the extremely poor, among who many are ready to be counted. It is also not about the 23,000 ghost workers just yanked off the Federal payroll. Not at all.

    Well, this is all about some critical vacancies suddenly thrown open in some sensitive jobs by some critical circumstances. The news broke last weekend that the sensational lifestyle of a weird Lagos church leader had collapsed at the hangman’s door. Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeugo (Rev. King – to his followers) of the Christian Praying Assembly failed to get the Supreme Court to reverse the sentence passed on him by the lower courts for killing Ann Uzoh, one of his congregants, who he doused with petrol and set on fire for alleged fornication. The bizarre life of the charlatan is the stuff of a great work of fiction – blasphemy (he called himself God), blood (he struck his followers at will) and sex (women served him food naked) – but the shame of it all is that it is real.

    Who succeeds Rev. King as  the leader of this strange Assembly?

    Rev. King’s date with the hangman may take a while to come. The Prisons are short of hangmen. There are no fewer than 1,639 inmates awaiting execution, a report said, quoting Prisons spokesman Francis Emordi. This piece of information has sparked a lot of postulations about the mysteries and mysticism of the hangman and his morbid vocation.

    Why are we short of hangmen when the tribe of devilish criminals is swelling? Are people not applying? If this sensitive job is advertised, will there be a sea of people trying to get in? In other words, can we expect a stampede as we had in the 2014 Immigration jobs fiasco in which 19 applicants died? What are the qualifications for the job? School Certificate? First Degree? In which field? What is the pay like? What kind of feeling will an appointment as a hangman evoke? Joy? Introspection? Cynicism? Power? Domination?

    How does a hangman relate to his family members, associates and colleagues? Does he go to church or mosque to worship and make supplications for a fine day at work? To him, what makes a good day; the number of times the gallows crank? Does he have a sense of humour, cracking jokes and laughing heartily? Does he cry?  Could he be a party freak? Is he proud of his job? Will he tell his loved ones about his job or swear to an oath of eternal secrecy? Is there a code of conduct for hangmen? What kind of heart do they have? Do they also think about death? Do they require any special training for their job? Who trains the hangman? Where does he train? Home? Abroad? Would anybody love to read the autobiography of a hangman?

    Opponents of the death sentence will be happy to know that we lack enough hands for this morbid but important job in the delicate chain of justice. Besides, we are told that the list of those waiting to see the hangman is long because governors are not keen on signing death warrants, at least not as speedily as they sign Certificates of Occupancy (CofOs). Why do governors delay this task after their Lordships have made their pronouncements? Who gains from such foot dragging? How does a death row inmate feel? Whenever he eats, does he have the feeling the meal may be his last? What goes on in the mind of a death row inmate?

    It is really not clear why the Prisons authorities have not hired more hangmen? Now it has taken the sentencing of a wayward preacher of a jaundiced message to force an audit of hangmen. Anybody for this job?

    We need also a coach for the Super Eagles, our wavering national soccer team. Something told me that Sunday Oliseh wasn’t going to last on the job, which he took on July 15, last year. His legendary temper, the unrepentant Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), pompous players and a system that stifles creativity and rewards mediocrity, I knew, would combine to undo him.

    Before him was Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, the one with the imperious nickname, “Big Boss”, who threw in the towel in South Africa after winning the Cup of Nations in 2013. He was ready to ditch the team until he got direct access to former President Goodluck Jonathan. In no time, the team’s fortune dwindled, even as his relationship with the authorities crashed. Keshi had to go, eventually.

    Oliseh, youthful and boastful,vowed to revive the team. Under him, the Eagles played 13 matches, won six, drew five and lost two.

    He brooded no excuses for lateness to camp and felt no qualms having a spat with his players. Goalie Vincent Enyeama got lashed for coming late to camp, his plea that he had gone to honour his late mum cut no ice with the coach who gave him the push. Then he went on a long break (he was rumoured to be ill), returned and led the Super Eagles to Rwanda for the CHAN. After claiming to have spent his money feeding the players, he gave the NFF a piece of his razor- sharp tongue. He said his critics were insane – to the shock of many decent Nigerians who follow football with a unique passion.

    Unable to take it anymore, the NFF wielded the axe but before it could land it  on the coach’s head, the minister stepped in, waving the olive branch. Saved by the bell, Oliseh apologised to his employers. Then the fireworks subsided. But the smart guy knew he was in injury time; bosses hardly forget even if they forgive. So, in a dramatic manner that dazed the NFF chiefs, Oliseh quit the job after collecting his outstanding N20m pay. Left in the cold, the NFF drafted in Samson Siasia to a job from which he was unceremoniously disengaged in 2012.

    The NFF has launched a desperate search for a coach. Considering how many soccer giants who got it ended it all in an acrimonious manner, one is tempted to ask: Is this job jinxed?

    Also vacant is the chairmanship seat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the one that used to call itself the biggest in Africa. Former Borno State Governor Ali Modu Sheriff is perching on it in acting capacity after a rancorous choice that was a little better than picking a motor park chairman – no guns, knives, cutlasses and axes; just verbal assaults and tantrums by those who claim to love the party.

    Goaded on by some governors, Sheriff, like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a spar, has been battling to retain the seat. Still unable to consolidate his position, he has sent President Muhammadu Buhari a quit notice, threatening that PDP is coming back to power. He was said to have had former President Goodluck Jonathan – he was almost distracted from the lecture circuit to join the fray- in his corner, but Jonathan’s former ministers would not let him be. Sheriff was described in many unflattering terms. Femi Fani-Kayode (I take that back; he is now Olukayode) said the former governor had bewitched the PDP and called his imposition an “abominable monstrosity”. The former minister, a garrulous fellow and master of diatribes, called Sheriff the father of Boko Haram. Now the duo are threatening to meet in court. I have booked a front row seat.

    Considering the fate that befell some former chairmen of the PDP, how noble is this job that some are dying to get? Sheriff has agreed to surrender the seat in three months. Who grabs the trophy?

    ESE ORURU AND THE ABDUCTED LAGOS PUPILS

    Just as the curtain was being drawn on the Ese Oruru saga, the news of the abduction of three girls from the Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary (BMJS) in Ikorodu on the outskirts of Lagos hit the airwaves. Ese, 14, was taken from her Bayelsa home and ferried to Kano, converted to Islam and married by Dahiru Yunusa (aka Yellow), one of her mum’s customers. There may be many other girls who fell into such a horrendous fate, locked up somewhere, never to be seen again by their parents. This is why Yunusa and his accomplices (Dan Kano et al) should be prosecuted.

    The kidnap of the BMJS girls brings back memories of the Chibok girls, who were snatched off their hostels on April 14, 2014. The recovery of the victims will surely rekindle the hope that the Chibok girls will be found – someday. The Ikorodu incident is a major distraction and a challenge for the security agencies. It is reassuring that the state government, which has invested so much in security, has vowed to get the abductors. We are all praying that the kids are back – hale and hearty. The key lesson here is that security is everybody’s job. We should be vigilant.

     

  • Economy: Way out

    There is a cacophony of voices asking President Muhammadu Buhari to convoke a summit on the economy presumably to find a solution to the foreign exchange scarcity and the impecunious state of several of the federating states of the Nigerian Union. It seems the president is predisposed to just doing that. But exactly what will those invited be talking about that the averagely educated Nigerian cannot guess.

    Economics is not rocket science. We know what is wrong. Because of the collapse of the price of hydrocarbons, the export of which our economy depends on, our country is not earning as much as it used to earn. The fact is that our income has gone down by about 70 percent. To complicate matters our export of agricultural produce has also been affected by the fall in global price for them. China which was the driving force behind the global economy has slowed down and India another demographic and possible economic juggernaut is a story for the future. We import virtually everything including things that we do not need. Apart from spare parts, automobiles, medical equipment, drugs chemicals and educational materials, we can shut down our ports and force ourselves to produce what we need while whatever foreign exchange we have is devoted to providing necessary infrastructure for our present and future development.

    Mazi Mbonu Ojike, one of our early nationalists used to say we should boycott the boycottable and use whatever we produce. Whether we harken to this call now or in the future is a moot point. At the end we have to look inward to move our country forward. If we had saved well against a rainy day, we would not have found ourselves in this pitiable situation. The mindless looting of the public treasury in recent times has made things worse.

    The kind of looting we are being told happened is enough to depress any sane and patriotic Nigerian. The level of looting poses existential threat to this republic.  In China some of what happened in the recent past would have attracted ultimate punishment .There is no doubt about it. Some of the stories sound like stories from Arabian night and Alibaba and the 40 thieves. People walk into the office of the National Security Adviser, sign a piece of paper, and walk out with a mandate to go to the CBN or banks where government has money to go and collect billions for some spurious work for government or the ruling party or for no work at all!

    Nigerian oil was sold without the treasury being credited with the proceeds. People have come out to say their accounts were credited with huge amount of money without their knowledge or without having performed any assignments for government. Billions if not trillions were shared among party bigwigs  as if people were playing the game of monopoly with the nation’s money.Government ‘s decision to bring the guilty parties to book had better been hastened  and speeded up before people lose their patience. Money taken from these economic saboteurs had better be deployed to pay the millions of Nigerian miserably awaiting the payment of their salaries  and pensions. The TSA must not be used to delay payment of salaries and pensions . The present situation of scarcity not only of foreign exchange but also scarcity of the Naira must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. Instead of succumbing to the call for an economic summit, government must continuously engage the public to apprise it of the situation. The president should broadcast to the nation about the dire state of the economy and what he is going to do about it. Nigerians are not fools. They know the president did not cause the present economic collapse and paralysis. People need to be told this to blunt the ridiculous allegation of the opposition that they did better while in office.

    What I expect government to do is to declare economic emergency and austerity by radically reducing the cost of governance. I know that there may be constitutional impediments to doing this but we just can not continue to do nothing. This will involve drastic cut in executive and legislative expenditure and even reduction of diplomatic missions abroad and merging of parastatals and universities and polytechnics at home. We may have to merge local governments and make parliament across board part-time instead of the wasteful practice of the present Naira-guzzling legislative houses at the centre, states and local governments. If we do this, it will send a message to all and sundry that these are unusual times requiring unusual measures and solutions. All these can be achieved through a declaration of economic emergency and economic siege.

    There must exist in the law books legal devices to make this happen. Some may argue that this can still be done through the economic pow-wow being suggested. Then it behoves government to put before the summit a well-crafted agenda  instead of allowing the Nigerian mania of a useless talkfest to go on.

    This reminds me of the Bismarckian approach on national issues of not leaving the fate of the nation to verbal display and debates. What we need to do is clear. Cut down all the jargon,cut down all frivolous importation of luxury goods, wines, champagne, rice, wheat and all kinds of imported confectionaries. Let us eat for starters the much ballyhooed cassava bread. There is also nothing wrong in eating yams and other local staples. While doing this we can then begin to produce all we need at home. Necessity is the mother of invention. The Chinese that we all admire today went through the same trajectory. For the sake of all black peoples at home and in diaspora, let us try and prove that the black man is not all talk and no action. Let us prove to the world that we can endure some pain in order to get the gain of sustainable development. A philosophy of providing what we need rather than what we want ought to be our new credo from this time onwards. If we do not take this route least travelled, we will all end in the broad way leading to national ruin.

    We must remind ourselves that our situation is not the worst of all possible worlds. We are neither Venezuela nor Libya! There is no need to panic. The problem we have is a global problem. We mustn’t  lose sight of that fact. Thank God we still have a second chance to get things right. Indeed  in adversity we must have hope. This is not the hope of religious sermon but the hope that we can come out of the economic woods in which through our past action we have put ourselves. If we are determined and if we are prepared to work hard, we can get out of this economic doldrums. Perhaps we can begin by looking at the 2020 economic plan put together as a blueprint to make Nigeria one of the biggest 20 economies in the world. We can also look at other economic blueprints put together by previous governments instead of reinventing the wheel. If the civil servants cannot do this, then government must look for willing and competent people in industry and the universities.  We must go back to agriculture as well as mechanize our mode of production. We need not put all hope on solid or hard minerals alone as some are wont to suggest. Of course we must diversify our economy to tap all sources of revenue. But our priority must be agriculture and industrialization. All this can go pari passu  with the  current economic diplomacy embarked upon by the president. But in all this, charity must begin at home.

  • All flay the King

    He’s the only one who knows how he came by that name. He was named Chukwuemeka Ezeugo but he adopted Rev King when he started his ministry. There was a Rev King, who captured the imagination of the world in his lifetime. Even in death, the American Rev Martin Luther-King remains a legend. By adopting his name, Ezeugo was trying to walk in the image of the original Rev King, but he lacks what it entails to do so. This is why he missed his way and misled many, who religiously believed and still believe in him.

    According to Mark Anthony, in Shakespeare’s tragic play, Julius Caesar, ‘’the evil  men do lives after them…’’ Though  Ezeugo  aka Rev King is not dead, the evil that he perpetrated resonates across the country. In his lifetime, the evil that he did is already living after him. Since the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence passed on him by the Court of Appeal and a Lagos High Court for murder, the feeling in town is that he should be executed immediately. Where two or more are gathered the discussion is on when will Rev King be executed? His neighbours, especially, do not pray that he should ever come back. Why is a ‘man of God’ so hated by his neighbours?

    This is the question I have been trying to find answer to since Rev King’s travails began 10 years ago. Rev King is the General Overseer (G.O) of the Christian Praying Ministry (CPM) on Ugo Unabuife Street in Ajao Estate, Lagos. He held sway in the neighbourhood where he turned himself into the lord of the manor. He oversaw everything that went on in that area. He was not only the G,O of CPM, but also of Ugo Unabuife, where he is seen as a terror of a pastor.  Rev King was a different kind of pastor. He was in a class of his own; he was not in the class of the late Rev King whose name he corrupted to perpetrate evil.

    It is ministers like the killer-Rev King that give the real men of God a bad name. Rev King, if he was true to his calling, should be winning souls for God and not taking the lives that he cannot create. I have not ceased wondering how his kind of preacher is able to attract thousands of followers, but then is religion not said to be the opium of the people?  No matter how bad a pastor is, he will always get those that will follow him. Like, they say, attracts likes. This is the case with Rev King. He may have the gifts to preach the word; speak in tongues and prophesy, but he misapplied them. He knew the Word but he was not a doer of the Word. He replaced the Word with his own rules, which he applied  in dealing with those who called him ‘’daddy’’.

    Yes, he is their ‘’father in the Lord’’, their ‘spiritual father’, so to say, but he was not spirit filled.  He was not a father in the true sense of the word to his many disciples. He treated his ‘’children in the Lord’’ as slaves and a master-servant relationship existed between them. He flogged them at will; threw things at them in anger and even set them on fire if he so desired. One day, he overstepped his bounds and he found himself in the trouble, which earned him a death sentence right from the high court to the Supreme Court. What kind of G.O is he that he will set his church members on fire? Is that the way to correct a child? The Good Book says ‘’train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it’’. This G.O did not imbibe this teaching.

    Of course, we should not spare the rod in order not to spoil the child, but that is not to say that we should beat a wayward child to death. We should feed them with words, which they should keep in their hearts. A godly priest will not have acted the way Rev King did when six of his followers – Chizoba Onuorah, Vivian Ezeocha, Jessica Nwene, Kosisochukwu Ezenwankwo, Chiejina Olise, and the late Ann Uzor – allegedly committed fornication. Indeed, the Good Book frowns at fornication, but it does not say that we should kill fornicators and a G.O is expected to know that. A G.O is not expected to fly into a rage over every matter; he should be seen keeping his head where others are losing theirs.

    An overseer, the Good Book says, ‘’must be above reproach, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money…he must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and the devil’s trap’’. Rev King did not take heed and he fell into disgrace and the devil’s trap. See where it has landed him – the death row. The Supreme Court has affirmed that he should be executed for the murder of Uzor, the only one who died among the six persons he set on fire on July 22, 2006. It is just a matter of time before the execution of this verdict, which has become a subject of discussion worldwide. Many of his brainwashed followers believe that he will not be executed, but many who have tasted of his so-called terror are praying for a speedy execution of the verdict.

    He can only be saved if Governor Akinwunmi Ambode decides to temper justice with mercy. But Rev King’s reputation in his neighbourhood does not show that he deserves such mercy. Besides his gullible followers, and perhaps, family members, none of who has, of now, spoken on his fate, no other person is  praying that he should be spared. Rev King has reached the end of the road. His fate should be a lesson to other pastors, who believe that they are larger than life. No matter how big they think they are, they should bear  in mind that they are not God. If he had been a good pastor, his fate may have been different. But as he made his bed, so he will lay on it.

     

    Free the girls now!

    ON Monday night, three schoolgirls were abducted from the Anglican Church-owned Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary (BMJS) in Ikorodu, Lagos. Their abduction brings back the sad memory of the Chibok girls, who were kidnapped in similar circumstance from their school in the wee hours of April 14, 2014. The Chibok girls are yet to be found. This should not be the case with these BMJS girls. We should all rally round their families, the school, the government and the security agencies to get them back. We should not allow the abductors to have the last laugh. No, never. If they know what is good for them, they should let the girls go now.

  • Dealers as leaders: The Putin example

    Blackmail is the new game for the ‘dealers as leaders’ in Abuja. It is a new tool for those haunted by their past. It is a weapon freely deployed by those who have been challenged to prove their loyalty to the nation. Those accused of betraying the trust of the people resort to it rather than defend their honour. Confronted over the misapplication of $2.1b loan for military hardware, Sambo Dasuki saw the hands of Muhammadu Buhari in his travails. If such antics fail to fool anyone, his alleged confederates remind the people that Buhari has spent close to a year in office fighting only corruption. And while they engaged in profligacy spending N300m to buy toys before the passage of the budget, some self-conceitedly declare: ‘It is time Buhari delivers on his campaign promises and stop blaming GEJ’.

    Or how about hilarious resolution shortly after its inauguration calling on Buhari to start implementing his N5, 000 social welfare campaign promise for the unemployed with immediate effect.

    Blackmail is also often used as a pre-emptive measure. Following the invitation of Bukola Saraki’s wife by EFCC, the House of Representatives swiftly produced a Dr. George Uboh who alleged that Ibrahim Lamorde, the then EFCC boss diverted over N1trillion the anti-graft agency recovered from treasury looters. When the Code of Conduct Tribunal, (CCT) insisted on trying Saraki, the senate president for alleged false asset declaration, his 84 ‘like-minds’ senators provided evidence to show that Danladi Umar’s personal assistant, Ali Abdullai Gambo, was docked by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) sometime in August, 2013 in Abuja for receiving N1.8m from one Taiwo Rasheed allegedly on behalf of the tribunal chairman.  And when Obasanjo accused the upper house of corruption, there was a ready defence. They were merely following the footsteps of their father who they alleged bribed them back in 2007 during his third term debacle. For maximum effect they revealed that Obasanjo, nine years after leaving office, signed the Abuja Rail contract without an MOU or a design.

    The purpose of the subtle blackmail according to Lai Mohammed, the Minister for Information and Culture was to delay prosecution which for the high profile politician takes between seven years and infinity. The sad thing is not the resort to subtle blackmail to delay prosecution but the real tragedy is that Buhari is yet to start the war on corruption. All he has done so far is attacking the symptoms of a deep rooted malaise unleashed on our nation through Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and Obasanjo mismanaged privatisation programme. The former allowed Babangida’s ‘army of anything is possible’ to pillage our land like a conquered territory resulting in the betrayal of the vision of our founding fathers. Part of the fallout is the depreciation of our naira from Babangida’s pre-structural adjustment programme value of N1 to US$1 to today’s over N300 to the US$1. With the latter, Obasanjo presided over the sales of  N100b assets acquired over 50 years (1958 and 2008) for a paltry $1.6b to dealers and wheelers who embarked on asset stripping to buy private jets and build skyscrapers instead of running the industries they bought at next to nothing, efficiently.

    The scandals surrounding the sales of Cocoa Industries Limited under the Babangida liberalisation policy and the Ajaokuta steel complex during Obasanjo privatisation drive easily call to question the loyalty of the two leaders to our nation. Ikeja Cocoa Industries was established by Western Region’s visionary leaders. It was a product of sweat and blood of Western Region’s cocoa farmers whose farm produce were heavily taxed through the marketing boards to raise funds for executing the ‘free education’ programme of the region as well as build a solid economic base to absorb its products. Unfortunately, Bode George, Sasaenia Oresanya and Mohammed Lawal, as Oodua military governors sold 60% of the then 24 years old company valued at N97, 958,000 by Messrs Onakanmi and Partners to Emerald Packaging Limited, owned by an investor from Kaduna State for N9m. Some other Oodua owned companies suffered similar fate.

    Nothing demonstrates the betrayal of our nation than the total lack of transparency in the purported sale of Ajaokuta steel complex to an unknown Indian company. Part of the BPE report on negotiation with the preferred Indian investor who was undoubtedly fronting for our politicians read as follows: “This concession which saw the taking over of ASCL undervalued to the tune of about $300m and Itakpe was one of the biggest scams’. GSH was to pay nothing to the government but expected to inject its funds to revive the plant with some of the following conditions:  the Federal Government should give GSHL two oil blocks; that GSHL be allowed to be lifting crude oil from Nigeria; that the Sapele Power Plant be given to GSHL to operate; the Concession of Delta and Warri Ports to GSHL to operate and that the supply of Natural Gas to GSHL must be at “competitive and reasonable tariff”. GSHL offered to pay N5.00 per cubic meter of gas as against the market price of N30.00). It also inserted in its conditions that “gas price should be kept reasonable and consistent.”

    Britain sold the idea of privatization to us. But unlike Britain where all segments of British society theoretically benefitted from Thatcher’s privatization programme, our people suffered double jeopardy.  At the regional level, youths were robbed of the wealth built through the sweats of their grandfathers. At the national level, inherited national patrimony which was to be held in trust for our children was shared by the military, their fronts and their groomed ‘new breed’ PDP politicians that bred nothing but corruption.

    And what is the way forward? I think the starting point is resorting to subtle blackmail – the tool those who have stolen our nation blind now find very effective. In this regard, to take the war to those who have mortgaged the future of our children. Buhari who has so far been restricted to fighting symptoms should start by setting up a body to investigate what has become of our assets confiscated under the reign of one-eyed kings- Babangida and Obasanjo. Assets of those who engaged in asset stripping to buy private jets and build skyscrapers can be auctioned with the proceeds deployed back to rebuilding the industries so as to create jobs for our teaming youths. Let me confess, I don’t own the patent to the above recommendation. Russia does.

    Russia under Gorbachev and Yeltsin went through our recent experience when she was forced by the West to embark on uncontrolled privatization in spite of her weak institutions. Few unpatriotic criminals cornered the wealth of Russia. Russia became a candidate for aids from the West.  Putin adopted the above subtle blackmail. He was maligned and accused by the West of human rights abuses and of tampering with freedom of the press. Putin will not allow those who do not believe in rule of law hide under same to continue the rape of Russia. Today, with millions of Russians youth back at work, Putin is not only immensely popular at home, he has moved on to reestablish yesterday’s candidate for western aid as an undisputed world power.

    We have no alternative than take control of our economy from dealers as leaders, importers of toothpicks, Morocco ‘Titus’ fish, South African chicken, Vietnamese rice, Italian ceramics, and US junks manufactured in Taiwan.