The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Breaking the yoke

    In this era of change, Nigerians are only interested in seeing things work. They are not ready to listen to excuses on why things cannot work.

    What the people desire is a Nigeria where things are done accordingly. A Nigeria where public utilities work. They want to turn their taps and see water gushing; they want to press the switch and see the light come on; they want to get to the bank and be able to withdraw money from their domiciliary accounts and they want to get to the filling stations and get fuel to buy with ease.

    These are a given in other countries; so they wonder why things cannot work here as they do over there.

    Greatness does not come cheap; it entails hard work and a sense of urgency, especially for a country like ours, where things have gone bad for years.  In this era of change, we must shed the toga of defeatism and reach out for the skies.

    Who says we cannot achieve round-the-clock power supply? Who says our hospitals cannot compare with the best in the world? Who says we cannot have all-year-round fuel supply? Until now, fuel supply was a perennial problem. Motorists drove round town in search of petrol, while husbands, wives and children heaved jerrycans about town looking for petrol, diesel or kerosine. It was a stressful and distressing thing. A land so blessed with oil, yet its citizens cannot get fuel to buy.

    The story has started to change. Motorists can now drive in and out of filling stations to buy petrol within seconds. It is not an easy task, but with determination and zeal, Mrs Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, Managing Director of Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), has been quietly working to ensure that fuel is available in every filling station across the country. Nnamdi-Ogbue assumed office some five months ago in the heat of marketers’ demand for payment of fuel subsidy.

    For long, marketers have held the nation to ransom with their demand for subsidy payment without anything to show that they actually imported fuel. This is why many believe that subsidy is a huge fraud. The major marketers allowed themselves to be so tarred because they believe more in making subsidy claims than ensuring availability of petroleum products.

    If not for PPMC, the nation would have been grounded by marketers during the Yuletide. They refused to import fuel, insisting on the payment of their outstanding subsidy claims. Even after the payment of the over N500 billion subsidy, they still refused to import fuel. It was the ‘’marketer of last resort’’, to borrow Nnamdi-Ogbue’s word, that moved in to save the day. Nnamdi-Ogbue has proved that she is equal to the task, but she should not rest on her oars. She has to sustain what we are enjoying now – availability of fuel.

    And much more than that she has to also consider how to make  the ‘poor man’ specific product, kerosine,  available to the masses,  and at affordable price too. As a nation, we cannot leave the whole business to marketers otherwise the poor will continue to suffer. Not too long ago, some marketers were thumping their chests for selling kerosine for N50 per litre. Of course, their outlets were jampacked by longsuffering Nigerians eager to get the product at that cheap price. It was all political noise. Today, these outlets are selling kerosine for over N100 per litre, which is higher than the pump price of petrol.

    Nnamdi-Ogbue knows that she heads a government agency from which the people will always expect succour anytime they feel shortchanged by major and independent marketers. Within a short time in office, she has identified where the major problem lies – pipeline vandalism. With a N50billion loss to vandals in nine months last year, she knows that they must be stopped before they cripple her company.

    Stating the importance of pipelines to PPMC’s job, Nnamdi-Ogbue was reported as saying : ‘’We don’t have to converge on Apapa, we can now go to Kaduna, Kano and Makurdi. We will now have different depots from where we can easily truck out and the more efficient way is to go to the nearest depots, to states that you are supposed to service…The Makurdi-Yola pipeline has not worked in the last 10 years due to vandalism. And those are the pipelines that must be reactivated because with their reactivation, it reduces the challenges of distribution as it becomes more efficient for us in the distribution of products. We are not putting up our hands in the air and saying that there is nothing we can do because we are doing everything within our powers to make sure that these issues are sorted out and that started with the Mosimi-Atlas Cove satellite and then we have moved towards Ibadan’’.

    The public must help her to win the anti-vandalism war. If we refuse to discharge our responsibilities as citizens, how then do we expect PPMC to fulfil its obligation to us? What the PPMC chief said about vandals’ activities is instructive here. ‘’We have had the joint task force to monitor the pipelines, but they have not been as efficient as we expected and so what we have done is to get private persons and called in contractors to secure the pipelines for us and that has yielded results.

    ‘’I remember that on the first Saturday that we got private contractors on the Mosimi System 2B, that same night vandals were caught for the first time in a long time. We are also working very intensely on the Port Harcourt-Aba-Enugu line’’, she said.

    Will she break the yoke of perennial fuel scarcity? Nigerians cannot wait for her to do just that.

     

     

  • Revolutionary rascals

    The gecko thinks if it quits the roof to live in the forest long enough, it will become an alligator. Will practice make the cat roar like a lion? I have seen all sorts of revolutionary marches and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Nigerian revolutionary is an incurable sissy. It doesn’t make a darn bit of difference what his causes are. It’s worse if he’s in his youth – because then he fully immerses into the backwardness into which he has been born, evolving quite brazenly like a barbarian, badgering onto the stage for acclaim, through the trap-door.

    The incumbent ruling class will glory in its delusions of power and grandeur, until the Nigerian youth muster sufficient courage to remove it. Perhaps. Until then, we will get the quality of leadership that we deserve.

    How can the youth take over? How can government be made to reflect the wishes and soul of the citizenry? The preexisting political structure and party regime is no doubt an albatross to the emergence of a greater Nigeria. This is because the nations’ politics as it is so constituted, is structured to serve the whim and wiles of the predatory ruling class holding the country hostage even as you read.

    There is need to evolve a credible opposition party structure particularly as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) fades out from the political space to resurge as a hydra-headed monster in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). This requires the active participation of the nation’s youth. There is need for the nation’s youth to come together to evolve a credible alternative to the existing political platforms that we have in the country.

    But before the youth can embark on such purposeful exploit, this segment of the citizenry needs to come to grasp with certain bitter truths about its incapacities. The conscientious and the just, the honorable, gracious and humane; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but soon it slips from their grasp turning them from leaders of the revolution into victims of the revolt thus their seemingly desperate inclinations to distance themselves from every revolutionary march.

    No revolution can be successful if the human elements serving as its force of change are wholly incapacitated to see to the fruitful end, the ideals of the insurrection; which brings me to the quality of youth mooting the revolt.

    Revolution is never the rebellion against a pre-existing order, but the setting-up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one. How different could an order anchored by the current crop of Nigerian youth be?

    In the daily lives of our youth, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thoughts of possessions they may acquire and that others may take from them. Russell would say “It is not so that life should be lived” but the Nigerian youth could not be bothered even if they knew that much.

    Many whose lives ought to be fruitful to them, to their friends, and to the world in entirety are hardly inspired by hope and sustained by joy; they seek in imagination the vanities that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence.

    Ultimately they choose the path of decadence. In their private relations they are pre-occupied with the inane lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive; they are engaged in giving affection and respect at a price and the reward often comes by their desperate quests.

    In their work they are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and are least concerned with the actual task that has to be done.

    In politics, they spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their benefactors, godfathers, class or ethnicity, even as they make their world less happy, less compassionate, less peaceful, more full of greed and compatriots whose growth is perpetually dwarfed and stunted by oppression.

    A spectre is haunting the Nigerian youth. Knowingly and unabashedly, they have entered an unholy alliance with the ruling class. They do not constitute formidable opposition to keep the ruling class on its toes neither do they offer invaluable support to keep our leaders on track.

    Their approach to politics complicates the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is splitting up more and more into two great hostile camps, the ruling class and the working class; the proverbial middle class got lost somewhere at the crossroads where the bourgeoisie swallows up the proletariat.

    Though youth does not really have the means to stop the economy, the ruling class dreads the youth, as was discernible when a wave of panic seized the Nigerian government by the jugular in the wake of the defunct Occupy Nigeria protests. What do they fear? It’s without doubt the frequency and the potentials of youth mobilizations. Massive youth mobilizations were taking place across the globe and with often grievous and far-reaching consequences in the affected nations; the Nigerian leadership no doubt dreaded a Nigerian manifestation of the Arab Spring.

    The fear of the Nigerian leadership was however hardly far-fetched given the radicalism of the Occupy Nigeria movement.

    In a violent society that has no future to offer them, the Nigerian youth have very little to lose thus their lack of hesitancy in confronting the State. The wish to abolish status quo was widespread among the nation’s youth as they romanticized the idea of a revolution as the protests dragged.

    In spite of the youth’s passionate struggle against the incumbent leadership’s utter insensitivity and cluelessness, the eventual result was basically, an opportunistic contract between the exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin would call “the original sweetheart agreement.”

    This revealed a lot about the Nigerian youth’s revolutionary potential. Eventually, the nation’s youth were written off and their grievances dismissed as the crazed rant of a pathetic mass of revolutionary impostors. The youth were eventually dismissed as essentially hopeless and misdirected.

    Most of the time, youth mobilizations and revolutionary movements attract sympathy from the workers and the population, as if the youth were saying loudly what the majority couldn’t afford to say. Thus, in many instances, youth mobilizations restore to the social camp the confidence in the masses’ ability to resist; and in some cases other working sectors engage in mobilization, following the youth. The Nigerian youth however, presents a contradiction to the benefits of such relationship of trust.

    He is accustomed to keep his head down like one eternally doomed to be adept in all the arts of the beggar. He even presumes a little upon the possession of talents which, as he ought to know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity; in the long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of those who are placed over his head, and when they inflict greater hurt upon him, he becomes refractory and shy, turning round to crawl into the wall when he is backed against it. This is hardly the way to get on in the world but very few Nigerian youths are conversant with the words of Voltaire: “We have only two days to live; it is not worth our while to spend them in cringing to contemptible rascals.” But what if “contemptible rascals” also qualifies a greater percentage of the nation’s youth?

  • Profligacy and prostrate economy

    President Buhari is unsettled by the obscene and ill-advised decision of the Senate to waste N4.7b on toys called state of the art, Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) disingenuously described by a self-serving Senate as “operational cars for its 109 members and the Lower house’s plan to, in the words of Leo Ogor, spend ‘about N4b’ on cars for its 360 members. An exasperated President who turned down the recommendation for a N400m presidential fleet and forfeited part of his allowances and had expected the lawmakers to take a cue from his actions has indirectly asked the public to go to court if the lawmakers fail to see reason.

    And come to think of it. Some of these lawmakers driven by greed and covetousness are former governors, ex-ministers, commissioners who from their submission to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), we know have fleet of cars and houses in Abuja and elsewhere. They have nonetheless gone ahead to collect car loans and bulk running allowances in advance. Curiously, one of them crying like a child whose ice cream has been taken away self-conceitedly told a Punch reporter: “does the president expect us to use our personal vehicles, bought with loans, to carry out oversight functions within and outside Abuja?”

    Another without thinking wondered aloud why the President thinks ‘spending one percent of the nation’s N4trillion recurrent expenditure to buy utility vehicles for a whole arm of government was too much.’

    Some of these self-serving senators are former employers of labour with private sector orientation. They should tell Nigerians whether they give their workers car loans, running allowance and buy them utility cars maintained by the employers. They should tell Nigerians if they pay their employers housing allowance, furniture allowance and clothing allowance among other allowances they immorally collect in advance. Do these fellows who are expected to find solution to our economic woes realize there are thousands in the media, public service and private sector who are being owed six to nine months arrears of salaries? Of course they don’t seem to understand that over 70% of our university graduates are roaming the streets.

    Buhari who has publicly declared that the cars he inherited  can last for another 10 years, and who needs all the time to face Boko Haram insurgency, mass unemployment and prostrate economy, the result of the collapse of the manufacturing sector occasioned by profligacy and cash and carry economic policy of the past PDP government has now decided to have a closed door meeting with these legislators who are behaving like kindergartens quarrelling over toys totally oblivious of the economic crisis the nation faces.

    Fortunately, Nigerians no more needed to be told why Saraki, Ekweremadu and Dogara, once upon a time PDP family members were so desperate to hijack the National Assembly, employing sometimes ignoble strategies to achieve their objectives. They all want business to continue as usual. Their first protest was over a suggestion that the scandalously $189,500 high salaries they inherited from the 7th assembly be scaled down. But now we know, like gluttons who consume immoderately, they want more for themselves.

    One way of doing this was an indefensible increase in the number of committees to ensure the largesse goes round. As Punch cynically asked in an editorial last week, ‘since committees are tied to the number of federal ministries “With a GDP $565 billion, (and) 25 federal ministries, what would 65 Senate and 96 House committees be doing? And for maximum effect, the paper went on to inform Nigerians that the Senate of long established federal systems like that of United States with a GDP of $17.9 trillion,  has only 20 committees, Australia with a GDP of $1.2 trillion 20,  the French with a $2.4 trillion economy, six,  and Germany with GDP of $3.3 trillion 21.

    The 8th Senate seems to be confirming the fears of those who argue that as an offshoot of the 7th Senate presided over by David Mark, Ekweremadu and in which Saraki was an influential member, it cannot bring joy to our people. In spite of the outrageous and scandalous earnings of $189,500 per lawmaker which the influential Economist of London, described as the highest in the world, unfolding events seem to confirm it as an accessory to crime against Nigeria.  In spite of their SUVs, we did not see them in the besieged North-east where two million Nigerians have been rendered homeless living in camps. Mark and Ekweremadu did not think their oversight functions included raising alarm when the CBN ferried $2.1b raw cash in 11 boxes to President Jonathan NSA’s office where instead of buying arms for the military, it was shared by PDP members to fight the 2015 re-election contests.

    Newspapers also reported over the weekend that government is planning to spend N5b this year ‘on providing official residences for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara’. The budget  indicates the Senate President complex will receive an allocation of N502.5m while the official residence for  House of Representatives Speaker Dogara  who we are told currently lives in a private house received a modest N1, 035, 652,

    Nigerian taxpayers would rather Osinbajo remains in Aguda Guest House which housed all the past vice presidents since 1999 except for Atiku Abubakar who opted to stay in one of his houses in Abuja when asked to vacate the house of the Chief Justice of Nigeria he was occupying. With an expenditure of N2.1b according to a report by Ini Ekot (Dec 28, 2013), going into upgrading facilities in the Aguda Guest House  between 2012 and 2013’,  it should be good enough for our humble vice president.

    Even if the budgeted N3b is for the completion of the N7b VP mansion  which was derailed by Smart Adeyemi committee over the request by  a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Bala Mohammed, his FCDA Executive Secretary Adamu Ismail for an additional N9b to ‘provide furniture, fencing, two additional protocol guest houses, a banquet hall and security gadgets’, Nigerian taxpayers would rather Osinbajo remains in Aguda Guest house while the mansion is converted into commercial use to earn  funds badly needed for development.

    As for housing the current National Assembly leaders who we know have mansions in Abuja from their submissions to Code of Conduct Bureau, I think it will be immoral to put additional burden on taxpayers. First it is on record that in 2013, FCT proposed N50b budget provisions “for the designing and construction of the residences of the President of the Senate, David Mark; his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu; the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal; and his deputy, Emeka Ihedioha”.  Nigerians have not been told what became of the mansions occupied by their predecessors or the ones the above men occupied until May this year. If the properties in accordance with PDP immoral monetization policy have been sold to their occupiers, Nigerians would expect the proceeds from the sales deployed towards building new ones instead of imposing additional burden on taxpayers.

    Some of our current office-holders have beaten the record of Ozumba Mbadiwe’s Ijora land deal where he bought government land at reduced rate and sublet back to government. Today they renovate government houses with taxpayer’s money, sell to themselves and turn around to ask government for accommodation. We have no evidence the current office-holders seeking accommodation fall into this category but this is a widespread practice the media exposed since Babangida’s era.

    But I however think there are one or two lessons about public morality and propriety we need to learn from those from whom we copied democracy. In contrast to our public office holders, parliamentarians in Britain, a few years back, who took the advantage of low rent in government quarters to sublet their London flats out, were forced to apologise to the public. The world watched defeated Gordon Brown drive out of 10 Downing Street in his own old rickety car leaving behind his official British made Jaguar for David Cameron, his successor.

  • Jega’s men’s curious calls

    BY ALL standard, Prof Attahiru Jega, immediate past Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, discharged himself creditably in office. He was an electoral umpire par excellence, and he performed his duty as if his life depended on it. Jega came to office in 2010 when INEC’s record was nothing to write home about. INEC under the leadership of Jega’s predecessor, Prof Maurice Iwu was just an electoral commission in name.

    During Iwu’s tenure, we knew the winner of an election ever before it was conducted. It was standard practice then for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to win any election no matter how unpopular its candidate was. By his own making, he turned himself into PDP’s man and he had no apologies for it.

    Nigerians got a relief when his tenure expired. Ever before the expiration of his tenure, many had called for his removal, wondering why he was still being retained after the disastrous  2007 elections. The elections remain the worst ever in the annals of the country. Even the late President Umoru Ya’Adua, who was elected that year, condemned the polls, promising to reform the electoral process. He could not do that before he died, leaving the onerous task for his successor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan. Former President Jonathan’s choice of Jega was hailed by many, who saw him as a man of integrity.

    Truly, Jega lived up to expectation. Those who worked with him knew his stand on elections – let the party with the highest number of votes win in a free and fair contest. But many of his men from some of what we have seen at the election tribunals may not have been on the same page with him. While Jega toiled day and night to leave a legacy of an impartial umpire, some of those he entrusted with electoral job were not that bothered about their image.

    They cared less about public perception and as such they hurt a process that should have been open and transparent. They were Jega’s eyes and ears  in the states they served. But some of them chose to work with politicians and play by their own rules. It was to avoid a situation like this that Jega went to his constituency – the university – to get these people to work with him during the 2011 and 2015 elections. By so doing, he was using his own standards to judge others.

    He thought his fellow teachers will be like him in character but he forgot that no two persons, even where they are twins can have the same traits. Jega’s undoing was placing too much trust on these academics. It is unfortunate that some of them breached the trust Jega reposed in them.

    It is a shame that instead of honouring their colleague by giving off their best, they chose to play for pecuniary gain.

    Are there no more good and honest men in our universities? If university teachers cannot be entrusted to conduct free and fair elections, then we are done for as a nation. Will we have to go and look for angels to do a job, which men like us do in their countries without fuss? What happened in some states during the last April 11 governorship election, especially in Abia, Akwa Ibom and Rivers, has exposed the underbelly in banking on lettered men  to conduct elections. The public will not easily forget the  way the professor who acted as the returning officer for Rivers conducted himself during the collation of the presidential poll results on national television. It was a forerunner to what we are witnessing today – the annulment of the governorship election in that state by the tribunal and appeal court.

    I do not understand why a professor will declare a candidate winner of an election where the number of votes cast is more than the number of registered voters. Without being told that should have sent a signal to the returning officer that something is wrong somewhere. But the returning officer saw nothing wrong in such discrepancy. He used the result, as it were, to declare the winner of the election when he should have cancelled the result outright. Should we continue to use dons as electoral umpires? INEC Chairman Prof Mahmoud Yakubu has adopted Jega’s style, but from what we have seen of the performance of these lecturers in the 2015 elections, isn’t it time for us to look for other men and women outside the ivory tower to do this most sensitive and delicate job?

    There is no big deal about using university teachers for the job. If we are looking for upright men, they abound in every stratum of the society. Let Yakubu cast his net wide and he will find them. He should not make the mistake of relying solely on lecturers to conduct the 2019 elections. He has enough time between now and then to get men and women of honour for the exercise.

     

     

  • Matters miscellaneous for year 2016

    How time flies! Year 2016 is already here. January is a month of deep thoughts for me. Two most important people in my life were born in the month of January. My illustrious brother, Benjamin Oluwakayode Osuntokun of evergreen memory was born on the day of Epiphany – January 6, 1935. If he had been alive, he would have been 81 years on January 6. The Kayode Osuntokun Trust will be celebrating his life and achievement with the usual annual lecture today January 7, appropriately at the Benjamin Oluwakayode Osuntokun Auditorium on the grounds of the University College Hospital, Ibadan where he spent almost all his working life of medical research and practice. This year’s  lecturer is a young  and brilliant Professor Olufunmilayo Falusi Olopade who is Walter L. Palmer Distinguished  Service Professor and Director, Centre for Global Health and Associate Dean for Global Health, University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious universities on planet earth. It is gratifying to note that given the right environment, our people perform excellently abroad and this young lady is not only a credit to her parents and Nigeria but to humanity at large. It is most fitting that the Trust has finally found a worthy lady to break into the group of eminent scholars who in the past 20 years have given lectures to celebrate a worthy academic forebear.

    January 10 is the birthday of  Abiodun Olayinka Adekoya, the girl God chose for me to be a wife. Even though God called her home almost 13 years ago, she will always live and be alive in my heart. People called her rose because of her light skin colour but I like to remember her as diamond because diamonds are forever. Whenever I remember my wife especially in the quiet of most nights, I shed tears most time involuntarily remembering the good old days and wishing to relive them. Loved ones of course never dies; they live in our memories and in the children and grandchildren left behind. Indeed my son has named his lovely daughter Abiodun after his mother. Wale my nephew has also given us the joy of a Kayode Jr. having named his son Kayode after his father and we also have six foot plus Benjamin in  my nephew Segun’s son named after his father. The Yoruba say Ina ku feeru boju ogede ku fomo re ropo meaning  a dying fire may be covered by ashes only to come alive and plantain trump always brings a fresh offshoot from the old trunk. In short man never dies because he continues living in his offsprings. Heaven needs not be impatient afterall, we will all be going there!  We on this side of the heavenly divide have tried to remember our loved ones through academic prizes and funding visiting professorhips. The Kayode Osuntokun Estate has done this in the University of Ibadan and I have instituted a prize for best microbiology graduate in Redeemers University in memory of my wife because that was her field of study. The Osuntokun family, joined by Kayode’s friend, Chief Dele Falegan have also endowed a large prize for best graduating medical student in Ekiti State University. I left Ekiti State University  where I was Pro-Chancellor with endowment for annual prizes in Law, Engineering, Social sciences, Humanities and Environmental Sciences. These prizes are to be awarded in perpetuity. This is my hope and not wishful thinking! I say this because our universities, incredibly, as it may sound, are not as organized and careful as they should be in continuously managing endowment funds. There is evidence of monies for endowment being lumped with general university money and being spent or stolen to the point that endowment monies are misapplied, misappropriated or outrightly stolen!

    This brings me to banking in Nigeria. Many of our banks are robbing us with all kinds of spurious charges; only GTB is not guilty of this. In fact GTB does not levy  account holders who are over 70 years any charges. This is unlike UBA which levies all kinds of charges sometimes running to over a thousand naira every month. I hate to say this: the owners of the bank go on splashing their unearned income all over the place in global and continental do-goodness while fleecing us here at home. Imagine if say five million accounts are debited a thousand naira for all kinds of charges for routine banking services of receiving salaries or pensions, that would  amount to five billion unearned income every month. They play on our intelligence that few will complain about a few thousand naira which will on the other hand add up to billions of naira. The CBN should step into this and stop the banks from taxing our pensions and deposits. Of course I know that taxes have to be paid on interest earned on deposits but not on routine transactions of withdrawals and payment of bills. While on the banks,  must we  be threatened by all kinds of fraudsters asking us to click on sites or be disconnected because of the  non-compliance with BVN  registration despite the fact that we have done this over and over? Sometimes our ATM cards are rendered inoperative  or cheques embarrassingly dishonored because our birthdays in the banks do not agree with the one on the BVN! Banks send me congratulatory messages on dates arbitrarily chosen for me by my banks and banks that I do not have accounts in. I even get bank statement from one bank that I never had account in! When you move from banks to GSM lines, it is the same scam. One is often threatened with disconnection because one communication body has said ones details are not properly captured. Deductions for services not rendered are made from one’s accounts and one is incessantly bothered by calls asking one to join for deal or the other. If I am to be reporting in the offices of these telecom companies every time I am asked to do this, it will be a merry go round kind of life. We go to banks to give details of who we are, we do the same for telecoms, same for national ID,  for passport, for drivers licenses, hospital cards, ATM cards, libraries cards, ID cards at places of employment and even hotel cards! Why cannot all these details be shared by those who need them? Do all these electronic devices involved not expose us to certain dose of radiation? In civilized countries, data is shared among several bodies rather the waste of time we are subjected to in this country providing the same data over and over and year in year out. What is happening in our country is that we are being dragooned into modernity without necessary infrastructure to facilitate this. All I can say is Lord have mercy!

    I hope this hard-pressed government will be able to find resources to repair our collapsed roads. I remember Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala telling us during Obasanjo’s administration that the money saved from payment of foreign debts after we paid in one lump sum our debts to foreign countries and commercial institutions will be used to fix our collapsed infrastructure. She also said the Abacha loot will also be used for the same. Nothing like this was done. Rather, the same Okonjo-Iweala allegedly transferred about $350 million one night to Dasuki to be shared among party men on the eve of the last election. The same woman is apparently back at her desk in Washington after her Trojan assignment of putting our country in economic distress where the West will have us belong. Good job madam economic whiz kid!

    This government must still fix the roads whether it likes it or not . I mean we cannot postpone living! If we have to install toll gates along our roads as long as these monies are properly managed and the money ploughed back into road maintenance, so be it. Government must also collect taxes from all adults to improve the quality of our lives and not to lavish on government officials and parliamentarians at federal state and local government levels. The oil and gas global market are not likely to recover this year. In fact oil price may go down below $20 a barrel. This is why I cannot understand the careless talk by some government officials that pump price of gasoline may be slashed below the current official price. What Nigerians are yearning for is availability not unreliable low prices. People are buying fuel at a price ranging between N120 and N180 depending on where one is. If fuel is available at N100, Nigerians will adjust to that fact and people should stop raising our hopes about cheap fuel only to dash them. We will have cheap fuel only when we have full refining capacity in Nigeria.

  • And the winners are…

    And the winners are…

    YOU can accuse Nigerians of harbouring a large army of tricksters, pranksters and fraudsters to whom corruption, bad leadership, poor followership and poverty mean nothing. But you cannot assert that our people are stricken by lack of ingratitude. No.

    Nigerians surely know how to reward good deeds. Otherwise, how do you explain the series of awards going on now? As usual, “Editorial Notebook” will not be left out of this yearly ritual. So, here is to all those compatriots of ours who stood out in 2015.

    He has been lampooned for running the economy aground, mishandling the war against Boko Haram and lacking the courage to fight corruption, a charge amplified by no other person but the man to whom he was an adopted son. But, fair is fair – Dr Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan did well by relinquishing power when he saw that it was all over. A typical African big man would have preferred to shed some blood, smash some heads and scream that he would never surrender a mandate given to him freely by millions of Nigerians. But, many have asked: had he any other choice? Well, that is neither here nor there. The reality is, the Jonathan presidency has become history. A former teacher, he has since hit the lecture circuit, pontificating about democracy, rule of law, good governance and all such theories. Take a bow, Dr Jonathan, you are the Man of the Year.

    When a fire broke out at a popular market in Ado-Ekiti, Governor Ayo Fayose led firemen to fight it. After the smoke had cleared and the stalls lay in ruins, he ordered in the bulldozer, promising that from the ruins of that market, another, which will be a worthy edifice, will spring up. His compassion provoked questions on the mysterious fire.

    His Excellency recently suborned the House of Assembly to hold a special session where he was proclaimed “leader of the opposition”, following his verbal assaults on President Muhammadu Buhari and those newspaper advertorials in which he played the necromancer, predicting gloom and doom.

    But of all the governor’s stunts of epical Balotellian proportions, none seems to have matched his outlandish presentation of the 2016 budget. The video is all over the place. Fayose strolls into the Assembly in a Polo shirt. The lawmakers sit there, looking serious like pupils awaiting the headmaster’s visit. Some have their hands clasped onto their chests. Others are restless, like a patient on a dentist’s chair. Then, the governor sounds off about the state being his “catchment area” , raises up the document and asks four times: “Those who want this budget passed speedily, say yes!”. As most of the lawmakers watch the bizarre scene, the gallery erupts: “Yeah!.” His Excellency is not done. He goes on: “Those who doesn’t (sic) want this budget passed speedily, say ‘yeah!.” All is quiet. Fayose then reaches out for the gavel, which he brought, and bangs the podium, yelling: “The ayes have it!.” He turns to the Speaker and bows sharply. “Mr Speaker, I hereby present the budget.” Can you beat that?

    For combining so well the dual role of the executive and the legislature, for being so compassionate to his people and for delivering regularly those diatribes against the President even when nobody replies him, Fayose is Governor of the Year.

    Considering the row that greeted his enthronement as Senate president, Dr Bukola Saraki should snatch away the Senator of the Year Award. The truth, however, is that many of our distinguished senators are qualified to claim this much disputed title. There is Senator Ibn Na’Allah, the architect of the infamous “Bill for an act to prohibit frivolous petitions and other matters connected therewith”, otherwise known as “Anti-social Media Bill”. Senator Ike Ekweremadu – against all odds – became Deputy Senate President by what many have called the betrayal of principle and alleged forgery of the rules, which is still the subject of a police investigation. Dino Melaye’s exuberance attained its full potentiality as he was either playing Dr Saraki’s bodyguard or making frivolous allegations, always yelling like a hungry hyena. None of them, I regret to say, got the trophy.

    Step forward Senator Kashamu Buruji. For long, there has been the argument that he is a fugitive running away from justice in the United States where he has been invited to clear his name of drug charges. Buruji, who has been accused of changing his name at will, insists that he has no case to answer and that he is not, in fact, the fellow being sought after by the law enforcement agents. The suspect, if there was any, he says, was his brother who had died. But, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) would not listen. Its men stormed Buruji’s home and attempted to seize him. He locked himself in and vowed to commit suicide should the agents persist in their battle to catch him . Then, the courts stepped in and pulled the brakes on his planned extradition.

    Distractions over, Buruji then joined his colleagues to begin the arduous and intellectually challenging exertion of lawmaking for the peace and progress of the country. Unknown to us all, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) – Ah! NANS, those who didn’t understand the game were screaming – was watching his progress. In no time, Buruji was called up to be garlanded as “Golden Man of the Year”. NANS President Tijani Usman said it was in recognition of the senator’s “untiring, exemplary and compassionate leadership style”.

    A few days ago, Buruji issued advertorials titled “Corruption must die if Nigeria must live”, urging Nigerians to support President Buhari’s anti-corruption battle. Besides, he said: “The only money I have ever received outside my legitimate business earnings is the one (N30m) given to all senatorial candidates by my party during the last election. The senator’s critics shouted: Where was the gift from? Who handed it over?

    From a drug suspect threatened with extradition, his home bombarded in a commando-style as if he was an armed robbery kingpin, his seat threatened by a tribunal judgment, which the Court of Appeal overturned and now an anti-corruption crusader, Buruji’s is, indeed, an “uncommon transformation” (apology to former Akwa Ibom Governor Godswill Akpabio). Take a bow, Buruji, Senator of the Year.

    Senator Akpabio’s Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) hit a United States Embassy vehicle in Abuja. After a few days in an Abuja hospital, the distinguished senator flew overseas for medical help. Many were wondering why he didn’t check into the multi-billion naira world-class hospital he built in Akwa Ibom State during those years of “uncommon transformation” . That, no doubt, was the Accident of the Year.

    Even outside office, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro seems to be grabbing the headlines more than he did when he was Foreign minister – he was also Defence minister, you may wish to recall. His role in the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections has become a subject of a massive probe by the military. He has, besides, been mentioned in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC’s) investigation of the alleged diversion of $2.1b arms cash. While all the noise was going on, Obanikoro (Koro, for short or Koro Ibo– ballot- a nickname he earned as a result of his yet unproven but widely acclaimed prowess at winning elections) issued a statement that he was not on the run but in a United States university, studying History.

    Instead of praising his courage– in the search for knowledge, many have been scorning him. They ask derisively: “History; what kind of  history? Is he planning to manipulate history?” The fact is that, unlike some other former government officials who checked into hospitals –former PDP chair Haliru Bello was on wheel chair on Tuesday when he was hurled before a judge – when issues were raised about their tenure, Obanikoro has simply gone into the academia for more knowledge. For his love for scholarship, Obanikoro is Student of the Year.

    This year’s awards are, regrettably, slightly tinged with tragedy. The revered Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, died overseas, setting off a bitter–expensive, many claim– struggle for the throne. Former Kogi State Governor Abubakar Audu, who was set to be proclaimed winner of the November 21 governorship election, died suddenly. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in a manner that exhibited so much dependence and less independence, declared the election inconclusive and ordered a supplementary poll in some polling units. Of all the deaths, however, the most controversial remains that of former Bayelsa Governor D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha, also known as Alams.

    He was said to be in a Dubai hospital when the news broke that he was to be extradited to London for alleged money laundering. He had years earlier escaped from Britain in circumstances that provoked a wide range of conjectural elucidations, among which was that he was decked out in a woman’s clothings. Alams jumped off his hospital bed, hopped onto a plane and flew home. Not long after, he died. Now many are saying cynically that he was merely proclaimed dead, an unproven assertion that has rendered his death inconclusive. When is death not the final, the end and the closing of all things?

    The row has refused to die. For this, Alamieyeseigha’s death wins Controversy of the Year.

    In the business sector, what would have qualified for the Deal of the Year – billionaire Aliko Dangote threatening to buy English Premier League giants Arsenal – did not take off. Mobile operator MTN was hit with a $5.2b fine. After  negotiations, the fine was reduced to $3.4b. As we all looked forward to the company signing the cheque, it suddenly made a detour and elected to go to court where the matter remains pending. So, no Deal of the Year Award.

    Now, a short break. More awards are on the way. Don’t go away.

  • Songs of Biafra

    FOR sometime now, Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, the embattled Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) leader, has been quiet. He may have decided to lie low to allow things cool down in MASSOB where his authority is being challenged by some members, who even had the temerity to suspend him. Rather than address the infighting in MASSOB, Uwazuruike is taking on the larger society. On Tuesday, he presented what he called the 2016 Biafra Budget at the Ojukwu Memorial Library in Owerri, the Imo State capital. He also unveiled plans to conduct election on February 22 into his planned Biafran government in the Southeast.  He named a Catholic priest, Rev Father Samuel Aniebonam, as chairman of Biafra Independent National Electoral Commission. The cleric and other ‘’men and women of God’’, he said, would conduct the election, which he said, would be by open ballot popularly known as option A4.

    Wishful thinking, you may say. But we should not dismiss it as such. Uwazuruike is free to dream dreams, but he should be careful that he does nothing to destabilise the country. His desire is for a Biafra nation, which appears to be dear to the hearts of some of his people. But is he not daring constituted authority with the way he is pursuing his dream? He should not allow his dream to get a better part of him and break the laws of the land. He and his co-travellers say they do not believe in Nigeria, but as long as they reside on its soil, they are subject to its laws. So, he should beware and tread softly so that he does not run foul of the law. That is if he has not already done so!

  • We need desperately to restructure

    As ever, we hear daily, stories of inter-ethnic conflicts in countries of Black Africa. We read of unrest in the Central African Republic, turbulence in Burundi, the probability of a return to violence in Rwanda, the continued disaster of Somalia, ethnic animosities and threats of secession in Uganda, continued terrorism and the rampage of warlords in the eastern provinces of the Republic of Congo, similar agitations in Angola, Mozambique, trouble in Mali, Chad – the list goes on.

    When we read these things, we Nigerians must recognise that these are things that can happen in our country too. In fact, we must be honest and admit that signs of them already exist in Nigeria. The Biafra agitations in Igboland, the endless inter-ethnic conflicts in the Middle Belt, the contribution of ethnic discontent to the strength of Boko Haram, the growing dissatisfaction among the masses of educated Yoruba youths – are all developments that we must accord the seriousness they deserve.

    The glaringly obvious answer is to restructure this federation appropriately and empower each people group as much as possible to develop itself in the context of Nigeria and to gradually banish poverty from among its peoples.

    It is in the light of these that I re-read the written message brought by a distinguished delegation of Northern leaders, representing the Arewa Consultative Forum, to a meeting of the Yoruba Unity Forum holding at Ikenne on December 15, 2012. ACF is the topmost organization of the Hausa-Fulani political leadership of the North; and the Yoruba Unity Forum is one of the topmost organizations of the Yoruba political leadership of the South-west. The said document is therefore a message exchanged between two organizations representing the two largest nationalities of Nigeria – the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba.  That makes it a truly historic document. What the prestigious delegation of the Hausa Fulani leadership had to communicate to the august gathering of Yoruba leaders that day says much about our country.

    I first read this document soon after its message was delivered at Ikenne and I was highly impressed then by its form and formalities. I am still impressed by the same today.

    Even so, I find the core proposition of the message shocking and embarrassing. The central proposition of the message was that no real change is needed in the way that Nigeria is organized and managed today! That proposition is summed up in the following staggering sentence: “Today, we have reached a point at which certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of many settled issues in our nation”!

    What does ACF mean here by “many settled issues” that “certain groups are calling for a re-negotiation of”?  Surprisingly, as they spell out quite unmistakably in their message, they mean the structure that the Nigerian federation has today – the structure that, gradually and deliberately between 1966 and 1999, the Federation of Nigeria was given by a succession of northern military dictatorships punctuated now and then by northern-led civilian presidencies.

    The ACF message urges that, in discussing the issues relating to Nigeria’s decline and near-failure, we should eschew recriminations. I agree with that. And I am sure that most Nigerians would agree. Recriminations will not solve the titanic problems of our country.

    But I am sure too that most Nigerians want Nigeria’s political leaders to be sincere and open in discussing Nigeria’s problems. Our country’s situation is desperate, to put it mildly. The war on corruption by the present Buhari presidency is a step in the right direction; but the most important step in the right direction would be to restructure our federation properly. Corruption is one of the symptoms of Nigeria’s decline; the warped and distorted structure of our federation is the root of our country’s decline.

    Any group that continues to insist now that our federation’s structure as it is today is “settled” and not open to discussion obviously needs to rethink in the interest of us all. In the interest of Nigeria’s recovery, orderliness and prosperity, the ACF and its principals must recognise that continued resistance to a proper restructuring of this “federation” by a prestigious nation like the Hausa-Fulani nation is dangerous to Nigeria.

    The stakes are simply too high to allow for continued evasions and dogged stonewalling. This country must sincerely and seriously sort itself out. Our country is a country of many nations. These nations had evolved over thousands of years before the British came along and used their stronger technology to push all of us together into one country. In spite of one-hundred years of living together in Nigeria, these nations are still alive and strong. Even in similar multi-nationality countries where the nationalities have lived together as one country for many centuries, the general tendency today is to give each nationality some local autonomy to manage its affairs in its own way and to make its own kind of contribution to the country it belongs to. Britain, India, Switzerland, Indonesia, Spain, and others, are doing just that. I repeat that even the British who forced all our nationalities together to create Nigeria are now pursuing the policy of “Devolution” – which means giving each nationality (the Scots, English, Welsh and Irish)  the freedom to design its constitution, control its own national government, and develop its own economy – in the context of the oneness of Britain.

    As we prepared for independence in the 1950s, our political leaders were in no doubt that our nationalities should be given the recognition and development freedom that they deserved. That is why they agreed to a federal structure for Nigeria and allowed each of the regions of the federation to manage itself in its own way. The regions made commendable achievements in development, and at independence, our country was a land of hope and pride, a country that the world viewed with great expectation. All that was needed was to take the regional autonomy lower to the level of the nationalities – to grant the petitions of the group of minority nationalities in each region for a region of their own.

    But, unfortunately, after independence, the northern politicians who controlled the Federal Government decided that the Federal Government must control all things in Nigeria, and that the federating units must all be subject to the whims and caprices of the controllers of the Federal Government. By the beginning of the present century, our country had become a battered and broken entity on the edge of a precipice. An overwhelming majority of our citizens, in all regions of our country, are wallowing in poverty and hopelessness. Even the North was beginning, as at independence, under Sir Ahmadu Bello’s highly respectable leadership, to make impressive economic and social progress. I had the privilege in 1961 of visiting this great premier of the North in his office, and of listening to him for a few minutes as he told us what he was doing for the people of the Northern Region. I left his presence very proud of him, and very proud of my country and myself.  Now, the North is sunk and sinking in poverty, and countless youths of the North are reacting to their hopelessness by giving their energies to callings that are dedicated to destroying, killing and wrecking. And yet, some of the men who have been elevated to high positions of leadership in that same North are telling us and the world that the distortions that have led our country to these disasters are “settled” and not open to discussion? It is unbelievable!

    Most Nigerians are saying that the present structure and situation of their country is untenable and unsustainable. The Yoruba nation, the Igbo nation, the nations of the Delta, the nations of the Middle Belt, and the Kanuri and related peoples of the Northeast, all speaking through countless voices and organizations at home and abroad, are saying so. It is time the Hausa-Fulani leadership come forth to say so too.

    The dream of one region’s domination of Nigeria is anachronistic and unattainable. Striving for it is chasing shadows – and chasing shadows in a manner that only generates Nigeria’s decline and promotes ever-increasing poverty and hopelessness for the millions of Nigerians. The dream of a prosperous and great Nigeria is attainable. We can make Nigeria prosperous, and we can all prosper together in Nigeria.  That is a goal worthy to strive for.

     

    • This article was first published on December 17, 2015.

  • ‘Press boys’ and Buhari would hate this…

    Picture Femi Adesina as President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and Muhammadu Buhari as his Special Adviser on Defence or Agriculture; I believe a President Reuben Abati would have fared better commanding Goodluck Jonathan as a Clerk in the Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry unit. It’s quite heartwarming too to imagine an Eni Akisola as Governor of Ondo State while Olusegun Mimiko serves as a director in the state’s health ministry. If roles were swapped, do these bastions of Nigerian journalism possess the superior wisdom, intellect and charisma to lead?

    Would the ‘elevated tact’ they offered in their news columns be enough? Would the relative truths and morality they projected on their pages and that endeared them to their teeming readership and patrons among the ruling class, guarantee their election into the esteemed and very demanding public offices?

    Or would they need devilry and measured insensitivity to succeed, like the predatory ruling class they serve? Would they, like their principals manifest as everything but a boon to the Nigerian state, in time? Would they need journalists to evolve into ‘press boys’-  vulgar, grotesque aberrations of the journalist as watchdog?

    Nigeria savours the vulgar and sexually grotesque no doubt thus her fascination with the amoral beauty theme, the deformed beautiful boy to be precise. In this festering theme, the journalist suitably features in the machinations of a decadent and predatory ruling class. He becomes journalism’s dark answer to the society’s sinister lust for the beautiful boy – and so we have the journalist as the attractive ‘press boy,’ open to all manners of twisted, criminal and strange ventures.

    Last year, we did strange things. ‘Press boys’ within and outside the country’s corridors of power gave the journalist a slatternly sensitivity. Thus the press boy manifested on Nigeria’s psyche, like a provider of degenerate pleasures, a commercial sex worker to be precise.

    I hereby apologise to the wiry of the pack, the gentlemen/ladies of the press; the crusader breed that painstakingly burnt the hours, doing ‘legwork’ and anchoring reportage that impacted and changed lives, however nominal the impact. Apology to the editors and media too, that devoted pages and priceless hours to publish the news and investigative features that continually suffered the public’s apathy because they were too didactic and devoid of bias.

    Last year, journalism fell to mob tyranny. I speak of that age-old tyranny of the mob that severely skews newspaper cover stories thus establishing the descent of the fabled press’ intellect into dimwittedness – no thanks to the journalist that mutated like Castiglione’s courtier, without the latter’s vaunted athleticism or social savvy.

    Last year, the ‘press boy’ affected citizenship and justice with misty emotion, flaunting docile intellect, bearing and gestures of a mutt on the leash of a predatory ruling class. He was essentially a deformation of the courtier – his conduct is likable to that of the celebrity hairdresser, boudoir confidant or presidential lounge lizard perpetually nodding in affirmative to the caprices of his principal, the president, or every patron with deep pocket.

    Last year, the press boy constantly groveled at the feet and filth attic of his principal in apparent affirmation of the truism: “He that pays the piper dictates the tune.” Flattery and malice leapt from his forked tongue as he attacked his principal’s perceived detractors with relish. Like the medieval, Italian male harlot, his shameless self abasement was unmanly and amoral; he elevated bum over forelock in a flagrant rite of socioeconomic and political sodomy.

    Last year, the journalist misappropriated the warrior spirit; ‘press boys’ among us paraded themselves as leopards but chirped like crickets gone nuts, in dubious indignation at the whirlpool of tragedy that has become the Nigerian dream. The African Independent Television (AIT) for instance, went to war with reason, ethics and decency as reflected by its damaging , irresponsible broadcasts about candidate Muhammadu Buhari during the presidential elections.  Last year, the ‘press boy’ was the ruling class’ beast of burden; he made sensibility a prelude to dog-eared masochism. This unfortunate reality was predetermined by his innate sensitivity. The ‘press boy’ suffered a moral concussion, a consequence of his perverse manifestation as a beast of moral grayness.

    Outside the loop of power, he was the quintessential moralist, the unsolicited arbiter in matters of equity, nationhood and justice. In the loop of power, he became Reuben Abati to the ruling class’ Goodluck Jonathan; Femi Adesina to Muhammadu Buhari.

    And the journalist that suffered the misfortune of being unacceptable to the incumbent power structure, hovered and loitered about the corridors of power, seeking the proverbial moment when fortune would smile at him and accord him wiggle room in the country’s theatre of base, bloody, political intrigues – think Dele ‘name-dropper’ and company.

    Last year, the Nigerian ‘press boy’ like the Petrarchan lover, fancied himself deliciously powerless vis-a-vis a domineering society and media owner. Goaded by his sodomised sensibility, he accentuated his ethical contusion by seeking sufficiency in loot accorded him by the ruling class.

    Last year, as all others, the journalist was insanely reactive; fettered by grinding poverty, institutional bias, dubious professionalism and imperious principals, he became a parody of masculinity whose words and deeds boomed as cloying mime of every criminal and politician’s desire. How can such character effectively discharge his role as watchdog of the society or defender of the masses’ rights?

    Let this be the year we stopped enabling the journalist to betray us; the journalist as ‘press boy’ will never serve us. Nigeria deserves a press that would look Buhari in the eye and tell him that the honeymoon is over, while stifling the din of sentimental fops spiritedly chanting ‘Sai Buhari!’ to all of the president’s unforgivable gaffes.

    Buhari isn’t expected to magically redeem the damage caused by his predecessor’s locust years in power, but it’s 2016 and we are done listening to drivel about how his predecessor (s) squandered the country’s resources and destroyed the nation’s economy. Nigeria deserves a press that would tirelessly remind Buhari of such fact; a press that would firmly and maturely make him understand that he isn’t the best that we have to offer but the country’s timely answer to the darkness and monstrosity foisted on us by his generation.

    Buhari’s much-hyped calmness in face of provocation has gotten too old now. Nigeria does not need him to respond to gnats like Fayose, Metuh, Fani-Kayode and company but the country certainly deserves his coordinated and progressive response to maladies of recurrent fuel scarcity, insecurity, unemployment, substandard healthcare and education, brain drain and so on. Nigeria deserves a press that would tell him that his ridiculous reduction in fuel price from N87 to N86. 50 smacks of duplicity and desperate lust to be cuddled.

    The joke is on him if he fails to live up to his campaign promises; he needs to know that whatever loot he recoups from his predecessors in power should be judiciously applied to the betterment of the nation where the impact would actually be felt in the lives of the citizenry.

    This year unlike all others, the Buhari we give is the Buhari we will get. Let Buhari groupies stop using the press to cuddle Buhari. Let the press start telling it as it is. Who says Mr. President can’t bear the heat? Remember, he is Muhammadu Buhari and his second spell in power is encore.

  • My person of the year : The electorate

    Choosing the person of the year is not an easy job. I should know because those of us in the media see it as our business to give out such award at the end of every year.  The awardee could be person or persons, or an institution, where an inanimate object is chosen. Whether the awardee is human or not, it still carries the tag : person of the year.  The person of the year need not be the most trusted man or woman or institution on earth. The main criterion in picking such a person is his impact on society in the outgoing year.

    How did he affect the society? Positively or negatively? Even, if his work negatively affected society that will not disqualify him from being named person of the year. It only shows that he did something in the outgoing year which cannot be easily forgotten. Picking the person of the year out of our 170 million population is not a walk in the park. We have many people in different walks of life who impacted on the country either for good or for ill in 2015. Who among them should be person of the year?

    It is also not a must that the person of the year must be wealthy. There is nothing that also says that he must be an industrialist, a politician or an academic. The person of the year could be an artisan or an house boy; what he does is not the issue but his impact on society. 2015 was not an ordinary year. It was a year we were forewarned about few years ago. Some American foreign relations experts had at a round table gazed into their crystal ball, warning that Nigeria may disintegrate in 2015 if care is not taken.

    It was not a prediction of doom per se, as some tend to see it. The experts’ submission flowed from their analysis of the Nigerian situation, especially what happens during elections. Since 2015 was an election year, they feared that if things were not well handled, the country may go up in flames. It was a timely warning because it made us to sit up. We were troubled by the prediction and it generated heated debate across the country. We called the Americans names for thinking like that, but we subconsciously resolved that their prediction will not come to pass.

    To avoid death and destruction in the 2015 elections, some eminent Nigerians led by former military head of state Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar got the two leading presidential candidates Dr Goodluck Jonathan and Gen Muhammadu Buhari to sign a peace treaty before the poll. It was all in a bid to ensure that the Americans’ prediction did not come to pass.

    For winning the March 28 election after his fourth attempt, President Buhari made history. Former President Jonathan also made history as the first sitting president to lose election and accept defeat without overheating the polity. But, the greater history maker is the electorate, which voted out the Jonathan administration. It was as if the voters knew the rot into which the Jonathan administration had thrown the country before they voted it out. Just imagine where we will be today if Jonathan had returned to power. We will still be living a lie as a country under him.

    If Jonathan had been reelected, we will not have heard about the $2.1 billion arms bazaar – the misuse of the recovered Abacha loot to oil the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) political machine and service the friends of government; we will not have heard about the illness of former Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, who turned the ministry to her fiefdom. We will not have learnt about the economy’s mismanagement by the world renowned economist, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who looked the other way while former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col Sambo Dasuki was busy playing games with our money. As minister of finance and minister of the economy, it was Okonjo-Iweala’s duty to ensure that our money was properly utilised, but she didn’t.

    Jonathan and Okonjo-Iweala kept quiet as Dasuki played Father Christmas with our commonwealth. We were saved by the electorate’s vigilance. They stood firm in voting out Jonathan so that Nigeria’s future may be better. If we had continued under Jonathan, it would have been business as usual. Alison-Madueke may not be in London today nursing her health; she would have put up a bold face as if everything is well, while sneaking out once in a while for treatment so that we will not know what ails her. I am not mocking her, but just drawing attention to the kind of game they played with our country under their watch.

    They were desperate to remain in power. This was why former First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan relocated to Rivers State for the April 11 governorship election to ensure the victory of her protege Nyesom Wike. Today, the tribunal and appeal court have annulled his election. The Supreme Court may likely nail his coffin next year. Will Mama Peace again relocate to Rivers to ensure that her boy wins? The electorate would have spoken loud and clear in the Rivers election if it had been free and fair. Their day will come next year when there will be no Mama Peace to breath down the necks of the election managers.

    For standing firm; for upholding the truth; for shunning filthy lucre; for being vigilant; for remaining honest to themselves; for saving the Nigerian project; for having the audacity to vote the way they did; for the power to see beyond the wobbly Jonathan administration,  the electorate are my person of the year. Going forward, I pray that they will not go to sleep. May 2016 be a better year for us. Happy New Year.