The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Buhari’s ‘demons’

    There is an epiphany of morality in President Muhammadu Buhari, a vision of hope and romanticised ‘Change’ that the severely exploited and hapless citizenry would die for. Buhari rode to power chanting change and promising a radical, progressive departure from the pilfering that characterised public office before his emergence.

    At his assumption of office, this writer thought President Buhari would affirm his touted Spartan discipline by scorning the presidential villa at Aso Rock. It seemed a foregone conclusion that President Buhari would frown at the vulgar luxury and wastage of public fund characterised by the State House and thus set about to institute a new standard of service and leadership by stripping the villa of obscene opulence – he could have simply departed it for more Spartan abode while he redistributed Aso Villa’s insane lavishness to shore up sectors of governance lacking adequate ease and provisions.

    Notwithstanding his vanity for Aso Villa’s legendary perks, one can’t help but admire Buhari’s seeming valour and resolve to recoup the country’s looted funds from public officers that served in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s highly corrupt and disgraceful administration.

    But like I averred in recent past, President Buhari’s touted anti-corruption fight should only be taken seriously when culprits get sent to jail to serve sentences that befit their crimes. Nigerians should neither accept nor entertain any attempt at granting looters of public fund, the luxury of plea bargain.

    If Buhari grants them such right, then he would be legitimising their corrupt acts and he would by default, have supported and applauded the mass murders committed by every public officer and their associates caught with the country’s looted funds. President Buhari ought to realise that looters of public fund are mass murderers.

    For instance, money that could have been used to arm the military to crush terrorism, repair damaged roads and fund the country’s ailing health sector have been embezzled by miscreants in power. Consequently, thousands of lives have been lost to terrorist attacks, ghastly accidents on bad roads, poor health facilities.

    The deaths of these hapless souls brutally hacked down in their prime by terrorists, bad roads and health sector, are blamable on the men and women that conspired to divert fund initially earmarked to resolve these problems.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria is still afflicted by political profiteers comprising the ruling class and various segments of the poor, struggling masses. In the ensuing degeneracy of politics and cultural ethos, the hero we know today may morph into a dreadful monster. Given that power is the brandy of the turncoat, there is need to persistently scrutinize President Buhari uncompromisingly.

    For instance, his touted anti-corruption fight remains noise-making at the moment. When the ‘corrupt’ get prosecuted and sent to jail for their misdemeanor, Nigerians will believe him. And despite his touted reduction of his salary and that of his deputy, President Buhari is not working pro bono. He is being paid for the work he does. And it’s an open secret that his cozy allowances among other frills of being President and living in Aso Rock are the stuff the finest fantasies are made of.

    Buhari has been cuddled enough, by the media and his most ardent supporters. Nigeria needs him to work now. And no matter the floweriness and duplicity of spin accorded his performance so far, very little has changed since he became President. It is sad to note that the steadier electricity supply oft cited by his diehard apologists as a dividend of his leadership has since petered out. Electricity supply has become worse and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), under the numb chairmanship of Dr. Sam Amadi is determined to inflict greater hardship on Nigerians by increasing electricity tariff.

    Perhaps such increase would be taken in good faith if power supply were indeed steady. But it isn’t and all Amadi could base his planned increment on is a convoluted technical and financial mumbo-jumbo deliberately obscured to confuse and overwhelm poor, hapless citizenry afflicted with the ill-luck of a predatory NERC and private electricity entrepreneurs.

    And even though he vowed to crush Boko Haram by December 2015, it is clear that President Buhari won’t achieve any such feat hence he should learn to be more tactful and modest in making future pledges. The military’s recent fiasco with the Shiite Muslim sect elicits greater apprehension among the citizenry – many are worried that President Buhari and his re-invigorated military might have sown the seeds of another bloody, villainous insurgent group masquerading as Muslims.

    Like I intoned few weeks ago, Buhari is yet to do anything extraordinary; the ‘steadier’ electricity supply has dropped to an abysmal low and the Ministry of Power and Works is reportedly planning to reintroduce toll gates on the country’s bloody and badly cratered roads. It is in fact amusing that Buhari would permit such unfairness while the citizenry brave untimely death, handicap and stress traveling the country’s perilous road networks.

    While we acknowledge that his touted honesty and integrity exerts reasonable pressure on corrupt individuals and institutions to do a cartwheel away from corruption, it need be reiterated that his anti-corruption stance and ‘government with a human face’ propaganda will continually resonate as a desperate, corny lie until the Nigerian State begins to sentence looters of public office to severe jail terms.

    Buhari needs to divorce himself from sycophancy, vanities of power and decadent luxury emblematic of Aso Villa if truly he possesses the morality and Spartan discipline frequently ascribed to him. And contrary to claims that he has a great team to work with, he doesn’t. Among his ministers, we have one that allegedly jetted out of the country to celebrate convocation of his ward at an overseas university while his state’s university withered in the stranglehold of strike action and neglect by his government.

    We have characters that had been embroiled in scandalous cases of corruption and administrative ineptitude. Nigerians accepted him (Buhari) and his team not because they are the best that we could ever produce but because they represent that excusable part of our cancerous bulk that could pass our body.

    The citizenry see the ruling class as a primitive tribe of predators grossly inured in corruption; on the other hand, we love to see Buhari as our saviour. Contemporary boondocks legend paint a portrait of him as a warrior in wolf-skin vest, brandishing a shield of steeled morality and a stone-axe forged to hack down monuments that the corrupt ruling class built to entrench corruption.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria needed Buhari hence the beauty of his emergence as President via the March 28 elections. But has Buhari justified the mandate given him so far? Besides his bid to recoup looted funds from corrupt officers of the last administration, how does he fare as an administrator?

    Buhari’s touted morality is ennobled by the citizenry’s admiration and cult worship of him. The danger in the cult worship he currently enjoys however, subsists in the fact that we are setting him up for failure. Certain sections of the press may go easy on him because one or two members of the nation’s fourth estate are in his employ as media aides but the truth need be told to President Buhari from time to time; he is not doing too well at the moment. His performance is below par.

  • Hard times and time for understanding

    The price of crude oil fell to US$36 a barrel recently and even at that Nigeria is even finding it difficult to sell its sweet crude oil. This is because of a glut in the global market due mainly to the fact of overproduction in Saudi Arabia where a nation of around 12 million is producing almost 10 million barrels of crude oil a day. This is also coupled by America’s self-sufficiency in energy because of its tremendous shale oil and fracking gas production. The USA used to buy about 60 percent of Nigeria’s production. It is today not buying any oil from Nigeria. In fact there is serious talk in the USA that it should begin to export oil. The USA is now so comfortable that it refused to allow a consortium of Canadian and American companies complete a trans-American pipeline that would have been taking crude oil across America to the Gulf coast from Canada. The refusal ostensibly was based on environmental considerations but in actual fact this was because the USA can now afford to play the environmental card because it does not need additional oil to compete with struggling American oil companies. The fact is that this project has merely been mothballed and would be resuscitated in the future particularly if the Republican Party wins the presidential election next year. Leaders of the party deny that the global environment has been abused because of industrial processes and therefore needs no abatement measures being taken. This is in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. The import of this for Nigeria is that we have not seen how low the price of crude oil will drop. The slowdown in Indian and Chinese economies and consequent reduced demand for Nigeria’s export of hydrocarbons has created a buyers market and crash of oil prices. These two huge markets in Asia are critical to oil price regime. The oil-producing Middle East is right at their backyard and transport costs compared with costs in transporting African oil is lower. Furthermore, Iran is coming into the global market in 2016 in a big way following the agreement of that country with the international community to put a hold on its hidden nuclear weapons programme. Russia, the other big oil producer needs all the money it can get from oil to maintain the illusion of a major power and its military operation in Syria and because of these, it is producing as much oil as its capacity can bear. Current estimates put its production at about nine million barrels per day. There is therefore oversupply of the global oil market.

    What is to be done? If the Saudis can be persuaded that its strategy of driving aground American shale oil and fracking gas production is not working as expected even though some small companies have folded up, then appeal can be made to that country to reduce its oil production. This is a big If, because this desert kingdom and its innumerable princes have gotten so used to trillions of dollars of oil money for its political stability that it will be a Herculean effort persuading them to change course. OPEC should be persuaded to meet in extraordinary session to cut production. Countries like Mexico and Russia should be invited to coordinate their oil production with that of OPEC to save the industry in the interest of the global economy because at the end of the day, if the countries depending on energy production collapse economically with resultant political ramifications, the whole world will be destabilized. Cheap oil may be good for some but at the end of the day it is not good for the global economy. The world needs in the short term, huge financial resources to operationalize the COP 21 global agreement on climate change recently worked out in Paris. Critical to that agreement is innovation and adaptation and every country will need resources to carry out these mechanisms.

    We have been talking about economic diversification in Nigeria for decades but the easy oil money has dulled our collective brains. Now the chicken has come home to roost. Serious diversification and clean technology-led industrial production will take time. Our agriculture, neglected over the years of easy money cannot be revived by a wave of the hand. Even the ballyhooed solid minerals sector will need all effort at organization, correct legal regime and attraction of direct foreign investment. In spite of all these obstacles and impediments, we cannot just lie down doing nothing waiting for better times to come in an uncertain future. We must do something. A campaign to rationalize the use of foreign reserves must begin. Mbonu Ojike in the 1950s asked Nigerians to boycott what is boycott-able. We have to embrace that philosophy now. It will come with a cost. This is where communication comes in. Government at all levels must explain to Nigerians that the time of easy life has come to an end. No more champagne, red and white wine, brandies and whiskies, fancy suits and shirts. This is the time to make our tailors work and whoever is ashamed to wear made in Nigeria clothing must be ready to look for funds outside available scarce resources. The ministry of information and culture and indeed all ministries must help the president to pass the message to all Nigerians to be patriotic. Those who brought down the economy through outright looting and wastage of foreign reserves must be tried and jailed. Punishment must be sure, certain and swift. No more prevarication and wringing of hands about what to do about corruption. Whatever has been collected from looters must be made public and those involved publicly shamed. This is the only way to prevent recovered money being looted again as appears to have been the case in the Jonathan administration.

    Critics who are going around about Buhari not performing must be challenged to tell us what they would have done in face of a global economic meltdown we are facing where in Greece the rate of unemployment is 60 percent and the situation in southern Europe and the Balkans generally is just slightly better. While everyone agrees there is need for responsible opposition, but no one must be allowed to misinform our people that the president does not care or love his people or that he is punishing a section of the people because he is a hard man and an uncaring soldier! This uncouth criticism must be confronted head on. This government is our last chance to get it right. The difficult time we are facing is the right time to put us on the right trajectory so that when good times return we will be well set on a path of frugality, rectitude and integrity rather than on the path of waste, stealing and squander-mania which previously prevailed. In this regard all branches of government must show the light so that the people can find their way. The recent splashing of billions of Naira by the Senate to buy SUVs is not the right way to lead and the decision should be rescinded. This is also not the time for anybody to be agitating for any form of salary increase rather we should all be helping government and thereby ourselves to build a strong country with a virile and sustainable economy. Nigerians must learn to work and work hard. An economy based on unbridled importation of all sorts of junks from India and China and Indonesia is not a sound economy. We must learn to produce what we need.  We must not want what we cannot produce. An economy based on trading of other people’s goods is no economy. The time of political and economic frivolity is over – whether we like it or not!

  • Task before Yoruba’s new leaders

    With the bitter supremacy struggle between revered Afenifere battle-fatigued fathers and their sons  operating  under ARG, acronym (Afenifere Renewal Group) finally laid to rest with the defeat in the Yoruba nation of Jonathan, the former’s choice for the last presidential election, I think it is time for rapprochement between fathers and sons. After all, what warring fathers and sons have always wanted is a government that guarantees freedom, promotes justice and fairness. With the inauguration of Buhari/Osinbajo administration in May, the sons have compensated their thoroughly-drained aggrieved fathers with a victory that had eluded them despite their 55 years in the trenches. The battle ahead will require all hands on deck after 55 years of abridged progress, eight years of Obasanjo vindictiveness against his own people, and six years of Jonathan’s politics of subterfuge that deliberately marginalized the Yoruba nation.

    Buhari will no doubt provide a level playing ground for all to thrive. His war on corruption and the battle against economic saboteurs have taken off in earnest. From there, one hopes he would move to tackle the greatest threat to nationhood- political restructuring which is what has been used for sustaining corruption by those benefiting from a unitary system fraudulently called federalism; for undermining   the security of the nation by those who reap political dividends from unimpeded infiltration of thousands of Fulani herdsmen, ranchers and cattle rustlers across north-eastern borders; for sabotaging the nation’s economy by militants sponsored and armed by Niger Delta ‘vultures’ that feed  on the blood of those who look up to them for protection; and for dumping of fake drugs and expired products on the street of Lagos by unpatriotic elements who hide under the anonymity of ‘no man’s land’ to commit heinous crimes against Nigerians.

    Since we know Buhari will not stand on the way of those who intend to fashion out a better future for themselves and  their children, I think it is time Bola Tinubu returns to Lagos to confront headlong the current political crisis facing the Yoruba nation. It was his failure and that of his ACN that a big stick was not wielded when ex-Governor Fayemi and  Opeyemi Bamidele, his friend embarked on their ego quarrel that paved the way for the emergence of an embarrassment called Ayo Fayose who was on record as thanking Bamidele for making him governor after his dubious victory. Tinubu and his colleagues will now have to find answers to Fayose who has become a national and international embarrassment.

    It is on record that he invaded courts with thugs to beat up judges presiding over his case, shredded their judgment sheets; chased out 19 opposition lawmakers and inaugurated an assembly with six PDP lawmakers; chased opposition members out of town with the help of thugs during the election that produced the current assembly members. It got more bizarre last week when Fayose invaded the state assembly with his supporters and went on to personally present and approve a budget whose contents were unknown to the hapless lawmakers who watched Fayose’s theatrics as the rest of the nation did, courtesy of Channels television.

    While the bemused lawmakers sat with folded arms, Fayose bellowed: “those who want the budget passed, say aye”! His supporters who outnumbered the lawmakers responded with a thunderous aye. Then focusing his gaze on the obviously scared lawmakers sitting down like rain-beaten chickens, he again bellowed: “those who don’t want the content of this budget passed, say nay”; the assembly hall was like a grave-yard. There upon, Fayose brought out what many have described as a carpenter’s hammer from a small bag held by one of his aides, struck  the table thrice and declared ‘budget passed’, to the thunderous applause of his supporters. Some of the lawmakers with mournful look on their faces later told reporters they ‘owed their positions to Fayose’. The South-west is sick if a part of it is sick.

    It is an irony that Fayose, to demonstrate he is a grass root man has been going to market to personally buy “pomo”, cow skin and imported iced fish in a Western Region led between 1952 and 1959 by highly educated and talented visionary leaders who among other things had a policy on agriculture that supported self sufficiency.  Over 60 years ago, Awo and his group pointedly told the Yoruba they would not eat cow meat except they domesticate their own cows. To implement the policy, Awo’s government imported cows for domestication from Argentina. Femi Alana recently reminded me that many households domesticated their own cows popularly called ‘Elila’ in the fifties and early sixties. Sixty years after the west experienced self-sufficiency in chicken and eggs production through the farm settlement programme executed by products of primary school trying to save enough for their secondary school education, Governor Fayose is still in court facing EFCC allegation of frittering away N19b of taxpayers’ money on fraudulent chicken poultry project that never produced an egg.

    Apart from Segun Oni who tried to rehabilitate a cattle ranch established in Otun Ekiti by Adekunle Ajasin in the Second Republic, no South-west governor revisited the 1952-59 laudable agriculture policy since 1999 including ex-Governor Kayode Fayemi, who admitted spending about N3billion to build a governors house in a state where there is no private house worth half a billion. That his government house was the least expensive in the country was besides the point. Two billion naira pumped into the Ajasin-initated Otun Cattle Ranch and managed by experts will make the whole of South-west less dependent on cattle from the north.

    Our new political leaders must also pay attention to Ondo. This is not because it is ruled by PDP. After all the Yoruba always say, ‘you don’t all sleep with your head turned to the same direction’. Dissent is rooted in the Yoruba culture. But what has been happening under Governor Mimiko reflects neither Yoruba culture nor the subculture of a proud Ondo people that often call a spade by its name. Mimiko was Jonathan point-man on ‘stomach infrastructure’ through which traditional rulers and various groups were allegedly bribed in dollar denominations. The variant of Mimiko politics is alien to a people who were at the forefront the ‘Agbekoya’ uprising of the 60s as well as the protest against NPN’s fraudulent ‘landslide and sea slide’ victories of 80s.

    In neighbouring Osun State, Aregbesola needs help. He is a governor who still thinks and acts as an activist. It is alleged by his political detractors that he speaks first and last at Exco meetings where his word is law. They claim his populist policies are often not backed up with rigorous intellectual debate that often accompanied policy initiatives 60 years ago. This they said accounts for why he almost ran the economy of the state aground before the federal government’s recent bail out.

    Ajimobi’s endless wars with his party men as well as his political enemies tend to deprive his government of the needed energy to focus on government policies. A focused Oyo State can serve as the food-basket of the South-west. The winners-take-all policy of Governor Amosun of Ogun State which led to the recent exit of Segun Osoba, a founding father of AD, ACN and APC in the state underscores the need for the APC party oligarchy to let governors know that  ‘democracy is a game of compromise even when the power of coercion’ is available. Without resolution of these political problems, regional integration will remain a forlorn hope even with the best of intentions and efforts of Yoruba statesmen and intellectuals.

  • Their road to infamy

    IT goes by the fanciful name of Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA). It is a big and sensitive office, which handles national security matters. As an organ of government, it works directly with the president, mind you not the office of the president. The National Security Adviser (NSA) has direct access to the president and the NSA bypasses protocol whenever he wants to see the president.

    Not for the NSA is the waiting in line in the president’s  outer office  in order to see the first citizen. It is a given for him to see the president whenever he wishes. Under the immediate past administration, this was a routine matter. Embattled former NSA Col Sambo Dasuki saw former President Goodluck Jonathan at a minute’s notice. Whenever he was at the Villa things moved at frenetic pace. Dasuki’s visits were not for socials, they were strictly for business – but we did not know the kind of business he and Jonathan were transacting behind closed doors.

    Instead of serious business of state, facts are emerging that they were busy planning how to share the recovered Abacha loot. In one word, they were looting the loot, which they should have used to adequately arm the military to fight Boko Haram and also develop the country.

    The Abacha loot came at a time of urgent need. Here was the armed forces confronted with a formidable foe, but not properly armed to fight it. Dasuki, ever so wily and cunny, saw a way to make money out of such a major crisis. Why not use the loot to buy the much-needed equipment to fight Boko Haram? This was the idea he sold to Jonathan and without wasting time the former president changed his mind on the use of the money for national development. There is nothing wrong in Dasuki’s suggestion that part of the Abacha loot be used in equipping the military, but it is the motive behind it that is bad.

    Dasuki had no intention of buying any arms and ammunition, he merely saw a way to enrich himself at the nation’s expense and at a time thousands of his compatriots were being killed, maimed and displaced from their homes by Boko Haram. If he really meant to take the war to Boko Haram, he would have discussed with the then Minister of Defence, Lt Gen Mohammed Gusau, a highly-experienced officer,  and they would have mapped out a plan for acquiring weapons for the battle against Boko Haram. But he did not do that because he has his own agenda – and that was to render the military incapable in the face of the Boko Haram threat. With the security apparatus in his hands, he got his way, especially with a president with no experience in military matters.

    To Jonathan, Dasuki was the all-in-all in security affairs. After all you cannot be National Security Adviser without taking charge of everything security, be it the military, police, intelligence service and para-military outfits. Dasuki ran a one-man show, sidelining Gusau and others, who he knew could stand up to him when the chips are down. With Jonathan’s support, he did what he liked and got away with it. Having pocketed the Defence and Service chiefs, Dasuki operated an outfit, which main task was to take control of public funds and distribute to those he and Jonathan thought should benefit. Politicians, phony businessmen, marabouts and the media , among others, benefited from the looted funds, which Dasuki, according to former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, collected to prosecute the Boko Haram war. Did he? Obviously, he did not; otherwise, Boko Haram would not have run circles round the military throughout the Jonathan years.

    Following the receipt of about $322 million Abacha loot, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala said, ‘’the NSA made a case for using the returned funds for urgent security operations since, he noted, there cannot be any development without peace and security. Based on this, a decision was taken to deploy about $322 million for the military operations, while the expected $700 million would be applied for development programmes as originally conceived’’. As coordinating minister of economy, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala owed it a duty to ensure that the recovered loot was judiciously spent, but she did not, preferring to pass the buck to Jonathan because as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces security matters fell under his purview.

    Hear her : ‘’The NSA is to account for the spending to the president, who is the commander-in-chief, given the fact that the Minister of Finance is not part of the security architecture and does not participate in the Security Council’’. She failed in her duty for not insisting that due process be followed in the processing of the money. For one, the money was not captured in the Federation Account as stipulated by the Constitution. Second, it was not appropriated for by the National Assembly. Jonathan, Dasuki and Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, on their own, just decided what to do with public funds without recourse to constitutional provision. Yet, they  swore to uphold the Constitution when they took office.

    Mrs Okonjo-Iweala is as guilty as Jonathan and Dasuki on that score. This is not trial by media; it is merely stating the facts as they are. Our leaders like to act with impunity and nothing reflects this arbitrariness more than the way the trio of Jonathan, Dasuki and Mrs Okonjo-Iweala handled the Abacha loot. Their action smacks of cruelty to Nigerians. Little wonder that activist lawyer Femi FalanA (SAN) is talking of taking them before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for offences against humanity. Their wickedness reflects in those officers and men who lost their lives in the terror war and in the thousands of others killed or maimed or now staying in Displaced Persons’ Camps (IDPs).

    Yet, immediate past Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh had the temerity to say at a Security, Media  Summit held in Abuja in October, last year by ONSA  that ‘’when we took oath to become soldiers, we didn’t say there was anything like constitutional immunity; your own is to first obey. We took oath to defend Nigeria with everything that we have’’. The question that Badeh and his ilk should ask themselves is what did the military provide for these soldiers to defend the territorial integrity of their country? Were they given the equipment to fight and still fled from Boko Haram? Badeh was just given a dog a bad name in order to hang it. He knew where to direct his complaint, but he could not do so because he was hands in glove with his NSA.

    What Dasuki and others did to their country is sad. They abused the people’s trust and they should be made to pay the price for their action to deter others. Dasuki has said he did all he did with Jonathan’s approval. I do not doubt him, but when he sees Jonathan face to face can he confront him with that fact?

  • On real issues arising from abuse of N32b security votes

    On real issues arising from abuse of N32b security votes

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan has a case to answer regarding his role in the sordid matter. It should not be swept under the carpet.

    The nation has been stunned in recent weeks by intense media revelations on the security funds disbursed by the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), as slush funds to prominent members of the former ruling party, the PDP. The estimated total of the slush funds is N32billion. It is probably more. In addition, it has been alleged by the EFCC that the sum of $2.1billion meant for arms purchase has simply disappeared. It was allegedly diverted into private pockets, principally those of Dasuki to purchase choice properties here and abroad.

    There is a palpable feeling of public outrage in our country over the cavalier manner in which the slush funds were handed over to some prominent leaders of the PDP. Dokpesi, the owner of DAAR Communications, got a hefty N2.1billion of state funds to spruce up the image of the party for the general elections. The former vice president, Sambo, got a hefty N20million monthly from the funds. Not to be left out, Obaigbena collected a cool N700million on behalf of some newspapers for damage to their vehicles and newspapers by overzealous security agents of the Jonathan PDP federal government. As the trial of the principal actors in this disgusting event begins, we shall learn more about the full extent of the abuse of the security votes under the direct control and authority of former President Jonathan.

    Col. Dasuki, the former national security adviser, was at the centre of this financial scam in which such vast sums of money were shared out to the PDP chieftains ostensibly to facilitate the re-election of Jonathan as President through outright bribery of the electorate. State funds were used in a partisan manner to serve the political interest of the PDP. In a true democracy this is unacceptable. It was Dasuki who, pleading security considerations, asked for and obtained a postponement of the May elections. This, and the use of slush state funds to fraudulently secure Jonathan’s electoral victory was, subversive of the democratic process that we are trying to develop in our country The plan failed completely as he suffered a woeful defeat in the presidential elections. The slush funds probably never got to the voters. They were simply diverted into the private pockets of the PDP leaders. If Jonathan had been re-elected, nothing would have been known by the public about this gross abuse of power by the Jonathan PDP federal government.

    What is even more galling about the whole sordid affair is that even after President Jonathan’s defeat, Dasuki continued to hand out state funds to the PDP hacks without any caution at all about the possible future consequences of his action. In a statement issued yesterday by the EFCC, it said Dasuki was being tried because ‘he was involved in various activities that bordered on economic sabotage, a compromise of the nation’s security, and endangering the lives of Nigerian soldiers involved in the anti-terrorism fight with Boko Haram’. In other words, this man who had primary responsibility for the nation’s security was busy subverting the nation’s security and the fight against the terrorism of Boko Haram. Some soldiers who refused to fight because they could not cope with the superior fire power of the insurgents were tried and convicted for mutiny. It was only the change of government that saved them from summary execution.

    There is some justifiable media speculation that the funds involved in this financial scam were from the recovered Abacha loot, recovered mostly from some helpful foreign countries and warehoused in the Central Bank. The foreign countries involved demanded and obtained from the PDP federal government assurances that the recovered funds would be spent on useful public projects. Instead, and in effect, the funds stolen by Abacha and recovered were stolen again and shared out to the leaders of the PDP, the ruling party at the time. This is very damaging to our country’s foreign image and our integrity as a nation. At the time this vast amount of money was being shared by the PDP leaders, the federal government could hardly pay its workers’ salaries and pension. This year it borrowed about N1.5tr to meet its financial obligations to its workers. It had no funds to fix our decaying social and physical infrastructure. It is this kind of massive corruption at the highest level of government that makes it difficult for the government to meet its basic obligations to the people. It is why that vital road, that vital bridge, those useful and necessary schools and hospitals, cannot be built. It is the massive theft of vast sums of public funds that has deepened mass poverty in our country.

    So far, former President Jonathan has remained studiously silent about the whole sordid affair, and his role in it. But his silence is deafening as the nation needs to know who fraudulently authorised the diversion of the arms purchase fund as well as the abuse of the security votes. It is not possible that this vast financial scam took place without his knowledge. Specifically, Dasuki has claimed that Jonathan was aware of the slush funds and that he acted on President Jonathan’s instruction. Of course, even if this was the case, it does not exonerate him. A public official is not under any moral or legal obligation to carry out the instructions of his principal, including the president, if he considers such instructions illegal. President Jonathan cannot legally claim immunity from prosecution for an act or actions that were clearly illegal. Presidential immunity does not cover criminal activities. He must be made to account for his action in the court of law. He is reported to be seeking a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on this disgraceful matter. But a meeting with President Buhari over this matter is not necessary. It is for the courts to determine his innocence or guilt. He should be invited by the EFCC to account for his actions regarding the slush funds.

    In the light of this unprecedented official financial heist at the highest levels of the Jonathan presidency, it is time for the National Assembly to enact a law that will put an end to the so-called security votes which are being enjoyed and grossly abused by the governors, and even council chairmen. In some cases, it is even being used to finance private armies that pose a direct threat to our national security. It is the major source of official corruption in our country. All funds intended for our national security should be handled directly by the security and intelligence agencies, and not the president. As we have seen in recent years, it is subject to abuse and is subversive of the democratic process in our country.

  • 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.

  • Rethinking Buhari and Osinbajo’s pitiful life-boat

    How many hearts filled with grief will balance an offshore account? How many homes – cold, poverty-stricken, scam-activated, shall balance ill-acquired “executive estacode” and “constituency allowance?” How do we measure progress on the watch of men given to scams and plunder?

    Despite the misery doled unto us, piecemeal…savagely and in large chunks, we are yet to affect appropriate rage and displeasure. We have evolved from the people that made the hare-brained determiners of our life course to become the decadents whose fortunes hang askew because we have learnt to enjoy our tragedies as sport; like the mother who gets off by watching the father sodomise the son.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and company, represent our only hope even as you read; yet the purportedly Spartan President and Vice President frantically radiate desultory sparks of moonshine and call it the great sun beams of a prosperous future.

    How can Buhari and Osibajo’s purported frugality and uprightness compensate for the scary, conniving, creepy characters we have in the nation’s upper and lower legislative chambers? How will their much hyped and oft exaggerated morality dull the misery inflicted on us by a corrupt judiciary and civil service?

    How can these two men quell the inferno of greed and inclinations to pilfer burning through the souls of our executive governors, local government chairmen and so on? They are just two men after all; there is too little Buhari and Osinbajo can do to assuage our pains and institute a truly humane leadership and citizenship in the country.

    Buhari and Osinbajo are mere humans; they are no deities nor are they vicegerents of our Supreme Creator hence it will be foolhardy to expect too much from them. Both men irrespective of whatever innate yearnings they profess to fight corruption and foster a prosperous future for Nigeria, ultimately constitute their own handicaps. The frills and thrills of high office have apparently dulled their consciousness to the actual miseries plaguing the citizenry. Ensconced in their high offices, President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo are immune to the ravages of infrastructural lack, declining naira, power outage, insecurity, unemployment and endemic poverty snuffing lives out in the suburbs and backwaters, gradually.

    That is why they can persistently harp on their determination to live up to their campaign promise by paying N5, 000 monthly to impoverished families in the country.

    Speaking on the initiative in the run-up to the March 28 presidential polls, Osinbajo stated that the initiative is meant to support 25 million of 119 million extremely poor Nigerians who earn less than N200 a day to take care of their families. The vice president added that the fast way of dealing with that is the N5,000 monthly Conditional Cash Transfer Programme.

    “We will give N5, 000 to the poorest 25 million over a phased period, if their children are enrolled in school and participate in immunization…So we are actually doing two things; we are giving stipends to the very poorest and ensuring that in order to earn that stipend they certify two conditions,” he said.

    Osinbajo  said that the party decided on the 25 million figure because that is what they can deal with in the first phase, adding that “we are looking at phasing it over a period because it will cost about N1.35 trillion to do so if we do all 25 million at once.”

    He said the N1.35 trillion they are proposing for the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme’ is not so much compared to the AMCON bailout of “persons who are in debt, many businesses and businessmen and it cost N5.7 trillion to do and that is a bailout of the relatively wealthy.”

    Recently, Vice President Osinbajo has been responding to criticisms by opposition party goons that the initiative is unrealistic. According to him the government will make good its pledge. While the initiative may be in tandem with similar practices around the world,  one wonders how the APC would run the programme at the backdrop of unreliable national statistics; how will the APC identify those that are actually in need of the palliative without turning the scheme into a scam and cesspit for political discrimination and patronage? How cost-effective and realistic is the venture in the face of systemic corruption and at a period that the country grapples with depressive economy?

    At this point, it is important to stress that such spurious palliative introduced by the duo was not booed during their campaign for the presidency lest the witless PDP misappropriates it as weaponry in its arsenal of vitriol and inarticulate drivel en route the recently concluded presidential elections.

    Nigerians do not need the much hyped N5, 000 alms rather the citizenry needs Mr. President and his deputy to man-up and take pragmatic steps to correct the persistent social and economic ills plaguing the country. Of course, the country suffers no dearth of corrective and progressive ideas, what had always been lacking is a courageous leadership, daring enough to tackle the countries monstrosities head-on and conquer them, for the benefit of the citizenry and successive generations.

    The incumbent leadership should know better than assault our hearing with far-fetched narratives of monuments they will establish in our interest. They seem to forget that greatness is basically achieved by the productive effort of a man’s heart in the pursuit of clearly defined, visible and rational goals. Nigerians will no longer be taken by their ornamentally couched life-boat palliatives and hastily conceived monuments they desperately put up.

    It’s about time President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo understood that Nigerians have become more wary of the public officer bearing gifts and promises of bliss. We know he is usually the one seeking to win our hearts that he might get to break it, for the umpteenth time.

    We shall no longer be deceived by the appalling recklessness with which they campaign and project “government with a human face. Oftentimes, the hallmark of such “humanitarian” campaign is the advocacy of some limitless grand scale public goal or initiative, without regard to context, costs or means of achieving it.

    Nigerians would like to see Buhari and Osinbajo validate their promises, touted ethics and projections by the best of dependable philosophies and deeds of human existence –the citizenry need a great deal more than “life-boat” solutions like the N5, 000 stipend. We do not live for the mercy of “lifeboats,” such base and patronising palliative is hardly fertile earth in which to sow and harvest our fruits of hope, ‘Change’ and metaphysics.

    Nigerians need them to resolve the conflicting characteristics of our tribal mentality even as they validate and attain a worthy equilibrium between, say, the expediency of wiping off our slums vis-à-vis the desirability and affordability of beautifully planned cities and suburbs.

    Buhari and Osinbajo should be done evaluating and projecting our given concretes by their abstract principles, it is time to gauge the most probable if not practicable outcomes of their promises, in the throes of ruthlessly objective and rational processes of thought.

    We need the incumbent leadership to actualise its blueprint for the provision and sustenance of good roads and electricity, standard health care and security, stable economy and quality education among others; we are done lusting and living for their life-boat and oft futile palliatives. The N5, 000 monthly is certainly one such venture. Buhari and Osinbajo need to get more creative and humane.

  • Making politics less attractive

    Sadly, many young Nigerians below the age of 30 watching the macabre dance by our politicians in the last few years cannot but conclude politics is a game for scoundrels. Even High Chief Raymond Dopeksi, who only a few weeks back was trying to rehabilitate a near fatally wounded PDP was last week fingered by embattled Dasuki, as a partaker in the $2b ‘phoney’ arms contract under investigation by EFCC. The statements by AIT, his communication outfit,  and the one from his family which confirmed the receipt of N2.1b ‘for publicity and media political campaigns during the 2015 General Elections, probably explained the ignoble role his AIT medium played during the said election.

    But long before Dokpesi’s current national embarrassment, we have had some children of ex-PDP chairmen and other leading PDP politicians arraigned by EFCC for oil subsidy scam. In between, we have witnessed how Bukola Saraki, the Senate President was saved by the judiciary over the N9b financial crisis that led to the collapse of his fathers’ Societe Generale Bank. It was not much of a relief that he in June assaulted the sensibilities of Nigerians with a story of how he hid inside a small car for over three hours in order to outwit his other 51 APC members and later sneaked to the assembly hall where he was adopted Senate President by the opposition. He has also in the last few weeks, been going to court not to defend but to evade his trial over the weighty allegations brought against him by EFFC. The obscene scene of Ike Ekweremadu’s celebration of opportunism about how he and other PDP politicians usurped the deputy senate presidency seat which by convention belongs to the ruling party was no less agonizing to decent Nigerians.  The above, sadly is the picture of politician our young impressionable children harbour in their heads.

    I think we owe it as a duty to let our children know that Dokpesi, Saraki, Ekweremadu and current ‘new breed’ politicians are not the archetypal politician and that if indeed there are privileged Nigerians involved in ‘phoney’ arms contract in the face of Boko Haram’s war of attrition that has killed over 20,000 Nigerians, rendering over two million refugees in their own country, such characters, our children must be told, are sick minds and not politicians.

    They must be told that ‘politician’ is not a euphemism for a venal and an unscrupulous man; that men without character who hijack politics in the last 30 years starting with the Babangida era and use it to betray friends, political parties and  justify state murder of political rivals are not politicians; that true politicians are noble men saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the survival of  man in an organized society; that they are men and women often buffeted by fortune and misfortune in equal measure because of ephemeral nature of power; that they are gifted men and women called upon to find  a delicate balance between  private affluence and public squalor and that politics is a calling  not for the depraved, the opportunist and scoundrels but for those who are ready to sacrifice time and self for others.

    Those who hijacked politics for selfish ends did not only ban political parties, abridged our political socialization process, they also banned teaching of history in our schools. But we must defy those who want us to forget history by restating for the benefit of our children that politicians as true servants of the people once bestrode our shores.

    Let us start with Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. He confessed to his biographer, Trevor Richard that he saw flush toilet for the first time when he was given official staff quarters in Bauchi. He went on to become the Prime Minister with big mansion in Lagos. We have no evidence he ever considered converting the Prime Minister’s mansion to personal residence. He died leaving behind no string of houses in Kaduna or Lagos.

    We had Ahmadu Bello who selflessly served his people to the end.  He went round the northern villages handpicking brilliant northern youths without class or religious consideration and sent them to the best universities abroad. President Buhari not too long ago claimed he would have remained a poor Fulani herdsman had Sardauna not picked him from his Daura village for the military academy. When Sardauna was called upon to assume the leadership of Nigeria, he chose to stay back in Kaduna and serve his people. Sardauna died leaving no mansions behind in Sokoto or Kaduna where he reigned supreme. There was also Aminu Kano, the doyen of ‘talakawas”. He selflessly served Kano people to the end.

    Awo spent six years attending six different elementary schools fending for himself as a firewood seller, water seller, road mender and house boy in Abeokuta. He along with his ‘fanatically loyal colleagues’ such as Bode Thomas, S L A Akintola, Arthur Prest, Oba Akran, E A Babalola, Awokoya, Ajasin, Enahoro, Rotimi Williams Osuntokun among many others between 1952 and 1959 introduced free and compulsory primary school programme which moved primary school enrolment from 430,000 in 1952 to 1,037338 by November 1959, and secondary school enrolment from 6,775 in 1952 to 84,374 in 1959.  And as against a colonial government 20 post-secondary school annual scholarships for the whole country, the AG administration awarded 200 in one year tenable in the UK, US and University College Ibadan. Awo and his colleagues stopped the building of staff quarters, encouraged the white expatriates and Nigerian staff to look for houses on their own. But to ease their housing problems, the government acquired 350,000 acres of land in Bodija GRA Ibadan and 750,000 acres in GRA Ikeja and eased the process of securing loans to build personal houses. It is instructive that none of these GRAs will you come across mansions belonging to any of Awo’s selfless servants of the people including the late Pa Osuntokun who supervised the projects.

    We cannot climb the palm tree from the top, to paraphrase Edmund Burke philosophy. You have to first be a good representative of your people before you can be a good Nigerian as argued by Obafemi Awolowo.  Awo and his colleagues’ made personal sacrifices because they were serving their people. Even when facing grave difficulties in implementing their party programmes in the face of NCNC opposition, Awo in an emotional speech told his colleagues in the Western House that he was sure future generation of Western Region youths for whom they sacrificed their time would one day commend them for their efforts.

    The motivation of Awo and his colleagues in the west was not different form that of Ahmadu Bello who opted to remain in Kaduna to serve his people. It is not also different from Zik’s resolve to relocate to the East to take over from Eyo Itta, a minority as premier when he was prevented from becoming the premier of the West by those who rightly argued an Igbo man could not be leader of Western Region at a time a Yoruba man could not contest for a seat in the East or be allowed to mobilize voters for support in the North. (Akintola’s attempt in 1953 resulted in the Kano riot which tragically claimed more Igbo lives.

    Since we cannot decree loyalty, we are not likely going to have true politicians as servants of the people except we have a restructured Nigeria.

  • A season of goodwill

    A season of goodwill

    DOES anybody remember it is Christmas?

    I almost did not – for good reasons. The Boko Haram insurgency remains a bad sore, partly a self-inflicted injury, as we are beginning to find out – courtesy of the $2b arms contracts probe. Politicians have refused to learn a lesson on why the people’s will should be allowed to prevail, our roads keep taking lives, power supply remains everything but stable and rights abuses are yet to abate. The economy is like a barber’s chair, rolling and rocking but going nowhere. Senators are struggling to enact a law that will criminalise free speech – as if they never swore to make laws for the benefit of the citizenry.

    In the stifling environment, isn’t it easy to forget the Yuletide? The reality of it hit me when a cousin of mine showed up with a gift. Besides, harmattan is here, dry, dusty and nasty. Visibility is poor; it is cloudy and a bit smoggy. No excuses; the season of goodwill is here. So, as I do every year, I have begun a compilation of gifts for some prominent Nigerians – just before the authorities declare the Yuletide inconclusive.

    On top of my mailing list is President Muhammmadu Buhari. I have refused to join critics of his frequent travels, which an aide insists are not for fun. Consider those friends we have lost over the years; won’t we woo them back? How do we announce that the giant of Africa is truly back when our President is not seen at major seminars where world leaders discuss such life-and-death matters as climate change, ISIS, small arms trafficking, human trafficking and others.

    For the President, I have ordered a copy of Jonathan Swift’s classic,  “Gulliver’s Travels”. He will get also several packs of Vitamin C tablets.

    Many of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s associates have dissociated themselves from him, I am told. Not on account of any ill-feeling, but simply because His Excellency is out of power. I wonder how many Christmas cards and visits he is going to get. Poor man.

    Some of his friends are telling Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) detectives all they know about the $2b arms cash bonanza at the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). The EFCC is contemplating how to handle the matter; should it take in Dr Jonathan for questioning or leave him out of it all? Should he be sent questions to answer or simply be allowed to decide how to clear his name? The “armsgate” cash is huge, bigger in reality and in imagination than what the late Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey, chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), the forerunner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said could send him fainting.

    I bet Dr Jonathan would like to address this and other matters in his memoirs, which will surely be a best-seller whenever he decides to write it. But, a source told me he is yet to start writing. From me to the former President is a hard copy of Curtis Bisel’s “How to write an autobiography: The secret tips to finally get started”.

    Talking about the “$2b armsgate”, former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki seems to be at the centre of it all, with people, such as controversial businessman Raymond Anthony Aleogho Dokpesi confessing that he got N2.1b from his office – we understand that the AIT/Ray Power chair actually has N10b (incredible) to account for – and the accountant Shaibu Salisu giving an account of  how the cash was funneled. Former Sokoto Governor Attahiru Bafarawa was said to have got N100m for –wait for this – “spiritual purposes”.

    Well, we’ll get to know more now that the matter is in the open court. Before then, I have ordered for Dasuki an ATM, the Automated Teller Machine that dispenses cash at the touch of some buttons after the insertion of a personalised and coded card. It keeps records of who gets what and actually issues receipts.  All this after a courteous greeting, which in this case will run like “Welcome to ONSA. Please, enter your secret number.”

    Dokpesi has issued a statement that the cash he got was for “media and publicity”. But the EFCC, which is said to be unable to fathom what the ONSA could possibly have to do with publicity contracts, has asked the high chief to tender some documents –letter of award, certificate of no objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement, certificate of completion and all that. Dokpesi’s  family has said he submitted a proposal to Dr Jonathan  in the presence of the then Vice President, Namadi Sambo (where in the world is he?) and that the proposal was thoroughly scrutinised. What due process could have been better than this, Dokpesi was said to have told the incredulous officers, who were amazed and dazed at the depth of his proficiency.

    I have briefed a young lawyer with an incredible zealotry – you missed it if you thought Mike Ozekhome (SAN) got my brief – to file an application for a copyright on a yet to be published work that will change the face of Commercial Law for ever. “How to sign multi-billion naira contracts”, by Dr R.A. Dokpesi.

    Where is Olisa Metuh? This is the question many have been asking on account of the unusual silence of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman. I have got Metuh a bottle of Cognac. Besides, he will get a basket of farm-fresh okro to keep his mouth ever-smooth and  ever-running as in the days when his party revelled in the illusion that it was going to rule  for 60 years – in the first instance.

    The other day in the newsroom, somebody was talking about Dr Doyin Okupe – remember him; one of Dr Jonathan’s spokesmen, the one who swore that Buhari would never be president? – and his prediction that the All Progressives Congress (APC) would find it difficult to manage its success in the general election. Now, said the fellow, rather than defend its victory in Kogi State, the party’s leadership flunked a single test of integrity and  principle– Haba Chief John Odigie-Oyegun – agreed to a supplementary election and abused the memory of its candidate, Abubakar Audu, by dumping his running mate, Abiodun Faleke, for a man who never cared for the party after losing its primary. Now, let’s be fair. Isn’t Okupe right?

    Okupe will get from me a week’s supply of Italian pizza from the best restaurant in town for what the fellow called his precision. By the way, has the prince executed that Benue State contract, the one on which he reportedly got a hefty mobilisation fee? Or has he been restrained by a court of competent jurisdiction from executing it?

    Faleke too deserves a gift. I have ordered “The proverbs of MKO Abiola”, a pamphlet compiled by the former crime writer who is now a security consultant, Ben Okezie. Abiola, frontline businessman, philanthropist  and sport enthusiast, won the June 12,1993 presidential election, but his friend, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the poll for no reason. Abiola died in a desperate battle to reclaim his mandate. Before then he had  quipped in reply to a reporter’s question: “With a friend like IBB, nobody needs an enemy.” Faleke should note particularly such instructive proverbs as “You don’t abort a pregnancy after the baby is born” and “You can’t shave a man’s head in his absence”.

    Dino Melaye has been hyperactive since he became a senator. Vaulted from street activism to the Senate, Melaye, in the view of many, has never really got over his dramatic transformation. Not for him the sobriety that is the hallmark of a lawmaker. When he is not playing Senate President Bukola Saraki’s bodyguard, he is busy screaming – without facts but with fake figures – that an innocent company has  creamed off N25b of the national revenue in three months.

    I won’t join those condemning what they have described as Melaye’s incivility, describing him as an empty barrel making the loudest noise and an irritant who thrives on peddling salacious rumours. No. From me, the distinguished senator will get a bottle of the herbal medication “Kalms”, which will assure him of a good night’s sleep and put him in a calm, reflective mood all day.

    Before governors begin to feel neglected, let me quickly announce the package for a worthy member of that exclusive club, Mr Ayodele Fayose, the grandiloquent “architect of modern Ekiti”, the one who recently corralled the honourable members of the House of Assembly to crown him the “leader of the opposition”, a title that has refused to stick despite his “Balottelian” stunts.

    Fayose, you may wish to recall, just before the general election, practically laid bare in public, his mother’s private infelicitous circumstances, saying the old woman had been condemned by her health status to wearing pampers, like a baby. This being a family paper, I would not like to write the other things he said in denigration of then candidate Buhari, using his innocent mother as a symbol.

    I have asked a photographer to glaze a bold copy of the popular Yoruba song celebrating motherhood for His Excellency. Here it goes:

    Iya ni wura iyebiye, ti a ko le f’owora

    O lo yun mi fo su mesan,

    O pon mi fodun meta

    Iya ni wura iyebiye ti a ko le f’owora

    “Mother is the priceless gold that money can’t buy. “She bore me in her womb for nine months. “She carried me on her back for three years. “Mother is the priceless diamond that

    money can’t buy.”

    Sunday Oliseh is hanging in there as coach of the Super Eagles, a team that has embarrassed its fans in spectacular ways since it won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 under the pompous Stephen ‘Big Boss’ Keshi. Since he got the top job some five months ago, Oliseh has played eight games, winning four, drawing three and losing one. He has been tongue- lashed for lacking attackers who have the skill of scoring goals and for engaging in needless squabbles with goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama.

    For Oliseh, the honeymoon may soon be over. I have got him an M2 Basic Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor, the OMRON  brand. He will surely read it.

    My mailing list remains open and inconclusive – in the  spirit  of these days  of  inconclusiveness– all through the Yuletide. Should anybody feel left out, he or she should feel free to contact me. After all, this is the season of goodwill. Merry Christmas!

  • Making Nigeria succeed or fail is our choice

    Since the victory of General Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential elections, I have taken time now and then to brush up on my readings on development. I have focused, not so much on the development stories of particular countries, but mostly on the broad issues of development – why some countries succeed and others fail.

    I have read, re-read, and looked up the reviews and commentaries on the following books, and I urge leading citizens of my country to find one or two of them and, at least, browse through them: Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond; Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed also by Jared Diamond; Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity & Povertyby Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson; The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly; and The Wealth & Poverty of Nations by David Landes.

    Each of these distinguished authors offers own profound thoughts on the question that is most important to Nigeria today – the question of whether we Nigerians will make our Nigeria a success or a failure. Altogether, the summary of the studies and thoughts of these authors is that we Nigerians are absolutely able to make our country succeed and to make it fail. To put it in another way, we have all we need to make Nigeria succeed brilliantly; and we have all we need to make Nigeria fail disastrously. The choice is entirely in our hands, and we are free to choose either way.

    Needless to say, various factors beyond human power are important  – factors such as geographical advantages or hardships, ethnicity, ethnic culture and history, availability or non-availability of natural resources, a country’s ethnic/cultural homogeneity or diversity, religious homogeneity or diversity, etc. But, in the final analysis, the ultimate determinant of whether a country shall succeed or fail is the choice made by its people, the institutions they set up, and the integrity or non-integrity of their operation of those institutions.

    For instance, being located in a desert makes development difficult for a country – but it does not make development impossible. The small state of Israel is a desert country, but its people have made it one of the most productive small countries in the world, agriculturally and technologically. Having two or more different nationalities (each with its own homeland) in a county makes stability and development difficult, but it does not make them impossible. Switzerland in Europe has no less than four nationalities, but it is one of the most stable, and one of the richest, countries in the world. Being richly endowed with natural resources is good for development, but it does not guarantee development. Nigeria is one of the richest countries in natural resources in the world, but it has been relentlessly declining, with the masses of its people becoming poorer, since independence. The key – the secret – in each case is the choices made by the people and their loyalty to those choices, and the institutions they give their country.

    In short, Nigeria has been declining since independence and becoming less and less stable, and over 70% of our people live in absolute poverty today, because we have been making the wrong choices, setting up the wrong institutions, and denying integrity to our institutions. The biggest of the wrong institutions is our federal government. Essentially, because we have hundreds of ethnic nationalities, our best choice was a federal structure. However, we ought to have borne in mind the danger of having too many states and too many state governments – and thereby putting too heavy a load of administrative costs on our country. (India with a population of about one billion at independence, carefully carved itself into 28 states, and gave most of the burdens of development to the state governments).

    Unfortunately, it suited the purposes of some our most influential policy makers to carve our country into smaller and smaller states, so as to transfer more powers, resources and assets to the federal centre. That paved the way for horrific inefficiency and corruption at the centre, turned our states into impotent entities forever at the mercy of the centre, destroyed most development energy at the state and local government levels, and plunged our country into deeper and deeper poverty. The old regional responsibilities and assets (like universities, export crop management, some crucial highways, control over schools and school curriculum, etc) that were transferred to the centre mostly floundered and perished.

    Those who controlled the centre arrogated to themselves the prerogative of deciding who would rule the states, and election rigging by federal agencies (INEC, police, secret service, and even the military) became part of our political culture. Similar relationships developed between each state and its local governments. Federal agencies, as well as the departments of the federal government, eminent institutions like the Central Bank, the state and local governments, all lost integrity. Leadership whims, caprices, and impunity, ruled over our country. We ceased having a country worth the name. Most observers began to say that our country was a failed state that somehow kept standing – a failed state that would soon crumble.

    Then a new day appeared to dawn in Nigeria. With the election of the new government, optimism and hope rose over our country. Understandably, most of our people are eager to see Buhari crush corruption. Buhari’s former stint at ruling our country, and his general reputation and body language, fuel the anti-corruption expectations. But, hopefully, Buhari understands that to crush corruption fully and abidingly in this country, we must reorder and revamp the institutional roots and fabrics of our country. The wrongly chosen, distorted and corrupted institutions are the roots of our country’s problem. Redraw, restructure, and straighten up, our institutions and, not only will corruption perish, our whole country will begin to rise again.

    But, of course, our country can continue to decline – and can decline until it crumbles. Whether our country revives and survives, or whether it continues to decline until it perishes – both depend on the choices we make in the next few years. That means that Buhari can lead us in ways that continue the decline one way or another. For instance, he could choose to revive and reinforce the ambition of northern domination of Nigeria, reinforce the accumulation of power, assets and  resource control in the hands of his federal government, and make the states more in number and weaker in stature – he couldeven adopt the insane proposal that the number of states be increased to 54! He could, out of loyalty to a section of the country and to a political party, sustain the culture of election manipulations. He could focus solely on the prosecution of proven treasury looters and ignore the inherent loopholes in the structures of governance which make such blatant theft possible. He could do all or any of these and more – and pave the ultimate path to Nigeria’s disappearance. But he could guide and lead us in totally different ways, and give our country a new lease of life.

    To build or kill Nigeria is our choice.