The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Crisis of youth unemployment

    We do not have the reliable statistics but it seems incontrovertible that we as a nation are facing one of the worst unemployment problems of our modern history. At the end of British colonial rule in Nigeria and its immediate aftermath, educated Nigerians did not have to wander around for years looking unsuccessfully for work. University graduates up till the 1970s found jobs in the civil service, teaching, security services and in the rapidly expanding private and professional services. Even secondary schools graduates still found jobs in government and commercial sector of the economy. The end of the civil war in Nigeria witnessed stupendous expansion of the civil, military, and security services. This came on the heel of exponential growth of hydrocarbons production in Nigeria which paid for the various new jobs created after the war. The careless saying of some of our leaders then was that our problem was not money but how to spend it. We did not save some of the money accruing to us from the sudden wealth. The reason given for this was that our country was crying for development. The post-civil war years of rehabilitation and reconstruction also required the expenditure of huge amount of money which happily became available through the revenue generated by the relatively large volume of our oil production and the high prices the largely sulphur-free sweet crude brought to our national exchequer. The oil wealth also led to tremendous expansion of educational institutions at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. This expansion was not matched with expansion of job opportunities for young people streaming out of these institutions. Furthermore, our population has been growing geometrically leading to having too many mouths to feed. Our peasant agriculture has not been able to cope with this increase in population thus resulting in huge food import bill. This means that if we can have a modern agricultural sector, we will not only feed ourselves, we would be able to export agricultural produce but furthermore we would be able to provide millions of jobs for our people. Solid agricultural foundation will be the take off plank for our industrialization. We should be able to grow all the cotton needed for our textile mills. From textile production we should be able like most industrialized countries move to heavy industries.

    We have the basic ingredients for rapid development and massive employment. We have abundant human resources in terms of manpower. We have invested huge amount of resources in manpower development. It is of course true that our educational facilities are not adequate but they are sufficient to produce reasonably educated people who can be trained to learn through trial and error and on the job. We also have considerable amount of natural resources. We have reliable energy resources such as vast hydrocarbon resources like oil and gas and considerable amount of strategic raw materials like copper, columbite, bauxite, uranium to mention a few. We have vast agricultural land that can be put to use through rain fed agriculture and or through irrigation. Our country is traversed by two perennial rivers in the Niger and the Benue. We have other rivers and the right kind of topography that can be harnessed for hydro-electricity. We have a huge internal market of 170 million people and the ECOWAS market of almost 300million is open and available to us for exploitation. We do not only have vast arable land, we have abundant sunshine which is a source of renewable energy. The question then arises why we are still bogged down with this level of underdevelopment and consequent youth unemployment. The answer is leadership and lack of vision by those who have had the opportunity to lead us since independence. Our leaders, I must say, have been too timid in challenging our people to face the task of development. Instead of growing our economy through hard work they have taken the line of least resistance by merely collecting commissions from multinational corporations involved in our hydrocarbon exploitation. They have not turned the millions of jobless people lazing about into building corps deployed appropriately into where they are needed to build houses, construct roads, build dams, sea and airports under the supervision of technically competent people. Rather than do this, we farm out our jobs to foreign companies in Europe and in recent times to Chinese who are given huge contracts to build what Nigerians should be building themselves. We do not even learn the right kind of lessons with our interaction with the rest of the world. Our leaders troop to China to behold the achievements of the Chinese, an achievement that took the Chinese the last few decades to consolidate. They did not do this through speech-making but through tears, bruises and if necessary blood. There can be no crown without the thorns. We have enough examples of peoples who took great strides in development through sacrificial work. Russia leapfrogged the bourgeois stage of economic development into the industrial and space age through dint of hard work. I am always irritated by the number of beggars and underemployed youths on our city roads selling all sorts of junks for a living. If I am allowed to say, I will assert with all emphasis at my command that most of the young hustlers in Lagos belong to farm settlements. Our governments must have the guts and the nerves to force those who are physically able to work for a living  to do so rather than living at the margin and edge of society becoming drug-taking jetsam and flotsam of an increasingly hopeless and dangerous underclass of the lumpen proletariat.

    Critics of my analysis may be wondering whether I am recommending a communist or collectivist approach to solving our economic and unemployment problem. I am not interested in theory or ideology. All I know is that we have serious economic problem which we have to solve or we would all go under. I also know we can learn from other countries that were faced with the same kind of problem in the past and how they were able to solve them. We may not be Russians and Chinese. Neither are we Americans with their limitless resources in Gods own country. We may not be driven by an ideological credo but whatever will or may work, we should not shy from trying it.

    The present federal government is toying with the idea of paying N5,000 poor relief to jobless youth.  This is a good idea but it must be accompanied by work either on the farm or on building sites. Young engineers should be mobilized and given tools and deployed to build roads and houses and railways using the abundant labour of the unemployed who will receive the poor relief until through their yeoman effort, the economy revives and grows and normalcy and correct economic relations and right wages  return to the land. In order to do this legally, appropriate legislations must be passed declaring a state of economic emergency in the land. If needs be, we must for now close our borders to the useless importation of all kinds of junks from all over the world. We must eat what we grow and wear what we make and what our tailors sew and our shoemakers make. Imagine the millions of jobs that will be created in this way. By trying to do things ourselves and actually succeeding, we would be challenged to do more things and gradually we will start making better things and more sophisticated products. I remember how we used to disparage Japanese goods when I was young. The same talking down on Chinese products was visited on goods coming from China. But nobody is laughing at Japanese and Chinese products now. As the foremost and biggest Black Country in the world, we must challenge ourselves and even forget or ignore economic orthodoxy to achieve our goal of development, a development anchored on adding value to our God given resources. I am in not suggesting economic autarchy because we live in an interdependent world. What I am suggesting is that we must build on our comparative advantage in certain areas and bring what we have to the quantum of global products rather than our present situation of hopeless dependency on the western and Asian world leading to massive unemployment at home.

  • Metaphor of the round leather (2)

    • (The burden of journalists as European soccer groupies)

    Some would level to their dullest perception always and praise it as common sense. Even as it becomes clearer by each passing second that the dullest perception is only ever common; it hardly gets to make sense. But sense too, like the gospel truth is always relative, according to the temperament of the individual that is trying to make sense.

    Brings to mind an argument I had with some Nigerian youths recently; the passionate soccer lovers see nothing fascinating about the Nigerian Premier League (NPL), rightfully so too. In an exclusive section of a popular elite bar, the youths comprising a doctor, two lawyers, an accountant, a PR consultant and four journalists – excluding me – derided Nigeria’s soccer league.

    Their derision was heartfelt and yet devoid of the barest pang of lamentation. And there in subsists their tragedy. Had they, despite their acerbic wit and mockery, betrayed even the slightest twinge of regret about the deplorable state of the country’s soccer league, they could be excused for their unapologetic disdain for Nigerian soccer.

    They didn’t and according to them, they cannot for the love of Nigeria, subject themselves to the agony of supporting the Nigerian league. “The coverage is poor, the pitches are the worst and it parades no stars. I would rather watch the English Premiership than waste my time,” noted a journalist. Few days earlier, colleagues in a Lagos newsroom had espoused vitriol about the Nigerian league. Their disdain was predicated predictably on very bad pitches, poor coverage and absence of world class stars.

    When a colleague stated that he would rather support Enyimba FC of Abia state, he was smothered by die-hard groupies and fans of European soccer teams. They dared him to mention five players of Enyimba FC but they did not wait to see if he could; then they went on to tell him that they would rather invest their time, passion and money in supporting star-studded teams across Europe.

    They do not care that the coverage of the Nigerian league is poor because journalists and soccer lovers like them will never endeavour to see and report a match at the nearest stadium. They do not care that issues of bad pitches, corrupt sports administrators, insecurity and fans’ apathy among others are aggravated by such disposition as theirs’ to Nigeria’s ailing soccer sector.

    They conveniently forget that there was a time Nigerians were truly crazy about the Nigerian league.

    With remarkable enthusiasm, they understate the potentials of the local league that paraded Kanu Nwankwo, Celestine Babayaro, Stephen Keshi, Rashidi Yekini, Daniel Amokachi among others, for their beloved Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC to mention a few, to exploit.

    Indeed, no amount of persuasion or ideological protestation could convince such characters to cultivate a smidgen of the love they profess for Chelsea FC, Arsenal FC, Real Madrid et al for local teams like Enyimba FC, Nassarawa United, Gateway FC and Ocean Boys.

    The Nigerian journalist, apparently, is not left out in the mad scramble for escape from his societal insanities, however temporal. Thus he devotes quality time on and off work to European soccer while he scoffs at his severely underreported local league.

    Like other fanatics of European soccer, he seeks to forget infinitely, that he is no different from the proverbial wretch who rejects his penis because his Caucasian neighbours’ seem bigger; with whose shall his wife scion his kids?

    Thus is the tragedy of the Nigerian soccer fanatic. It gets more interesting when he is a journalist. Then, his mystifying love for European teams as his barbed vitriol against the NPL attains a perplexity of sort; oftentimes he attempts to intellectualize the unintelligible.

    He desperately engages in the pursuit of happiness like a bliss-bandit seeking joy where he has sown none. Thoreau would equate this to seeking safety in stupidity whereas Lord Byron would dismiss such passionate disdain for one’s heritage as the petrifaction of a plodding brain.

    This is the predicament of the Nigerian journalist and other European soccer groupies. Perhaps it’s because he is only human. Were it that he would dedicate a similar amount of time and effort as he commits to the coverage of the English Premiership, a “reality TV” show or shenanigans of Lagos and Abuja’s “high societies” for instance, on one NPL soccer match at a time, the fortunes of Nassarawa United, Dolphins FC, Wikki Tourists to mention a few, may eventually improve.

    It’s not a shame to seek entertainment by the sportsmanship and fortunes of a European champion like FC Barcelona or popular English club side like Manchester City; it is, when a Nigerian, particularly a journalist, does so believing that his nation is incapable of elevating soccer to such fantastic height.

    Such journalist without doubt, is irredeemably less than. Measured with and without his vanities, he presents no exception to the Nigerian human social anomaly; he is essentially a perpetuation of it. Thus if you are a Nigerian journalist in your youth and you are reading this, chances are that you epitomise a similar state of mind. You are probably contemptuous to everything Nigerian.

    Chances are that you do not believe in the possibility of a star-studded Nigerian soccer league. Chances are that you do not believe that Nigeria could eventually become a Mecca of sort for international soccer players and pundits seeking to make a fortune and a name. Chances are that your inferiority complex cuts deeper than that. You probably consider Nigeria incapable of greatness of any kind. Chances are that you do not believe in the evolution of a truly conscientious Nigerian leadership and citizenship.

    Chances are that you do not wish to be judged by the same standards by which you judge others. You probably don’t believe in the continuity of the Nigerian project. You are probably reading this with undisguised contempt and you definitely wouldn’t admit that you personify all these and much more.

    Such is the temperament of a Nigerian journalist. He represents an abject negation of the vision, fortitude and sincerity he ought to embody. He hardly seeks to set an agenda or elicit positivity thus contradicting the agenda-setter cum social responsibility theories of the press.

    “No government or nuclear weapon is as powerful as the press,” it is said. This saw is definitely not about the Nigerian press; not because it’s bereft of such formidable power but because it has programmed itself to seldom exploit it.

    Recently, I asked that if the Nigerian journalist in his youth is assessed by the same standards by which he judges others, would he be adjudged as excellent, conscientious and honorable? Not a few colleagues bellowed an unconvincing “Yes!”

    When I suggested otherwise, someone claimed that I had made a sweeping statement. Another queried – albeit mischievously – that what is the yardstick for determining a distinguished journalist; he said: “Is it by winning a CNN or Nigerian Media Merit Award?”

    A good newspaper, supposes Arthur Miller, is a nation talking to itself; a good journalist, I suppose, is a patriot, pricking his nation’s conscience. Funny how convenient it is to loathe the proverbial looking glass by which we screen others and decry their faults. Guess we dread the reflection we might see.

    • To be continued…

     

     

     

  • Kogi’s confusion and INEC’s complicity

    The cacophony of newspapers’ howling headlines such as ‘APC picks Bello as Audu’s replacement’, ‘Faleke picks Audu’s son as ruining mate’, Kogi’s State House of Assembly threatens to impeach any governor-elect other than Audu’s son’, ‘PDP and Wada pray court to declare Wada governor elect’, that daily hit us on the face, more than confirm the confusion going on in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.

    The confusion as many have argued is a subterfuge by PDP and its INEC sympathizers to destabilise Kogi following their loss of yet another state to APC. And still  for many others, the logjam is the price the nation is paying for the indiscretion of President Buhari who many believe did not search deep enough for an independent-minded person that can measure up to the larger than life image of Jega, the immediate past INEC chairman.

    Those who speak of conspiracy theory base their analysis on the facts as presented by INEC. There is sufficient evidence to show that the election pronounced ‘inconclusive’ had been won ‘round and square’ by APC candidate. Matters are not helped by the actions and pronouncement of defeated PDP and its candidate who is scheming to reap from the misfortune of Audu in character with PDP that massively rigged elections in 2003, 2007 and which was wrestled to the ground in 2015 by Jega who insisted on the use of card reader machines to check electoral frauds.

    Preceding the current contrived confusion, INEC’s returning officer for the Kogi governorship election, Emmanuel Kucha credited APC’s Audu with 240,867 votes to PDP Wada’s 199,514, leaving the former with a positive variance of 49,953 votes. His report also showed Audu had secured no less than one quarter of the votes cast in 16 out of the 21 local governments of Kogi state while Wada managed to secure a quarter of votes cast only in five states. Audu by that declaration had fulfilled the constitutional and electoral acts provisions to be declared winner of the contest. The outstanding 25, 000 votes will not positively change the fortune of Wada and PDP.

    But curiously even though it was obvious that only 511,000 of the 1,379,000 INEC registered voters turned up for accreditation for the election, INEC’s Kucha still went ahead to pronounce an election already won ‘inconclusive’  on the basis of 49.000 registered voters out of which only 25,000 had permanent voter cards.  ‘This figure as well as the accredited number of voters ought to have been the concern of INEC’, according to Jiti Ogunye, a clear-headed legal mind. But INEC, according to him “went overboard and started talking about registered voters that they didn’t all give PVCs.” For him, “that was a pretext by INEC to stalemate, for whatever reason, the election.”

    That ‘whatever reason’, from the point of view of those who talk of conspiracy theory is the desperate rush by PDP and its thoroughly trounced candidate to court praying “that in view of the death of the APC candidate, Abubukar Audu, Wada should be declared the winner of the November 15 governorship election, that INEC be compelled to issue a Certificate of Return to Wada and finally that INEC be restrained from conducting the supplementary election scheduled for December 5”. PDP’s Uche Secundus and Wada seem to have forgotten St. Paul’s admonition to the foolish Galatians (Galatans.6:7) that ‘a man cannot reap what he does not sow’. But no one can blame PDP for catching on APC indecisions and mutual suspicions arising from intra-party struggles among coalition groups. For instance, it is the dumped APC deputy governorship candidate that is fighting the battle that APC ought to lead.

    Before APC oligarchy could settle down to address their internal demons after the party’s victory, Buhari, detested by northern parasitic elite that had held their people down for 16 years suddenly became their hero. Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank under Soludo, Yar’Adua’s  Minister of Finance  from May 2007 to January 2009 and Jonathan’s  Minister of National Planning between January 2009 to March 2010  representing the group, first tried to create disharmony among APC oligarchy by publicly claiming Buhari won the election on his own merit without the Yoruba votes.”So what’s it that the region is bringing to blackmail Buhari into handing over the government to Tinubu who thinks controlling Lagos is same as Buhari?” he was quoted to have said. What an old man sees sitting down may be invisible to a young man standing up, as Yoruba saying goes. Pa Akande alerted the oligarchy about the new strategy of enemies of change. Strangely, the president himself started saying: ‘I belong to no one; I belong to everyone’ adding that he was indifferent as to those who preside over the National Assembly. The enemies of change started quoting him to justify the trading off of APC victory to the defeated PDP.

    Those who wanted the president to celebrate his righteousness forgot he finally won the election after repeated failed attempts not by being righteous but by playing hard politics. Oyegun, the APC chairman is a perfect gentleman who believes society like our mother earth is governed by laws. But you cannot apply Biblical and Koranic moral laws and physical science absolutes when dealing with those whose Bible is the 1513 Niccolo Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, which celebrates the real nature of man over abstract ideals such as morality.

    Mistrust and lack of coherence more than absence of strategic thinkers explain why there has been hardly any decision taken with sure-footedness since Nigerians gave APC victory. It was this weakness Saraki and Dogara exploited.  Today as Senate President and Ekweremadu as his deputy and with Dogara as Speaker, and PDP’s control of half of the chairmanship of the House committees including those of all important petroleum resources (upstream and downstream, gas resources, aviation, works environment and Niger Delta Commission), APC may be in government, it is PDP that wields power. In fact Saraki and his ‘like minds senators’ have become a threat to the change Nigerians fought for.

    These intra-party feuds, many believe deprived the President the much needed support and rigour required in the appointment of an INEC chairman. Yakubu Mahmood  the new INEC chairman, a  professor of political History and International Studies at the Nigerian Defence Academy with a first class degree in History from the University of Sokoto and a PHD from Oxford,  was first appointed the executive secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, by President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua  in 2007. He also served as Assistant Secretary of Finance and Administration at the 2014 National Conference. There were unproved allegations by ex-President Jonathan’s political enemies  that he secured his 2010 PDP ticket  by mobilizing funds from TETF with the help of Sanusi Lamido as CBN governor.

    Even if this was untrue, from the experience of Lamido Sanusi who ably supported PDP policies but was humiliated out of office following his criticism of government; General Patrick Aziza, former National Security Adviser to Jonathan, removed for alleging PDP was behind Boko Haram; and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who tried to ‘walk the tight rope’ by covering up PDP stalwarts that were involved in fuel subsidy and import waivers scams, we know PDP can hardly keep anybody who does not share its worldview in office.

    It is for the above reasons critics believe that Mahmood, although a first class material and an eminent Nigerian was a wrong choice for the INEC chair by virtue of his association with PDP. His involvement in the on-going INEC’s contrived constitutional crisis in Kogi seems to further confirm that. As Jiti Ogunye puts it: “He failed the litmus test in his first outing”.

  • Desperate challenges facing Yoruba South-west

    One of the major foibles of Nigeria’s development management since independence is that Nigeria’s federal rulers generally prefer to adopt an integrationist attitude to the issues of development.  Every group that somehow steps into the control of the Federal Government assumes that it has been given the duty and authority to micro-manage all development issues and all sections of Nigeria.

    Such an integrationist stance ignores the huge size of Nigeria as well as Nigeria’s intense diversity in geography, people, culture, history, levels of development, people’s orientations, desires and development choices, etc. Each people, region and section of Nigeria has its own package of development challenges, and each package evolves along a logic and trajectory of its own, and keeps perpetually producing its own peculiar kinds of new challenges. In the final analysis, therefore, the aggressive integrationist orientation of our federal rulers has been wasteful and foolish, and it has generated enormous waste and discord. In fact, to spell out fully how foolish, wasteful and destructive it has been, one would need to write a whole book – a book that could become a worldwide text on how to lead a country to failure.

    But the theme of this column today is not the folly and destructiveness of the Federal Government’s mismanagement of Nigeria but the peculiar and urgent development needs of the South-west region of Nigeria. The Southw-est came into the 20th Century and into Nigeria as the most developed part of tropical Africa. Its defining strength was its urbanism, with towns and cities at short distances from one another, a situation that did not exist in any other part of tropical Africa. Partly because of this, what is now the South-west of Nigeria was better able to absorb and utilize the incoming transformations at the beginning of the 20th Century. There were already schools in probably most Yoruba towns by 1900. In fact, Yoruba people had been producing new college-educated elite in Engineering, Law, Accountancy, Medicine and so on. By 1859 Yorubaland already, had a newspaper and by the end of the century, there were newspapers in many Yoruba towns. Yoruba authors had written books in various subjects all the way from History to Fiction to the Sciences etc. Then in the 1950s, a peculiarly business-like regional government pulled the South-west much further ahead still. Fortunately also, the Yoruba had a culture that respected the religious choices of individuals and accepted and included people from any other culture of the world.

    The consequence of all these, as Nigeria has declined since independence and as poverty has intensified all over the country, is that people have been fleeing from all parts of Nigeria to the South-west. Within only the past few decades, many Yoruba towns and cities have become almost unrecognizable as a result of rapid increases in population. Most who come, do so because of what they believe to be abundant opportunities waiting for them in the South-west. But sadly, many of them are now discovering that the opportunities are not as abundant as they expected. The level and intensity of poverty in the South-west is becoming frightful. Many Yoruba towns are losing all of urban beauty and many parts of many cities are simply growing slums. The crowds of young people peddling little handfuls of articles in the streets represent an underemployed mass.

    In a better managed federation with more sensitive leaders, a region that comes under such bombardment would be considered for special input and assistance by the Federal Government. However, nobody who knows Nigeria would ever expect that Nigeria’s Federal Government will make such special considerations for the South-west or any other part of Nigeria. The summary then is that the South-west is being asked to bear a burden it is unable to bear, and the result of this is that the quality of life in the South-west is deteriorating rapidly.

    Of course, we in the South-west have a lot to criticize our state and local governments for but the bigger problem is from the federal source. This bigger problem is not merely that the Federal Government will not help the South-west, but that in fact they are forever trying to hold the South-west back. The examples of federal efforts to hold the South-west back are legion and the result is that life is being made difficult not only for the people of the South-west but for the millions flooding in from other parts of Nigeria.

    There is no point asking anything of the Federal Government. A new situation has arisen now, however, in which the party holding power at the centre may be fairly reasonably expected to relate more sensibly and more productively to the South-west than ever before. We in the South-west are expecting and waiting for that to happen and hopefully it will happen. But even if it happens, the main burden is still on us the people of the South-west, our state and local governments and the traditional Yoruba institutions that served the interest of our communities.

    The first direction we must go is to make our masses of educated youths seriously productive members of society. By our youths I do not only mean the indigenous Yoruba youths but all youths. We need without further delay to establish programmes whereby our youths will be equipped with modern job skills in various directions as artisans, machinists, modern farm hands and farm managers, builders, plumbers, masons, computer operatives and so on. We need to empower some of our businesses to offer such training in-house. We also need to encourage private individuals who are interested in contributing to education to participate in the establishment of technical and skills institutes. Side by side with these skills, our youths need to be educated to be good workers – loyal to their employers, ambitious for the companies they work for and dependable in the performance of their duties.

    The investment world out there is already interested in the South-west, but the fear is that the workers are not there. If we could create the skilled and dependable workers, we could turn our fortunes around in just a few years. Then we need to dig deep into the resources of our culture in order to carry out this transformation. We must assist those of our people already in small businesses to improve the quality of their services. An American who travelled widely in the South-west recently remarked that the small business culture (not just in trading) already exists and is an ancient culture with the Yoruba people. For example, he pointed out that if public authorities would assist the countless thousands of Yoruba women who cook food for sale in ‘bukas’, this industry could attract a lot of foreigners to the South-west.

    The South-west also has one of the richest resources for cultural tourism on earth. This is an industry that people of the South-west can develop at little expense. Thirdly, the Yoruba produce a whole range of traditional products, garments, fabrics and works of art which is another area which the governments of the South-west should look into. Moreover, Yoruba women have the reputation of being, in history, some of the greatest traders on the African continent – another area in which their governments should help them to improve and modernize.

    The summary is this. The people of the South-west command the capabilities and the means to transform their region and to help Nigeria to pull ahead. Those who hold the reins of power in the region owe their people and the world the duty of attending to all these possibilities without delay. That is the challenge of the Southwest today. The situation can be changed quickly and radically. But if we delay, it can become too complicated to handle. Nobody can stop the many millions coming to the South-west. The onus is on the South-west to seek urgently to command the strength to accept and include them constructively.

  • Tribute to Victor Adetunji Haffner (1919-2015)

    Tribute to Victor Adetunji Haffner (1919-2015)

      The following excerpts are from my written tribute to Pa Victor Adetunji Haffner at his funeral service on Friday, November 27, at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos

    The home calling on November 5 in Lagos of Mr. Victor Adetunji Haffner, at 96, marks the end of a glorious era in the profession of engineering in Nigeria. This era produced some of Nigeria’s finest engineers and public servants in colonial Nigeria like the late Chief S.O. Fadahunsi of the old LEDB and Chief T.M. Aluko of the Lagos City Council, who is probably better remembered as a notable novelist. Pa Haffner was in this esteemed group of pioneering pre-independence engineers. He was a pioneer in telecommunications engineering, the first in his field. He served his country proudly and diligently. For over two decades, from 1954 to 1975, he straddled and shaped the future course of the development of telecommunications in Nigeria. In 1964, he became the first CEO of the Nigerian External Telecommunications (NET), the first state-owned telecommunications company in Nigeria. Pa Haffner was buried in Lagos on Friday, November 27, 2015, after a moving and well attended funeral service at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos.

    Engr. Haffner was born on September 1, 1919 at 10, Haffner Street, Lagos. After attending the Church School at Broad Street, he received his early education at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, from 1932 to 1938. Among his classmates of the 1938 set were Pa Akintola Williams, the first Nigerian chartered accountant, and his younger brother, Chief Rotimi Williams, the distinguished Cambridge educated lawyer, now deceased.  My late father, Chief Olagunju Asaolu Fafowora, was of that set too. Of the 12 students who performed brilliantly in the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations in 1938 and went on to have brilliant professional careers, only Pa Akintola Williams is alive today. He was a month older than Pa Haffner. They remained close friends until the end.

    After a brilliant academic record at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, from where he obtained his Cambridge School Certificate in 1938 at the age of only 19, a remarkable feat in those days, Mr. Haffner worked for a while as a clerk in the Accountant-General’s office of the colonial service. It was from there that he proceeded to Northampton College, London, (now City University) for the first part of his engineering course. After that, he studied at the famous Regent Street Polytechnic (now Westminster University), from where he graduated in 1954 as a Chartered Engineer, specialising in telecommunications engineering. He was the first Nigerian in this field. He worked briefly with the English telecoms firm, Cable and Wireless, from where he was recruited by the Nigerian colonial government in 1954 as a pupil engineer in the old Post and Telegraphs (P&T) department. His rise in the P&T was meteoric. In 1963, he was seconded to the newly formed company, Nigerian External Telecommunications (NET), as deputy general manager. The following year, he was appointed the managing director of NET, a post he held until his sudden and inexplicable retirement in 1975 by the Murtala Mohammed military regime.

    It was under his watch at NET that satellite communications was first introduced in Nigeria. It was also during his tenure as MD that NECOM House, the magnificent 32- storey headquarters of NET, was developed at 12, Marina, Lagos. He always wanted the best for his country in the field of telecommunications. When, at 95, he presented his memoirs, “Reflections on Nigeria’, to the public last year, his professional colleagues acknowledged him as the pioneer of telecommunications engineering in Nigeria. After his sudden retirement from NET, Marubeni, a Japanese communications firm, offered him a consultancy. This provided him with some financial succour. As he noted in his memoirs, he made more money with Marubeni than he did at NET.

    But it is not simply as a distinguished and an accomplished engineer that Pa Haffner will always be remembered. He had very wide social and family connections and he touched many lives for good. He was versatile, cultured and a good churchman. In his public life, he stood up for principles that he valued, based on noble ideas that he never compromised, no matter how strong the opposition was. Many thought of him as being controversial. But he always stuck to his guns, no matter whose ox was gored. He also left an enviable legacy at the Cathedral Church of Lagos, Marina, with which he was so strongly connected from birth. From the age of nine he was in the church choir. He was also a most influential member and secretary of the Standing Committee of the Cathedral for many years. He was honoured with the Cathedral Parish Award for his immense and varied services to the Cathedral. When the Cathedral needed to buy a new pipe organ, it was to Pa Haffner that it turned. As Chairman of the Church Organ Fund Raising Committee, Pa Haffner successfully accomplished this difficult task.

    I also personally owe him a debt of gratitude for providing me with very valuable advice and information when I was writing the history of the Cathedral. Over two dinners at his pleasant Ikoyi home, he provided me with a mine of information and insights into significant historical events in the church of which he was a personal witness. He was proud of his old school, the CMS Grammar School, Lagos and, until his death, contributed immensely both materially and financially to its physical development in recent years. When I was privileged to serve as the President of the Old Grammarians’ Society (OGS), he gave me his encouragement and unstinted support. I knew I could always count on him and his old classmates, Pa Akintola Williams and the late Chief Rotimi Williams for support. In fact, he was honoured posthumously by the school on  November 21, 2015, for his valuable contributions to the progress of the school over the years.

    Considering his privileged pedigree and distinguished family ancestry, one could say that Pa Haffner was born with the proverbial silver spoon. He was a direct descendant of the Creoles, the immigrant Brazilian families that dominated the social and political life of the old Lagos colony under British colonial rule. But as he wrote in his memoirs, which it was my pleasure and privilege to review, he had to work hard for his professional success, in a career that took him to the top as a telecoms engineer in Nigeria. Pa Haffner’s father, Mr. Frederick Matthew Haffner, was an official of the Lagos City Council. His mother, Victoria Adepeju, was a niece of the legendary John Otunba Payne, a brilliant lawyer and first Nigerian Registrar of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. He was also a Church Warden at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos.

    Pa Haffner also had as his grand uncle, Dr. Henry Rawlinson Carr, who graduated from Durham University at 19, and had such a brilliant career in the colonial civil service, rising to the post of Resident of Lagos, and next in rank to the colonial Governor of Lagos. When Pa Haffner was a student at the CMS Grammar School, Lagos, then at Broad Street, he lived with Henry Carr at his sprawling mansion at Tinubu Square. As Henry Carr was never married and had no children, he took Haffner as his adopted son and nurtured him carefully. This was a rare privilege which, no doubt, had a profound influence on Haffner as he grew up. It was Henry Carr who ensured that Haffner joined the Cathedral choir at nine. That was when his love of both church and classical music began. He learnt the piano and became quite good at it. He was a patron of the Cathedral Choir. He grew up to be a man of culture and pleasant manners. My wife and I would normally visit him in his lovely home on his birthday anniversaries. These visits were always a great pleasure and delight, as Pa Haffner was such a splendid host, taking every care to make sure his visitors were relaxed, happy and convivial.

    In 1957, Pa Haffner married Grace Olubunmi Majekodunmi, a cousin of the late Dr. M.O. Majekodunmi of Abeokuta. She died in 2007 at 81. They were blessed with three children, two boys, and a girl, Bimbo who, in his last years, looked after him with such devotion and affection.

    To his family, numerous friends and professional colleagues, I offer my deeply felt condolences. May Papa’s soul rest in perfect peace.

  • Education in Nigeria – 2

    The point I am making is that fundamental restructuring of the educational infrastructure is called for.  In the new educational architecture, there is a need to look critically at the technological and technical aspects of education. The present polytechnics are not doing what they are supposed to do. They need to focus on technological training of the young people. Polytechnics should stop mounting courses in business and social studies. There is no point in polytechnics offering courses in Public Administration, Business Administration, Finance and Mass Communication as they presently do. Without a sound technological education to back up small industries what the Germans call “mittelstand” which is the backbone of industrialisation and employment in advanced countries, Nigeria will not be taking the right strategy for industrialisation. Below the polytechnics, we also need to focus on technical schools and colleges to train artisans like carpenters, bricklayers, draughtsmen, electricians that would be needed in industries. The present ridiculous situation whereby carpenters, bricklayers, electricians and plumbers are recruited from Benin, Togo and Ghana in the absence of good tradesmen in Nigeria should be reversed through expansion of training facilities for these types of workers in our country. There is also a need to bring into the educational scheme tradesmen and their journey-men like tailors, mechanics, electricians, plumbers  hair-dressers and so on into some kind of arrangement with the technical schools, so that young people coming through this informal system can be certified as ready for work. The Germans and Japanese do this with considerable success. All these will need a radical rethinking by our educational planners away from the present situation of over-emphasis on certificates to the neglect of the practical aspect of education.

    I am happy the new government appears seized with the problem of education by suggesting full students accommodation in the universities. I am not sure that this is the solution . Yes, more hostels should be built. The universities libraries and laboratories must be modernized and  be well-equipped. Teachers must be encouraged to stay and scholarship must be provided for the training of graduate assistants. Lecturers must be trained and retrained. They must enjoy study leave and sabbatical leave and must be adequately remunerated. But where will the funds for all this come from? Students and their parents will have to contribute to their training. There is nowhere in the world where higher education is free. No  good thing can be free. The situation where governors and president of the country will suddenly for political expediency, cut university fees to N25,000 a year in some states, payable twice  does not make sense. This is like saying school fees have been pegged to less than 100 pounds. This singular action brought down state universities  and some of their federal counterparts to a state of penury and inability to pay teachers and other ancillary staff and to teach students. The outcome of their irresponsible acts have so embarrassed the governors and  the federal educational authorities that they do not know what to do. They are too ashamed to eat their own words and they have no money to give to their universities. This is one of the ways state and federal universities have been undermined by their proprietors  – the federal and state governments. Like the case of primary and secondary schools, the private universities in particular those not founded for profit may have to fill the void being left by the public universities that are dying because of too much interference.

    There may be nothing wrong with this scenario  of private universities filling the void in advanced countries like the United States and Great Britain. But even there, all good universities can access government research grants and development assistance. For a developing country like Nigeria, the role of the state in educational development must be supreme and not secondary. This is because the role of our higher institutions in physical and material development of our country cannot be overestimated. But we must begin from the beginning by wholesale revamping and restructuring of primary education, then move on to do the same thing at secondary level; then the improvement would reflect in higher education. This suggestion is not that the private sector’s role should diminish;  rather what is suggested is that the state must not abdicate its responsibility to private entrepreneurs. Their role must be secondary while the state must play the dominant role.

    In a new educational structure, the question of the curriculum would have to be tackled. The debate between functional or  esoteric education would have to be sorted out. Does the universities prepare young people for the work place? The answer of course is that students have knowledge imparted to them and it is the application of this knowledge that is required in the work place. Apart from the professional courses like medicine and allied disciplines and engineering, hardly do people take knowledge acquired in classrooms to the work place.  After all, wisdom and sagacity is the application of knowledge. I have seen young people with liberal arts degrees become excellent computer programmers. I do not believe in describing young people as certificated illiterates as some foolish people have been describing jobless graduates in order to escape the responsibility of not planning for employment of young people. Many young people may not be good in the use of the English language but what they lack in grammar they make up for it in their ability to amass information and analyze it – thanks to information communication technology. The development of ICT has made learning less onerous as was the case in my university days and the fact that students don’t spend all their time in the university libraries is not an indication that they have no access to information which in most cases is carried around in their little internet connected phones.

  • Et tu, APC

    In its days in opposition, the All Progressives Congress (APC) was fiery and fearsome. It drove the fear of God into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from which it wrested power six months ago. We have lived with APC since then, but as some have been saying, we have yet to see the party belch fire from its mouth like the Sango Yoruba god of thunder. What these people are saying, in essence, is that what they are seeing, at least for now, is not what they bargained for from a party, which came to power, on the mantra of change.

    Has there been any change in the last six months? To me, it is too early in the day to answer that question one way or the other. But for sure, we should have started seeing some signs of what to come because as the saying goes, the morning shows the day. This is, however, not an assessment of the APC government but of the party’s handling of the fallout of the November 21 Kogi State governorship election, which it had won before its candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu’s sudden death.

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not declare the late Audu winner of the election because of Article 44 (L) (N) of the 2015 INEC Election Guidelines, which states : Where the margin of win between the two leading candidates is not in excess of the total number of registered voters of the polling unit(s) where election was cancelled or not held, decline to make a return until another poll has taken place in the affected polling unit(s) and the results incorporated into a new form EC8D and subsequently recorded into form EC8E for declaration and return. But, the party’s reaction to this unexpected development  was least expected.

    APC did not react as the APC we know. Its reaction was too tame and tepid as if nothing is at stake when it is  the governorship of a state that  is the bone of contention. Give or take, APC has already won the election, no matter the provisions of the election guidelines. PDP also knows that it has lost – that is why it is fighting tooth and nail to see if it can upturn the poll on technical ground. Its candidate, Governor Ibrahim Wada, is trailing the late Audu by 41,353 votes and the outstanding votes in the 91 polling units where election did not hold are 49,953 out of which APC only needs 9000 votes to retain its lead. This is why INEC has fixed a supplementary poll for Saturday and asked APC to replace the late Audu with another candidate whereas he contested the November 21 poll with James Faleke.

    Without Faleke as the late Audu’s running mate, the ticket would have been incomplete and APC would have been disqualified from the November 21 poll  because no sole candidate can contest election as governor, according to Section 187 (1) of the Constitution. With Audu’s unfortunate passage, Faleke should ipso facto step into his shoes. We can only be talking of a substitution as provided for in Section 34 (3)  of the Electoral Act 2006 if both candidates had died. The section reads: Except in the case of death, there shall be no substitution or replacement of any candidate whatsoever after the date (not later than 60 days to the election) referred to in subsection (1) of this section.

    Since Faleke is alive, why is APC replacing him with another candidate, Yahaya Bello,  who ab initio was not on the ticket that ran for the November 21 election? Justice and fairplay demand that Faleke should complete the race he and the late Audu started. In Audu’s absence, he has become the governor-in-waiting because no matter what, APC has won that election. To impose another candidate on Faleke at this stage will be highly unfair; it will amount to being used and dumped. APC promised the nation to do things differently. The time has come for the party to live up to its promise. And it can start by doing so with a deft handling of the Kogi impasse.

    If it does, it would have stood up for what is right without consideration for the attendant consequences. Some people are saying that the party does not want to field Faleke as its candidate because he is from the minority group in Kogi State. Should where he hails from make him a second class citizen in his own state? Didn’t APC realise that he is from the minority group before pairing him with the late Audu? If Audu had died in office, will those who do not like where Faleke comes from be talking of the propriety of a minority succeeding him when it is constitutionally stated that the deputy automatically becomes governor where his boss dies? INEC is set for Saturday’s supplementary poll, which Faleke and Wada have rejected.

    Wada and his party too have cashed in on the impasse to claim victory at the poll all because of APC’s misreading and mishandling of the case. PDP would have since stolen the show from APC if It is not crystal clear that come rain, come shine, the latter  will eventually be declared winner of the election, if not by INEC, but certainly by the court, when all this political shenanigan is done with. APC should stop playing the PDP game because by so doing it is unwittingly playing into the opposition’s hand. PDP does not want to lose Kogi despite having seen the handwriting of defeat on the wall.

    It has now become a case of to the courts, O disputants! Wada is in court seeking to be declared governor-elect in the absence of the winner, the late Audu. He seems to have forgotten that the late Audu ran with Faleke. And Faleke is also in court, seeking what truly belongs to him. I only hope that APC will put its house in order before the  Kogi crisis turns into another Senate leadership brouhaha albatross on its neck. The public expects something better from APC and it is not too late for the party to show that it can make the difference in our national life. The people are looking forward to that much-expected change.

  • Metaphor of the round leather

    The rambling youth who abandons his farm to seek greener pastures on his neighbour’s land is never as manly as the starving cow which kicks over its food bucket, leaps over the barnyard fence to run after its calf at milking time. Even the maternal cow commands greater respect than the Nigerian youth. Even a plough-wearied bullock tilling barren land excites greater dignity than the youth who passionately maligns Nassarawa United, Rangers of Enugu and Gateway FC to worship A.C Milan, Manchester United among others.

    Some would rave that I have made a sweeping statement but the tragedy of the Nigerian youth at home isn’t any different from that of his peer in Diaspora. A pitiful lust remains their woe; it’s a hankering for undeserved luxury, base sentimentality and unearned greatness. It is what drives a 38-year old Masters Degree holder and soccer enthusiast in the United Kingdom to call Super Eagles’ John Obi Mikel, a failure even though he, the 38-year old, washes the anuses of mental patients in a low budget geriatric home in the UK and Mikel earns about £80, 000 a week playing soccer or sitting on the bench for Chelsea Football Club in the same country.

    The 38-year old soccer buff was pissed with Mikel and his team mates’ performance at the recently concluded African Cup of Nations (AFCON) and at the ongoing FIFA World Cup qualifiers. He thinks they constitute monumental disgrace to Nigeria. And he painstakingly states so on his Facebook social networking page. Some would claim he has every right to criticise and condemn the Nigerian Super Eagles, like every other Nigerian who loves to see, breathe and talk ‘fantastic football.’

    But this is hardly about the ignorant youth’s debatable logic or Mikel’s deep pocket, it’s about the rabid inclinations of the Nigerian youth and soccer enthusiast to criticize and condemn everything Nigerian within and outside the exciting world of soccer. It was fascinating to see the nation’s youth unite in condemnation and virulent abuse of Nigeria’s Super Eagles over their perceived lackluster performances at international soccer tournaments. It doesn’t matter that the hastily constituted squads were meant to use the tournaments to fine-tune in depth and strength. No sooner than the tournaments begin than the Nigerian soccer enthusiast began to fantasize of the team’s incontestable right to excellence and invincibility even though it was ill-prepared to function and gel as a team.

    It took Clemens Westerhof four years or thereabouts to build the excellent squad that served Nigeria for well over a decade but the Nigerian youth and soccer enthusiast wanted former Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi, to parade a perfect team in three months, at the 2013 AFCON. When the team drew against Zambia and Burkina Faso, not a few of their peers cursed and demeaned them as the worst things to ever happen to Nigeria. When they beat Ethiopia 2 – 0, their peers at home ridiculed them endlessly, claiming they shamefully managed to win by penalties. However, nothing compares to the ill-will accorded the team as it prepared to face the Ivorien team.

    The “Super Chickens” will fall to the might and soccer prowess of Didier Drogba, Yaya Toure, Africa’s former best footballer and their Ivorien team mates, claimed the Nigerian press and other soccer buffs. Eventually, the Super Eagles put a lie to prophecies of doom by their peers at home and abroad; they simply outclassed and dominated Drogba, Toure and team mates from the first blow of the whistle to the end of the match. The Super Eagles beat Ivory Coast 2 – 1.

    It hardly mattered what final fate awaited the Super Eagles at the tournament – which they eventually won – what truly mattered was their spirited disavowal of the abject disloyalty and rabid sentimentality of Nigeria’s soccer loving youth.

    Currently, Nigeria is afflicted with youth irredeemably dim and misty in persona and worth; like spent shadows, they incarnate an insensible perspiration towards the sun. Their contempt for Nigeria extends beyond their disdain for Nigerian soccer. Like the beautifully dull and half-witted, this generation of youth encapsulates an inordinate contempt for everything Nigerian. They would dump the Nigerian dream for scraps and crusts of the American dream, British dream, South African dream, Malaysian dream, Ghanaian dream and even the Malian dream to mention a few.

    One cannot pontificate enough – even by unrelenting self-righteousness –to lay a foundation of true understanding and compassion for their plight. I speak of the unrepentant critic forever mounting the soapbox in his living room, courtyard or public bar to curse our leadership and curse the times even as he does nothing to improve the times.

    It’s even more tragic to see a journalist in his youth incarnate such pitiful citizenship despite expectations that he ought to know better. Such character that will play muscle to the most hideous politician for the paltriest fee often turn around to blame politicians for everything that is wrong with Nigeria. Such young members of the nation’s Fourth Estate espouse more bleakness and disdain for the Nigerian dream than their contemporaries from other professional and class divides.

    I speak of rich, spoilt brats acquiring the best of Ivy League education abroad with money pilfered from our coffers by their parents in the ruling class. I speak of Nigerian youth and self-styled intellectuals washing the anuses of the senile in geriatric homes and hospices abroad, even as they return home to belittle the impoverished teacher and farmer burning out under the worst living conditions, with dignity.

    I speak of postgraduate alumni from Nigeria driving cabs, cleaning public toilets, robbing, scamming and trafficking their sisters, daughters and mothers to foreign brothels for a fee. Then I speak of the very successful living abroad and yet propagating as much venom as bloody solutions to every problem in our fatherland.

    Lest I forget the maddening horde of Nigerian youth whose clamour for change is meticulously smothered no sooner than they gain access to vulgar privileges they whole-heartedly condemn as the excesses of the ruling class. With this shameful lot, the average youth brazenly casts his lot every time he incites cheerlessness and contempt for everything Nigerian.

    What pleasure is there to be derived from ridiculing one’s heritage just for the pleasure of doing so? The one who derives his thrill from doing so, himself becomes an everlasting jest, oftentimes to his great loss. The Nigerian youth who does so besmirches the essence of true citizenship and grace. But aren’t we all identifiable with such character?

    To this, many will vehemently object but it still doesn’t belie the fact that left to our devices, we shamelessly espouse and glamourise degeneracy. Little wonder, the hue and cry over the removal of fuel subsidy abated to a burp. Little wonder the profligacy and sleaze of the Nigerian ruling class became acceptable to hordes of cowardly revolutionaries that threatened to “Occupy Nigeria.” Little wonder several misguided youths have joined the campaign of calumny against President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign.

    The infinite cowardice in our hearts will continually betray our mutinous battle cries against the corrupt ruling class. The Nigerian youth is undoubtedly a researcher’s delight; every hour he substantiates the fraudulence of grief and the revolutionary march on this side of the divide.

     

    • To be continued…

     

  • Sounds of Biafra

    Sounds of Biafra

    WHY the renewed push for Biafra?

    Until Nnamdi Kanu hit the scene with a bang, we all thought the show had ended the way it began – full of drama and action, just like a movie. It used to be the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) led by the facetious Ralph Uwazurike whose followers were dismissed as flighty youths who saw it all as an exciting pastime.

    Uwazurike would, for months, threaten to “declare Biafra” as if a mere proclamation by an Indian-trained lawyer in one corner of the beautiful landscape of  Igboland would be the open sesame that was needed to make the dream a reality. He and his army of youthful followers would, with great revelry – singing, drumming, drinking and dancing – set a city throbbing and gather in a corner, plant the green-black-red Biafran flag and raise his hands in a black power salute. The youths, driven into a strange freneticism, would hail endlessly. Sometimes the police would come to smash the rally. Other times, they would just ignore the marchers.

    So vexatious was Uwazurike’s antics that the police seized him in 2005 and detained him on treason charges. Besides planting flags in a few places with great fanfare that belied his intentions and the enthusiasm of his supporters, the man also launched what he called the Biafra passport. The only beneficiary of this weird enterprise was, perhaps, the printer who got the contract to print the document. Nobody was confident enough to travel with the passport, which became an ordinary booklet symbolising the delusions of grandeur of its holders.

    In no time, MASSOB was hit by an enervating crisis of leadership. Uwazurike was, ironically, accused of sabotaging the group he had led with much braggadocio  after the police arrested many of its members for celebrating its 16th anniversary. A faction vowed to probe him.

    Director of Information  Uchenna Madu said: “We sympathise with the brainwashed and hypnotised members of Uwazurike’s faction who died and those detained during the celebration of  the 16 years anniversary of MASSOB while their leader was dining with his friends.”  Damning.

    He went on to say Uwazuruike visited Umuahia after the police stormed his home in Okwe, Imo State, to assure them that his MASSOB had no plan to break up Nigeria. Madu said the MASSOB chief then fled to Lagos without telling his supporters that the anniversary celebration had been called off. The police grabbed many of them who attempted to stage the anniversary.

    Uwazurike loves controversy and loves hugging the limelight. He was on song just before the last general elections when he called for former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chair Attahiru Jega’s resignation. His apocalyptic warning was, of course, ignored. The elections went on and, as they say, the rest is history.

    If we thought we had seen the last of such theatricals, we were damn wrong. Enter Kanu of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), the brain behind the overseas based Radio Biafra, who is said to have cut his teeth under Uwazuruike. He has been detained even as a case of alleged treasonable felony is being prepared against him.

    Now, many are wondering what this resurgence in pro-Biafra activisim is all about. Didn’t the late Eze Ndigbo Gburugburu Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu – of fond memories – say that it was all over? Why should a group of youths, many of them yet unborn during the reprehensible Civil War that took so many lives – God forbid another fratricidal venture – begin to sing the song of war? Are the Igbo so marginalised in the configuration of power and influence in this country that some would rather embrace a bloody solution to what seems a mere village square squabble over kolanuts? Isn’t this another conspiracy of the elite against the very people they claim to be fighting for even as it is apparent they are festering their own nests?

    Even kids have been asking what it all entails. Will they now ask our friends and school mates to return home to a new place called Biafra? Are we going to need visas to visit them? How about Igbo men who are married to Yoruba women and Yoruba men who have Igbo wives; where will they stay?

    Will the “chemist” down the road pack it up and return to Aba or Abakaliki? What will happen to the massive spare parts markets in Kaduna, Kano, Lagos and Ibadan as well as other cities? How will customers go to Ariaria and Onitsha markets; by visa? What will happen to the various Eze Ndigbos and their red crowns in Kano, Ibadan, Makurdi and all other places? Their kingdoms another to take?

    A former military chief, an Igbo, is said to have pasted on his facebook page the points he believes the excited agitators may have refused to note. It has the title “Foolish is not Igbo” and states: “For six years, our own occupied the offices of deputy Senate president, deputy speaker, Secretary  to the Government of the Federation (SGF), minister of Finance/coordinating minister for the Economy, ministers of Health, Labour, Aviation, Petroleum (by marriage), Chief of Army Staff and so on, yet nobody complained that the Igbo got too much of the Federal power rations. Neither did your highly placed brethren improve your lot in terms of development.”

    He then went on to say that “while other ethnic groups watched and played their politics towards national relevance, we the Igbo got carried away and played politics of the pocket where semi-illiterate moneybags charted the course for us.” He said those who had access to Aso Rock got fat contracts and lied to “the Igbo, who put all their eggs in one fragile basket that had lost form and shape to protect them”.

    “As the results of those fatal errors set in,” said the gentleman, “the same money-miss-roads are now fanning the embers of seccession as their next meal ticket bargaining chip while the teeming youths they lure with money and lies risk losing everything, including their lives.”

    There you have it.

    A dialogue between Abuja and the pro-Biafra agitators, which will eventually culminate in a general amnesty for the youths in the manner of the former Niger Delta militants’ programme, has been suggested. But there is the postulation that should the government succumb to this subtle pressure, it will get a long list of requests for amnesty by other vociferous and quiet but highly combustible groups.  Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), which has not hidden its anger over the loss of the seductive pipeline protection contract. Ombatse, which is yet to explain the disappearance of policemen on a peace mission to its area. Arewa Youths. Egbesu Boys. And more. Soon, amnesty will jam amnesty and there will be general amnesia.

    To some of my Igbo friends, the agitation portrays them in a bad light. It is wrong. Damn wrong. The Igbo man has excelled in many fields, including education, medicine, business, sports and many other areas of human advancement. His intelligence, nay  perspicacity, is the subject of  striking wisecracks.

    Consider this, which once appeared on this page: “An Edo man invited his friends to his mother’s burial. After lowering the coffin, the family put yam, rice, meat and other foodstuff in the grave – in line with tradition. A Hausa  man asked why. The Edo man smiled and said: ‘According to tradition, the dead go on a long journey and need all the food items they can get.’ The Hausa man dropped N100,000 inside and said, ‘when the food finishes, buy more.’ The Yoruba man dropped N50,000 and said, ‘Add this, in case that is not enough.’ The Igbo man smiled, brought out his cheque book and wrote a cheque of N200,000, dropped it in the coffin and took the N150,000 notes as change, saying: ‘Nwanne, withdraw it when you reach there o. It is going to be a dangerous journey. We don’t know how many robbers are out there and, after all, we are in a cashless economy. Travel well oooo!’“

    There is enough room for the Igbo talent to find expression and blossom in Nigeria. If there are grievances – aren’t they normal in human relations? – they should be settled within the law. The impetuosity of succession comes with great pains and no gains. We do not need it.

    Igbo kwenu!

    Death and the Prince

    Prince Abubakar Audu, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in last Saturday’s Kogi State governorship election, was set to receive the prize after hauling  in 240,867 votes, leading his closest rival, Governor Idris Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) by 41,000 votes.

    All seemed set for his coronation. Then the shock –Audu died. We were all humbled. As usual in such situations, an army of emergency doctors, lawyers, traditionalists and psychologists rose to analyse the calamity. Some said he suffered a stroke; others said a spiritual arrow was fired at him. Yet, others claimed he died of shock.

    The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deepened the complexity by announcing that supplementary elections would be held in 91 polling units instead of declaring Audu the winner. Was INEC aware of his death?  The number of registered voters in those units is 49,000. Of these, only 25,000 have voter cards. If all of them vote PDP, that will note be enough to close Audu’s gap. INEC should have given the prize to Audu’s running mate, James Abiodun Faleke. Isn’t that the logical thing to do?

    Audu’s death has thought us some lessons. We do not own our lives. No prize is bigger to be trade for it and we should always be prepared for the biggest prize – eternal life. Besides, we should be mindful of what will be said of us after our departure.

    May Audu’s soul find mercy with the Creator and the lessons of his passing find root in the hearts of all men of power and influence. Farewell, worthy prince.

  • Oshiomhole vs. Niger Delta vultures

    Last week, in a rehash of ‘rent-a crowd’, an art perfected by Niger Delta wheelers and dealers as leaders when confronted with their betrayals of the poor on whose name they swear, sponsored demonstrating half-naked women who claimed to be “mothers, sisters and aunts to Chief Igbinedion”, descended on the ancient city of Benin threatening to go completely naked if Oshiomhole fails to stop ‘insulting elders from Benin Kingdom’.  Governor Oshiomhole’s offence was his announcement that his government had begun moves to recover $31million  “fraudulently taken” from the government coffers, during Igbinedion’s administration and resolved to revert the conversion ‘to private use, of government properties and funds meant for the people of the state’ by the former governor and his father, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion.

    The Niger Delta itself is a land of extremes where the masses of the people wallow in abject poverty while a small segment of their political elite, described by Saro Wiwa as ‘vultures’ feed on the blood of the vulnerable in their midst. They erect mansions in major cities of the world, and fly in private jets to visit their homes in Warri, Asaba, Port Hacourt, Uyo and Yenagoa. Saro Wiwa, a witty playwright and environmental right activist and  one of Africa’s brightest ‘sun’ killed by Africa, strongly believed  the Niger Delta vultures are responsible for the prolonged nightmare of his people.

    Adam Oshiomhole, whose life-long commitment has been the protection of the disadvantaged, shares with Saro Wiwa not only a striking physical semblance, stubborn suicidal instinct but also the passion for the impoverished people of Niger Delta. Like Saro Wiwa, Governor Oshiomhole is not afraid to confront those he believes are parasites sucking the blood of the impoverished people of the Niger Delta.

    First it was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Minister of Finance whose ministry he accused of unauthorized withdrawal of $2.1b from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and of colluding with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to withhold huge sum of money that ought to have been transferred to the federation account. He also took on Diezani Alison-Madueke, the immediate past minister of petroleum who he claimed supervised the theft of about N1.6 trillion by some PDP stalwarts and their offspring under the guise of fuel subsidy when  in reality ‘they never imported a pint of fuel’.  On November 5, he picked on Lucky Igbinedion, his predecessor in office and his father, the respected Esama of Benin, accusing them of betraying the trust of those who looked up to them for protection.

    But Igbinedion has shot back asking Oshiomhole to “tell the people about properties he allegedly acquired in the last seven years in Dubai, Cape Town in South Africa, in San Francisco, United States of America, a high rise apartment in Atlanta also in America and in London. He is calling everybody a thief but Oshiomhole is the biggest thief in Benin City today.”

    Igbinedion’s friends in the judiciary have reminded the governor, in case he has forgotten, that ‘the law empowers a sitting governor to allocate lands to people, including his own father’.  Is Oshiomhole himself not allocating lands to people as a sitting governor they sneered?  And as if to justify Lucky Igbinedion’s actions, Oshiomhole was told that by 1952, the year he was born, Chief Igbinedion had built a mansion in Benin and was wealthy enough to donate two houses to the then newly created Mid-west in 1963.

    As part of the battle for the minds of the Edo people, Igbinedion said he was revealing for the first time how much contribution his father and Tony Anenih, his godfather made to his administration.  According to him, “They borrowed the state money. It is documented and you have it there. When the banks could not trust us, I went to them. My father just felt you have got to do what you have got to do. There were days the pensioners would cry to him or block the road to Government House. We had to run to them just to keep the government run­ning.” Impetuous Governor Oshiomhole, there you have it. Pa Igbinedion and Anenih (the fixer) were jointly richer than Edo State when Lucky held sway.

    But that cannot be the end of the narrative. To ascertain if indeed Niger Delta vultures are really behind the nightmare of the impoverished masses of Niger Delta as hypothesized by Saro Wiwa, a prejudice swallowed by Oshiomhole, a quick recourse to memory is required to complete the narrative.

    Let us start with Lucky Igbinedion himself. He was after his tenure as governor dragged to court by EFCC and slammed with 191 court charges including the theft of N25b. This was reduced to one count of corruption summarized as ‘false declaration of account’, after plea bargaining. An Enugu Federal High Court presided over by Justice Abdullahi Kafarati later sentenced him to six months in prison with the option of a N3.5 million fine which many considered a slap on the wrist. With the plea bargain agreement he reached with the EFCC, he was required to return N500 million and forfeit three of the houses he acquired with stolen public funds to the Federal Government.

    Ibori who perfectly fits Saro Wiwa’s vulture characterization was first arraigned in Kaduna. But his associates in the judiciary curiously won their argument that he could only be tried in Asaba. Since there was no Federal High Court in Asaba, Dr. Ewetan Uduaghan, secretary to Ibori government,  who went on to succeed him as Delta State governor, quickly donated two government buildings for the purpose. The Asaba Federal High Court created for Ibori and presided over by Justice Marcel Awokulehin wasted no time in discharging and acquitting James Ibori of all of the 170-count charges of corruption, involving the laundering of millions of dollars, filed against him by EFCC.  But this did not stop a London court that described Ibori as ‘a criminal in government house’ from jailing him for 13 years after pleading guilty to some of the offences for which he had been acquitted by Asaba Federal High Court.

    And finally we can add Alamieyeseigha, the ‘Ijaw Governor-General’. While his influential Nigerian associates insisted the people of Niger Delta had no problem with their governor-general over his husbandry of their resources, the governments of Britain, United States, South Africa, Bahamas and Seychelles as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank under the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative’ were not impressed. They went on to list his portfolio of foreign assets which included accounts with five banks in the UK and further accounts with banks in Cyprus, Denmark and the United States; four London properties acquired for a total of £4.8m; a Cape Town harbour penthouse acquired for almost £1m, assets in the United States, and almost £1m in cash stored in one of his London properties. Britain’s Metropolitan Police went on to charge him to court from where he jumped bail and escaped to Nigeria. And when Ribadu finally secured his conviction in Nigeria, ex-President Jonathan his fellow Ijaw man granted him a presidential amnesty.

    Membership of Saro Wiwa’s Niger Delta vultures is spread among the political, economic, intellectual and military classes as well as the judiciary and the press. With Igbinedion, the convict now playing the victim while casting the governor as the villain, Oshiomhole must have now realized that embarking on a crusade against Niger Delta vultures is like going on a suicide mission as Saro Wiwa discovered too late.