The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Medical education and frustrated young graduates

    Some years ago during the Obasanjo administration, he was told that there were no positions in hospitals particularly teaching hospitals for medical graduates to do the compulsory one year requirement as house men without which their training will not be complete. If their training is not complete, they will not be able to practice medicine and they will not be able to serve in the NYSC. The president gave an executive order expanding the training positions in teaching hospitals.

    Around this time also a delegation of The Historical Society of Nigeria intimated the president that History had been muscled out of primary and secondary schools curricula and that no country can develop without a point of reference in the past. Furthermore it was pointed out to him that some of the anti-social behaviour noticeable in our youth and adults is a manifestation of the disconnect between the leadership and the follower-ship and between the present and the past. He was told that without solid grounding and connection with the past the present will be disjointed and the future will be uncertain.

    The president was persuaded and he issued an executive order restoring the teaching of history to the appropriate levels in the educational ladder. Unfortunately the presidential executive order was obeyed in the breach! The ministry of education simply put one huddle or the other in its way of implementation.

    The issue that is very critical right now is that of young people completing five or six-year medical programme in a university and having no where to finish their education as house officers. I would never have known about the existence of this problem but for the fact that my colleagues have children graduating and frantically searching for non-existent places in hospitals. I have had to join friends in this frantic search sometimes successfully but failing abjectly some other times. When my daughter finished her medical programme abroad, she did not have her dad around to run around looking for friendly CMDs.

    This is a problem that needed not to have arisen in the first place if we plan seriously in this country. The Nigerian Medical and Dental Council must share in the blame. Whenever it gave approval for establishment of medical schools, it ought to impose quotas on each approved medical school. All medical schools ab initio should be required to indicate where graduates would spend the stipulated one year of housemanship after graduating. The hospitals need not all be teaching hospitals. All specialist hospitals and some good private and general hospitals should be encouraged and funded to take in house officers. There may be need for caution in all and sundry starting medical schools. If we are not careful mushrooming private universities may catch the virus of starting medical schools for profit.

    Now that we know we have this problem the president of our country should issue an executive order immediately and not tomorrow asking the various hospitals afore mentioned to get cracking and solve the problem. Definitely there will be need for special appropriation to be made through the National Assembly and Senate. This problem must be permanently rested and terminated.

    As a professor who knows the challenges facing young people, I cannot fold my hands simply because it is not really my problem. It is everybody’s problem. There will come  a time in this country when old people like me will be challenged by young people for messing up the country if we can not plan well for the future. As leaders, we have become very insensitive to problems of the youth. There seems to be a total disconnect between the people and the leadership. The same disconnect manifests in the way we run the NYSC. Suddenly young people are being fleeced by asking them to pay N5,000 to access the NYSC website to register or get their states of posting ! Yet these young people are giving free service for their country. The same insensitivity led to young people stampeding after paying N1,000 to a private company recruiting immigration officers. Some died in the process including pregnant women. The illegality of the whole thing became clear when the Controller- General of Immigration Department said he knew nothing about the so-called recruitment. A job for the public service commission was firmed out to a powerfully connected company leading to the death of young Nigerians. Up till today no one was held accountable and punished.

    Young people are posted and put in harms way in states where it is generally known there is no security. A few years ago, parents were called to receive the corpses of their children brutally murdered in Plateau and Bauchi states during break-down of law and order. One of the governors of the states had the temerity to say the murder of youth corps members was an act of God. Lord have mercy! If God were man, He would have struck down this erring governor with thunder!

    James Baldwin wrote a book in the 1960s entitled the FIRE NEXT TIME to demonstrate pent-up anger among the youth particularly the black youth if their problems were not addressed. His prophesy came true when young Blacks during the Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency started rioting and burning down American cities. Johnson responded by passing a comprehensive Civil Rights Act and embarked on building what he called the Great Society. To his eternal glory, he laid the foundation of what has now been described as an American Century. We should not wait until we have the equivalent of an Arab Spring or a revolt by our youth before embarking on youth-friendly policies at all levels of governments in Nigeria. If we do not do something positive to help the young people of Nigeria, we may all be swept off in the violence and blind fury that are bound to accompany youth frustration, disenchantment, discouragement and disappointment with the status quo.

  • Not the way to go

    In Nigeria, people like to cause confusion where there is none. They get a kick from turning things upside down just to destabilise the polity. Their joy is in heating up the whole place so that they can benefit from the ensuing crisis. These people abound in every segment of society. Their policy is if we cannot have it no other person should. But they are found mostly in  political circles.

    There are many spoilers in our political firmament. These are political jobbers who ingratiate themselves with those in power for their own selfish end. They do not have our leaders’  interest at heart, but they create the impression that they do. A wise leader will not touch them with a 10-foot pole, but since wisdom is far from many of our leaders, they get easily carried away by such people’s antics and end up in the hall of infamy.

    Remember June 12, John Atkins, Arthur Nzeribe, Abimbola Davies, the late Justice Bassey Ikpeme  and the Association of Better Nigeria (ABN)? In 1993, the faceless Atkins,  Nzeribe, now in his wintry years,  Davies, who sprang up from nowhere then, and ABN, among others, did all they could to stop the June 12, 1993 presidential election. The late Justice Ikpeme even granted a late night  injunction barely 48 hours to the election, stopping the National Electoral Commission (NEC)  from going ahead with the exercise. Of course, the late judge and her order were ignored.  In a series of adverts, Atkins argued strongly for the postponement of the election. The Prof Humphrey Nwosu-led NEC, he claimed, was ill-prepared for the poll.

    Nzeribe argued along the same line, making it look as if he was the faceless Atkins behind those adverts. Till today, many are not convinced that it was not Nzeribe in Atkins’ skin. What they were doing was against the electoral law, but the security agencies kept quiet. They allowed Nzeribe, Davies and ABN to be because they knew that these people and ABN cannot be dancing without their drummer being at hand. The drummer was the government of the day, which from the look of things was not ready to go after trying several gimmicks in the past to truncate the transition programme.

    It banned and unbanned candidates, shifted the hand over date severally before it ran into a cul-de-sac in 1993. June 12 was the proverbial bone that got stuck in their throats – they could neither cough it out nor swallow it. Despite their scheming, the election held and the rest, as they say, is history. But some people have not learnt from that. Today, some people want to take us down that road again. They are demanding postponement of next month’s elections to enable the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) complete the distribution of the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC).

    The PVC is a must have for eligible voters; without it they cannot vote. Of the 68.8 million registered voters, about 42.7million have received their cards, according to INEC, which spoke on the highly sensitive issue on Tuesday night. The argument of poll postponement proponents is that millions of people will be disenfranchised if the election is allowed to hold as scheduled . Their argument holds no water as INEC has assured all that it can complete the distribution of the remaining 26.1 million cards between now and February 8. ‘’And if push comes to shove, we will distribute the cards till February 13, which is the eve of the presidential election’’, said INEC Chairman Attahiru Jega, last week.

    The truth is that those calling for poll postponement are being used by some forces to do so. Some are doing it for money; others are doing it on the prompting of the government, which believes that if such people add their voice to it, it would give the clamour some sort of relevance. That is where they miss the point. Nigerians are anxious, very anxious, for the elections to hold because they are tired of the present administration. If many have their way, they would prefer that the elections  hold today.

    Nothing will make these people happy than to see the Jonathan administration go. The past six years have been hell on earth for many Nigerians despite the government’s claim of having touched their lives. In what way has the government touched people’s lives? Is it through its fiscal policies under which the naira keeps depreciating against  the dollar? Is it through the provision of critical infrastructure? Is it through stable power supply? Is it through the creation of jobs? We can go on and on. There is nothing to write home about this administration and this is  why discerning Nigerians are anxious for the elections to  come so that they can with  their own hands determine their fate.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has seen the handwriting on the wall; this is why it is tacitly backing those calling for postponement of the elections, citing many eligible voters’ inability to collect their PVCs for such indefensible demand. With what the National Security Adviser (NSA), Col Sabo Dasuki, said at Chatham House in London last week, it is clear that the PDP-led government, nay the Presidency, is not averse to a poll shift. But will INEC dance to their tune? This is where the problem lies. Those seeking  postponement do not know how to sell the idea to INEC, which is determined to get the elections done with as scheduled.

    So far, INEC has maintained its stand that the elections must hold next month come rain, come shine. But you can trust our people to go to any length to get what they want. On Tuesday, they took the fight, so to say, to INEC Headquarter in Abuja even when the issue of poll shift was not on the agenda of their meeting. All the parties except the All Progressives Congress (APC) and United Progressives Party (UPP) insisted on postponement of the poll. Their reason again was the distribution of PVCs to eligible voters before February 14. This is not an issue over which we should break bones. It is a matter that can be resolved without some people hiding under it to cause mischief.

    No doubt, INEC is facing challenges in distributing PVCs to all eligible voters. But should this be enough reason to ask for poll shift? The answer is no. What those in power should do is to come to INEC’s aid in getting these cards distributed speedily instead of using delay in their  distribution as a ploy for poll shift. Even if the elections are shifted for 90 days as Dasuki suggested in London, what is the guarantee that all eligible voters will collect their PVCs before the rescheduled poll? There is no need to shift the poll because those determined to vote will do all they can to get their PVCs as long as INEC makes good its promise to get them ready before February 8.

    Those calling for poll postponement  are not reckoning with the resolve of  Nigerians to get all-this essential card come what may as long as they are made available for collection. As I write this, I have yet to collect my PVC, but I am determined to get it whenever it is made available between now and February 8, even if I need to sleep at my polling unit or ward to pick it up. It is a sacrifice one must make in order to exercise one’s  franchise in next month’s elections. And I know that many Nigerians are ready to make that sacrifice. So, no to poll shift.

  • Through the looking-glass

    • (To the ‘press boys’ or ‘Gentlemen of the press?’)

    Now, the truth has fewer moments. History is as we tell it and every day, we fabricate new histories with sore rhetoric. Our fitful dalliances tender fresh traceries of chaos in cataclysmic garments we love to adorn as needle points, on the pasty bosoms of our motherland.

    Fangled stitches, in-bred strife and hate-entanglements resonate in our news pages, on to the streets, into our strife-torn yards. And so we re-enact towering tragedies on impulse, fabricating new beginnings from no ends and disastrous endings from bogus beginnings.

    All these because we crave a new car; because we lust for a trophy wife, ‘nouveau riche’ status and concubines. Our lust for money pushes us to do several hideous things. Every hour, it turns thousands who could have overcome its darkness into eternal addicts to the base and inane. For the love of a lousy buck, many a Nigerian journalist dies, everyday.

    The Nigerian journalist will sell his closest friend and colleague, and the entire Fourth Estate out at the blink of an eye.

    Now, everybody stares at us with contempt. Naked in the storm of their maddening glare, we have grown to know insult; now we love and understand it as inseparable part of our calling.

    Nothing distinguishes us from dispensable hooligans-for-hire save our obsequiousness to serve, albeit with remarkable élan, and our desperation to function as anything and everything, including a soundboard for clichés and sham realism –innate essence of our socio-politics. We have become the stamen that lets down the azalea, the comforter that brings grief, and the emissaries of needless hate.

    One hundred and fifty six years of print journalism and 56 years of broadcast journalism yet we are still that pitiful band with no lasting legacy save all that could be termed loathsome and fundamentally offensive.

    The grammar of our language has since been fathomed by those whom we seek to chaperon. The tenor of our thinking, owing to our customary habit of allowing each sentence trail off in sophistry and confusion, tears at our reasoning and cochlea meaning nothing, substantiating naught and denoting only calumny, deceit, greed and all that cowardice and double-speak ever gives.

    Our lamentations are of bad leadership but even now that we are in position to unlearn every perfidy that we have learnt and denounce the hypocrisies that drives us to beatify shams and delusions as the soundest of truths while we canonise reality as the genesis of farce, we dither.

    We do not inform. We do not educate. Not enough anyway, for every story and analysis we have run till date beclouds every parameter that we have set, to identify and challenge true leadership when it wavers in our face.

    We are still the watchdogs desperately playing lapdogs and regretfully, junkyard dogs of the ruling class. Our “fearless” barks still resound like the chatter of enfant terrible rodents crisscrossing our dilapidated rooftops.

    We do not speak to power although we love to beat our chests that we do. If we do really, then we would have enlightened the electorate to the candidate whose politics deserve our mandate and patronage; we would have alerted the electorate to those expectations and demands we are meant to enshrine and perpetuate in the face of political campaigns primed only to befuddle and entertain.

    If we are truly as visionary as we claim to be, we wouldn’t find much substance in such issues as the religious inclinations of Muhammadu Buhari nor would we find much to interest us in incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan; we would not find much to project as the likely benefits of keeping President Jonathan in power come February 14.

    We would rather be bent on reflecting the citizenry’s insistence that their mandate counts in the election of the proverbial candidate whose leadership will titillate measure, while his deeds become the thrust of timeless odes and narratives.

    If we truly possess dauntless intelligence, professionalism and understanding of our socio-politics, we would teach the nation to explore the politics and soul of at least one candidate in order to trust him.

    We would have set the agenda for every manner of campaign that every manner of “messiah” would incorporate and propagate. We would write through decadence and filth to silence the neurotic tick-tock of midnight before it smothers totally, the sunny whispers of dawn.

    Were we as patriotic and professional as we claim to be, we would endeavour to become something more than disposable pawns in the designs of political parties and candidates with the most hideous plans; we would write not what we have been paid to write but what we honestly ought to write.

    If we are truly as honourable as we would like to be addressed, we would strip every candidate and their apologists of the smokescreen that deceives, like the leverage of incumbency, wealth, power and deceitful imagery we continually launder and foster; we would present each candidate in the light of his vanities, idiosyncrasies, politics and citizenship of humanity and every time, we get to interview him – no matter how desperate he is to be portrayed as the best president or governor Nigeria would ever have. We would, among other things, ask the questions that reveal and infuriate, not just because it is trendy and impressive to do so but because it is those questions they labour to avoid that matter.

    If we are truly the statesmen we pride ourselves to be, we shall desist from profiling the candidates that emerge in the light of vanities we seek to satisfy, like our desire to own a house, acquire a posh car, join an elite club, foot education bills and increase our bank accounts; all these things we shall hopefully acquire under the leadership that improves and furthers, if we could take the pains to install it.

    Today, we see the death of chivalry and reason because we are desperate enough to demean the powers of our Fourth Estate. We have chosen to play errand boys to even the least honourable political public office holder, party chieftain and thug.

    That is why for all the bluster we muster, pimping and syndicating highfaluting articles, “Special Investigations” and “Truths of the matter” that are as relative as our inclinations to submit and play dumb, we remain among other things, emissaries of distrust and rancour and pitiful pawns in the designs of every contestant and godfather with a deep-pocket.

    We do not get it, still; although we think we do just because we manage to pretend to do so. We are still as impotent as our words. Beneath our bloated affectations of high character, our lives remain sketchier than we wish they are but our people do not know so. Thus some of them read us and listen, still.

    But who is it that actually listens? Who are those whose lives we impact by our pretentious lines and mercantile intellectualisation? The trodden perhaps or could it be our benefactors in power? If only we could understand our strength and substance, we would know that there is no true activist except us; we would know that there is no powerful kingmaker than we could ever become. Perhaps we do, we are just too selfish for

     

  • Days of bile and vile

    Days of bile and vile

    AS the Abuja Accord still alive?

    When the 11 presidential candidates signed a pact to ensure that next month’s elections are peaceful, we all clapped for them, hailing their patriotism. Now we know we have been deceived. The accord has been shredded.

    There has been so much anxiety in the land, fuelled by politicians whose language drips violence. But do we need to be told that such conduct paves the way for the manifestation of the savagery we are all so eager to avoid? In other words, it is not initially all baton, bullets and blood. No. These are merely the corollary of a brutish thought process that evokes the foul language that precedes trouble.

    Almost everybody is guilty, but the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gets the trophy. Instead of leading a solid fight against the fundamentalist Boko Haram, a group that keeps assaulting Nigeria’s military might and the quality of its political leadership, the PDP has laid the blame at the doorstep of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and its leaders.

    Some Christians have been bamboozled with wild tales of how APC and its leaders have been backing Boko Haram – all in a desperate battle to win votes. At what point did APC begin to romance Boko Haram? Are those politicians accused of starting it all not in the President’s company? Are they not members of his party?  If APC is backing the sect, why did it attempt to kill its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, in Kaduna? Borno, an APC state, continues to be troubled by the sect, which has killed and kidnapped thousands of its citizens, including the over 200 Chibok girls whose whereabouts remain unknown since April 14, last year when they were snatched off their dormitories and hussled off to nowhere.

    Apparently frustrated that the Boko Haram smear campaign has fallen flat on its face, the PDP reached into its bag of old, dirty tricks. From nowhere the news came that the report of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), the intervention agency Gen. Buhari once chaired, which its purveyors claimed indicted him, would be made public.

    Just before the report was splashed on newspaper pages, former President Olusegun Obasanjo knocked the bottom off its bucket, dismissing it as a document that was of no importance. Gen Buhari, he said, passed the test of integrity that the probe was all about. Obasanjo, it should be noted, set up the panel that conducted  the probe.

    But the hatchet men were not done. They soon devised other forms of mudslinging, saying Buhari had no certificates. Haba! This is the first time the former Head of State’s academic qualifications are being challenged. To the idlers and jokers, it was no point that the man had contested elections three times on the same rules set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Constitution. In their warped view, it is no use visiting the schools Gen. Buhari claimed to have attended to confirm whether he was actually there or not and then, armed with iron-cast evidence – if the General lied – challenge his eligibility to run.

    Enter the military. Army spokesman Brig.-Gen. Olajide Laleye, at an elaborate press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, said the NA Form 199 A, which Gen. Buhari filled after his commission as an officer, shows that he got the West African School Certificate in 1961. “However, neither the original copy or the Certified True Copy (CTC) nor statement of result is in his personal file,” Gen. Olaleye said.

    The army, he said, will not be party to any controversy surrounding Gen. Buhari’s eligibility for any political office. Really? Hasn’t the PDP and its henchmen railroaded the army into this season of bile and vile that is nothing but politics to them? If the papers are not with the army, where are they?

    Why is PDP bringing up this matter now? Does the law say a candidate must tender his papers on the eve of the election?

    Thankfully, Government College, Katsina released its copy of Gen. Buhari’s certificate yesterday––to the dismay of the PDP and its itinerant drummers.

    Perhaps unknown to the PDP, many see this as part of the desperation to keep alive its dream of ruling Nigeria for 60 years- in the first instance –  a dream that is collapsing so fast, like a structure erected on sand. In fact, to Gen. Buhari’s growing army of fans, the certificate matter is no issue. “Let Buhari present a NEPA bill as his certificate, I will still vote for him,” a former soccer star is quoted as saying.

    That is the level of the emotional attachment that many have to the wind of change that Gen. Buhari symbolises. Isn’t it too late to stop him?

    No, the PDP and its errand boys think. It was obvious the certificate issue would not fly. So, off to town they went to procure an “Oluwole” – oh! that home of master forgers on Lagos Island- health report that states that Gen. Buhari is ill, proclaiming the piece of paper as a bulletin issued by the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, which they actually misnamed. Femi Fani-Kayode, who before getting the job of spokesman of Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s Campaign was busy – broke, some insist – answering money laundering charges in court, broke the false news of Gen. Buhari’s “illness” .

    The General’s handlers said he was fit as a fiddle and stressed that he would not fiddle with government cash if voted into office. Gen. Buhari defended his fitness, challenging a reporter to a session of jogging.

    Apparently buoyed by the fake health report, a governor – governor indeed – assaulted the public’s sensibility by issuing an advertorial suggesting that if voted into power, Gen. Buhari would die in office. It was a classic case of adult delinquency and buffoonery taken too far, even by the awful standard of the advertiser and his masters, who disowned the document as an exclusive device of his.

    Now, many are recalling the curse of the Great Zik of Africa on “those  who make a mockery of old age” when in 1981 the former Senate President, the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo,  pilloried the old man – all in the name of politics. Okadigbo said his complaints were “the rantings of an ant”.

    Zik replied in a moving dirge. He wrote:

    “My boy, may you live to your full potential, ascend to a dizzy height as is possible for anyone of your political description in your era to rise. May you be acknowledged world-wide as you rise as an eagle atop trees, float among the clouds, preside over the affairs of fellow men…. as leaders of all countries pour into Nigeria to breathe into her ear.But then, Chuba, if it is not the tradition of our people that elders are roundly insulted by young men of the world, as you have unjustly done to me, may your reign come to an abrupt and x close. As you look ahead, Chuba, as you see the horizon,  dedicating a great marble palace that is the envy of the world, toasted by the most powerful men in the land, may the great big hand snatch it away from you. Just as you look forward to hosting the world’s most powerful leader and shaking his hands, as you begin to smell the recognition and leadership of the Igbo people, may the crown fall off your head and your political head fall off your shoulders.None of my words will come to pass, Chuba, until you have risen to the very height of your power and glory and health, but then you will be hounded and humiliated and disgraced out of office, your credibility and your name in tatters forever…”

    When, many are asking, will PDP begin to discuss issues? Will Dr Goodluck Jonathan stop theorising  about “stealing” and “corruption” and go after all those who have robbed the treasury, some of them part of those  running his campaign? How will he convince Nigerians that he has done all that is humanly possible against Boko Haram? Will there be jobs for all? How? Will he restore the dignity of the Judiciary? Can we ever get power right and save industrialists the fortune they pour into diesel drain?

    The song about debasing – sorry, an error there –  rebasing of the economy, petrol queues, railway, rice and cassava bread and all that sounds like an old lullaby that can no longer lull us all to sleep. Let’s sing a new song, Your Excellency.

    To many Nigerians, this season of vile and bile has provided a massive canvass for the exhibition of their amazing creativity. Since the government suddenly reduced fuel price from N97 to N87 last Sunday, the action has become a subject of jokes on the Internet. There is a caricature of the President – bowler hat, a short sleeve shirt and a pair of shorts – filling a motorist’s car at a petrol station.

    In another posting, Dr Jonathan is pictured in a pensive mood, his left hand on his chin. Behind him is former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his tongue sticking out mockingly, saying to the President: “Even if you reduce fuel price to N10, they won’t vote for you. Huuuu!”

    There is also the portrait of a man laughing hysterically and saying: “So, because we said we need change, GEJ has given us N10 change”.

    What do you say of the onomatopoeic contraption of Buhari’s name to FeBuhari to push his choice for the February 14 election? In Yoruba, fe means love. You are simply being urged to love Buhari and show this on February 14, the all-lovers day that is also the election day. What a coincidence!

    See you at the polls.

    Bonjour Mbu Joseph Mbu

    It is only fit and proper to welcome Assistant Inspector-General of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu to Lagos where he is to take charge of Zone 2, which comprises Lagos and Ogun states.

    Mbu’s belligerence is well known. So, for Lagosians who may want to be familiar with the new helmsman’s style, a word of caution. Mbu dislikes rallies and protests without police permit, although the courts have said you don’t need a permit for such gatherings. If in doubt, ask the #BringBackOurGirls campaigners. He, being a peaceful and cultured officer, does not like being described as “controversial”. If in doubt, ask Amaechi Anakwe of AIT, who spent time in detention for describing the gentleman as controversial. With Mbu, no office is sacred. If in doubt, ask Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi or simply recall the officer’s lion and leopard allegory, which he told with remarkable relish. When Mbu is at work, never accuse him of partisanship, of singing Abuja’s song. Never. He is a thoroughbred professional.

    So, fellow Lagosians, there you have it. Before I am charged with tardiness, may I quickly say bonjour officer.

  • Jonathan, Corruption and rule of law

    PDP rallies are often swelled up with rented crowd. We have as authority the Ogun State-based PDP mobiliser for the last year Ekiti governorship election who after Fayose’s unexpected landslide victory told Channels Television that PDP should not be expected to invite people to their rallies without making provision for their protection from the vagaries of the weather. He was commenting on PDP policy of ‘stomach infrastructure’, which he admitted was targeted at PVC holders all over the state. It is unlikely the crowd paid any attention to lies dished out by cynical politicians who themselves have little faith either in the electorate or the ballot box. Long before President Jonathan’s combative flagging off of his campaign in Lagos and Enugu, Nigerians were already familiar with his exaggerated achievements in the economic sector, now the largest in Africa, roads rehabilitation, railways, power generation, agriculture and foreign investment all of which have been wildly celebrated by his transformation ambassadors. But I think what Nigerians were not prepared for was the president’s claim of being the champion of the war against corruption and a crusader for the rule of law.

    Addressing a crowd of supporters at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu, Jonathan told the crowd of his success in the war against corruption in the last four years using modern technologies. According to him “There is no government that has fought corruption more than we have done.” The crowd did not bother about proof. But the president all the same went on to provide one. It turned out not to be in the number of corrupt people successfully prosecuted by his regime, but in the fact that  Buhari who the president claims cannot remember his telephone number is too old to understand the meaning of corruption. According to him, “Buhari believes that every wealthy Nigerian is corrupt”; and “If a Nigerian businessman has a private jet, then you are corrupt, if you have a good house, then you are corrupt, if you have a good car then you are corrupt”. The president didn’t need to ask Buhari for his definition of corruption. As a lucky shoeless boy fortuitously turned president and now surrounded by many wealthy friends, owners of big cars, private jets, palatial houses some of whom recently contributed a whopping N21 billion in a few hours towards his re-election bid, he knows better. The president’s only misfortune however is even if his crooked logic remains unassailable among the vulnerable 18 years old he has chosen to work with in order to move the nation forward, the group will not determine his fate on February 14 because they hardly vote.

    Both in Lagos and Enugu, the president also positioned himself as the guardian of the rule of law. Again, the president did not tell his supporters what he has done to enhance rule of law over the last six years. Instead he resorted to Buhari bashing. He reminded them how back in 1984, without adding that Buhari was the head of a military junta, he jailed their fathers and uncles without following rule of law. And in Enugu, how Buhari jailed ‘some prominent Igbo politicians including former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme and former governor of old Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo’. The president concluded saying: “I am not going to run the government based on my habits; I am going to run the government according to global best practices.”

    But that has been the opportunity the president repeatedly bungled these past six years becoming in the process the greatest threat to the rule of law, first by his partisanship in the saga of Justice Ayo Salami who was eased out of office for having the courage to rule against PDP governors that stole their opponents’ victories in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun and later as an accessory in the undermining of the rule of law in Ogun in 2011, then Rivers, Edo and Ekiti in 2014.

    Nigerians know that as an impeached former governor who was also standing trial over EFCC alleged financial fraud besides murder charges, Ayo Fayose was not constitutionally fit to run for governorship office. But he was the president’s favourite among about 15-odd candidates. He went on without a manifesto to mysteriously secure a landslide victory over a performing incumbent Governor Fayemi. Haunted by the demon that saw him out of office in 2006, even as governor elect, Fayose went with thugs to beat up a judge presiding over his eligibility case, shredded his robe and judgment sheets. The protectors of rule of law kept their peace. Then Fayose drove 19 opposition lawmakers out of town and with the help of 300 policemen, ferried seven PDP members in government bus to the assembly where they hilariously impeached the speaker and appointed one of their own as speaker. A few minutes later, the governor appeared on a national television telling Nigerians he has recognized the new Ekiti speaker. The President and his Attorney General, guardians of the rule of law kept their peace.

    Before Ekiti was Ogun State. In the run up to the 2011 presidential election, President Jonathan was accompanied in his campaign tour of Ogun State by ex-Governor Gbenga Daniel who at the time was ruling his state as a sole administrator after shutting down the state assembly and driving the lawmakers out of town. The president pretended not to be aware of this in spite of strident calls to intervene in what was then a PDP intra party feud.

    In the battle of supremacy between Governor Rotimi Amaechi and the President’s wife in Rivers State, about seven law makers who publicly swore by the name of the president and his wife threw the state into chaos as they tried to illegally remove the speaker and the governor. The state police commissioner became the de facto governor. It took the president over six months and the intervention of well-meaning Nigerians before a tepid statement was issued in his name calling “on all those who were remotely or directly involved in heightening political tension in Rivers State to put an immediate end to their actions which are capable of plunging Rivers State into public disorder and strive to settle their political differences without further recourse to barbaric acts of violence”.

    In Edo State, about seven members of the House of Assembly consisting of suspended members of the ruling party and others barred by a court injunction from entering the assembly premises ignored court order and with the help of thugs took over the house after driving out the majority of members who have since relocated to the government house. The guardians of rule of law maintained their peace.

    However, in the wake of a recent Abuja Federal High Court order to swear in  Bala Ngilari as the Adamawa governor, it took the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Bello Adoke, only a few hours after the ruling, to issue a statement directing the Chief Judge of Adamawa to immediately swear in Ngilari. Akpabio, who is the chairman of the PDP Governors’ and the president’s accomplice in many acts of impunity and politics of subterfuge, was to later tell state house correspondents that ‘President Goodluck Jonathan deserved commendation for his adherence to the Rule of Law and respect for the nation’s judiciary’. But since there is no perfect crime, as they say, Akpabio followed with a Freudian slip. “Ngilari is a PDP man; he is not in the opposition… the interesting aspect is that it is a family business for the PDP,” he said triumphantly.

    As I watched the president dance with Ayo Fayose in Ekiti last week, just as I have over time observed his apparent support for the rape of the rule of law, confirmed corrupt elements and various acts of impunity, the more I am persuaded President Jonathan lacks the strength of character to sacrifice his private interest for the public good.

  • In bad taste

    No wonder many decent people are  running  away from politics; it is not that they are not  interested in the game, what they are afraid of is the mudslinging. Some politicians are crude; so crude that  they are not better than motor park touts, to borrow the words of President Goodluck Jonathan.  They use intemperate language unmindful of the damage they may cause. These ill-mannered politicians believe that all is fair and foul in politics. But should it be so?

    In this age, we should be playing politics without bitterness as espoused by the late Ibrahim Waziri of the defunct Great Nigerian Peoples Party (GNPP), who despite defecting from the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) in 1979 remained friends with his former party members and used no curse words against them.

    Decent people will continue to shun politics if our politicians continue to behave the way they do. What is in politics or the contest for power that a politician will wish another dead? There is no way any same person can defend the advertorial placed by Ekiti State Governor Peter Ayodele Fasyose in The Punch and the Daily Sun last Monday, on the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Alhaji Muhaamadu Buhari.

    The advert does not show that we have grown politically as a nation. The essence of any campaign is for the contestants to show who is the best among them. It is not a forum for abuse or mudslinging; neither is it one for twisting biblical passages in order to satisfy inordinate desires. Election is not a do or die. You contest and lose to contest again.

    You do not contest to die; you contest to live and see where you missed it so as to become a better candidate in future. None should know this better than  Fayose, the harbinger of the hate advert. And what is Buhari’s offence? He is contesting the February 14 presidential election against Fayose’s political leader, President Goodluck Jonathan. Fayose wants to remain in Jonathan’s  good books and as such he is ready to do anything to satisfy his master.

    But the president should know people like Fayose for what they are – they will support you today because it pays them to be on your side and abandon you when the tide turns against you. Fayose knows that his bread will remain buttered as long as he is on the president’s side. Perhaps, he is acting with the benefit of hindsight. A president got him out of office in 2006 because he was found to be cantankerous. Fayose does not want history to repeat itself  almost nine years after. To avoid that bitter experience, he has thrown all what he has into supporting Jonathan against Buhari to protect his political future

    There is nothing bad in his support for Jonathan, but  everything  about his hate advert against Buhari is bad. His advert, which I find nauseating  to reproduce here was uncalled for. That is not how to campaign for your candidate. Fayose went too far in that advert and it calls to question the sanity of some of those we call our leaders. Is it not a shame that such a figure is a governor in Nigeria? Fayose could have found better ways of campaigning for Jonathan instead of descending so low with such a cheap advert.

    It cost money to place that advert but its message was too cheap for such a price. So, has money not been put to shame? What is the point in spending a fortune on an advert only to come up with a message that rankles? Since Monday, Fayose has been under fire for carrying his sacrifice beyond the house of worship. The good he wanted to do Goodluck Jonathan through that advert has turned to bad for him. He is the one to make a choice now – does he want bad luck – as he has brought upon himself with his advert – to remain his portion or will he mend his ways for good luck to locate him?

    Fayose went overboard in that advert; no wonder Nigerians have been cutting him to size over it. But then he who the gods want to destroy they first make mad. This is what we are seeing in this case. To the leadership of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), the advert was a killjoy. It said : ”You know, sometimes it looks as if life plays a cruel game. The Punch of today has an advert reportedly sponsored by Ayo Fayose. Now going by Facebook (FB) responses alone, the advert has attracted many negative responses…

    “From a professional standpoint, it’s not an issue of whether the advert is good or bad. It is simply unconventional, shocking, controversial, and perhaps even embarrassing, and has certainly annoyed a few people. And by the way, the reference to portions of the Bible introduces a curious twist…

    “Now I am sure that wherever he is, the president must be wondering about his Ekiti enfant terrible. These are really interesting times!” Indeed, they are. If they were not, Fayose will not be putting his name on such a despicable advert when we are talking of the Abuja Peace Accord.

    How can we  ensure a hitch free election with such hate spewed forth from the Fayose advert? It is the worst worded advert I have ever read. It was too provocative  and did not do the Abuja Peace Accord any good and  I daresay the papers should have erred on the side of caution in carrying it. The media should not be too conscious of money; yes we are in business to make money but we must be wary of the antics of politicians who do not mean well for the country.  Otherwise we will allow them to blow up the country with their hate mongering under the guise of electioneering. There is no better word to describe Fayose than that of APCON – an effant terrible. What an effant terrible!!

    Will the president and PDP call him to order? I doubt if they will  because it pays them to pretend as if they did not see this evil which their beloved son has committed. A free, fair and peaceful election as agreed to under the Abuja Accord  starts with those close to the corridor of power not doing anything  to breach that pact.

    Mbu the ‘lion’

    MANY are agitated over Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) Joseph Mbu’s deployment to the Zone 2 Police Command comprising Lagos and Ogun states. And they are rightly so. Mbu, the self-styled lion,  parades an unenviable record as a police officer. The atrocities he committed  as Rivers State Police Commissioner and AIG Zone 7 Abuja are still fresh in the people’s memory. Was he deployed to Zone 2 to intimidate the highly vociferous people in his command as we get set for next month’s elections? Time will tell. Let him have these words of wisdom at the back of his mind : ”If you are sent on a servant’s errand, you deliver it as a freeborn”.

     

  • Time to focus on economy

    The falling price of crude petroleum presents  Nigeria a golden opportunity  for our leaders to put on their thinking caps to come up with reasonable solution to what has become a recurring decimal in the economic life of our country. Even though the price of crude petroleum is not likely to remain low for too long because of several reasons chief of which is the fact that the fracking gas oil which has reduced considerably American oil imports will become uneconomic to produce if the price of crude falls bellow 40 dollars. Secondly the oil majors that are critical to the global economy and its stability will not be allowed to go down with losses totaling trillions of dollars belonging to the investing public that is invariably western capitalists. In other words, it is in the enlightened interest of the West to settle for oil price at between 70 and 80 dollars a barrel.

    In the meantime Nigeria  and such other oil producing countries  like Venezuela  constitute the Achilles heels of the previously formidable cartel of OPEC which unlike Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States can call the bluff of the west and engage in price war to drive the fracking gas and oil industry of Canada and the U.S. out of the market. With trillions of dollars in foreign reserves, Saudi Arabia and the the Gulf States can afford to overproduce at any cost or not to produce at all in order to make a point. Nigeria, Iran Venezuela and Indonesia cannot afford that strategy.

    This is really a pity in the case of Nigeria. Iran and Indonesia are at least semi-industrialized but what do we in Nigeria have to show for all these over 50 years of oil production? We have been talking about diversification  until we are blue in the face  amounting to motion without movement. It seems we may continue like this unless we are forced or compelled to do something. Some years ago an Israeli ambassador told me when he travelled from Ibadan to Kwara State he dreamed about Israel having the abundance of land he saw on his trip and that the ruinous wars his country was engaged in would not have been necessary and that with that land Israel would have been able to feed the rest of West Africa. Imagine then what the  land available all over Nigeria in the hands of a technologically competent country could do for us in our country.

    I am not excited by  the claims of our mobile telephone-distributing minister of agriculture and his claim of agricultural revolution when the whole country is awash with imported rice and other farm products of other countries! But there is no doubt that we must go back to the land. This was the resource that sustained us before hydrocarbon resources. We must support agricultural investment through farm subsidies instead of oil subsidies that are making people rich without working! This will have to be done in such a way that there will be a stampede to become young farmers. The way it is done is  through guaranteed prices for agricultural produce. We have done it here in Nigeria  before through the regime of the abandoned marketing boards which guaranteed prices for farmers even when there was a fall in agricultural produce globally. This was how Nigeria encouraged production of cocoa, Palm produce and groundnuts before the curse of oil on Nigeria which led to our people living a life of indolence and living off commissions as compradore agents of foreign multinational companies.

    Since 1999 when the PDP came into power, we have been told about the plan of power sufficiency. The current president told us that by the end of last year those of us with generators will be begging people to take them off us because by then power will not only be available but would also be cheap . This promise has been fulfilled in the breach! We are daily told of how many thousands of megawatts of electricity we need and how government is going to meet this demand only to be followed the second day on how the power situation has collapsed to 2000 megawatts or less, sometimes worse than where we were in 1999 and after billions of dollars have been spent by the same PDP government that wants to be re-elected. If we are serious about development we should ask serious questions about the urgent need for power for industrialization and reasonably comfortable life free of the environmentally damaging diesel generators that have become permanent feature of our lives whose fumes kill instantly or intstallmentally. Power is key to our survival as a civilized country and the party that can solve this problem should be embraced by Nigeria. We do not need to depend on gas at all so that we are not blackmailed and threatened as we are daily  threatened that unless we abdicate power to people for oil and gas producing states we would have no country. There is enough coal and water to give us power forever in this country. Even without oil we can access resources in the international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF to support our electric power infrastucture. Industrialization and agriculture will get us to where we want to be. We started well on this route when we had several textile mills all over Nigeria supplied by Nigerian cotton growers but we let all this go to  waste  when we got drunk on oil wealth. Any student of western industrialization knows it was from light textile industries that countries progressed to heavy industries. You can not jump a developmental stage! In all this we have to emphasize power. Indonesia a country with serious spatial difficulty  scattered over 2500 islands is joining China as an industrial hub of the world because of her ability to supply its people power which has made small scale industries and enterprises thrive. There is no magic in all this. We just have to work hard. No amount of prayers in churches and mosques will help develop our country. Our future is in our hands. And we should not expect miracles. God is not a magician! If we do the right things in this country, there will be jobs for everybody to do and it will not matter who is in or out of government or the ethnic group from which the president or governors come.

    What we have had in the hands of the World Bank Trojan horse of Okonjo-Iweala in the last 10 or so years is management of prosperity which is not the same thing as economic policy. Paying off our indebtedness to the Paris Club and London club countries and the Bretton Woods institutions does not require neuro surgery because management of an economy in a time of plenty is easy even Joseph did this in pharaonic Egypt. What is  the big deal publishing state allocations and investing a mere $1 billion in Sovereign Trust Fund  while drawing down billions of dollars in foreign exchange to pay for all kinds of wines and champagne of which we are the largest consumer outside France all in the name of free trade when we do not benefit from dividends of comparative advantage on which free trade is based? What is left of our foreign earnings is then stolen to put it mildly  under the regime of market economy and subsidies for oil imports.  This is an embarrassment of importing oil by an oil exporting country. Why has it taken us more than 15 years to fix the four oil refineries in the country?

    The point I am making is that we should have managed our economy better and allow in things that we need rather than pandering to the dictates of the World Bank regime of free trade when we have nothing to contribute to global trade except raw and crude produce.

    Finally, we have an opportunity to tell our people that the meaning of self government includes taxation. Nigerians for a long time have not been paying taxes. This  is the time to tell our people the home truth. A situation where only salary earners are the only ones paying taxes is simply untenable and unhealthy. Every adult must be made to pay taxes no matter how small. This  is the only way people will have a sense of ownership of their government.

  • How to preserve Nigeria

    Imperceptibly, slowly, but surely, Nigeria’s real need in the weeks ahead is emerging in the Nigerian political debate. Most Nigerians may tend to focus on elections, but, really, the greater concern of Nigerians is the peaceful survival of Nigeria – while the greatest fear is that this coming election may generate the occasion for bringing Nigeria’s ills to a cataclysmic outcome. We Nigerians have a central duty to ourselves, to the Black race, to Africa, and to the world – and that duty is to make some meaning out of Nigeria.

    That duty is very huge, though many of us do not quite understand or appreciate it. I was already a fairly well-informed youth in the 1950s, when Africa and the wider world first began to recognize the importance of Nigeria to Africa and the world. My experiences in those magical times remain deeply planted in my consciousness. We Nigerians are not merely one-fourth of the Black people of Africa, the largest country in population in Africa, and the fourth largest country in population in the world. We are also one the most educated populations in Africa. And we are unusually blessed with natural resources – including some of the richest crude oil and gas deposits on earth. Africa and the world see us a potential world power – the Blackman’s only world power since ancient Egypt.

    At near 80, I still get tears welling up in my eyes when I remember some of my experiences concerning Africa’s expectations about Nigeria.  In January 1960, I was leading a Nigerian students’ delegation to a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The noise of Nigeria’s coming independence was everywhere. After a dinner one evening, the Ethiopian Minister of Education (Mr. Endalkachiu Makonnen) placed his hand on my shoulder, looked seriously into my eyes, and said, “My young Nigerian brother, congratulations for your country’s coming independence. I hope that as you Nigerians prepare for your independence, you are also thinking seriously about your country’s duty to our continent. A lot in our Africa is going to depend on your Nigeria soon”. I shed tears in bed that night – tears of joy for my country, tears of pride in my country.

    Sadly, as soon as we achieved independence, we began to mess up our country. Even so, Africa continued to expect much from us. In early 1980, a group of us Nigerian Senators paid an official visit to Sierra Leone. While bidding us goodbye in his office, the Prime Minister, Mr. Siaka Stevens, went into  touching reminiscences, at the end of which he said,” I hope that you Nigerian leaders will always remember that you are not building Nigeria for Nigerians alone but for the whole of Africa”.

    Such memories will stay with me till my last breath. It has been my destiny to see my country glowing in the horizon, and then declining relentlessly in a self-made darkness – until she is now about to plunge into an abyss. In fact, as I listen in horror to prominent Nigerians exchanging threats of violence, mass murders and mindless destruction, all I can do is to pray two prayers – one, that if it is Nigeria’s destiny to break up, she should break up in peace; and second that the leaders of its successor countries would learn from the sad story of Nigeria and lead their new countries to prosperity.

    For these reasons, I cannot visualize the coming presidential election in simplistic terms or merely ad-personem. I am daily bombarded by excitable folks who proclaim Buhari as the promised saviour of Nigeria, the hero who will restore a true federation, kill corruption and revive Nigeria’s chance to survive and prosper. On the other hand, I receive mails from other patriots who write sentences like this: “Let‘s get the Caliphate and its candidate Buhari defeated and we gain a breather to pursue the campaign for a True Federalism Constitution that will liberate all our peoples”.

    These expressions touch my heart, but I know that they make matters look too simple. On the face of it, Jonathan’s credentials are very persuasive. He comes from among minority South-south nationalities who, since independence, have led the fight against the growing excesses of federal power and the aggressive claims and insensitivities of federal rulers. Bright and brave youths who were Jonathan’s kinsmen have sacrificed their lives in the fight. Therefore, when Jonathan rose to the presidency, most Nigerians who desired a true federation and a stable political life for Nigeria rejoiced – and many brought pressure on him to do what his background so abundantly promised.

    But Jonathan didn’t respond. Sadly, it became gradually apparent that he was very much in love with the excesses of federal power and money. And all that time, he was hoping to seek re-election. Even when he was finally prevailed upon to summon a National Conference, he chose not to give it any clear direction. So, if Jonathan would not do the great service that he could have done for Nigeria while he was aspiring for re-election, is he likely to do it during a second term when he would no longer need any votes? I know that some highly respected citizens from the Southern states belong to a Southern Solidarity Movement – and that, in fact, the group held a meeting this past Tuesday. But, southern solidarity for what? Just to get Jonathan re-elected? On a blank cheque? Is that how leading citizens should build their country? Nigeria deserves that these eminent citizens should get Jonathan to commit clearly to an agenda which spells out a True Federation and a stable country – as the main pillar of his campaign.

    Yes, Buhari will fight corruption. There is no doubt about that. Hatred of corruption is apparently his God-given gift. How much he will succeed in suppressing corruption, and for how long in our country’s future, are things we cannot tell. The bigger and more beneficial duty would be to lead our country into a true federation. A true federation will certainly diminish public corruption – apart from giving us a stable country.

    In terms of restructuring the Nigerian federation, however, Buhari needs to be told that a lot of Nigerians have doubts and fears about him. After independence, it was his kinsmen that wanted an all-controlling federal government. And it is they who, from their position of controllers of federal power, have strategized doggedly for it – in the belief that it would perpetuate their control over Nigeria. Even now, they are still mostly bent on it– as was recently evidenced in the National Conference.

    But – but, there may be a plus for Buhari even in this. He is an intrepid and stubborn fighter for causes that he believes in. He can, as his fight against corruption shows, rebel against the mainstream of his people’s leadership. If he does become convinced about the value of a rational federation, he will fight for it. It is the duty of his eminent supporters, therefore, to persuade him and to get him to make it the central piece of his election campaign from now on. I wish them success – and I wish Nigeria luck.

    In short, while struggling to get our candidate elected, let’s struggle to save our country. We can do it.

  • Some truth you might love to hate

    Some say Muhammadu Buhari is a sentiment; who isn’t? Perhaps Goodluck Jonathan, they would say. Let’s not be trivial and given to hogwash, President Goodluck Jonathan is an unjustifiable sentiment gone wrong.

    Shall we write-off Buhari, just because…stuck in the intricate webs of our internalised and yet collectivised perversions, we are desperate to make a Hobson’s choice? Shall we continue to compromise and seek the consolation of wonderfully wrought intellectualisations just because it is socio-politically correct to do so?

    If not Buhari, who? Goodluck Jonathan? Show me the candidate without a splodge to his name. Of all the charlatans we launder, show us the self-acclaimed Messiah without some murder, pillage or unsubstantiated and yet uncontested allegation of fraud or corruption to his name, save Buhari.

    And so may I in response to those who consider President Jonathan as Nigeria’s only hope, aver in Rand-speak that there can be no compromise between a property owner and an intruder; offering the intruder a single teaspoon of one’s silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender – the recognition of his right to one’s property.

    Simply put, there can be no compromise, however exquisitely couched, between us and the looters we tolerate; offering them a jolly ride to our corridors of power in the spirit of socio-political expediency would not be a compromise but a total and cowardly surrender – the recognition of their right of ownership and monopoly over what is essentially ours.

    Whether we like it or not, there can be no concession or wanton sophistry acceptable on basic principles and fundamental issues. There can be no compromise between truth and falsehood, reason and irrationality. Imagine a compromise between food and poison, isn’t it death that would win?

    Nothing corrupts, nothing disintegrates a culture or a man’s character as the principle of moral agnosticism; that is, the idea that one must be morally tolerant of anything and everything and that ingenuity consists in never distinguishing good from evil and taking sides. It is obvious who profits and loses by such a precept, isn’t it?

    Even as so many of us indulge in the propagation of political claptrap in the interests of Goodluck Jonathan, it wouldn’t hurt to heed the subtle warnings of our individualised and wholly subjective realities. It couldn’t hurt to heed the caveat of objective reality.

    Given that we put ourselves on trial every time we think a thought and speak it, it is only fair that we seek to institute, however difficult it seems, a measure of checkmating every propaganda and irrationality we so desperately project. It is only in our peculiar culture of amoral cynicism, subjectivism and hooliganism that we arrogate to ourselves the freedom to utter any sort of irrational judgement and expect to suffer no consequences like pitiful presidential court jesters, Femi Fani-Kayode, Doyin Okupe and company persistently do to our chagrin.

    In as much as we seek to impeach every other candidate but our preferred candidate on the basis of their antecedents in governance and outside it; in as much as we have chosen to play the biased judge and jury with such impunity that teaches the just to recant, so should we expect to be judged and impeached by every judgement we pronounce.

    You see, the things we condemn or extol actually exists in the objective reality that is open to the independent appraisal of others. The values we project become the essence of our socio-politics and being. Every utterance we make, as our mildest insinuations, presents the clarity or absurdity of our individual perceptions as well as the rationality and otherwise of every politic we choose to celebrate or repudiate.

    If we did not indulge in such abject perversions and pitiable evasions as the argument that some contemptible liar “means well” – that a mooching bum “can’t help it” – that an unrepentant murderer “needs understanding” or that a desperate, power-thirsty politician is driven by concern “for the public good,” the history of our past few decades would have been different. And even today would offer ceaseless practicalities to compose the best odes by.

    In the light of ceaseless hardships and evils foisted upon us by President Goodluck Jonathan and company,every man who struggles not to acknowledge that his administration is pernicious to Nigeria’s wellbeing will find it very much dangerous to identify goodness in whatever form. To such character, a person of virtue presents a threat capable of exposing and toppling all his perversions and evasions.

    Can we now identify and root for the candidate capable of resolving the conflicting characteristics of our tribal mentality? Can we identify the candidate who can 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?

    Can we identify the candidate who can evaluate and project our given concretes by an abstract principle while exacting the most probable if not practicable outcomes in the throes of ruthlessly objective and rational processes of thought vis-à-vis his enfant terrible gut-feelings or hunches?

    Do we know the candidate capable of instituting such blueprint that would guarantee the provision and sustenance of good roads and electricity, standard and affordable health care, security, stable economy and quality education among others?

    I guess we know the candidate undeserving of our mandate right now; that candidate is Goodluck Jonathan. Let Fani-Kayode and his fellow harpies know that the cult of sophistry they project would never succeed by their sneaky and open rebellion against reason. Let them know that their negation of reason would never amount to some sort of superior reasoning nor would their most brutal rebellion stifle morality or metamorphose into a superior kind of virtue.

    The cult of sophistry they perpetuate approximates nothing but the ugliness of muted confessions and a plea for blanket forgiveness for Goodluck Jonathan – despite Boko Haram, the missing Chibok girls, declining economies, devalued naira, dying industries, unemployment, and thousands of innocent deaths by Boko Haram’s bomb blasts to mention a few.

    The depth or shallowness of each candidate and his political form is further accentuated in the following joke currently trending in Nigeria’s social media:

    1. APC: We will ensure power stability.

    1. PDP: Where is Mrs Buhari?

    2. APC: We are going to fight corruption

    2. PDP: APC tried to hack INEC computers

    3. APC: We are going to fight terrorism

    3. PDP: Some APC elder statesmen are garage touts

    4. APC: We will invest in agriculture

    4. PDP: S/South will collapse the economy if Jonathan loses

    5. APC: We are going to upgrade standard of education

    5. PDP: I will expose failures of our ex heads of state

    6. APC: We will curb degradation of environmental pollution

    6. PDP: Buhari doesn’t know his phone number.

    7. APC: Nigeria’s wealth must be enjoyed by all of us

    7. PDP: Buhari put Umaru Dikko inside a crate

    8. APC: We will encourage rural development

    8. PDP: Buhari cannot use a computer.

    Camp Jonathan no doubt epitomises philosophical default, the intellectual bankruptcy that teaches promising hearts to exist in a vacuum of sort, like a paradise of weaklings and the perverted in thought. Pity this truth will be ignored by some, come February 14.

  • Obasanjo’s book and judicial censorship

    Let me say right away that former President Obasanjo is not my favorite politician. I also probably do not count as one of his closest friends even though I had defended him when it was crucial such as when Abacha sentenced him to death and I was ambassador of Nigeria to Germany. I  mobilized the European Union by personally going to Hamburg to brief former chancellor Helmut Schmidt  of the situation of his friend and the latter got in touch with his successor Helmut Kholl who was then on state visit to South Africa asking him to return home because Germany at that material time headed the  E.U rotational presidency. I believe I am one of those who probably saved Obasanjo’s life. Obasanjo in his self-righteousness does not believe he owes any mortal being a debt of gratitude for any favour. It is not in his character! After his release he publicly said in Toronto Canada that all Nigerians, with the exception of the dead and those in detention supported Abacha. I was in the audience and I was pained to no end.

    My late brother Kayode was his physician and he was the last patient he saw before his demise. Obasanjo was under house arrest ordered by Abacha and my brother flew from Geneva to Lagos to see him and also in solidarity with him in his hours of travail. The soldiers will not let him see his patient and one of the soldiers threatened to shoot him. My brother dramatically brought out his stethoscope and asked the soldier to bring out his hand because he wanted to check his blood pressure. Since most human beings including soldiers are afraid of dying, the soldier involved complied and he was subsequently tested and pronounced hypertensive. My brother told him he was almost a dead man but that if he would buy amlodipine tablets and combine it with cholesterol reducing tablets of simvastatin he would get his hypertension under control. The poor soldier went and called his captain who was also tested and given the same prescription. At this point the captain told the physician he could come in at any time he wanted. This was how Prof Kayode Osuntokun got to his quarry! On Obasanjo’s own testimony, he told me he noticed Kayode did not look well. My brother died when Obasanjo was in jail in Yola. I visited him when Abdulsalaami  Abubakar pardoned and released him. He told me he heard I was in detention too. I confirmed in the affirmative. I had reviewed a view BEYOND FREEDOM written by some world leaders dedicated to Obasanjo’s freedom in The Tribune and granted an interview to a young man named Akande who turned out to be a spook of the Abacha regime in which I was critical of the regime. When this was combined with my spirited effort to save Obasanjo while I was ambassador, my cup seemed to be full and this led to my being in military detention on Child Street in Apapa, Lagos for months. I will be one of the first to testify that Obasanjo’s freedom was an act of divine mercy through the instrumentality of man. When Obasanjo had just left prison I could not recognize him. He was reduced to half his normal size. He was totally emaciated and only a close look revealed the man who was in the shrunken body. If he became hardened after his experience, he was justified. Obasanjo told me he was going to visit Professor Bopo Osuntokun, Kayode’s widow. He never did and never until today asked for her and her children!

    I write this for public records and to confirm Obasanjo s reputation of seeing himself above human and perhaps what he regards as sentimental gratitude and acknowledgement of other people’s contribution to his life.  I shared my anger with a family friend close to Kayode and myself who is also close to Obasanjo and from the North. What he said is that most great men use people and move on. Of course I did not agree with him.

    Having said this, I agree that Obasanjo remains a great Nigerian leader which is not the same as a great Nigerian. Certainly, of those who have held office as head of state of Nigeria, he remains head and shoulders above all of them with the possible exception of Muhammad Buhari. I also admire him because he keeps records. He may misuse or misinterpret his records, but he keeps records and has his eyes on history. All the lazy people who criticize him should shut up or write their own accounts!

    Most of Obasanjo’s writings are autobiographical and they are written from his personal perspective. This is why historians would not take an autobiographical account without cross checking it with other accounts before arriving at objectivity. It is almost impossible for one to write about himself in a negative way, so all those who are expecting Obasanjo’s to be totally objective, miss the point and even when our great Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, writes about his experiences in life, we can only take it as his own account and not the gospel truth.

    No court of law should impose censorship on the reading public. This is a fundamental and perhaps, almost inalienable right that no judicial officer paid by the public should peremptorily take away from us especially when such a right is guaranteed by our constitution. There are also provisions for whoever is wounded by the exercise of free speech to go to court and seek redress. No politically influenced and induced injunction is acceptable and I am surprised that our legal activists have not gone to court to enforce our rights which are no doubt justiciable. Since the book is going to be released abroad the futility of the Nigerian court becomes apparent.

    I disagree with the rather intemperate language of Professor Wole Soyinka in criticizing Obasanjo for allegedly mentioning him in the new book My Watch. I mean what entitles Wole Soyinka to take apart many people in the country with license why nobody can criticize him? He should be ready to take as much as he gives! If all Obasanjo allegedly said was that he did not respect his political  judgement and that he only respects his taste of wines and his ability to shoot partridges, how can such jovial comments lead to the savage criticisms of  Obasanjo by Wole Soyinka? I like our Nobel laureate but in this particular case he should have respected Obasanjo if not for himself but as a former Head of State of Nigeria. Because of the way Soyinka dressed down Obasanjo, others not deserving have been insulting the former Head of state. This is a case of being knocked down by an elephant and rats now start running over one. No one should get me wrong. We can criticize without being offensive. This is the point I am making.

    Obasanjo or his publishers should challenge the ban on the book and let’s see if anybody has the right to prevent us from reading what a former Head of state that is still being maintained by the public exchequer has written about his service to the nation. This is an issue of public interest.