The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Celebration of corruption

    Last Sunday, Dr Doyin Okupe once again did what he does best-insulting Nigerians and assaulting their sensibilities. After months of jamborees around a nation at war by TAN, a body suspected to be an assemblage of government contractors, to celebrate President Jonathan as the best leader our nation has ever produced, the government decided to set aside its temporary setback on the battle front, roll out the drums to celebrate some of its recent victories in its war against corruption. According to Okupe, these success are to be measured in terms of redistribution of billions of naira through government improvement on the “the old corrupt system of government direct procurement and distribution of fertilizer” and  the “nation’s movement from its 144th position on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index last year to 136th position this year”.

    The problem however is that many Nigerians seem to share the views of Adewale Maja-Pearce who in a piece titled. “The Nigerian Status Quo” written for the New York Times on November 16, that“The current Nigerian government is widely seen as the most corrupt since independence from Britain in 1960”. Everything President Jonathan has done in the last six years seems to reinforce this view. In fact for many, who have not only watched helplessly as few greedy politicians and their fronts confiscate our national patrimony, but also witnessed the imposition of economic policies which have failed in the West where there are rules on a people that operate without rules; or where the rules are violated by government where they exist, government is an accomplice.

    Unfortunately for Okupe, this feeling cuts across party lines. Aminu Tambuwal, a PDP member until few weeks ago, is for instance on record as saying that  President  Jonathan’s “body language” did not indicate that  he had the political will  to stem  corruption in the country. He had then decried Jonathan’s penchant for setting up committees to probe corruption allegations instead of allowing the statutory bodies set up by law such as the EFCC, the ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices and other-related Offences Commission) and the Code of Conduct Bureau to do their job. He had then cited the oil subsidy and Securities and Exchange Commission scandals, the Pension scam as well as the ‘Oduaghate’, to buttress his allegation of Jonathan’s perceived paying of lip-service to the war against graft. Of course, sycophants surrounding the president trivialized the serious issue by asking “Is he (Tambuwwal) now a sorcerer that he now goes about reading people’s body language?”

    David Mark, the Senate President betrayed his frustration in the celebrated pension scam case. Mark had asked the President who was suspected to be shielding Maina to ‘choose between maina and the Senate’. And on John Yakubu who embezzled N27.2billion and got reprieve after paying a fine of N750, 000, David Mark had observed: “for any living human being to have stolen the money of those who have laboured for this country, I think it is only God who can decide their fate”.

    And not too long ago, deeply troubled Senator Victor Ndoma Egba, the senate majority leader told his subdued colleagues on the floor of the Upper House, that he was sure none of them could have imagined the level of decadence in our society. He then gave a personal testimony. According to him, his old father, a retired justice of the appeal court had authorized one of his sons to sign for his pension. The young man was made to sign for the over N7 million boldly written against his father’s name but was paid N5 million. The N2 million which he described as ‘blood money’ was forcefully taken as bribe by government officials. “If that could happen to a retired justice of Nigerian Court of Appeal whose son by the grace of God, is the majority leader of the Nigerian senate, the plight of lesser beings could be better imagined”, he had moaned

    Okupe perhaps also thinks Nigerians cannot appreciate the reason their leader is often treated with disdain by Western leaders and African countries that once looked up to us for direction has been on account of his inability to tackle corruption. Except those who live by lying to the president, Nigerians know President Jonathan has been captured by fuel subsidy fraudsters, armoured car scammers, and beneficiaries of government import waivers who import the labour of other societies to the detriment of our jobless youths. President Jonathan made his choice. And this he has reinforced by his policies in the last six years.

    First let us start with the pension scam. All attempts to bring sanity to the pension system have been sabotaged by the presidency. For instance the Senate Joint Committee on Public Service and Establishment and State and Local Government Administration spent four months to investigate the alleged mismanagement of N469bn pension funds.  On June 20, 2012, it submitted a report establishing the diversion of N273.9billion between 2005 and 2011. It also discovered in December 2012 another N195bn fresh pension fraud.

    Senator Aloysius Etok, the chairman of the pension probe panel also discovered that Abdulrasheed Maina spent N1billion screening 29 pensioners, another N8 million on a weekly basis on 38 security officers guarding him and was also found to have forged his transfer letter from Borno State. The man refused to honour six different invitations from the Senate which prompted the senate president to issue a warrant of arrest. While moving around with police escort, accompanying the president to welcome foreign dignitaries, Deputy Police Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba said – “We have not seen Maina. He is still a wanted man; anyone with information about him should please contact us”. Just as princess Oduah was part of the president’s delegation to Jerusalem shortly after ‘Oduahgate’ scandal; Senators Olubunmi Adetunmbi and Enyinnaya Abaribe have claimed Maina was in the entourage of the president trips to some foreign countries. For Jonathan, friendship takes precedence over the nation.

    But friends turn foes when he is challenged. That was the fate of the former CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi following his letter to the President alleging that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation had failed to remit $49.8bn, to the Federation Account. The figure was later scaled down to $20bn. The Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala later admitted that at least $10 billion remains unaccounted for, and explained that President Goodluck Jonathan has ordered a forensic investigation into the missing money. The race for 2015 has eclipsed all that.  Sanusi the harbinger of tales considered unpalatable by government has been shoved out of office. In NNPC, it is business as usual.

    And to further confirm that another name for the Jonathan presidency is corruption, we can take another look at the fuel subsidy scandal. The actual budget expenditure on subsidy for both petrol (PMS) and House Hold Kerosene, in 2008 was only N346.7b .The major actors were four companies along with NNPC. The four became 140 by 2011 under Jonathan. As against N245 billion Appropriated  in 2011, N2, 657.087 trillion was paid with much of the amount  not for consumed PMS but shared by government officials and PDP stalwarts including those who did not import a pint of fuel. Okupe told us we should praise the president who in an election year allowed the sons of his party’s current and immediate past chairmen taken to court for their alleged involvement in the fuel subsidy scam.

    That they have not been successfully prosecuted, the president claims were because ‘the wheel of justice grinds slowly in our environment’. But the same wheels were energized to secure justice for Boni Haruna in four days after seven years grilling by EFCC to pave the way for his ministerial appointment. In the case of Ayo Fayose, after 52 court appearances and months of detention by EFFCC, between 2006 and 2014, the same wheels were disabled to ensure he became governor without first ascertaining his eligibility as an impeached former governor.

  • In defence of freedom and democracy

    In defence of freedom and democracy

    In a recent article by me in this column, I echoed the thoughts and assertions of liberal philosophers that it is very difficult for any society or nation to achieve freedom for its people, and that, once achieved, it is even more difficult to defend and sustain such freedom. This was what led one philosopher to warn that ‘vigilance is the eternal price of freedom’.

       This has been the experience of our country, Nigeria, and its people, since independence from colonial rule was achieved in 1960. Three recent events illustrate how easy it is for our rulers to trample on our collective freedom, and how easy it is for them to get away with it. The first was the shameful manner in which a combination of the police and agents of the security forces  invaded the premises of the National Assembly and prevented members from holding a scheduled meeting specifically called to consider President Goodluck Jonathan’s request for an extension of the existing emergency rule in the Northeastern part of Nigeria where the insurgents, Boko Haram, have been on the rampage with heavy civilian casualties, including the over 200 Chibok girls that have not yet been recovered from their abduction. The second assault on our fledgling democracy was the invasion by the security agencies of the private office of the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Lagos, and the seizure by them of valuable documents of the party, including vital papers on the party’s register of members, and relevant information needed by the party in respect of the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) distribution. The third disturbing event was the unlawful manner in which Ayo Fayose, the newly elected Governor of Ekiti State, removed the Speaker of the House and got three of his nominees as commissioners approved by a House which was not legally constituted as required by the rules establishing the House.

      In all three cases, the police and security agents offered very lame and disturbing excuses for these disgraceful and deplorable assaults on our collective freedom. In the case of the police invasion of  the National Assembly, during which some members, fearing a possible impeachment of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, scaled the perimeter fence of the National Assembly, the Inspector- General of Police, Mr. Sulaiman Abba, claimed falsely that he ordered the lock out of members of the National Assembly because of the intelligence reports he received that some thugs were about to  invade the National Assembly and prevent members from meeting.

      Obviously, this claim is spurious, and fabricated, to justify a brazen and reprehensible police invasion of the National Assembly. For, if it was true that the police chief had received such an intelligence report, he should have informed the principal officers of the National Assembly, Senator David Mark, and Tambuwal, and sought their approval to shut the National Assembly. There is no evidence that the police chief passed such security information to these two. The decision to lock out members from the House was plainly political and intended to humiliate and embarrass Tambuwal for defecting from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party, to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party. Subsequent events and political manoeuvres, including the attempt by the PDP members of the House to impeach Tambuwal reveal the real intentions of the police chief and the security agencies in locking out members of the House. It was to stop the House from meeting to perform its legitimate and lawful duties.

      In the second case, that of the break in by officials of the Department of State Security (DSS) into the APC office in Lagos, it was claimed by these agents that they broke in because they had received intelligence reports that the APC office was being used as the site for the cloning of the Permanent Voter Cards for next year’s general elections. Again another brazen lie used to justify an unlawful and reprehensible act. If it were not so, the DSS would, by now, be showing the public evidence of such cloning of voter cards. It has not yet done so, and has irresponsibly ignored a court ruling that the invasion was illegal, and that all documents taken away by the security agents in this disgraceful abuse of power, should be returned to the office of the APC. This incident is reminiscent of the Watergate break in, which drove President Richard Nixon from office in the United States. It is unthinkable in any democratic and civilised country.

      In the third case, that of Governor Fayose’s manipulation of the Ekiti House of Assembly, to remove the Speaker and secure the approval of the rump of the House for his nominees as commissioners, again this is no less than a flagrant breach of the democratic process, in which the independence of the legislature is constitutionally guaranteed against any form of abuse by the executive branch of government.

      In all three cases being considered here, the President has not uttered a word in condemnation of these brazen assaults on our fledgling democracy. But his silence is deafening, as it represents an explicit approval by him of the abuse of power and office by the police and the security agencies. In other civilised climes, those responsible for these breaches of the rule of law would have been dismissed immediately and handed over for prosecution. None of these has yet happened. Instead, they are being tacitly defended to the extent that the police chief, an unelected public official, could tell members of the House of Representatives that he no longer recognised Tambuwal as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, even though the House has not yet removed or replaced him.

     This is a dreadful and dangerous road our country has travelled before with grave consequences. In 1962, during the constitutional crisis in the old Western Region, the Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, in an evidently partisan and unconstitutional manner, ordered the police to invade the Western Region House of Assembly, in which there was a fracas, and ordered the closure of the Assembly. Subsequently, he declared a state of emergency in the region, and handed it over to a sole administrator. It was a script written and acted upon to destroy the Action Group (AG) government of the region. This wanton assault on democracy in the West eventually led to the first military intervention of January 15, 1966, in Nigeria, an event that eventually led to our bloody three-year civil war in which millions of our people died. We have not yet fully recovered from the consequences of that single action by Prime Minister Balewa of taking over the government of the Western Region in circumstances that were plainly absurd and unconstitutional.

      Now, one would have thought that the entire country would unite in condemning and resisting these serial assaults on our democracy and freedom. But that is not the case. Instead, it is being viewed in partisan terms as a matter solely for the opposition party. As usual, tribal considerations have blinded some of our people to the possible tragic consequences of this onslaught on our freedom. But freedom and democracy cannot be divided, or denied to those who, today, may be in opposition. Freedom denied an individual, is freedom denied to all. Let me end this column by recalling what Lord Palmerston, a 19th century British liberal Prime Minister once said about the defence of freedom;

    ‘There is a passion in the human heart stronger than the desire to be free from injustice and wrong, and this is the desire to inflict injustice and wrong upon others. Men resent more keenly an attempt to prevent them from oppressing other people than they do the oppression from which they themselves( once) suffered”.

  • Redeemer’s University at Ede -2

    The significance of the presence of Redeemer’s university in Ede is huge. This is unquantifiable on a spiritual level for both the town and the state as well as for Nigeria. Everybody needs prayers especially now when we are faced with challenges of existential nature. Ede is predominantly a Muslim city but it has a forward-looking Oba, the Timi, Alhaji Muniru Adesola Lawal who in spite of being a fervent and practicing Muslim, is totally supportive of the university in terms of making land available. This he has sometimes done in spite of opposition of some of his subjects who do not have a global perspective of the material spin-off that the university would bring to the Ede community. We have sometimes put the monarch in the invidious position of having to defend a Christian institution against the opposition of conservative Muslim subjects. Within a short time to come, this monarch’s vision would soon become manifest to his subjects and would be praised for taking his people to the right path. Ede is an historic city at the frontier of the old Oyo Empire. His kings were battle axes for the Oyo Alaafin and the Sango worship was the imperial religion that was practised in Ede. It still has adherents but not as many as before the coming of Islam and Christianity. Towards the end of the colonial era in Nigeria, Ede was made famous by its Timi, Oba Laoye, the father of the present deputy governor. Timi Laoye was proficient as a drummer and went all over the world particularly to Great Britain as a cultural ambassador of Nigeria, exposing to the western world, the drumming ingenuity of the Yoruba talking drum. He shared the glory of mastering the talking drum with Ibadan’s Chief Ayorinde, the father of the current Baale of Ekotedo, Chief Taiye Ayorinde. Timi Laoye was a forward-looking Oba and he laid the foundation for his forward-looking successors and he ensured that all his children were well immersed in western education.

    Even though Osun State as a whole is probably 60 to 70% Muslim, Yoruba people for centuries have managed to reconcile the fact that religion is a personal affair and everybody would be individually answerable to the Almighty. There would be no collective judgement on the last day. This has helped Muslims and Christians to co-exist peacefully in Yoruba land. In my ancestral family, the graves of Christians and Muslims are side by side. On a material level, Osun State would benefit to the tune of millions of naira from the tax that we would accrue to it from the workers of the university. The institution would not only be an academic institution at the tertiary level, it would have schools from kindergarten through primary, secondary to university level. So if you permit my immodesty, Redeemer’s University is coming to Ede on a civilising mission. Because of this we hope, pray and expect to benefit from Osun state’s infrastructural budget especially in helping us open our vast campus for development. It would also be necessary for the state government to build a police post somewhere near the university preferably at the gate so as to keep miscreants and hoodlums from disturbing the peace of the university community. The university is in its 10th year of existence and during this period it has attracted attention from local and international bodies. It is today a centre of excellence in West Africa for Genomics research and some of our staff were at the forefront for testing people for the Ebola virus because we have a strong foundation in microbiology. Thanks to Professor Oyewale Tomori, our founding Vice-Chancellor who is presently President of Nigeria Academic of Sciences. His able successor, Professor Debo Adeyewa has sacrificed his personal comfort by moving the university screamingly into its permanent campus as well as by encouraging research and excellence among staff and students and he would go any length to see that this is the central focus of the university without losing touch with our foundational credo of making God the centre of the university’s activities. Graduates of our university are globally recognised and when they go abroad, their certificates confer respect on them and they complete their master’s programme within a year and without having to do a make-up year as is the case with the graduates of public universities in Nigeria. The future of this university is great. All that it would require is support from its proprietor and commitment on the sides of staff and students and encouragement from the society and state in which the university is located.

    The plan of the university is that it would probably not exceed 10,000 students when it is at optimal level of development. The plan also is that the university would be a comprehensive university, having all the traditional colleges of medicine, engineering, dentistry, pharmacy, and law in a programmed development. It has three colleges right now- natural sciences, humanities and social and management sciences which would be split into two colleges of social sciences and management sciences. It also has a budding graduate school and because there is no trade unionism on campus, there is predictability in the number of years students spend and whatever school fees students pay which is not huge, it is money well-spent considering the quality of education being provided by able hands of young and experienced professors some of who have retired from public universities but who are not yet time expired. Even the 10,000 planned student body would eventually have to be increased and I can see the university in future, taking more students than 10,000 and probably increasing to 20,000. Just like the most famous universities in the world such as the University of Al-Quarawiyyin in Morocco, Al-Azar in Egypt and European universities like Oxford and Cambridge and their American counterparts like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia all started as religious institutions and have grown into academic trees that they are today. Redeemer’s University in the future should also become a global centre of learning with its doors open to all and sundry from all over the world. This is my prophecy.

  • Fayose: Yoruba’s new PDP leader in action

    I sympathise with Ayo Fayose for his current travails. It is as if it is now a crime to be resourceful enough to defeat two sitting governors at different periods. He has on account of trials by his political detractors since his second coming six weeks ago become the face of all that is wrong with us as a nation and with our fledgling democracy.  The truth however is that the Fayose phenomenon is only symptomatic of a nation ‘of anything is possible’, one that thrives in aberration of putting  square pegs in round holes, hoping the nation will wobble on.  Didn’t we not too  long ago have an ill-equipped Aguiyi-Ironsi who thought all that was required to manage society was military training and tactics, an ill-equipped Obasanjo, who thought he could play god because fortune had smiled on him, and an  incompetent Shagari who only wanted to be a senator but found himself imposed on Nigeria. He smoked while Akinloye and his NPN wrecked the economy. There was also the cunning Babangida who took the nation for a ride for eight years of ‘transition without end’; an impostor called Abacha whose only agenda was to mindlessly loot the treasury. We have similarly had a terminally ill Yar’Adua and a Jonathan who by all accounts is a good man but lacks the competence and political will to manage a multi-ethnic society which is today torn between Christians and Muslims, north and south, Fulani versus Middle Belt and Ijaws versus Hausa/Fulani – their traditional allies.

    Fayose, today’s aberration is brash, garrulous, and confident. He is well grounded in the art of street fighting as espoused by his mentor the late Adedibu, PDP garrison commander of Ibadan politics who rose through the rank as an Action Group thug in the first republic to become the leader of Ibadan thugs and road workers union. He it was that told us that to be a governor, you must be ready to remove your dress and fight it out on the street and have no inhibition about falsely swearing publicly with the Holy Koran. Fayose has been an outstanding student. But for those like Obasanjo who have continued to prolong our nightmare through playing god, Fayose would have been a celebrated success if he had been restricted to his area of core competence – protecting the king on the throne. The Yoruba with its rich culture have long warned of the consequences of usurping the throne by those not groomed to ascend thrones. Accordingly they say, “Ti a ba fi eru j’oba, ilu a tuka.” The governor  by all accounts is not a slave; this is just the Yoruba way of saying those who were not groomed to be kings but usurp the throne, will mismanage the fortune of the people while the community will be in disarray. We witnessed the consequences of such an aberration during the reign of Abacha, when NADECO members fled the country. We saw a bit of it during Fayose’s first coming as governor 2003 -2006 when Ekiti elite fled from the state while revered traditional rules like the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti who had nowhere to run to was rudely challenged by Fayose to remove his crown and sceptre and come to the political arena for contest of popularity.

    Indeed the view of George Akosile, the state chairman of defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) shortly before Fayose’s impeachment in 2006 was that “Fayose is not a proper person to rule Ekiti State. He has no certificate. He is an area boy…” This may sound harsh and uncharitable, but Akosile was vindicated by Fayose’s subsequent impeachment by 23 of the 26-member state House of Assembly in October 2006 for the mismanagement of N12 billion local government joint contribution fund and the alleged theft of N1.3 billion through the derailed integrated poultry project among 26 charges brought by EFCC to support his impeachment.

    Most people had thought that eight years in the political wilderness,  51 court appearances and months of detention over the yet-to-be resolved 26 charges EFCC  brought against Fayose would have sobered him but a leopard does not change its skin. This time around, he did not even wait for his inauguration before resorting to self-help. He simply led a band of thugs and okada riders into a court premises, beat up the judge handling the case about his eligibility to contest an election, filed long before the election. They tore the judge’s gown along with some prepared judgments.

    With inauguration, he started with the mundane. The government house commissioned on the eve of his inauguration, he claimed, was too big and too tastefully furnished for a people’s governor. He then directed okada riders and thugs to go and have a taste and feel of the place because government house belongs to them. Days later, his political detractors claimed he spent another N200 million to carry out further repair on the same house. At the state secretariat, a new entrance was to be constructed to keep ‘evil servants’ at a distance while the governor moves to his office every morning. There had been an earlier directive that civil servants who got promoted in the last one year were to revert back to their old positions. Due to no fault of theirs, they would also have to refund the allowances already earned because government is broke. Along the line, the people’s governor appointed a special adviser on stomach infrastructure. Government also issued a public notice inviting his supporters to a rendezvous at drinking joints for carousing on Fridays at government expense.

    Then from the mundane, the government moved to the bizarre. Never equipped to manage conflicts through negotiation and compromise with the other arms of government, he forced 19 of the 26 members of the state House of Assembly out of town, ferried the seven members of PDP in a government bus guided by over 300 heavily armed policemen to the assembly chambers where the seven hilariously pronounced the speaker and deputy impeached in their absence and accorded one of their seven members the title speaker. Minutes later, the governor, dressed like one of his supporters was addressing local and international press. He told bemused nation that he has recognized the new speaker and was prepared to work with him.

    With Ekiti now fully secured, Fayose who won an election without an agenda has moved on to the national stage. Last week he ferried PDP members and some leading Ekiti Obas to Obafemi Awolowo University, to sell Jonathan who is seeking re-election in 2015 to the marginalised Yoruba who the Jonathan administration has largely ignored for three years. This in itself was an arduous task. But Fayose instead of selling Jonathan embarked on petty personal wars by attacking Obasanjo’s person.

    Fayose’s answer to Obasanjo’s warning that “increasing corruption under Jonathan had damaged the economy, with possible consequences of having to borrow to pay salaries and allowances because of dwindling revenue allocation to states and local governments” was to call attention of the public to donations to Obasanjo library and an alleged sharing of N50 million to each senator and House of Representatives member during Obasanjo’s third term fiasco.

    Fayose’s answer to Obasanjo’s warning that “Nigeria cannot continue to indulge in disdain for truth, elevation of corruption and incompetence, reinforcement of failure, and celebration of mediocrity, tribal bigotry, fomenting violence and anti-democratic practices in states and National Assembly” was to accuse Obasanjo of intolerance of those with independent minds of their own.

    Fayose’s reaction to Obasanjo admonition that it took Jonathan more than three years to appreciate and understand that “Boko Haram is not simply a menace based on religion or one directed to frustrate anybody’s political ambition”, was to praise the president for refusing “to toe the path of unconstitutionality” and for respecting human rights by not committing crime against humanity” as Obasanjo once did.

    I am sure it is not only the Ekitis  at home and abroad that feel diminished by Fayose’s emptiness and attempt to wage petty personal wars with serious national issues at Ife last week, his entourage made of professors and respected traditional Ekiti rulers and even  Obasanjo who first promoted him beyond his level, would probably share the same fate. Behold the new Yoruba PDP leader, the nemesis of Obasanjo in action.

  • Abba’s faux pas

    The police play a vital role in every society. They are in charge of law and order to ensure peace and harmony in the land. The police are an arbiter of sorts, between two disputing parties, be they individuals or institutions. As a body conferred with the power to arrest and detain people within a reasonable time before charging them to court, the police are expected to use this power wisely and soberly.

    But, in many instances, the police, especially in Nigeria act with impunity. They arrest and detain people at will. At times, they kill people under the guise of law enforcement and tag their victim ”a robber”. Where the person is not ”a robber”, he may be a victim of what they call ”accidental discharge”.  Our police do not seem to value human life, yet they say they are our friend. The ”police is your friend” is the legend you find at the counters of almost  all police stations or posts.

    Are the police really our friend? There is nothing that puts the lie to this claim than their actions in recent times. Led by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, who should be the epitome of a gentleman officer, the police have become the attack dog of the executive. It seems Abba was deliberately chosen among his peers to take up the executive’s fight. Since his appointment in February following the retirement of his  predecessor, the urbane  M.D Abubakar, Abba has been putting the wrong foot forward.

    Rather than be the people’s IG, he is more at home being on the side of President Goodluck Jonathan. Those not in the same political camp with the president are not in his good book. The president’s fight is his fight and we have seen him prove this time and again. When Speaker Aminu Tambuwal defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in October, Abba wasted no time in withdrawing his security aides, citing Section 68 of the Constitution. The interpretation of this section is  the crux of a case between PDP and Tambuwal at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

    On November 20, Abba was at it again when he sent his men to cordon off the National Assembly in order  to stop Tambuwal from entering the House of Representatives Chambers. To him, Tambuwal is no longer Speaker because of his defection to APC. Pray, where was Abba when the Speaker and virtually all members of Ondo State House of Assembly defected from the Labour Party to PDP? If he saw nothing wrong in those defections, why is he shouting blue murder over  Tambuwal’s move to APC? Why is he not applying Section 68 of the Constitution in that case since he knows law so well? It is not the job  of Abba as IG  to interpret the Constitution; his job is  to ensure the maintenance of law and order.

    Abba has left his job undone in his attempt to interpret the Constitution when he is not a judge. Perhaps, he feels that as a lawyer, he can play the judge. Instead of wasting his time interpreting the law, a job not under his purview,   Abba should turn the heat on hoodlums, who have taken over the country.   Last Wednesday, he did the unthinkable when he appeared before the House Committee on Police Affairs over his men’s invasion of the National Assembly on November 20. He told the stunned committee members that he no longer recognised Tambuwal as Speaker.

    Irked by his persistent reference to the Speaker as Alhaji Tambuwal, the committee asked him to address the Speaker properly. Abba replied that he would not because the matter is in court. If he knew that, why then did he withdraw the Speaker’s security details when the matter has not been decided? This is the impunity we have been talking about. If Abba can withdraw the security aides of the Speaker with the tacit approval of the president, can other Nigerians be sure of the protection of their rights and privileges?

    While awaiting the court decision, it would be advisable for Abba to retrace his steps before it is too late. He is not the first IG and certainly,  he won’t be the last. But whatever he does today will become history tomorrow. How will he want posterity to judge him? As IG of the people or a puppet? The choice is his.

     

    Adieu Olopa

    The news hit me like a thunderbolt. Jude had been in my thoughts since I returned to work on November 24. Last Wednesday, I asked after him from Dada Aladelokun, his colleague on the City Desk. Dada said he was on leave and would soon resume. The following day, we got a medical report that he would not be able to resume on November 30 because he was ill. The doctor said he was placing him on two weeks sick leave. We left matters at that until Saturday morning when a telephone call from Folorunso Atta, my colleague at the defunct Daily Times and a crack crime reporter like Jude, changed everything. Whenever Atta calls, he regales me with his exploits of late. But on this day, that was not to be.

    I sensed that something was wrong from Atta’s voice, which was too low for my liking. I was about asking if all was well when he said:  Man Lawi, Jude ti ku; o ku laro yi. Meaning: Jude is dead; he died this morning. I was dazed by the news and promptly asked Atta, ”how did you learn of his death?” He told me he got the information from Jude’s neighbour, who works with a paper in Anambra State.  When I saw Jude Uche Isiguzo last in October, I didn’t know that I will never see him again. Jude was a lively and easy-going person. His philosophy was live and let’s live and was at home with everybody. What could have killed Jude I wanted to know from his neighbour. Did he undergo surgery?

    ‘No, he didn’t undergo surgery”, the guy said. ”So, what killed him?” I asked. Like me, the guy had been shattered by the news of Jude’s death. He pleaded with me to let him be and I understood what he was going through, especially as he said he was standing beside Jude’s body.  Jude was a lovable person because of his simplicity. He was everybody’s person as shouts of olopa rang out from every corner whenever he was in the newsroom. Though, he was chairman of our chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), he did not allow that to affect his job. He was on top of events on his beat. You can trust him to deliver if news breaks on his beat. What could have cut Jude down in the prime of life?

    His wife Gwen told us on Sunday that he was already getting better and that the family was planning to hold a thanksgiving after he left the hospital. Instead of a thanksgiving, we are now planning for Jude’s funeral. What an irony of life. We take consolation in the fact that he lived well and touched lives. As the Editor, Gbenga Omotoso, told Gwen last Sunday, it is not how long, but how well. As part of the funeral rites, our chapel yesterday held a candlelight procession for Jude. Decked in black, members walked from the office in Fatai Atere Way, Matori, Lagos, to the nearby Palm Avenue intersection and back on his memory.  My heart goes out to Gwen and other members of the Isiguzo family. Adieu Olopa. May you find rest in the Lord’s bosom.

  • In the future of our dreams…

    Like hairy swine in squeals of slaughter, we punctuate this month too, as our month of joy. We mistake death-cries for shrieks of pleasure. Perhaps it’s because we do not know how to differentiate one death-cry from the other; we do not understand how to tell apart, squeals of death from squeals of laughter.

    Tell me, what grief do our hearts distill, into joy? Our dreams shan’t remain unfulfilled, we believe…after the month of February, 2015. If we could pluck out the dark from our land of dusk and thus make every night a resplendent morn of bliss and joy, will Goodluck Jonathan lead us to the greatness we seek or something like it?

    Let this be the moment we get to understand that the degeneracy we swore to exhaust shall live with us, still. Let this be the moment we acknowledge that Goodluck Jonathan couldn’t change our stars even if he bled his heart out. Today, every gesture he makes is akin to singing malicious sonnets to tame a savage race; every effort he makes is akin to hoarding tiny beads of sweat against the dry essential of tomorrow.

    As the pines drip devoid of motion so do our impassioned dreams drift and flounder – because we have perfected our knack for savagery and plunder. We are still as heinous as we were this morning, yesterday and the day before yesterday. How could our plight be different from what it was?

    As you read, everything continues to go wrong with our motherland because every day, we forsake the good that ought to matter. As you read, we are still in that hour when the neurotic clock-tick amplifies our poetry of inhumanity, savagery of style, variable truths, half-truths and eccentricities that sheds like tears from a plenitude of tragedies time stores.

    As you read, we are still the hoodlums causing chaos at random, according to the whims of devious godfathers. We are still the bankers pilfering the life-savings of poor and struggling compatriots after we deny them the benefits of patronizing us. We are still the bank chiefs stripping Peter to pay Paul and robbing the downtrodden to feed our wantonness and greed.

    We are still the police officers mounting road blocks at random to fleece hardworking compatriots of the little they manage to scrounge, everyday. We are still wives to the thieving governor, and councillor, gigolo to the rogue bank chief.

    We are still the internet scammers and advanced fee fraudsters giving Nigeria the worst of names, at home and abroad. We are still parents to the internet fraudster, kidnapper, armed robber and political thug.

    We are still the armed robbers and burglars thwarting our will to strive honourably and prosper, for our vanities. We are still the high-society big boys and drama queens desperate for groove and splendour in the midst of too much rancour and squalor.

    Our philosophy of altruism still permits no concept of a self-respecting, self-supporting man. It permits no view of compatriots save as sacrificial animals and profiteers on sacrifice. It permits no view of compatriots save as victims and parasites…still.

    Our concept of equity still permits no concept of a benevolent existence among men. Our definition of Rule of Law still permits no perception of justice thus the ugliness, cynicism and wantonness in which we spend our lives and burn out, the lives of others.

    Our people are still destitute and the majority of us that aren’t are haunted by the fear that they may become so at any moment. Our wage-earners still nurse the constant fear of unemployment; salaried employees worry that their employers may soon go bankrupt or deem it necessary, as usual, to cut down their staff.

    Every Nigerian still faces a hard struggle to survive. And after making great sacrifices for the education of our sons and daughters, we still find that there exist no openings for the kinds of skills they are supposed to have acquired.

    Our graduates are still slugging it out behind the counters of convenience stores overseas. They are still cleaning the anuses of aged Brits and Americans. At home, they engage in armed robbery, kidnapping, hooliganism and advanced fee fraud.

    And in the midst of such arrant perversion, we remain the activists exploiting the pains of the trodden to perpetuate our grand scheme of greed and plunder. We are still the clerics selling salvation to monsters we adorn with power, unquestioningly. We are still the prophets of doom and eternal damnation.

    We are still the critics capable of nothing but unsubstantiated claims and clamour. We are still the ones who see nothing good in anything. We are still the electorate that thinks no good of any candidate and yet would cast our votes for the worst of a bad bunch.

    We are still the worthless part of the equilibrium that balances our national equation to the calculation of scoundrels parading our corridors of power. We are yet to answer as men even as the climes call for such men that would tame the animal pack we have assigned such humane task as leadership and governance.

    We are still the journalists pandering to the whims of predators we have learnt to endure on our power plinths. We are still the practitioners who sold out, the watchdog who became lapdogs and then, dung-dogs.

    And even I who write this epitomize the grandest of all evils, your “high and mighty columnist,” “alarmist” and “intellectual terrorist,” still.

    We still condemn and criticize, offering nothing practicable to replace everything we condemn and criticize. The knowledge we flaunt still makes our lives no better. Our anecdotes and intellectual protestations still aren’t worth a random fart.

    We are still in the era of the black sheep, the epoch of the boy-child, struggling through desertion, lies, vainglories and shame. We are still training our wards to become contradictions of the patriot-leaders we may never have.

    We are still in the age of the girl-child adrift from our dreams of equality, ladyship and rewarding motherhood. The icon is still a human sound-bite and our pantheons are overcrowded with all manners of creatures we ennoble as heroes.

    The moment continually steals by us while we rant and yield to impotent bluster. We are still stuck on doing the same things, the same ways, over and over again and expecting different results. We still hasten daylight in order to ornament it with a dark pall.

    Our talk used to be of freedom. Yesterday, we thought we had found freedom in Ebele, Mr. Nice Guy. Today, we know better; we know Ebele baba is as degenerate as the rest of us. Let this be the moment we acknowledge that no ‘humble’ leader could make our lives better. Let this be the moment we understand that no practicable policy or people-centred governance could improve our plight until we expunge our souls of the evil within.

    We could change if we want to. Or we could stick to this beaten path that rewards and ruins us. Come 2015; shall we unseat the boy who had no shoes and thus hoodwinks us to steal our shoes even as he robs Nigeria silly?

  • Redeemer’s University at Ede -1

    After almost 10 years living in borrowed robes by staying in the comfortable Redeemed Christian Church of God’s camp on Km 46, Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, Redeemer’s University finally moved to its own home and its own campus at Ede in Osun State. To many of us who are used to electricity supply 24/7 and regular water supply, as well as peace and security and the opportunity to fellowship with the body of Christ at the camp, and particularly with God’s appointed shepherd, Pastor Adeboye, moving out of the camp has been a wrenching experience even though all of us expected that one day or the other we would have to make this move. When the time came it was like a thief in the night because no one really expected it. Many of our students were praying earnestly that this would not happen in their own time.

    Apparently, their prayers have not been answered. The vision of the man of God who is the proprietor of the university was to locate the university in Ede for which several years ago land has been made available to him for the fulfilment of this mission. When the university started in 2005, considerations about staffing, about students’ intake, about proximity to Lagos and all other earthly reasons made the authorities of the university to begin to toy with the idea of building the university along the expressway from Lagos to Ibadan.

    Temporary facilities were rapidly built in the RCCG camp at a cost of some millions of naira and it was gradually becoming unthinkable that this vast investment will be abandoned by moving the university out of the vicinity of the camp. The proprietor of the university then began to look for land near the expressway. Several hectares were purchased and paid for sometimes not only once but twice yet people continued to encroach on this land, forcing the authorities to spend billions of naira to open a brand new road through Simawa from the RCCG camp to Ikorodu.

    Again, land was paid for but because of the greed and the avarice of the land owners and the mistaken assumption that the church has a deep pocket, they kept demanding for more money and even at a time asking inhabitants of one or two villages to be put on pension without having performed any work for the church. In exasperation, the proprietor apparently seeking the face of God felt that our problems in the university were due to disobedience to the vision God gave the proprietor.

    It was in this circumstance that the decision to move to Ede was taken and anybody who has had contact with Pastor Adeboye would know that when he takes a decision inspired by God, nothing can change it. Within a year of taking that decision to go back to Ede, billions of naira was deployed to transform virgin forest into a university campus.

    The existing master plan was quite grandiose and it would have taken years and perhaps a trillion naira to bring it into a reality. Interestingly, there were local banks and foreign financial institutions, some of them of doubtful integrity that were ready to provide funds of course at interest to the university authorities to build a 21st century campus. Redeemer’s University is quite different from other universities even from other sectarian church-inspired universities.

    The proprietor does not believe in usury and would not allow the university to go borrowing money from the market. This means then that an action plan within the master plan had to be drawn up. This action plan is what is being followed right now. With less than a year, hostels that can accommodate 4,000 students have been built in modules of 24 students per house and two students staying in one room en suite that is with toilet and bath for two students.

    A friend of mine who saw this praised the proprietor for building for students what he called executive accommodation and this is the absolute truth. I remember when I was at the University of Ibadan; on my floor we probably had about 20 students to two toilets and three points of shower. Of course this was the golden years of the University of Ibadan in the 1960s.

    When my nephews went to the University of Ibadan, water was no longer available in the hostels for bath and flushing of toilets and my poor two nephews that were studying medicine had to dash home anytime they wanted to ease themselves or to have a bath because the bath and toilets in the university were no longer functional and I am not sure the situation has changed. I do not know of any university in Nigeria whether public or private that could provide this kind of social facilities for their students.

    I was myself a Pro-Chancellor of Ekiti State University and I struggled unsuccessfully to build hostels for students on campus and I am still hoping and praying that in the course of time, EKSU will be in a position to build hostels for their students. Without students living in hostels, they will pass through the universities but the university will not pass through them. They will be as raw and uncouth when they graduate as they were when they came in. Students acquire good manners and ethics through interacting with other students, by going to debates and various university clubs, going to theatre, eating in cafeterias and in our case in Redeemer’s University, worshiping together.

    I must say that most of what is needed to bring out the good in students has already been provided even if in a nucleus form in our new campus and come January, we will have our first convocation on campus starting with the convocation play in our brand new Arts Theatre.

    I do not want to paint a picture of perfection because the campus is still developing, buildings have not been completed and several facilities are still to come and no single building with the exception of the nursery and primary school has been painted. Staff housing is uncompleted and many of the staff are living rough, I myself have been staying in hotels but all this is to be expected of pioneers.

    Pastor Adeboye himself has made a surprising visit to the students during which time he assured them of his support and even told them that as pioneers, all their names will be engraved on the walls of the auditorium so that future generations would know what they went through as pioneers. What is good for the goose should also be good for the gander and I hope in like way those of us who are staff would also be remembered either while we are still there or when we would have left.

  • ‘Area boy’ democracy

    THOUGH the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) knew long ago that it had lost Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, it was still thrown off-balance by his defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on October 28. The defection was vintage Tambuwal and it was executed with clinical precision, which left some members of the House of Representatives wondering what hit them long after he hit the gavel on his table to end that day’s  sitting.

    Outside the hallowed chambers of the House, the PDP leadership was dazed. Its national leader, President Goodluck Jonathan, Chairman Adamu Muazu and others had no immediate answer to the calamity that befell PDP.  Their dilemma since then is what to do to Tambuwal without being seen to break the law.

    Without much ado, the  President invited Senate President David Mark and Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha to a meeting at Aso Rock. The main agenda, according to those who should know,  was Tambuwal’s defection. The President, it was gathered, found it unbelievable  that Tambuwal could defect on the floor of the House without the PDP members, who are in the majority, doing anything to stop him. He was said to have also met with other political actors and the security agencies  on how to address what he sees as  the ”Tambuwal challenge”.

    Jonathan, sources said,  views the Speaker’s defection as a challenge because of its capacity to strengthen  the North’s campaign  against his second term bid. Tambuwal is the most prominent core northerner in this administration. Though Mark is a northerner from Benue State, he is not from the core north like Tambuwal, who is from Sokoto and a Fulani to boot. To pay Tambuwal back in his own coin, it was decided that he must go as Speaker. But how do you achieve that without flouting the law? To this end, Tambuwal’s  security details were withdrawn barely 48 hours after his defection by the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Suleiman Abba, who turned himself into a court by interpreting the Constitution to justify his patently  illegal action. The IGP was not done yet.

    Determined to satisfy his master and also thank him for confirming him as IGP, Abba, ever the obedient servant, went beyond himself last week to stop Tambuwal from entering the House in order to pave the way for the Speaker’s removal by  those involved in the covert plot. In a society where crime is being committed almost every second, hundreds of policemen were drafted to the National Assembly just to stop the Speaker and his supporters from entering, while millions of Nigerians were left at the mercy of criminals.

    I laugh when I hear the police defend their indefensible action. They said they went there following intelligence information that ”thugs” would invade the Assembly that day. But pray, did Tambuwal and his entourage look like thugs to the police when they were coming? Here was a man, who submitted himself to screening, yet he was not allowed to access the House. I watched on television  how he beckoned on a police officer, asking him to ”approach me; I am Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives”. The officer  ignored the Speaker because he was acting a script.

    Simply put, this is motor park democracy where the powers that be use the  security agencies to deal with their opponents. The holidaying lawmakers decided to sit last week following a letter from Jonathan, seeking another extension of the state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. I hate to believe that the President would abort a sitting which he called for to consider his request.

    To prove that he has no hand in this misadventure, the President must not spare all those involved, no matter how highly placed they may be. The police also cannot be trusted to investigate the matter because they are biased. They cannot be the investigator in a case in which they are indicted. If we are interested in getting to the root of the police siege to the National Assembly, we should constitute a group of eminent Nigerians to probe the incident.

    Anything short of this will serve no purpose because the police have shown their bias in the matter.  This is not a police case.

    When two elephants fight

    THERE is no love lost between Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu and Enugu State Governor Sullivan Chime. The duo became bitter political foes because of Chime’s interest in the Enugu West Senatorial District, which Ekweremadu presently represents in the Senate. As the leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu State, Chime has been doing everything in his power to make Ekweremadu politically irrelevant.

    But Ekweremadu has proved to be a tough nail, absorbing everything thrown at him by Chime and his acolytes. Ten days ago, his medical mission to the state was disrupted by those ostensibly acting on ”orders from above”.  The mission is a yearly project under which over 10,000 people from the five local government areas under Ekweremadu’s  senatorial district enjoy an all-embracing  free treatment for eye-related problems. Those who require glasses, surgery, drugs et al, get them for free.

    The question is why would anybody want to disrupt such a programme? Must we play politics at  the people’s detriment?

    If Ekweremadu wants to bring dividends of democracy to his people should he be stopped from doing so because he is not in the same political camp with the governor of his state? Is it wrong for political foes to join hands to bring succour to the people? People go into politics to better the lot of their constituents and  not to deprive them of the inherent benefits.

    Who is the loser in all these? It is the people; not Ekweremadu. So, if Chime has the people’s interest at heart, he would do something about the disruption of the Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s Ikeoha Foundation Free Eye Treatment Project at Oghe in Ezeagu Local Government Area of Enugu State by thugs allegedly led by two development area administrators (DAAs). Being government officials, there should be no problem in fishing out the DAAs  to answer for their action, except if they have the backing of officialdom.

    Well, Ekweremadu has vowed to fish them out, no matter what. ”I will do everything within my powers to bring them to book. They can run, but they can’t hide; I will smoke all those involved out and ensure they face the wrath of the law”. Nothing will make the people happier than to see those who torment them pay the price for their action.

  • Jonathan, Abba and PDP Police at work

    Jonathan, Abba and PDP Police at work

    ‘If Abba does not understand the implication of his actions for the health of our fragile democracy, we cannot say the same of his principals. Or could it be they just don’t give a damn about the inevitable collapse of a tripod with two disabled legs?’

    As one of those who in 2011 demonized Buhari on account of his human right abuses as military head of state back in 1984, I am daily haunted by the unheeded warning of Sonala Olumhense, one of Nigerian most gifted writers that voting Jonathan would amount to giving him a licence to sell what is left of Nigeria to PDP. The verdict is today self evident. The fight against economic saboteurs Jonathan claimed to have identified at the onset of his administration, the quest for a culture of free and fair election, the battle  against insurgency, resolution of the national question through convocation of national confab, at the end were all about what was in them for Jonathan and PDP and not about Nigerians. Even the celebrated 16 years of unbroken democratic dispensation was at the expense of separation of power – the soul of democracy. Jonathan has continued to take delight in the subversion of the legislative and judicial arms of government.

    To be fair to Jonathan, he inherited the war against separation of power from ex-President Obasanjo who shuffled senate presidents and speakers of both the upper and lower houses according to his mood. He routinely disobeyed court orders. Picking up from where Obasanjo stopped, Jonathan unsuccessfully attempted to plant pliable leaders on the National Assembly. His failure produced Speaker Waziri Tambuwal. He has however secured more successes in undermining the judiciary which started with his unjust persecution of Justice Isa Ayo Salami for ruling against PDP governors who stole the people’s mandates in Edo, Ondo, and Ekiti and Osun states.

    With the exploits of Suleiman Abba who was Rivers State Police Commissioner (2009-2012) before he was promoted above his contemporaries and seniors as IG, he seems to have been specifically recruited to subvert the two other arms of government.  Although described by newspapers as an officer with ”vast experience in criminal investigation, intelligence-led police”, he probably left those virtues back in the Nigeria Police before taking on a new cloak of ‘PDP’ Inspector General of Police. And he has not disappointed the president and PDP.  Femi Falana has just written to him citing three instances where the police had displayed “political bias” since his appointment:  the arrest and detention of over 700 leaders of All Progressive Congress (APC),” during the Osun State governorship election which took place on August 9, the illegal ban on Bring Back our Girls campaigners within the Federal Capital Territory (already overruled by the courts) and his withdrawal of the security details of Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives  because he decamped from PDP. He has achieved more for PDP. Unfortunately the party’s gain is the nation’s loss.

    Now With Abba as PDP-IG, our hard earned democracy seems to have come under severe strain. We have since witnessed an already emasculated Ekiti judiciary which was unable to convict Ayo Fayose after 52 appearances and months of detention by EFCC over charges of corruption and murder brought against him after his impeachment in 2006, subjected to further assault when judges were assaulted in their court rooms by thugs supervised by Ayo Fayose and the PDP Police in Nigerian Police uniform. The legislative arm of government suffered no less a fate in the same state.

     There, the only seven PDP lawmakers in a legislative house of 26 members, were ferried in government bus, protected by over three hundred armed police men to the state House of Assembly where they hilariously pronounced the Speaker and his deputy impeached, while naming Dele Olugbemi the new speaker. Few minutes later, the state governor was telling Channels Television reporters he dalready recognised the kangaroo election of Olugbemi and was prepared to work with him. This charade was quickly followed by congratulatory messages from ‘the conglomeration of the Transport Unions, Commercial Motorcyclists, market men and women, the governor’s main constituency. Then Fayose told his supporters, many of them thugs, to go and get ready to battle imminent invasion of the state by thugs to be imported by the 19 majority lawmakers from Lagos and Osun states. And taking a cue from the governor, the police quickly followed with a statement claiming that “The State Police Command has received an intelligence report that some group of people are planning to invade the state to disrupt the existing peace and cause break down of law and order”.  It is obvious to discernible Nigerians that Fayose’s fabricated information which preceded the so-called police intelligence report  are parts of war against the state legislature whose 19 members had given notice of their imminent return from their hide-out in Lagos to challenge the illegality of the governor and the police.

    In neighbouring Edo State, bulldozing Abba has on behalf of his principals, demolished the state House of Assembly. According to the state government “four honourable members who refused to abide by their suspension order have continued to hold illegal sittings in the House of Assembly Complex, which is undergoing renovation, with the connivance of five other valid PDP lawmakers and with the aid of the Nigeria Police.” The police that are protecting those flouting court orders was unable to provide security for the majority 15 APC lawmakers who have relocated to the governor’s office.

    Abba has equally bared his teeth in Lagos. A combined team of over 50 security operatives’ from the DSS and OP-MESA stormed the APC Data Centre in Ikeja, pulled down the gates, destroyed over a dozen computers, servers and arrested  25 APC data agents and three security guards, while carting away 31 bags of Ghana-must-go raw data to Abuja. Ms Marilyn Ogar, the spokesman for DSS justified the brigandage saying their action followed a petition that “cloning” of permanent voters card was going on with the intention of hacking into INEC’s database, corrupting it and replacing them with the “cloned” data.’ And without thinking, she added: “We are being proactive on account of the security situation in the country, you know that the Boko Haram has been targeting Lagos and so, we cannot afford the petition lying low.”

    If you are wondering what that has got to do with cloning of PVCs cards, then you are also forgetting they need to explain their miserable mission. Besides, since it is only a thief that can identify the footprint of another thief on stone, it is not impossible PDP is engaged in cloning of PVCs in Lagos. Didn’t Fashola recently raise an alarm about missing names of 1.4m voters? Add that to the bungling of the distribution of the PVCs by INEC in Lagos?

    And finally, displaying his enormous and unrestrained power, Abba’s last Thursday assault on the National Assembly carried the signature tune of a president who always plays the ostrich. Obviously, the president employed the debate about emergency as a decoy to plan the removal of Tambuwal as speaker. Abba’s men at about 10:2 a.m, gave the Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha with his full official protocol and convoy, free access into the National Assembly unhindered. So were many other PDP lawmakers including the deputy majority leader Leo Ogor.  But the PDP Police could not recognize the Speaker even after formally introducing himself saying – “Gentlemen, my names are Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and I am the Speaker of the House of Representatives”. When the speaker abandoned his car and walked to the National Assembly lobby, PDP policemen paid by Nigerian taxpayers, fired three tear gas canisters at him and  fired more tear gas canisters into the lobby resulting in the fainting of two of Tambuwal aides. If Abba does not understand the implication of his actions for the health of our fragile democracy, we cannot say the same of his principals. Or could it be they just don’t give a damn about the inevitable collapse of a tripod with two disabled legs?

  • How Nigeria destroys

    How Nigeria destroys

    The great danger of being part of Nigeria today is that Nigeria tends massively to corrupt everything and everybody. There is hardly anything to look up to in Nigeria. In most directions that one may look, the beckoning is perpetually and relentlessly towards the low, the ignoble and the graceless. Most of the privileged and influential seek nothing but their own. In the reckoning of the typical powerful and influential Nigerian, the masses of ordinary Nigerians are, at best, cannon fodder for the reaching of his warped goals – and at worst, just despicable beings deserving to be ignored in their poverty, their ignorance and their hopelessness. The famous writer, Wole Soyinka, once wrote a book with the title The Man Died. Man with the higher qualities and nobler passions of man has almost totally died out in Nigeria.

    Recently, in some other place, I pointed out one relieving feature in this generally depressing Nigerian landscape – namely, the strong spirit of religious tolerance and accommodation among Yoruba Muslims and Christians in a Nigeria in which most other Muslim peoples have turned the great religion of Islam into the reason for the massacres of their fellow men, the destruction of whole settlements, and the disruption of a whole country. But, unfortunately, in the realm of partisan politics, no such relieving feature exists anywhere in Nigeria – not even among the Yoruba. Everywhere in Nigeria, party politics has been bestialized into a horrible and unrestrained civil war in which prominent politicians set up whole propaganda outfits to lie perpetually and to cruelly besmirch opponents – and hire young men to attack, harass and murder political opponents. And the goal of all the beastly lying and the satanic plots to murder is never to gain political positions for the purpose of serving the interests of country and people; it is to enhance the politician’s access to the country’s money and other resources. Hordes of young people are easily available for recruitment because they are unemployed, poor, and desperate to earn some income – even if it is income from the hand of Satan himself.

    All things considered, I believe that most informed observers would agree that one of the saddest aspects of this political debauchery in Nigeria is that it has become strongly entrenched among the Yoruba people, in the Yoruba South-west, too. This is one of the worst among the terrible legacies that Nigeria has bequeathed to any Nigerian nation. It should never have found acceptance and root in Yoruba soil. The Yoruba are the inheritors of nearly 1000 years of a supremely orderly political system and governance which respected the sovereignty of the people, emphasized respect of the rulers for the ruled, established powerful instruments for the moderation of the conduct of rulers and influential notables, and made government a reliable servant of the people. In modern times, when the European system of elected governments came to Nigeria in the 1950s, the predominantly Yoruba Western Region easily led Nigeria in orderly democratic politics, free and fair elections, and government that powerfully advanced the well-being of citizens. But today, the Yoruba seem to be very eagerly throwing away all their own wonderful political heritage and avidly grabbing Nigeria’s horrible political heritage.

    Sadly, in today’s Yoruba South-west, persons elected or appointed into state governments come into office breathing fire and brimstone against political opponents, thereby destroying orderly cooperation between the constitutional arms of government, and generally giving the people whom they rule the terrible image of an unruly and barbarous people. Yoruba politicians serving in the federal government think that their duty is to launch attacks on Yoruba state governments controlled by other parties, and to use federal power and federal agencies to humiliate and disrupt such state governments. Most leading Yoruba politicians are armed with militias of cronies who are employed in such despicable tasks as mindlessly lying against their boss’s opponents, carrying out assassinations, disrupting the activities and meetings of opponents, and killing at random in order to instill fear into opponents.

    In the background to all these is the fact that party membership has been robbed of all meaning. The politician who is powerfully seeking his party’s nomination for an election today, if he happens to lose the nomination, has no qualms whatever about becoming a contestant for the nomination of another party by tonight. Even a politician who has been loyally elected into government on the platform of a party, has no pangs of conscience at all about deserting his party for another party – he does not think of himself as having any duty to the persons who laboured to get him elected. In the context of all this horse trading and betrayal, the traditional sensibilities of Yoruba people are being massively distorted, and Yoruba traditional commitment to good governance is being ruthlessly destroyed.

    Thus, for the most part, governors, elected representatives, and political leaders among Yoruba people today are not leaders and rulers of their people in any meaningful sense; they are  brigands and desperadoes seeking nothing other than the chance to steal public money and to build up huge wealth thereby –  so as to be able to squirrel money out of Nigeria for hiding in secret bank accounts abroad, for buying expensive real-estate properties in other lands, for taking girlfriends on expensive trips, and even buying expensive houses for girlfriends, abroad.

    These acts of brigandage contribute greatly to poverty among their people. Of course, the accumulation of all power and resources in the hands of the federal government, and the general mess being forever compounded by the federal government, are the taproot of poverty in Nigeria. But state and local politicians, by their profligate behavior and betrayal of their people, add enormously to the poverty in two ways. In the first place, their stealing of public money adds much to the failure of state and local progammes of development. They leave very little chance of success for plans to improve the schools, to improve state and local roads and water supply, to assist businesses and increase job opportunities for the people, etc.

    In the second place, the wild, noisy and unruly politics tends to drive or keep good businesses and employment opportunities away. There are great amounts of investment capital seeking to come from the richest countries to virgin countries worldwide, but no businessman or investor would ever want to bring his investment or business to a place where political life is unstable and frequently agitated. For some of the states of Nigeria, including some states of the South-west, promises by the governors or aspiring governors to attract businesses and improve employment opportunities are mere lies. Their disorderly politics makes any fulfilment of such promises impossible. Stable and orderly politics is the first requirement of economic development in any country or state.

    All that I have said here about the Yoruba South-west are true of the rest of Nigeria. Indeed, some parts of Nigeria are much worse than the South-west. The crucial point about the Yoruba of the South-west is that they started off in modern times with a great and enviable political heritage and that, rather than build on that heritage, they have been junking it in recent times.