The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • A state of anomy in Nigeria

    Terrible things are happening in Nigeria these days. Some months ago, a state in the eastern part of the country began to witness the phenomenon of baby factories. Young girls from ages of 15-30 or thereabouts were lured into the houses of some madams or captured by apparently heartless and hard-headed individuals who kept these girls as captives and then got boys or men to impregnate them as if they were rearing pedigree dogs. When these girls delivered their babies, they were paid, depending on the sexes of the babies, anything from N300,000 to N400,000. The cycle was again repeated until somebody blew the whistle and these poor children were released. This phenomenon seems to have been peculiar to the south eastern states in Nigeria until it spread first to Lagos then to Ondo and Ogun states. Apparently the same gangs who were driven out of eastern Nigeria relocated elsewhere. The operation seems to be the same and the children of poor people were always the victims. Sometimes one gets the impression that some of the parents of these children were involved in these sordid affairs. One is not too sure whether the babies so produced are sold to people who genuinely want children and cannot have them or to shaman who use human beings for their rituals. Whatever the case maybe, draconian measures should be taken against these people whose acts and actions derogate from our humanity.

    In another part of Nigeria, in Ibadan precisely in a place called Soka forest near Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, some 28 skeletons of human beings were discovered along with a few people some chained down like dogs and at the lowest stage of human degradation. These people were being prepared for sacrifice to some deities. We do not know whether the operators of this evil forest are cannibals but thankfully, none of them has yet been captured eating human beings. This is a very strange discovery in Ibadan of all places because no such things have ever happened in any part of Yoruba land before. There have been incidences like this in some shrines in eastern Nigeria but it seems this phenomenon is spreading and all of us should be thoroughly ashamed of this. Immediately after the discovery was made, people began to speculate that some politicians may have been visiting the evil forest for rituals designed to give them electoral victories. This is totally unfounded and probably absolutely untrue. It just shows the level of the low esteem to which our politicians have fallen that they will be associated with this primitive occurrence. The mother and father of all these crazy happenings in Nigeria is the unwarranted massacre of school children by Boko Haram. It is unbelievable that a group calling themselves Muslims would wantonly attack school children while asleep and murder them in their sleep for no just reasons but for the fact they are in school to learn. In the same vein, children, women and old people are murdered by Boko Haram in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states. The sophistication of the weapons being used makes one wonder whether these fanatics are actually Nigerians. The North-east of Nigeria particularly Borno State is the gateway for Islamic civilisation in Nigeria. The Kanuris who constitute the largest ethnic group in the North-east are one of the most sophisticated and enlightened people in Nigeria and they have been this way for centuries. How some part of this people can descend to the level of barbarity of the Boko Haram makes one wonder. I lived in Maiduguri between 1982 and 1984 and this was one of the happiest times of my life and I can hardly believe what I read in the newspapers about the killings that are going on in the same Maiduguri.

    For some years now, reports about nomads killing farmers or people of two different religions killing each other in Plateau State have made newspaper headlines and these killings have been going on daily basis with increasing ferocity. First of all, it began as a crisis between settlers and owners of the land but it seems to have degenerated and gone beyond urban areas to rural areas where Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farmers are at each other’s throats. The problem probably is that cattle rustlers steal the cows of Fulani cattle rearers after those cows trespass and eat crops of farmers in the region. The unending wars centre around the Fulani’s love for their animals and the economic losses farmers of Plateau suffer when their crops are eaten by Fulani’s cows. As if the problem on the plateau was not enough, this sad episode is being replicated in Benue State and parts of Nassarawa State bringing Tivs and Fulanis into conflict. The Tivs are one of the greatest farmers in Nigeria inhabiting the valleys of the Benue River and involved in age-long agriculture, growing yams and other tubers. The Fulanis bring their cattle in a long journey from the north to the south across Tiv land eating farm crops as they go along. In retaliation, the Tivs engage in cattle rustling thereby touching the wrong nerves of the Fulani who then retaliate with amazing ferocity. The Tivs are not a push over when it comes to defending their territories and the consequence of this is a war without end. In recent years, Fulani nomads and herdsmen are now found all over the country and there is a growing fear that what is happening in Tiv land and Plateau State can spread to other parts of Nigeria. There is therefore a call for dedicated pasture for nomads across the country. How to work this out remains a knotty problem.

    In the oil bearing Delta, militancy there has not abated. People are still routinely kidnapped for a ransom. The situation is so bad that recently, a relation of the president was kidnapped. Forty percent of the oil production is stolen by bunkerers who are somehow in league with international petrol robbers who are denying Nigerians of much needed revenue. In spite of the fat contracts being given to so-called militants to protect pipelines, the looting and siphoning of petroleum resources continue and the consequence of this is a drastic cut in state revenue allocation. Some states have had their allocation reduced by almost 20 percent for the past four months.

    The distress seems to be enveloping the whole country and even the northwest particularly Katsina which was spared the insurgency in the north suddenly came alive following the recent mass murder of innocent people while the president was even visiting the state.

    The overall picture of our country is not too good and one wonders what kind of dispatches the embassies will be sending home to their governments. The situation is very frightening and it does not seem that our government is able to handle the problem satisfactorily. What is at the core of this problem to me seems to be poor leadership, corruption, misgovernance, unemployment, poverty, inept policing and poor equipment of the police and the armed forces to the extent that the rag-tag irregulars of the Boko Haram is able to give our security forces a bloody rose. Perhaps instead of a political conference we should have a security summit. Of course, it can be argued that if we get our politics right, everything will fall into its normal place but for now, the question of general insecurity has become a disincentive to local and foreign investment in the country, the result of which is the massive unemployment in the country. The tragedy in which the department of immigration wanting to employ 4,000 people but decided to call 700,000 and to collect N1,000 each from poor applicants leading to the trampling to death of some of them including pregnant women brings us to the nadir of human degradation and unless our leaders rise to the occasion, we may be witnessing the beginning of a national collapse and a people’s rebellion.

    What is obvious to any discerning observer is that we are in trouble in this country and it does not seem those at the helm of affairs know this. Never in the history of our country has so much problems arisen to confront the people and government of Nigeria. The way we navigate our way out of this jungle in which we find ourselves will determine the future of this beleaguered republic.

  • In a chartered jet age!

    NO matter what anybody may say about our Petroleum Minister, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, one thing you cannot take away from her is that she likes living big. Whether that was her lifestyle before she became a minister, we cannot really say now because she was then not in the public eye. But since she became a minister of the Federal Republic, she has shown that she is a woman of fashion and style.

    First, as works minister under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, she dazzled us when she appeared on the Benin-Ore road in an orange overall with an helmet to match, weeping over the poor condition of the highway. With that, she registered herself in the subconscious mind of her compatriots. May be she would have come up with more stunts if she had been left in that ministry, we may never know. We never saw such theatrical displays again until she appeared in the petroleum ministry.

    In her present ministry, she has taken her flamboyance a notch high. How else will the world know that she is manning a powerful ministry if she does not live big? Mind you, people like her are used to living like royalty, but nothing gives them more pleasure than to have free money to do so. With such free money, they are ready to paint the world red, moving from one capital city to the other under the guise of discharging their official duties.

    In gallivanting all over the world, they do it at the tax payers’ expense. Money that should be used to develop the country, provide infrastructure is spent on inanities just to oil their ego. They want to live big, conveniently forgetting that in doing so, there are millions of their compatriots, who cannot afford a single meal in a day. There is nothing that depicts the extravagance and flamboyance of those in power more than the recent revelation that Mrs Alison-Madueke spent billions to maintain a jet.

    We were confounded when we had that in three years she had blown over N10billion on the Challenger 850, which has been at her beck and call since she assumed. As usual, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which board she chairs, has since come out to deny that the jet is for her exclusive use. What else would NNPC have said? There is no way it could have admitted that the jet services madam alone. To do that would have amounted to insubordination by the Group Managing Director (GMD), Mr Andrew Yakubu, who has a penchant for defending even the indefensible.

    Since the chartered jet scandal blew open on March 20, Mrs Alison-Madueke has kept mute. That is what they all do when the shit blows open, leaving their aides to run helter skelter, defending them. In a country like ours with its high poverty rate, does it make sense for any minister to ride in a chartered jet, not to talk of keeping one for personal use? If Mrs Alison-Madueke were not a public official would she have kept a chartered jet and spent N10billion on it in three years?

    This allegation is too weighty for her to keep quiet as if it is nothing. It is something. It is just unfortunate that we are from that part of the world where people do not bother about the actions and inactions of their leaders. If it were to be a society of proactive people, we will be saying a different thing by now. They would have made the country too hot for Mrs Alison-Madueke by now that she would be looking for a place to hide. Bu what do we have? She is strutting all over the place, parading herself still as our oil minister.

    The case against her is strong; very, very strong. Hear the House of Representatives member, Mr Samuel Babatunde Adejare, who alerted the nation to the exotic lifestyle of the minister : ”In these days of scarce national resources where public finance is shrinking in the face of ever increasing national needs, such as roads, health, education and power, among others, an official of government could waste public funds on such luxury as chartering a Challenger 850 aircraft for extra official use.

    ”In recent times, most states of the federation have been facing acute shortage of allocations due to the dwindling national revenue, which has reduced the quality of governance and deprived the people of dividends of democracy. Based on reliable evidence, the Hon. Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, has been committing 500,000 euros (N130million) monthly to maintain the aircraft, thus in two years, the minister has committed at least N3.120billion in maintaining the private jet, which is used solely for her personal needs and those of her immediate family, which is an appalling act”.

    Adejare was not done. The expenditure, he said, could only be a tip of the iceberg ”as several other billions of naira have been allegedly wasted on flying the jet all over the world, obviously for the leisure of the Hon. Minister and her immediate family on trips that were of no benefit to the country. This colossal waste is currently estimated at N10billion, which includes the payment of allowances to the crew for the trips, hangar parking and rent based on the lease agreement”.

    Another lawmaker Mrs Uche Ekwunife came to the aid of Mrs Alison-Madueke, informing her colleagues that there is no proof that the minister had been carrying members of her family on the jet. Well, if she has not been carrying her family members on the jet, has she not been giving a ride to her friends, among whom is Mrs Ekwunife? Mrs Ekwunife said in the hallowed chamber of the House that she had ridden on teh jet. If the minister has been carrying Mrs Ekwunife, what then can stop her from taking her family on it? The lawmaker should just spare us of this her unsolicited defence. Better still, she can appear before the House Committee on Public Accounts, which has been mandated to probe the matter, to defend her good friend.

    She would have a lot to defend the minister for. At the last count, it was said the number of chartered jets at her disposal is three and not one. The other two were said to have been uncovered in the course of the committee’s work. Did Mrs Ekwunife also ride on those two jets? It is a serious issue for a minister to have three chartered jets at her disposal. What does she need these jets for? Is she the president that she should maintain a fleet of jets? Where is she going that she needs three jets to always be on standby for her?

    Instead of working to get our four refineries back on stream so that we will no longer suffer the pain of fuel scarcity, Mrs Alison-Madueke is busy gallivanting all over the world, enjoying herself at our expense. If really these trips were official, what benefits have they yielded? If she can show us the benefits of these trips, then the money spent on maintaining the Challenger 850 can be justified. But if there is nothing to show for the trips, she should be made to refund every dime.

  • Youth, like dried flowers 

    I have seen courage flower in the face of the impossible. Such valour is frequently ascribed to an innate strength and unparalleled humanity of the courageous. It is no physical strength. And very few of the world’s bravest warriors possess such valour that defies brawn and accentuates moral vigour.

    Victor John, 15, showed such courage in a damning moment; thanks to John, the entire clans constituting Ungwan Sankwai, Tyekum and Ungwan Gata villages of Bondon district, Kaura LGA of Kaduna State were saved from total extermination by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

    Although many of the bereaved are wailing the brutal massacre of loved ones even as you read, the survivors owe their lives to the 15-year old who sighted the invaders marching on the community. John alerted his father and reportedly went from house to house to wake up their neighbours and warn them of imminent death. Eventually, his father evacuated some of his siblings but his mother and other siblings weren’t so lucky; they were hacked to death by the invaders.

    Like the Kaduna teen, Hugh Thompson, an American army pilot could be said to have exhibited moral courage in the face of odds. Thompson landed his helicopter between a platoon of American soldiers and 10 terrified Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacre. Then he ordered his gunner to fire his M60 machine gun on the advancing U.S. soldiers if they began to shoot the villagers. For this act of moral courage, Thompson, like John, suffered repercussion; he was hounded and reviled by the American establishment.

    Such is the consequence of moral courage. It begets a price. In the case of Victor John, it cost him his mother and siblings. And for being morally courageous, Thompson was vilified by the American military – the establishment attempted to conceal the massacre and court-martial him.

    Moral courage encompasses the nerve to do the right thing and speak the truth always. In involves defying the mob as a solitary individual; to spurn the invigorating embrace of comradeship; to be disobedient to authority, even at the risk of your life, for a higher principle. And with moral courage come persecution and any other form of repercussion that more often than not, exposes the individual as defenseless mark to be preyed upon.

    Gani Fawehinmi had moral courage, so did Martin Luther King. Malcolm X had it and Wole Soyinka epitomizes it. Predictably, perpetuators of such morality are either maligned by fate or ascribed rogue status by the State. Routinely they are accused and charged for treason. But in their touted notoriety subsists the irony of an incontrovertible metaphor; they usually represent the best of mankind and civilization in their time.

    The contemporary youth however, personify a very sad contradiction of humanity and courage epitomized by John, Thompson, and the late Fawehinmi to mention a few. Essentially, they represent Nigeria’s sad decent into the gallows of inhumanity. Like a fugitive quirk you find no word for, the contemporary youth grows like a scar on his clan and the nation’s psyche. Much of what he symbolizes indicates decadence and rot thus the manifestation of a Nigerian youth divide incapacitated to the finer traits of citizenship and humanity.

    This glaring lack manifests virtually in every aspect of our life as a nation; the Nigerian society evolves as a perfect reflection of the nation’s youth. Given the quality of the nation’s youth, the country suffers the preponderance of cowards and shadows of men populating its youth divide and the future of the Nigerian State.

    From a tender age, the Nigerian youth is socialized to be corrupt and inhumane; the process starts very early in life, in the family unit. Many parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see their child cheat and oppress his peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see him evolve into a ‘lovable’ brute at a tender age; they claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

    Thus from adolescence through adulthood, many parents applaud dishonesty perpetrated by their wards, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty; parents nurture them in their wards and the latter perpetuate them in attitude, till they start procreating and perpetuating within their lineage, grosser forms of shamefulness and bestiality.

    It starts from the very little things; like grooming the child to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.

    Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena. Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; and at the end, we have brutes and foetal adults running our lives and determining our future.

    At this juncture, many may dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 160 million-strong families or thereabouts. Really? If that be the case, why is it that their voices and deeds resonate and tower above the humanity of the ‘moral few’ if ever such divide exists in contemporary Nigeria?

    As you read, Nigeria manifests as the tainted fantasy of a perverted mob, home and abroad. The virtues that builds character, fosters community and sustain a nation-state, from honesty, self-sacrifice to transparency, are ridiculed everyday in public sphere and every night on TV as rubes stupid enough to cling to unrealistic fantasies and bestiality are celebrated on network news, perverted sitcoms and the now ubiquitous reality TV charade.

    It is due to a lack of moral courage and character that the Nigerian youth tirelessly obsess about the decadent and perpetrate the obscene just to be seen as hip and flowing with the times. Hence the attractiveness of the vulgar, such as the fast-circulating homosexuality and trans-sexuality bugs, internet scam, terrorism, bribery, official fraud, wild, rampant and uninhibited sex.

    The Nigerian youth has been flipped upside-down and inside-out that it has become increasingly difficult to identify by them what constitutes acceptable values and culture of civilization representative of the Nigerian spirit and psyche. Today we praise the woman who tries to be the toughest career girl in the office and applaud the man who tries to be the prettiest drag queen in the bar.

    Consequently, the country embraces depravity and perpetuates society on series of pathetic illusions thus amplifying the kind of twilight disconnect that accelerates the disappearance of dying empires. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is agitation for acceptance of homosexuality, acquittal of a corrupt public officer or glorification of an insidious civilization, Nigeria takes surefooted strides into infamy and extinction.

    •To be continued

  • How really bad is corruption in Nigeria?

    How really bad is corruption in Nigeria?

    There is growing and justified local and international concern about public corruption in Nigeria. But how deep is corruption in the country? Most Nigerians, including public officials who are at the centre of corruption in the country, know it is pervasive and that, to a large extent, it is directly responsible for poor service delivery and mass poverty in Nigeria. Public corruption polarizes the state and constrains economic growth. But President Jonathan pretends it is not all that bad. While addressing the Nigerian community recently in far away Namibia, he said media reports about corruption in Nigeria were exaggerated, and that his government was tackling it. The Nigerian community in Namibia will not believe him. It has easy access to the internet and is well informed. Most of our nationals President Jonathan met in Namibia left Nigeria in the first place to escape the crushing poverty at home, brought about by mass corruption in Nigeria. In fact, President Jonathan’s rebuttal of the full extent of public corruption in Nigeria was in direct response to the damning comments by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe the week before about widespread corruption in Nigeria.

    The Nigerian public too will find President Jonathan’s denial of the full extent of corruption in Nigeria bemusing, if not downright irritating. Internationally, Nigeria is notorious for its massive corruption. The global anti-corruption organization, Transparency International has, in its annual reports, consistently ranked Nigeria among the lowest in the global country league of transparency. It is estimated by respected financial experts that corruption accounts for over 40 per cent of public expenditure in Nigeria. Vital public projects cannot be completed because of official corruption. All branches of the government are hugely corrupt. Of three high court judges recently sacked one, a female, owned over 20 properties and other assets. If it were not for its vast oil resources, very few foreign investors will seek to do business in Nigeria where, because of public corruption, the cost of doing business is one of the highest in the world. As Mr. Yakubu, head of the NNPC confirmed last week, even the international oil majors, the biggest investors in Nigeria, are getting less enthusiastic about making further investments in the Nigerian oil sector. They see Angola, which is less corrupt, as a better investment destination than Nigeria.

    The fact is that, on a daily basis, Nigerians are made to live with horrendous massive corruption in all facets of their lives, ranging from the corrupt police, the pensions scam, to the petty and corrupt local and states government officials. Issuance of official licenses, permits, approvals for land and property development require the payment of bribes to public officials. Houses and markets built by the state for the poor are corruptly snatched from them and sold to the rich. President Jonathan cannot pretend not to know this. The Grandmaster of this cesspool of corruption is the federal government, the biggest spender and controller of the largest financial resources in the country. It is at the centre that corruption takes place on a scale that cannot even be imagined by the Nigerian public. Public corruption in Nigeria was rife before President Jonathan came to power. But it has since grown worse during his tenure as President. It is now systemic, and the President appears unwilling, or unable, for reasons of political expediency, to tackle it effectively. Recently, the Minister for Finance, Ngozi Okonji-Iweala, was reported as saying that Nigeria’s vast oil resources had become a curse to the nation. She was badly misunderstood and sharply criticized for her comments. But she was right. If we did not have so much oil, we would be compelled to manage our resources better, like other African countries such as Botswana that are not so richly endowed with natural resources. Nigeria would be less corrupt. The truth is that our oil wealth has fuelled corruption in the country. It has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It has polarized our nation.

    A few days after President Jonathan downplayed the extent of corruption in Nigeria there was a stampede in Abuja and other cities in Nigeria over recruitment by the Immigration Services. Nineteen people died in the stampede. But as it turned out the recruitment exercise was unauthorized by the Board of the Immigration Services. The candidates, over 700, 000 of them, were made to pay N5,000 each as so-called ‘processing fees’ for 4,000 jobs that did not exist or, if they existed, had already been filled by the same authorities that advertised those jobs, and stood to make N3.5 billion, or more, from the fatal recruitment exercise. The collection of N5, 000 as ‘processing fees’ by a consulting firm was plainly illegal and fraudulent. Application for recruitment into the civil service is free. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Alhaji Abba Moro, who masterminded the massive and fatal fraud of which he would have been a beneficiary, was aware of this. But he has neither resigned as Minister, nor has he been fired by President Jonathan. He was not even remorseful over the loss of 19 innocent lives during the Immigration recruitment exercise which he blamed on the victims. How callous can Nigerian officials be? It is the impunity with which public officials are treated that accounts for their brazen corruption.

    As I write this, the riddle over the missing $20 billion oil revenue, which is more than the annual budgets of most African countries, remains unresolved, with both the federal ministry of finance and the NNPC blaming each other and trying desperately to cover up the massive financial leakage and fraud involved. It will probably be swept under the carpet by the authorities in the end, after a perfunctory and inconclusive investigation. Instead of fully probing the allegation the whistleblower, Lamido Sanusi, the loquacious former Governor of the CBN, has been effectively fired by the President. Sanusi has since claimed that the charge of ‘financial recklessness and mismanagement’ made against him by the Financial Reporting Council regarding the intervention funds was baseless, as the President himself had often requested for such interventions by the CBN and had approved them. The President has not denied this and was aware of it as far back as March last year when he first received the FRCN report indicting the Governor of the CBN for ‘financial recklessness’. He waited nearly a whole year before acting on such a scathing report about the sleuth and sleaze in the CBN. Some of the so-called beneficiaries of the intervention funds, a veritable source of massive corruption, have denied receiving from the CBN the funds allegedly donated to them. So, the CBN, the major financial institution in the country, the so-called ‘bank of last resort’, has proved to be a major source of corruption as well. In effect, all major public institutions in Nigeria, including the major financial institutions, are corrupt. The fact of the matter is that very few, if any, public institutions and agencies in Nigeria can stand a vigorous audit of their financial operations. Many of them have not been audited for years.

    Nigeria loses about 20 percent of its oil production and exports to massive oil bunkering and theft. President Jonathan is fully aware of this, but he appears unwilling or helpless in tackling the problem in spite of the massive loss of revenue involved. The NNPC is known to be a cesspool of massive corruption, but the president is under some inexplicable constraint that makes it difficult for him to tackle the problem headlong. It is as if he is simply overwhelmed by the vast scale of public corruption in the country. How about the Abacha loot, the allegations regarding the private jet of the Minister for Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Allison Madueke, and the prevarications in sacking the former Minister of Aviation, Ms Oduah? How about the fraud and scam discovered in the oil subsidy in which companies that did not even import oil received in 2012 subsidies, unbudgeted for, totaling N1.3 tr. from the federal government, or the NNPC? How about the issue of unresolved discrepancies in the funds of the SURE-P which the government has simply swept under the carpet? These are only a few of the reported scams that President Jonathan has refused to tackle expeditiously. In the circumstances, how can he be taken seriously, either here, or abroad, when he says media reports on corruption in Nigeria are exaggerated and that he is fighting it? Where is the evidence that he is doing so, when he has been hesitant to move against public officials facing charges of corruption? Instead, the President has become increasingly hostile to public criticism, threatening that Governors of states that criticize him on corruption should not expect federal projects in their states. But he is president of the whole country.

    Now there is talk in official circles of removing the so-called oil subsidy. The federal government says it is not sustainable. But the high cost of imported refined oil is also due to the massive fraud in the oil sector. Public resistance to the proposed removal of the oil subsidy is justified in the circumstances. But whatever one’s reservations might be about the oil subsidy, it is better to remove it, once and for all, as it has for long, been another veritable source of massive corruption in the country. It was not the public that was benefiting from the oil subsidy, but the fraudulent oil importers, and the fat cats in the Ministry of Finance and the NNPC. Let us close this window of massive fraud and scam in the Nigerian oil sector.

    So, Mr. President, public corruption is alive and well in Nigeria. It is, in fact, becoming increasingly acceptable socially. Denial by the president of this fact, known locally and internationally, will not do him or our country any good at all, as it will dent both the image and credibility of our president and the entire country.

  • National Conference: Use this lesson and save Nigeria

    As the National Conference is now taking off in Abuja, I consider it appropriate to repeat some things that I recently wrote in this column. Nigeria could soon break up – if anybody thinks otherwise, as things stand today, he is deceiving himself. Anybody who is conversant with the strong feelings of most Nigerian peoples can easily see it.

    But I believe that Nigeria can be saved – that Nigeria can survive, and go on from there to prosper in the world. The country called India offers us a very useful lesson. If we learn that lesson and use it, we can save our country. This is the historic task facing the National Conference as it sits in Abuja.

    India was, like Nigeria, created by the British. It was the largest British protectorate in Asia – in the same way that Nigeria was the largest British protectorate in Africa. Both Nigeria and India contain very many nationalities (otherwise known as “linguistic nations” in India) – Nigeria contains nearly 300 nationalities, India about 2000. At the independence of India in 1947, India was a “federation” designed by the British overlords. The British had created the Indian Federation merely for “administrative convenience”; the states or federating units of the federation were arbitrary blocks of territories based on administrative convenience – without any deference to the nationalities. The nationalities were grouped or split irrationally.

    Like the India of 1947, the Nigeria of 1960 (at independence) was also a federation designed by the British for administrative convenience – without deference to the nationalities. The nationalities were grouped arbitrarily into three regions, and some nationalities were split up along the boundaries of the three regions. When many nationalities cried out against this irrational treatment, the British rulers answered that they were not willing to change anything – and that Nigerians themselves could tackle the problem after independence. Since independence in 1960, the Nigerians (civilian politicians and military dictators) who have controlled the powers of the federal government, have just followed the example of the British – by creating states for administrative and ulterior political considerations, and by irrationally grouping and splitting our nationalities. Therefore, the Nigerian federation of 2014 is, unfortunately, still almost exactly like the Indian federation of 1947.

    Worse still, as Nigerian rulers have created smaller, weaker and poorer states, they have reasoned that these states are too weak to hold much power or responsibility, and they have consequently grabbed all power, all resources, and all resource control in our country, and heaped everything in the hands of the federal government. The federal government has therefore become a sick and unrestrained monster, mud-swimming insanely in limitless power and money, barging into everything and anything according to its whims and caprices, dragging all efficiency down, generating corruption, distorting electoral and judicial processes all over our country, and breeding hideous poverty. With the poverty grew crimes, insecurity, various species of conflicts, and now, terrorism. Today, most Nigerians have had enough – and Nigeria is about to implode.

    Parts of India (the far northern provinces which became Pakistan and Bangladesh) broke away soon after 1947. After that, the rest of India continued to shake; many nationalities wanted to break away. Today, Nigeria is shaking, and many nationalities want to break away. But Indians took action and saved their country. We Nigerians can save Nigeria too – simply by doing what the Indians did.

    Here is what the Indians did. Many Indians began to advocate that their federation should be restructured in such a way as to show respect to the nationalities, and make the nationalities happy to be members of the Indian federation. Most of the biggest politicians opposed this, claiming that it would only lead to the breaking up of the country. The Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, threatened that if it was adopted he would resign. But the proposal grew more and more popular, more and more intense. Finally, by 1953, the country accepted it. Nehru and other powerful politicians humbly bowed to the will of the majority. A National Commission was set up to look into the matter and to advise the country.

    The Commission recommended the following: First, that the nationalities and their different cultures should be respected, and that no nationality should be split by any boundary in the federation. Secondly that the larger nationalities should each form a state. Third, that the small and contiguous nationalities in various parts of India should negotiate among them and form states (no nationality was to be pushed into any state; the nationalities that agreed to form a state would negotiate the constitution of their state). Fourth, that a lot of powers should be devolved to the states from the federal government, to make the states strong, and that, in revenue allocation, the states should receive much more than the federal government.

    The process of devolution resulted in the following list of powers for the states: public order; police; education; local government; roads and transport; agriculture; land and land revenue; forests; fisheries; industry and trade; state public service commissions; and courts (except the Supreme Court of India). It also laid down another list on which the states and the centre would both have power to make laws – namely, criminal laws and their administration; economic and social planning; commercial and industrial monopolies; shipping and navigation on the inland waterways; drugs; ports; courts and civil procedures. The federal (or union) government was given powers over such subjects as defence, foreign policy, inter-state commerce, the Supreme Court, etc. In revenue allocation, the states were given a percentage much larger than that of the Federal Government. Today, it is 85% for the states and 15% for the federal government.

    An Indian scholar and statesman, Dr. S.D. Muni, has described the effects of this careful restructuring as follows: “The elaborate structure of power devolution has combined with the linguistic basis of federal unity to facilitate the management of cultural diversity in India and to help mitigate pulls towards separatism and disintegration”. Muni adds that both at the federal and state levels, Indians are dedicated to “a consciously followed approach to preserve and promote the cultural specificities of diverse groups”, and that that “has helped such groups identify with the national mainstream”. Finally, the health of the whole structure has been greatly helped by the fact that Indians have consciously remained loyal to the integrity of their democratic institutions and to democratic politics.

    That is it. Surely we Nigerians are able to take these same steps and save our country. The National Conferenceshould restructure our federation along the same lines. We should also establish effective measures for upholding democratic politics in our country, the integrity of our elections and courts, and the handling of our public accounts. These steps will surely benefit our country, our states, our nationalities, our institutions, and all of us Nigerians. They cannot conceivably hurt any Nigerian nationality or group. Therefore, hopefully, no Nigerian nationality or group will, at the National Conference, put up a resistance to them. I fear that if any nationality or group resists these measures at the National Conference, Nigeria might quickly evaporate on the spot. We must all join hands to prevent that.

  • Electricity, journey without end

    A year ago, President Goodluck Jonathan in a rather expansive mood told the nation that by December 2013 many of us with generators would be begging people to take them away from us because by that time electric power supply will be abundant and regular. It is now clear that the prophecy of the President has not come true and our hopes have consequently been dashed. I was Ibadan for about a week at the middle of March and throughout almost seven days there was no light in my high-brow neighbourhood of new Bodija extension. In this precinct, we have an agreement to shut down our generators by 11 O’clock at night so as to allow people without generators to sleep. Secondly, this was also necessary to avoid being targeted as a rich person because only rich people can afford the cost of generators, their maintenance, and the cost of diesel or petrol. And thirdly, our community security guards prefer to operate in the dark and therefore prefer absence of light which is the normal thing in civilised countries. The period under discussion is also the period when we did not have petroleum products in Nigeria so even if one wanted to put on generators, there was no fuel to fire the engines. I also need power to pump water from my well into the over head tanks for water supply since I have to operate like a local government supplying all my municipal needs. In the absence of power and in the circumstance of terrible heat then prevailing all over Nigeria I was reduced to a miserable life of stinking village peasant. This was the condition in our well regarded neighbourhood and one was therefore prepared to buy petrol or diesel at any price in order to have a reasonably tolerable life. I am going into all these detail to show that electricity supply is not only a key to industrial development but also a necessity of modern living.

    In 1999, when President Obasanjo took over power, we were told that the installed capacity of electricity in Nigeria was 6,000 megawatts and that only 2,400 megawatts were available for distribution. The country was then told that with the massive investment in building generating power plants, Nigeria by 2003 would have available 6,000 megawatts available power and at least 10,000 megawatts installed capacity. It is now 14 years since and the available power last week was 2,4000 megawatts. This is after several billions of dollars have been spent, several new generating plants built and commissioned, the old ones supposedly revamped at the cost of billions of dollars and yet we are back to square one. The minister in charge of power, Professor Nebo says the reason for this collapse is due to vandalisation of gas pipelines by militants in the Niger Delta. I do not believe this simplistic explanation. Sometimes in the past, we were told about drop in the water level in the dams, snakes hanging around electric transmission lines, thieves cutting transmission lines and other imaginative excuses. The upshot of all these is that a country of 170 million people that requires at least 100,000 megawatts of electricity is getting less than 3,000. The hopelessness of our situation becomes glaring when compared with the situation in South Africa where a country of less than 40 million people is generating about 50,000 megawatts. We have tried everything under the sun and even under the moon without a solution. Then we were told that privatisation is the answer. We have now privatised and the situation has gotten worse. The reason for this worsening situation must lie in the fact of either those who bought into the electricity sector are the wrong people with no technical knowhow or required people or resources to manage a critical sector of our national life. We are therefore in a quandary as a nation and it seems to me that the policy makers are throwing up their hands and resigning themselves to this present condition of absolute failure. The collapse of the electricity sector is manifestly the result of bad governance and poor leadership. A visit to our sister country of Ghana proves this point completely. In all my visits to Ghana and staying in hotels, I have never heard the sound of generators. There is a feeling that this present government is overwhelmed by the myriad of problems facing the country. The federal highways have collapsed, goods cannot be easily cleared at the ports, the roads leading to the ports are dilapidated, there is general insecurity all over the country, the recent tragedy of a million young people looking for 4,000 immigration jobs and some of them dying in the process is a signal if one is needed of a failed state. Let us hope that the jamboree going on in Abuja would come up with a new constitutional architecture for running this benighted country and this new architecture must device new structures for running this plural country instead of the over centralised system that we currently have. It should be possible for individuals of means to set up electricity generating companies in cities and villages and distribute and sell power to whoever wants it. The success of the Redeemed Christian Church of God camp in this regard should be a pointer to the future. Power is available 24/7 for a community close to 20,000 people because they have their own gas fired turbine and distribution network totally independent of government and the national grid. If this can be replicated all over the country this will put an end to our suffering and miserable lives. Legal institutions should be put in place and the banking sector should be encouraged to facilitate the replication of the success of the RCCG camp all over the country. For those who are old enough, this was the situation in Jos in the 60s and early 70s when a private company was generating and distributing power on the Jos Plateau. This was also the case with most big cities that had independent power generating plants. There is therefore a need to go backward to the future in this regard. We need to explore all possibilities to come out of this rot and without power, our country will not develop and the hopelessness of unemployment will continue to afflict our youths with consequent insecurity nationwide.

    The need for regular supply of electricity in a world that is increasingly driven by knowledge industries does not need any emphasis. If we are to join the rest of the world in the application of computers, in teaching and learning, in administration and planning, in distribution of resources, and in running our lives generally regular supply of power is an absolute necessity. Any visit to our so-called teaching hospitals in Nigeria will show how far back we are in the global race for excellence. Sometimes, sick patients have to be carried on the backs of their relatives upstairs in hospitals when the lifts will not work as a result of lack of electricity. Even the administration of drugs in regular doses cannot be done when the equipments fail. This is just an example and this can be multiplied several times over in several sectors of our lives. The fact that our streets are pitch-dark at night is an invitation to insecurity. A visit to New York a city that does not sleep puts most of our cities back in the Dark Middle Ages where we belong. It is even sad for me to be writing about electricity and water problems in 21st Century Nigeria which are taken for granted in most countries of the world including countries of the Third World. Many people outside Nigeria would find it pedestrian to discuss the issue of water and electricity supply. But of course in our country, we seem to be at the first stage of development in all areas of human life. This unfortunately is the sad reality of our life in this country. Sometimes you have the impression that our leaders may not realise this especially when they foolishly compare our country with the United States of America when they are demanding for unearned salaries and allowances. As a public commentator and public intellectual, one is like the voice of one crying in the wilderness without anybody listening.

  • Three jobs for one life

    In our characteristic manner, we have almost forgotten the tragedy that hit the nation when 19 youngsters died in their search for job on March 15. Since the tragedy, we have moved on as if nothing happened. Those who know us as a nation know that it is in our character to forget so soon things that should engage our mind. It has been 12 days since the tragedy, yet its import seems lost on the government.

    Besides remembering the dead at august ceremonies, such as the inauguration of the National Conference on January 17 and the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on March 20, the government has generally treated the job seekers’ death as one of those things that will soon blow away like others before it. The fault is not that of the government but ours because we tend to also treat such issues with levity.

    We are not bothered collectively to the extent of rising to challenge the government. All we are good at is to make noise and after that it is to thy tent oh Israel. We leave the bereaved to bury their dead and move on to other things. The government knows that things will not be different with the March 15 Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment test in which the job seekers died.

    The initial outrage over the tragedy seems to have petered out. We are no longer talking about the incident because as usual other topical issues have cropped up which we consider more important than the death of these promising 19 youngsters who went in search of bread, but never returned home. I do not understand why we are not angry enough as a people to want to fight for our right and what is just. We like to complain in the dark recesses of our houses where nobody will hear us.

    We are afraid of playing on the large stage of the streets where our voices will be heard. This is where we are different from people in other parts of the world, say like the North and South Africans. As the late ace Afro-beat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, sang years ago, our fear stems from the fact that we do not want to die. But when will we not die? Whether we rise to fight for our right or not, we will die? So, why don’t we die fighting on our feet instead of being passive where we should be proactive.

    This is not an incitement, but a wake up call on Nigerians not to allow themselves to be taken for a ride by those in power. Twelve days after the Immigration jobs tragedy, the Minister of Interior, Patrick Abba Moro, who oversees the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is still talking down at us. He even has the temerity to blame others for something he should take responsibility for. From what we have seen so far, there is no way Moro can absolve himself of the tragedy that befell the nation on March 15.

    It is only in this part of the world that public officers find excuses for their actions and inactions. Moro cannot be allowed to get away with the tame excuses he has been given for the cause of the tragedy. First, it was that the job seekers did not follow procedure. Next, it was that doctors, nurses, bankers, teachers and others thronged the recruitment centres in large number. Really? What does he expect in a society where there is no job security? Won’t people look for where their employment can be guaranteed? Moro’s excuses are not tenable; they do not hold water.

    He has questions to answer and the earlier he prepares his mind to answer these questions when he appears before the Senate and the House of Representatives the better. This is a man who stopped the NIS recruitment in 2012 because the former Comptroller-General, Mrs Rose Uzoma, did not follow due process. If he could do that just about 15 months ago, why should he fall into the same morass now? There is no way he can defend the March 15 exercise, which the Board of Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence, Prisons and Fire Service has said it knows nothing about. Yet, the Board is charged with the recruitment, promotion and retirement of officers.

    Where is the moral justification for Moro’s action in conducting the March 15 botched exercise if he could cancel the one of 2012 conducted by Uzoma for not following due process. Defending his action in an interview with Sunday Trust on March 13, last year, he said : ”We had these allegations of recruitment racketeering. We had these allegations of lack of transparency in the recruitment process…and I believe that it is only responsible that as a minister, if there are allegations that Nigerians expect to know about, especially if it is for the integrity of the person involved and the integrity of the Service and good governance, it is only fair that we should set up a machinery to ascertain the veracity of these allegations.

    ”It is only fair for us to know if things are wrong and to properly situate things so that the morale of the staff and the integrity of the Service are not impugned by these allegations. If we continue to gloss over these things and pretend that nothing is happening, there is the possibility that Nigerians will go to town with the conclusion that certain things are wrong. Where things are wrong, we should have the courage to go ahead to sanitise the situation. Where nothing is wrong, we will show that nothing is wrong”.

    Good talk, honourable minister, Nigerians are waiting for you to walk the talk in respect of what happened on March 15. It cannot, to borrow your words, be ”glossed over” by providing each family that lost people in the tragedy three slots in the civil service. What a way to remember the dead!

     

    Re :lmmigration death point

    Who says our leaders have not been putting on their thinking cap? That is what the president and his council members did which enabled them to come up with the infantile decision to give slots to families of the dead. Help us, oh God! Anonymous.

    The Minister of Interior and the Comptroller-General of Immigration must carry the can. For once, some persons must be sanctioned for this great lapse in organisation and administration. The buck passing must stop. From Chukwuma Dioka, Owerri, Imo State.

     Re: Honour and the looter

    The late Gen Abacha was indecent, brutal, wicked and beastly. What President Goodluck Jonathan tried to achieve by giving the late Abacha, a common thief, an award is yet to be understood. From Uche Okereke, Umuahia, Abia State,

    If you say the late Abacha did not deserve that award, what will you say of Babangida. Let the dead man rest and talk about the living ‘evil’ general. Anonymous.

    His decision to honour the late Abacha shows clearly that President Jonathan is a zoologist. Help us beg him to forward a supplementary list to the National Assembly to honour Oyenusi, Anini, Clifford Orji and even Judas Iscariot posthumously, then we shall applaud him as the president. From Jemiluyi Peters

  • Death as precondition for appointment

    Last week, all grieving parents had expected from a government that has for several months been on the defensive for its inability to protect from violent death, children in their schools and now, young graduates seeking employment was for the government to establish its relevance by making example of an unfeeling and insolent minister. Similarly, opinion leaders around the country were not just calling for the sack of the minister of internal affairs but his prosecution for criminal negligence following avoidable deaths of young Nigerian job seekers. But the response was typical President Jonathan. This was conveyed through the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, who, with his characteristic zest which is often at variance with the mood of the moment, reeled out the content a new government policy ostensibly designed to assuage the raw feelings of aggrieved parents

    Maku first informed us that as a demonstration of the president’s displeasure with the March 15 tragedy, he has ordered the cancellation of the bungled recruitment exercise which most informed Nigerians already knew was nothing but a swindle organized by PDP swindlers who feed on the blood and sweat of the weak.

    Maku also revealed that the president who always avoids hard decisions that may impact negatively on any of his trusted party men and women has set up a committee headed by the chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Deaconess Joan Ayo. Other members include the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), David Paradang, who was excluded in the March 15 PDP deal, representatives of the Inspector-General of Police, Comptroller of the Nigeria Prison Service, Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and the Commandant-General of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps. The committee is to conduct a new recruitment to fill the NIS vacancies.

    Such mandate in itself was an indirect admission of government’s loss of confidence in its own bureaucracy and by inference in itself. Government after all is only as good as its bureaucracy which controls the water we drink, the roads we pass, the air we breathe, the education of our children, preservation of our culture and our dreams and aspirations as a nation. When it decays, society decays.

    And finally, the minister delivered government’s message of hope to grieving parents; “three young members of the deceased families, one of which must be a female, are to be given automatic employment, so are all the injured currently receiving treatment in hospitals across the country”. To be sure of those who are qualified under the last category, we still have to wait for government definition of what constitutes an ‘injury’ since applicants experienced varying degree of injuries ranging from possible loss of limbs, of pregnancies, fractures, bruises and even psychological traumas.

    For the survivors of the March 15 organized chaos and deaths who still eye NIS jobs, the gates have not been permanently closed, the competition has only become fiercer and their chances slimmer. But it is bad news for the hungry, the weak and the psychologically traumatized applicants who have roamed the streets in search of job for years and appear physically healthy only in appearance. Remember in 2008, when such people were subjected to physical exercise as parts of similar recruitment process, 43 of a little less than 200,000 that participated that year collapsed with 17 ending up in the mortuary.

    But if this ‘death as a precondition for employment’ policy was conceived by government as a problem-solving activity involving choosing between many alternatives at minimal cost, it is dead on arrival. It will likely turn out to be a piece of bad policy that cannot be implemented.

    First, one is not even sure if a government already overwhelmed by daily harvests of deaths from mindless killings by Boko Haram and some suspected Fulani herdsmen have had time to take inventory of the victims of March 15 disaster. Probably for that reason, the government is yet to release to the public the names of the dead and the injured scattered all over the country. Until such an exercise, we may not know if some of the victims are the only siblings of their parents. Even if they are not, in a society where a parents strive to train a child hoping he would after graduation take over the training of his junior ones, how are we sure some of the diseased siblings are qualified to be absorbed either into the highly coveted NIS or into the bureaucracy?

    And who, if one may ask, are the family members of those diseased pregnant women? Their parents or their spouses? If the latter, will the husband be allowed to present his own brothers and sister? And if that happens, will that not defeat this government ‘creative’ policy of compensating the dead through offer of job to her siblings? And in such circumstances, can we foreclose the possibility of the parents of the dead pregnant job seeker suing government and their son in-law? But beyond litigation, an attempt to deprive a diseased pregnant job seeker of her own compensation will be a betrayal of Dr Patience Jonathan advocacy for equality of men and women in the sharing of dividends of democracy. That, in my view, is one war the president can ill afford as the preparation for 2015 gathers momentum

    And still more questions. In the case of the diseased without female sibling, will her family lose out or be allowed to sell its quota? And it cannot get any messier if the diseased is from a polygamous home where the wives had just had an altercation before the tragedy of one of the family members? Don’t forget in Africa, the belief that the ‘witch cried last night, the child dies in the morning, who does not know the witch killed the child’, still holds.

    Obviously this is one piece of policy that is not implementable. And as usual, the voice is behind it is that of the same PDP dealers and wheelers who in attempt to cover up the theft of 1.7 trillion mandated the president to tell Nigerians that the economy would collapse without the removal of fuel subsidy. It is the same voice of PDP men who often reap where they did not sow who were behind the president’s miscalculated attempt to change the name of University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University. And in recent times, voice of PDP parasites behind the president’s ill-advised decision to fritter away public funds on welcoming entertainers into PDP fold in Ilorin, Sokoto and Katsina while the nation was on fire. Except those PDP dealers and wheelers manipulating the president, everyone knows the president would have secured more mileage by arranging a meeting with bereaved families of slain school pupils or survivors of bombed markets.

    But as argued on this pages these past three years of PDP’s self serving policies, greed, lawlessness and irresponsibility, as recently demonstrated in NIS and has been the practice in NNPC, PPPRA, the aviation sector as well as other government ministries and parastatals, are indicative of absence of governance following President Jonathan abdication of government to PDP dealers and wheelers. Our ‘grievous mistake’ as our inimitable Solana Olumhense pointed out in The Guardian last Sunday is the wrong assumption that we have a government. What we have, he says is a “pretence-performance, like children playing in the sand”. It is just as well this grim verdict is coming from one of Nigeria’s most respected independent minded journalist and not from Pa Bisi Akande, the opposition APC interim chairman who not too long ago likened President Jonathan government to that which operates at a kindergarten level.

  • Working class abstractions

    Neither proverbs nor verse; nor the most burdensome introspection could rewrite our tragedies into bliss. The grandest of rhymes would make no monstrosity sublime; it will not ignite the most gutless of hearts into an elegance of fire. But we continue to chant anyway; even as our freedom song becomes a funeral dirge. We continue to chant anyway; we who invite the tree maggot to beautify our funeral pyre.

    It is not wisdom, humaneness or courage that drives us to do the things we do, rather it is an absence of these that dwarfs our hearts from the highest deeds. Thus we evolve from a nation enfeebled by fear and greed, to become the land besotted to lust and death’s every endeavour.

    Hence our pursuit of self to the detriment of the Nigerian State. It is to the same evils that we are still beholden. Despite our tiresome rant and supposed displeasure with the status quo, we remain the perfection of a stagnant form of self-complacency.

    The role of the Nigerian elite and the working class is today, perverted. No longer do they serve to provide a focal point to challenge the nation and ultimately advance its course. The Nigerian elite today, settle principally to perpetuate their parasitic existence. And so does the country’s impoverished working class.

    Despite our protests in the interest of the working class or the proverbial “average Nigerian,” reality proves us mostly, to be just another band of opportunists and frauds. The Nigerian working class indeed, constitutes a fraud. Without doubt, this purportedly cheated class has evolved to become as much tormentors as the country’s ruling class.

    Both the ruling class and the working class are indeed cut from the same stock. They possess no enviable culture or refinement save their proficiency in the decadent and perverse. That explains why the major preoccupation of the Nigerian people is to acquire – albeit obscenely – material wealth, fame and a limitless degree of influence and impropriety to make an obscene show of it.

    This in no small measure impacts negatively on the country’s social institutions of which a great many evolve to become like those chestnut burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only for pricking the fingers. The downside of this abnormal situation manifests in the quality of citizenship available to the Nigerian nation.

    Although the country’s pioneer elite class emerged to serve both patronizing and reactionary roles in response to the agenda of the country’s British colonialists, this small band constituting the country’s ruling class have since evolved along various shades of political culture that are at best rudderless and incoherent.

    The Nigerian working class, on the other hand, evolved out of an economic necessity. The evolution of this class has over time betrayed series of conscious and desperate attempts by members of the class to align themselves with the ruling class against fellow underprivileged members of the working class.

    Hence today, the country’s working class has evolved into a fundamentally crooked class, comprising struggling professionals, unemployed youth, self-styled activists and opportunists persistently milking every impasse and volatile situation to their advantage. With the inexorable expansion of the process of globalisation, they are bonding much faster and inching together towards a more definite destruction of the nation’s populist movement, and its yet untapped array of socio-political and economic resources.

    The scale of the current crisis is no doubt immense and reflective of the contradictions that have been piling up in the last 54 years of the country’s independence. Not only has the Nigerian working class been severely depleted of men of potential and substance, its capacities to make new heroes of otherwise dormant youths has been ruthlessly sabotaged.

    Far removed from its limitless potentials in the pre-independence era, the country’s working class has become too handicapped to face the country’s infinite challenges. Therefore, the citizenry’s total capitulation to the country’s extremely stringent living standards which persistently manifests in the country’s leadership malaise, dying industries, unemployment, substandard education, healthcare and insecurity to mention a few.

    Caught in the vortex of these dehumanizing conditions, many social commentators have advocated a Soviet-styled or Middle-Eastern styled revolt against the country’s ruling class however, what most of such advocates have failed to note are the striking peculiarities that will hinder such a revolt in this part of the globe – basically, the absence of a cohesive and a fundamentally conscious working class.

    The most remarkable detail replicated in the various revolutionary actions that have successfully taken place across the world, is the indisputability of Freidrich Engels’ assertion that the State is nothing more than armed bodies of men, organized in the interest of the private property.

    As Ola Balogun identified recently, Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali like various characters constituting Nigeria’s conscienceless leadership are just individuals, who on their own are totally powerless, but they maintain their influence and might by imposing themselves on the citizenry via the apparatus of coercion and violence perpetrated through their nation’s armed forces.

    But unfortunately for Mubarak and Ben Ali among others, the armed forces of men constituting their nation’s armed forces are themselves human beings with feelings and are also affected by the pervasive harsh realities and inhumane conditions of their societies. At a decisive point during the revolution, these armed bodies of men discovered in the citizenry’s revolt, a rousing fearlessness and fortitude to challenge and conquer, thus even the army got divided along class lines.

    The middle and junior ranks began to reason and identify with the aspirations of the revolutionary movement. Eventually, they began to see themselves too as civil servants and the oppressed even as they unapologetically flouted age-old military codes.

    What is deductible from these occurrences is that even the armed forces and various other apparatuses of State coercion and power will act decisively in the interest of the rebellion if the masses can give them enough reason to do so – via infinite tenacity, purpose, initiative and preparedness to sacrifice. These sterling qualities unfortunately, are lacking in the country’s citizenry.

    Thus Nigeria remains an independent nation constituted by citizenry who do not know yet how to be free. We could not be totally free yet even if we tried. Even if it could be granted that the average Nigerian – working class to be precise – has freed himself from a colonial tyranny, he remains at present, slave to various classes of home-spawned political and economic tyranny.

    The Nigerian working class today lacks a true culture of citizenship and manhood characteristic of the free. They are essentially shorn of initiative and slavish in character. Slavish, because they are unapologetically mindless, gullible and unable to evolve an acceptable standard of determining the truth and identifying with it.

    However, it’s probably due to the persistent hardship and extreme realities they are forced to endure that the country’s working class have become pitiably vitiated in reason and exploits. The success of any revolution is never totally dependent on the presence of a bloodthirsty revolutionary front but as current realities instruct; the existence of a conscientious, cohesive, patriotic, peaceful and formidable working class.

    The existence of such peace-loving and dependable class of citizenry becomes imperative in a country like Nigeria where the ruling class seems completely lost to reason and justice.

  • An extraordinary March

    An extraordinary March

    MARCH is special. The month symbolises renewal and relief, some reprieve from the terrible cold of the winter months, which my friends living overseas could not wait to see off. They are excited now.

    Gone is the snow and its nuisance. Here is March, foreshadowing the sunny summer. Flowers are blooming. The air is cool. It is no longer harsh in its coldness. This is winter’s way of saying farewell. In fact, metaphorically, spring is a season of rebirth, of newness and of joy.

    Here, the rains are struggling to return. Even when it pours heavily, the water is quickly lapped up by the sun-baked earth. The landscape is dusty. The sun is biting, burning and scorching. The discomfort is fuelled by the power problem, as airconditioners become some of those ornamental antiquities. The only smiling faces are those of diesel merchants and their cousins, the generator dealers.

    March, ironically, has shown us its bloody face. With spring a terrible storm has sprung up, visiting the land with strange calamities. We cannot wait for March to march out of our lives.

    There is still no trace of the Malaysian Airlines plane that disappeared on March 8. There were 239 people aboard Flight MH 370. Despite a massive search for the plane, the mystery of its disappearance remains knotty.

    Last Saturday, 19 jobless youths died in a desperate attempt to find jobs. The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said it planned to recruit 4,556 . No fewer than 770,000 applied. They were corralled into the centres for the aptitude and fitness tests after each of them had paid N1,000 for a form and N500 for a white vest. Among them were many who had not had a decent meal in days. Famished. There were those who were physically and mentally exhausted. There were expectant mothers desperate for a fine future for themselves and their unborn children. Good luck, they were told by their loved ones as they left home that calamitous morning.

    But 19 of them were unlucky. They were trampled down in the stampede that occurred as a result of the foolishness and sheer greed of the organisers of the morbid exercise, which may eventually be exposed as a wicked attempt to rob the poor.

    Then the blame game began. Interior Minister Abba Moro, speaking like a bingeing old man struggling to fight off a terrible hangover, heaped it all on the victims. He said they did not listen to instructions, that the centres were flooded by unauthorised people and that a probe of the incidents was on the way. No remorse in his voice. Nor pity for the families of those who died. Nor a deep reflection on the matter that is as scandalous as it is ridiculous. Nor an answer to any of the questions sparked by the show of shame.

    Who owns the company that got the contract to run the tests – Senate President David Mark’s wife has denied that she owns it – for the NIS? Can’t NIS recruit its own men and women? Is it true that NIS boss David Shikfu Parradang resisted the recruitment initially, but was overwhelmed by the minister? What was Moro’s interest in this matter? Why were there no ambulances at the centres? If there is, indeed, a probe of the matter, why will Moro be the one to oversee it? Shouldn’t he step aside as a sign of respect for the dead? Can he be a judge in his own case? No. Nemo judex in causa sua.

    Isn’t this a criminal matter? Where are the police? Will the bereaved families be compensated? Why were the applicants not insured, considering the nature of the test? Why were they not screened and their number reduced before the tests?

    The Immigration jobs tragedy has also raised questions of credibility – and sincerity – for the government’s jobs schemes. At first, it was SURE- P. Is anybody sure of what this is all about? And then YOUWIN. Fancy names all. Who wins? Where? When? How? Is this another Baba Ijebu gamble scheme? How much cash has gone into it? Something tells me that Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – she seems to be ministering onto a dying economy – will someday be called upon to give account of these jokes.

    As a sign of disrespect for the dead and our predilection for abusing humanity, we went to Abuja on Monday to open the National Conference – the much touted magic pill for all that ails Nigeria. Even before it begins, the conference is showing signs of being the biggest gathering of holidaymakers – and jokers, some insist – ever seen around here. The first argument was over the sitting arrangement. Petty? Wait for this: Lagos pastor Tunde Bakare got up to say if a Moslem uses a religious prayer to preface his contribution, a Christian can also open his contribution with “let somebody praise the Lord”.

    We saw the delegates –a mixed crowd of leaders and looters, crooks and cranks, pranksters and youngsters– on television. They were queuing up leisurely for accreditation after filling their attendance forms. All smiles. Many were pumping hands in a long-time-no-see manner. Some were yelling after seeing their age-old friends – and foes. The conviviality was arresting. All at N7billion.

    The future that the delegates came to discuss lies in the morgues – those youths who went through the pains of going to school and died of the pains of joblessness and their battle for a better deal. The future lies in those mass graves covered up by those forsaken villagers whose lot it was to face Boko Haram’s immolation after crying for hours and no help came.

    But this is not the first time that we have demonstrated crass insensitivity to our collective humanity. The other day in Abuja, we hosted the world to a centennial party, hours after 43 pupils were murdered in their sleep by Boko Haram insurgents to whom madness seems not to have a limit. Heartless.

    March opened its bloody match in Maiduguri, the beleaguered Borno State capital, with two bombs going off simultaneously. It was like an invasion from hell. By the time the bedlam cleared, no fewer than 35 residents lay dead. Besides, 20 villagers were said to have been killed by jets targeting the insurgents.

    Stunned, Governor Kashim Shettima rushed down to Abuja for help. He told reporters that the military were doing their best, but the insurgents seemed to be better motivated and better armed. Fair comment. President Goodluck Jonathan didn’t like that. He later said in an interview that if he withdrew the troops Shettima would not be able to stay in the Government House. No sir. That sounds imperious.

    On March 15, no fewer than 100 villagers were killed in Kaduna. Governor Mukhtar Yero shelved his overseas trip to comfort the bereaved. In Katsina, on March 13, on the eve of President Jonathan’s visit, armed men overwhelmed some villages, killing scores in their sleep. The President ordered that the killers be arrested. They are yet to be found.

    On March 4, there were reports that 11 old people were burnt to death in a village. They were among the 40 people who were killed by –who else – Boko Haram. The military have been fighting back. Of the insurgents who stormed Maiduguri on March 13, 60 were reportedly killed.

    In Plateau, after a brief lull, the killings have resurged. Benue State has lost its serenity to bloody encounters between herdsmen and other residents. Governor Gabriel Suswam came under fire as he drove to a village to sympathise with those who lost their loved ones.

    Many have left filling stations after spending hours on the queue only to die on those bad roads. Last Sunday, 55, including women and children, died in two accidents on the Gashua-Garin Road and the Potiskum-Damaturu Road in Yobe State. On the Lagos –Ibadan Expressway, 10 died on Monday.

    The intensity of the Boko Haram campaign has made March a month to watch. Is it time for the final battle in Boko Haram’s calendar? Why is there so much blood in this month of rebirth?

    On the day 90 villagers were reported killed, I called off a meeting. We were all crestfallen, too weak emotionally to discuss our editorial plans. That was unusual. Just like a bloody March.

    A boat capsized on March 12 in Lagos; 13 persons died. Some of the passengers were said to be rushing home to watch a soccer match. They got sunk in the marshy waters of March.

    The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said the Boko Haram madness was contrived to ridicule the Jonathan administration. This is political cretinism taken too far. Could party spokesman Olisa Metuh tell us who the contrivers are? Is that why the party has been holding rallies all over the place as if our lives depend on its buffoonery? Will a presidential visit to the parents of those Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, Yobe State, kids killed in their sleep be a bad idea? I don’t think so. But then, why should we be surprised that political rallies are more important to our leaders? Isn’t this March, the strange month?

    Nigerians, apparently tired of crying, are coming up with a strange display of morbid humour, cracking sardonic jokes. Consider this sent to my phone by a colleague: “The 2014 Gulder Ultimate Search is here! The search is scheduled to take place in Maiduguri. Contestants will be looking for Boko Haram leader Shekau. The star prize is $10million. Make I help you collect form? Abi what are friends for?”

    Don’t laugh. Remember this is March. Or how do you explain yesterday’s presidential response to the NIS jobs tragedy- three jobs for families of each of the dead and automatic employment for all the injured. Strange? Never mind. This is March.