The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Immigration death point

    For years, my little friend and brother, Telemi, has been begging me to help him get a job. He believes that with the kind of job I do, I should know one or two persons that can give him a job. Whenever he calls me from his Abuja base, he never fails to let me know that many government agencies are recruiting covertly and that all he needed is to be linked with the top shots of those organisations to facilitate his appointment.

    Daddy won gba yan ni Immigration, won gba yan ni Road Safety, won gba yan ni Civil Defence, won ko gbariwo e sita ni. Eni to bamo yan niwon gba. Translation : They are recruiting in Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC); but they are doing it discreetly because they are employing only those with connection.

    After sending him to one or two friends in Abuja without any luck, I told him to take things easy, while we continue to pray to God for the best. Telemi never gave up on his job search since he has a wife and two kids to feed. Whenever he calls, I feel for him because I know how it feels to be jobless. At times, I feel guilty that I have disappointed someone who looks up to me. But what can I do when things have become so hopeless in our country.

    How do we explain a situation where graduates of many years cannot get a job? Rather than create jobs or create the enabling environment for investors to do so, the government is playing politics with the matter. It claimed to have created 1.6 million jobs in four years, yet we cannot feel the impact. In which sectors of the economy can we find these jobs? Civil Service? Agriculture? Telecommunications? Banking? Insurance? Small scale enterprises? Military? Paramilitary?

    The truth is that the government is not doing anything concrete to address the issue of unemployment. It is merely paying lip service to it. Jobs are not created by the government just saying so. There should be tangible things in place to show that jobs have been created. And when these jobs are created, we will surely know because the number of unemployed will be reduced. Sadly, rather than reduce, the number keeps increasing.

    So, last Saturday when I heard about the NIS Recruitment Test taking place across the country, I was worried for Telemi. Something told me that in his desperation for a job, he may have found a way of sitting for the test without telling me. I was worried when I saw the huge crowd at the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos Mainland, who came to write the test. Among them were expectant mothers, elderly men and women. When I saw the sea of heads moving from one end of the stadium to the other, I knew that a tragedy was waiting to happen.

    For one, the exercise was not well coordinated. The applicants were left to their own devices. They knew next to nothing about what to do. They just flowed with the tide. They were confused because there was nobody to direct them. It was not a way to organise a test at all. For those of us who sat for public examinations in the past, we know how these things are organised and how the examining bodies go the extra mile to ensure that things are in order. In this instance, NIS was not clearly in charge of the exam which it asked people to come and write.

    How do you expect people to write a test in an open field like the stadium without chairs and tables? Why ask them to gather at the stadium when they were not expected to do an endurance test? If it was such a test, would the stadium have been ideal for it considering the sheer number that turned up? If it was such a test, would it have been appropriate to invite expectant mothers as we saw last Saturday? There can be only one explanation for what happened last Saturday and that is that, the NIS was not aware of the exercise which was conducted under its name.

    But is that possible? Yes, it is quite possible where the examining body, which in this case is NIS, is not carried along by those who took it upon themselves to conduct the interview through the backdoor. What I do not understand is why the NIS Comptroller-General, Mr David Paradang, allowed a cabal to hijack such a sensitive assignment from his outfit. Well, it may not entirely be his fault as NIS is said to have been handed over to a thick madam as her pot of soup. This madam, it wa gathered, handled the recruitment. So, Paradang has to look the other way when things like this are being done. He is just a figurehead managing an organisation over which he has no control. But this cannot be an excuse to exonerate him from last Saturday’s tragedy across the nation. With 19 persons dead at these recruitment centres (read as death points), Paradang cannot hide under the glib phrase : ”my hands are tied” to wash his hands of this fiasco. We will not accept that except he is ready to tell Nigerians those who tied his hands.

    As for Abba Moro, the Interior Minister, it is unfortunate that someone with his pedigree is caught in this mess. This is what happens to those who abandon the people’s cause to team up with their oppressors. No matter the amount of good he might have done in the past, Moro has unwittingly spoilt everything he ever stood for with the state murder of these innocent Nigerians, who went out in search of jobs, but never returned home to their families.

    If Moro has any shame at all, he would have resigned by now.

    RATHER than do that, he is trying to rationalise why things went wrong on Saturday. There can never be any plausible reasons for the death of these young men and women. Their country failed them at a time they needed the country most in their lives. They wanted a platform to enable them contribute their quota to national development, but the country sent them to their early graves. Must we continue to waste the lives of our youths this way.

    In 2008, we lost 17 persons in similar circumstance during the nationwide recruitment of NIS and the Nigeria Prisons Service. Six years down the line, we are yet to get out of such a horrible cycle of deaths. Are we progressing or regressing? Let the government immortalise these youths so that they would not die in vain and also serve as a reminder to us as a nation that unemployment is a gunpowder waiting to explode. Affliction, the Bible says, will not rise a second time. But what do we have here? Let our leaders put on their thinking cap and do the needful. May the souls of the departed rest in peace.

  • National Conference: Nigeria’s game changer

    On Monday in Abuja, President Jonathan finally declared open the long-expected and much- debated National Conference. It was just a ceremonial day of inauguration. But even then, the nearly 500 delegates gathered from all corners of Nigeria must already have started to feel the enormous gravity of what history has called them out to do. And for the rest of the 170 million of us Nigerians who are staying home and at our jobs (if we have any jobs), the finality that this National Conference represents will gradually become plain in the days to come.

    Simply put, this conference promises to be Nigeria’s game changer. Given the low level to which Nigeria has fallen in all directions, and given the very high expectations of Nigerians today, the possibilities are very high that this conference could change Nigeria radically for the better – could start Nigeria on a totally new path of orderliness, generate a radically new level of integrity in the processes of state, and point Nigeria onto a vibrant new path to prosperity and greatness in the world. But, at the same time, certain well-known factors lurk over and among the conferees – factors which, if they surface seriously in the conference, could result in the total and sudden disintegration of Nigeria.

    Whatever happens, President Jonathan would seem now to have set the record straight about his true intensions for this National Conference. There have been doubts about what he really wanted. I have been among those who have asked whether he was calling a National Conference only for the purpose of strengthening his bid for re-election in 2015. I have also been among those who have asked whether he is aware that the National Conference could change the political terrain in ways that could eliminate his chances of being a candidate at all in 2015. I have asked, “Would President Jonathan want to be president again from 2015 if the National Conference results in a much weaker federal government, and a President controlling much less powers and much less money than now?” And I have asked, “Is President Jonathan willing to accept the possibility that the National Conference could abolish the presidential system and replace it with a parliamentary system, and conceivably remove him completely from top leadership running in Nigeria’s political life?”

    I can say now that we Nigerians have received our answer to these troubling questions. President Jonathan will let the National Conference take its decisions, as it sees fit, in the interest of Nigeria. I was highly impressed when he said in his speech to the inaugural meeting of the National Conference: “Let me again repeat what I have been saying that Goodluck Jonathan has no personal agenda in convening this National Conference”. After the passing of our late President Yar’Adua, many of us intellectuals abroad, who do not belong to Jonathan’s ethnic nationality, chose on principle to support him for president, and have continually supported him – without even desiring to be known personally by him, not to talk of expecting any personal benefit from him. We reasoned that having a man from a minority nationality as our president could do some great good to the image of our country in the world. And we also calculated that a president from a minority nationality, especially from the Delta, would greatly increase the chances of needed restructuring of our federation. In the past three years we have watched in increasing agony as he seemed to attach no importance to the restructuring of the federation. Now, I can say that the agony is over, and that, if President Jonathan does indeed see this National Conference successfully to the remaking of our federation, he could become one of the greatest Nigerians, one of the greatest Africans, of our times.

    But there still remains another factor that could destroy everything. In the past year or so, as the debate over restructuring has grown, the political leaders of our Hausa-Fulani North have insistently said that they oppose any kind of restructuring – and that the status quo is sacrosanct. In a visit of leaders of the Arewa Consultative Forum to the Yoruba Unity Forum in December 2012, the Arewa North leaders stated emphatically that they considered the existing structure of the federation as settled, and that they rejected any idea or suggestion that matters that have been settled be reopened. There have even been significant Northern voices that have threatened that any attempt to change the status quo, or to modify the resource control situation, would provoke a war.

    In the same vein, a conference of the Northern Elders Forum, held on March 10-11, adopted the following stand: “The planned National Conference has no constitutional basis, or any form of legitimacy or authority to speak for the people of the North or other Nigerians. Its proceedings, conclusions and recommendations are therefore of no consequence and will not be accepted by the people of the North”.

    If such positions as this were to surface in the deliberations of the National Conference, there seems to be little doubt that Nigeria as we know it could fizzle out instantly. A Yoruba diaspora think-tank organization, Oodua Foundation, has responded to this statement of the Northern Elders Forum. Their answer goes as follows:“We must express serious shock about the statement credited to the Northern Elders Forum meeting of March 10-11 (concerning the National Conference). In the interest of all the peoples and citizens of Nigeria, we must urge the Northern Elders to reconsider this very damaging statement of theirs. In the history of the constitutional development of Nigeria, the present National Conference is perfectly in line with all previous Nigerian constitutional conferences, and it is by no means inferior to any in legitimacy. These are no times for irreconcilable stonewalling, or for hard postures designed to intimidate. No Nigerian people can now be intimidated. The way matters stand today, we either all join hands and sort out the colossal mess that Nigeria has become, or we separate”. From all over Nigeria, and from among Nigerians living in various parts of the world, people are speaking up to endorse and support this response by Oodua Foundation.

    The chances are good for Nigeria to change, reform, and go on to prosper. But the chances are also strong for Nigeria to self-destruct quickly. Which it will be is in the bosom of the National Conference which was inaugurated on Monday. This National Conference will change the Nigerian game – either way. The world is watching.

  • NIS tragedy; PDP’s crocodile tears

    A bungled recruitment drive by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) last Saturday left 19 desperate job seekers dead and scores of others still in critical condition in hospitals all over the country including Abuja which accounted for eight of the casualties. In Abuja as was the case in other venues, the tragedy followed a stampede as the over 70,000 youths that turned up for an aptitude test tried to gain entry into the main bowl of the stadium through only one point.

    Although deaths have become mere statistics in our nation which is today under assault by Boko Haram that attack army barracks, detonate bombs in heavily populated areas killing in hundreds, and Fulani herdsmen that sack villages killing women and children without discrimination, but for a government whose primary responsibility is the protection of lives and property to be seen as an accessory to the killing of job-seeking youths through the sloppy attitude of its officials especially at a time the legitimacy of that government is being viciously challenged through internal insurrections, cannot but be unsettling.

    I am also not sure if the crocodile tears coming from PDP and its leading lights whose inept leadership, bad economic policies and total absence of a coherent employment policy this past 15 years account for the current state of unemployment of thousands of youths turned out by our universities annually is not as infuriating as the tragic death of the youths.

    The PDP which seems to have shown more commitment to the sharing of our national patrimony by some of its members through fraudulent privatization policy and outright stealing by not a few of its indicted leading members is, according to Olisa Mentuh, its National Publicity Secretary “shocked and deeply saddened by the news of the untimely death of the young citizens”. The president who appointed Abba Moro a minister for no other consideration beyond being a failed PDP gubernatorial candidate in Benue, the late president Yar Adua’s Campaign Organisation Coordinator and one-time Director-General of the David Mark Campaign Organisation was also said to be “personally devastated by the incidents”. To the Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba whose colleagues refused to screen Abba Moro but asked him to take a bow just because he was the senate president’s candidate, the death of the job seekers was “an unimaginable tragedy for the country.” And for Tambuwal, the Speaker of the Lower House, “the death of the innocent youths was sorrowful and regrettable”. But no one is deceived. Nigerians know those responsible for the latest tragedy as well as the current state of our nation.

    Moro the Minister of Interior, for inexplicable reasons approved the sales of 520,000 applications for available 4,556 positions, raking in millions in application fees and cost of tea shirts. We are not told the final destination of the blood money but it is certain the amount like the NNPC $8 million a day scam described as kerosene subsidy or the huge amount to be raised by FRSC through double taxation of motorists in the name of new plate numbers will not pass through the federation account. However, in Moro’s judgment, the victims including the dead are to be blamed. As he self-righteously told grieving parents and concerned Nigerians, the victims “lost their lives due to impatience; they did not follow the laid down procedures spelt out to them before the exercise.” It didn’t matter that the applicants were already at some of the centres as early as 6.am while the ministry officials sauntered in at after 9.am and as was the case in Abuja National Stadium, expected the over 70,000 applicants including pregnant women who had been on the queue for over three hours to use only one entrance in the absence of crowd control experts.

    But beyond the deaths (we have a daily harvest of that in Borno, Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, Katsina); beyond inhuman conditions, (we have in the words of one analyst become victims of self-abuse as many of the victims attended universities where their hostels had no functional toilets and class room without desks), and beyond insensitive and outright reckless ministers (President Jonathan can boast of not a few), the tragedy of last Saturday, is a symptom of absence of governance arising from the collapse of our bureaucracy, once rated the best in Africa. What manner of government officials took the decision to conduct aptitude test for close to half a million in one fell swoop using various stadia across the country?

    The collapse of governance has found expression in the fact that for 15 years of PDP, we have been ruled by one-eyed king as predicted by Bode Thomas who had argued during the pre-independence years that what we needed was regionalism with strong regional parties, and leaders to meet at the centre. The North either for political expediency or its conspiracy against the West for Awolowo’s mortal sin of supporting the self-actualization quest of minorities, who wanted liberation from their northern feudal lords, imposed Obasanjo as its chosen leader for the Yoruba nation even when he was roundly rejected by his people. Obasanjo, who out of delusion thinks without him there would be no Nigeria chose ailing Yar’Adua just as he was also to single-handedly impose ill-prepared Goodluck Jonathan as the representative of the South-south at the centre.

    President Jonathan, the late Yar Adua and Obasanjo, their godfather, cannot give what they did not have. And this perhaps explains why when Obasanjo’s attention was called to the absence of a coherent employment policy by PDP during his first term in office, he enthusiastically called our attention to thousands of young graduates hawking recharge cards and the unemployable illiterate youths who could neither read nor write, hawking plantain chips on the streets of our major cities as dividends of undefined PDP employment policy.

    Obasanjo’s successors have not gone beyond his poverty alleviation gimmick that allows favoured PDP business partners to be issued with import licenses for fairly used motor cycles and tricycles from India. Yet this is a nation that had its first motorcycle assembly plant in the 1960s.

    As if this is not tragic enough, they have continued with his liberalization economic policies which allow granting of waivers to favored business fronts importing, cars, tyres, ceramics, shoes, drugs, textile including used clothes. And now the same set of PDP leaders who have presided over the collapse of all our budding industries this past 15 years are shedding crocodile tears because 19 out of desperate 500, 000 graduates fighting for a place in government politically manufactured 4,500 vacancies in NIS lost their lives.

    The truth of the matter is that PDP and its leading lights have paid only lip service to unemployment because as the major beneficiaries of the present economic policy that has ceded ownership of publicly owned companies to their members, they are answerable to none. The banking reforms which as we now know favoured those in government and their friends led to the reduction of employment by over 50%. The telecommunication sector driven only by profit firm their services out .

    And if you can still not see PDP politics in last Saturday tragedy, ask if NIS obtained police permit to use the Port Harcourt stadium. Not too long ago, 13,000 employed teachers assembled in the same stadium purportedly to collect their appointment letters. The Inspector General of Police ordered Mathew Mbu his commissioner to disperse the newly recruited teachers with teargas. PDP members whether at the state or national level hardly embark on any venture that will not yield them maximum political dividends?

  • subsidy

    All thinking Nigerians should be worried about the daily revelations of impropriety in the oil industry. This has led to arguments even within government about how much money is coming into government coffers from the oil industry. We had a situation where the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria Sanusi Lamido Sanusi gave an alarming figure of how much seepage from the oil industry Nigeria was experiencing. It is common knowledge that forty percent of oil production is being stolen by bunkerers and through damage to oil pipelines by so called militants in the Niger Delta. Every effort to combat this by government through deployment of security forces in the area and also paying off militants and awarding fat contracts to their leaders do not seem to have solved the problem. Therefore, when the CBN Governor announced that huge amount of money was lost between the NNPC and CBN many Nigerians were worried about the shenanigans going on in the oil industry.

    The alarming figure that the CBN Governor gave as money missing was first scaled down to $20billion and finally to $10.8billion. Even our World Bank surrogate of a Finance Minister confirmed this figure. Now as if working to answer the NNPC has come out with figures to wipe out the $10billion plus that has been a subject of argument. The NNPC has said that about $7billion of this money has been used to subsidise importation of kerosene even though there is an extant government policy on not subsidising the price of kerosene. The remaining three billion was accounted for in sundry ways which appeared to any thinking person incredible and cooked up explanations on how government money is being spent without budgetary appropriation this is outright illegal. We are talking about billions of dollars and not naira. It seems to me that the Nigerian public is being taken for a ride. No one is saying that whatever impropriety that is happening in the oil industry is new.

    It appears to me that the shady dealings are the norm of operation in the Nigerian oil industry. This opacity usually begins with allocation of oil blocs to anybody with influence in government and collaborators, and fronts of Ministers and top most politicians. This is how some Nigerians have come to immense wealth that some of them publicly declare that they do not know what to do with the unearned money they have accumulated. One sometimes wonders if the way we operate our oil and gas industry is unique to Nigeria because our neighbours in the ECOWAS region as well as in the Cameroons and Chad do not seem to operate their oil industries the same way we do in Nigeria. This is certainly not the case in most OPEC countries. And the difference is clear we are the least developed of all the OPEC countries. And we are the only OPEC member country that imports gasoline and diesel for internal consumption. The irony of this should shame us as a people. Nigeria has been exporting crude petroleum since 1956 from Oloibiri, that is 58 years ago, and in spite of having four refineries most of which are probably not working we continue to dissipate our foreign reserves on gasoline and diesel importation. This is why in spite of a barrel of crude oil selling over $100 for almost 15 years since 1999 to the present our foreign reserves that by now should have been more than $100 billion is still hovering around $43 billion.

    What should worry most of us is that with the development of shale gas oil in the US and Canada and possibly in Europe within the next few years and with India and China also following suit we may have the ground cut under our feet when there may be no market for sale of what is left of our rapidly dwindling hydro-carbon resource(s) and even if there is a market this astronomical price of over a $100 per barrel may not be sustainable. The logic of the situation therefore is that we should make hay while the sun shines. Most of our governments in the past, have always talked about diversification of the economy and the present government has also embraced the same slogan without any concrete plan to bring this into reality. I shudder to imagine what will happen in 10, 20 or 40 years time when our chicken would have come home to roost and when nemesis of the rampant corruption we indulge in would stare us in the face. This is why it is necessary for the youth of this country to be engaged in discussing and finding solutions to the problems of this country and not allowing old fuddle fuddies to ruin their future.

    The solution to all these messy oil deals is blowing in the wind and everybody can hear it. We need to stop sale of oil blocs to non-oil companies and individuals. It is easier to bring to book any corrupt multi-national companies than individuals and comprador agents of foreign companies. We also need to build up oil reserves rather than wiping out through corrupt sales of oil blocs all the known oil reserves of Nigeria. In the Province of Alberta in Canada, money accruing to the provincial government from oil production is divided into two and one part is invested in Blue Chip companies for citizens yet unborn who have a claim to the oil wealth of the province. The reason for this is that no one generation should spend the material heritage of a people. This same argument informs the massive investment in Blue Chip Companies by Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait so that posterity could also share in the oil wealth of the present, we need to embrace this wise policy. We also must sell off all the oil refineries in this country to private companies even at a giveaway price so that the annual drain pipe of so called rehabilitation of refineries can end.

    It will then be left to the private owners to make the refineries function so that they can recoup whatever investment they have in them. This should be a win-win situation for us because the nature of capitalism is that private investors are not Santa Claus’s and the only way to make profit is through the sale of their products and our large market would give us the advantage of economy of scale thereby bringing down the pump price of refined petroleum products. Finally, government must take a bold decision about so called oil subsidy on all oil products. We should stop immediately spending money that is not appropriated in the budget as oil subsidy. Whatever we call it whether petroleum tax rather than oil subsidy would have to be paid by the public so as to eliminate the present opportunity for rampant corruption.

    These enumerated policy options cannot wait they have to be implemented right away so as to put the finances of this country on an even keel. Our people have suffered so much in a time of plenty and this cannot continue without dire consequences on the country. The general insecurity in the country and even the terrorism of Boko Haram are not unconnected with the hopelessness that have become the misfortune of the youths. It is in the interest of the poor and rich that we must find a solution to the general and generalised poverty and immiseration of our people. We now have a situation where the rich cannot sleep with their two eyes closed because the poor can also not sleep because of their empty stomachs. If we don’t take preventive action to stop the open robbery of a nation, we should be prepared for a people’s rebellion that will overwhelm the country.

    The poor people of Nigeria have waited long enough for the amelioration of their miserable lives. The young and educated Nigerians roaming about the streets without jobs have become cynics who see everyone better than themselves as the cause of their problems. All they seem to be waiting for is for a leader to galvanise their boundless energies in the right direction or against those who are oppressing them. We who are their fathers cannot be smug about it believing our hands are clean. Unfortunately, if we don’t speak up to change the direction and trajectory of our corrupt ways we will all in the whirligig of time be swept off in the fury of justifiable rebellion and violence of the masses. A word is enough for the wise.

  • In dark time

    Today, the Nigerian youth becomes fleeting fracture of the towering immensity he ought to represent. More worrisomely, many of the nation’s youth seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis 40 years before they get the physical kind from chain smoking, binge drinking, gluttony and mental indolence. Who cares though? It’s every man for himself; the ruling class and Nigeria’s senior citizenry will not bat an eyelid even if our youth is wasted beyond redemption, as long as their children inherit their stash of the country’s looted wealth.

    The ordinary youth however, continues to perpetuate that sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes as “wisdom” among the rich but arrant foolishness of the masses. Hence the successful doctor, banker, journalist, engineer, accountant to mention a few, amongst us, do not care about anything and anybody else.

    Yet we pine for positive social change and environment in which we could thrive. The few that claim to be intellectually endowed and progressive in thought amongst us seek to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to actualize their dreams of bliss. But even this few have no taste at all for the vagaries of honest industry.

    We live and thrive on a perversion hence when we cry for a historic revolution and youth-friendly society, our thoughts pander to a more permissive and corrupt society that will aid our mad, desperate dash for unearned wealth or what we deem our share of the Nigerian dream.

    This is our Nigerian dream: a lush, breathtaking future that de-emphasizes honest toil and accords our vanities a caressing glance. We dream of strings of bank accounts at home and abroad; we hope to drive the best cars, live in palatial mansions in highbrow areas and enjoy the most lucrative contracts and job offers even when we do too little to deserve these.

    Our lust for the fleeting banishes reality. And this depravity is pervasive. Decades ago, it manifested as worrisome and inordinate self-love; today, we re-establish it as the language of the socially inspired and politically correct. Hence the frenzy with which we seek out and worship industry titans, political messiahs, entertainment superstars and other celebrity icons. It’s all part of our desperate ploy to substantiate our vanities by seeking ourselves in those we worship and establishing a false intimacy with them.

    If modern gospel of prosperity and motivational literature won’t make us celebrities, then celebrity idols, reality television and sheer violence will. We impatiently wait for our cue to walk on stage inside our theatre of the absurd to be admired, feared or envied. Our vanities cramp the growth of our human spirit: they restrict the resuscitation and positive engagement of our productive faculties. Thus we find it hard to subscribe to such faith, simple decencies, honesty and values that demand that we enthusiastically dedicate ourselves to progressive personal growth and realistic rejuvenation of the Nigerian enterprise.

    That is why we have youth threatening to destroy Nigeria and perpetuate ethnic genocide if President Goodluck Jonathan retains his seat or is booted from office come 2015. It is unforgivable idiocy and utter insanity for any youth to lend himself to such pitiful causes despite glaring political and socio-economic constraints that the incumbent administration foist upon us. This is not to absolve preceding governments of culpability but it is simply too repulsive in thought and action for the contemporary Nigerian youth to root for leadership that has done too little to improve standard of living in the country even as it gorges on resources meant for the sustenance of the collective.

    A societal madness has begun to occur: bigoted, unemployed youth and bigoted employed youth; lost souls wandering the streets of Nigeria’s major cities, day and night, like loose molecules in an unstable social fluid have begun to ignite. Thus our cities have become covens of immense cruelty where youth, fired by angst, a lingering sense of hurt and revolt, take alarming steps from threatening violence to perpetrating it. Traditional neglect of the youth as negligible integers of growth has evolved to dangerous generalizations and the demonization of peaceful majorities.

    Today, economic forces create an overriding sense of disenchantment and futility among the youth. Additionally, the tyranny and insensitivity of the ruling class accentuates reactionary attitude and self-aggrandizing pursuits amongst the youth. The prominence of social justice and equality movements has dissipated as we become more concerned with identity politics than the greater good. Ironically, the ruling class, their close associates and scions are the only beneficiaries from this splintering of Nigeria into racist and more selfish associations.

    A prevalent crisis of confidence has occurred in reaction to the social turmoil. More youths are feeling empty and without purpose yet we continue to moot revolution like the next best thing we could orchestrate after our last follies have fallen silent. We forget, still, that there is a time to speak and time to act; time to scream and silently orchestrate the inestimable violence of uprightness.

    Our much vaunted “Occupy Nigeria” movement failed because the Nigerian youth is innately lacking in grit, honesty and ideal; that is why we remain perpetually exploitable – victims of what George Bernard Shaw, terms “the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry.”

    Despite our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo as the protests dragged, the eventual result was as usual, an opportunistic contract between the exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin would call “the original sweetheart agreement.”

    Eventually, the Nigerian youth is written off and our grievances dismissed as the crazed rant of a pathetic mass of revolutionary impostors. President Jonathan and company couldn’t be wrong for eventually dismissing us as essentially hopeless and misdirected, I reiterate.

    Here, then, is the crucial temptation facing us; either we acquire at least a provisional and concrete ideology and the ability to commit ourselves to more progressive enterprise, or we expose ourselves to greater exploitation and disillusionment. More often than not, we are tempted to give up and retreat, in search of some comfortable, greener pasture where we can luxuriate and “survive” according to the idiosyncrasies and social conditioning our host nation deem worthy of us; this is always the resort of cowards and the feeble-minded.

    The alternative is to drastically overhaul our values to become more progressively inclined and concerned with the political, the economic and social; to acquire the competencies and the skills necessary for the tasking work that must be done if the social structure of Nigeria is to be even slightly modified. Solutions can never be discovered without profound understanding of law, governance methods and the economics and social organization of humane statehood.

    It’s about time we cultivated progressive interest in such realms and practicable goals and norms for their actualization; without these, we will continue to flounder in the sea of often ‘well-meaning’ but ineffective good intentions.

    These are dark days for the Nigerian youth. We are going through a particularly unpleasant form of hell but it’s a hell that we have made for ourselves by our ghastly greed, laziness and inarticulateness. But we have still got youth on our side and thus the possibility of change.

  • APC’s Vision for Nigeria The Development of a Welfare State

    APC’s Vision for Nigeria The Development of a Welfare State

    Last week, the All Progressives Congress (APC), the main opposition party, unveiled its manifesto in Abuja. As I have not yet seen or read the full document, my comments on it are limited to media reports on the manifesto that highlighted a social welfare vision of the party for Nigeria. This includes the party’s strategies on job creation, the fight against rising public corruption, the poor and deteriorating social and physical infrastructure, the creation of state police, widespread insecurity in the state, and greater transparency in government. It is definitely time for change in Nigeria and the urgent resolution of these long standing challenges is critical to Nigeria’s future progress and stability. The manifesto is wide ranging and should enjoy mass electoral appeal in the country.

    But there are some inexplicable and puzzling gaps in the manifesto. Omitted from it are such contentious but crucial issues as fiscal federalism, a parliamentary versus a presidential system of government, federal-state relations, and the frightening rot in the energy and oil sectors of the economy. The manifesto is also silent on the need for the political restructuring of the country and on the need for a review of revenue allocation between the centre and the states. Evidently the party could not reach a consensus on these controversial issues. We eagerly await the manifesto of the PDP, the ruling party, which has been in power since 1999, during which its performance has been less than satisfactory, and well below the expectations of even its own supporters. But the APC manifesto remains only a promise of what the party will do if it wins next year’s general elections. This promise cannot be fulfilled if the APC loses next year’s presidential election.

    In states controlled by the APC in the Southwest, most of the strategies outlined by the party in its manifesto are already being implemented with positive results. The physical transformation in those states, particularly in Lagos and Edo, is quite impressive. There can be no doubt that in those states there is a far greater commitment to developing a better infrastructure and laying a solid foundation for the future economic progress and social welfare of the people of the states. Outside the Southwest, a few other states have shown a similar commitment to promoting economic growth and the welfare of the people. Northern governors announced recently, but somewhat belatedly, that secondary education in their states would now be free. It should have been made free long before now. A greater spread of this commitment by the states is necessary for the overall development of the nation.

    However, the leaders of the APC still have a lot of work to do on their manifesto to make it more credible. The cost implications of the political agenda have to be carefully worked out to ensure that it is sustainable and that the resources for implementing the social aspects of the programme are available. All the governments of the federation are facing a severe cash crunch caused by declining oil revenues, massive scams in the critical oil sector, and colossal financial management at the centre. A few weeks ago, Governor Fashola of Lagos State complained publicly that, due to the fall in the revenue of the states, specifically the federally allocated revenue on which virtually all the states depend, he was short of funds to continue with some of the social and economic programmes of Lagos State. Virtually all the states governments find themselves in this situation and, regrettably, have had to cut back on their public spending, even for laudable projects. Some states have already cut their wage bills by half.

    There is a high probability that this deplorable financial state of affairs will continue for some time. The nation depends mostly on its revenue from oil exports. But some twenty percent of this possible revenue is currently being lost to oil bunkering and other scams in the oil sector. The NNPC has remained largely unaccountable. So, revenue from oil exports is not meeting the set target, despite the rise in global oil prices. Though commendable, the APC will need to look carefully again at some aspects of its social welfare programme to ensure that the financial resources to implement them are available. Specifically, I refer to the plan of paying the poorest 25 million people in the nation a monthly allowance of N5, 000, and the payment for a whole year of ex-Youth Corp members who are unable to find jobs. Together, this will cost the nation over N2 trillion or nearly half of the total federal budget for 2014. These are quite impressive proposals which have some electoral appeal. But the cost involved will be quite staggering and unsustainable. The APC will need to review this proposal more carefully.

    Of course, it will be argued that the resources are available, that the economy is growing, and that what is required at all levels of government in Nigeria is less public corruption and a better and more prudent management of our financial resources. But the same objective of reducing the prevailing mass poverty in the country through the proposed financial handouts can be realised by promoting economic policies and strategies that will lead to the creation of more jobs in the private sector, through increased foreign investment in the country. This can be achieved by improving the woeful infrastructure, and by promoting a greater transparency in governance in the country. The same objective of reducing the widespread mass poverty in the country can also be achieved by reducing the widening income gap in the nation between the rich and the poor, particularly in the public sector where income disparities are immense. The ratio of minimum and maximum wage in the public sector is as high as 1: 1,000. And this does not even include the opportunity for graft and unearned income to which highly paid public servants and the rich have easy access. In the rich countries the ratio is 1:5.

    At less than US$3 per day, minimum wage in Nigeria is very low. Fresh University graduates get a little bit more. Unemployment is estimated at over 30 per cent. There is no moral or even economic justification for this huge income gap. Governments in poor countries tend to deliberately keep labour costs low in the expectation that this will lead to increased demand for labour and attract more foreign investment. But experience in poor countries where labour is generally cheap does not support this view. Cheap labour is just one of several other factors that attract foreign investment into a country. In fact, such a strategy constrains productivity. It leads to frequent labour strikes and these impede economic growth. The APC should pursue an alternative strategy on public wages. It should increase the minimum wage and reduce the remuneration of highly paid officials in the public sector, particularly the pay of those in the executive and legislative branches of government. Better pay for the workers will increase their spending and stimulate the economy.

    This is not simply a moral issue. Better wages for workers will improve productivity in all sectors of the economy. Economic growth in Nigeria will be even faster. A prosperous, stable and secure state cannot be built on the foundation of such economic injustice. It is this injustice that accounts for the high crime rate in the country, and why our homes and streets are no longer safe. It is the source of murders, kidnappings, and armed robberies in our country. In a way, even Boko Haram is a manifestation of this social injustice. It is no accident that it is in the North East of Nigeria, the poorest part of the country, that it has had some appeal and success. Religious extremism feeds on wide spread poverty and income inequalities. These tend to attract the poor. Religious fanatics and extremists use these social and economic inequalities in the state to foster social grievances.

    A national consensus on the need for the creation of state police has emerged. This will improve state security and reduce the coercive powers of the federal government. This is an agenda item that the APC should encourage its delegates at the National Conference to pursue vigorously in concert with the delegates of other states in support of the idea of a state police. As I write this, the APC has not yet nominated its two delegates to the Conference. But it is well represented by APC delegates from the states controlled by the party. They should not compromise on this issue. Whatever it may think about the prospects of the national conference, the APC, as the main opposition party, should seek to be more actively involved in its deliberations. It should be at the table when critical issues on the new Nigerian Constitution are being debated.

    As a blueprint for social and economic development, the APC manifesto is sound. But as the leaders of the APC should know from Nigeria’s recent political history, party manifestoes do not necessarily win elections in Nigeria. If it is any guide, the experience of Chief Awolowo and his UPN is instructive. Given the ethnic character of Nigerian politics, local issues, even at the state level, as well as political alignments, are far more critical in winning elections than a manifesto, no matter how appealing and promising it is. That is where elections are won or lost.

  • Honour and the looter

    Last month was the month of our centenary as a nation and the government rolled out the drums in celebration. The celebrations have not ended mind you. In case you missed out in the revelry in Abuja some two weeks ago, do not worry, you can still get on the gravy train. For those of us who were not lucky to get an award during the February 28 ceremony where the deserving and the not deserving were honoured, we have a chance to get our own share of the cake in the three-month lottery programme, which was launched in Abuja on Monday.

    The star prize is N100million, while 90 Hyundai cars will be won daily for 90 days. Talk of empowerment, I think this is one way the government thinks it can empower many Nigerians, who live under the poverty level. Other consolation prizes are tricycles, generators, smart phones, television sets and freezers. Did I hear you say how I wish everyday is our centenary? Those, who from the outset, said that the centenary is nothing but a jamboree may be right after all.

    Until now, Nigeria had never celebrated the amalgamation of its northern and southern protectorates, which gave birth to its name. The amalgamation was an accident of history and we treated it as such for all of 99 years until those in power today decided to mark the 100th anniversary with pomp and ceremony. Does it mean that we will, henceforth, celebrate the amalgamation anniversary on its due date as we do that of our Independence on October 1 of every year? The centenary celebrations were nothing but a waste of scarce resources.

    What is there to celebrate about a nation where the per capita income is nothing to write home about? What is there to celebrate about a nation where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening by the day? What is there to celebrate about a nation, which is the ninth producer of oil in the world, but cannot meet its people’s domestic need for petroleum products? What is there to celebrate about our 100th year when all the industries, which used to be our pride in the 70s and 80s are dead? Those that did not die have since relocated to smaller countries like Ghana and Togo. What is there to celebrate about a nation that does not care about its people? The people only matter to our leaders in times of elections.

    The celebrations were just to make those in power feel good, no more, no less. There is no justification for it at all. We thank God for our unity; we thank Him for keeping us one. We thank Him for those that fought to keep the country together till today, especially the unsung heroes, who died in the civil war. But did they spare a thought for these people during the centenary celebrations? No, these people were not remembered. They chose to honour some of those who put us in the bind we are in today. It is good to honour a former head of state, but such honour must be earned, not given on a platter. Elsewhere, former leaders are not honoured because they once held office, they are honoured for the legacies they left behind.

    This is why many find the honour given to the late Gen Sani Abacha during the Centenary Awards Ceremony rankling. Honour for the late Abacha? It is unbelievable, but it happened in Abuja on February 28 before a host of dignitaries. To show us how unserious we are as a nation, five days later the United States (US) seized a $458million Abacha loot in what was described as the “largest civil forfeiture action ever”. What an encore to the honour for a looter. More implausible is the government’s reason for honouring the late Abacha. Hear the government :

    “He took over power when the nation was on the brink of the precipice. He mobilised the nation’s most prominent political class into his cabinet and succeeded in ensuring the continued unity of the nation. He also raised Nigeria’s international standing for his peace keeping military interventions in Sierra Leone and Liberia. He oversaw an increase in the foreign reserve from $494million to $9.6billion by the middle of 1997 and reduced the external debt from $36billion in 1993 to $27billion in 1997”.

    What about the evils he committed. Those evils are more than the good he purportedly did for which the government honoured him. If only the late Abacha had maintained the course, he would have ended well. He ended badly because he was evil personified. There was no peace in the country in his time. Assassinations were the order of the day. Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola, Suliat Adedeji, Lai Balogun, Tunde Elegbede and Omosehinwa, among others, were killed by gunmen either on the road or in their homes. The late Abacha was also instrumental to the judicial assassination of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Yet, the government found him worthy of honour.

    The late Abacha honour was not deserved. And we do not need to look any further on why he did not deserve this award than the seizure of his $458million loot in the US. This loot is just a tip of the iceberg. The other day, we were told by Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala that the government had recovered a $500million Abacha loot. Since the government is aware of the atrocities the late Abacha committed, the question is why did it still deem it fit to honour him? Did it take the action out of fear of being accused of unfairness? Unfair to who? To a looter? Was Abacha fair to Nigeria? The late Abacha does not deserve the award and it is not too late for the government to withdraw it and apologise to Nigerians for its error of judgement.

    The prayer of many Nigerians is that the likes of Abacha shall not come this way again, not for him to be honoured by the government. The honour does not fit him. It is like putting a necklace on a pig. How will it look like? Ugly, of course. This is exactly how the garland looks on the late Abacha. Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka spoke the minds of many in his statement titled: Canonisation of terror, in which he rejected his own award because he could not share the same pedestal with the late Abacha. Soyinka said : “What the government of Goodluck Jonathan has done is to scoop up a century’s accumulated degeneracy in one pre-eminent symbol, then place it on a podium for the nation to admire, emulate and worship”.

    Soyinka spoke before the US released its scathing indictment of Abacha over the $458million loot. The US Department of Justice noted: “This is the largest civil forfeiture action to recover the proceeds of foreign official corruption ever brought by the department. General Abacha was one of the most notorious kleptocrats in memory, who embezzled billions from the people of Nigeria, while millions lived in poverty”. It is sad that this is the man my country is given an award. Cry, beloved country.

  • Warning against election rigging in the South-west

    The virulent disease that is killing Nigeria is the belief by those who control the powers and resources of the federal government that it is their right and prerogative to control all things and all choices in all corners of Nigeria. Whoever is President lives in the deluded belief that he simply determines and does all things in Nigeria – takes all decisions, authorizes, countermands, or stops, the smallest pieces of infrastructure, decides who will hold all public positions, and dictates who will win elections anywhere in Nigeria.

    The symptoms of this destructive delusion showed up immediately at independence in 1960. At independence, an alliance of the NPC (the party ruling the Northern Region) and the NCNC (the party ruling the Eastern Region) controlled the federal government. A third party, the Action Group (the party ruling the Western Region), formed the official opposition in the federal parliament. In the perverted thinking of the NPC-NCNC allies, it was utterly unacceptable to them that they were not controlling the Western Region too. They were not prepared to wait until the next western regional election to try and win the Western Region; they were obsessed with using federal power to grab the Western Region immediately. And so they embarked upon plotting to disrupt the Western Region in order to destroy its government and appoint their own nominee as ruler there. From 1962, they achieved their purposes over the Western Region – shut down the elected regional government, enthroned a sole administrator, and blatantly rigged the elections. In those insane actions, the Federal Government of Nigeria at independence established the pattern for the political future of Nigeria – and the path to Nigeria’s ultimate destruction.

    Every Federal Government of Nigeria has trodden that path since then. The military dictators of 1966 to 1999 did it very atrociously. Since 1999, every presidency has done it. The Jonathan presidency is doing it totally mindlessly now.

    Officials of the federal government have always commanded unlimited financial resources, have always enjoyed unrestrained freedom to use such resources without accountability, and have always blatantly used the money to “settle”, subvert and emasculate enough influential citizens in any part of Nigeria. Consequently, they never lack enough eminent citizens to assist them in their crimes against our country, and against our people.

    State elections are due in Osun and Ekiti states of the South-west soon – before the end of this year, probably hidden under the shadow of the National Conference which is expected to commence soon. Already, the cry is up that the federal agency responsible for elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is already manipulating the registration of voters for these two elections. We heard this kind of distress cry in Anambra State recently, when a gubernatorial election was on there. The Anambra election was rigged – so badly rigged that the international community had to take notice and even raise voices. The elections in Osun and Ekiti states will be rigged too – unless enough resistance is mounted by those who want democracy in Nigeria and the world. The resistance starts now.

    But, first, a note about identities. Gbogun Gboro does not belong to, support, oppose, or represent, any Nigerian political party. That has always been obvious in this column. Gbogun Gboro springs from the accumulated, and by now enormous, Yoruba Diaspora, with great and rising influences in all parts of the world. Because many of the most educated Nigerians have had to flee the Nigerian mess in recent decades and seek opportunities in other lands, almost every Nigerian nationality now has a very substantial Diaspora across the world, each dedicated to the well-being of its own people in Nigeria, and to an orderly and stable Nigeria in which every citizen, and every nationality, can thrive. From intensive researches by an intellectual section of the Yoruba Diaspora, we are confident that the Yoruba nation owns great cultural assets that can give the Yoruba nation a decent, progressive and prosperous society in the modern world. We have no doubt that being part of a chaotic country like Nigeria is seriously hurting the well-being of our Yoruba nation (and of other Nigerian nationalities). We are resolved to resist the destructive effects of Nigeria on our Yoruba nation, and to contribute dedicatedly to the making of an orderly, stably democratic, and prosperous Nigeria (in which our Yoruba nation and the other nations can prosper together). Above all, and urgently, we are committed to reviving and re-energizing our Yoruba nation – in the context of Nigeria if possible, out of Nigeria if Nigeria’s resistance to change and improvement should make that necessary.

    This is why we are focused now, among other things, on the issue of elections. For about 1000 years, we Yoruba have operated a monarchical political system in which selection of rulers (kings, chiefs and other leaders) by the people have been the rule and the practice. We attach great importance to fairness and integrity in the selection of our rulers. We know that, when selections are handled without integrity, the usual result is conflicts and troubles in the community. In our history, there were instances when whole towns broke up because of these kinds of conflicts and troubles. As a nation, we do not play games with the selection of our rulers. And when, in the 1950s, the British introduced ballot-box elections to Nigeria, we Yoruba in the South-west brought our traditional integrity into the new system. No Yoruba leader or party tried to rig elections. Even our most powerful political leaders had serious opponents who gave them good fights at elections. In the federal election of 1954, the opposition party in our region beat the party in power in the region. We heard stories of tampering with elections in some other parts of Nigeria, or of the power of government being used there to harass and frustrate candidates, but we never had such things in our region. We were a confidently growing democracy.

    When the controllers of the federal government launched the attack on our Western Region in 1962-5, they immediately struck down our democracy and introduced truculent practices of election manipulation. At last in late 1965, we could no longer tolerate it. We exploded in a big and stubborn revolt which went on until some elements of the military had to step in and destroy the civilian government. However, even after this, the rigging of elections did not go away. But, each time elections have been rigged in the Yoruba South-west, it has provoked our people into serious reactions – often leading to the violent deaths of many of our youths.

    Let the notice be sounded therefore that there are quite formidable forces in the wider world now that will rise and fight any attempt to rig any more elections in the homeland of the Yoruba in Nigeria. And the most powerful forces in the international community will be roused too.

    And let it be repeated that this is not about any party or politician. It is about preserving the qualitative cultural assets of the Yoruba nation for the benefit of the Yoruba nation in the world.

  • How not to motivate our soldiers

    This administration seems to put the wrong foot forward all the time. If the pomp and pageantry that accompanied the wasteful centenary celebration a few days after the gruesome murder of about 50 school children and the abduction of 20 others was beyond government, because it was an event designed to round up what some saw as our year-long celebration of an absurdity, the junketing around the country with about three presidential aircrafts at public expense by the president, vice president and senate president to mobilize PDP members for the president’s 2015 ambition while the siege by insurgents that has claimed over 300 lives in three weeks lingers, is indefensible.

    There is undoubtedly a sense of revulsion all over the country against our bungling politicians who are divided over Boko Haram’s unending mindless killings of innocent Nigerians but united when it comes to confiscating disproportionate share of our resources by the ruling elite. Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili, former minister of education, as keynote speaker at the recent presentation of APC manifesto captured the mood of frustrated Nigerians when she pointedly told her hosts which included many repentant former PDP members that politicians of all hue who don’t often talk of ethnic group when sharing our national patrimony but haggle only over sharing formula are the problem of the nation.

    For an administration that sees going to church to mobilize Christians for more prayers each time fresh tragedy befalls us, the sickening events of last week was the height of insensitivity. It was ill-timed and ill-conceived and couldn’t have come at more inauspicious of times for the nation. It came at a time the nation was still mourning, at a time when thousands of Nigerians motorists and those who depend on gasoline to power their small generators were marooned for hours on long queues at filling stations due to what the minister of petroleum attributed to ‘diversion by major oil marketers’, and at a time of an on-going probe of an illegal daily expenditure of US$8 million on kerosene subsidy, a product used more by the lowest class to which 80 percent of the military belong.

    The obscene scenes of the president’s campaign team of who-is-who in PDP and all its elected governors round the country for 2015 is not how best to mobilise Nigerians in the face of the tragedy that has befallen our nation, or motivate our embattled armed forces that the politicians have, through acts of omission or commission, put in the harm’s way. A few weeks back, a tearful Governor Kashim Shettima on account of the relative ease with which Kauri, Idzge and Konduga villages in Borno State were sacked by Boko Haram, had pointed out that “what we are being confronted with is that we are in a state of war and that the sooner we stop playing the ostrich and rise up to the challenges of the day and marshal all resources towards stopping the antics of a better armed and a better motivated Boko Haram that is withstanding the fire power of our security apparatus”. He was accused of undermining the fighting spirit of our soldiers by Doyin Okupe, the president publicly paid crisis manager. And from the president came a scornful threat about, “if I should withdraw the military from Borno, we will see what will happen. He won’t be able to stay in his government house”.

    The governor has since become the issue. On television and social media, government apologists insist the governor’s continuous stay in a state under emergency does not give enough motivation to our fighting forces. Instead of taking a critical look at the reasons behind our soldiers’ inability to respond to five hours insurgents’ attack on their targets, or why there was no immediate help from the commander of the Tank Battalion in Bama whom Alhaji Kyari Ibn E, l Kanemi, the Emir of Bama claimed to have contacted before escaping from a palace under a siege by insurgents who ended up killing over 70 residents of the town, all government apologists who are probably benefitting from our collective tragedy want is the head of the governor. They forget that even Afghanistan with its on-going 13 years war against insurgency has an elected president and state governors.

    Besides the lack of training in guerrilla warfare recently raised by a retired senior air force officer and inadequate equipment, (Okupe recently told Channel TV’s Sunrise crew that the N30 billion Nigerian satellite only captures vehicular movements and not objects below four feet), massive corruption and politicians’ obscene display of waste at a period of war, this administration has done far more damage to the fighting spirit of our soldiers. I don’t think just because one chooses to be a soldier is enough motivation to die for one’s country if we continue to treat those who have made the supreme sacrifice as ‘unknown soldiers’ or are treated as mere numbers.

    It has for instance been claimed by families of those who lost loved ones during the suicide attack in St. Andrews Anglican Church inside Jaji army barracks that many senior officers who ran into the church to help victims after the first bomb blast died along with many of the congregation following the detonation of the second bomb. Nigerians were never told the names and ranks of these national heroes who deserve the highest honour that our nation can bestow .The recent attack on Maiduguiri airport left about 20 military officers dead according to some credible local newspaper. Many more according to foreign media died in other various ambushes by Boko Haram insurgents on many of the undefined battle fronts. They all remain anonymous or unknown soldiers.

    There is equally a web of secrecy surrounding hundreds of policemen and other members of the security forces that have paid the supreme sacrifice. Only last week, Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) Comptroller General, David Parradang revealed to Nigerians for the first time that there were “about 37 officers in the immigration service that died in the course of Boko Haram attacks with many who sustained serious injuries located in various hospitals across the country”. But like many others, they remain anonymous entities.

    Unlike other societies where victims of national tragedies are documented for posterity, where ordinary foot soldiers who died in the service of their nations are celebrated, here, not even senior officers that received advanced training from all over the world are mentioned when they fall in the service of our nation. Three weeks after the brutal murder of about 50 secondary pupils, the victims just like our fallen soldiers remain just numbers.

    Even if the claim by some surviving victims of Boko Haram assault that some of our soldiers often disappeared from their posts shortly before each attack is launched is untrue, even if government is right that our soldiers are well trained, adequately equipped, indifferent to the obscene scenes of wastefulness daily on display by politicians and are well motivated to want to die for Nigeria, it must not be lost on us that they are also rational beings who, in the first place, joined the military either because they were poor and propelled by a dream of climbing the social ladder or of cultivating heroism. For many a soldier, the greatest impetus is dream of heroism and when they pay the supreme price, even for a cause they don’t understand or believe in, they want to be remembered for their heroic exploits.

    This is why in other climes, soldiers are treated as heroes. Their heroic exploits are celebrated in life as in death. In Britain, France and US, appreciative compatriots line the streets to herald the arrival of their caskets and their burial command national attention. The media focus on their parents, siblings, wives and the children they left behind. Even where they die young and unmarried, there will be focus on their girl-friends, the schools they attended, and their dreams which studies have shown is in most cases about dying as heroes.

    For many of our fallen heroes like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, heroism is the motivation. Tragically, this is what our nation has consistently denied her fallen heroes. One would have expected the names of the likes of Okigbo, Isaac Boro, Nzeogwu, Adekunle Fajuyi and a host of others that died during the civil war in President Jonathan centenary award list. But as it was in the past, so it is today.

  • A rewarding visit to Afe Babalola University

    On Thursday February 6, I paid an unscheduled visit to Afe Babalola University in Ado-Ekiti. My primary mission was to visit the founder, Chief Afe Babalola, somebody that I have tremendous respect for because of his exemplary life of determination and success. He is a man who built himself up by his boot strap. His formal education did not go beyond primary schooling at the Emmanuel School, Ado-Ekiti. Even though he passed the examination to the world famous Christ School Ado-Ekiti, he could not take up the opportunity because his parents were too poor to afford his fees. He was determined not to spend the rest of his life in the drudgery of farm life which was the only option open to him. He therefore embarked on self tutelage and correspondence courses through which he passed not only the ordinary level but also the Advance Level of the London University General Certificate of Examination. He then sat for the B.Sc Honours Economics of London at home and the LLB Honours of London before travelling abroad for the required numbers of dinners at the Inns of Court before being called into the English Bar. He returned to the country in the early sixties and registered as a pupil lawyer under the distinguished Olu Ayoola, one of the most brilliant lawyers in Nigeria in the early 1960s. Ayoola eventually ended his career as a high court judge after his illustrious life as a practicing attorney. My nephew incidentally is married to one of Ayoola’s daughters. Chief Afe Babalola then set up his own practice in a modest way but his hard work and determination made his success predictable. I first heard of Babalola sometimes in 1966 when he defended my oldest brother Chief Oduola Osuntokun after being charged to court along with the entire Chief S.L. Akintola’s cabinet after the coup d’etat of 1966. He more than justified the confidence my family had in him when he successfully defended my brother. Since then I have always been impressed by his phenomenal success.

    He has gained all kinds of laurels in his legal profession including the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and several awards and prizes in England, Canada and USA. His chamber in Ibadan is reputed to have produced more Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) than any other chamber in the country. He has been honoured both in Ekiti and outside Ekiti and his latest honour as Are Amofin of Yorubaland was conferred on him by the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III.

    Chief Afe Babalola first got involved in higher education when he was made Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council of the University of Lagos a position which he held for almost eight years during which time he was adjudged to be the best Pro-Chancellor in Nigeria. He donated an auditorium as a parting gift to the University of Lagos. His stint at the university brought him into the awareness of the sorry state of higher education in Nigeria and he was determined to do something about it.

    These preambular statements are meant to introduce the founder of Afe Babalola University. Babalola had a vision of excellence in higher education and he is now running with this vision in his own university in Ado-Ekiti. The university runs a collegiate system namely of the College of Engineering, College of Sciences, College of Social and Management Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Law, and College of Pre-degree and Degree foundation programmes, totalling six colleges in all. The only thing that is missing in the University and apparently deliberately so is the College of Humanities because the emphasis of the university is physical and economic development without provision for humanistic and literary studies. Chief Babalola is obviously following directives of government which erroneously make no room for humanistic and philosophical groundings without which there can be no development. Development is not synonymous with physical building and infrastructure, it involves the fine arts of human behaviour without which there is no civilisation and this can only be gotten from liberal arts studies. This is an argument that I probably should not go into and this is not the place for such a debate. What is important for me to say is that he has built perhaps the most excellent private university in Nigeria. Course offerings go beyond the traditional disciplines found in many universities in Nigeria. I believe that the programmes of ABUAD are heavily influenced by American university tradition. For example, in the Department of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, students can graduate with degrees of Bachelor of Science in Biometrics, as well as Bachelor of Science in Medical Physics apart from the traditional areas of Computer Science and Information Technology, and other areas like Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics with Electronics. His College of Medicine and Health Sciences offers degree courses in Anatomy, Physiology, Nutrition and Dietetics, Sports and Health Science, Nursing, Medical Laboratory Technology as well as Bachelors of Medicine and Surgery. This college must be one of the most comprehensive colleges in the country. If ABUAD can find staff to teach all these courses, the university would be one of the best in the world. There is also a Bachelors degree in Tourism and Events Management in his College of Social and Management Sciences which obviously is tailored to meet specific needs in Nigeria today. In his College of Sciences, I noticed that he has special degrees in human biology as well as another degree in zoology and I am happy to note that unlike most private universities where zoology and botany are no longer offered these degrees are offered at ABUAD. For a country in the tropics and whose economy is partially based on tree crops, knowledge of botany ought to be a prerequisite for development.

    ABUAD’s 4,000 students are housed in exquisite hostels and fed in excellent refectories and are taught in well endowed laboratories, libraries and engineering workshops. The university is building a massive talents centre on three floors to provide facilities for all kinds of games including basketball, badminton, swimming, squash and dancing floors for students. The university is also building a massive hotel/guest house at the gate of the university which the founder believes will be the best hotel in Ado-Ekiti when completed. The institution is founded on the basis of NOT FOR PROFIT because whatever accrues to it is ploughed back into development and upgrade of facilities. To support this massive development, Chief Babalola has established a university farm that specializes in aquaculture that at its maximum level of development will not only be able to feed the students with fish but the entire city of Ado-Ekiti and its environs with fresh fish as well as smoked fish. That’s not all. The farm is also developing mass production of guinea fowls and quail birds, there is also a piggery but there is no poultry, obviously because Chief Babalola does not want to join the Nigerian crowd in the poultry business. There is a massive mango farm with close to 300,000 mango trees already planted. There is also a moringa farm and a laboratory attached to it producing moringa capsules, tea bags, cream etcetera.

    All these ventures would eventually serve as centres for entrepreneurial studies for the students so that they will not only be theoreticians but practitioners in the various fields of their academic endeavours. These ventures are also designed to sustain the university in future. Hundreds of young people are also gainfully employed in all these ventures.

    I did not ask for how much it will cost to educate a child there but obviously as they say in Yoruba land that whatever is good must have a price. A child could have a first class education here in Nigeria in this university and perhaps at a fifth of the price to send the child abroad with all the psychological problems involved. ABUAD reminds me of what the University of Ibadan used to be like when I entered it in 1963. It was like a piece of western architecture in the tropics of Africa. This is what ABUAD is like today. ABUAD is service at its best and I pray that many Nigerians of means like Chief Afe Babalola would follow his example instead of spiriting our money abroad for the development of other lands.