The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • There we go again

    Shortly before Taraba State Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai returned to the country on Sunday after a 10 – month sojourn abroad, this paper had an encounter with him. It was a lucky meeting between him and our reporter, Joke Kujenya, at the Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Centre and Home on Staten Island, New York, United States. They saw eye – to – eye but could not talk to each other because Joke was there ‘unofficially’, that was how they put it, and so could not walk up to the governor for a chat.

    Despite that, the description of what she saw last Saturday following her chance encounter with the governor before he was brought home painted enough picture of his state of health. Her report, which was published on page three of The Nation on Sunday, reads in part : ‘’While waiting, I did a quick look – around. And there, he was. I got locked in eye contact with the man himself, Governor Danbaba Suntai! He sat on a wheelchair in Room 503 beside his bed laid in white with three pillows well set aside each one.

    ‘’The name tag on his room read : Dan Fulani. He wore a red T-shirt on an off – white pair of trousers. He also wore a grey coloured sneaker to complete the outfit…But, he did not utter a word to the reporter neither did he move his body. He only raised his head on the same spot. On impulse, he looked up and saw the reporter. Then he locked his eyes on the reporter squeezing his face probably for a recollection. This lasted for over 10 minutes…After a while, he looked away and bowed his head’’

    The foregoing shows that no matter what some people may be saying, Suntai still needs care and serious care at that. We thank God that he is getting better, but he should be allowed to fully recover before being rushed home over unnecessary fears that he may be impeached as governor to pave the way for his deputy, Garba Umar, to step in as the countdown to the 2015 elections begins. That he survived a plane crash is enough reason for him and his family to thank God. The cases of many others were not as serious as his and yet they died. I believe that God preserved Suntai’s life because he still needs him, but it may not be in the capacity of a governor. This is the bitter truth his loyalists don’t want to hear. Unfortunately, his wife is on their side.

    Suntai should let the will of God prevail in his life instead of allowing people, who don’t mean well for him to push him around for their own political interest. This is the problem with our politicians. They can play politics with anything, including human life. The signs all point to the fact that Suntai is not in full control of his mental senses. Just a look at him as he was being carried out of the plane that brought him home on Sunday was enough to tell any sane person that the governor still needs to be under close medical watch.

    Why then did his wife , Hajia Hauwa, friends and political associates rush him home in such a critical condition? The answer is simple; they want to manipulate him for their own political gains. I am particularly pained that Suntai’s wife could be a party to the manipulation of her husband. Does she truly love the man? Does she have her family’s interest at heart? It is true that women love power, but a woman must know where to draw the line when the life of her husband is involved. Will Hauwa be happy if something untoward happens to her husband in this bitter contest for power now playing out in Taraba?

    She doesn’t need to travel far to see what happened to people in similar circumstance not too long ago. I am sorry to use the Yar ‘Adua case as an analogy, but I am forced to do so in order to bring home to Mrs Suntai the danger she is playing with in allowing her husband to be used as a pawn on the political chess board of some people. What else does she want after being wife of a governor for six years before the unfortunate plane crash in which her husband sustained the injuries he is nursing? Instead of being thankful to God that she still has her husband to hold on to, she wants to carry her sacrifice beyond the mosque by dabbling into politics.

    I hope she will not end up burning her fingers. Today, Taraba is facing a crisis of leadership because of her husband’s sudden appearance on the scene, despite not being mentally alert to discharge the obligations of his office. What will Suntai lose if if his deputy continues to run the state while he continues to attend to his health? Is being governor more important to him than becoming hale and hearty first? Is it not the person that is alive that can think of holding political office, whether president, governor or whatever?

    At this point, everything lies

    in the hands of Mrs Suntai.

    She can change things by putting a stop to this political shenanigan. What will it profit her if she acquires all the political power in Taraba, but loses her husband? She should not be part of the political statement that her husband is strong, healthy and raring to return to work being mouthed by people like former Information Minister Prof Jerry Gana and one – time publicist of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) John Dara. What should concern her now is the wellbeing of her husband if she wants him to be father of her children till the couple grow old together.

    Unfotunately, Mrs Suntai is becoming too much involved in the political undercurrent of her husband’s illness instead of nursing him back to good health. Though, I was not there, but I believe that the doctors would have told her that ‘’madam, please ensure that your husband takes his drugs regularly and rests well until he returns here for examination’’. Can Suntai have that rest if he returns to work now when we know that the job of a governor demands a lot of rigour no matter how backward that state may be?

    If there is nothing to hide about the health of her husband, Mrs Suntai will not be shielding him from members of the House of Assembly, who have oversight functions over him. Those who say he is fit to return to work or who assisted him in writing to the lawmakers that he was ready to resume should bury their heads in shame. They should remember the damage they did to the country during the Yar ‘Adua saga. They should not make us to travel that road again. Suntai’s life should be more precious to us all than him being a puppet governor.

    Let Ozekhome go

    Every day our country keeps sinking deeper into a morass. People leave their homes without knowing whether they will return safely. We live each day as if it is going to be the last because of the fear of the unknown, When we leave home and return safely, we do thanksgiving. We live in fear in this country today; the fear of Boko Haram, the fear of kidnappers, the fear of ritual killers, the fear of night marauders and the fear of rapists. Of the lot, the fear of kidnappers makes our hair stand on our head because we don’t know where and when they will strike.

    The kidnappers’ latest victim is Mike Ozekhome (SAN), who was kidnapped on the Benin – Auchi road last Friday. Since his abduction, we have not heard from his kidnappers to know what they want. Is it money? Is it that he should drop a case that he is handling? Is it that he should stop his activism? Rather than answer these questions, the kidnappers are keeping us in suspense. If only his kidnappers know Ozek baba, that is how some of us call him, they won’t have snatched him. Unknown to them, they have abducted a man they should have befriended. They may have a reason for their action, but they got the wrong person

    Ozekhome’s place is not the kidnappers’ den. Nobody’s place is the kidnappers’ den any way. So, I appeal to the kidnappers today to let Ozekhome go. They should let him return home to his family unhurt. Ozek baba, I am praying for your safe return.

  • A recent trip to Ghana – 2

    The Republic of Ghana is a thriving democracy under its current young President, Dr. John Dramani Mahama who is an intellectual in his own right. What I find extremely interesting about modern Ghana is that the country is run by the young people who are mostly in their 30s, 40s and 50s; the kind of people who will be pushed aside in Nigeria. The simplicity of the Ghanaian leadership is overwhelming. In my recent visit to Ghana, one of the Senior Protocol Officers in the Presidency who was in charge was a young lady in her 30s who was simply dressed in Ankara fabric sewn into a gown and I immediately imagined what a senior protocol lady in Nigeria would have been wearing. The minister of state for tertiary education was a young member of parliament most likely in his late 30s or early 40s. The Ghanaian constitution enjoins on the President to appoint substantial members of his cabinet from parliament. This is something those reviewing our constitution should look into. I personally like the South African model where the President is also the leader of his party in parliament so that he can channel his policies towards enactment into Acts of Parliament. There is so much to learn from Ghana that probably writing a book about it is what would be required. For example, there is no dichotomy between the cities and the rural areas. City houses are not vastly different from what you find in the rural areas and electricity is available everywhere. Hence, rural-urban migration is severely mitigated.

    The most glaring disparity between Nigeria and Ghana is the whole question of monuments and legacies. There are no monuments in Nigeria of the past; the houses of our past leaders are treated as ordinary abodes rather than national monuments. The Premier’s lodge in Ibadan I believe has been sold to an individual or turned into a high court. The Premier’s lodge in Kaduna, the so-called Arewa House is some kind of archive whilst the Prime Minister’s lodge in Lagos is now an army officer’s mess. The federal parliament and the original federal secretariat and its successor in Lagos have been abandoned, burglarised and vandalised and are now inhabited by rodents. We have not even been able to build the mausoleum for Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in spite of millions set aside for it and the graves of our leaders are taken care of by their families. But when you go to Accra, Nkrumah’s graveyard and that of his wife are tourists’ attractions. There is a museum for his books, his clothing and even the bed he used in Lincoln University as a student. If it is not too late, may I suggest that there is a need to build in Abuja monuments to our heroes as well as a country home somewhere in the woods or hills of Abuja for our President to escape to for reflection so that he does not spend eternity in Aso Rock totally isolated from reality? Nigeria is much richer than Ghana in resources and wealth but much poorer in management and vision. I am passionate about the two countries, Nigeria is my home, my daughter is married to a Ghanaian hence, Ghana is my daughter’s home.

    There is little sense of nationalism in Nigeria and our flag does not attract the kind of attention and sense of patriotism that the Ghanaian flag enjoys. Yet you cannot build a nation without symbols and monuments. We just do not have rallying points and heroes around which we can build the sense of pride which a developing country needs. When I visited New Delhi, I was taken to Jawaharlal Nehru’s home and showed his house and his bed on his last days on earth and the simplicity was simply overwhelming. In Accra at the Nkrumah Gardens, the Cadillac car he used as President is preserved compared to the vandalization of Murtala Muhammad’s car deposited for ‘safe’ keeping in the National Museum in Lagos.

    Whenever I pass by Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s personal house in Ibadan and see crates of Coca-Cola in front of it, I feel a sense of loss about how the place could be turned into a tourist attraction. There is so much that is missing in our lives and it is not really a question of money or budgetary allocation. What seems to be the problem with us is that we simply have no sense of vision and mission and our sense of who we are is befuddled by our current problems many of which are self-imposed.

    Perhaps the problem of Nigeria is the official lack of the sense of history. I use the word ‘official’ advisedly because the ordinary man on the street has a sense of history and he can easily connect with the past. This is why the caliphate for example is still a strong force that connects the past with the present among the Hausa-Fulani. The institutions of the Ooni and the Alaafin are potent rallying points in Yoruba land and any politician who denigrates these institutions, does so it at his own peril. Even among acephalous societies of the Igbo, the Ibibio and other Nigerians who until recently did not have centralised institutions of monarchies, their sense of history is no less important and individuals can relate to this sense of history. But at the official level where for reasons best known to government, history has been yanked out of primary and secondary school syllabi apparently on the advice of Americans who came here in the seventies and advised our government to introduce what they call “social studies” in place of history. This is something they do not do in their own country where American history with its theme of their manifest destiny is drummed into the ears of young people so that they could feel they are a special people and almost a chosen generation. But we who need this sense of nationalism because our nation is in a state of ebullition were wrongly advised and probably deliberately made to operate in an historical and cultural void. Unlike Ghana, which has a sense of purpose under Nkrumah and would brook no interference in the educational system of their people, we have been made to go through a system of disconnect between the present and the past; the consequence of which is the total absence of the sense of history in our national life. After 53 years, we have no monuments to point to for the coming generation and to take tourists to while visiting our country. There are no national symbols of our sovereignty, of our history, of our unity. We think the numbers of cars and trucks on our roads and the variety of foreign restaurants and eateries and the innumerable generators and other manifestation of our dependency on Western culture are signs of modernity. We leave the exhibition of our 2000 year old civilisation in Nok, Ife, Benin, and Igbo Ukwu in the hands of oil companies in various metropolitan centres of the world happily without any condescension on their part. This should have been the duty of our government to showcase our past to the rest of the world but our leaders are more interested in feathering their own nest and looting the treasury and building mansions which their children will not be able to maintain and which would have to be turned to museums in the future. Perhaps it is not too late to make amends and I sincerely hope that when our leaders visit other parts of the world including Ghana, they would learn the lesson of building monuments for the future. Life is not about material well-being alone, there are things that appeal to the spirit. A nation could be developed physically but be spiritually poor. A city like Abuja for example may be beautiful but it has no soul and it is incumbent on planners to try and infuse soul into such a city. This is why Abuja is deserted at weekends and people flee to places like Lagos, Kano in spite of the fact that they are not as developed as Abuja. As a nation, we need to be thinking of the future and of our children and grand children and the legacies we would leave behind. This is why civilised countries spend huge amount of money on museums, art galleries, libraries, national monuments which are what will endure and not whatever money we have in bank vaults.

  • APC manifesto: Nigerians want miracles

    APC manifesto: Nigerians want miracles

    The All Progressives Congress recently unfolded an eight-point cardinal programme that covers electricity generation, war against corruption, food security,   integrated transport network and free education. Others are devolution of power, accelerated economic growth and affordable health care. While the party has tried to assure Nigerian that the programme will transform Nigeria, the ruling PDP has through its National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh said that the APC eight point programme, which offered nothing new was “a very poor imitation and a bland parody of PDP manifesto.” And echoing similar sentiment, Dr Doyin Okupe, says “It is a plagiarized version of the PDP manifesto and it lacks vision”.

    It is difficult to disagree with the two misinformation merchants though their claim in itself is an admission of failure by PDP that in 1999, promised through Obasanjo, its leading star, to provide stable electricity within two years, embark on agricultural revolution, end massive importation of foreign goods as well as fight corruption, some of the issues the rival ACP now says it intends to tackle. After eight years of Obasanjo roadmap, Yar’Adua’s seven-point agenda and President Jonathan’s own transformation agenda that has run for over two years, outside PDP and its leading light, the verdict today is that we are worse off than we were in 1999.

    What the APC eight-point agenda has offered the electorate therefore is only a choice between PDP’s 14 years of failed promises and APC’s hope based on the credibility and the past records of its chief promoters, Buhari and Tinubu. The party wants the electorate to be guided in 2015 by the record of Buhari who ensured during his short term in office, the nation not only stopped importation of wheat, our problem became how to store locally produced grains; the nation not only creatively ensured we did not waste billions on importation of refined fuel, but was exporting refined fuel; and of course the record of the defunct ACN governors from Lagos to Edo who have set standard of performance yet to be matched by those PDP governors who collect from the federation account in one month what some of the opposition governors collect in 12 months.

    But I think Nigerians want more. The APC eight-point programme like the PDP 14 years recycled agenda, are routine responsibilities of government that do not require the intervention of angels or men with special talents. They remain intractable because of the greed of PDP leaders who chose to serve themselves rather than fulfil their obligation to Nigerians. This is not just the views of a critique of PDP’s inept management of the nations affairs, it is also that of the various probe bodies set up by the government itself as well as that of the judiciary that at different periods indicted nearly all the past PDP chairmen, past Senate presidents, past Speakers of the Lower House, ex-governors some of whom have served jailed terms at home for financial malfeasance or abroad for money laundering.

    An army of frustrated unemployed youths driven into the embrace of Nigeria’s prosperity prophets by PDP 14 years of uninspiring leadership have grown to become miracle seekers. They therefore want nothing less than miracles from APC. Their expectations are legitimate. The challenge of what appears impossible task, which often come through dreaming dreams, is what after all make political parties relevant to their societies. Political parties in the US, Britain, Japan and China modernized their societies by dreaming dreams.

    Nearer home, we have the example of the western Nigeria under Obafemi Awolowo in the 1950s. When the AG launched its freed education programme, others that could not dream dreams dismissed it with a wave of hand. In fact NCNC went a step further to undermine it through campaign of misinformation which resulted in AG’s loss of federal election in 1952. The success of free education became a testimony that those who dared to dream often perform miracles. More miracles followed. The Awo-led AG awarded more foreign scholarships to youths of the defunct Western State in their first year in office than the total number of scholarship the departing colonial masters awarded to the whole of Nigeria in the preceding three years.

    Nigerian miracle seekers, assaulted by PDP’s celebration of generating 2500MW in 14 years after frittering away of over US$20 billion want dreamers who will generate 40,000MW in four years, repair our refineries in six months, insist we eat our own local rice in one year, stop importation of used tyres from Ghana, South Africa and Europe in three months by giving bailouts to Michelin and Dunlop to relocate from Ghana back to Nigeria.

    Beyond the yearning of Nigerians for dreamers, APC eight-point agenda whose originality is being violently contested by PDP can hardly be attained within the present system that has sustained PDP anarchy and rape of our nation for 14 years. This is why one finds it curious that restructuring is conspicuously missing in the APC agenda. This omission cannot be attributed to differences in ideological orientation of the merging political parties. Restructuring formed the major platform of Buhari’s quest for the presidency in 2011. Of course restructuring and regional integration are experiments that have started to yield dividends in the states controlled by the defunct ACN.

    They can be best achieved within a restructured Nigerian federalism. The six power blocks that emerged after the 2011 election which bear semblance to Alex Ekwueme ‘s recommended six geo-political zones as the building block for a federal arrangement that will reflect our cultural and ethnic diversity can become the platform for APC dream of a restructured Nigeria. The current 36 state structure with 774 arbitrarily created LGAs have become channels for the depletion of resources desperately needed for developmental efforts.

    For instance the current six states of the South-west do not need more than a governor and perhaps six deputy governors to coordinate the activities of LGA which should be the responsibility of the zones/regions instead of depending on father Christmas from Abuja whose interest is in patronage not for development, but for destabilization of states as it is now evident in the sponsored crisis in Rivers and Adamawa.

    And at alleged N50m monthly allocation for security to a governor, the six state governors take away N300m in a month or N3.6billion in a year, or N14.4billion in four years, enough to make the South-west self-sufficient in rice production or turn the South-west to a major exporter of ‘ofada and Igbimo’ rice. Savings from just the rationalization of governors alone can perform the same miracle with cotton in the North-east now made ungovernable by jobless religious fundamentalists, groundnut in North-west palm oil in South-south and South east.

    Of course it will be a miracle to restructure a nation where ‘Nigerian army of anything is possible’ created states for their wives and local government for their media assistants; where the obsession of the young and the old in their 70s who had served as ministers and senators is to become governors of their unviable states; where governors of insolvent states that cannot pay salaries of teachers fly private jets and ride in armoured vehicles; where state representatives at the centre are the highest paid lawmakers in the world; where hardly literate local government councillors are better remunerated than university professors and where ministerial appointments like oil block allocation are shared on the basis of state representation.

    But then beyond mobilization for elective political office or ensuring actual takeover of power, what political parties are in the main called upon to perform, are miracles. And only parties that dream dreams succeed in this endeavour. APC must note that traumatized Nigerians who have lost hope in all politicians, military and the current ruling class, are impatient. They don’t want more of the same. They want dreamers. They want miracles.

  • Daniel goes to Lagos

    Daniel goes to Lagos

    LET’S get it right from the outset. This is not about the former governor and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – sorry, an error there; the Labour Party(LP) – Otunba Gbenga Daniel.

    Neither is it about politics, its rough and tumble, twists and turns, intrigues and treachery. Nor is it about politicians and their wily ways, their inconsistency and ineffectuality that have bred a stifling socio-political situation. Boko Haram. Kidnapping. Armed robbery. Ritual killing and other despicable acts. No.

    The story is familiar. A kid packed his bag, left home in Benin City, headed for the airport and jumped into the wheel compartment of an aircraft getting set to fly. The pilot, who had earlier complained that he saw an unusual movement, was cleared to take off. He did. Some passengers said the take-off was not smooth. They claimed that there was a bang and many were screaming: “Jesus! Jesus!”.

    Thankfully, the plane landed safely in Lagos. The passengers disembarked and congratulated one another for a safe trip. From the tyre compartment emerged a boy, in all the innocence of a kid. He wore an orange-white sweat shirt with a hood, a white rosary dangling from his tender neck and a black backpack in his hand. He was grabbed by a security man who held him so tightly as if he was his after-race prize.

    Poor boy. From his countenance, Daniel was upset. Probably not because he was seized like a Lagos pick-pocket. No. Most likely because the trip ended so soon. He was, surely, not yet in his destination. Daniel was heading for America and realising that he was still in Nigeria must have infuriated him.

    After watching some movies, he had confided in his younger brother that he was one day going to fly to America. What he didn’t say was that he was going to so do in such a sensational manner.

    Why did 13-year old Daniel choose to travel in that weird way? His mum, Mrs. Evelyn Ohikhena, said he was never maltreated. He couldn’t have been running away from a hostile home. To psychologists, this is a practical expression of the fecundity of a youngster’s mind, the raw power of imagination. Even the famous movie pranksters, Aki and Pawpaw, could have found Daniel’s feat a bit odd. Neither Edddie Murphy – Coming to America – would have imagined a kid stowaway. Nor Nkem Owoh’s peregrination in Osofia in London would have harboured such a stunt.

    Like in such strange matters, the Daniel story has suddenly bred an army of emergency aeronautics engineers and beer parlour pilots, who have not allowed the experts to talk. They have been arguing that the huge sound the plane was said to have let out at take-off couldn’t have been caused by the kid’s presence in the tyre area. Can that happen without the person who may have caused the obstruction being hurt? What is the size of the tyre? How possible is Daniel’s action, going by the laws of aerodynamics? Where does avionics come in? Is the tyre area lit for Daniel to see during his flight? The row goes on and on.

    If the pilot had aborted the take-off – assuming he was not sure the obstacle he saw had been cleared – the next day’s headline would have been so electrifying. Sample: “Hundreds escape death on Arik Air flight.” And such other sensational stuff.

    Spiritualists have entered the fray. A senior government official who was on the flight described Daniel as “an evil spirit”. He was shaking as he spoke – apparently thinking the boy had some ethereal force to bring down the aircraft but was handicapped by a superior power. Some even said the little one thought he was going to heaven.

    There is also a large crowd of security experts, who have been postulating on how our airports –we have thrown billions into knocking down and rebuilding terminals with little consideration for the human element, the personnel – should be secured against cows, sheep, birds and touts.

    The Daniel story is yet to end. Who are his class mates? Who is his teacher? What kind of pupil is he? Brilliant? Troublesome? Talkative? Naughty? Where is his dad? What does he do? What are Daniel’s other ambitions, besides just flying to America? Who are his heroes? Can he sing the National Anthem? In other words, does he believe in Nigeria where his future is assured? What fired his imagination? The American dream? A mere case of an idle mind being the devil’s workshop? Infant fantasy? Shouldn’t he have been in summer school, like the kids of the rich? The questions are many.

    His sister told The Nation yesterday: “He always said he will surprise us one day. His younger brothers also informed our mother that Daniel told them that one day, he would make our family popular. Thank God he is alive to tell the story himself.”

    Will Daniel’s antics open a new door of opportunity for terrorists as it is being suggested in some circles? That is neither here nor there. What is sure is that our overzealous security agents may have got a new licence to brutalise innocent people. Watch out for accidental discharges at airports!

    Daniel’s escapade may not have been driven by poverty. Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the Christmas Day underwear bomber, is not from a poor home. The son of a respected banker, he was seduced into extremism by the thoughts he harboured. He, apparently for some inexplicable psychology reasons, lent himself to radicalism. He remains unrepentant till date.

    But Daniel is not the first stowaway. According to The Telegraph of UK, American Clarence Terhune became perhaps the first aviation stowaway in 1928 after he hid himself on an airship, flying from the United States to Germany. So thrilled by his daring feat, the Germans offered Terhune a job at a department store.

    Mere imagination may have fired Daniel to undertake the Benin-Lagos flight. Not so for another Nigerian. Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight from New York to Los Angeles in 2011, using an out-of-date boarding pass. He was arrested in LA after attempting to board another flight, using the same invalid boarding pass. When the police searched him, they found 10 other boarding passes, none of which bore his name.

    There was also the crafty cleaner who in 2009 boarded an aircraft at Medina Airport in Saudi Arabia on the pretence of cleaning it. He hid in the toilet of the Jaipur, India-bound flight. He was discovered when a passenger tried to use the facility.

    Kid sensations are scare nowadays, except for some pop stars singing lewd songs that are neither elevating nor inspiring. All noise, no sense – to the old school.

    I hope Daniel is doing fine with the security agents who have been questioning him. He should be allowed to go home and continue dreaming. It is from such dreams that great deeds sprout.

    He is daring, the very quality that many of our leaders lack. It is this lack of boldness and courage – and character – that has kept the nation in toddlerhood even at adulthood. The Nigerian paradox has planted in the minds of our leaders a strong feeling that state police is not possible; why don’t we try? A national conference is avoided like a plague. Isn’t it imperative now, considering the quagmire in which we have found ourselves?

    Nigeria needs dreaming and daring leaders. How do we get them?

     

     

    The return of Suntai

    TARABA State Governor Danbaba Suntai’s return on Sunday from a 10-month overseas medical trip was as dramatic as the circumstances that led to his incapacitation for that long. But the Taraba show is yet unfolding.

    Suntai is, no doubt, physically exhausted. He needs time to recuperate in peace – no stress, no worries. But, like in the late President Umarau Yar’Adua’s case, the selfish forces that are gaining from his being there, even if he is out of form in every way, will not let him throw in the towel.

    He sent a letter to the House to say he was set to return to work. The governor followed it up yesterday with a shocking dissolution of the executive council. Besides, he made a short broadcast, thanking the people for standing by him. Lagos lawyer Femi Falana is calling for an inquiry into the health of His Excellency. That is what the law says. If he is certified fit, he should continue to run the show.

    Suntai will not lose anything if he is allowed to quit, should doctors confirm that he can’t do the job. The forces that seem to be holding him captive are being unfair to him and the people. The buffoonery is unnecessary.

  • Just me…being self-righteous (3)

    We belabour the ‘Nigerian dream.’ We abuse the idea that life will get better, that progress is assured if we keep faith, obey the rules and work hard, that prosperity is guaranteed if we continue to tread the slow, steady path to progress and a prosperous future. And in pursuit of these lofty ideals, we pervert the steady, measured, impartial course of the universe; hacking pliant paths to our dreams, from the crossroads where gluttony fosters depravity.

    Eventually, we awaken to a cold, bitter truth: We are being sacrificed. The Nigerian dream we are sold isn’t worth our sacrifice. And the individual dreams we pursue, aren’t worth a smidgen of what we make them out to be. By the time we all struggle to achieve our dreams; Nigeria will be finished. Given that each tribe may finally achieve its dreams of nationhood via secession, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw to mention a few may establish their new nations.

    When we do, the swollen belly of our idiocy and pride shall become clearly visible to us. When it does, it shall suddenly dawn on us that, all along, we had been blindly acting to a script prepared by career predators from Western nations of Europe, America and our ruling class.

    The truth shall become clearer to us in intensity and impact and we shall hopelessly realize that we are being sacrificed. We will all be sacrificed; some of us much quicker than others. As it is now, so shall it be in our new nations, the Biafran youth, Ijaw youth, Oodua youth and Arewa youth to mention a few, shall become disposable indices in the scheme of things.

    But until then, we will continue to have today and squander it on the altar of racism and greed. Today, it’s impossible to see any offspring of our ruling class engage or become embroiled in the familiar tragedies that mar our lives. It’s always the children from the breadlines, struggling middle class and backwaters that are involved. We are the youth divide traditionally expected and required to function and serve as unquestioning muscles and ordinary cannon fodder in the ruling class’ blueprint of pillage and destruction.

    The decline of Nigeria is a story of gross injustices by the ruling class to the citizenry. But that is only an aspect of it, the greatest injustice is that meted out by individual citizen to self – the youth particularly. And this predominant malaise often plays out in our corruptibility and disinclination to foster a more humane leadership and society.

    Today, we suffer declining standards of living, stagnant and falling wages that are hardly paid at due time; we suffer curtailment and absolute denial of our basic wages, long-term unemployment, slave labour, escalating crime wave, among other ills.

    Together, we perpetuate gruesome realities of the weakest being crushed decisively and maniacally by the affluent and strong. Together, we perpetuate a story of unbridled sectarian, ethnic and corporate power that has taken our government hostage, overseen the dismantling of our cultural heritage, societal and entrepreneurial values.

    But if the ruling class, in connivance with predatory nations and institutions from the so-called ‘first world’ is responsible for plundering our natural resources and bankrupting the nation, we, the youth, are responsible for even worse atrocities.

    We serve as the tools by which the ruling class and its cohorts overseas plunder and destroy our nation. The virus of political corruption, the perverted belief that only political and material profit matters, has spread to distort our thoughts and understanding of right and wrong. Today, it manifests in endemic proportions plaguing our communities with religious and political terrorism, economic and cyber-terrorism to mention a few.

    Today, the Nigerian society dies a gruesome death basically because we lay to waste, our youths and we, the latter, by our suicidal actions and thoughts, submit ourselves as hopeless prey to the Nigerian ruling class and their cohorts overseas.

    Everyday encounters with gluttonous gangs of struggling youth reveals among other things, that many of us are the same social products as our peer from the aristocratic divide. Conditioned by life’s harshest vicissitudes to survive at all cost, we lay in wait, striving and bidding our time until we are ably positioned and strong enough to serve or rob the rich whose life we earnestly covet and decry.

    A visit to any night club, party, religious organization or office still attests to this fact. Ambitious and upwardly mobile youth from the breadlines or struggling working class families engage in a variety of excesses to the applause of mates yearning to be in their shoes. Either as advance fee fraudsters, bankers, journalists, accountants, secretaries, factory hands or ordinary clerks, youths from the breadlines daily engages in a bitter, desperate struggle to chance on the shortest possible cut to sudden and stupendous wealth.

    We seem beset by a greater and unexplainable fear beyond the fear of poverty amongst other harsh realities of their lives. Fear plays a greater part than hope: we are infinitely buoyed and obsessed with thoughts of the money that we could make or the possessions that might be taken from us or elude us, than of the joy and value that we might add to our own lives and to the future of our fatherland.

    Most of us, like our more privileged peer crave the best of everything without actually sweating for it. And when we do sweat for it, our industry is tainted by vigorous dashes of impatience and duplicity. In our work, we are haunted by jealousy of competitors, and a fleeting interest in the actual work that has to be done. We spend greater time and passion defending unjust privileges that we are desperate to enjoy.

    Such appalling youth constitute a greater segment of the human element expected to salvage Nigeria from eternal ruin and bloodbath. Consequently, our society becomes more rudderless and unstable and vulnerable, on our watch. Now that Nigeria as our fathers, ‘the wasted generation’ made it, and we the youth, aggravate it, have begun to collapse, we withdraw from the possibility of rebirth, and instead choose to exploit the infinite possibilities in our fragility and predicted collapse.

    It’s about time the Nigerian youth started postponing immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices spurred by conviction that the future can be better than the past. Beyond the politics and inanities of our existing ruling class and political parties, we face far more difficult questions at our moment in history: How do we reconcile reality with promises that have been made to us? How do we make the best of our circumstances at the backdrop of indefensible leadership failure and disillusionment of the citizenry?  How do we evolve and nurture to fruition, a new vision to help us deal with our gruesome realities, even as we chart a promising story of the future? How do we divorce ourselves from the pains and disappointments of the past – particularly those that many of amongst us had no stake in but yet internalize and perpetuate unexplainable miseries thereby?

    How do we redefine “Peace, Unity and Progress” with our lust for “Life, Liberty and Happiness?”  How do we become more human than we are now?

    • To be continued…

  • A recent trip to Ghana –1

    My father, David Osuntokun like most young people from my hometown Okemesi went as an adventurer to the then Gold Coast in the 1930s well before I was born. In my hometown of Okemesi, it was not unusual to find many people speak Fante or one of the Akan languages which they acquired when they were working in the then Gold Coast, now Ghana. My dad was involved in mining Manganese in Nsutta somewhere in the centre of Ghana. He also acquired some education and was able to function as a catechist on Sundays apparently ministering to the considerable Nigerian community in the mining town. Ghana was therefore referred to in my hometown as ‘Oke-Okun’ that is, “abroad”. Many of my people suffered in the 1960s when they were deported from Ghana by the Busia government. Unfortunately, this was reciprocated in the 1980s by the Buhari government when millions of Ghanaians who were economic migrants were deported for being involved in criminal activities. This was a charge that remained unproven. This is an episode that is better forgotten in the history of the amicable relations between the two countries.

    My dad made some money in Ghana and built a rambling house in our home-town Okemesi for himself and his two uterine brothers one of whom was older and the other younger and used the rest of the money he made to engage in trade as an Osomalo which was the favourite pastime in our area in those days.

    The point to make is that I have a history of relationship with what is today Ghana. In 1963, before I entered the University of Ibadan while I was teaching at Oduduwa College, Ife, I led a students’ excursion group to visit the then vibrant Republic of Ghana under its ebullient and visionary President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. We visited the University of Ghana at Legon, the then Kumasi College of Science and Technology, Achimota College in Accra where we stayed as well as Prempeh College in Kumasi which played host to us while in Kumasi. We also visited Tema, the artificial port created by Nkrumah on the Gulf of Guinea and the site of the Volta Aluminium Complex. We also went to Akosombo Dam where Ghana’s hydro-electricity is generated.

    At that time because of our young age, we did not quite appreciate what we saw. People of my generation somehow felt inferior to Ghanaians because they beat us regularly in soccer, we danced mostly to their musical tunes played by E.T. Mensah and Ramblers Dance Band and because they got independence in 1957, they were the leading African country. In spite of their size and population, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah towered above all African leaders. He, Sekou Toure of Guinea and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt along with Pandit Nehru and Joseph Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Dr. Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia and possibly Chou En-Lai of China were responsible for launching the Non-aligned Movement. Nkrumah made our political leaders particularly our Prime Minister Sir Tafawa Balewa look puny and irrelevant in African politics. This made us young people to admire Nkrumah and Ghana well above our own leaders and our country. Nkrumah also wrote books which when I entered the University of Ibadan, we read in our political science class particularly his autobiography Kwame Nkrumah and his Africa Must Unite which was a call to all African states to unite in order to survive and to liberate the rest of Africa that was still under colonial or settlers’ subjugation.

    In fairness to Nigerian leaders of the first republic, Nigeria was and is a more complex country than Ghana because of our complexity of cultures and religions as well as the multitude of our languages. Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa has sometimes being dismissed as too conservative and ineffective but that is not true. He was more of a practical politician and a realist but unlike Nkrumah, he did not leave any lasting monuments or legacies of his regime.

    In Ghana today, tourists and officials of foreign governments cannot but be impressed by the monuments that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah left behind. The Flagstaff House that is, the office of the President, the Aburi Gardens standing some miles away from Accra on a hill and serving as an escape residence for the President more like Camp David in the United States and Checkers in London is a source of pride to Nkrumah’s genius of forward planning. He even built an Africa House on the grounds of parliament which he hoped would be the headquarters of the African Union to which he committed huge amount of resources in support of the Pan-African Movement and the liberation of the continent from colonialism. After his death in Romania of Prostate Cancer, his body was given full military honours and national burial in Conakry where Ahmed Sekou Toure had declared him a co-president after his overthrow in 1966. His body was later removed from Conakry and buried in his hometown of Nzima in the Nkroful area of Western Ghana and it was from there that Jerry Rawlings removed the body for the third time to be interred in a national mausoleum on the Accra polo grounds where in 1957 Nkrumah had declared Ghana independent. It was Rawlings who appreciated more than anybody the contribution of Nkrumah to Ghana and Africa’s development and it is interesting to note that today’s young people in Ghana live in adoration and gratitude to Nkrumah who laid the foundation of what is now arguably the best run country on the African continent.

    • To be continued

  • Is Shekau dead or alive?

    Is Shekau dead or alive?

    His grainy internet picture shows him wearing a turban. This is the only photograph of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau that is often used by newspapers. Nobody has seen him in public, except perhaps, members of his group, who are privileged to come in contact with him in the line of their deadly business. Thus, Shekau is more of a spirit than a human being. But he has a reputation of being a hard hearted and non – compromising fundamentalist.

    There is a $7million reward on his head for the atrocities committed by Boko Haram, but Shekau seems unperturbed. He (or is it his ghost?) still comes out once in a while to either  issue threats or claim responsibility for some attacks carried out by the sect. He spoke nine days ago, but the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) wants us to believe that it was not him that appeared on video posted on Youtube on August 13. The JTF claims that Shekau may have died of gunshot wounds in Amitchide in Cameroon on August 3.

    If Shekau is dead, JTF should be able to prove to the world beyond reasonable doubt that this dreaded human terror is no more. The irony of it all is that the JTF itself is not sure whether Shekau is dead or alive. Its statement on Shekau’s well – being did not serve the purpose for which it was issued. The statement, I believe, was issued to clear the air over the death or otherwise of the Boko Haram leader, but it ended up confusing the public the more.

    Until the statement was issued, the public knew nothing about the fate of Shekau. We didn’t know that there was an encounter in which he was allegedly shot but escaped with wounds. The JTF believes that he must have died from those wounds. What informed the JTF’s belief? We don’t know; all that we know is what is contained in its statement, which the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has described as hasty because the circumstances from which JTF drew its conclusions do not ‘’add up’’.

    The military is not known to do things haphazardly. It takes its time to dot the I’s and cross the T’s in life and death matters before it comes out with its position. When it concerns the death of a person, the military is even extra careful because it knows the implication of saying a person is dead when that person’s death is not confirmed.  The military double checks its facts to ensure that they are correct before pronouncing a person, whether a soldier or a bloody civilian like Shekau, dead. That is the military tradition. And JTF, we believe, is  operating under that rule.

    Shekau is not just any member of Boko Haram; he is its linchpin. He is to Boko Haram what the late Osama bin Ladin was to Al Qaeda before he was killed by the United States (US) Naval SEAL 5 in May, 2011. Shekau is not a small fry whose death should not be confirmed before it is made public. In breaking the news of the death of such a person, there is no need to rush things. Such a death  can only be confirmed after a thorough and painstaking exercise.

    If Shekau has indeed been killed, what Nigerians expect is a categorical statement from the authority, detailing how, where and when he was killed. The statement should not be equivocal.  It must be clear, succint and unambiguous. As it were, the JTF statement cannot pass muster. This was the dilemma we found ourselves at our editorial meeting on Monday evening when we got the JTF statement. Do we take it at its face value and run with it that Shekau may have been killed as claimed by JTF? Do we do our independent findings to ascertain the true position of things?

    We resolved to err on the side of caution by settling for the latter option. We found out that even within the military, the JTF claim was not well received. The military found it difficult to believe the JTF story that Shekau had been killed without concrete proof of his death. Where is the body? Which doctor confirmed him dead? Where was he killed? These are some of the questions begging for answers in the JTF statement. If Shekau actually died in Amitchide, Cameroon, has the JTF visited the place to see the body and confirm that it is really his?

    In the face of the doubts expressed by the DHQ over JTF’s position, that statement is not worth the paper on which it is written, except the task force can convince us  with clear cut evidence that Shekau is dead. We saw proof beyond reasonable doubt when bin Ladin was killed by the Americans. We saw his body being buried at sea. And we saw a confident President Barack Obama, exultantly responding to a question that: ‘’I can assure you that Osama bin Ladin will no longer walk the surface of the earth’’.

    We need this kind of compelling evidence and talk to believe that Shekau is dead. For now, we don’t know what to believe. Is Shekau dead or alive?

    Making of an empress

    First Lady Patience Jonathan

    seems to court controversy

    with her actions.  It appears she enjoys the image she is cutting for herself. No first lady has been this controversial in our 53 years of nationhood. Wherever the First Lady goes, she leaves pain and agony in her trail.  She seems not to care what the people think about her and the pain she inflicts on them whenever she visits their states or holds a ceremony in Abuja.

    A few months ago she was in Lagos and the metropolis was virtually shut down because of her. People were held up in traffic for a whole day.  It was a terrible day for most motorists who swore and sweated in traffic. Till today, Dame Patience has not apologised for her action. Her husband, who is our president, does not treat us the way she is doing. President Goodluck Jonathan, give it to him, takes the people into consideration, whenever he is visiting Lagos.

    Since he understands the nature of the place, he does his shuttle in and around town in a helicopter to avoid a traffic gridlock, which his movement on the road may cause. For all his wife cares, the people can go to hell whenever she is visiting their states. As in Lagos, so was it in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, when she visited a few weeks ago.  The Garden City was at a standstill because of her visit. Last week, Abuja had a dose of this treatment. The First Lady was hosting what she called: ‘’Celebrating Nigerian Women for Peace and Empowerment’’.

    The event was well publicised. Forty eight hours before the ceremony, the people were informed that the access road leading to Eagle Square would be shut to traffic. Motorists thought it would be a minor irritation. But when they got to the road on the day of the First Lady’s event, they got a shocker. There was no movement. They could not get to their offices, which they could from inside their cars. To walk past the stern-looking policemen on the road would be suicidal.

    In short, that day, the Federal Capital City, especially the Central Business District (CBD), was a no go area. It was cordoned off by the stern-looking policemen, who blocked all access routes to the Eagle Square. What the people went through that day is best captured in the words of some of them as reported in the papers last Friday. ‘’I met the traffic right from the Yar ‘Adua Centre and immediately turned away from that road and followed another route only to be confronted by a more serious snarl in the town’’, said a motorist.

    Another said : ‘’I make most of my daily earnings by taking passengers to the Federal Secretariat and Eagle Square but on Thursday, I had to turn down many passengers because all the access routes to the CBD were blocked and there was traffic everywhere..’’ Must the First Lady inconvenience the people any time she so wishes? It is high time the president called her to order, that is if he is not a party to these her  irritating actions.

  • Power sector and spin-doctors

    Power sector and spin-doctors

    Nigerian power problem seems to defy solution, not because of lack of good intentions or efforts on the part of our leaders, but because such efforts have often been designed to fail. Tragically, like most intractable man-made Nigerian problems, the same leaders, the source of the sector’s woes and some victims of their greed often go spiritual, asking for divine intervention. Like typical victims of underdevelopment, some have said the sector is doomed because its headquarters was dedicated to the Yoruba god of thunder. Some have even suggested three days of national fasting and prayers. Unfortunately, the current efforts of the Jonathan administration, designed and packaged by the same set of leaders that derailed the previous efforts including the Obasanjo roadmap, is not likely to end the nightmare of Nigerian victims of PDP inept handling of the power sector in the last 14 years. The omen from the unfolding events in the last three weeks, gives no assurance of any form of solace to troubled Nigeria electricity consumers.

    For instance, last week, about 60 licensed Independent Power Producers (IPPs), owned by some PDP leaders or their sympathizers, under the aegis of (IPPAN), led by its chairman, Professor Jerry Gana, a former minister of information, current chairman of University of Lagos Governing Council and a permanent feature in every PDP administration since 1999, visited the Ministry of Power to give

    government a set of conditions before the IPPS can effectively take off.

    Chief among the body’s demand is government granting to IPPs, a waiver for the importation of gas-related machinery and equipment.  Others include government funding and supply of pre-paid meters, government provision of funds that could be readily available should the bulk trader not meet up with its commitments and finally taking cognizance of uncertainties related to operating independent electricity plants, they appealed to government not to leave them alone entirely, but to consider taking shares in their various companies. “We are craving the support of government by way of equity participation. We are open to government coming to take 5 -10 per cent equity in our companies just like it is doing for the newly acquired DISCOs.” They are probably asking for what happened in the aviation industry.

    The government through the minister has agreed that ‘on equity participation, whenever the Federal Government through the National Council on Privatization (NCP) arrives at putting in shares in the

    sector, we will be ready to assist the IPPs by owning equities in the IPP companies. We are ready to do whatever will promote or facilitate an enabling environment for IPPs to thrive,” It is obvious those who will benefit from such self serving policy of government reinvesting in private firms after divesting its interest and selling public firms held in trust for the people to private concerns at such scandalous

    amounts which has prompted probes set up by government to direct some of the firms be taken back.

    If we need further evidence that president Jonathan Roadmap for Power Sector Reform  whose focus  is ‘market reform, change of the current ownership, attracting new investment in generation into the market, expanding the transmission capacity, providing for government divestment’, like the 2005 Electric Power Sector Reform Act (EPSR Act), which called for ‘unbundling the national power utility company into a series of 18 successor companies: six generation companies, 11 distribution companies covering all 36 Nigerian states, and a national power transmission company, is not going to bring relief to Nigerians soon, the interview Dagogo Jack, the chairman of the presidential task-force on power as well as member of presidential Committee on Power, is all that is required.

    Asked if there is a time frame for the new licensed firms to start yielding dividends, he said since government  has no control over private firms, the best government can do is to ensure they ‘sustain the current 4500MW level, if they cannot increase it’.

    What has become apparent is that PDP inherited a little over 200MW from Abacha’s regime.  This according to Segun Agagu, minister of power under Obasanjo, was moved up to 4,200MW in 2002. There was no evidence of any further improvement until the end of Obasanjo’s tenure. But then it was PDP men themselves that alleged a rip off.

    First, President Yar Adua, Obasanjo successor alleged that over ‘$10 billion was spent on power by the Obasanjo administration with nothing to show it’. The Speaker of the House Representatives, Dimeji Bankole’s put the amount frittered away at over $16 billion, while the House power probe committee Chairman, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu’s figure was $13 billion. President Jonathan’s own three year road map after an alleged expenditure of 8 billion dollars has pushed the power capacity to 4,517MW (miserable 4% of what South Africa generate) in December 2012.

    In other words, after eleven years, and expenditure of between 18 and 24 billion dollars depending on which of the PDP leading members’ figures you want to adopt, PDP secured a marginal gain of about 2500MW.

    This was in fact wildly celebrated by the then minister for Power, Professor Bath Nnaji who announced gleefully that “With regards to generation, Nigeria is moving ahead by ‘leaps and bounds’, adding that the ‘only problem facing the sector was that of transmission.’ (His transmission firm is to be commissioned soon in Aba by President Jonathan) In fact the president was less restrained. He told CNN Christian Amanpour in far away New York that Nigerians were celebrating his unprecedented achievement in the power sector, a claim which forced the ever resourceful CNN anchor woman to ask for prove from residents of darkness enveloped Lagos.

    But one thing has remained constant. The same set of PDP men, involved in PDP ‘family war’ over the power sector  are also today actively involved in the on-going new efforts either as ministers, governors, senators or IPPs members or as wild celebrants of the absurd.

    Two weeks ago, the nation witnessed a significant drop from the peak of 4,517MW attained on December 21, 2012 to 3,443MW, a drop Prof. Chinedu Nebo, the new power minister attributed to the shutdown of the Chevron gas plant, while admonishing to Nigerians ‘to learn to cope with this type of experience each time there was to be a routine maintenance’.

    And as if we are all pupils of kindergarten, it was this period Dr Doyin Okupe, the president’S Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs chose to celebrate the report of NOI polls, carried out in July 2013 which curiously indicated that 53 percent of Nigerians sampled in the exercise were satisfied with the President’s performance, with majority of respondents attributing the high approval rating to improvement in power supply across the country.

    Okupe remains unrestrained.  According to him, “It is expected that by the time most of the hydro power dams which are currently been rehabilitated also resume operations by the end of September, (40 days from now) most Nigerian cities will have more hours of power supply from the National grid…” Dr. Okupe was not done:‘The implication of this and other reforms, “is that without any doubt, before the end of 2014, Nigerians’ long held dream of joining the worlds list of countries with uninterrupted power supply will be closer in reality than it has ever been,’ he triumphantly declared.

    And working on the theory that Nigerians have short memories, he ignored the fact that it was in June, a month before the survey that the Minister of State for Power, Zainab Kuchi, after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC), publicly declared: “We have 160 million Nigerians now and we are only giving power to 40 million of that population, what it means is that there are about 120 million Nigerians that are without power and wish to buy power”.  The minister for power, Nebo, who was present at the press briefing also added “the situation where only 25 per cent of Nigerians have access to electricity is a nightmare caused by human beings used by evil forces”.

    I think it is pointless asking how Dr Okupe and his pollster arrived at 53%.

  • More barbs, please

    More barbs, please

    IF Zimbabweans had any doubt that they were going to endure five more years of Robert Mugabe, that was settled on Tuesday when the court ruled that the election of the 89-year old was free and fair.

    His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, denounced the election as “a farce” and “a massive fraud”. Local observers said it was a sham and western powers were critical of the poll, but the African Union (AU) whose observers were led by former President Olusegun Obasanjo said it was all free and fair. In his first public speech after the rancorous poll, Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, poured invectives on his opponents, telling those who accused him of vote grabbing to “go hang”. Tsvangirai was lucky the old man was in a good mood. Even before the voting began during his first attempt in 2008, he was given a black eye.

    In Britain, a professor has just condemned Winston Churchill’s speeches as uninspiring, saying it was wrong to claim that they stirred his compatriots to beat Nazi Germany. Prof Richard Tonye, in a new book, also asserted that the Second World War leader’s “finest hour” radio address, one of his most famous, lacked impact “because many people thought he was drunk”, according to “The Mail”.

    Back home in Nigeria, the barbs are flying. All Progressives Congress (APC) Chair Bisi Akande, in a widely publicised interview, told President Goodluck Jonathan that the presidency “is not for kindergarten”. For the Presidency, that was like a jab in the stomach. Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s aides were falling over one another to reply Chief Akande. One said he should respect his age. Fine. But, is it not said that with age comes wisdom, an attribute which nobody has accused the chief of lacking? If Chief Akande believes Jonathan’s handling of some critical issues is not good enough, what is wrong in saying so? Shouldn’t a lucid presentation of facts and figures have been deployed in replying him, rather than mere abuses? The debate is on for the phrase of the year. When the verdict eventually comes, I have no doubt that “kindergarten presidency” will snatch away the prize.

    The rain of blows in the Rivers State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) crisis seems to have subsided. Now, the two sides in the fratricidal war are launching verbal missiles. The other day in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike told his supporters to ignore what he said they must have read in the newspapers – that his opponents asked the President to remove him as a condition for peace. He said: “I have even overstayed. If you can be minister for two years, you must thank your God.” Many sneered at Wike’s comment. They do not need to. Given the chance, how many would not want to be minister for just one month? Just one month.

    Wike, who has his eyes on the governor’s seat in 2015, delivered a tirade in which he said: “We’ll make sure they will not sleep again, as they are sleeping now. They will not sleep with their two eyes closed. One eye will be open because they know there is danger.” It was not really clear if his listeners were inspired. What seems evident is that not many residents are sleeping deeply nowadays, with the return of kidnappers, rusty ex-militants and other criminals from what was like a long long holiday.

    Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi was a bit philosophical in his reaction to Wike’s broadside. He said: “I heard he’s going all over town, saying I didn’t appoint him; the President appointed him, but I nominated him…but, you know character doesn’t come easily; character is a very difficult thing and I am a man of character.”

    Amaechi, who was hosting some Niger Delta Bishops who had earlier visited First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan to resolve the differences between the duo, recalled how it all started and concluded: “As wife of the President who is the head of the government and head of the nation, she is my mother, and you expect that as my mother she should be able to protect her son. No mother takes away a police commissioner to the detriment of her son. So when next you see my mother, please, tell her that she should try and protect her son.”

    That was thought-provoking. Did the First Lady influence the posting of Police Commissioner Mbu Joseph Mbu to Rivers? His tenure has been as turbulent as a flight in a bad weather, yet the authorities keep saying Mbu would not be moved, even as the National Assembly has resolved that he should leave.

    Mbu himself has defended his integrity, saying he is a professional and not a politician – an assertion backed by no less a personality than Inspector-General Mohammed Abubakar. Whoever will pick the Policeman of the Year will surely have a problem choosing between Mbu and former Kogi State Police Commissioner Amanana Ababakasanga -remember him? – the one who barred Osun politicians from travelling to Abuja because, according to him, they showed no convincing reason for embarking on the trip.

    Whichever way the Rivers crisis is resolved, it will be difficult to find a sarcasm that will be as biting as Amaechi’s on our dear First Lady. In other words, the first family’s spokespersons surely have their job well cut out for them.

    In Imo State, Governor Owelle Rochas Okorocha has dumped the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) for the APC. APGA is angry. Before one could say nna, which faction, Okorocha had been slammed with suspension. But the governor said he was not disturbed because Ndigbo’s interest is paramount in his mind. Such interest, he said, could be well served in the APC. “APC remains the best vehicle to promote the interest of our people. PDP has marginalised the Southeast and has nothing to show for all its years in power,” said the governor.

    Adamawa Governor Murtala Nyako told the world why he is not at peace with PDP Chair Bamanga Tukur. He cited what he described as Tukur’s dictatorial attitude. He believed Tukur is not the best for the job, adding: “Tukur is killing PDP. He has been setting up reconciliation committees, left, right and centre…without results. He has just made Umaru Dikko chairman of PDP disciplinary committee. Dikko was indicted during the military era; he would have been brought home from UK to Nigeria if not for the vigilance of the Scotland Yard Police. Now, Tukur glorified such a character, bringing integrity problem to PDP.”

    Nyako, who spoke through the party’s factional secretary, went on: “We are sure many Nigerians will lose confidence in the party… .” You can say that again, sir.

    Tukur has taken up the gauntlet, asking those pushing for his resignation to forget it. “I’m not resigning,” he said in a statement he personally signed. He added: “I am not looking for anything at my age other than putting it on record that God has helped me, and then I am using the opportunities he gave me to serve the rest of Nigeria to the best of my abilities.” Fine. But, chairman, some people are wondering whether Adamawa’s governorship isn’t big enough a toy for your son.

    Asked by this newspaper’s Edo State Reporter to comment on the Rivers crisis, Patrick Obahiagbon, the inimitable former member of the House of Representatives who is now the Chief of Staff to Governor Adams Oshiomhole, replied: “What are Amaechi’s transgressions? That he regularly gives vent to the collective decisions of his brother governors? That he nurses vice presidential ambition, which he has even denied? That he habilimented himself with a perfume of recusancy and not decumbency when he suspected a foul play on the oil wells that he insists belong to Rivers State? That he hobnobs with progressive governors? That he insists on the exercise of his inalienable right to recontest as chairman of the Governors’ Forum? Is this why the apparatchik and coercive apparatus of state sustained by taxpayers’ money has been arrayed against him? I see in this malodorous script the hands of Esau though the voice of Jacob and this is certainly an eschewable socio-political asphyxia cascading into a Frankenstein monster that does not dignify the Presidency and this Makosa dance must stop forthwith.” Mouthful. Indeed.

    Whether they are blabbing or babbling or sneering or sniggering, our politicians are surely an exciting lot. How I wish they could keep it all at this – no cudgels, no cutlasses, guns, bombs and bullets. After all, didn’t the late songster, the weird one, Fela Anikulapo- Kuti, a politician in his own right – MOP, Movement of the People (you remember? ) – say yabis is no case? Let the barbs fly, please.

  • Just me being self righteous (2)

    Posterity will remember Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo. Our descendants shall remember Gani Fawehinmi, Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa and Nnamdi Azikiwe. Tomorrow, while our children’s children and their great-grandchildren recollect Nigeria’s golden age, they will say it was when such leaders of thought and men were alive.

    They shall effortlessly forget “the boy who had no shoes” and yet emerged to become “President.” They wouldn’t think much of him and his cohorts in the ruling class even if they tried. Posterity shall remember the incumbent ruling class as the lower brutes that survived on the blood of the working class. They shall remember the working class as much lower brutes – forgettable elements in the annals of the Nigerian state.

    Time will come when the Nigerian ruling class shall pay with blood, melancholia and despair. From six-feet under and grisly jail cells, they shall lust for life, desperately seeking a second chance with a kind of humble defeatism. Within that same breadth of history, the Nigerian working class shall pay with more tragedy, more misery and blood even as they whine and lust for a better tomorrow.

    Until then, we shall continue to have “today” and yet fail to make the best of it. Now more than ever, we enumerate that pitiful lack of wisdom and aversion to freedom. Like the ruling class, we suffer a lack of intellect and knowledge – useful knowledge to be precise.

    Thus even if spurred by inexorable courage to topple the elite and change our stars, our tragedies shall persist in frequency and extent. After we inter the bones of the last of the ruling class, we shall raise our heads to seek our next best hero only to find none.

    That is because we who shall survive are as savage as the worst of the ruling class. Left to our own devices, we display an unforgivable lack of humaneness and character. Hence even if we could successfully seize power from the ruling class, we shall manage to remain not much in significance and sight. Simply put, were our dreams of change realizable, we shall always remain the next awful alternative.

    Sophistry and deceit are the springboards from which much of our civilization evolve; add mediocrity, mindlessness and greed; and you have a perfect representation of the Nigerian youth.

    We were wrong to think it a matter of years and decades that we would improve in citizenship and insight. We are unaware – like our base and iniquitous elite – that true knowledge essentially translates to being an emissary of truth, hope, superior culture and progress to both the literate and unschooled.

    We forget too that the true essence of learning, that is, both intellectual and vocational learning is never simply to teach breadwinning, furnish teachers for the public schools or be an epitome of polite society. It should above all be the appendage of that fine adjustment between reality and the growing knowledge of life; an adjustment which discovers the secret of civilization and the solution to its seemingly intractable problems.

    Insanely; to this end, we apply religion and milk it, we even get to abuse it. Thus by every manner of faith we commit the worst of inhuman transgressions – like playing God, terrorism and mass murder, lust for flesh and money.

    Today, we lack that broad knowledge of what the world knows and strive to know of progress – which we could youth besides food, shelter and clothing is knowledge. For without it, we become basically unequipped and sorely handicapped to satisfy our need for food, shelter and clothing.

    Thus the need to evolve and painstakingly propagate practicable knowledge and culture in unexploited and infinite capacity. Until we attain a broad, busy abundance of such understanding, not all the finest flavours of the proverbial national cake – be they oven-baked or sand-baked – can save us from our lusts and the affliction of the Nigerian ruling class.

    The knowledge we flaunt is basically a ghost of human education that yet despises the enlightenment and empowerment of the masses. Under the foul stench of every form of slavery, we fight a lost battle for survival within the tainted air of social strife and entrepreneurial selfishness. The progress we seek is impeded by our lust for cynicism and delusions of grandeur. We starve and die for our lack of honest and broadly cultured men.

    Patience, humility, good breeding and taste, comprehensive high schools and kindergartens, universities and polytechnics, industrial and technical colleges, teacher training colleges, literature, tolerance and tact – all these spring from proper learning and culture.

    It’s time we engaged in pursuit and dissemination of knowledge devoid of loose and careless logic – like the type that produced and still produce a good number of the Nigerian ruling class. And the final product of our training must be neither a medical doctor nor journalist, but a man. And to make men, our learning process must be replete with ideals as well as broad, pure, practicable and inspiring ends of living – not desperate, sordid, money-grabbing sound bites. The end product of our educational process must have learnt to work for the glory of his calling, not simply for pecuniary gains. The intellectual must think for truth and progress, not for fame or the applause of the gallery.

    And all these are attainable via human endeavour and yearning; by a conscious quest for learning; by founding the primary school for the secondary and the comprehensive high school for the polytechnic, university and teacher training colleges. If we could successfully weave such a system, we could finally establish an educational system and not a distortion of it; we could finally midwife multiple births and not ceaseless series of abortion.

    To bring about such bliss requires the presence of substantially gifted men of courage and culture – a principal prerequisite we seem infinitely handicapped to fulfill. Thus we have shadows of men constituting the Nigerian ruling elite and youth. Consequently, we have learnt to live off the attainments of men of stature accessible now in history and diminishing daguerreotypes.

    The ruling class couldn’t be bothered if our educational system is wrecked beyond redemption; the philosophy of its intransigence is discernible in its greed and brazen disregard for the future even as Nigeria shamelessly treads the trail of erstwhile educationally-challenged neighbours in Africa.

    The politics of greed and incompetence of the incumbent administration demands that it neglects the core issues militating against the success of the Nigerian education enterprise – like inadequate funding, poor research facilities, inadequate infrastructure, outdated lecturers and teaching methods, obsolete libraries and laboratories and the degenerate politics of discrimination between Nigeria’s polytechnic and university enterprise.

    Hence the fraudulence and apparent cowardliness of the incumbent administration in addressing Nigeria’s unending educational crisis – simply because the final products end up to be you and me and every minion unfortunate to belong to the Nigerian working class.

    It is therefore, the duty of every constituent of the Nigerian working class to see that in the future competition for our mandate, the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the humane, unpopular and true.

    • To be continued…