The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • What Nigerians demand of Jonathan and PDP

    PDP zero-sum struggle for power without responsibility has begun in earnest. The battle line as it was in 2010 is once again between President Goodluck Jonathan and the northern political class whose current public face is Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State. Jonathan who has now come of age has taken the battle directly to his political adversaries.

    The chairmanship of Nigerian Ports Authority and that of Board of Trustees of the PDP (BoT) considered critical for electoral funding and victory have both been ceded to 80 years old Tony Anenih, the celebrated ‘fixer’. The president has in his pocket, Bamanga Tukur, who is as ruthless as other past PDP chairmen such as Ahmadu Alli whose son like his was involved in alleged fuel importation scam, Prince Vincent Ogbuluafor, taken to court by Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) for aiding three bogus companies who claimed to have executed jobs worth over N2.2billion’, and Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.

    Tukur has also effortlessly caged Jonathan political enemies in the South-west, neutralized the influence of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) headed by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and installed Godswill Akpabio of Akwan Ibom as the chairman of newly formed PDP Governors parallel forum.

    The president has ignored the claim by Governor Aliyu, the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum that he signed a document with the northern governors back in 2010, to the effect that he would do only one term. Dr Doyin Okupe the president’s spokesman has however dismissed Babangida’s claim as diversionary. He says the president considers such claim as “an invidious attempt to sway him from his chosen pursuit of the set out constituents of the transformation agenda which form the basis upon which Nigerians overwhelmingly elected him to steer the ship of the nation in 2011.” Whatever that means.

    But the president’s wife not known for any form of obfuscation has along with other PDP women of goodwill started to count the chicks before the eggs are hatched. For Patience Jonathan, ‘100 opposition cannot defeat PDP’. And as for the PDP Women Leader, Kema Chikwe, her group she says “is confident that when President Jonathan returns in 2015, women would be talking about 50 per cent, no longer 35 per cent affirmative action”.

    Indeed, other Jonathan strategists have moved beyond whether Jonathan would run or not .They have plotted how he would effortlessly capture 11 of the 19 states in the north and five of South-east and six of South-south.

    Now that we have been told our input may not count for much in President Jonathan’s return to Aso rock in 2015, we can at least remind him of other pending issues beside his uncompleted ‘transformation agenda’ Dr. Okupe so romantically talked about.

    May we remind the president that in spite of his chest-beating about achievement on electricity, 150m Nigerians still have to ration 4,600MW after PDP’s 13 years in power and frittering away of close to $20b compared to 150,000MW South Africa generates for her 35m population.

    That our roads are in worse state of disrepair than PDP met them 13 years ago. (Governor Fashola of Lagos only last week threw a challenge at the federal government to identify a 100 kilometre road they have completed anywhere in the country this past 13 years.)

    But far more than decay in infrastructure, the president is aware of the international community’s warning of possible collapse of the Nigerian economy in the next three years with the dwindling oil fortunes arising from US drive for self-sufficiency in energy coupled with the massive corruption of Nigerian ruling class. This was long before the recent ACN alert.

    We may also wish to remind the president that even if he and the PDP do not give a damn about Nigerians who they assume suffer from collective amnesia, they can on account of Nigerians having become the butt of expensive jokes by players in the international community such as David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain and Bill Clinton, former US President who literarily told Jonathan to his face that Nigerian ruling class are thieves, to revisit the following outstanding issues before his foreclosed return to Aso rock in 2015.

    On the Lawan Farouk House committee report of alleged theft of N1.7trillion by fuel importers, Okupe had said we should praise the president for insisting the son of his party chairman fingered in the scam faces the law. Today while he and his accomplices are flying around the world, Nigerian SANs and judges have told us they are busy discussing ‘plea bargaining’ on their behalf in absentia.

    We may need to remind the president that his Ribadu Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force discovered N10 trillion was lost to crude oil theft, from a yearly loss of 250,000 barrels per day or N1 trillion yearly. But Shell Nigeria’s Managing Director Mutiu Sunmonu said only on Monday that “The volume stolen, today, including over 60,000 barrels per day from Shell alone, is the highest in the last three years.” He did not forget to add the obvious: that government should confront the big men behind oil theft. In 2011, Nigeria lost $7b to oil theft.

    The same Ribadu Committee reported that N178 billion worth of refined petroleum products was stolen from the pipelines, through vandalism orchestrated by thieves. That has continued unabated even with the substitution of our ill-equipped naval men with companies owned by repentant militants that have secured mouth-watering contracts. Shell claims it spent $1.1m to repair damaged pipes in Nembe Creek in 2012.

    We have also only seen cosmetic changes in NNPC which the report claims incurred $5 billion (N785 billion) short-payment from sale of domestic crude and recorded a deficit of N298 billion from the accounts of its 16 subsidiaries. The report has more. $183 million (N28.7 billion) remained outstanding from signature bonuses.

    And still outstanding is Oby Ezekwesili’s recent claim that the regimes of late President Umaru Yar’Adua and that of President Jonathan squandered $67bn from the country’s foreign reserve. In spite of Okupe’s wild claim that it was an attempt to bring the Jonathan administration down, Nigerians believe Ezekwesili’s challenge for a debate is a step in the right direction.

    Nigerians are also interested in knowing the number of aircrafts and helicopters President Jonathan intend to add to his current fleet of 10 since 2015 is settled. Sahara Reporters had alleged in its edition of December 5, 2012 that while most major countries in Europe and Asia maintain mostly two aircraft in their presidential fleet, the Jonathan-led administration spends estimated N9.08bn annually on 10 Presidential jets.

    And finally, I also think Nigerians will also want the president and PDP to give account of all recovered loots from their indicted party members and sympathizers. This is in view of the claim of an Anti-Corruption Network that the N191bn assets seized from the Managing Director of the defunct Oceanic Bank Plc, Cecilia Ibru cannot be accounted for. According to them, their “investigation and physical visits to some of the properties in the United States and United Kingdom revealed that some of the properties claimed to have been forfeited are still in her custody directly or indirectly.”

    Perhaps our story would have been different if only President Jonathan and PDP had dedicated half of the energy currently deployed towards how to share spoils of office comes 2015 to serving Nigerians like Obafemi Awolowo and his AG party once did for the West and Ahmadu Bello and his NPCparty replicated in the North in the 1960s.

    The above few demands therefore, contrary to the conclusion Okupe will most predictably reach, are not designed to bring down PDP and Jonathan administration we are told is already destined to return to power in spite of 13 years dismal record, but to aid those who have started to question the sanity of Nigerians.

  • Who will stop the gunman?

    Who will stop the gunman?

    WILL the police ever find Commissioner Chinweike Asadu’s killers?

    To many Nigerians who have lost faith in the system the answer is simple – no. Inspector-General Mohammed Abubakar has vowed to bring the killers to justice. In fact, there has been a whirlwind of arrests in Enugu, the city in which the Kwara State Commissioner of Police was cut down in a hail of bullets last Saturday. Doctors are battling to save the lives of his orderly and driver.

    Asadu was driving home after dropping a lawyer-friend of his who came visiting. A bus carrying four armed men blocked his car. He was ordered out of the car. He did. His orderly also came out. The gunmen found Asadu’s driver, Oliver Omeh, a corporal, in uniform and opened fire, killing the commissioner and leaving the others injured. By the time Asadu’s guards rushed to the scene, the gunmen had vanished into the thick, dark night, perhaps never to be seen again.

    Did Asadu underestimate the security situation in Enugu? Why did he not take enough guards, knowing that trouble blows no siren? Who was the visitor? Were the gunmen after the Camry and fired the lethal shots out of panic? Can Omeh and Aloha Olaniyi, the driver, identify them? Were the gunmen robbers or contract killers?

    The puzzles are as numerous as the number of unresolved assassinations that the police say they have been tackling. What is clear is that the police have lost a fine officer and a good man, going by the tributes that have been pouring in since the tragedy occurred- less than three months to Asadu’s retirement date, a date to which he was excitedly looking forward. But are these accolades genuine? We may never know.

    With Asadu’s murder have come more troubles for the police, who are yet to find the Pension Task Force Team leader, Ibrahim Maina, a man they protected with a battalion for months as if he was the most important of all our VIPs. The Senate issued a warrant of arrest for Maina to come and explain how billions of pension cash went missing. Maina ran to the court to seek protection. He got none. Then he went underground. From his hiding place, he kept organising protests, pushing the authorities to leave him alone. He will surely show up again, perhaps for a bigger assignment, when everything is calm.

    Should Senate President David Mark see police chief Abubakar today, his first question is most likely to be: “Where is Maina?” “We are looking for him sir. Rankadede sir,” the IG will, most likely, reply. Both will smile, shake hands, crack some jokes and move on.

    Farouk Lawan – I’m sure you remember him – is facing bribery charges in court, after a long, winding and grinding investigation that went everywhere but, in the view of many, got nowhere. The lawmaker confessed to collecting some $620,000 bribe from businessman Femi Otedola, but vowed not to surrender the evidence to the police (He doesn’t trust them?). He was hauled before the court after so much noise from those who felt that even Mr Integrity needed to prove his integrity- if indeed he had any. The case is on, but the question remains: “Where is the cash?” We may never know.

    The popular thinking is that if these seemingly simple cases remain unresolved, how much more murder, murder under the cover of darkness, and assassinations. The Igwes. Bola Ige. Odunayo Olagbaju. Isiak Mohammed. Jafaar Adam. Theodore Egwuatu. Harry Marshall . Layi Balogun. Funsho Williams. And many more.

    The police have lost so many men, unsung and, most likely, unmissed by the force they served and died for. They are never remembered. In some cases, their families get thrown out of the barracks soon after their death, left alone to fend for themselves in a beautiful country troubled by ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.

    The Asadu murder has ignited many thoughts on crimes, criminals and crime fighters. Among us are men who live in the past, in the dark past when life meant little and people were slaughtered in a savage world of brutes and bullies. These are ritual murderers, who believe human blood and body parts can, by some mystical powers, yield money.

    A newspaper reported on January 30 the case of a man who found a human head on the road opposite his home in Jos. A headless body cut into many parts was recovered on Tafawa Balewa Road, also in Jos. The body was later identified to be that of a resident of the city. These are just two among many. We may never know who these savages are.

    Almost two months after some bodies were found floating on the Ezu River in Anambra, there is still no clue to who the dead were. The police vowed to resolve the mystery; they are yet to. Politicians have been visiting the community to offer the residents “pure water” and make inciting statements that can never aid the resolution of the mystery, but deepen the kind of animosity that may have led to the problem. Did the bodies drop from heaven? Is there a big conspiracy among those who lost their loved ones to keep quiet for fear of being given the same treatment? Was it a mere expression of our callousness and loss of humanity? We may never know.

    The other day in Kano, a 42-year-old woman was arrested for selling dogs. There was a song and dance about her arrest. According to the law enforcers, that was the second time she had been arrested. The woman said she knew no other trade. What happened to her eventually? We may never know.

    Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole has been accusing the police of complicity in the murder of his private secretary, Olaitan Oyerinde. The police have denied this, alleging that the comrade-governor is using his position to hurl abuses at them. Oshiomhole’s case is simple. He says the gun used by Oyerinde’s killers had been with the police since April 24, 2012, before the murderers struck. It was, according to the governor, retrieved from the police exhibits room and presented as the one used to kill Oyerinde, whose activist-friend was initially arrested for the crime, but let off the hook by a court that found that the police were tampering with his rights. Besides, the suspects arrested by the police are different from those being held by the State Security Service (SSS). Now, who is to face trial for the crime? Who killed Oyerinde? We may never know.

    As we reflected on the Oyerinde murder, a colleague recalled a joke that once appeared on this page to reinforce his belief that the police will surely find Asadu’s killers because, according to him, he was one of them, their own man. Here goes the joke, once again, dear reader: “In an effort to determine the top crime fighting agency in Nigeria, the President narrowed the field to three finalists: SSS, Army and Police. The three contenders were given the task of catching a rabbit that was released into the forest. The SSS went in, placing informants all over the place. They questioned all plants and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigation, the SSS concluded that rabbits do not exist. The army went into the forest. After two weeks without a capture, they burnt the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit. They made no apologies. The rabbit deserved it.

    “The police went into the forest. They came out two hours later with a badly beaten hyena. The hyena was yelling: `Okay, okay; I agree! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!`”

    Will the police find Asadu’s killers? Who will save us from the gunman?

     

    Jonathan goes to Borno, Yobe

    HE President will be in Maiduguri, the beleaguered Borno State capital, and Yobe State today and tomorrow. There will be no excited school pupils lining the road and waving the national flag. Markets will be shut and residents will stay indoors. A strange visit.

    The Borno State Government has declared a public holiday, apparently after considering the massive security implication of the official visit. The Inspector-General is leading 3,000 policemen. There will be no fewer than 100 secret agents and an army of Civil Defence personnel. The Chief of Defence Staff, Vice Admiral Ibrahim Ola Sa’ad, will coordinate the operation.

    The visit is coming after that of nine All Progressives Party (APC) governors – and a deputy. They visited the city’s biggest market, drawing applause. Presidential aide Dr Doyin Okupe said Dr Goodluck Jonathan planned to visit this week and that the governors merely took the wind out of his sails in what he derogatorily called a stunt and a circus.

    Must Okupe talk? If the President’s visit isn’t a show of bravado against the Boko Haram insurgency, what is it? Should there be any big deal in the President visiting any part of the country? What message will the visit bring us – that the Federal Government has made Borno and Yobe safe for all? Who will believe that?

    Anyway, au revoir, President Jonathan.

  • Hero or nothing like it

    Cowards with columns pass as men of valour. I am a columnist and perhaps a coward. But you would never know. You could never tell if I am true to the calling or just another character pushing pen and idle rant to make ends meet.

    It is never my intent to arrogate to myself some blundering heroism or self-abnegating priesthood, there is too many of my ilk doing just that. I write to vex your ego and caress it, as your prejudices dictate. I write to contend and affirm those defining moments in which you have discovered me to be a coward or villain, time and over again. But Nigeria has taught me that heroism is overrated; villainy could be relative and cowardliness is a virtue where perverted will consorts with ill.

    You are entitled to whatever you think of me. And I am entitled to what random thought I deem worthy of your readership – knowing the tenor of my rant inadvertently guides you to define me. So, if I am your hero, I believe you think too much of me. If I am your villain or contemptible coward…well, what can I say?

    But if you consider me to be an idiot, I hope you finally get to understand that no one can be a Nigerian without being in the strictest sense, an idiot. The average Nigerian is a special fool. The higher his status, the more adroit he is in perpetuating his folly. But this is hardly flak for the Nigerian fool in high places; it has always being his luck to find some greater fool to admire him. This is about the greater fool.

    This is about men and women of which every nerve is disoriented and every fiber that isn’t could be certified handicapped. This is about men and women presumably of higher learning and good breeding; those extraordinary Nigerians by whose talent and individuality Nigeria customarily channels pride and banalities of a better tomorrow. This is about the Nigerian columnist, the one whose dazzling intellectualism Moliere’s riposte of the knowledgeable fool fittingly substantiates.

    Today, we grovel at the feet of the ruling class, like mongrels. Today, we recognize the stench of the looter with the fattest envelope and our trained eyeballs hardly passes over the prospective interviewee with the promising smile which sooner breaks into a sneer.

    In our calling, there are still no-go areas. We can never question religion save the instances we get to castigate one faith to elevate another, in the heat of poverty-induced pogroms we have learnt to call ‘religious crises and ‘politics.’ Need I say people are simply hungry? They are jobless too. That is why they become cannon-fodder in needless genocides.

    The labourer still goes home with heavy steps, and the heart of the casual worker resuming night shift shrivels desolately, like fresh mutton sautéed with local gin. Even the newborn arrives sorrow-clad; he probably wishes that he had waited till never. Within this unbearable cheerlessness, the masses stare resignedly at our cover pages with knowing glares. They know they would never hear the infinitesimal clangour of chilled truth neither shall they enjoy the comfort of temperate hope because we have become the aberration of their desperate circumstances.

    The Nigerian columnist thinks himself a national hero; a noble intellectual and man of letters. Such is the wonder of a newspaper column; it goads many of us columnists to think too highly of ourselves. Add to the mix, a mass of fawning and frosty readership, and you have a perfect cocktail that makes a narcissist and lapdog of even the most modest journalist.

    How far we evolve depends on the quality of citizenship exhibited by his most patronizing and hostile audience. Yet it would never do to lay the blame for what we have become on society; that would be tantamount to perpetuating the “Nigerian factor” – that ageless pretext we have learnt to incite every time we fall short of measure.

    Who is your columnist? Is he truly that great, heroic man speaking and pricking conscience as a tireless patriot? Is he that uncommon, high-cultivated man of letters that has eluded our nation for so long? Is he a heroic seeker of truth and shiner of hope?

    It could be honourable to be all that and much more. But alas, we are no heroic bringers of light and that is because our readers aren’t heroic seekers of it. We do not seek to fight and conquer persistent monstrosities our ruling class manically visit upon us. Many a columnist live to echo the cynicism and intolerable disloyalty of all manners of readership. And many a reader live to applaud the treachery to the Nigerian State and posterity. The result is a gang of conscienceless and fortune-seeking citizenry.

    If we could overlook such decadence in our readership, we couldn’t justify a smidgen of it in Nigeria’s Fourth Estate even if we tried. Now that we have replaced our heroes past, we embellish their truths into absurdities and bad lies. Every day, we fail our people with shame we do not feel. We have become the stamen that lets down the azalea, the comforter that brings grief, the emissaries of needless hate. We have become slaves to the tyrants we ought to remove. Did we fight the military to a standstill so that we may become their instruments as democratic tyrants? Shall we forever be gut-challenged?

    We offer no direction folks save our shenanigans in the interest of the ruling class. Today every columnist seeks friends in high places but then, we are only being Nigerian. It’s time we inspired by the wisdom of dead writers; sages from whose ashes we struggle to rise. It’s time we held a cup of water for the dying veterans to sip. It’s time we searched their eyes to learn the gleam of courage and earn it.

    It’s time we screamed in coherence. It’s time we usurped the dominant order and rid our lives of the blanched bubus that makes us the vacuous wimps that we are. It’s time we congregated to produce the leadership that we crave. Now that the die is triple-cast, let us put our hearts where our pens write.

    And if we fall to the inanities we chasten and yet ennoble in others, then we shall know we are the broken clay pots calling the kettles black. We could midwife the dawn that would herald our freedom, yet.

    Let us become the conscience of the ruling class and the pulse of the breadlines lest we become dead to future generations; lest they never get to read of our selfless beginnings; lest they only get to know of the noon that confused us and the sunset of our debauchery.

    If we fail to change, our twilight will malign us. And in death, we shall lay rapt in the indecency of our lowly graves, our ears keen for the least abrasive diatribe we may get to treasure as the eulogies we never had.

    Let us brighten our world with truth. Let us imbue it with wisdom and deep delight; that we may strive more victoriously and make our world the best it can be.

  • The new Fayemi challenge

    Lest we forget how Ekiti a ‘historically and culturally identical’ land of honor was desecrated. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in all his majesty surveyed our land and settled for an Ayo Fayose as a replacement for Niyi Adebayo as governor of Ekiti State. Following a contrived dispute between Abiodun Olujimi, impeached Fayose’s deputy and the Speaker of the state House of Assembly, a state of emergency was declared in October 2006. General Tunji Olurin, Obasanjo’s kinsman was installed as sole administrator. It was obvious his mandate was to do a hatchet job of preparing the ground for rigging Segun Oni into office in the same manner Dr Koye Majekodunmi did in Ibadan during the first republic when he reinstated Akintola who had been constitutionally removed from office as premier and prepared the ground for the rigging of the 1965 regional election in his favour.

    Two years of purposeful leadership has already eclipsed eight years of political upheaval, violence, uncertainty and anxiety that characterized Obasanjo’s self-serving intervention in Ekiti. Peace has gradually returned to Ekiti, and today, Kayode Fayemi is dedicated to the ‘the restoration of the core Ekiti values of passion, courage, integrity, meritocracy and honour.’

    He is building roads and renovating schools. He has already equipped students and teachers with about 30,000 laptops. He has put in place a social programme that caters for about 20,000 elderly citizens. His free health programme is said to capture about 60 per cent of the population.

    But we are left with permanent scars of Obasanjo’s assault on our people and our land of honour. The most visible scar of Obasanjo’s selfish intervention in our affairs is the army of school dropouts following the near collapse of the educational sector of the state during the PDP years of locust. Ayo Fayose, it would be recalled, preferred poultry farms to medical school while a better equipped Segun Oni enmeshed in PDP politics of ‘sharing’ ignored informed suggestions to expend his energies on secondary schools instead of establishing universities the state could not support financially.

    One very sad example as governor Fayemi recently pointed out is that Christ School, unarguably the best in the state, and one of the best (like my own St Joseph’s College Ondo) in the federation, was in recent years recording less than 10% success in the West African School Certificate examinations. Most of the dropouts, spread around the state in the last 10 years have since found new callings as Babalawo (traditional healers), political thugs and pastors.

    One manifestation of this development was what happened in Emure last week, when misguided youths took law into their hands, disrupted market, stoned their traditional ruler the Elemure of Emure, Oba Emmanuel Adebowale Adebayo, and chased the community chiefs out of the palace.

    Their grouses: harvests of deaths of young people in their community arising from accidents such as those involving “two undergraduates from the community who died in a motorcycle accident in far away Ado Ekiti on Valentine’s Day, and, three persons who also died in an accident on Ikere – Ise – Emure road when the vehicles they were travelling in had a head-on collision”. The youths wanted their traditional ruler and his chiefs to explain how the members of their community met their death in such ‘strange circumstances’

    But if the governor thought the misguided youths with wild views were all he had to deal with, he was wrong. He also has the traditional rulers whose bemusing response to what by all accounts was an idiotic demand was a plan to ‘organise an interdenominational religious prayer session’ to curb harvests of deaths through motor cycle and car accidents.

    In the circumstance, Governor Fayemi has an arduous task in a state where religion has become the most thriving industry, second only to political thuggery, where misguided miracle seeking youths, instead of working, depend on periodic handouts from politicians, and a state where the only value added to the lives of citizens by traditional rulers who share five per cent of local council allocation in addition to gifts of new cars from state government is prayers.

    The task we are giving to the governor will now include the enforcement of God’s injunction that we must all ‘live by our sweats’ and the labelling as 419ers all misguided youths and community leaders who try to swindle God through endless prayers even after He, our almighty Father has decreed ‘we must all reap what we sow’. Their accomplices-the fake pastors who are insisting our youths can reap where they have not sown, must be declared enemies of the people and handed over to EFCC.

    For those honest Ekiti youths who want to live by their sweat and reap what they sow, the governor can call their attention to the good news Senator Babafemi Ojudu brought back from his recent tour of Israel. Ojudu cited the case of three young graduate farmers he met in Israel during the tour who post an annual turnover of $12m by cultivating tomato for export through a new irrigation method.

    Our hard-working and creative governor who has a way of getting things done must find a way of convincing our fraudulent young prosperity gospel preachers and their gullible miracle seekers that a new wave of miracles currently coming out of Israel, a war-ravaged, desert, land of unbelievers, who killed Jesus the son of God and thereafter unrepentantly proclaimed ‘may his blood be on us and on our children’, are also possible here.

    Happily, Ekiti is not a barren land. Ojudu has said arrangements are being made to irrigate 40,000 hectares of land throughout the year and that this is to be parcelled out to youths who genuinely want miracle based on God’s injunction that we must live through our sweat. The overpaid traditional rulers who have been reaping from where they did not sow should be given responsibility to mobilise the misguided youths of their various communities towards productive endeavours. They have lived as parasites for far too long with powers without responsibilities. Fayemi must find a way of making them more relevant to their communities.

    The stakes are high but the governor cannot afford to fail in this arduous endeavour because of its far-reaching implications for the future of our state. In another 10 years, today’s youth on whom he is investing so much are going to become doctors, lawyers and other professionals. As a social scientist, he knows today’s fraudulent miracle seekers, if not liberated, will provide only an insecure environment for his dream new generation of proud Ekiti young professionals. We are today witnesses to such failures in some parts of our country where those on whom huge investment had been made with the hope of bringing development back to their communities have been driven out to seek refuge and fulfilment in other areas including foreign lands.

  • Lord Lugard and the 1914 Amalgamation of Nigeria

    Lord Lugard and the 1914 Amalgamation of Nigeria

    The period between 1900 -12 was one in which the two halves of the protectorate, inheriting fundamentally different forms of administration and underlying political and social structures, diverged radically in administrative and political styles.

    The administrative structures in Nigeria before amalgamation were really diverse. It was as if Britain was really creating two different countries. When Lugard returned to Nigeria as Governor General in 1912 and introduced the amalgamation in 1914, largely for financial reasons, the content of the amalgamation was profoundly influenced by Lugard’s previous experience in Northern Nigeria and his disdainful attitudes towards Southern Nigeria. In effect, there was little or no amalgamation, for Lugard simply superimposed on the colony the existing structures in Northern Nigeria, particularly the obnoxious system of indirect rule. Lugard made no serious effort to bring Northern and Southern Nigeria under a uniform and central administration. For most of the time, he governed the colonial territory from the North in an administrative system that was so evidently incongruous.

    From his Political Memoranda, his Amalgamation Reports, and his numerous writings on the new colony, it is doubtful that Lugard, or most of his successors in the colony, really did think of Nigeria’s future in terms of a single political entity. Lugard’s successor as Governor General, Hugh Clifford, had warned in 1919 that ‘the coordination of all administrative work should be directed from a single centre’. His successor, Richard Palmer, disagreed with this view, and instead averred that Nigeria ‘was a mere geographical expression, the European label attached to three divergent though contiguous chunks of Africa’. British colonial policy in Africa was vastly different from the French colonial policy of assimilation that envisioned its colonies as possible French states in future. Lugard and most of his administrative successors in Nigeria did not have such a vision for Nigeria.

    The amalgamation, now being celebrated by the Federal Government, was certainly very unpopular in both Northern and Southern Nigeria at the time, and was vigorously opposed by the educated Lagos elite. In the North, the powerful emirates were opposed to it, as it was feared that a centralised administrative system would weaken their authority, which in fact depended on British rule, while in the South it was feared that it would lead to the introduction of the unpopular system of indirect rule and the curtailment of the few political rights that the Lagos-based educated elite enjoyed under the legislative council system. Sir Arthur Richards, another Governor General, while reviewing the 1923 Clifford Constitution had stated that his main objective was to promote the unity of Nigeria. But through his creation of regional councils in the three provinces into which Nigeria was divided, he reinforced the already existing trend towards regionalism in Nigeria. Richards justified his new Constitution for Nigeria on the ground that Northern Nigeria wanted little or nothing to do with the South. This view was subsequently echoed in the 1940s by both Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello, who stated quite clearly that they both regarded Nigeria as a mere geographical expression, and not a united country. In fact, Sir Ahmadu Bello complained publicly later that ‘the mistake of 1914 (meaning the amalgamation) has come to light’. It was as a compromise that a federal system was introduced as best suited to Nigerian conditions.

    The amalgamation created modern Nigeria, but it was not without some strains as it forced the various ethnic groups of Nigeria into a single political unit. It was like trying to force a political union among France, Germany, and Britain. Belgium is a good example of a country in which two separate and distinct nationalities have been lumped together with predictable results, similar to the situation in Nigeria. In fact, it was only in Nigeria that the British colonialists used the word ‘amalgamation’. This term was never applied to any of their other colonies in Africa, or elsewhere. Whatever we may consider to be the merits of amalgamation, it is not an event for us to celebrate. It is demeaning. We should merely mark it as a major event in Nigeria’s political development. I know of no other former British colony that has celebrated its acquisition in this manner. The idea has no precedence in Africa. It was British colonial genius that produced Nigeria. But they will not be celebrating it for obvious reasons. In fact, if they tried to celebrate the occasion, we should object to it as demeaning to us. Our African brothers will certainly consider the planned celebration rather strange. As a nation, we have worked hard and tirelessly to keep this nation united. But we should not celebrate an event in our colonial history of which we should not be proud.

    Of course, the amalgamation was a historic event in Nigeria and cannot be forgotten completely. The intention here is not to completely denigrate British rule in Nigeria as it did the country some good. It introduced western education in the South and a system of justice that was fair on the whole. But it is my well considered view that we should merely mark the amalgamation with seminars, and not celebrate it as if the idea was that of our people and leaders.

    It is a pity that Nigerian and African history are no longer being seriously taught in our schools and Universities. If they were, we would certainly take a different view of this plan to celebrate this episode of our history. Professor Tamuno, the chairman of the planning committee of the celebration, is a historian of note, and a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. He understands fully the point being made here. It would be better for him to advise the government that, instead of the planned elaborate celebrations, we should merely mark the event by holding seminars and lectures all over the country. This would be far cheaper, more relevant, and more meaningful. What we need is a sober reflection on what amalgamation really meant to Nigeria. I intend to discuss this in my next series of articles in this paper.

  • APC: Nigeria’s political Macedonia

    The coming of APC following the merger of ACN, CPC, ANPP and APGA to form a formidable political party is like the call to Paul of Tarsus to come to Macedonia and liberate it from paganism. I have always wondered who would liberate Nigeria from the death grip of the PDP after almost 14 years of non- performance. Fourteen years is a long time in the history of man and in the history of nations. A child of 14 years would be a strappling teenager who would not be oblivious of his or her environment. So it should be with a nation. The PDP appears to me tired and totally bereft of what to do to advance the interest of our country. Nigerians are generally not too demanding of their government. What they want are regular electricity, regular supply of water, security, good roads and good schools as well as other appurtenances of modern life. These are services some of which they are ready to pay for if available. When the PDP came to power in 1999, we were told that within six months there would be regular supply of electricity. We were also told that within four years of their administration, power generation will hit 10,000mega watts. We were also told that once we liquidated our foreign debts, whatever we were using to pay the debts annually will now be diverted to roads construction. None of these promises and commitments has been met. Our hospitals have remained consulting clinics, our roads have become death traps, our infrastructure generally have remained backward and almost non-existent. It will be very difficult for anybody to find an area in which we have made progress. Internal security has collapsed; we are still generating less than 4,000 mega watts of electricity for a population of more than 170 million compared to South Africa’s 35 million people who enjoy their country’s generation of close to 150,000mega watts.

    When I was young, our universities compared and competed with those of Canada, Australia and the UK. My B.A. Hons 2nd Class Upper Division of Ibadan gave me access to PhD programme without having to have a Masters degree. Today products of our universities have to do one make up year abroad before they can register for Masters Degree. All these have taken place under the PDP’s watch yet the PDP is hanging on our neck like an incubus against which we are helpless. Elections have been held three times since 1999 and all attempts to throw off this yoke have failed because elections in Nigeria are neither fair nor free. The poorer the party performs, the greater the votes they award themselves at election time. Who is therefore going to rescue us from this malevolent political party called the PDP? We have prayed, fasted and in some cases demonstrated against their policies to no avail. We are victims of the dictum that a country deserves the government it gets. In the meantime, corruption has become the second name of Nigeria and like a strong gale it is blowing everything before it and one is afraid that if there is no change it may destroy all of us.

    This is why the coming together of all progressive forces constitutes an answer to the call of patriotism and it behoves on all people of good conscience to rally round the party and deliver this country from the jaws of destruction and from political precipice and economic ruination brought on us by the PDP. I am sure the PDP itself would be relieved if it loses power in 2015 because it has run out of any idea of governance and it is too ashamed to surrender power unless this power is wrested from it.

    This is why the APC is a welcome development. At least we will have a chance to try another party that has a totally distinct idea of what to do in power rather than the present situation where most of the leaders of the ruling party are involved in primitive accumulation of money and a feeding frenzy on collective national resources. A party whose credo as exposed by one of their former leader was that service in government was a call to come and eat rather than to serve. This is the party that the APC has come to rescue from its own vomit. If all things go well and if the APC leadership is selfless, patriotic, self-abnegating, self-sacrificing and driven by the desire to rescue and salvage the nation, they should put aside all ethnic, personal, regional and religious consideration in selecting their leaders and in fielding the combination that will bring victory and succour to Nigeria in 2015. There is no dearth of leaders in the APC who can be president but emphasis must be on competence, incorruptibility and experience. The problems of this country are so many that we need energetic leaders; energetic leadership does not mean youthful leadership. The time to start preparation for 2015 is now. In this preparation, the APC must ensure that government facilities are not used against it and this will include the Police and the electoral commission as well as the armed forces. We must ensure that a non- performing political party is not returned to power by hook or crook.

    I want my children to inherit from my generation a country better than I met it. What presently exists is a travesty of governance and I am ashamed that this is all that this resourceful and cerebrally endowed country has. The fault is in us not in our stars. It will not matter where the president of the country comes from if he performs well. Our problem is that the routine performance of government duties by those in authority is a cause for celebration. Victory at recent football competition has been made the opium of the people and money left from the denuded coffers of government is being frittered away without budgetary provision on footballers. Governance has been shoved aside in parliament and in the executive to celebrate a mere football victory. This sterility of idea about what governance is will come to an end when APC comes to power in 2015.

  • The final showdown

    Between governors and the people, there is no love lost. Many will not touch the governors with a 10-foot pole because of their excellencies’ perceived imperialistic attitude. Our governors love power and they like to flaunt it by dominating their environment. Governors like to dominate everything even though they are not generals, who former military leader Gen Ibrahim Babangida once said ‘’like to dominate their environment’’. In the IBB school, only generals dominate their environment.

    Our governors seem to have put a lie to that statement with the way they have taken over the political landscape not only in their states but across the country. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors, in particular, are not only chief executives of their states, they also hold sway in their party.

    The governors have a lot of say in the party. With their number, they determine who becomes the national chairman, the presidential candidate and so on and so forth. When they band together, they are a threat to the leadership of their party, which does all it can to appease them on such occasions. When the governors take on their party, it is quiet interesting because the friction exposes the underbelly of the acclaimed largest party in Africa. PDP is large no doubt, but its so-called behemoth size always seems to be the source of its frequent internal crises. To a large extent, parties are defined by conflicts and crises and their ability to manage such problems.

    There is no political party in the world without its internal strife, but the ultimate test is in the party’s management of the crisis so that it does not get out of hand. More often than not, PDP’s crises threaten the polity for no other reason than the fact that it is the ruling party. When there is a crisis in the party, the polity quakes, with governance coming virtually to a standstill.. This is especially so when the president and the governors are quarrelling. And their spat has become a recurring decimal in recent times. If they don’t fight over who should become national chairman, they are sparring over which candidates should be fielded in an election.

    Better still, there may be a clash of personal interest between the president and the governors. At the moment, the president is fighting the governors over his political future. The governors have a body under which they meet and take certain decisions in their states’ collective interest. The Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) comprises all the 36 governors, meaning that the membership cuts across party line. As presently constituted, 23 of the governors are from PDP; six, Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN); three, All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP); two, All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA); one each for Labour Party (LP) and Congress for Progressives Change (CPC). Although the president has some differences with the Forum’s Chairman and Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, he has extended the fight to the group.

    By interfering in the affairs of NGF, the president seems to have forgotten that it is not an extension of the PDP of which he is the national leader. The NGF, in case Jonathan seems to have forgotten, is a body of states’ chief executives elected on different party platforms. So, he cannot dictate to the group how it should be run. There is nothing that will please the president more than to destabilise the Forum because of his feud with Amaechi, who he suspects of harbouring presidential ambition. Though Amaechi has repeatedly denied having an interest in the 2015 presidential race, Jonathan and his loyalists are not satisfied with the governor’s explanation. Jonathan and his men believe that Amaechi is using the NGF to gain political leverage and boost his chances for the presidency.

    This is why they are desperate to oust Amaechi as NGF chair and castrate him politically. In politics as in war all is fair, I concede, but it is wrong for the president to use federal might to destabilise an association all because of one man. The NGF is an association of duly elected governors; what is more as Nigerians, they are free to associate within the ambit of the law. Has the body done anything illegal? The answer is no. Is it wrong, that is assuming it is true, for Amaechi or any other PDP governor for that matter to harbour presidential ambition? The answer again is no. Should the president use underhand tactic to get rid of a political foe all because of that person’s perceived interest in an election which may even be held behind many of those now showing overt and covert interest in the poll?

    “Let tomorrow take care of itself,” the Bible admonishes us, but we will never take heed. We are always scheming and struggling for power when we don’t have control over tomorrow. The president may use Amaechi’s perceived ambition to kill the NGF, if the governors do not come together to resist him. This is not Amaechi’s fight simplicita; it is all the governors’ fight because of the crude manner in which Jonathan wants to get him out of the way. If he succeeds, who says Amaechi’s successor may not suffer the same fate in future once he stops being a ‘good boy’.

    Amaechi may have stepped

    on Jonathan’s powerful

    toes, but that does not give the president the right to use his enormous powers to deal with the governor. We are hearing about videos being showed at the Villa to reveal the governor’s ‘sins’ as if we are back in the Abacha era.

    Pray if a governor could be recorded at a public function and the video later used against him without his knowledge, only God knows what will happen to mere commoners if we fall prey to Jonathan whose eyes are now everywhere. Yet, our president, to quote him, is neither “a general” nor a “Pharaoh”. If this is how meek presidents behave, I would rather go for a general or a Pharaoh because at least, we will know where we stand with such a leader. With Jonathan, you don’t know anything until you are hit by a tonne of brick. The NGF has never been in this kind of bond in its 14 years of existence.

    Not even former President Olusegun Obasanjo, as tough as he was, took on the NGF the way Jonathan is doing. Will the governors allow him to have his way or will they fight him to finish? There may be something yet we don’t know about this our ‘affable, amiable, gentle and meek’ president. Very soon, he will unravel in our presence, that I am sure of.

    With him instigating the PDP governors to form a parallel forum, Jonathan has shown that he will stop at nothing to impose his will on us. With this kind of attitude from the president, we may be in trouble as a country. This is why I align myself with the submission of Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu at the NGF’s meeting in Abuja on Monday that “there is no basis for forming the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDP-GF). The PDP-GF is a deliberate move by the Presidency to split the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and turn it into a tool to be used. By forming another forum within a forum, it means forces from outside are at work. A dictator is going to emerge”. That is if he has not emerged already. The question is are we ready to resist this dictator? It is Amaechi today, we don’t know whose turn it may be tomorrow.

  • Hogs tale (3)

    Surface meets surface; still. Fancy-cute, Naira-keen, wisdom-thin and substance-poor; our next best hope still elevates the eternal law of averages. They choose to ornament “less-than” even below the eternal line of averageness. I speak of the Nigerian youth. I speak of you and me.

    Beneath our passionate cry for change subsists a spinelessness that ornaments even the deserter with the valor of knights, thousands of miles from the scenes of combat and the valiant’s death. We have failed to make a response ideal to our cause. We have failed to display courage necessary to our survival and adequate to our time.

    It’s every man for himself; the successful doctor, banker, journalist, engineer, police officer et al, do not care about anything and anybody else. It’s what Evelyn Waugh describes as the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich. Hence the desperation of the Nigerian youth to be rich, within the bounds of that dear old “wisdom” and thought process that infinitely manifests as foolishness.

    Such is the mentality of the Nigerian youth, regrettably lacking in guts and substance; our utterances persistently leap from our lips as discontent, insignificant as the spores of fungi yet impinged on the base surfaces of our minds. It’s indeed shameful what cowardly lot we have become.

    We dream of the future and talk of change within the limits of our intelligence forgetting that the world of such future that we anticipate will foster a more demanding struggle against the limits of our intelligence, not a cozy rose bed in which we can lie down to be waited upon by a more compliant fate and time.

    Our cries are for a historic revolution, bloody or not; even as our thoughts pander between the dangers of revolt and the inherent benefits in accepting the status quo in a prudent act of self-preservation. Hence we revolt by impotent words and a mad, desperate dash for wealth or what we’ve learnt to coin as our share of the Nigerian dream.

    This is our Nigerian dream: a lush, breathtaking future that de-emphasizes toil and accords our vanities a caressing glance. In the future of our dreams, we hope to keep strings of constantly increasing bank accounts at home and abroad; we hope to drive the best cars, live in palatial mansions in the choicest areas and enjoy the most lucrative job offers.

    In the future of our dreams, everything would work out just fine. There will be justice and equity even as we tirelessly wish to lord it over others; every public officer will be accountable to the electorate; elections shall be fair and free of fraud and other irregularities; political hooliganism and the godfather culture shall become monstrosities of a dead era; public service will work and the anticipation of road, sea or air travel shall evoke no foreboding.

    In the future of our dreams, both public and private security shall be assured; our education, health, financial and transport sectors shall evolve at the highest standards; Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) shall provide adequate and stable electricity; bail will be free, police officers shall decline and ask for no bribes; civil servants will become more honestly dedicated to their work and unemployment shall be reduced to the barest minimum.

    In the future of our dreams, we shall have more beautifully planned cities in replacement of our slums; we shall have more educated and law-abiding public; more liberated journalists, writers, musicians and artists; our leaders shall be men of immense stature and enviable track records in both public and private service.

    In pursuit of our dream future and desperation to guarantee its unobstructed realization, we have organized ourselves into riotous camps of retrograde youths offering ourselves as willing tools to every devious politician, godfather and criminal mastermind with a destructive plan.

    To achieve the future of our dreams, we scorn honest labour to perpetuate indolence and the most perverted mission aids. Every youth seeks the easiest shortcut to the future of his dreams; collectively the sum of our dreams and heartfelt hunt manifest as the worst human expression of vanity, civilization and desire.

    We do not do much to improve our plight and we do very little to improve the possibility of doing that. There is no conscious effort to mobilize ourselves for the good of our kind and the love of the collective good. Every youth pressure group presents a sham and a shameful representation of all that vanity and lassitude ever gives.

    Some of us are more brazen than others; individually, they hustle to position and project themselves as the best leaders of thought and drivers of hope that we would ever have. I speak of self-styled “youth leaders,” “advocacy gurus,” “evangelists” and “mentors” endlessly seeking local and international merit awards, presidential tea sessions and handshakes for leadership and inspiration they are yet to offer – and are infinitely handicapped to offer.

    This shameful lot refuses to function and contribute their quota to the pursuit and achievement of our cause. Rather they spend quality time applying for international and local funding for their suspicious schemes and non-governmental organizations; they spend quality time functioning as campaigners, muscles and agents of the incumbent ruling class that we swore to ouster.

    Together with our shameful and psychically handicapped “youth leaders,” we engage in unprecedented self-deception conveniently choosing to apply the balm to our chest while our hearts clog with morsels of our victual lust.

    Eventually our deceitfulness and greed roost with devastating consequences in our lives: think Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, kidnappers, Yahoo Boys, and every other corrupt youth scattered across our tribes, workplaces and pressure groups to the detriment of all and the Nigerian dream.

    But rather than speak as much truth to ourselves as we love to speak to power, we conveniently ignore our dread for the truth in relation to our kind. Consequently, the impacts of our dishonesty extend far beyond our travails as you read. It gets scarier knowing we shall undoubtedly pay for our duplicity whether we like it or not as we are doing now.

    The post oil subsidy removal palliative cash has crashed from its fabled N1.3 trillion to N0 billion. Thus our subsidy removal protests were in vain. The youths that died have died in vain. President Jonathan and company will get away with and there is nothing any one can do about it.

    Our heartfelt protests shall not be entertained anymore. Mr. President and our state governors can no longer affect the patience for such frivolities. We shall not be noticed until election time. We shall only be seen during familiar moments of tragedy when our negligible fates manifest disastrously like photographs of acceptable deaths.

    Our hearts shall cry to our leaders for succor and they shall reluctantly budge, as usual, alighting from their stuck-up pedestals to accord our tragedies a passing glance. We shall cry over relatives lost to avoidable car crashes, plane crashes, boat mishaps, bomb blasts and state sponsored genocide but leaders we have shall cry over vacations cut short, aborted fornication, and elongated work hours.

    Together, we shall passionately perpetuate the worst of treachery and disservice to our kind, customarily.

    • To be continued…

  • Corruption Incorporated

    Corruption Incorporated

    I can now understand people who say they do not read newspapers in Nigeria because of the fear of reading something that would give them heart attacks. The level of corruption in our country is just mind boggling. Nigeria produces on daily basis anything from 2million – 2.5million barrels of crude oil. Authoritative sources say that 400,000 barrels is stolen everyday from these. This is 40million dollars every day and over 14.6billion dollars a year. The government knows about this but it is doing nothing either because of collusion, ineptitude or incompetence. These figures are just mind boggling in a country whose per capita income is less than $1000 a year. Imagine what the stolen money could do to transform this country and put us at par with other countries in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

    We have institutions that would reduce if not stop outright the corruption that is ruining every aspect of our lives in Nigeria. We have the Police, the security organisations, the armed forces and the courts of law. A retiring naval officer recently upbraided the courts for freeing bunkerers arrested by the Nigerian Navy after apparently taking money from the criminals. Somebody who knows very well what is going on in Nigeria once said “we have reached the stage of irredeemability in the criminal, and corrupt fraudulent shenanigan going on in our country”. Those of us who are optimistic about our country tend to dismiss this as alarmist effusion but recently, the case of the Police Pension fraud in which 32billion naira Police Pension was stolen by six or so Civil Servants led by one John Yakubu Yusufu shows glaringly that our country is in trouble. The EFCC took these rogues before the presiding judge of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Justice Abubakar Talba. In order not to prolong the case, Mr Yusufu allegedly confessed to stealing 23.8billion out of the total 32billion naira stolen. We are told he surrendered properties worth about 370million naira and then pleaded for leniency on the grounds that he has old parents and children whose school fees he had to pay. The Judge Abubakar Talba was merciful and magnanimous by sentencing him to two years imprisonment or an option of payment of 750,000 naira fine. Yusufu, full of smiles paid up the money immediately and walked out a free man to enjoy his loot of at least 32billion after the forfeiture of his property and payment of his paltry fine. Everybody was surprised except the judge but nobody is laughing. Even though there is separation of power in this country and the judiciary is an autonomous branch of government, President Goodluck Jonathan should have called in the judge and quietly ask him what offence he Jonathan has committed against the judge that he decided to ruin his administration. If this judgment stands as it is, it can undermine confidence in the President and his administration because not many people will remember the name of Justice Abubakar Talba; what people will remember is that this was done under the administration of President Jonathan. Mercifully the EFCC has re-arrested this felon and charged him to court not for stealing the original sum of 32billion naira but now for a lesser offence of false declaration of assets. The story is continuing. A lot of Nigerians have reacted vigorously to the unfairness of the justice system in this country. The same week this Abuja judgment was passed, the Provost and Registrar of the Cooperative College of Ibadan were jailed five years and three years respectively for embezzling three million naira. In the same country people’s hands have been chopped off for stealing a goat or a cow in northern part of Nigeria.

    The essence of punishment is deterrence. Punishment must not be wicked and unusual but it must be commensurate to the offence committed. In China and the Old Soviet Union, corruption is a capital offence punishable by death. It is interesting to note that 4,000 retired policemen are dying without pensions because the money has been stolen by Yusufu and his friends. It is even more surprising and galling that Civil Servants will steal Police Pensions. Is it that Police Officers are totally irrelevant? One can at least understand, if understand is the word, Teachers Pension been stolen, but it is beyond me to understand that Army and Police Pensions will be stolen by civilians. It is like a sheep taking food from the mouth of a lion.

    Whatever the eventuality of this case, one hopes that this is a challenge and wake –up call to the authorities to take the case of corruption much more seriously. The insecurity, violence and even the Boko Haram movement is not unconnected to poverty and hopelessness. The eradication of corruption and the money saved can certainly be used to lift people up from the degradation of poverty, helplessness and hopelessness in which 65% of the Nigerian population finds itself. Corruption therefore is not only a criminal offence, it is a developmental issue. The only way we can provide security in this country is to create jobs and to get people gainfully employed. If done, this will provide security for the Nigerian people. As long as close to 30% of national revenue is stolen, we will continue to vegetate in our state of arrested development, poverty and insecurity.

  • Yoruba marginalisation: OBJ and PDP greed

    Yoruba marginalisation: OBJ and PDP greed

    “In things that are not enough, when people sit down to share and take decisions, if there is nobody to speak for you, there is problem,’’  Dr Doyin Okupe

    Shame on to all those who have said PDP has neither a philosophical foundation nor an ideological orientation. There you have it at last from a PDP leading light who should know having seen it all. As Obasanjo media spokesman, he legally secured contracts from Imo and Benue states. It did not matter that EFCC had to be invited to resolve how the ‘sharing’ was done applying the usual PDP ‘family affair’ approach. The important thing was that both PDP governors involved and Dr. Doyin Okupe were happy and maintained their peace while their political enemies wasted so much energy on non-implementation or non-completion of the road contracts.

    Except for a few cynical Nigerians and other PDP detractors, ‘sharing’ has long been accepted as PDP prevailing ideology even beyond our shores. Long before Okupe’s testament, John Campbell, former US envoy had during proceedings at a hearing on the topic “Nigeria in Turmoil” in the British House of Commons on the 19 March 2010 presented PDP as ‘an elite cartel at the centre of power in Nigeria’; ‘a political party that came together … as essentially a club of elites for sharing of oil rents and political spoils.’

    As if Okupe’s and Campbell’s thesis needed further validation, Audu Ogbe, a former chairman of PDP who claims ‘corruption is the only thriving sector in the country’, has further consolidated the views of Okupe, a PDP insider and Campbell, a detached political analyst. Hear Ogbe, “When I was chairman of PDP, my son never got involved in oil but two PDP national chairmen after me, their sons pocketed over N400 billion without supplying a tea cup of oil.”

    I also find myself for once supporting Okupe’s admonition that Yoruba Council of Elders, Afenifere (both old and renewal) absolve Jonathan from the war of attrition among South-west PDP greedy members. If they feel short-changed, they should look inward towards their greedy representatives in the PDP. Don’t our people say, the insect that feeds on yam lives as a parasite on the yam?

    Stripped of an attempt to rope in ACN whose ideology everyone knows is ‘Afenifere’, translated “prosperity for all through creation of an enabling environment for self actualization of each ethnic groups’ potentials”, Okupe a man who thrives in mischief and survives on exploitation of human frailty of leaders like Obasanjo and Jonathan will be right to say Yoruba members of PDP are the architects of the fortunes or misfortunes of the Yoruba nation.

    I think the Yoruba Council of Elders who has been trying to blame others for the sins of the wing of Yoruba political tendency that imbibes the PDP ideology of ‘sharing’, should listen more to Okupe. Our revered elders “fi ete sile, nwon npa lapalapa’ (leaving undone the pertinent while expending energy on the inconsequential). Instead of confronting Obasanjo the father of Yoruba PDP, who as president deprived the Yoruba of what rightly belong to them, imposed men without character even by PDP’s standard.

    After all it wasn’t ACN but PDP that masterminded the judicial indictment and imprisonment of Bode George and late Afolabi. It was PDP that took Adebayo Alao-Akala, Gbenga Daniel, Rashidi Ladoja, Ayo Fayose, and Dimeji Bankole to court for alleged, and in some cases, proven financial malfeasance. It was Yoruba PDP members that told a judge that both Obasanjo and Oyinlola have no respects for rules and judicial pronouncements, and the judge agreed with them.

    During the eight years of Obasanjo mainstreaming, Lagos- Ibadan and Sagamu Benin, the two most important roads in the country were abandoned because Obasanjo wanted to prove the point that he was president in spite of the Yoruba. Under his imposed state governors, there was virtual collapse of the educational sector.

    I think our leaders that have been paying solidarity visits to their troubled children who PDP acknowledged as having contributed to the eight years of criminal neglect of the West should ask Obasanjo, PDP legislators of both the upper and lower Houses during PDP years of locusts to account for their stewardship before taking on Jonathan.

    Senator Babafemi Ojudu, my younger colleague at The Guardian in whom I am very proud gave us an account of his two years stewardship as a senator during our last state association meeting in Lagos. He disclosed that he and his two other colleagues representing the state had decided to ensure N750m (N250m per senator) budgetary allocation for constituency projects is deposited with UNDP that has in turn promised to double the amount and invest same on a project that would provide jobs for the state youths.

    Ojudu further disclosed that while some states of the federation have as many as 10 federal roads slated for reconstruction or rehabilitation in the current budget, the only federal road listed against his state was a road in Nassarawa or somewhere. He also disclosed that while his state could boast only of one lonely driver or none at all in many of the federal parastatal, some states have between 12 and 20 in spite of the existing federal character principle. PDP sharing philosophy is based on neither existing law of the land, nor justice, fairness and equity. It is not surprising that Afe Babalola, Obasanjo’s friend and lawyer not too long ago claimed that the state of Ekiti roads all through PDP 12 years were in a worst state than what existed during the colonial days.

    Obasanjo in power was more interested in empowering non-Yoruba. Even Asari Dokubo, leader of a militant group in the Niger Delta recently told a newspaper reporter that he secured bigger contracts under Obasanjo than he got under Jonathan his kinsman. Nasir El Rufai, his former BPE Director General, has just told us he personally borrowed money to buy into state owned companies and used his position to attract donations from contractors towards the building of a private library. While this was going on, he presided over the sales of some Yoruba owned companies like Daily Times, National Bank, and choice properties in Ikoyi allegedly to his in laws and PDP cronies under the dubious privatization and commercialization policies.

    Okupe also lamented the loss of the office the speaker-ship zoned to Yoruba because of what he and Bamanga Tukur, the current PDP chairman described as internal squabbles among the Yoruba members of PDP. But apart from Dimeji Bankole’s possible enrichment of self and PDP members, the only legacy the Yoruba can point to was his shameless public fisticuffs with Gbenga Daniel over who would take credit for an uncompleted 10-year old Ota Bridge.

    Two years into the Jonathan presidency, it has become apparent that Jonathan does not give a damn about either the Yoruba, Fulani, Kanuri nor any group for that matter. Jonathan only cares about Jonathan. The shoeless boy, as president, does not see a difference between exploiting his Azikiwe Igbo middle name to secure votes in the East, disparaging the better focused Yoruba governors as ‘rascals’, or instigating the non-Yoruba residents in Lagos against high performing governor Fashola or sacrificing his party constitution after trade off with northern governors to secure the party’s ticket. Similarly President Jonathan did not see anything wrong in channelling his presidential campaign funds through a Labour governor of Ondo State or allowing him free hand to nominate ministers to fill the state slot. To Jonathan all is fair in war as in politics and the end justifies the means.

    Our elders may have no control over Jonathan policies, but they can at least remind Obasanjo and those who share the PDP ideology of ‘sharing’ that Awo whose legacies they have tried to obliterate built schools, universities, libraries, financial institutions, manufacturing companies housing estates and plantations, not for self but for the people.