The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

Terror in the sky

It is not the best of time to fly. Any traveller who had ever flown in the night would readily admit that they dread flying at that hour. If they can help it, they would not fly at night. Indeed, flying at night coud be risky; it is the time of day that visibility is poor, even on land. Ask any driver.

As many know, flying is all about visibility – the pilot’s ability to see and assure his passengers that they are in safe hands. With a country with poor Instrumant Landing System (ILS), one can imagine the enormous risk passengers face flying at night. This is talkng about commercial flights.

For military flights, the risk is greater. Going on night time sorties is not a tea party. It is a deadly mission in which anything can happen. Visibility also matters. The pilot’s senses must be extra sharp. His eyes and ears must pick up things and fast. There is no room for negligence as he works with the military control room which guides and directs him and his crew.

The fighter pilot’s aim is to get the target whether standing, sitting, or moving. From the air and with the guidance of his commanders on the ground who are monitoring him, he makes a reconnaissance to the enemy’s territory. It is a mission of life and death. Everything usually happens in a split second during such operations. If the pilot gets his bearings right and hits the target, he earns plaudits, but if he misses his way and falls into the enemy’s hands, he becomes a prisoner of war.

It is scary to be a fighter pilot. There is nothing worse than to be captured by the enemy. But once in a while, the fighter pilot hits the wrong target, letting all hell loose. When that target is not only a civilian but women and children, it makes things worse. The killing of scores of people in a community in Kaduna State on Sunday night by an army pilot is a classical case of a military mission gone wrong.

Acting on intelligence, the pilot flew towards Tudun Biri in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna where some bandits were said to have massed. But it was not a gathering of bandits or terrorists, which the government has been waging kinetic and non-kinetic war against in the past 14 years. It was a gathering of Muslim faithful celebrating Maulud (Birthday of Prophet Muhammed).

Sure of the intelligence he received, the fighter pilot bombed the gathering, killing over 85 persons, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Where did the army get the intelligence upon which it ordered the attack? I shuddered as I watched the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Chris Musa, and Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Taoreed Lagbaja, on television explaining what happened.

The generals were pained and humbled by what happened and it showed in their demeanour. They did not give excuses for the mission, but were full of apologies. What has happened has happened, they said, promising that it would not recur. The generals are left to clear the mess caused by this accidental bombing as heads of the defence and army units, and they have tried as much as they can to do so. “We are sorry”, they said.

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It is good that they apologised, but it would be better for them to ensure this kind of tragedy never happens again. The President has ordered a probe into the tragedy. The public awaits the outcome. More important would be the internal house-cleaning investigation by the army. This exercise which will be undertaking by a board of enquiry should be thorough and unsparing of officers found culpable in this incident.

Military men are too well trained not to know the difference between a gathering of faithful and a mass of bandits. It was this wrong profiling of the target that led to this tragedy. As humans, we are prone to mistakes, but as people trained in the art and act of war, military men cannot afford to make mistakes that would cost the innocent their lives.

These innocents should not die in vain. They died while serving God. They deserve a monument at the spot they were killed to serve as a reminder to us that it should never, ever happen again. May they find rest in God’s bosom.

December 7, 2023
100 years of elections: (1923-2023 )

Nine years after the 1914 amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates, Nigeria held its first general elections on September 20, 1923. Since then, several other elections have been held. It has been 100 years since the 1923 general elections. Three years earlier in 1920, council elections were held in Lagos. Like it was in 1923, so it is now. Our elections, whether general or not, are still highly contentious. Contestants want to win at all costs; or the elections are not free and fair.

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A century of elections is worth celebrating, more so that the 100th anniversary came during another election cycle. The presidential and National Assembly elections were held on February 25, while the governorship and Houses of Assembly polls took place on March 18. Our elections may be acrimonious; do-or-die or winner-take-all, but they can never be written off. They still remain the process through which leaders are elected.

We must do everything to grow the electoral process as that is the way to sustain democracy. With Nigeria’s experience of 100 years of conducting elections, the country has come a long way in charting its course.

December 7, 2023
Wike’s calculated gamble on jinxed project

For what many consider his over-enthusiasm in raising N15 billion to complete the long abandoned vice presidential house, Nyesom Wike, Minister of Abuja Federal Territory has gone through great stress and strain this past week. But one thing that is going well for the minister is that you can predict his stand on most issues. That makes him less dangerous than many of his predecessors that have used their positions to inflict pain on Nigerians. It is therefore safe for one to conclude Wike’s desperate attempt to complete the N7.1billion ill-conceived ‘befitting residence for our vice President’ by May 29, 2024 was informed by any other consideration other than meeting President Tinubu’s expectation that he finishes all abandoned projects.

But let us first situate the sources of our nation’s nightmare. Successive past ministers of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have always substituted their brain waves for state policies which they then imposed on Federal Housing Development Authority (FHDA) for implementation.

It has also been established that the Abuja masquerades that have used the FHDA as conduit pipes to fleece the country since 1999 are part of the military baked ‘new breed politicians’ who as creation of “Nigerian army of anything is possible” share the same mind-set with soldiers’ of fortune whose only orientation is sharing spoils of war after victory. It is therefore not a surprise that many of them have been indicted since 1999 through the courts or National Assembly probes for massive corruption executed through “privatization, monetization, unbundling of PHCN and Constituency projects policies or outright stealing by state governors.

While 10 Downing Street, has remained the residence of the British Prime Minister since 1735 and the White House the official residence of American President since 1800 without serious structural changes, our own “Nigerian Defence House”, made up of the main residence/president’s office, Aguda House/Vice President’s office and guest houses, built by Julius Berger at a cost of N25billion in 1989, has according to FHDA gulped about N8b in the name of renovation in a little over a decade.

It was the Abuja minister and the FHDA that unilaterally declared the Aguda House unsuitable for our vice president and went on to secure the Federal Executive Council (FEC)’s approval for a N7.1bn contract to put up what they describe as “a worthy edifice to house Nigeria’s Vice President’. The project according to Minister Dora Akinyili was to be completed in 20 months.

We also got to know through FCDA’s Director of Public Building, Arch. Adebowale Ademo that it was not the vice president, the end- user that decided on the facilities needed in the building but FCDA. And their preference are: the main building, three different living rooms, the vice president private room and conveniences, the second lady private lounge as well as a “chapel, a mosque and a dormitory for the security personnel.”

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And just as work was expected to be nearing completion in 2012, it was also the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Bala Mohammed who insisted N9 billion more was needed to complete the project. The request was turned down by the 7th Senate even after the N9billion was slashed to N6billion by the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP). The then Senate Committee on FCT, led by Senator Smart Adeyemi said either N13 billion or N14 billion or N16 billion for the project was “indefensible”.

His position was supported by the then chairman of the House Committee on FCT, Herman Hembe, his counterpart at the Lower House who expressed dissatisfaction with the level of work done despite the claim that about 87 per cent of the contract sum had been paid. It is also on record that it was the minister who, feeling dissatisfied with the verdict of the two houses, took the case before the Federal Executive Council (FEC) where the case stalled following President Jonathan’s insistence that the nation could not afford 120 per cent variation.

It was also another minister of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) Adamu Aliero who threw a jibe at Vice President Osinbajo to attract his attention by claiming “The vice president is staying in a guest house (Aguda House) meant for visiting heads of state.” The vice president in 2016 decided to go and inspect the project that was up till then a monopoly of successive ministers of Federal Capital Territory. His report after the inspection was damning. For him “the N6bn already spent on the project was a misapplication of funds”. His advice to FHDA was that the building be “considered for other use” since according to him, “there is no need for a new residence for the vice president as the current one, called Aguda House, is up to standard with enough space and well managed.”

Osinbajo has said Aguda House is good enough for the vice president. Shettima the current occupier has also not complained. If I were to advise Minister Wike therefore, I will say he should separate himself from his predecessors who as shown above have always wept louder than the bereaved.

I think we should also remind ourselves that it was the FHDA that presided over the sales of Asokoro legislative quarters to the lawmakers, the sale of the Senate President’s mansion, (a national monument) to David Mark just as they did for Dimeji Bankole, the Speaker of the Lower House. While this macabre dance was going on, contracts for a new Senate President and Speaker’s residences were awarded. And while David Mark accused by EFCC of short changing the nation ran to court to defend his spoils of war, the proposed Senate President and Speakers mansions have also become abandoned projects.

In view of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s verdict, I think I will align myself with Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP)’s call on the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, to use his leadership position “to promptly reject the plan by the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, to spend N15 billion for the construction of a ‘befitting residence’ for the Vice President, Mr. Kashim Shettima.”

The body’s claim that spending N15 billion on ‘a befitting residence’ for the vice president at a time when the federal government is set to spend 30 per cent (that is, N8.25 trillion) of the country’s 2024 budget of N27.5 trillion on debt service costs” will be a betrayal of the people, is unassailable.

After all, we have been told that the house with split ACs fixed was nearing completion before it was abandoned. The then FCDA Executive Secretary, Adamu Ismail, was also quoted as telling the Senate Committee on FCT that the proposed additional N9bn ( slashed to about N6bn) by the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) was meant to provide furniture, fencing, two additional protocol guest houses, a banquet hall and security gadgets.

Since the building can be put into other use in its current state, I think Minister Wike should just ignore the above variations and turn the building into other use as suggested by Osinbajo.

For him it becomes a win-win situation. He would have with one single stroke met the expectations of President Tinubu, a leader he desperately wants to please. He would have also distanced himself from his predecessors who for reasons other than altruism were prepared to shave others’ heads in their absence.

December 7, 2023
Citizens’ social responsibility in Nigeria

All Nigerians are united in wanting the physical development of their country. They want better roads without potholes, efficient electricity supply and distribution, running water, good schools, financially endowed universities and tertiary institutions, functioning hospitals, clean environment, regular and punctual transportation system, clean potable water and all the services that make a country great.

When we travel out of our country, as our elite does often, we are amazed at how other systems run and their citizens take the efficient operation as normal. We envy them and wonder why we cannot have the same system in our resource-endowed country. When some of us settle in these countries, we go along with their system and do what everyone does to keep the system going. We pay our taxes and if we don’t pay, we are quietly reminded and if we don’t get the hint, we are summoned to appear before the tax board or court and if we are recalcitrant we are sent to the slammer to learn a hard lesson. If instead of doing the right thing we try to bribe our way through, we are arrested for offence punishable by law and there is no pleading about not knowing that giving bribes is an offence or that we are related to the president, minister, governor or chairman of our local government area. If we are caught messing around urinating outside toilets or in toilets in the pubs or restaurants that are available on request to those pressed by nature, we are arrested for constituting public nuisance or if we plead insanity we are sent for psychiatric examination. In other words, there is punishment for social deviancy.

This of course does not mean everyone complies with rules, regulations and the laws. It is a philosophical question which Plato the Greek philosopher answered in his book THE LAWS. He had argued that the existence of laws in any state is a manifestation of an imperfect state and that if a state was ruled perfectly, there would have been no room for laws!

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Now let us come back to the situation in our country Nigeria. It seems laws in our country exist to be avoided or broken because they are considered an inconvenience. Our penal code needs to be thoroughly enforced. Punishment needs to be sure and certain. We need to introduce administrative justice to deal with minor infractions of the law instead of wasting time going to court when minor offences have been committed. This is what happens in the francophone countries. When a driver, for instance, commits a driving offence, the police can arrest and impose a financial punishment payable immediately or forfeiture of the vehicle until payment is effected. But in our country, driving correctly on the right side of the road is avoided if there is nobody to arrest the offender. Digging across the road to lay pipes is routine. Selling stuff on the highway is foolishly considered a fundamental human right! Throwing effluents across the road when it is raining is regarded as urban smartness.

I live some miles away from Lagos and it is usual to find traders along the highway wrapping their human wastes and excreta in paper and placing them on the concrete median on newly constructed highway. The aluminium hedges on the bridges are regularly yanked off by thieves to fabricate them into long spoons for cooking and for sale! Our people do not pay taxes and sometimes the tax collectors are not in their offices when there are people willing to pay taxes. Tax collectors sometimes collude with those who want to pay taxes to pay less for a cut. Nigerians except those on salaries who pay PAYE (pay as you earn) do not pay taxes. That is why huge conurbations like Ibadan, Lagos, Kano, Ogbomoso, Kaduna, Aba, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Maiduguri generate little or no internal revenue and have to wait for revenue from national revenue before they can service their urban needs. It seems our people do not recognise the link between development and revenue mobilisation.

People do not do the jobs they are paid for but complain that nothing works while they neglect to do their own little bit to make the collective life of all of us better. People cheat at examinations and deny those who have genuinely done better, places of admission. Parents use their prestigious positions to deny the children of those less privileged admissions into colleges paid for from public purse. What is most frightening is that people cheat to get into so-called prestigious colleges, cheat to pass public examinations and enter universities through cheating and get into public services through manipulating the system or outrightly buying positions and promotions in the public services.

Yet I remember that in this country, we all went through the system and came through public examination and interviews and were offered choice places and having to let go offers and telling our interviewers that we did not want the jobs offered because we had decided to go for further studies on the scholarship of foreign countries or even on the scholarship of one arm of our government or the other all on merit! When Chinua Achebe said there was a country, yes there was and he was damn right!

What do we have now in year 2023? We borrowed money to construct railways and the rail lines are routinely stolen or those issuing tickets print their own tickets in replacement of the railways corporation’s ticket resulting in vastly underperforming revenue generation with no money available to pay foreign loans used to pay for the railway construction. The minister of aviation in a previous administration took foreign loans to build an aviation company in the name of our country but instead of buying new planes simply borrowed one or two planes from a sister country which is much poorer than our country, paints the borrowed planes in our national colours, and takes over public media to launch the borrowed planes as the nucleus of our national airline. When he was found out, he simply went into the shadows saying his patriotic efforts were misunderstood and nothing happened!

There are a few things we can do as citizen-police without turning on each other in murderous rage. In Germany, the concept of citizen-policing is permissible. If one sees a person committing an offence, one can stop such a person by advising him or her that he or she is committing an offence. If the person does not stop, one can call the police. The people can be mobilized in a protest against open looting of a nation’s resources such as the case of the minister fooling around with the people’s money pretending to be establishing an airline. People cutting bridge railings or railways can be embarrassed and stopped in their actions. The commonest misbehaviour is that of trading on expressway or digging highways can be stopped by public action. It may not stop the bad manners but if citizens take their responsibility seriously, it will definitely have an impact. We should also take possession of our physical infrastructure and development by paying taxes and correcting those damaging public property. The current generation may be irredeemably lost in the struggle for citizens’ civic responsibility but we should revise our curriculum in our schools particularly primary and secondary schools to inculcate civic responsibility into our pedagogy so that in future our children’s children do not have to put up with our wretched life and experience. If we husband our resources, protect our institutions and ensure the mobilisation of our resources and their deployment in the improvement of the lives of our people instead of for the benefit of a few, our lot and that of those coming after us will be vastly improved.

November 30, 2023
Constituency projects’ corruption

Recent attempt by senators during a plenary session to persuade a people already suffering from persuasion fatigue with worn argument about the need to spread development to their constituencies, as justification for appropriation of additional funds for Constituency Projects was an assault on sensibilities of Nigerians. Predictably, it has elicited angry reactions from different Nigerian stakes holders. Reacting angrily with a recent editorial where it likened our insensitive senators’ self-enrichment of members to “a state capture” amidst the poverty ravaging majority of Nigerians, The Punch called attention to the fact that “the constituency projects have always been embroiled in allegations of corruption and waste”, which makes the intervention of President Bola Tinubu, the leadership of the National Assembly and civil society organizations imperative if we really want an end to the charade.

Unfortunately I am not sure Tinubu can perform a miracle where Obasanjo, who once dismissed our lawmakers as ‘pen thieves’ and Buhari, who speaking in 2015 through Babachir Lawal, his secretary to government said he was posed “to change the practice whereby “constituency projects had been the conduit pipe through which lawmakers embezzled money” failed.

Indeed, his VP, Professor Osinbajo while acting as president and Raji Fashola his minister for works were threatened with impeachment and sack respectively by Saraki-run 8th Senate for telling Nigerians that the delay in the reconstruction of collapsed all-important Lagos-Ibadan Express road was as a result of diversion of its budgetary allocation by lawmakers to their constituency projects.

It is also of little consolation that successive leadership and membership of the National Assembly since 1999 have always in defiance of public opinion, needed for democracy to thrive, often behaved like an army of occupation with the sole aim of sharing spoils of war after victory.

But first, we must remind ourselves that budget preparation is strictly a function of the executive while the legislature’s role in the budgeting process clearly spelt out by the constitution include implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting before authorizing public spending.

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To protect the interest of their constituencies, the legislature, like all other actors such as NGOs, pressure groups and international donors, are expected to lobby the executive at the budget preparatory stage. Trading their functions as stated in the constitution for award and execution of contracts as witnessed since 1999 is an aberration in a democracy.

In total disregard for constitutional provisions, budgeting has become a source of massive abuse by both the executive and the legislature since the birth of the fourth republic when budget padding in the name of constituency projects started with the appointment of Bukola Saraki, a medical doctor as budget adviser by President Obasanjo.

For a period, everything was shrouded in secrecy. In 2012 however, the Street Journal told Nigerians that each of our 360 reps was receiving N160m per year as against N240m by each of our 109 senators for constituency projects. The journal further claimed that “instead of expending the money on projects that will better the life of the people in the lawmakers’ constituencies, the bulk of it goes into equipping the lawmakers’ political war chests with only loyalists as beneficiaries”.

In 2013, chairman, Senate Committee on Millennium Development Goals, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume was also to confirm that “a total of N900 billion has so far been appropriated for constituency projects of members of the National Assembly since 2004”. It was also from the Minister of Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs Kabiru Turaki that Nigerians got to know that “members of the National Assembly who are the originators of the constituency projects development programmes are the ones who determine, decide and choose who implement the projects”.

With the institutionalization of budget padding for constituency projects as a source of corruption, N350billion was appropriated by the National Assembly in respect of about 2,516 projects spread across the country between 2011-2016. Those projects according to Civil Society Organisation-BudgIT never took off even after full payment had been made. In July 2016, in its survey of 436 projects across 16 states, 211 projects covering water bore-holes, rural electricity and roads projects and primary health centres designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor according to the body were abandoned.

In the ensuing war over sharing by the legislature, in July 2016, Abdul Mumin Jibrin while reacting to his removal as chairman of the appropriation committee of the lower house following a claim he ‘unilaterally padded the 2016 budget to the tune of N4.1 billion to his Kiru/Bebeji federal constituency in Kano State attributed his travails to his refusal to ‘admit into the budget almost N30 billion personal requests from Mr. Speaker and the three other principal officers”.

Four years after Buhari’s threat to rein in the lawmakers for their excesses, BudgIT’s Tracka Head, Ilevbaoje Uadamen told Nigerians that “constituency projects costing about N270 billion, nominated by federal lawmakers between 2015 and 2019 are lying uncompleted or poorly implemented across the country”. He also drew attention to “wasteful empowerment projects” in the 2019 Zonal Intervention Projects which according to him account for N58 billion of the N100 billion budgeted for constituency projects.

Except we returned to where the rain started beating us, Tinubu as indicated above cannot perform any miracle under the current structure where even in the because of absence of residual list, LGAs are funded from Abuja that performs no supervisory role over their activities; where the centre corners over 60% of the nation’s resources with states going cap in hand to Abuja every month for allocation and where about 50% of what was on the concurrent list were transferred to the exclusive list in 1979 by Obasanjo using late Rotimi Williams and Ben Nwabueze.

Remembering how we got here will be helpful. The pre-independence colonial administration was largely an army of occupation interested only in exploitation of our resources. This was best achieved through a unitary system. Pa Ayo Adebanjo has repeatedly told young Nigerians the story of how our founding fathers through a battle of wits secured for us a federal system which guaranteed unity in diversity for our nation. Unfortunately our ill-educated military frittered away the gains of 45 years’ of constitutional re-engineering struggle by our founding fathers. More tragic, the soldiers like their colonial creators seized the resources of the federating regions and declared “money is not Nigerian problem but how to spend it”.

When the soldiers were forced out of power in 1999 by combined efforts of the press, Civil Society Groups and NADECO, they foisted on the nation a unitary constitution and military created ‘new breed politicians’ with a mind-set of an army of occupation interested only in sharing loots of conquered territories. We find eloquent evidence in their self-serving policies including PPMC, privatization, monetization, unbundling of PHCN and of course the cornering of 25% of our budget as salaries.

The way forward is to go backwards, perhaps as far back as 1963 republican constitution or as recent as Jonathan CONFAB. The only option that is not available is continuing playing the ostrich as we have done since the collapse of the first republic.

I know of no multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society that has survived with 70% of items on the exclusive list. This is why federating nationalities have no faith in our country. As Senator (Prof) ) Wande Abimbola , former vice chancellor of OAU, Ife gloomily observed with a dose of sarcasm, following an open threat by his Ibadan people not to vote for people like him that failed to steal what they saw as national cake in Abuja “the people make the politicians thieves” (The Punch September 16, 2017)

November 30, 2023
The devil’s in the CTC

Errors are bound to happen, They are part of life. Somehow, someone, somewhere is making an error without attuning his mind to it. Nobody is above mistake is a common phrase. It signifies that no matter how big, brilliant or careful a person is, he can make mistakes.

The Yoruba put it succinctly: Asise o kan ogbon meaning mistakes still happen irrespective of wisdom. Some mistakes happen that leave the public speechless. How did it happen? They wonder. How could a physician, as we have heard before, forget his scalpel in a patient’s womb after surgery? How? How? How? Determining the how becomes an endless question.

The how did it happen question is being asked across the country today following the contradictions in the verdict of the Court of Appeal in the Kano State governorship election dispute read in open court on November 17 and the certified true copy (CTC) of same released on November 21. It is a worrisome development, which has divided lawyers, politicians and others.

In the judgment read in open court, Justice Moore Adumein upheld the tribunal’s decision, sacking Governor Abba Yusuf. But in the CTC, the verdict, in one breathe, quashed the the tribunal’s verdict and in another, affirmed the same decision. How can there be two judgments in one, as it seems to be the case in this instance?

How can a verdict be of the same side of a coin? How can the court give with one hand and take away with the other? How can the court blow hot and cold at the same time? What and how happened? It is trite that the open court judgment must be in sync with what is in the CTC. From the little that I know about the judiciary, the CTC is derived from the open court proceedings. It is a reflection of court proceedings duly captured for the record.

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It is the document required for the filing of an appeal, if a party is so minded. It is also of benefit for private and public use. There is no other way to get judgments delivered in the past than to apply for the CTC whenever there is need for it, even 30 years hence. The reason is obvious: the court cannot sit all over again to deliver that same judgment.

In such a situation, the CTC comes handy. So, the open court judgment and its CTC must be the same, without contradictions, mix-ups or misstatements, except for typographical errors, when the human factor is at play. It is, therefore, befuddling how the Kano verdict error came about.

In what form was the judgment before the CTC was drawn up? Longhand, typewritten or typeset? In this age of technology, it is most likely that his lordship typeset the judgment before reading it in open court. This then makes the drawing up of the CTC easy, as all the court registry needs do is get his lordship’s typeset copy without subtracting or adding anything to it; seal and sign it that it was drawn up under the registrar’s hand and his job is done.

How then did the words not in what was read in open court creep into the CTC? The officer and others who drew up the CTC have questions to answer. Justice Adumein could not have read something in open court only to contradict himself in the CTC. His Lordship could not have committed that costly mistake since he knows the consequences of such action.

It is implausible that he would do that under the prevailing political environment in which the judiciary has been so vilified. The political atmosphere has been polluted by politicians, and sadly, lawyers, who seem to have sworn to run down the judiciary at all costs. The contradictions in the Kano verdict have armed them with a fresh weapon to attack the judiciary and they have been unsparing. I pity Justice Adumein most in the circumstance.

His own people in the law community, which should give him benefit of the doubt, are baying for his blood. Even though they know the truth, they have already made up their minds that the CTC is the true judgment of the court. How can a CTC with two differing consequential orders be the real verdict? Can two parties be the winner of the same case, as shown in the CTC? Only one party wins a case in court. A close look at the verdict from the beginning shows how the court’s mind was working.

Until it suddenly veered off course in its concluding part where it gave judgment to Yusuf and Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC), with one million naira costs in favour of the former. Was this an inadvertent error or was it deliberately done to paint the court black? The two other Justices, in their consenting opinions, said they abided by the leading judgment which sacked Yusuf after reading the “draft” (of the decision).

Does the content of that draft match the CTC? If it does not, who tampered with the judgment between when it was delivered and the CTC drawn up? Those behind this shameful and devilish act, which might have been done for filthy lucre, must be fished out and punished in order to save the judiciary from itelf.

The registry cannot wash its hands of this matter. It has questions to answer as the section that keeps the court’s records. Why did it mess up the judiciary this way? In a political terrain that is so poisoned against the judiciary, the registry should have known better than allowing itself to be used to further denigrate the institution. Heads must roll over this matter so as to assure the public that the judiciary, is still above board, contrary to what some, in this political season, say.

November 30, 2023
This is your daughter’s body count (1)

There’s a TikTok trend that haunts us lately. It snuggles from your browser through catchy thumbnails and titles, into your phones. In the short videos, you see scores of fresh-faced girls blurt out their “personal truths.”

In some of the videos, they spiritedly answer the question: “What’s your body count?” In between the question and their answer, they do not gag or try to squeeze the words out. Initially, you might see a few girls say, “two” or “three.” Body count references the number of sexual partners.

Then comes the less inhibited girls, the assertive, daring stalwarts of Gen Z, in particular. Spotting a contemplative mien, they proudly calculate their body count as ”five,” “seven,” “10,” and “16” after taking a trip down memory lane.

One girl said her body count was “22” and “still counting.” About two or three others listed their boyfriends’ siblings and fathers as some of their random sex partners.

In response to their disclosure, the interviewer, equally a bumbling teen or young adult bellows an overexcited “Mad o!” The videos get more interesting as the so-called “content creators” become more daring with the “Hit or Miss” videos showing young adult males interviewing females of their age group or younger teenage girls, about the possibility of having random sex with another male respondent.

The female checks out the former and instantly decides if he is a “Hit” or “Miss.” Hit means she would hop in bed and part her thighs for him in a butt-beat. If she calls him a “Miss,” it means he isn’t her type.

If the latter is the case, the interviewer asks if she would settle for him instead. Often, she makes a show of checking him out and says, “Yes.” In about five such sessions, the male interviewer asks if he could pat or grab her buttocks and she responds in the affirmative.

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One interesting bit about these videos is that none of the female respondents is over the age of 22. None betrays an internal struggle; they neither gag on their answers nor attempt to squeeze out their morality-defying responses.

In another video, a girl, presumably in her late teens makes a sordid show of riding a cucumber, cowgirl style, in her mother’s kitchen till she orgasms. Afterwards, she waves the cucumber thick with her milky discharge, before the camera, and places it on an overturned plastic bowl.

The enthrallment with celebrity has brought us to a whole new state of mindlessness, no doubt. This frantic quest for renown assumes a perilous turn in the antics of younger Nigerians, online and offline, thus triggering frantic posers on the need to regulate social media.

It also elicits crucial questions about the homes from which the aforementioned girls emerged: Where are their parents? Are they privy to their daughters’ activities online? How did they become so desensitised and permissive of such degeneracy?

Degenerate Nigeria can only be cured by farming our loins for the hidden cowries of a nobler race. The uninhibited Tiktok vixen and her male enablers are in no way different from the brothel prostitute and her foul-mouthed roughneck pimp. Like the rapist, political assassin, ballot robber, kidnapper, and bestial public officer, they are the results not of society’s savagery or sexism but of society’s absence.

The family is the building block of society and civilisation. But circumstances of its breakdown and reduction to a dysfunctional nature foists the responsibilities of raising a child on a single parent, sometimes the father, and often, the mother.

In the wake of its collapse, several arguments have been advanced at home and overseas that children raised in a two-parent household often do better than their counterparts who were raised by single parents.

It’s extraordinarily well-documented how much of a disadvantage children from single-mother households have over children whose parents remain together, but less well-documented is how much of a disadvantage they have over single-father households.

For example, studies in the United States Department of Census and Health, among others, have found that children that from single-mother households are five times more likely to commit suicide than children from both unbroken households and single-father households, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison and 32 times more likely to run away from home.

The list does not end there; single-mother households also account for 70% of all teen pregnancies and 70 per cent of all child murders and filicide.

The debate has seen both sides of the divide advance uncensored empirical studies and sullied research findings to substantiate their arguments and validate entrenched truths or prejudices. Whatever the nature of their positions, and whatever the robust resources – in cash and kind – committed to their propagation and sponsorship by foreign interests, Nigeria must urgently commit to a moral recourse.

The society is currently in the throes of moral turpitude that has quickened its ruin and complete subjugation to a new wave of what Bulhan aptly describes as metacolonialism, championed by supposedly developed but corrupted civilisations of Europe and America.

Modern Nigeria is a product of the moral torpedoing of our families, schools, worship houses, the streets, and the media. The morally ambivalent youth is today’s amoral nomad, superbly conditioned by Western education and the media to scorn the native intelligence and wisdom of the ancient.

Many morph in real-time into unthinking herds cum agents of colonialism. Hence the preponderance of skitmakers, journalists, writers, teachers, economists, social workers, engineers, and health workers, to mention a few, who function as glorified stooges of the debauched world.

The faithlessness and moral corruption that they personify is similar to the one that drove African enablers of the transatlantic slave trade. This degeneracy remains largely unchallenged.

To prevent its recurrence, we must hinder the social mechanisms that render our youths capable of such. And this can only be achieved through education. The Nigerian school must begin to impart more than money-making soundbites and status-conferring skills.

President Bola Tinubu, while presenting the 2024 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly, outlined human capital development among his administration’s priorities for the upcoming fiscal year. So, the budget places significant focus on children, recognising them as the most critical resource for national development.

If Nigeria truly seeks sustainable socio-economic growth in the long run, we must groom generations of men and women capable of nourishing and preserving the Greater Nigeria enterprise.

Nigeria needs patriots amply groomed to understand that the most important achievements aren’t measurable by the number of likes or emojis attracted by a viral video of sexual misdemeanour on TikTok.

The true purpose of socialisation dims in the camera lights and applause of degenerate Tiktokers. It’s about time parents began to monitor their children’s activities on social media – the girls in particular.

And the reasons are hardly far-fetched. The lust for applause and cheap renown finds more fertile tracts in the psyches of females flaunting their “fleshly assets” in social media’s carnal theatre.

But while sex and nudity are deemed profitable by millions of girls setting up shop in cyberspace, time and over again, teenage girls and young adult females have become victims of cyber-bullying and scandalous videos of revenge porn.

November 30, 2023
Dirty gold: The child miner conundrum

In Zamfara, the Kadauri gold fields loom like artisanal dystopia. Think of it as the glitter belt where little boys toil, chained to manly lust.

The children, caught between the womb wall of lower earth and the dazzle of proverbial Midas’ spoils, illustrate embowered servitude in open fields.

The boys are many and dispensable inside the mine pits of Kaudari in Maru, Anka, among other local councils. Far from the confines of their barely populated classrooms, they write their dreams in shiny beads of sweat: the indelible ink of their brow. It’s the only way that their absence from school could mean something.

Scores of out-of-school kids, mostly boys, litter the dusty tract digging for gold. A dirt pan assures a full plate to their starving bellies. Thus they defy the heat, obstinate souls accustomed to searing whipping from the sun.

If they aren’t deterred by the scorching heat of the mine pits, how can they recoil from the gold fields over the threat of a distant public officer?

On September 3, 2023, the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dele Alake, issued a 30-day ultimatum to artisanal miners engaged in illegal mining nationwide to join cooperatives or find another vocation. He said, “On the expiration of the period, the full weight of the law will fall on anyone seen on a mining site without a determinable status.”

Alake’s threat to crack down on illegal miners, however, hardly deters the underage gold prospectors perhaps because it doesn’t summarily address them. Mubaraq Baballe (11), Naziru Aliyu (13), and Naziru (eight), for instance, belch a narrative only hunger could reveal.

Shouldering aplomb like a steel amour, the minors feverishly dig the earth and shovel sludge every day, hoping to hit pay-dirt. They have been at it for over four years, hunting for gold amid the dusty plains of Kadauri.

The hope of hitting pay-dirt and earning between N500 and N1,000 (less than $1) for their efforts is overpowering.

Many of them have never been to school. They slave away at the various mine pits every day; when they get lucky, they give their earnings to their parents “to buy food.”

There is a backstory to each boy’s presence in the Kadauri gold field. The recurrent strain recounts how poverty and hunger render them vulnerable to older associates and paymasters in Zamfara’s illicit network of artisanal miners.

The latter use them as mules and errand boys in an illicit network that cost Nigeria about $2 billion annually and over N353 billion in losses in gold smuggled out of the country between 2016 and 2018, according to the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) audits and reports from international sources.

The mineral-rich earth of Zamfara offers child miners several opportunities to make a quick buck. It’s a perilous keep, fraught with attacks by armed bandits prowling the region and toxic lead deposits in the soil.

Despite the obvious perils, the dazzle of Kadauri’s gold belt lures the boys to turn up every day, armed with a shovel, a can-do spirit and a dirt pan.

Alake’s warning bears no resonance among the child miners perhaps because they do not understand the magnitude of their work as ”outlaws.” A lack of compliance with his 30-day ultimatum made him grant another 30-day extension even as he warned that from October, a security task force would become active in the solid minerals sector and illegal miners would be prosecuted.

Still, illegal mining persists. This may be blamed on the lack of effective regulation and punishment for flouting them. Miffed by their daring, the Governor of Zamfara, Dauda Lawal, on Sunday, September 23, issued a ban on illegal mining activities in the state and ordered law enforcers to shoot illegal miners at sight, claiming that such stringent action has become necessary to end the destructive activity and ensure the well-being of the people.

Hundreds of people have been killed or kidnapped by bandits in Zamfara in the wake of a previous ban imposed by former Governor Bello Matawalle, and several miners relocated from Zamfara to less policed hubs of artisanal mining in Niger and Osun States.

In their absence, field leaders contract underage boys to fill the vacuum created in the artisanal gold mines thus accentuating their predicament as part of the 10.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria – 30 per cent are in the North-West (Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi, Kano) and Niger States in the North Central region.

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To cushion the huge foreign exchange revenue loss from gold smuggling, the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari launched the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development Initiative (PAGMDI), an artisanal and small-scale gold mining development programme meant to diversify the country’s revenue base.

Initial forecasts held that the PAGMI initiative could add about $500 million annually to Nigeria’s foreign reserves, and contribute $150 million in taxes and $25 million in royalties.

To guarantee the seamless actualisation of set goals, the federal government licensed two refineries to refine gold to the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).

Under the arrangement, the government was expected to buy directly from small-scale miners at designated hubs in their villages, while the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) buys directly from the state government.

This was meant to prevent the locals from selling extracted gold to bandits and other illegal operators. The plan is yet to materialise to the advantage of all identified stakeholders.

And neither Alake’s ultimatum nor Governor Lawal’s resort to hard power would resolve Zamfara’s illegal mining conundrum until stakeholders address the difficulty posed by the teeming army of underage boys scattered across the gold fields of Zamfara and other mining hot spots in the country.

The government must work with other stakeholders to address the structural and institutional factors such as rural poverty and difficulties in meeting legal and regulatory requirements that tend to push artisanal gold mining operators deeper into the informal economy – where child miners become instant, defenceless tools for illegal miners and bandits.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that about one million children work in mines and quarries. However, the actual number is deemed higher as the proportion of child miners in some countries is estimated to be as high as 30 to 50 per cent of the workforce.

In Zamfara, many such children work in extreme conditions in remote areas like Kadauri and other parts of Maru LGA. Children work in ore extraction and assist in drilling. They push carts, clean galleries, and remove water from the mines. They crush stones, haul minerals, pick gemstones, and wash gold.

They descend to the bowels of the earth to crawl through narrow, cramped, and poorly lit makeshift tunnels, where the air is thick with dust and smothering. They constantly risk fatal accidents due to falling rocks, explosions, collapse of mine walls, and the use of equipment designed for adults. It’s a very scary situation which could trigger another health crisis reminiscent of Zamfara’s lead poisoning disaster of 2010.

Experts warned that the 2010 epidemic may persist in the environment for up to 15 years resulting in long-term health problems including permanent learning and behavioural problems, and brain damage.

But the child miners of Kadauri are oblivious to such dangers. Their struggles blend into the toxic underbelly of their dreams and the vague promise of a better tomorrow.

November 23, 2023
Can Nigeria be great again? My personal observation

I have been engaged with my children and my former students on the question of whether our country was once great. And if it was, whether it can be great again? That’s the question. My answers to these loaded questions are in the affirmative. The genesis of my answer has been to agree at the point of when Nigeria was once great and to identify the point of decline and what it can and it must do to get us back to the correct trajectory of positive development in the journey to greatness.

Not everybody will agree with even the primary part of the question. There are people who still believe that the concept of Nigeria ab initio is false and that the country was and is still a geographical expression! My answer is that most countries in the world are geographical expressions and that no country was divinely created and leaders had had to fight for them. Great nations like the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, China, Canada, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many others had had to be forced into being or made to evolve from larger empires and political configurations.

The fact of where each nation began is a matter of history. There is no end to the argument of whether a state is artificial or natural. I think 1960, the year of independence of Nigeria constitutes the beginning of our journey to nationhood. The beginning is however not the ending. The Chinese say that the journey of a thousand miles necessarily begins with the first steps. It is obvious to us still alive, that the constitution that took us to independence should have been confederal instead of being federal which gave the federal authority power of intervention in the governance and police affairs of the regions. But faulty as it might have been, if the politicians had been men of vision, we would not have had the crisis in the Western Region in which the government at the centre made up two rival political parties to the one in the Western Region, used police powers to impose its will on the Western Region whose resistance to federal intervention led to violence and break down of law and order which precipitated a military coup d’état by the small army of less than 10,000 soldiers. The fact that the constitution of the federal army was lopsidedly made up of persons favourable to the political desire of those at the federal level constituted the point of decline of Nigeria. In other words, Nigeria had not had time to fully attain its greatness when the whole thing was truncated in 1966 January coup d’état .The period of this potential greatness was not more than two years after independence climaxing at the Action Group crisis of 1962 and the declaration of emergency rule in western Nigeria by the federal government in 1963, marking the departure from constitutional rule climaxing in the army’s successful putsch in January 15 1966. This derailment what was essentially a collapse of a house of cards. This was however bemoaned by friends of Nigeria at home and abroad, captured and captivated by the appearance of a large and thriving democracy on an insurgent African continent during the historic global contest between democracy and free enterprise versus dictatorship of proletarian communism.

Nigeria fought a bitter civil war between 1967 and 1970 in which the internal contradictions of the country were then exploited by the global political rivals but which eventually resolved in favour of the western alliance of free enterprise and anti-communist Islam. This also coincided with the huge accrual from sale of hydrocarbons which made reconstruction, rehabilitation and reunification of the country possible from 1970 to about 1980 when the country had a second chance at democratic renewal. The point I am making is that the road the country missed in 1966 was again made open to it when the military, not by conviction but mounting power struggle at home and pressure from abroad, forced the Obasanjo’s government to transmit power to Shehu Shagari in 1979.

The period of decline temporarily ended in 1979 and the latency of greatness which had remained during the dark days of Nigeria was given a fillip by the restoration of democracy in 1979.

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The constitution under which this government was meant to function was the revamped unitary grundnorm otherwise known as Decree 34 imposed by General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi which dissolved the federating four regions of Nigeria into unitary government of several provinces . Of course, not many people knew this at the time, but the difference was between six and half a dozen. General Ironsi seemed in retrospect to have been sacrificed for a form of constitutional structure favourable to those who captured power at the centre because all the governments from Yakubu Gowon to Ibrahim Babangida, and other military rulers governed the country under this constitution and nothing has changed till this day. The changing of guard and revolving door of one military ruler from Buhari to Babangida, Abacha, and Abdul Salami for almost two decades was all part of keeping power in “safe” hands. When the military first came into government, it was triggered by youthful exuberance; this idealistic leadership was soon neutralised by their seniors who were manipulated by those who felt they knew what was desirable for the country and by traditional/ religious leadership of the country who if not directly but secretly, co-opted into power, could have made the country hot for the younger military rulers. At least they can beat their chest that they gave their one country back undivided to the politicians to have a second go at governance. The country they gave back to the civilians was a hollowed out structure. The rule of the gun had made corruption easy because no one could challenge a man holding a gun to the head of an accountant asking for cheques transferring to officers of government, money to be quickly signed. This led to a senior army officer saying the situation in the army in the 1990s was a situation of an army in which anything goes! The appearance of democracy from 1999 to the end of Buhari’s so-called democratic regime was a military mirage not a democratic reality. Presidents like Obasanjo and Buhari remained essentially military men in democratic toga of agbada and Babanriga, wielding almost total control of power and responsibility and with whom they shared the power with. This situation presumably ended in May 2023.

The new Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration, we have been told, is a regime of renewal and we should trust the president not to forget his promises to the nation. He has publicly stated just last week at the NESG that he has made mistakes in the past and who hasn’t? And he is not above mistakes now but he is running a collective government and he wants to be corrected if he makes any mistakes in his current role as driver of a movement of renewal. If he sticks to this promise and makes access to those in government possible to those outside it, then I believe that Nigeria can be great again.

The future of the country belongs to all of us and not to any particular regime or ethnicity. The world will pass the black people bye unless we wake up in time. Look at where the Japanese, Chinese and Indians are today and the Arabs are not far behind. We blacks are the only laggards manning the rear. If we do not want to be remembered as freaks of nature or mistake of creation, we just have to buck up and tie our shoe laces for the present race of competition in the world. If we agree that Nigeria is at a critical state in the black world, then we must join with President Tinubu and forget the differences among the various ethnicities and fight together for the soul of our potentially great country whose greatness continually lies in its latency. We know when we deviated from the path of greatness. We must go back to the beginning and have a confederal constitution instead of four regions but of perhaps six regions and tinker with other areas of governance borne out of experience since 1960. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should lead by example and God can use anybody to achieve His divine mission. He should call to order any erring governor, minister and chairman of council that he has a covenant to change Nigeria and to start the building of a new Nigeria. Things will not be easy but let’s begin. If he succeeds history will be very kind to him and to all who rally round him to accomplish this mission but if he fails then we all fail with him and there would be no room for excuses! This is why we must all watch with eagle eyes!

November 23, 2023
Election, unsigned ballots and law

Elections worldwide are guided by laws. They are not conducted on a whim. The laws cover the contestants, the voters and the umpire. The laws are not for decoration; they are to ensure the credibility of the exercise.

Elections are serious business. They are fought with all that the contestants have – money, men and materials. While the contestants strategise on how to win, the umpire worries about the freeness and fairness of the exercise.

The umpire is key to the success and transparency of the election. The umpire could be an individual or an institution and integrity must be the umpire’s watchword. In Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which has become known by various names under different stages of our political evolution, handles elections.

The umpire has never come under fire as it is now experiencing. What are its sins? While not defending INEC, it must be stated that in most cases, many of its accusers are just criticising the agency because they lost. Where they won, their verdict usually is, it did well. Sadly, they have transferred their aggression to the court, which is now being dragged all over the place for following the law stricto sensu.

The laws guiding elections are unique. This is why election cases are described as sui generis (in a class of their own). To win an election case, the petitioner must prove that it was not conducted in substantial compliance with the law. But in most cases, this has become a dilemma. In the circumstance, the court has no choice than to throw out the case.

That the court cannot take the place of the electorate is not debatable. It is not the court’s duty to elect people, but it is its job to determine the winner of an election in any dispute before it. It is not an interference when the court does that, but part of the process as enshrined in law. It is like that too in other parts of the world. But unlike us, most times, their elections end up at the polls and not in the court. Losers accept defeat and move on.

Who do we blame that the reverse is the case here? Nobody, as it is the right of the loser to go to court. However, what is not right is not to accept the court’s verdict and then resort to malign the judges, with lawyers in full support. The judges did not enact the law; their job is to interpret it and in doing so, if they observe any flaw, they can point it out. One interesting aspect of the Electoral Act which has come under intense scrutiny of late is Section 63.

It is on the strength of this provision that the tribunal sitting in Kano invalidated the election of Governor Abba Yusuf of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP). The tribunal found that 165,000 ballot papers did not bear the INEC seal nor were they signed by the presiding officer at the polling units where they were used. As a way of maintaining the integrity of the election, the law empowers the court to invalidate such votes and deduct them from the total scores.

The tribunal did precisely that and Yusuf’s total votes dropped sharply. His loss became the gain of Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who the tribunal subsequently declared winner of the election.

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To some senior lawyers, such as Femi Falana, that amounted to sanctioning 165,000 voters for some electoral officers’ error. How? He did not say. Does he have evidence that the electoral officers issued those ballot papers? Did they match the ones in INEC’s booklet? Where did they come from, if they were not issued by the electoral officers and did not match those in the booklet? Did Falana consider all these before lashing the tribunal for invalidating Yusuf’s election because of the unsigned ballot papers, which may eventually turn out to be fake?

I can see where Falana is coming from, though. His thinking is that the voters could not have come into possession of those ballot papers without the electoral officers’ knowledge. This will be true to the extent that the ballot papers were obtained at the polling unit and from the right source. But where the process is compromised and party faithful allowed to take over at polling centres, can the court be blamed for invoking the law accordingly?

Clearly, something went wrong in those polling units, which may be beyond the power of the presiding officers, except if they were part of it. Where then is the fault of the tribunal in all these? I hope Falana is not saying that it should have looked the other way and aided and abetted electoral offence in clear violation of the law?

According to Section 63 (1) of the Electoral Act: Subject to subsection (2), a ballot paper which does not bear the official mark prescribed by the Commission shall not be counted. In Section 65 (1), the law allows the returning officer to take final decision on the issue subject to a review within seven days by INEC. After seven days, INEC becomes functus officio and can no longer so act, leaving only the court with the power to do so as contained in Section 65 (2):

A decision of the returning officer under subsection (1) may be reviewed by an election tribunal or court of competent jurisdiction in an election petition proceedings under this Act.

The Kano tribunal acted under the ambit of this provision. To say that the court should shut its eyes to the use of unsigned ballot papers is to encourage electoral malpractice. The user and the provider of such ballot papers should answer for their action and the beneficiary deprived the fruit of an unjust victory.

November 23, 2023