The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Corruption: Beyond Bawa’s sack

    Corruption: Beyond Bawa’s sack

    The sacking of Abdulrasheed Bawa as EFCC chairman is once again a sad reminder that EFCC is not the antidote to corruption as long as corruption remains a thriving criminal enterprise of institutions of state i.e. the executive, legislature, the judiciary and the press.  EFCC is only a pencil in the hands of its creators.

    The fact of our recent history is that the military, especially during the dictatorship of Babangida and Abacha’s “army of anything is possible”, institutionalised corruption in Nigeria. And what was foisted on Nigeria when they were forced out of power by Nigerians in 1998, was military-bred “new-breed politicians” that bred nothing but corruption.  

     Obasanjo, who was forced by the international community to establish the EFCC in 2001 with Ribadu as his pioneers anti-corruption Czar, has continued to deny claims by lawmakers that he provided tons of money in ‘Ghana Must go bags’ for his failed third- term fiasco during 2004-2005 constitutional review exercise. He has however not denied blackmailing serving state governors and federal government contractors to donating N7billion towards the building of his presidential library besides other generous contributions towards the establishment of his privately owned university. Jonathan, following in the footsteps of his godfather, also raked about N7billion from government contractors to build churches and recreational centres in his Bayelsa State.  If President Buhari did not consider nepotism as worst form of corruption, he cannot pretend that the theft of about N677billion daily by a few economic saboteurs under the fuel subsidy scam did not constitute corruption.

    As for the legislature, many of their members as early as 2000 claimed they sold their houses to fight the 1999 election and demonstrated their eagerness to recoup their election expenses through fuel subsidy scam according to a House of Representatives probe report. There were also the ill-implemented privatization World Bank programme and the self-serving monetization policy.

    If we had deluded ourselves for so long believing the judiciary, “is the last hope of the common man”, the bar has demonstrated by the actions of some of its members that, a part cannot be holier than the whole, as it is tarred with the same brush with the executive and the legislature.  After arraigning some senior lawyers for corruption, the then NBA’s President, Abubakar Mahmoud started canvassing for the withdrawal of the prosecutorial powers of the EFCC. But Magu insisted a “Bar populated or directed by people perceived to be rogues and vultures cannot play the role of priests in the temple of justice.” He cited the case where  Mahmoud as “the federal government appointed prosecuting counsel in the trial of ex-Delta State governor, James Ibori, at the Federal High Court, Asaba, bungled the case while the same ingredients from that case were used to fetch Ibori a 13-year jail term in London”.  The NBA president, according to him “was also the commission’s counsel in the appeal against the infamous perpetual injunction from arrest and prosecution by former Rivers State governor, Peter Odili, which was still pending before the Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt’, eight years after it was filed.

    The press, the fourth estate of the realm, changed all the rules of journalism from the onset of the fourth republic.  They embarked on massive ‘news commercialization’ through sales of their mast-heads, sacred editorial pages and TV prime time to promote thieving governors and fraudulent bankers who diverted depositors’ funds towards buying private jets and houses in Dubai. 

    With dysfunctional institutions, it was not a surprise the sacrifice of those who gave their all to fight corruption ended in vain. Let us start with Ribadu.  Among his many daring exploits, Ribadu in spite of 15m pounds alleged bribery attempt had insisted on prosecution of James Ibori, a former governor of Delta State, who was an ally of President Yar’Adua for money laundering. For his pains, he was suspended by President Yar’Adua on December 27, 2007 and subsequently demoted from the rank of an Assistant Inspector General of Police to that of Assistant Commissioner of Police, a rank he held in 2003 when he was first appointed chairman of EFCC. In 2008, Ribadu was forcefully retired from the police, and fled Nigeria after two failed assassination attempts.

    Farida Waziri, with the backing of James Ibori and Bukola Saraki was appointed by Yar’Adua as Ribadu successor. In spite of her godfathers, she was fired by Jonathan on November 23, 2011 allegedly over her investigation into the fuel subsidy scam. Like Farida Waziri, Ibrahim Lamorde was framed up, disgraced and humiliated out of office.

    Ibrahim Magu, who investigated Ibori’s case was arrested, detained and suspended from the police for several months without salary for keeping files of top politicians under investigation. Rehabilitated by President Jonathan, Magu was appointed by President Buhari as acting chair of the EFCC on November 9, 2015.

    Magu took on the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. When the Ibori case was bungled in Asaba High Court, he followed it up to London where Ibori was eventually “jailed by Southwark Crown court on April 17, 2012 for 13 years after he ‘pleaded guilty to 10 counts of money laundering and stealing $50m from the Delta State treasury’. He then took on ex-President Jonathan over $15m traced to his former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs, Waripamowei Dudafa, which the ex-president’s wife claimed belonged to her late mother, Madam Charity Fyneface Oba.

    Magu like his predecessors was disgraced  out of office with a false claim that Pastor Emmanuel Omale of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry, and his wife, Deborah, laundered N573 million on his behalf  by using the said fund to buy a property for Magu in Dubai.

    But the truth came out with Justice Halilu’s judgment following a bank’s admission that “the purported N573 million was wrongly reflected as credit entry into Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry’s account by its reporting system”.

    Malami, one of Buhari’s “loyal gatekeepers” who held him hostage had petitioned him complaining of Magu’s insubordination, alleged mishandling of recovered properties and re-looting of the interest on actual M550b lodgements. Malami, who had wanted to install his own man as EFCC chairman had his way when with his strong backing, Bawa who like him, is from the same Kebbi State, was confirmed by the Senate on February 24, 2021 as the chair of EFCC.

    Based on Malami’s previous antecedent of attempt to control the EFCC and interfere in the activities of the anti-corruption agencies, many concerned Nigerians including Prof Itse Sagay, chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, (PACAC)  believed Malami would not allow Bawa perform independently.

    In spite of his loyalty to Malami, Bawa ended up sharing the same fate with his predecessors who were humiliated out of office.  He was placed on indefinite suspension from June 14 over what the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), described as “weighty allegations of abuse of office levelled against him”.

    EFCC cannot stop corruption. As with our other crisis of nation-building, what we need to stop corruption is an elite consensus. It is our governing elite that will decide whether they want us to be like China, Japan, Denmark, Norway, Singapore or Syria, Somalia or Southern Sudan.

  • Let Nigeria breathe

    Let Nigeria breathe

    In previous dispensations, Nigeria‘s leadership handled the country like a funeral economy, where the public officer was a slayer and pallbearer.

    Think of him as ‘His Excellency’ who refused to build good roads but scurries to accident scenes to mourn the dead.

    Think of him as a mass murderer, who embezzles security and health funding thus afflicting the country with lingering terrorism and rising maternal mortality.

    Think of him as a cold cook, the mortician who denied Nigeria a functional health system that he might exploit citizenry panic, and steal health funding, in the throes of a global pandemic, like the coronavirus.

    Ultimately, he fulfils the role of a grim reaper. Apology to the honest, humane public officer, if he ever truly exists.

    As Nigeria reclaims her corpus from the claws of the coronavirus aka COVID-19, fresh afflictions manifest in sick bloom – thus presenting the dubious public officer and his billionaire associates in the private sector interminable prospects as patriots and saviours, rhetoricians and pallbearers. 

    For public officers in the executive and legislative chambers, inflation, citizenry deaths, terrorism, banditry, a comatose economy, and unemployment, become contiguous vehicles of compassion.

    Most gestures of love are, however, assertions of power, class and dominance. They affect no self-sacrifice, only refinements of self-love and domination. The guiltless may speak for themselves.

    In this new dispensation, Nigerians expect President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to stabilise and strengthen the economy, revamp education, security and healthcare, among others.

    The pervasive inflation and cash crunch experienced by the populace post-fuel subsidy offers veritable opportunities for social re-engineering and remedial measures.

    The incumbent leadership would, however, say it is on top of the situation. On Monday, May 29, 2023, while delivering his inaugural speech as Nigeria’s President, Tinubu declared that the ‘subsidy is gone.’ The declaration automatically led to an astronomic increase in the price of petrol as fuel prices leapt from ?185 to over ?550 in many parts of the country.

    Recall that ahead of the 2023 presidential election, all the leading presidential candidates including Tinubu promised to remove the fuel subsidy if elected. The candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi repeatedly described the scheme as an organised crime, suggesting that money spent on petrol subsidy should be channelled into social development.

    While speaking in Lagos, on Thursday, June 29, 2023, when he was hosted by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, at the Lagos House, Marina, Tinubu said he removed the fuel subsidy to stop the bleeding in the nation’s finances.

    He has the whole of his first term (now less than four years) to prove the efficacy of his fiscal bandage and palliatives. And he has certainly got his work cut out for him.

    Amid the torment of insecurity, a struggling economy and unemployment, he must resuscitate Nigeria from the gallows of misgovernance. He must prevent this country from relapsing to her old ways. On his watch, Nigeria must divest herself of ill repute. Governance must truly manifest with a humane spirit.

    Tinubu’s government must also make social and economic palliatives work for every segment of society irrespective of gender, tribe or social class. On his fiscal policy, he promised to review the federal budgetary culture, revamp national infrastructure, drive an import substitution agenda, reform the taxation system whereby the rich will pay more for what they consume, and lastly fight corruption, inefficiency and waste in government.

    He promised to manage inflation and renegotiate foreign debt obligations. And while we grapple with tighter management of the exchange rate as an alternative to the current loose, open market approach, he must make good his promise to devise a national industrial plan that extends tax and other credit facilities, encourage domestic manufacturers and producers and develop major and minor industrial hubs in all geopolitical zones.

    His palliatives must be relatable to the people’s needs; negotiations to increase the minimum wage must be wrapped up and actually devised to serve the interest of the masses. And it wouldn’t hurt his administration to devise measures like affordable public transport fuelled with cheaper energy sources, among other incentives.

    “Let the poor breathe!” the masses chant across social media platforms; this new refrain has, over time, attained toxic undertones as a language of disenchantment and protest by agitated segments of the masses.

    Under the tenor of rage carelessly spun and hurled in the social space, however, manifests a positive suasion for peace and patience with the new government. A new league of patriots emerge through the womb wall of our travails, preaching forbearance despite the threat of grislier hardship.

    Against the backdrop of it all, the crows are circling. This minute, Nigeria’s “friends from abroad” intone basement giggle, like the proverbial ghommid plundering beneath our nation’s sandcastle. Tinubu must beware of the patronage of the ‘superpowers’ of the world. Perhaps he sees the chill beneath their smiles. 

    They have seen him reiterate his intent to make Africa the centrepiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. They had read his body language en route to the polls; they have heard him declare Nigeria’s focus on Africa as the fulcrum of its policies on economy and foreign policy. They have estimated the import of Nigeria’s commitment to successful integration and implementation of trade policies, security and border controls with her African neighbours.

    It would be naive to believe they will applaud this. His government must brace its hide against a slew of brazen and subtle assaults on her interests at home and abroad.

    With the rise and growth of globalisation, the calculus and dynamics of colonial domination have assumed more subtle and treacherous forms; superpowers of the so-called “First World” have redesigned their conquest expeditions to suit the poetics and mathematics of their “enlightened self-interest.”

    The Euro-American complex of resource exploitation and cultural imperialism persists through residual structures of domination and collective socialisation through media propaganda and scholarship.

    Also, a conditioned mass passion for consumer goods imported from abroad and effective dissemination of the belief that this stage of colonialism (globalisation), notes Bulhan, represents a great advance in human history continues to be the bane of industrial and economic growth in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

    By sustained assault on our world of value and meaning, they will seek to penetrate our psyche by deploying social and economic relations. Nigerians, of course, have always been vulnerable to this scourge of culture, politics, and personae.

    To counter this meta colonial complex, the federal government must partner with progressive social actors to reinvent our national narrative in the language of patriots and deeds of an exalted ethic. This is neither a call to stifle constructive criticism nor self-censorship. Rather it’s a call to decolonise the Nigerian mind and political space.

    It’s about time we stopped being fawning and defenceless before oppressive hierarchies. Nigeria must no longer incur debts of impotence and naivete in the global comity of nations.

    Tinubu’s leadership must lead Nigeria to scorn the European gift of discord – be it a damning post-election report or sullied economic palliative. As Nigeria struggles to rebuild, we must scorn Europe’s lure and bouquets of dubious advocacy.

    Think of the West as the proverbial paramour who comes offering the worm with the apple while inviting our private glances to her public pleasures. But while other nations may consume the worm with the apple, let Nigeria eyeball it as a false fruit of rebirth. We must be wary of her sullied patronage including her gift of gendered and sexuality freedoms.

  • JAMB: The girl in the middle

    JAMB: The girl in the middle

    For 45 years, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has been conducting extrance examinations for prospective university students. It was not smoothsailing from the beginning. The task was enormous and JAMB was stretched beyond limit to deliver on its mandate.

    Those days of rough and tough beginnings have been put behind the examination body, which is now more orderly In the conduct of its examinations. But one issue still sticks out like a sore thumb in the world of JAMB. The issue is not peculiar to JAMB, it is one that confronts all examination bodies, schools and other institutions of learning globally.

    Cheating and related malpractices are the twin evils besetting the conduct of internal and external examinations. Examination malpractices did not start today and they are not likely to end tomorrow. As long as the world exists, cheating or giraffing (stretching the neck to copy from another candidate), writing answers on some hidden parts of the body and covertly bringing notes and even a whole textbook into examination halls will remain a cankerworm to the social fabric.

    Despite all efforts to redress the situation, nothing has changed. Things are getting worse by the day. It is not for nothing that complaints are rife that examinations today lack integrity compared to what obtained in the past. In the past, teachers and parents were not known to indulge their wards in examination malpractices. But today, many parents pay others to write exams for their children, with the connivance of teachers/invigilators.

    JAMB initially serviced universities alone. Its scope was later expanded to cover all higher institutions, such as polytechnics/monotechnics, colleges of technology and education, giving birth to the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME), that we all know today. In the past seven years, JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, has striven to curb exam malpractices. Every year, pupils who tried to cut corners in order to enter the university and other tertiary institutions have been exposed and barred from writing the UTME.

    Sadly, it has not served as a deterrence. The cycle keeps repeating itself every exam season. The nation is now enveloped in the drama of the fallout of the April 2023 UTME. JAMB and an applicant, Mmesoma Ejikeme, are in a row over her result. Mmesoma claimed that she scored 362 in the UTME, clinging to a notification slip purportedly issued by JAMB to support her claim. JAMB debunks the claim, saying it last used that slip in 2021.

    It says what it uses now is a result slip, with the applicant’s embossed picture and other security features. Mmesoma insists that she printed the slip from JAMB portal, explaining that she is incapable of falsifying her score, which JAMB puts at 249 to 362. (See photos). This is not the first time that JAMB is faced with this kind of scenario. In some past UTMEs, some applicants made wild claims only to back down after being confronted with superior evidence. Will Mmesoma’s case end the same way? The public is waiting and watching.

    Mmesoma, 19, looks too innocent to engage in any illegality. But then if looks alone were the parameters for measuring character, many criminally-minded people would get away with heinous offences like murder, armed robbery, banditry and terrorism. With JAMB’s insistence that its systems were not breached and that Mmesoma’s result did not emanate from it, the matter is getting curiouser and curiouser.

    Mmesoma could be a victim of circumstance – an unwilling tool in the hands of an exam mafia, which Oloyede and his men have been fighting since 2016. But can her result be doctored without her consent? Has JAMB ever had such a case before? Exam malpractices are give-and-take. A market of sorts for willing buyers and sellers. The buyer, that is the applicant/student, pays for the services of the seller, the mafia, that carries out the job. Or is she the villain and merely pretending to be innocent?

    Mmesoma herself has said that upon scanning, the quick response (QR) code on her slip brought out the data of another candidate, with a score of 138. How then did her own name get on the document, with a score of 362? Did JAMB issue her the slip? JAMB said it didn’t. Where did she get it from? JAMB portal, she alleged. Here lies the puzzle, which the police must unravel in order to get to the bottom of this matter. This is more of a police case than one for the Directorate of Security Service (DSS).

    The matter should not be allowed to drag on and on. It is high time it was laid to rest so that the girl, Kamsiyochukwu Umeh, also from Anambra like Mmesoma, who JAMB acknowledges as the highest scorer in the 2023 UTME with a mark of 360, can take her rightful place in the limelight.

  • Julius Berger’s lie

    Julius Berger’s lie

    In the past two weeks or so, the longsuffering motorists and commuters who ply the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway daily have been subjected to another round of traffic pains by Julius Berger. The firm is now working on the Kara market end of the Long Bridge up to the turning at Berger bus stop inward the old Lagos toll gate. Seven days ago, the Berger turning was closed and traffic diverted to other routes. The closure was bound to cause chaos and it has been hell in the past few days.

    People spend four to five hours in traffic on a journey that hitherto took 10 or so minutes. On Monday, the firm promised to open the turning to ease traffic during the Sallah holidays, which end today, and close it back on Monday (July 3). The turning was never reopened because the place had been dug up. So, the sufferings of the road users continued. Why did Berger lie that it would reopen the turning? Why didn’t the Federal Ministry of Works (FMoW) and the Lagos State Government confirm the position of things before issuing separate statements on the reopening of that junction?

    Berger has been taking the public for granted on that road and the authority is afraid to call the firm to order. This is what happens when people get compromised in the discharge of their duties. Why can’t the FMoW rein in Berger? What is it afraid of? Can Berger act like this in its own country? The people’s patience has run out with Berger on that road, which completion date is now said to be July 31. The public’s prayer is that they should just hasten up and get out of the road.

  • Fear of implosion in Russia

    Fear of implosion in Russia

    The news of mutiny in Russia came with surprise to everyone who has some knowledge of world affairs.  But when it became clear that the mutiny was by the WAGNER mercenary group fighting along Russian troops in Ukraine, there was some relief that it was not the Russian army. If it had been the Russian army, it would have obviously led to possible change of government after 23 years of Vladimir Putin’s iron fisted rule. However the 36-hour mutiny by this group raises some serious questions about the Russian state and the future of 70 year old Putin.

    Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it has become obvious that the Russian leader was badly advised and was told that the campaign against Ukraine would be an easy task and that the Ukrainian army would collapse like a pack of cards when faced with the Russian army. Putin had been led to expect this and that he would make a triumphant trip to Kyiv and install a puppet government in Ukraine totally subservient to Russia. He had reasons to think like this because the two people are linked by culture, history, geography and substantially by language because a third of the people in Ukraine particularly in the Donbas region and Crimea speak Russian and even native Ukrainians understand Russian because their two languages are not totally different. But having tasted independence and nationhood, Ukraine had grown to like it and resented being ruled by a government in faraway Moscow.

    In other words, Putin was misled by the intelligence department of his government to take an action which has now misfired. It then transpired that Russia was not prepared for a land war. Attempt to recruit bright young men to beef up the  standing army of  old soldiers and compulsory one year recruits  was undermined  by the desertion  of millions of such young men to Georgia and other states of the former Soviet Union. It was to improve the fighting quality of the rapidly recruited young  men in the Russian army that the Wagner group of mercenaries led by a mercurial person called YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN was called in. He was an ally and close confidant of Putin who had been useful to the president in  all kinds of situations, as a chef in Saint Petersburg and as someone involved in trying to meddle in  the  presidential elections in the USA in 2016 to assist Donald Trump defeat Mrs  Hilary Clinton. 

    Prigozhin deployed his mercenaries to help President Putin seize the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Recently, he has organized a mercenary group variously said to number about 50,000, some of them prisoners and hard core fighting men to do President Putin’s operations in Syria, Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR). While doing this, he has apparently amassed huge amount of money from trade in crude oil from Syria and gold and diamonds from Africa. He is an unusual character not directly under the state but apparently reporting to the Russian president. This kind of organization is not unusual in president Putin’s Russia where strong armed men are doing his bidding and dirty work in keeping subject nationalities subservient to him. Theirs is such a brutal army which his goons maintain in Chechnya. The Wagner group seems to be allowed considerable power as long as they remain absolutely loyal to President Putin .

    This was the situation in which the WAGNER group and its leader YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN were deployed to the front in the war in Ukraine. He and his troops proved their mettle and their contribution proved decisive in the war in some parts of the Donbas particularly in Bakhmut.  PRIGOZHIN then began to deride the regular army and their officers as cowards and useless fighting men in the war against Ukraine. He began to call for the sack of the Russian chief of army staff and the Defence minister   Sergei Shoigu and the army chief fighting in Ukraine, General Valery Gerasimov accusing them for being responsible for the loss of more than a hundred thousand young Russians on the front.  He was apparently upset by attempt by the military to get the group absorbed into the army by July 2023.

    His constant abuse and diatribe against the top hierarchy of the ministry of defence went on for weeks and months without restraint and many observers began to think that Putin was using him against the army which had not performed as well as expected in the war in Ukraine. The liberty granted him by the president was apparently taken for licence to do anything. He claimed the regular army sent a missile to his camp which killed some of his men .This led to PRIGOZHIN leading thousands of his troops from the front in Ukraine into Russia and seizing a southern army base called Rostov on Don in southern Russia and sending a column of his troops to Moscow apparently to take over the Ministry of defence and army headquarters.  This column was some 125 miles from Moscow when President Vladimir Putin panicked and took to the air on Saturday June 24 to brand PRIGOZHIN a traitor who stabbed Russia in the back. In the broadcast Putin compared what was happening to the rebellion against the Russian revolution in 1917 in which the czarist regime was overthrown and the Czar Nicholas 11 was overthrown and his entire family wiped out.

    I personally found the comparison important though odious because Putin now sees himself as an anointed ruler of Russia like the Romanovs. Perhaps what may have jolted Putin was the attack on Putin’s claim that he went to war because of fear of Ukraine joining NATO. This was disputed by PRIGOZHIN who claimed it was because the chiefs of the army and the Defence minister wanted to be promoted Marshals and that certain oligarchs were benefiting from the industries and minerals in Eastern Ukraine and wondered why the sons of the rich Russians and other privileged groups were not in the Russian army fighting and dying in the war front in Ukraine. The mutineers were also welcomed with hugs and cheers on the street and their rebellion was beginning to take the shape of a long awaited uprising. Putin took the extra ordinary step of television broadcast calling PRIGOZHIN a traitor and that Russia would deal with him and all those involved in the rebellion with military severity.

    The whole world was seized with fear not for Putin being put down but with the fear that a man like PRIGOZHIN could come to power and be in control of thousands of nuclear war heads.

    NATO and particularly the USA tried meticulously not to get involved and for the whole thing being seen as a CIA plot.  But as careful as the USA was trying to stay away from the internal Russian rebellion, the Russian foreign minister without any evidence was suggesting that NATO probably had a hand in it. But NATO was put on a state of alert while Ukraine tried very much to exploit the chaos in Russia.  Not much appeared to have been gained by any Ukraine’s effort on the battle fields. Within 36 hours of the revolt, PRIGOZHIN called off his rebellion after the intervention of the Belarus dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko and because PRIGOZHIN said he did not want Russians killing fellow Russians. A deal was signed giving PRIGOZHIN exile in Belarus and a pardon as well as payment for his troops to join the regular army. No one, it seems will suffer any consequence for an act president Putin had earlier on called treason which would be punished with extreme severity.

    The question to ask now is who are the losers in this debacle? PRIGOZHIN has definitely lost a lot unless we have not been told the entire tale of the settlement. He has lost his command of his unusual mercenary force. We don’t know what will happen to his troops and mines in Mali, CAR and Burkina Faso and his oil wells in Syria.  Will President Putin‘s Russia take over control of these assets and liabilities? PRIGOZHIN had better take care of himself because the long hand of the Kremlin reaches Belarus. In any case, if Putin gives orders for PRIGOZHIN to “be terminated with extreme severity “, that will be the end of PRIGOZHIN’s story.  But we are not even sure if PRIGOZHIN is in Minsk or still in Russia or that President Putin may pardon and draw him near before liquidating him. On the other hand, President Putin has lost face.  He has been proved not to be in total control of Russia to the extent that a rag tag army of mercenaries could have the audacity to threaten him.

    The  fact that the column of the mercenaries got to within 125 miles of the Kremlin without any challenge by any of the innumerable security forces in Russia  raises fundamental questions of either lack of communication or inside secret support for the mercenaries. Although this incident may be a chink in his huge armour, it still however exposed some weakness which may not be fatal to president Putin’s regime. Nobody knows the effect of the mutiny on the morale of the fighting men in the Russian military, but it certainly would have undermined their valour, courage and fighting spirit and trust in their officers. 

    No one can also predict the attitude of the mercenaries if they are forced into the regular Russian military. The effect of this is that the demoralised soldiers would become sitting targets for the hardy Ukrainian army. If this proves true and many of them are killed or taken prisoners, Putin may then be ready to negotiate on fairly favourable terms to Ukraine. If the Russian army were to collapse totally, Putin may order the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine and hopefully the American supporters of Ukraine would not retaliate in the same measure from their bases in Germany and England where they store tactical nuclear weapons, but if they do retaliate, this could lead to nuclear Armageddon. The other scenario is that a military collapse of Russia in Ukraine may lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin and his trial for war crimes and an end to the war  in Ukraine and  the signing of a peace treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s independence and possible entry into the European Union and NATO.

  • Fuel subsidy and masses’ self-proclaiming heroes

    Fuel subsidy and masses’ self-proclaiming heroes

    That there is always a raging battle between the governed and government is understandable. The former, made up of fortune-seekers, experiencing varying degrees of insanity, are often not conscious of the sources of their nightmare. The latter, in power at the behest of the rich owners of society understands very clearly that their mandate is to maintain a delicate balance between the masses and their oppressors whose only desire is to preside over an empire of slaves. However, because of few evil men and women in government, the masses as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Minister of Finance, found out during the 2012 fuel subsidy debacle, are often “cynical and distrustful of government”.

    Unfortunately, journalists who as students of society understand that it is the governed that needs the government more are the same people that often portray government as Leviathan, a fearful sea monster that must be brought down. Government job is not made any easier by the fact that it is almost impossible to serve as an impartial umpire in the battle between the parasitic owners of society and the masses on whose blood they feed.

    A quick journey through memory will show how demonization of government by the media in recent years has only prolonged our   nightmare.

    Between 1979 and 1983, Adisa Akinloye, Shehu Shagari and their National Party of Nigeria (NPN), despite warning by Chief Obafemi Awolowo that the ship of state was heading for the rock, crashed the economy through massive consumption of imported branded Champagne, rice and other manufactured goods from Europe. And fearing the loss of the 1983 election, they adopted Walter Ofonagoro’s dubious theory of “landslide and seaslide victory’ in opposition strong holds, to steal the 1983 presidential election.

    Then their nemesis came in the person of Muhammadu Buhari. Although burning with a patriotic zeal to serve, he was ill-trained in the art of managing society. He betrayed his incompetence when he threw all politicians irrespective of the level of the guilt into detention without following due judicial process. Ill-advised, he dared the West by rejecting unsolicited IMF loan. He then challenged Nigerian consumers of foreign goods to produce their own wheat if they wanted bread or starve if they could not plant their own rice. I think Nehru, who insisted Indians should go naked if they could not make their own clothes was his role model.  He took the battle to nosey journalists, jailing reporters for reporting the truth and executing drug pushers with a decree with a retroactive power.

    Buhari is unhinged, so declared Nigerian journalists. To show the pen is mightier than the sword, journalists mobilized human rights lawyers and civil society groups to wage a vicious war with Buhari. Why would he not provide palliatives before asking us to plant our own wheat; we demanded. We played into the hands of America, who working hand in gloves with greedy Nigerian importers of labour of other nations, sponsored Bababngida’s palace coup.

    For betraying Buhari and the Nigerian masses, some leading light of our profession such as Chief Duro Onabule (editor of National Concord) became Babangida’s Chief Press Secretary while Tony Momoh, a celebrated editor of the Daily Times became Minister for Information. Babangida despite opposition of Nigerians, took the IMF loan, and in the name of Structural Adjustment Programme, opened our country to importation of goods from all over the world.

    Our budding industries, textile, pharmaceuticals, electronics, car and truck assembly plants collapsed. Our naira that was in 1983 stronger than the dollar exchanged for $1 to N6 by 1986. The JAPA syndrome started with our university lecturers and experienced doctors migrating to Europe and Canada.

    But it was a payback for the media. While Buhari only jailed journalists for reporting the truth, Babangida according to Gani Fawehinmi, parcel-bombed Dele Giwa in his study. Journalists went Afghanistan or underground. His henchmen, Uche Chuwumerije and Walter Ofonagoro closed down all private newspapers throwing all journalists into the labour market. Babangida and Abacha waged war against Nigeria until 1998.

    In 2012, we once again betrayed Nigeria. In 2009, a sub-committee on fuel subsidy regime headed by Isa Yuguda, a former managing director of NAL, a former governor of Bauchi and a former minister of state, aviation, had confirmed the fuel subsidy program was a scam. A similar probe by the National Assembly in 2011 also confirmed that against NNPC 59m litres per day claim, the nation was consuming only 35litres, resulting in the theft of some N667billion daily by some Nigerians. In 2012, President Jonathan’s Imoukhuede Committee on Fuel Subsidy indicted 21 firms and directed recovery of N382 billion. President Jonathan decided to end the fuel subsidy scam.

    Again it was the media, the self-declared hero of the masses that led the war against President Jonathan. Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) organized a town hall meeting to provide a platform for self-serving human rights lawyers and civil society groups, NLC and NUT to blackmail Jonathan.

    Okonjo-Iweala, the Minister for Finance said ‘removal of fuel subsidy will free N500b as intervention fund and another N500m for infrastructure”. Her argument was rejected because of what she described as “cynicism and mistrust of government”.

    Sanusi the CBN governor’s argument that to “continue borrowing and subsidising fuel consumption is to saddle the next government with a heavy sovereign debt crisis”; and that spending N13 trillion on fuel subsidy, will not allow us to “build up our reserve, stabilise our exchange rate, maintain stable rate of inflation and sustainable debt’ fell on deaf ears.

    Read Also: Petrol subsidy removal: private school owners signal hike in fees

    The Nigerian Labour Congress NLC, Trade Union Congress (TUC) mobilized “the fit, sick, rich or poor, young or old, artisan and professional, religious leaders’ across the nation for mass protest. Octogenarians including Tunji Braithwaite, Kalu Idika Kalu and Ben Nwabueze were not left out in all-out war against Jonathan. The Convener of Save Nigeria Group (SNG) Pastor Tunde Bakare anchored the protest”.

    In 2012, inflation projection was 14%; today it is 24%; the nation’s debt profile has moved from N7,564.4  billion to N49.85 trillion; fuel subsidy expenditure has  also moved from N1,23 trillion  to N400b monthly. Today, “the smuggling of subsidized petrol”, according to President Tinubu “depletes Nigeria’s economy by as much as N4.88 trillion yearly”. That only confirmed his unassailable position that fuel subsidy scam must go on the first day of his presidency.

    Dear compatriots, even with all the facts before Nigerians, labour, promoted by segment of the media is still threatening to go on strike except palliative is first provided as we did back in the eighties. Those who think we can continue to do the same thing and expect different result are supporters of our enemies, the parasitic rent seekers and evil men in government including the one from whose house EFCC allegedly found about 40 state-of-the-art cars and tons of naira equivalent of about N70b last week.

    Yuguda, asked by Channels Television what he thought emboldened Tinubu to do what Presidents Jonathan and Buhari could not do, spoke of political will and fear of owners of society. But if you ask me, I will say courage failed them because they were betrayed by the media. The difference today is that, those who engage in balance of terror through misinformation, mischief and blackmail and falsely swear in the name of the masses even as they serve the owners of society as slaves, understand that with President Tinubu, it is now going to be a balance of intellectual engagement.

  • NSA: Making life safe, sound

    NSA: Making life safe, sound

    He happened on the national scene like a bolt out of the blue in 2003. He came unannounced, unknown and unpopular. But within months of taking up the job of executive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu’s name caught on like wildfire. He was no longer Nuhu who? EFCC shot him to limelight and 20 years on, Ribadu has hecome a recurring decimal in national affairs.

    His relationship with EFCC was symbiotic. He and the agency made themselves with equal measures. He made EFCC a household name through his actions and in the process, his stock rose. Ribadu left EFCC in 2007 in controversial  circumstances, following the coming of the late President Umoru Yar’Adua. Some politicians, who no longer wanted him at EFCC, pushed for his removal. But it was not done in a tidy manner.

    After having held office for four years, it suddenly dawned on them and their collaborators that Ribadu should not have been appointed in the first place because of his rank in the police. The EFCC job, they claimed, is reserved for a Commissioner of Police (CP). Ribadu was an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) when he was deployed in EFCC. He was eventually ousted and sent to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru near Jos, the Plateau State capital.

    He left NIPSS with the fanciful mni suffix to his name to return to the police where again a row broke out over his rank. Was he ever promoted to CP and then Assistant Inspector-General (AIG), the rank on which he purportedly left NIPSS after the one-year executive leadership programme. The issue turned into another dingdong, with the Police Service Commission (PSC), reportedly directing that he remains an ACP. Till today, the rank on which Ribadu left service is still a subject of controversy.  . To some, he retired as a CP and to others as an AIG.

    After several years on the sidelines, Ribadu is back in the mainstream of power. On June 19, President Bola Tinubu appointed him National Security Adviser (NSA), just some days after his appointment as Special Adviser on Security. On Monday, he took over from Maj-Gen. Babagana Monguno, with a pledge to secure the country because it is time Nigeria knows peace. Good talk, but he has to walk the talk.

    Ribadu comes to office as the first NSA with no military background in the past 24 years of democratic rule. The position was until his appointment 10 days ago the exclusive preserve of Generals. The President would have considered many factors before settling for a police officer as NSA. The job, as the title shows, is not for military men per se, but for all those engaged in security work.

    Security is an all-encompassing and all-embracing  concept, which is much more wider than pigeon holing it as a military duty. It is not. Security requires serious thinking, elaborate planning, deliberate and sustained execution of policies, adequate facilitation and use of technology and intense intelligence gathering to drive the process. Security is not solely about having boots on the ground. It should not be equated with war, in which the military is renowned. Adequate security can avert war, which is the essence of safeguarding a nation.

    The country has been fighting a war on several fronts in the past 14 years without nothing to show for it. Whether kinetic or non-kinetic or symmetric or asymmetric or whatever other name it is called, this war has cost us a lot in human and material terms. No nation or group of people fights a war endlessly. It is even better to prevent a war than fight one. A sound NSA can avert war through deep thinking and resourceful management of the intelligence at his disposal. We need a thinking and not a warring NSA at this time. A NSA that will lead the nation  out of the ongoing unconventional war in which it has lost many soldiers and civilians.

    Ribadu has his job cut out for him. How can he get the insurgents comprising mainly fundamentalists, bandits, and other criminals to stop fighting their country? How can he resolve the longstanding feud between  herders and farmers? How can he end the ethnic skirmishes in many parts of the country? It is a tough call, but he can discharge his duties without complicating issues. He should see himself as the chief security officer of the nation and not of any ethnic group which must be protected at all costs, whether right or wrong.

    He comes to office highly recommended. Ribadu cannot afford to fail the President, who picked him from a large field, and the nation, which now looks on him for respite from the long years of the unconventional war that has displaced many, made thousands of children orphans and taken farmers off their land. As NSA, he must remember that security is key to the rebuilding of the economy so that people will feel the impact of government. His time to do that is already running.

  • Towards food sustenance

    Towards food sustenance

    If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu truly intends to improve Nigeria’s agricultural economy, his policies mustn’t suffer self-impeding calcification, in time.

    Previous gospels of agricultural revitalisation have been stifled by the magnification of tropes as truth and slogans as change theory. Ask the touted beneficiaries. It’s all slick insentient theatre.

    Perhaps the problem is not with the policies; after all, what are policies but papered fantasies? Policies symbolize intent and are enlivened only through implementation. However, depending on the quality of leadership, an agricultural policy may stifle the farmer’s sighs and blot out under-served tracts. It could enliven by external fillip or stifle to internal sabotage.

    Thus while the African Development Bank (AFDB)’s investment of $520m in Nigeria’s “specialised agro-processing zones” is good news, great care must be taken to see it manifest to intent.

    It will further open up the economy for investments that provide job opportunities and poverty reduction, enthused Tinubu. In his inaugural speech, the president promised to resolve challenges relative to agriculture’s different sub-sectors; he said his administration will create agricultural hubs across Nigeria to boost food production and engage in value-added processing.

    Rural incomes, he said, would be secured by commodity exchange boards guaranteeing minimal prices for certain crops and animal products. “A nationwide programme for storage and other facilities to reduce spoilage and waste will be undertaken.”

    Through these actions, the president said, food shall be made more abundant yet less costly and farmers will earn more while the average Nigerian pays less.

    Pundits scrutinise his projections juxtaposing them with previous policies cum unrealistic attempts to guarantee food sufficiency. Though former President Muhammadu Buhari’ Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) boosted rice and maize production, it didn’t translate to food sufficiency as prices of food items escalated amid rising inflation.

    This affected the purchasing power of citizenry whose incomes remain poor in the face of high cost of food, making it difficult for millions to feed themselves satisfactorily.

    Reviewing the sector’s performance in the last eight years, the National President of the Association of Yam Farmers, Processors, and Marketers, Simon Irtwange, expressed worry about the intervention of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in the sector, describing it as “uncoordinated.”

    He said, “They descended into the arena and made a mess of the initiatives such as the Anchor Borrowers’ Program, the Private Sector-Led Accelerated Agriculture Development Scheme (P-AADS) and consequently the programmes failed because beneficiaries were not the real farmer.”

    Agreed, the picture was grim pre-Buhari. At his arrival, the former president boosted productivity via such schemes as the Presidential Fertliser Initiative (PFI) by which he supplied farmers with discounted fertilisers. Fertilisers became available to farmers at ?5,500 per bag, a significant cut from the ?9,000 per bag initial regime. And to provide peasant farmers access to credit, the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) was established. Between 2015 and 2018, ?174 billion was reportedly disbursed to about one million farmers. The total repayment as of the end of 2018 stood at ?21 billion. The records are actually more unnerving on further probe.

    Successive governments have initiated agricultural interventions in the quest for food sufficiency but most policies have focused on supporting farmers with finance – and this has often been ill-fated. No thanks to corruption.

    Tinubu must succeed where Buhari failed but he must understand that his government cannot achieve agricultural boon simply by pronouncing passion to resources. He must thoroughly examine if resources are pronounced to his passion.

    To truly improve the fortunes of the agricultural sector, the government must eliminate the structural impediments of unreliable power supply, dilapidated irrigation systems, overcrowded ports, and poor roads among others.

    Today, it takes an average of six to eight days to move a truckload of tomatoes along the country’s main transport corridor, from Jibiya in the far north to Lagos in the southwest. Unless the cargo is refrigerated, it will perish before reaching Lagos port.

    Hopes that the ambitious rail network would improve transportation are have been dashed by challenges posed by theft and vandalisation of rail tracks, and insecurity.

    Against the backdrop of these challenges, Nigeria must fund diversification of agriculture to make it more appealing to a vast youth population that is spiritless about farming but might be attracted to processing, marketing, and other business opportunities along the value chain.

    Several pundits have suggested the deployment of emerging technologies in agriculture. Young people are eager to master new technologies and apply them to agriculture to increase productivity and solve challenges, notes Heifer International in a recent sampling of respondents from 12 countries across Africa. These technologies, it said, can help increase the desirability of agriculture-related career paths to the youths.

    Despite the touted promise of agri-tech, it will foster strictly ephemeral growth, if misapplied. Rather than give relief, it might birth a Siamese bundle of utopia and dystopia in one breadth. More fascinating is the manifestation of the now ubiquitous start-up fintech and its marriage to the agro-economy.

    A peculiar thing is happening: where the government fails to show up, foreign financiers or angel funders, if you like, are extending their interventions with curious funding.

    How could anyone deem such interventions scary in a world where oligarchs maul promising youths into armed bandits, career assassins, political hooligans, while they embezzle public wealth to fund extravagant lifestyles?

    Thus the argument persists that agri-tech and angel funding are great for the economy. These seed monies – regardless of their slush equivalents used for funding regime change and dubious political springs worldwide –  are filling a crucial void in empowering youths who would otherwise be unemployed and left out of the loop of social interventions.

    But not all ‘seed money’ is a slush fund; a few agricultural startups have sprouted from the seeds of angel funders with stakes in diverse sectors of the agro-economy. Some of their interventions subsist in the production of palm kernel oil (PKO) which is still currently inadequate for the companies that use it as raw material.

    Then, there are those that support farmers’ scale-up from peasant farming to commercial farming by providing extension services, quality seeds, access to finance, access to mechanization, and general advisory services on new and innovative methods in farming.

    These appreciable interventions deserve sustainable partnership with the Nigerian government. But technology, like the crude oil boom, is Janus-faced, often manifesting as development’s womb and tomb.

    Tech history has often been characterised by a debate between enamoured romantics and dismissive sceptics. Neither divide, however, projects a convincing response to opportunities and challenges that new technologies present; both in turn often exaggerate or downplay the impact of technology, and this leads to entrenched positions and polarisation.

    Such entrenched positions can be harmful even if politically correct and more media-friendly than the highly differentiated analysis fostered by reality and careful, longitudinal research.

    Advocates of technology integration in agriculture must understand the discourses that drive it and, in some cases, harm its acceptance, and find a balance between the technological innovations that can be sustained by sound policies and those driven more by Machiavellian interests.

    Technology is useless if it isn’t humane and doesn’t improve life. Given the soil’s contribution to all life and wealth, technology must be deployed to enhance its healing and restorative properties by which disease passes into health, age into youth, and death into life.

    The wellspring of wealth is agricultural surplus, the ability to feed more than one with the labour of one.

  • An ode to genius 

    An ode to genius 

    For several years, Nigeria has feted and fooled with undeserving celebs. Many a male and female of ill repute has been tooled with renown. Thus the social space pulses with ornamented sap heads in glitter and gold.

    Occasionally, we hear of an individual or two, who asserts his or her right to renown. Society enjoys the emergence of one, two, three or four genii or more, who put up brilliant performances in the humanities, arts, academia, sports, science and tech, to mention a few.

    These are the ones we should really celebrate but the most they get, usually, is half a page of news mention, grudgingly doled out to them by a hesitant press.

    Consequently, we know too little of them. They do not enjoy appreciable renown, like the glitter gang.

    Let this be the moment we choose to acknowledge the finer breed of Nigerianness, like Aminat Imoitesemeh Yusuf, who graduated with a perfect Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 5.00 (First Class Honours) from the Lagos State University (LASU)’s Faculty of Law.

    The Vice-Chancellor (VC), Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello, gladly pronounced Amina as “LASU’s best-graduating student in history.”

    It is indeed fulfilling to acknowledge her emergence as the overall best-graduating student in LASU’s 40-year history. Moved by her achievement, the traditional ruler of Iba Kingdom, Oba Adeshina Suleiman Ashade, the Oniba Ekun of Iba, hosted Yusuf and her parents on Sunday, June 18, to celebrate her exploit.

    The monarch, whose kingdom is one of LASU’s host communities presented Aminat with a cheque of N2 million in the presence of her family, her school’s management and other traditional chiefs.

    According to him, Aminat’s feat was being celebrated to encourage his own children and serve as an inspiration to young people in the kingdom that hard work truly pays.

    The Oniba’s cash gift to Aminat follows the N500,000 awarded to her by the University Management on Wednesday, June 14, being the first of the windfall to greet her extraordinary performance.

    Her parents’ joy was perceptible on their faces. While her mother beamed brilliantly, her father, Ibrahim Yusuf, a multiple award-winning journalist with The Nation, maintained a calm, fulfilled mien.

    Nothing is as gratifying as seeing his graduate daughter manifest with appreciable grandeur that surpasses his at her age; add that to her infectious humility, piety and predilection for excellence, and you have a perfect picture of a well-groomed child.

    If Ibrahim is a pride of the Yusuf clan, his daughter, Aminat, becomes the prodigious heroine whose exceptional feat restyles the paradigm of accomplishment of his lineage.  Aminat, like Poe’s true genius, shuddered at the probability of validating incompleteness via a mediocre performance. Thus she committed to the attainment of excellence in full measure.

    She preferred silent striving to careless tripe and dulled her sense of entitlement to embrace a culture of disciplined enterprise and taqwa as counselled by her Islamic faith. The Arabic word taqwa means “forbearance, fear and abstinence.” It is also explained as “God-consciousness, piety, fear of Allah, love for Allah, and self-restraint.”

    Self-restraint and tact have, so far, served as her shield against the debauchery pervasive of the university campus, larger society and social media.

    It is heartening to see a contemporary Nigerian female manifest with traits and glory worth emulation by her peers and younger ones.

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    Amina dared to be the exception in an age teeming with the likes of Anto, a Big Brother Naija (BBN) inmate notable for her twaddle of being a “grown ass woman” who has “f..ked a lot of niggas” but wanted no one to “take it personally” because she and her fellow inmates in the DSTV/Multichoice degenerate show were simply “having a good time.”

    In an age when hordes of young Nigerian (and African) females are wildly corrupted and misled into toxic femininity, Amina affects the wisdom of the ancients, which admonishes moderate assertiveness, progressive consciousness, and a disciplined pursuit of personal goals.

    Swathed in her hijab, she cut a portrait of glowing modesty and respectable grooming. While some may dismiss this as an errant validation of her presumed propriety, testimonials from her tutors and peers erase all doubts about her character.

    This is the kind of youth that our daughters should emulate. Not the degenerate, drug-addicted, sexually perverse, celebrity junkies ‘flexing’ their regressive savvy on both traditional and new media.

    En route to her glory, Aminat flaunted no cleavage. She bared no flesh as a function of her femininity. The only thing nude about her was her assertive decency. Thus we may declare her brand of femininity ennobling.

    As she ventures into the larger society, she must understand that unlike the archaic kore (maiden) whose ample graces are utilitarian, the model Muslimah must stay graciously clothed in her will, perspicacity, propriety and brilliance.

    Her outward and innate beauty should constitute her votive palette from which she aspires to a more splendorous portrait. She must strive heroically shrouded in cultured femininity and uncompromising decency.

    Unlike the confused, contemporary vixen, sculpted through decadence and gobs of imported, reckless awareness, her character must be such that invites the strolling spectator to admire her in her mould.

    She should never seek to be vixen but virtuous; she must never seek to be toxic but humane.

    Right now, stardom falls upon her and shines through her; she must be wary of its flicker lest it torches her modesty. This is neither to secularise her persona nor ritualise it but to identify it as an exemplary bust worthy of emulation by hordes of misguided teens aspiring to become tinsel town’s glitter mob.

    Right now, Aminat is the diva to beat. But she clearly has a long journey ahead of her. If you ask her, she would tell you of her wish to be acknowledged as an accomplished female, attorney, woman, Muslimah.

    Unlike the misguided BBN inmate, she does not intend to “f..k a lot of niggas” or strip and twerk on TikTok for acclaim. Rather, she has set on the path to self-actualisation the old-fashioned way, by dint of passion and honest endeavour.  She would make a tough attorney someday. A successful one, hopefully. 

    Ibrahim Yusuf’s loins has certainly borne no strange fruit. From the bold patina of Aminat’s growth, this is understandable.

    She has certainly grown from the starry-eyed girl, whose admission to LASU’s Faculty of Law elicited indescribable passion from her father, a few years ago. Ibrahim enthused with joy, regaling his colleagues with the promise reposed in his daughter. Thus he worked tirelessly to support her despite his struggles as a journalist. Those struggles have paid off now.

    There is no gainsaying Nigeria teems with uncelebrated genii across various fields of endeavour. Beyond the university campuses, there are many more gems in education, journalism, public health, and law enforcement but society reserves honour for a curious breed, it would seem.

    How easy it was for Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to physically show up at celebrity wannabe, Hilda Baci’s contrived and wholly inconsequential cookathon, and ignore a glorious attainment like Aminat Yusuf’s. A terse acknowledgement is never enough.

    And if the state could host winners of BBN’s toxic reality, irrespective of the nature of the publicity stunt, Lagos, the Centre of Excellence could oblige more salutary glance to outstanding citizenry across all fields of endeavour.

  • Globe-trotting African presidents should remain at home

    Globe-trotting African presidents should remain at home

    Last week a delegation of the presidents of four African states of Senegal, Zambia, Comoros islands and South Africa and some  top government functionaries from Egypt, Uganda and Congo-Brazzaville, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa  of South Africa, went on a wild goose chase to Ukraine and Russia with what Ramaphosa called “an historic peace mission “ to work for  the resolution of the  conflict between the two countries arising from  the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy politely told the delegation that he was not interested in any peace talks while Russia continues to occupy a third of Ukrainian territory. Needless to say that Ukraine was not happy with many African leaders’ positions of not criticising Russia and not voting against Russia in the United Nations to condemn that country’s attack on Ukraine a weaker and non-belligerent nation on the grounds of Russia’s support during the African struggle against colonialism, racism and apartheid. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin who knows President Ramaphosa well as both of their countries are members of BRICS, a group of countries committed to finding another monetary medium of exchange outside the American dollar, received the delegation warmly even though the Russian president said the terms of the negotiations which included respect for each country’s territorial integrity was a non-starter and no go area after the Russian  invasion and annexation of Crimea and the eastern territories of Ukraine inhabited by Russian speakers who Putin  previously refers to as “Russia abroad”.

    Any knowledgeable person should have known the two country’s positions before this doomed mission was embarked upon. The presidents of the African countries should at least have been well briefed by their missions in Russia and possibly Ukraine if they have diplomatic relations with the latter country. To go to Ukraine to ask it to negotiate with its powerful neighbour and trespasser on the grounds that Africa was starving because of the war in Ukraine and its inability to buy grains from both Russia and Ukraine sounds rather insensitive because Ukrainians in their tens of thousands were dying defending their country in what it regards as “a just war “against Russia. The authorities in Ukraine could justifiably have described the Africans as fighting for their bellies or shall we say “stomach infrastructure” rather than seeing the higher call and more honourable defence of the principle of maintaining the international order supported by the United Nations’ charter in which the principle of inviolability of international boundaries is enshrined. Although this point is in the 10-point negotiating platform the African mission suggested without getting adequate and listening ears and patience of the Ukrainians who rather brusquely shoved off the Africans out of their country on their way to Russia. The Russians were also not ready to listen to any plea of peace. The two countries seem to believe there cannot be any negotiations until they had apparently exhausted themselves on the battlefield. The much expected counter offensive against the entrenched Russians has just begun and Ukraine seems to feel the much advanced NATO armaments supplied it will help it see the backs of the Russians while the Russians with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and more available if needed, will eventually overawe the Ukrainians. With their fixed and unmovable positions there was no chance of a peaceful negotiation.  It is surprising that the Africans felt they would be able to move the Russians and Ukrainians where the much more influential Chinese government had previously failed.

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    On their return home to Africa, President Ramaphosa congratulated himself and his friends about making the “historic trip “in search of peace this time not in Africa but on a global stage in Europe.

    I understand President Vladimir Putin will soon be meeting all African presidents, 52 of them in Africa-Russia summit. I sincerely hope the summit will not take place. What will they talk about? Wheat and fertilizer imports from Russia that cannot be done under normal business relations? Or will they be talking about bringing the Wagner group of Russian mercenaries to more African countries apart from Mali, Burkina Faso and Central African Republic? Or perhaps the sale of more AK-47 that are now manufactured all over world would be on the list of what to discuss. Russia is not in any position to offer African countries that have mismanaged their economies loans to be happily looted by African politicians and their bureaucracies and military who aid and abet the looting of their national patrimonies and even foreign loans. Honestly speaking, if there are things to discuss and I agree there may be things to discuss among friendly countries, this should be done at the level of the African Union and the African commission or at the level of the regional organizations existing all over Africa.

    I hate to see President Putin at the welcoming party with 52 or so African heads of state lining up like school children being called one by one and approaching with two arms stretched to greet the Russian leader with placid face indicating boredom and wondering when the comedy would end.

    I have the same views on France-Africa summit, China-Africa powwow, Britain- Africa meeting, Japan-Africa summit, and Germany-Africa or America-Africa summit. All these humiliations have to stop. If any African leader wants to go to any of these countries, it should do so solely on its own. I know from experience that these global powers are only interested in meeting a few key countries in Africa while the remaining countries can have summits among themselves and sort themselves out! It is about time African leaders understood that the task of developing their countries lies in Africa and not in Europe, America, Japan or China. We are in a world of competing nations and quietly understood but not spoken, competing races. Every nation is out to fight for its own well-being and no amount of propaganda will change this .There was a time when Chinese were derisively referred as “Chinaman”, when Indians were called “coolies”,  Japanese were looked down upon  as “Japs “but not anymore. I remember looking for accommodation in London as a student in 1965 and the hand written advertisement on the wall read “accommodation available, no Indian, Irish, Chinaman, blacks need apply, Jap ok “.  Of course things have changed all the races or nations mentioned in this racist advertisement have earned the respect of the whole world except the blacks and this is where our challenge is and not in gallivanting around the world in various summits in which Africans in the words of the racist British imperialist defender, Rudyard Kipling in his book The White Man’s Burden as “half children half devils”.

    I hope the new president will not allow himself to be dragooned into any summits in which he and others will be lined up as curios from another world to be seen for the entertainment of others enjoying themselves at the expense of Africans.