The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Return of the lion

    Return of the lion

    When the lion, the king of the forest is not around, all kinds of animals will be seen parading themselves in that position. But, once the king returns, they all go into hidden. A leader will always remain a leader. His place cannot be taken whether he is around or not.

    When the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT), left the country for a well-deserved rest in London, the mainstream and social media was abuzz with all sorts of stories. They said he went abroad on medical tourism. Even, if that was true, what is wrong in going out to take care of one’s health, if one has the means?

    Many go abroad to take care of themselves. But when it is Asiwaju, it becomes a sin. Why? At the risk of being tagged a Tinubu boy, I will say it is because he is a man destined for great things; a man chosen to affect his generation. Whatever such people do, always causes a buzz.

    He was the subject of discussions for the two weeks that he was away and since his return on October 6, they have not ceased talking about him. To borrow a popular street lingo: E shock them, with his return. While he was away, they said he was ill and too old to stand for next year’s presidential election because of his failing health. There was nothing they did not say or write about him.

    Those that do not know him would think they were talking about a man so feeble that he could no longer move. But, lo and behold! Here was Tinubu emerging from inside the aircraft looking radiant and regal in a wine turtle-neck, striped brown jacket and trousers, with a Kangol cap to match. He was looking hale and hearty. He came down the stairway unaided.

    At the foot of the stairway were his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima, director-general of his campaign council, Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau, the deputy director-general, Adams Oshiomhole, and many others. Tinubu embraced and shook hands with everyone of them, bouncing, turning on his heels and smiling as he did so. He looked refreshed, rejuvenated, and well rested.

    Tinubu did not look 70, at all. He looked more like a 55-year-old, swinging from one end to the other, exchanging banters here and there, backslapping and laughing heartily. Tinubu looked extremely fine, composed and cool. The outing was impressive and it would go down as one of his best ever. He did everything right. I was amazed ed watching him on television.

    Is this the man they say is ill? I wondered and started looking forward to how the papers would capture Tinubu’s triumphal return graphically the next day. I was more than disappointed by what I saw. There were no graphic reports about it at all. It was as if the man had not returned. The same media that made a show of his trip could not bring themselves to report his return when they saw how energetic and bubbling Tinubu was on arrival.

    Read Also: 2023: North’s groups to quiz Tinubu, Atiku, Obi, others on visions

    Since his arrival, he has been busy, working on his campaign plan. First, was the inauguration of the women’s wing chaired by the First Lady, Hajia Aisha Buhari. Tinubu was in his element at the event. You could see the benefit of going on vacation on him. He looked relaxed as he spoke on the occasion, with the women hailing him: ‘Jagaban’! ‘Jagaban’!!… Then suddenly, they switched to: ‘City Boy’! ‘City Boy’!! ‘City Boy’!!! With all in the hall rising for Tinubu, who was on stage, delivering his message.

    He described the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a party of ‘termites’, which destroy a structure slowly and steadily, as the Yoruba will say, warning against returning the party to power in 2023. Tinubu has shamed his detractors by returning home stronger, bigger, better and much more ready for the 2023 election. He has always been ready. His readiness manifested during the battle for his party’s presidential ticket last June. He visited no fewer than 20 states then.

    He will visit more states than that as candidate. Asiwaju, a reformer and tested leader, is battle ready. The women have already lined up behind him. They have assured the Lion of Bourdillon, the Jagaban Borgu, the Asiwaju of Lagos and ‘City Boy’ of their support through rallies in Lagos, Owerri (Imo) and Abuja. There is more to come, they told him, asking him to keep going that they are behind him.

    Asiwaju’s state of health is not and will never be an issue except for those who cannot see beyond their nose. They think that they can make him unelectable by saying that he is unhealthy. He has silenced them with his refreshing looks following his return. His eyes are on the ball, no matter what people say in social media. He is looking at the larger picture of making Nigeria the great nation it was created to be.

    His detractors have nothing to say again now that he has proved them wrong over his health. They will do well to listen to what he said at the women’s event on Monday: “Never again shall they come back. Who are they? They are looters. Who are they? They are squanderers. Go out there and tell them, a new hope is here. Tell them, you are following the man who knows the way; tell them you are following the builder”.

    Indeed, who will follow a destroyer or a man who does not know the way?

  • Magu’s triumph

    Magu’s triumph

    Obafemi Awolowo identified the greed of the Nigerian educated elite as the source of our nation’s nightmare. Ibrahim Magu, in an attempt to force our educated elite to toe the path of honour, like his predecessors, Nuhu Ribadu,  Farida Waziri and  Ibrahim Lamorde, was framed up, disgraced and humiliated out of office. Last week, the courts upheld his honour. His triumph I think has once more validated Awo’s thesis that our institutions, the executive, legislature, judiciary and the press are not the problem but our educated elite that operate them.

    Magu was defiant to the end. “I have no fear in my DNA”, he had told our educated parasitic elite, adding “The EFCC’s motto is ‘Nobody is above the law’ “We don’t chase innocent people, but thieves of state resources. We have reached a level where nobody can stop us in the fight against corruption.” Although they got him at the end but not without a fight with President Buharis’s loyal gate keepers, state governors, our national legislative houses of deals, the judiciary that serves none but itself and of course a compromised media that instead of its constitutional duty of holding the powerful to account, celebrate men with feet of clay.

    As it has now turned out, the president’s men including Lawal Daura and his DSS , Abubakar Malami and his NBA, Senate President Bukola Saraki and his like-mind senators  that hounded Magu out of office were driven more by their  interest in how recovered looted resources were distributed as well as malice.

    Nuhu Ribadu in spite of 15million pounds alleged bribery attempt had insisted on Ibori’s prosecution for money laundering. Magu, as head of the EIU, spearheaded his investigation as well as the  role of his friend, former Kwara State governor and serving senator, Bukola Saraki, in the collapse of Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria.

    In 2007, with Obasanjo out of government and Umaru Yar’Adua who was largely sponsored with Delta State resources by Ibori, in the saddle, Ibori influenced the demotion of Ribadu by the Police Service Commission, chased him out of town and replaced with a candidate chosen by Ibori.

    Magu was also arrested, detained and suspended from the police for several months without salary and eventually transferred out of EFCC allegedly for illegally keeping case files of top politicians being investigated by EFCC. He was later rehabilitated by President Jonathan who transferred him back to EFCC.

    Magu was appointed by President Buhari as acting chair of the EFCC on November 9, 2015. For five months, the senate refused to screen him. And when finally the senate did, as a result of pressure from civil society groups, twice, Magu’s candidacy was rejected.

    Read Also: Magu retired before promotion was approved – Dingyadi

    Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) believed the senate seem to have acted mala fide by picking and choosing the least favourable DSS report to reject Magu’s nomination”. Itse Sagay insisted “Since Nuhu Ribadu left, we have not had a man with such sterling qualities as Ibrahim Magu”. Those arguments did not stop Dino Melaye from announcing that Magu failed integrity test, quoting from one of the two contradictory letters from the Department of State Services (DSS)  alleging “Magus’s accommodation was not paid for from the commission’s finances but by one Umar Mohammed, a retired Air Commodore, a questionable businessman”.

    Magu continued his work in acting capacity but not without opposition from NBA.  A “few months after the commission, in unprecedented fashion, arraigned some senior lawyers for corruption”, NBA’s President,  Abubakar Mamoud 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 reminded Mamoud that he 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 which EFCC lost in questionable circumstances while the same ingredients from that case were used to fetch Ibori a 13-year jail term in London”.

    Magu also informed Nigerians that the NBA president “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.

    Then Magu took the battle to  all those who allegedly shared ‘Dasukigate’ slush fund including Tompolo: N13billion, Dokpesi: N2.1billion, Bafarawa: N4.6b for spiritual purposes, Iyorchia Ayu: N350m, Odili and Jim Nwobodo: N100m each Bode George: $30,000 and  Chief Olu Falae:N100m, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai’s N63m and Obanikoro and Fayose’s N4.745billion to prosecute Ekiti and Osun elections etc.

    After five years of heroic battle with power and principalities behind corruption in Nigeria, 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 October 4 judgment. Following  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”, the court awarded the sum of N540.5 million as cost to Omale “for incalculable damage to his, reputation, his wife and their church within and outside the country”.

    Magu’s travails and triumph is a call on our educated elite to look at themselves in the mirror.

    Mad soldiers on the long bridge

    It is bad enough that reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan express way that took less than three years when first constructed, had taken PDP and Fashola and his APC 24 years with the end of travellers’ nightmare still not in sight.  On Thursday October 3, I spent about three hours between Punch and Kara Market. As we approach Kara, a young soldier had directed a car ahead of me to park on one side of the bridge, apparently because the driver hesitated a bit when asked to stop.  He then came over to me and with a wave of his right hand asked me to move. In another 30 yards, it was the same gridlock and I queued behind a trailer. For the next 20 minutes, it was the same standstill. And getting to my side while walking down to join his other three soldiers, he looked at me and shouted “Old man you did not listen to me”. Before I could say anything, he started using the butt of his gun to hit my side mirror.  He then used his hands to pull it out, smashing it on the bridge as he walked away triumphantly while everyone watched in disbelief.

    What went through my mind was that the young soldier was probably on drug, depressed or an impersonator if not an armed robber. I believe Raji Fashola, as a responsive and resourceful former governor of Lagos understands why ill-tempered soldiers should not be deployed to carry out duties for which they were not trained.

    But we now know President Buhari, like most soldiers that fought wars has a mind-set, believing he knows what the people want without asking them. This probably explains his opposition to state policing. Yet, the few  available federal police officers when not following wives of Chinese construction workers to fish market, carrying bags and umbrellas for wives of LGA chairmen, are protecting rich Yahoo boys or musicians while assaulting jealous husbands of married women they take interest in at night clubs. Everywhere we turned, there is absence of governance.

  • 2023: Against anarchy

    2023: Against anarchy

    The most prescient portrait of imperialist desertion of a colony under siege was the United States-backed NATO’s sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    As the country’s capital, Kabul, fell to the Taliban forces on August 15, 2021, the world stared with abashed horror and revulsion at the most defining imagery of the Taliban takeover: the occupation forces shoved back hundreds of frantic Afghans struggling to get a spot on a departing aircraft, while Taliban goons flogged hundreds more with horsewhips, ordering them to go back and live obediently under the new tyranny.

    Afghans clung to the side of a departing U.S. military jet as it rolled down the tarmac to airlift out of the country. Some of them fell to their death as the aircraft gained altitude, according to agency reports.

    The U.S. authorities estimated that at least seven people died during the chaotic evacuation at the airport, including several who fell from the military jet.

    Many Afghans dreaded living under the Taliban’s brutish dictatorship as the sect’s leadership assumed de facto control of the country and immediately pronounced it the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

    The Afghan nightmare mirrors the Nigerian situation. At the moment, the country careens along a suicidal path, at the behest of citizenry flirting with rage and dangerous freedoms.

    Too many individuals and groups have thrown caution to the wind in support of their preferred candidates en route to the 2023 elections. Conversation degenerates to a melee online and offline as warring groups trade expletives – and sometimes hurl actual death threats as a function of partisanship.

    Yet the 2023 elections shan’t be Nigeria’s masque of the proverbial red death. No matter how seductive it seems to silence hope and amplify our woes, we must persistently look to the sunnier side of things.

    We must shun the enticement of artifice and doomsday predictions, lest we wring life totally out of our fragile nation.

    Read Also: 2023: Sylva declares APC complete takeover in Bayelsa

    Currently, Nigeria is a sand pit of carnage, guzzling human blood to fertilise sprawling killing fields. The citizenry’s lives drain with every breath, leaking from every pore.

    Like the predatory oligarchs, youthful Nigeria manifests as another ogre, a jaded generation turning thumbs down on the mainstream, at first for survival, and ultimately for their own amusement.

    A citizenry mired in oppression and wild inclinations would eventually propel Nigeria to self-destruct. A similar perversion of nationhood and citizenship reduced Afghanistan to prey at the mercy of imperial predators. Its occupiers’ stratagem resonated themes found all over the world, a conflict between definitiveness and dissolution of the state, until the bubble burst.

    As the US/NATO forces frantically pulled away from a stunning rout, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in one week, despite the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly 20 years to bolster Afghan security forces. The former’s sudden withdrawal has left too many Afghans disillusioned and scared as an old but familiar monstrosity stirs into a beast rendering their homeland a dystopic wilderness. The beast now waits in every glade, returned to its wild perch in nature.

    Would Nigeria learn from Afghanistan? It’s about time we understood that nobody could love our country more than we do. No Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, or Liz Truss, could ever love Nigeria more than Muhammadu Buhari. These leaders of the so-called developed nations, like their predecessors, would always see Nigeria (and the rest of Africa) as a mere tool for preserving their country’s enlightened self-interests. It’s as simple as that.

    No foreign media would ever aspire to utmost social responsibility in reporting Nigeria; that is a role best served by patriotic segments of our local press. Have we a patriotic divide in the Nigerian press?

    Journalists in particular must desist henceforth from inflaming the polity via incendiary statements and reports. The lust for NGO patronage should never incite them to mortgage national interests for hard currency – whatever the slant of their greed and their sponsors’ professed intent.

    Social media, in particular, has become a major source of warmongering for separatists and fake news aficionados; in truth, they are all terrorists. Those who spread fake news in a bid to incite carnage and hatred against any individual, tribe, social or religious group must be prosecuted as terrorists.

    We do not need another civil war. We must not give the doomsayers the opportunity to gloat; since their prediction of Nigeria’s collapse by 2015 failed, they had been left smarting in shame and earnestly committed to Nigeria’s death watch.

    It’s about time we learned from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the victims of the obscenely romanticised Arab Spring. Neither America nor Europe must be blamed for our inclinations to self-destruct.

    Carter Malkasian, author of The American War in Afghanistan: A History, served as a civilian advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan; according to him, throughout his travels with U.S. military commanders around Afghanistan, he saw numerically superior and better-supplied soldiers and police suffer incessant defeats by poorly resourced and unexceptionally led Taliban.

    While the U.S. and Afghan forces fought for hegemony and money respectively, the Taliban soldiers were inspired by faith and the promise of a divine nirvana – however spurious. They were united in belief and purpose as they fought to thwart a common enemy: the American soldiers of occupation and their Afghan enablers.

    May we not face a similar threat from Boko Haram, ISWAP, armed bandits, and spurious separatist groups.

    Corruption was part of Afghanistan’s problem. The military and police suffered as their commanders and government officials pocketed their pay, hoarded ammunition, and sabotaged the counterinsurgency operations.

    The Afghan nightmare evidently mirrors the Nigerian situation. Thus we must scorn poisonous interventions by countries whose major interest is to abolish our sovereignty, plunder our resources, and strip us bare to devious elements.

    It is about time we actualised a culture of true ideals against petty passions and sordid objectives. Let us begin to build that proverbial bulwark of citizenship with an ideal of patriotism untainted by wantonness, ill-bliss, power, and gratuitous rage.

    The ongoing jostle for political spoils at the 2023 polls is the most incantatory of our political games. It is overtly ritualistic. Devious oligarchs comprising politicians and serving public officers relentlessly pursue their selfish interests amid widespread suffering and bloodshed.

    The electorate – comprising the masses and self-appointed progressives – on the other hand, have shunned the lilies and languors of virtue for the raptures and roses of vice as Dolores would say.

    Politicians and the electorate jointly reconstruct Nigeria into a narrow commune, beholden to their selfish interpretations of citizenship, power, and democratic dividends.

    Our homes, families, worship houses, schools, communities, to mention a few, produce and sustain our affliction by corrupt leadership and followership. We must surgically excise from within our penchant for corruption and yearning to self-destruct.

    At the moment, the average Nigerian manifests the electorate’s detachment from patriotic experience. Most guilty is the Nigerian in his youth. He samples dissent but will not commit to progressive intent. Rustling ‘wokeness’ out of tired bromides, his sterile passion stifles patriotic fervour.

    We must live wary of the nature of youth participation in politics – perhaps because they have become a significant force in contemporary society.

    The youths personify the core of the Nigerian spring but if their passions pulse with uninspiring badges, notably toxic dissent, mindless bigotries, and predisposition to mayhem, Nigeria may crash and burn sooner.

    Where youths serve as cannon fodder for violence, the possibility of progress is forever muted. And hope is consequently eunuchised.

  • Bad hustle (2)

    Bad hustle (2)

    The most resonant message from John Eka Ewa aka John Lyon’s predicament is that manhood is the new fiend.

    Lyon, who was arrested by the police, on Thursday, September 15, over links to a kidnap syndicate responsible for several high-profile abductions in Bayelsa and other parts of the Niger Delta enjoyed fabulous repute on social media until his arrest.

    The 36-year-old’s plight once again highlights why most societal problems are attributed to degenerate maleness. The previous arrest of boychild ritualists: from the Bayelsa teens, Emomotimi, Perebi, and Eke (all 15-year-olds) for money-making rituals, has been blamed on poverty and the lack of a positive male role model in their lives. But what do we make of Lyon’s motives?

    From teenage boys and young men’s frantic lunge for sudden wealth via money rituals to their complicity in terrorism, gender-based violence, armed robbery, kidnap for ransom, Nigeria careens to the shove of dissembling manhood and we experience a fatal forming of maleness and society.

    Toxic families produce toxic citizens. Toxic citizenry becomes poisonous to nationhood in the long run. The interplay of toxic materialism, misandrist-feminism, and the absence of an exemplary father figure has foisted upon us a generation of ill-nurtured boys.

    Economic forces aggravate their sense of disenchantment and futility and changing gender roles and the denouement of masculinity afflict them with greater confusion.

    Masculinity flows from nature as an aspect of the birth mother, no doubt, but it is sculpted by society and a father figure into humane and effective manhood. The boy-child learns by instruction, counselling, and imitation.

    In an ideal setting, the father moulds his character by careful nurturing, awarding punishment for vice and reward for virtue. So, he teaches him to be a man within acceptable precepts of culture and society.

    Where the father is absent, or feckless, the boychild suffers exposure to degenerate blooming, like 32-year-old Afeez Olalere, who was encouraged to use his younger brother for money ritual by his mother – to encourage him, she fed poison to the said brother (her younger son) and watched him die.

    Boys are in trouble; due to the lack of positive male role models in their lives, they get what they can from the streets, social media, anti-male movies, and video games. All they need is someone whose exemplary footsteps they could follow but society provides them only men they could dumb down to.

    A recent analysis of 2, 000 mass media portrayals of men and male identities, found that men were depicted mostly as villains, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers. From this stockpile of anti-heroes, the boy-child is expected to navigate for a good male identity.

    Promoting the image of men as juvenile, mean, and stupid is cynical and exploitative, which makes the tide of inverse sexism that has swamped out television screens and the pages of literature even more appalling.

    In modern Nigeria, boys and young men suffer a dire lack of role models, especially if they are raised in a single-parent home. The situation is worsened by the lack of positive role models in extended family and government and the perpetuation of overwhelmingly negative images of men by the media and feminist scholarly research.

    Ultimately such portrayals lead to negative social costs for society in areas such as male health, rising suicide rates, and family disintegration. This is a precarious age for the boychild. He is taught to repudiate positive patriarchal notions of manhood and imbibe virulence as the cornerstone of his becoming.

    The college gender gap is another worrisome development; it must be acknowledged that while Nigerian males are projected to hold a statistical edge over females in school enrollment rates, they do not hold a productive edge over females.

    There are more females contributing meaningfully at work and acquiring postgraduate degrees. A cursory look at education statistics may be instructive.

    The academia shies from the issue bound by the gag of gender politics and the dubious notion that males enjoy higher school enrolment, are more financially stable and are better placed in business and politics. Consequently, several boys are denied push from high school to college.

    Read Also: Bad hustle

    I have seen more boys drop out of school to become internet scammers (Yahoo Boys) disguised as bitcoin traders, forex specialists, and I.T gurus, to mention a few. Many of them are casualties of dysfunctional families and the changing dynamics of the new global economy.

    The economy has become less friendly to men. This is a global problem, however. Jacqueline King, of the American Council on Education in her group’s study of lower-income adults in college, discovered that men had a harder time committing to school.

    They tended to start out behind academically, and many felt intimidated by the schoolwork. They reported feeling isolated and were much worse at seeking out fellow students, study groups, or counselors to help them adjust. Mothers going back to school, however, described themselves as good role models for their children. Fathers worried that they were abrogating their responsibilities as breadwinners, explained Hanna Rosin.

    Against the backdrop of these realities, the “protector” and “provider” theories of manhood and fatherhood are continually dismissed as credulous and crude, in a modern world where conservative ideals of masculinity are maligned and fiercely rebuffed.

    On the flip side, female folk enjoys patronage in crusader art and pedagogy. This slanted social complex has been adduced to a toxic leftist orientation.

    The situation is aggravated by a lack of adequate attention to Nigerian males at the policy level. Responding to my query on the issue, a staff of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) told me recently, that his organisation ignores Nigerian boys and adult males in its intervention programmes because the government has failed to make provisions for them in the policy level.

    “The Nigerian government and local NGOs do not consider boys and men worthy recipients of any form of intervention,” he lamented.

    It is pleasing to see girls and young women flourish and succeed. But it is wrong to neglect boys, leaving them to grow up embittered and miseducated. This is sure recipe for disaster, the kind that is happening in real-time.

    Aside from the teen boy and young adult male’s fancy for quick money via money ritual, a tragic manifestation presents via Boko Haram and armed bandits’ replenishment of their ranks with a steady stream of boy combatants, moving child abductees cum stone-cold killers through neighbourhoods and forests, using military trucks and passenger vans to boot camps holding more than 1,000 boys on the watch of adolescent trainers.

    There is a reason the “money ritual,” and Boko Haram and armed bandits’ creed of diabolism and violence is resonant among misled and brainwashed minors. The exasperating nature of their lusts, the grievances articulated, dysfunctional families, and the pervasiveness of poverty amplify the boys’ rationale for embracing a creed of cruelty and carnage.

    A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, among others, is a major source of widespread dissatisfaction with politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement.

    More worrisome is the teenage cult, Awawa’s incursion into primary schools. Just recently, 12 pupils of the Egan Community School, between the ages of 6 and 16, were reportedly initiated into Awawa, in Alimoso area of Lagos.

    These days, in the far north, it is normal to see 10-year-old boys romanticise raiding villages, killing traditional chiefs, and taking over their wives and daughters.

    This is how fragile the situation is.

  • Ethnic leaders as scourge of Nigeria

    Ethnic leaders as scourge of Nigeria

    As the battle for 2023 draws near, Igbo political leaders, the ever-flirtatious beautiful bride of Nigerian politics that often behave like “a wife with five husbands” and their chauvinistic shrewd Fulani suitors, have started to do what they do best-polluting the environment with toxic diatribes.

    It started with last week’s declaration by secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Mazi Okechukwu Isuguzoro, that “Nigeria will not be secure and united unless an Igbo president emerges”. He went on to single out “the North as the bastion of ethnic and religious politics”. A denunciation by Northern Elders Forum’s Director, (Publicity and Advocacy), Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who took exception to what he considered as Ohanaeze’s threat and blackmail of the north swiftly followed. Admonishing ‘Igbo leaders and elders to show maturity and leadership while marketing their Igbo candidate’, he was of the opinion that ‘if any group is known to play ethnic and religion politics, it is the Igbo’.

    But if it will be of any relief, let me remind the warring fair-weather couple, that history finds both guilty. And the facts: In the December1954 eastern regional election, NCNC won 72 out of 84 seats while their NPC suitors won 84 of 92 seats in their own northern stronghold. In the 1954 November election to federal House of Representatives, NCNC won 32 of the 42 Eastern seats. Similarly, ethnicity and religion determined the outcome of the 1959 election with east and the north winning their strongholds without opposition.

    The warring rivals are not only tarred with the same brush, both see Nigeria only as a commodity. What matter to them is what they can get out of Nigeria. Awolowo’s offence was that he provided alternative view on how Nigeria should be run.

    Back in 1945, he had argued “Nigeria is not a nation; it is a mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians in the same as there are ‘English’ ‘Welsh or ‘French”, adding, “There are various nationals or ethnical groups in the country…  There are as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English and Russians and Turks. Besides Their cultural background and social outlooks differ widely, and their indigenous political institutions have little in common. Their present stages of development vary…” He was therefore convinced that “the best constitution for such a diverse people is a federal constitution”.

    But Zik and his group wanted a unitary system which will sustain Igbo internal colonization of the minority Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio Anang and other minority groups in the east. It will also allow Igbo citizens to freely carry their trading activities unhindered to any part of Nigeria. What Ahmadu Bello wanted was not different from what Zik wanted- a Nigeria the north can control. He therefore at the 1950 Ibadan conference insisted on 50% of member of the Federal legislative House. All the constitutional engineering that followed including those midwifed by northern military leaders sustained that advantage. The agenda is kept alive by new northern inheritors of power including Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, Abubakar Malami, minister of justice and Shehu Garba, President Buhari’s spokesman who have come out to justify infiltration of southern forest reserves by foreign Fulani herdsmen.

    Their rivalry got to a head after the outcome of the controversial 1962/63 census and the disputed 1964 election which convinced the Igbo that it can never acquire power by democratic means if we agree democracy is a game of numbers. The eastern leaders were believed to have lured the military into politics in January 1966. Those who claim it was not an Igbo-inspired coup should tell Nigerians why General Ironsi who surrounded himself with Igbo political advisers pursued Igbo agenda with his Decree 34 of 1966 which turned the country into a unitary state – a winner takes all position for Igbo that then controlled the federal bureaucracy and the military.

    Read Also: Ethnic prejudices holding us back

    The north seized the initiative from their Igbo rival in July 1966 and by 1967 the bitter rivalry fuelled by ethnicity and religion dovetailed into war between the north and the east with the west as onlookers since Gowon had acceded to Awolowo’s demand that non-Yoruba soldiers be withdrawn to forestall the east from being attacked from the west.

    But the east was to drag Yoruba into the war, first by overrunning Mid-west which is culturally related to the Yoruba. Then the east determined to turn Yoruba land where they and their suitors started their mindless killings in January and July 1966, took the war to the west and were only stopped in Ore.

    Unfortunately, in the battle for the soul of Nigeria by Igbo and their Fulani rivals, the interest of their people, viewed only as instruments for winning elections, hardly featured. Thus In 1979, Igbo leadership stampeded ordinary Igbo voters to NPN, a re-incarnation of first republic NPC with Ojukwu, the Igbo war hero returning from exile to join NPN. In 1983, 1993, 1999, 2007, Igbo political leadership found their northern suitors irresistible.

    After jointly ruling the country between 1959 and 2015 (Alabi Isama: The Tragedy of Victory), their baleful legacies include 10 million of out of school children, bandits, kidnappers and herdsmen terrorists and millions of Igbo boys and girls shipped to urban centres of the country as street hawkers of imported goods. The states of ‘the beautiful bride and their crafty suitors’ in the north and southeast remain a scorched land where anarchy has forced their children to seek refuge in Lagos or foreign land.

    Today, the battle cry of the ‘Obi-dient’ crowd, the ‘Atikulates’ and the ‘Yoruba educated illiterates’ is ‘we want to take back our country’. But what country and through which instrumentality?

    Let us start from the Yoruba educated illiterates. Awo back in 1947 had spoken of Yoruba “barristers, physicians, teachers, clerks, skilled labourers and artisans, journalist organizational leaders, out of which only very small percentage are politically conscious” (Coleman Nigeria background to Nationalism pp 141-142). Today, 75 years after, we can add many Yoruba professors, PhD holders, journalists human right activists’ lawyers who remain noise makers or “Lagos mobs’ as the imperialist powers called them.

    Obi, a perfect example of Igbo beautiful bride, flirted with APGA, PDP, before finding Labour Party irresistible few weeks back. He has given no indication he intends to change from the ways of his fathers. Except for his Yoruba promoter, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, he has never spoken of restructuring. That, in any case will amount to class suicide.

    Atiku’s forbears in NPC nurtured the Kano terrorist body, called ‘MAHAUKATA’ (madmen) that in 1953 killed 40 in Kano to prevent Akintola of AG from lecturing northern youths on democracy. As Obasanjo’s vice president, 13 northern governors sent northern youths for indoctrination under Osama Bin Laden in Sudan and many returned to form the nucleus of today’s insurgents’ groups in the north. His celebrated book on restructuring talks of devolving power to the current unwieldy 36 state ad 74 LGAs which fitted perfectly into his great grandfather’s paradigm.

    To avoid ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom”, a few mischief makers are canvassing ‘citizenship’ in a country where an Igbo Bishop of universal Catholic Church from Anambra was rejected by Igbo people of Imo State. And while citing the American experience, they forget to add that all the indigenous people of our over 377 ethnic nationalities, the real owners of Nigeria will first have to be killed as the invading white criminals did to native Indians of America that owned their land.

  • Retirement and its challenges

    Retirement and its challenges

    A friend of mine after working in one of the Nigerian universities retired at the age of 70 and then picked up a job in one of the private universities where he had just retired after spending a decade there. I thank God for his life. I did the same but took a second retirement after I reached the age of 75 which was five years ago and I have been lazing around since then!

    When I was a young man, people used to retire at 55. I remember that my distinguished brother,  Professor Kayode  Osuntokun was asked to retire at the age of 55  as professor of neurology at the University of Ibadan as if neurologists at that level could be picked up on the streets to replace people like him!

    I don’t know how we came to retiring people at 55. I guess the British who could not survive in our own kind of climate and in our mosquito-infested environment fixed the retirement age at 55 so that they could return home with their fat gratuities and lifelong pensions while taking up new employment.

    Things have mercifully changed everywhere in the world and professors and judges do not retire at all in the United States. It is a case of wine getting better as it ages. We may reach that denouement in Nigeria soon. Whatever anyone may say to denigrate ASUU, they fought for the new age of retirement of professors but we must add that not all professors and judges should be kept at their jobs at 70 but only the mentally healthy ones should benefit from this long tenure because there is no point keeping a judge or a professor at his or her desk if there is signs of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

    What does a reasonably healthy person do when he is retired other than wait for the final call! There are many things one can do. One can if gifted with the skill of writing reflect on one’s life and documenting the changes one has witnessed in one’s life. In the case of Nigeria there is much to say. We should not let the future generations grope in the dark about what to do. We should so document our individual and national lives so that our succeeding generations can avoid the pitfalls of our lives which have brought us to the pedestrian level we now find ourselves. We should always speak up when we see something wrong being done because if we don’t speak up, it means we are complicit in whatever unrighteousness being committed in the name of all of us.

    What should we be afraid of at our age of retirement? What can anybody do to us at this age when we have lived the better part of our lives? As the Yoruba people will say, anybody above 70 has swallowed death and people can only kill the body but not the soul and as Shakespeare said, cowards die a thousand times before their death. This does not mean throwing caution to the wind but a retired person should only fear his maker and always speak the truth and let the devil be ashamed!

    Our people say a country without old people would go to the dogs. Old people are supposed to be the repository of wisdom. No one should be able to buy our voice at our age because whatever money anybody brings to us in our old age should be of no use to us. Are we now going to start building new houses? It will also be counterproductive to now start amassing wealth for our children and grandchildren. What we owe our children is good education and moral upbringing and with prayers, they would succeed if not in Nigeria certainly outside our shores as the stories of our children and grand grandchildren doing exploits can attest. At our age of retirement, contentment should be our goal. We should also see who we can help without jeopardising our own material interest. Many of us are involved in spiritual struggle to find meanings to our lives whether within the church or the mosque. I say this is a step in the right direction.

    Read Also: Public servants advised on early retirement plans

    I remember with fondness, a rather cynical friend when it comes to things spiritual which as a thorough academic, he had no patience for. He believed the only way to get at ultimate truth was not through religion or philosophy but through empiricism. Whatever that cannot be experienced or proved through practical demonstration was not worth wasting time on. But we know that only a mad man can say there is no God in spite of the complexity of the cosmos and our little planet in it.

    There are of course many experiences of the supernatural as witnessed to by fellow human beings. The fact that man’s limited understanding cannot comprehend the complex transcendental ways of God does not mean God does not exist or that God is dead as posited by that German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who was apparently out of his mind! It is not my intention to argue and assert the existence of God because religion is an individual belief independently arrived at.

    Retired people should try and go back to their beginnings in the towns and villages of their birth to try and pay something back to the society that produced and nurtured them. This will be difficult in these days of general insecurity and absence of community policing. Even in the best of times it was not easy relocating back home. The home folks will always think the man from the city has come with loads of money and he will almost be seen as a bank from which to take loans and grants whenever school fees had to be paid or somebody has to be buried. These obstacles can be overcome.

    As an optimist, the problem of insecurity will be solved one day or the other. We can also persuade our rural folks through our lifestyle that not all returnees are incredibly loaded.

    Once we settle in the rural places of our birth, we should also try and get involved in farming as a hobby. It’s always nice to plant seeds and see them grow. Living in the village will also prolong our lives by taking long walks and breathing clean village air and eating fresh food and fruits.

    I remember the late registrar of the University of Lagos, Olufemi Eperokun while in retirement offering to teach senior students of a private college near his house English, of course free of charge just to while away his time. My late brother, Moses was teaching in a college in Okemesi just to make himself useful after retiring as high flying agricultural expert in government and in the old Barclays Bank.

    I commend this kind of life to egg heads retiring to our villages. Those who are doctors can also bring some of their expertise to the villages while engineers and town planners can engage the rural folks in drainage and greening the streets.  The activities of retired people in our villages will also boost rural economy. If we make the rural areas beautiful we may see a reverse of the rural – urban drift and thus lead a revolution of making our country liveable again.

    In one word get engaged. It is not over until it is over! In this way the countryside will not be the abode of rural yahoos and country bumpkins!

  • PDP and its baggage

    PDP and its baggage

    If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has its way, it would have since sent Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike and his allies packing. Wike is the party’s major headache today and he is not hiding it. At every opportunity, he upbraids the party and its leaders. When Wike talks, there is no stopping him. There is nobody he cannot spar with.

    Iyorchia Ayu, the party’s national chairman, and Atiku Abubakar, its presidential candidate, know what I am talking about. Since he lost the presidential ticket to Atiku in May, Wike has been taking his loss out on those he believed worked against him. Number one on the list is Ayu and next is Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, who Ayu described as ‘the hero of the convention’. Hero? Hmm!

    Wike is incensed by that word. When he refers to it, his bitterness seeps through. Why would the party chairman go to Tambuwal’s house and hail him as the ‘hero of the convention’? He wonders. Referring to what happened on the night of the convention during his media chat in Port Harcourt about two weeks ago, Wike said he had spoken as the last speaker for the day, only for Tambuwal to be given the floor again. ‘What did he come to say?’ He asked rhetorically.

    Tambuwal, Wike recalled, said he was stepping down, noting that he did not stop there. He asked his supporters to vote for Atiku. ‘There and then, we could have stopped the convention and the heavens would not have fallen’, Wike said. What Wike has going for him is the support he enjoys across board. The elected and the appointed in many PDP-controlled states, especially in the south, see him as the one who will deliver them from the myopic leadership of the party.

    Indirectly, what they are saying is that the north is appropriating all the high offices. The party is going into the 2023 elections, with a northerner as its chairman and another northerner, the presidential candidate. PDP prides itself as a party that upholds the principle of zoning as a way of ensuring balance in party and public offices.

    The point Wike is making is that the chairman and candidate cannot come from the same zone. How will the south feel at rallies when a northerner, as chairman, is raising the hand of another northerner, the candidate? Wike and his cohorts are asking.

    A former deputy national chairman of the party, Bode George, and former Plateau State governor Jonah Jang, have since submitted that, that kind of arrangement is not healthy for the party. George and Jang declared that they stood by Wike. Jang likened what happened at the convention to the referee assisting a team to score a goal and at the same time blowing the whistle that it is a goal. He was saying that was bad refereeing. Hero indeed! He chuckled, remembering Ayu’s post-convention visit to Tambuwal.

    Read Also: Housing allowance passed due process, PDP NWC insists

    The Wike threat has reached the party’s national working committee (NWC), which ordinarily should be at the chairman’s beck and call. There is a split in its rank. A body that used to speak with one voice can no longer do so. Some members, without saying it, are accusing the top echelon of attempting to bribe them. As party chair and head of NWC, Ayu is troubled. His case is not helped by Wike’s relentless campaign that he must go. For Wike, that is the irreducible minimum for him to support Atiku as the party’s candidate for the 2023 presidential election.

    Wike has employed every trick in the book, without having its way, at least, for now. Ayu too is not folding his arms doing nothing. But signs that the national executive council (NEC) and NWC are not on the same page over the Ayu case emerged almost a month ago. NEC passed a vote of confidence in Ayu, the Board of Trustees (BoT) comprising elders of the party picked former Senate president Adolphus Wabara as its chairman to replace Walid Jibrin from the north, while the NWC crack widened. Wike remains unimpressed by the NEC and BoT actions.

    NWC handles the day-to-day affair of the party, while NEC is empowered to ratify its decisions. But power resides with NWC. Ayu knows that as long as NWC is intact and speaks with one voice, the Wike threat will amount to nothing. The NWC is now collapsing like a pack of cards, threatening his continued stay in office. Money is at the heart of the crisis. Some members have returned the millions of naira paid into their accounts as house rent.

    Ayu’s ‘I won’t resign refrain’ is just what it is: hot air. Some chairmen before him said the same thing, but they were eventually shown the way out. His case is not going to be different. It is just a matter of time before his fate is sealed. Something must give in PDP if it wishes to go into next year’s elections as a solid body. It is either Ayu goes or Wike goes. It is obvious that both men can no longer be in the same boat.

    Who will the party chiefs sacrifice between Ayu and Wike? Wike stands a better chance than Ayu because of what he can bring to the table. He can provide the needed funds and votes from his state for his party. Ayu cannot do that. He is like the pope of who Stalin once asked: ‘how many divisions does he (pope) have?’

    This same question will soon be asked of Ayu in a different way by those who are desirous of a PDP victory in the forthcoming elections: how much can he provide in campaign funds and how many votes can he muster from his home state of Benue considering that the governor, Samuel Ortom, is an ally of Wike? Here lies the Wike challenge in PDP’s world.

  • Bad hustle

    Bad hustle

    John Eka Ewa aka John Lyon’s tears offers a simple yet poignant proof of the powerful bond between crime and retribution, cause and effect. The now-viral video of the suspected kidnapper kneeling and pleading for mercy, in abject tears, reproves the masculinity and celebrity culture that fostered him.

    It speaks to our direful values and realities. It depicts the awful fragility of repute and toxic manhood. It is a reminder, in a sea of kitsch, of karma’s infinite malice.

    The so-called Abuja-based big boy was arrested by the police, on Thursday, September 15, for allegedly belonging to a kidnap syndicate responsible for several high-profile abductions in Bayelsa and other parts of the Niger Delta.

    Until his arrest, Lyon, 36, channeled renown by flaunting wads of cash on social media and motivating his followers to “hustle” and work hard. He posted pictures of himself with police orderlies at a political function and a church programme, where he is seen singing intensely and praising God.

    He equally brandished an interior design business in Abuja as his source of wealth. Then his cover got blown as a N70 million ransom was allegedly traced to his bank account.

    In a viral video after his arrest, Lyon, handcuffed and only in boxers, is seen kneeling on the floor and weeping profusely. He confessed to being a kidnapper claiming that he had only kidnapped two victims. But a man in the video who claimed to be one of his victims insisted that Lyon had kidnapped more than two people. The man narrated how Lyon’s gang abducted him and threatened to kill him if he did not part with a hefty ransom.

    A kobo for the thoughts of the bedazzled horde smitten by Lyon’s social media repute and presumed fortune. Another kobo for the indolent herd that let the dubious renown of the Lyons of the world lure them to a dark path.

    Predictably, social media has become a hot zone of bickering for conflicting divides among youths – some rationalise Lyon’s resort to crime stressing that the government had offered no enabling environment for the youths to engage in honest endeavour anyway.

    A more moral divide argues otherwise stressing that there could be no acceptable rationalisation of his crime. There is, however, a third divide comprising the ubiquitous ‘cruisers’ or infinitely permissive youth segment, out to simply “catch cruise” by glamourising appalling sophistry and justification for the misdeeds of Lyon and his ilk.

    There is a lot more ignorant folk debating how to feel and respond to the tragic turn of life for a kidnap kingpin like Lyon. What is apparent is that too many people simply wish to vent and feel gratified – call it an addiction to gratuitous fury. Victim or exploiter alike. Most Nigerians just want to be on the winning side. This mentality has so far foisted on Nigeria a generation of desperate and indulgent youths.

    Lyon’s predicament mirrors several young men and teen boys’ frantic lunge for sudden, unearned wealth. In January, Bayelsa teens, Emomotimi,15, Perebi, 15, and Eke, 15, were arrested while trying to use one Comfort, 13, for a money ritual. They reportedly“hypnotized” her and led her to Emomotimi’s apartment, where they cut her finger and sprinkled her blood on a mirror for ritual purposes. The ritual was supposed to make them rich. But for vigilant village youths, Comfort would have been history, perhaps.

    A creepier dimension ensued a few days after the arrest of the Bayelsa trio as three other boys between 17 and 20 years were arrested in the early hours of Saturday, January 29, by men of the Ogun State Police Command for allegedly killing their friend’s girlfriend in a money ritual.

    The suspects, Wariz Oladehinde, 17,  Abdul Gafar Lukman, 19, and Mustakeem Balogun, 20, and the boyfriend of the murdered girl, Soliu Majekodumi, 18, were arrested after they were seen burning something suspected to be a human head in a local pot.

    They confessed to beheading Rofiat, who was lured by her boyfriend, Majekodunmi, to where she was murdered by the quartet. They cut off her head, packed her remains in a sack, and dumped it in an old building.

    Read Also: ‘How suspected notorious kidnap kingpin John Lyon terrorised Bayelsa for seven years’

    Nigeria evidently careens to the shove of dissembling manhood. Consequently, we suffer a fatal forming of maleness and society. Lyon and the teen ritualists, without doubt, are products of a value system fostered by materialism, lacking in compassion and exemplary filial ties.

    Their actions aren’t accidental; from plotting to execution, a hideous smattering of bestiality manifests as their victims’ misfortune and society’s just desserts. Some have labelled them freaks and social accidents, but they are simply karma coming home to roost.

    Consider them the monsters we made, casualties of our toxic materialism, cutthroat gender wars, and celebrity culture. They are what we get from society’s virulent remoulding of gender and the precepts of becoming.

    Hitherto unacknowledged, today, they manifest as society’s dirty secret. Now, running loose and untethered, Lyon and the boys are not much of a secret anymore; like their kindred spirits among child bandits, teen gangs, and Boko Haram, they are wildly miseducated and fair game in a smorgasbord of spurious labelling.

    In their misadventure, however, we encounter afresh, the grotesque evolution of the Nigerian boychild. Culturally benumbed to maleness, he loiters at ethical crossroads. He is stuck at being a man while juggling moral and amoral precepts of his becoming. Through his dilemma, he is thought to scoff at traditional notions of maleness and embrace the dubious redefinition of manhood.

    The Nigerian boy’s enthrallment with easy riches is a consequence of the get-rich-quick syndrome pervasive in their immediate society. The malady perpetuates a fable, not of hope, but disintegration. It resonates in wildly covetous youths’ frenetic cry: “Mad o!” in admiration of pestilent quests and attainments by fellow youths – their celebrity heroes and Yahoo Boys (internet scammers) inclusive.

    The situation is aggravated by the frantic fostering and cues from mainstream and new media. For instance, several editions of scripted “reality shows” celebrate the preadolescent mind mired in a grave of delusions. Musicians, actors, cross-dressers, and the now ubiquitous “social influencers” participating in such shows personify a very deep cry for help but like Hoyle’s misdirected mortals, they will learn from avoidable mistakes, not from the example posed by the Lyons of the world.

    Popular culture’s celebration of grotesque and increasingly infantilised versions of masculinity aggravates the malady – from Nollywood’s neurotic man-boys to the bestial and slacker dudes of feminist-misandrist literature.

    Partnership and parenthood, responsibility, and security are projected as stultifying rather than instrumental to adult blooming. The gender wars aggravate this trend, thriving on the insecurities that drive the sexes apart.

    The stakes are too high to ignore. If we care about our society, we must pay as much attention to boys as we pay to our girls. The ruckus of degenerate manhood, misandry, and toxic feminism, however, furnish a popular culture that offers young boys a dumbed-down version of masculinity and rhetoric around fatherhood largely predicated on the father’s dispensability and his absence.

    Fatherhood is thus redefined in the public mind as an experience of failure rather than success; absence rather than involvement. In the same breadth, masculinity gets redefined as being embarrassingly brutish, effeminate, homosexual, brash, criminal, and incurably dumb.

    At his arrest, Lyon cried, “Forgive me, make una forgive me, my wife just born sef, a boy.” And that is in a sense, some new tragedy.

  • Nigerian economy and its various challenges

    Nigerian economy and its various challenges

    The Nigerian economy has been in dire straits in the last decade and rather than recovering, it has gone from bad to worse and this state is encapsulated in the declining rate of the Naira vis-à-vis other global currencies. The naira has become a valueless coloured paper, what the French will refer to as a mere piece of paper –chiffon de papier! The question to ask is what is responsible for this terrible situation? For ease of reference and for possible action, I hereunder list the reasons for the collapse of the economy in order of importance.

    It is now clear that the NNPC is riddled with corruption and crime. The Controller General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ali publicly challenged the NNPC to account for a third of the imported gasoline which it claims to supply daily to the motoring public in excess of what is needed while what it claims we use is already inflated as claimed by informed experts. This is the gasoline Nigerian government claims it uses between six and nine billion dollars to subside annually. If the corruption in the oil importation were to be stopped, there will be no need to go begging around the world looking for foreign loans which have to be paid by the current and future generations. One would also like to ask when the refineries being overhauled at the cost of billions of dollars are likely to come on stream.

    The London based news magazine The Economist recently wondered why Nigeria is missing from the oil bonanza enjoyed by other OPEC members reaping billions of dollars from the high price of crude petroleum arising from the windfall caused by the Putin’s war in Ukraine. A country like Saudi Arabia has made about $86 billion since February and it is committing it to building a futuristic city in the desert while Nigeria is borrowing money to build ordinary railway lines. Nigeria is not benefiting because a third of its oil production is allegedly stolen. It is now clear that a grand larceny organised by some powerful people is squeezing life and strength out of the country’s economy. One lawyer says the “NNPC is a crime scene “and he proved it at the recent Nigerian Bar Association conference.

    The chief of Naval Staff has publicly disputed the claim by government that crude oil is being stolen in the Delta by saying it would require hundreds of tankers  and small boats to move on daily basis the hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil claimed stolen by government. The government apparently as a proof of what it claims is being stolen has awarded a  protection contract for oil pipelines worth N48 billion  a year  to Tompolo, leader of one of the groups alleged to be blowing up oil pipe lines in the Delta and who had earlier been declared wanted by this  same government. This has generated a lot of brouhaha because some people are not happy about government’s abdication of its security responsibility to a private security company while wondering what work is left for the Navy, Police, Army, national security organisations to do. The president has now set up a committee to look into the situation of the oil industry of which he is the minister. This is a situation of national urgency and emergency that cannot wait for a snail moving presidential committee!

    The corruption in the country  if judged by the situation in the NNPC will in the words of the president “kill this country if the country does not kill the corruption!”. What is the plan of the government to put an end to corruption in an organisation where the most important and influential topmost 20 officers are from one part of the country while other parts of the country and the oil producing part of the country is totally marginalised in the running of an industry critical to their environmental survival and also critical to the economy of Nigeria?

    The CBN has not been properly run in the last five years. How does one explain the governor of the CBN buying a fleet of cars emblazoned with his presidential campaign logo and declaring to run for the president only to withdraw when the president asked all political office holders wishing to run for the presidency to resign? It was then he decided not to run for the post and kept his job. Is this action normal of the CBN governor or of any governor of a central bank anywhere? This is one of the reasons responsible for the declining value of the Naira among other reasons because our central bank is not above politics but buried in it.

    Read Also: Buhari: Nigeria may become world’s 14th fastest growing economy

    Our country is perhaps the only medium income country in the world where tax avoidance is the best game in town. Few people apart from salary earners pay income taxes. This is why the country relies on commissions from oil and gas exploitation and sale of our share of joint oil production with foreign companies since after more than half a century, we cannot on our own produce crude oil because capable people who could have mastered the art are routinely removed on the basis of federal character. The result is that we on our own cannot produce the crude oil neither can we even authenticate how much crude oil we produce and export.

    The free for all corruption  in our country has eaten deep into every aspect of our national life that the Accountant General of the Federation can with confederates allegedly steal a humongous  sum of N109 billion from the treasury he is supposed to protect. This kind of unacceptable behaviour gives vent to the criminal behaviour buried deep in the hearts of junior officers in the various bureaucracies, agencies and parastatals of government in the country. In this way the economy of the country has been destroyed and whatever political and security problems we have are directly related to the economic hopelessness of many of our citizens who now seem determined to bring down the whole rotten edifice on all our heads.

    The recent exposure in parliamentary hearings about corruption in the management of the country’s pension raises a fundamental question of trust. If workers cannot trust the management of their contributory pension scheme, they will therefore resort to self-help and indulge in corrupt schemes while in employment by putting away stolen money as a way of making hay while the sun shines thus worsening the corruption in government and thereby ruining the country’s future.

    Our trading partners are losing interest in us because of our unreliability as suppliers of energy at a time Europeans are in critical need because of non-supply of oil and gas from Russia. Our place as an oil producing African country has slipped behind Angola and war ravaged Libya. Our relevance in the international community has therefore nosedived in relation to other countries. Our need for future FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) will never be met having failed to be a useful partner to our trading partners at a time of great need because one good turn deserves another. We will now have to fight for market share not only for our hydrocarbons but for our non-oil exports in what would be an increasingly complex and competitive world when the war in Ukraine ends .

    Unrestrained and unbridled importation of all kinds of things like wines, rice and all kinds of consumer goods mostly from  Europe, China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia by unscrupulous traders who do not seem to know that they are shipping Nigerian jobs abroad and therefore weakening the Naira. The external trade needs to be monitored and all articles of trade not adding value to our national life should be banned.

    The government’s primary responsibility of protecting lives and properties of its citizens has unfortunately not been met in the last seven years. The rural insecurity has destroyed agricultural production leading to our country’s dependence on food imports which has led to dramatic diminution of our foreign exchange and consequent decline of the Naira.

    I believe there is need to declare a national economic emergency not only to rescue the economy from collapse but to challenge all stakeholders in the Nigerian enterprise to rise to the occasion and do their utmost to save the country .The country can be put on economic war basis. We can suspend the application of Habeas corpus for all economic offences and seize whatever resources that appears illegally acquired by people in the oil and gas sectors as well as in the military, security and bureaucratic arms of government.

    We should put an end to oil subsidies and make payment of taxes mandatory and compulsory for citizens legally of age. We should ensure that the war against corruption is fought in fact and indeed with absolute transparency. If all these measures are taken, the economy would bounce back, the Naira will be strong again and government would be in a position to pay living wages to all its employees including members of ASUU.

    On a final note, this president has not been well served by all those working with him including members of the legislative, executive and I dare say the slow acting judiciary, who from all reports in the public are not above board!

  • Reality check

    Reality check

    Yesterday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lifted the ban on campaigns, officially declaring open the 2023 race. Today, the Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar-led National Peace Committee will gather the parties and their candidates in Abuja to sign the first National Peace Accord ahead of the elections. The essence of the treaty is to ensure that the parties engage in issue-based campaigns.

    The Abubakar panel has been in the forefront of promoting peaceful elections since 2015. Through its efforts, then President Goodluck Jonathan conceded victory to President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 election before the final results were released, dousing the brewing tension over the poll following the show put up by a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain at the collation centre. At every election cycle or time, whether at the state or national level, the panel has been getting the candidates and their parties to commit to peace.

    The main election next year is the presidential poll. It is also the election that will usher in the successor to Buhari, who is not on the ballot as he is serving his second and final term in office. The campaigns are kicking off on the eve of Nigeria’s 62nd independence anniversary, an event which provides opportunity for governments (now and in the past) to take stock of their performances. What does the present administration have to tell the people on this auspicious occasion?

    What is confronting Nigeria right now is not different from the prevailing global economic downturn. The masses are confronted  with the daily challenges of living and how to overcome them. The basic necessities of life are difficult to get because of the high prices of goods and services. The poor are wailing and gnashing their teeth, praying for this cup to pass them. The harder they pray, it seems, the harder the problem. With the release of a new monetary policy rate of 15.5 percent by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday, things are not looking up at all.

    With a take home pay that cannot take them home, many live on hope. Hope that things will be better. Hope that they will live long enough to see the end of these trying times. Hope that the prices of bread, rice, beans, gari, petrol, kerosine, and diesel, yes diesel, will crash so that they can become affordable again. The biggest hope of all is that the factories will open again so that the real sector can bring the needed succour of providing jobs for the millions of our youths who are wasting away at home after leaving school.

    Read Also: All 18 presidential candidates face litigations, says INEC

    For want of something good to do, many of them have taken to crime, becoming what is today known as Yahoo-Yahoo boys. Indeed, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. It is not their fault, but that of the government which has not met its obligations to the people. With only eight months left for it to go, the people cannot expect much from this administration again. What is uppermost in its mind today is to quit the stage, going by the President’s recent remark. So, whatever it does now will be perfunctory. It cannot take any profound decision that will shape or reshape the life of Nigerians.

    A few days ago, it spoke about a pay rise because of the global economic downturn. It is a good thing to do, but can the deal be pulled off before its exit considering the issues that surround any pay rise? Will the private sector which is already hard hit by some of the government’s economic measures embrace the suggestion? Can the small and medium scale businesses increase the salaries of their   workers with what many of them are going through now?

    Any pay rise that does not cut across every sector of the economy will not serve any purpose as all workers buy from the same market. So, increasing the salary of federal civil servants without a corresponding hike in the pay of employees in other sectors will be meaningless. It will cause a tumult which the government cannot handle on the eve of its exit. The first thing for the government to do is to get the buy in of other employers on how to increase salary before any public announcement. What about housing, transportation, power, insecurity, rural and urban infrastructure? These are other key issues which despite its efforts the government did not address fully as it is about winding down.

    The next government will have its hands full. Whoever wins among the 18 presidential candidates should be ready to hit the ground running from day one. There will no room for excuses; no ‘I didn’t know that the rot was this much’ statement will be tolerated. They should do their findings now and know the extent of what the prospects and problems is. There are 18 gladiators but three of them have seized public consciousness in the past few months. They are Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, PDP, and Labour Party’s Peter Obi.

    Despite the results of some opinion polls being quoted here and there, I am yet to believe that it will be a three-horse race. Many people will be shocked by the outcome of the 2023 presidential election. The reality on the ground does not justify the confidence of Peter Obi’s supporters that he will win. Though the Obi-dient Movement is active in social media and the streets where it is holding marches with a few thousands of people, it has no significant presence in the small villages and towns and the big cities where elections are determined.

    Who are its representatives in the nooks and crannies of Nigeria? Who will coordinate its candidate’s campaigns in the remotest parts of the country where people do not even know of social media? Here, all they know is a house or hut or open space designated as polling centre. Tinubu and Atiku can boast of footsoldiers and other related resources necessary for an election. Election goes beyond making noise on television and in social media and holding roadshows with scanty crowds. If this was the case, Atiku will not still be literally begging Nyesom Wike, despite all the annoying antics of the governor.

    There is nothing that the antagonists of  Tinubu have not thrown at him, but the man is still standing. Calling a candidate names and accusing him falsely cannot detract from his capacity to do the job he has shown interest in. It goes without saying that he is the “best man” for the job as Works and Housing Minister Babatunde Fashola explained in a television interview a few weeks ago. For somebody who worked with then Governor Tinubu in Lagos, Fashola should know what he is saying.

    So, by the next independence anniversary, with Tinubu as president, Nigerians should expect from him an account of his great strides in office within 125 days. Nigeria deserves a leader like him so as to take its stand in the comity of viable nations. Happy 62nd independence anniversary, Nigeria.