The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Dealing with inconvenient stats

    Sanya Oni

    Flashback to December 19, 2018. Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had just released its routine Labour Force Statistics showing that additional 3.3 million Nigerians exited the labour force between December 2017 and September 2018 to bring the fledgling figure of the unemployed to 33 million Nigerians. In other words, unemployment rate had increased from 18.8 percent in the third quarter of 2017 to 23.1 percent in the third quarter of 2018.

    Baloney – blurted the president’s spokesman, Garba Shehu days after. The NBS not only lied with the figures, it has admitted that its methods were outrageously out of date. This much, he stated, was admitted to by no less than the nation’s statistician general, Yemi Kale to the Federal Executive Council subsequent to which he was directed by the president to go and put out the truth to the world!

    “When he finished addressing the federal cabinet last week, the government asked the DG of NBS, go out there and tell the Nigerian public, you are just saying to us now that Jigawa, Kebbi and Ebonyi are recording the lowest unemployment rates in the country on account of agriculture”.

    Claiming a “presidential vindication” of sorts, he said:  “the president had complained many times about the unemployment figures reflecting mostly the white collar jobs and therefore unfairly underplaying the millions of jobs his administration has created in the farms…”

    The NBS chief had of course retorted that this was arrant nonsense: the NBS reports not only covered all sectors of the economy including rural and urban areas as well as age groups, the methodology was as adequate and scientific as could be! Moreover, he neither admitted to the president nor his cabinet that the figures were flawed let alone telling them that he would address the media – local or global – to ‘adjust the figures’!

    “Assuming what you claim was actually said” he wrote on his twitter account, “then I make it very clear that neither the statistician general nor NBS ever made any such admission at any time to anybody and the unemployment computation does take into account all sectors, age groups and both rural and urban areas”.

    I actually thought that the press conference, ostensibly under the directing hands of our benevolent presidency would be the mother of all conferences hence my piece titled And now, Garba Shehu vs. NBS. Of course, it never held. As for the rebuttal, Nigerians are still waiting – nine months after – which of course leaves Nigerians in quandary as to who between the presidency and the NBS was to be believed!

    That turned out to be foretaste of things to come.

    At the inauguration of the presidential think-tank, the freshly minted eight-member Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC), the president would give what amounted to a marching order: time for new stats!

    To quote the president in his own words: “As you develop your baseline study, I would like you to focus on primary data collection…Today, most of the statistics quoted about Nigeria are developed abroad by the World Bank, IMF and other foreign bodies…

    “Some of the statistics we get relating to Nigeria are wild estimates and bear no relation to the facts on the ground.

    “This is disturbing as it implies we are not fully aware of what is happening in our country.

    “We can only plan realistically when we have reliable data. As you are aware, as a government, we priortised agriculture as a critical sector to create jobs and bring prosperity to our communities.

    “Our programmes covered the entire agricultural value chain from seed to fertilizer to grains and ultimately, our dishes.

    “AS you travel in the rural communities, you can clearly see the impact. However, the absence of reliable data is hindering our ability to upgrade these programmes and assure their sustainability”.

    That was the president to the new team. If you ask me, I would say that the president was not only putting a wrong foot forward, he was actually talking to a wrong audience! Data collection job for the body of eminent technocrats? That is certainly a new one from the Buhari presidency!

    So much for the president’s love for ‘reliable- stats; if only his minders would care to tell him that his presentation was actually to a wrong audience; second, that his PEAC is an unlikely body for the purpose of generating the primary data that he so badly craves; third, that there is already a statutory body – the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) charged with that very elementary primary data gathering job that he wants done; and moreover that the same NBS stats that he’s so eager to discredit is no vastly different from those routinely churned out by Financial Derivatives, the influential economic consultancy outfit headed by his PEAC member, Bismarck Rewane!

    A fightback from the presidency would provide comic relief –save for the dire emergency out there. Imagine; where Nigerians see fear, unemployment and insecurity; the presidency sees social intervention programme, anchor borrowers and other fancy schemes; when the majority complain of being poorer with each passing day, the government sees need for more tax revenue to finance projects! Now, thanks to Donald Trump, the world has since moved firmly into the post-truth era, which means that leaders can freely choose their version of reality – or call up alternative facts whenever it suits them. Does anyone still see why the NBS deserves the scorn?

    The presidency can seek to generate as many primary data as it suits it and for all manners of purposes under the sun; our development partners as indeed the rest of the international community surely know better than to think much of politically-tainted brews. And really, no one had said that the NBS, a quasi-independent body, is perfect; or that its conclusions cannot be questioned. But then, to go as far as to pretend that the body does not exist or simply deny it legitimacy because its findings do not align with that of government merely plays into our peculiar brand of negative politics! Minus the templates which have global benchmarks, I wager that nothing in the NBS stats that this presidency hotly disputes can be said to be anything but home grown stats! And so, while I understand the presidency’s desire to showcase achievements which I consider as sometimes exaggerated, I do have a problem when a self-proclaimed reformer- administration either chooses to see established performance benchmarks as something beneath it or seen to be actively working to undermine a critical institution like the NBS!

    I close: Yours truly cannot claim to know what this presidency expects of the PEAC; however, if the job description as spelt out by the president at the inauguration is anything to go by, Nigerians should be prepared for an interesting time!

  • Where are they now?

    ONCE in a while, this column does a retrospective on persons who have figured in the news for better or worse but have somehow fallen off the news radar, including those who were famous or used to be famous for being famous.

    This installment resumes that tradition after a long interlude.

    Protocols.

    Whatever happened to Professor Jubril Aminu, eminent cardiologist, formerly executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), professor of medicine, vice chancellor of the University of Maiduguri, Minister of Education and Minister of Petroleum Resources under the regime of military president Ibrahim Babangida, ambassador to the United States, and most recently a Senator of the Federal Republic?

    At the NUC and the Ministry of Education, Aminu was the scourge of vice chancellors and the Academic Staff Union of Universities.  He inveighed, not without justification, against what he called the “proliferation of professors.” I wonder what he would call that tendency today. The “mushrooming” of professors?

    Aminu had his favourite vice chancellor, though, in the person of Professor Grace Alele-Williams, who was also Babangida’s favourite vice chancellor, on account of which she was nicknamed Mamangida by  students and faculty at the University of Benin.

    She was awarded a second term one full year before her first term ended, whereas, at the University of Ibadan, they kept Professor Ayo Banjo in limbo for almost one year before granting him a second term.  Then, as now, it helped to have friends in high places.

    Aminu had a bad press.  They said he was haughty and high-handed, but he couldn’t care less.  He said he did what he had to do according to his best judgement and moved on.  He was content to let the facts and his conscience be the judge, though he was often loath to publicize acts of great personal kindness and official consideration that would have dampened, if not punctured, charges of parochialism that trailed him in his public career.

    My last interaction with him occurred when he was serving as ambassador to the United States.  Shortly  after he arrived at the post, I called his office and asked to talk with him.

    “Does he know you?” his secretary asked courteously.

    “I believe he does,” I said.

    She told me the ambassador was at a meeting and would ball me back.

    Some 30 minutes later, the phone rang.  It was Aminu.

    “Olatunji, you ran away,” he said, more in jest than in rebuke.  He was referring to my leaving Nigeria when Abacha banned The Guardian and many private media outlets and rendered the practice of journalism exceedingly fraught.

    Some banter followed, after which he gave me his telephone number at the residence and said I should feel free to call him after hours.  And if I was visiting Washington DC, I was welcome to lodge in the embassy’s guest house.  I never took him up on the latter offer, but whenever I called the residence, he either took the call in person, or called back if he could not.

    A good number of fellow expatriate Nigerians told me that their encounter with the ambassador was just as pleasant and gratifying.

    I recall vividly the challenge my family faced when my wife and I had to obtain new Nigerian passports for ourselves and two of our children.  The rules demanded that all four of us go to the nearest issuing office (Washington) to have our biometrics captured for the purpose.  This unreasonable demand plunged many a family into credit card debt, loss of income, and great inconvenience.

    In our case the challenge was especially formidable.  We have an autistic son who is difficult to manage when thrust into unfamiliar settings. I brought the matter up with Aminu, and he asked me to request a waiver in writing.

    A few days later, a letter came from the chancery saying we should send our application material for new passports.  We did not have to come to Washington DC; the ambassador had waived that requirement.

    In theory, any ambassador could have done that.  In practice, how many of them would have summoned the independence, the judgment and the fellow-feeling to do it?

    That was the essential Jubril Aminu.

    Aminu was probably still in medical school when Chief Richard Akinjide was elected to the Federal House of Representatives on the platform of the NCNC,  one of its youngest persons to achieve that distinction, later serving as Minister of Education in the NPC-NNDP coalition government until the collapse of the First Republic.

    Reputed for his forensic brilliance – he belongs in the second set of Nigerians to be conferred with the SAN – Akinjide is best known for the ingenuous formula which moved the Federal Electoral Commission to hold that by, winning the most votes in 12 of the 19 states of the country, and in one half of two-thirds of a 13th State, the NPN candidate Shehu Shagari had won a plurality in each of at least two-thirds of the states of the federation as stipulated by the Constitution, and thus the presidential election outright.

    The Supreme Court affirmed, and the joke was on those who had dismissed Akinjide’s formula as crack-brained.   In the legal battles that pitted the Federal Government against the states controlled by the Opposition in the Second Republic, Akinjide was a constant figure as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, smirking as the courts did the government’s bidding in case after case.

    Returning from self-exile following the overthrow of the Shagari Administration, he continued his brilliant advocacy, often doubling as a public intellectual.

    Until lately.

    His daughter Oloye Olajumoke Akinjide, a former minister of state for the Federal Capital Territory under the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, has been having a running battle with the EFCC over the misappropriation of some N650 million, little more than pocket change to minor functionaries in some federal establishments.

    She has even offered to pay back the sum at issue, but the prosecutors would not budge. And yet, her father has not come up with some recondite forensic doctrine to put an end to all that nonsense.

    Where is Chief Richard Akinjide?

    I should also ask after Sani Abacha’s favorite historian and media coordinator, Dr Walter Ofonagoro.  As Abacha Minister of Information, he continued the unfinished business of Verdict 83, concerned as always to appear clever for one opportunistic moment rather than make society wiser.

    On seizing power, Abacha had declared that June 12, 1993 presidential election presaged a vast promise for Nigeria. Later, as he tightened his grip on power, he declared that the election was “inconclusive.”  Later still, he would dismiss the election as “illegal,” a claim that military president Ibrahim Babangida who annulled the poll had never made.

    Ofonagoro took up the matter from there and compiled a tome crammed with documents of dubious authenticity in a desperate effort to lend pseudo-scholarly support to Abacha’s revisionism.

    The same Ofonagoro had served as communications director of the defunct National Republican Convention and a close adviser to its presidential candidate, Bashir Tofa.  One of the enduring images of the historic election was television film footage of Tofa driving from one polling centre to another in a futile bid to cast his ballot – futile, because he had not bothered to register to vote.  But since Abacha had declared the poll illegal, that must henceforth be the verdict of history.

    All the media organs Ofonagoro controlled as minister of information dutifully picked up the refrain and sustained it long after a discriminating attentive audience had stopped listening to Radio Nigeria or watching the NTA or reading the Daily Times and the New Nigerian

    When Kudirat Abiola was murdered by Abacha’s goons, Ofonagoro stopped just short of saying that  she got what she deserved.  When Abacha’s agents provocateurs were hurling bombs at federal installations and crowds of innocent Nigerians, Ofonagoro said it was the handiwork of a certain septuagenarian based in Owo, in Ondo State.

    When a caller who identified himself by an Igbo name took Ofonagoro to task during a live call-in show on Radio Nigeria, Ofonagoro denounced the caller as a NADECO sympathiser fraudulently parading himself as an Igbo.

    How so? 

    Because, said Abacha’s favourite historian, no true Igbo man would stand up for June 12.

    Under Ofonagoro, the NTA would not announce, much acknowledge the death of Afro-beat king Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, whose creative genius had contributed hugely to  stamping the music of Nigeria and Africa on the world’s cultural map.

    Drawing his inspiration from Kim Il Sung’s North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ofonagoro sought  to return the Nigerian press to the era of licensing and to make defamation a penal crime.

    Lost on Abacha’s historian-in-residence was the elementary truth that when you have employed the media ceaselessly to alienate and brutalize and insult and stultify the public, you cannot employ the same media to mobilize that very public for nobler ends.

    Where is Dr Walter Ibekwe Ofonagoro now?

     

  • The raids by customs

    Those who have followed the wave of clampdown on car dealers by men of the Nigeria Customs service in the last few weeks are bound to wonder if the nation isn’t under the siege of an undeclared emergency. I do not here refer to the routine seizures of cargoes of contrabands either at border posts or warehouses usually announced with fanfare on radio and television; rather, I refer to the macabre drama of going after car dealers and motorists on the highways and business premises all in the bid to collect unpaid duties on cars.

    Those of us who grew up in the late 60s will most probably remember the ubiquitous tax man at whose approach, able bodied tax defaulters scaled fences for the fear of being hauled before the officials for restitution; or fearsome local council officials perched on the highways supposedly collecting radio or advertisement taxes. Now, if we had thought that the country was permanently done with crude tactics of chasing tax suspected defaulters on highways and street corners, the ongoing onslaught by the men of the Nigerian Customs shows how deeply ingrained the psychology is.

    That is the context in which to see the ongoing rampage by men of the Nigerian customs under the leadership of the no-nonsense Col. Hameed Ali (rtd). For a country that continues to experience the shrinking of its civic space– no thanks to the general insecurity in the country – the resort to locking up of business premises and invasion of hotel premises all in the guise of chasing car owners believed to have evaded duty payment can only further take the country down the pole.

    The Punch reported an eyewitness account by one Imo Ugochinyere, said to be national spokesman of the Coalition of United Political Parties in Abuja thus: “Customs men have invaded Fraser Suite Abuja and sealed it, blocking diplomats and guests from coming in or going out…The affected guests include some soldiers who are lodging in the place….They are harassing guests and ordering hotel workers to wake guests up from sleep to identify their cars….’

    In the end, a total of 11 vehicles mainly of the Toyota, Lexus and Mercedes Benz brands were carted away.

    Interestingly, the Customs boss has since provided an interesting perspective to the saga. He told newsmen at a forum last week that 90 per cent of cars in Nigeria were smuggled into the country by unscrupulous elements. He specifically singled out vehicles on display in auto shops across the country just as he said that the raids on car dealers’ spots were to ascertain whether the vehicles were brought in genuinely or not. The country, he said, needs revenue for development, hence, it became necessary to collect duties on those smuggled vehicles.

    Said he: “We want to use this opportunity to ensure that cars within our borders are fully customised, which means duties are paid on them.”

    “We are looking for revenue from everywhere and we have these people who brought in vehicles and failed to pay duties.

    “What we are doing now, we are just enforcing the law, which allows us to collect revenue on behalf of Nigeria and also ensure those vehicles you and I will go and buy have genuine papers that are roadworthy.”

    The truth is that the customs boss is only beating a well-trodden path.  In fact, the approach is neither novel nor could be remotely described as smart. In the end, the treasury might be several billions of naira richer at least for a while; of course, the question of whether that crude, antediluvian extortionate method – a method itself so fraught with corruption – is the best that the men of the customs can come up with in this day and age would perhaps remain a part of our intriguing national question!

    To say that we have been on this route before is merely stating the obvious. Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the method was deployed until Obasanjo asked the Customs to back off following complaints by Nigerians. I recall the former president saying that an institution that could not muster the capacity to collect appropriate customs duties at the designated point had no business rolling tanks into town for the same purpose. In President Buhari’s first term, the customs also attempted to resurrect the obnoxious tactic only to run into another brick wall. Again, I recall that the Bukola Saraki-led National Assembly in the course of the altercation between the customs and the in the 8th National Assembly  actually went as far as attempting to change that particularly aspect of the law which most Nigerians had found increasingly offensive.  Unfortunately, rather than the customs getting back to the drawing board to address the issue in a fundamental sense, the institution’s leadership has again resorted to bandying an old law which seeks essentially to the reward failure of its establishment in the age of technology.

    So what will the latest activism achieve? Is it simply about more revenue into the coffers of government (and perhaps men of the customs)? When will the customs learn to do things the way the rest of the civilised world do? What will it take for the customs to shake off the jack-boot mentality in favour of a technology-driven enforcement?

    Imagine the customs supremo admitting that 90 per cent of cars in Nigeria were smuggled; in other words, for every 10 cars imported into the country, nine is smuggled. That being the case, it is either that the customs which he leads is either irredeemably corrupt and hence qualifies to be disbanded, or, that the law which he operates is so fatally flawed to have any redeeming feature.

    Is it any wonder that the world is laughing at us? For the sake of all that is sane and decent, President Buhari should order Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) to get his men back to the border posts. As for the National Assembly, it should proceed forthwith to amend the relevant laws permitting such open-ended raids. Remember, this is 2019!

  • Church in nation building

    It was a gathering to deliberate on the role of the church in nation building, last Sunday. A thorny issue by any standard, considering the dire straits facing our country, Nigeria. By independent statistics, our country is in a perilous times, and exhibits many indices of a failed state. Quite a number also hold the view, that the church is under persecution by secular authorities, and indeed, the Catholic Church offers a daily prayer, for Nigeria in distress.

    So, it was fitting, that the Catholic Men Organisation of the Holy Family Catholic Church, Festac Town, choose to invite a legal avant-garde, an intellectual colossus, a constitutional lawyer, human rights activist, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a Knight of the Order of Saint Mulumba, Chief Mike Ozekhome, to speak truth to the ecclesiastical and the secular power, on: “The Role of the Church in Nation Building.” Of course he didn’t disappoint.

    Controversial as ever, Ozekhome did not mind the presence of clerics in the audience to speak on the ills of worshipping wealth by the clergy. He doubted the spirituality of pastors amassing wealth from their congregations to buy jets, live in obscene luxury, and build schools that their peasant members cannot afford to pay the entry fees. He took a swipe at pastors who receive huge donations from their members, who have no visible means of livelihood, without asking them how they made such humongous money they have donated.

    Ozekhome called such offerings blood money, and charged all clerics to stop such illicit behaviour. He warned that the church is in decline, and that congregations are daily deserting the church. On why some congregants are disconsolate with the state of affairs, he quoted William L. Edelen, Jr. who said: “The church today is… almost indistinguishable from an average corporation or political machine.” The learned silk, noted that the effort to allow popular fancies in the church to accommodate the young people is inappropriate and is backfiring.

    He again quoted an article tagged ‘Youth Attitudes’ wherein it said: “There’s an old saying that you don’t pull yourself up by dragging the other person down. Just the opposite should be the case. That’s why, in our opinion, the churches have erred in not standing firm behind high moral standards and in being equally firm in teaching what is morally right and wrong. Young people need and want guidance…. There is no compromise with what is morally wrong.”

    The guest lecturer taught his audience that to build the nation the youth must be properly guided, and instead of allowing their excesses, they should be brought up morally fortified. He took a swipe at the hypocrisy amongst the clerics, wondering why a pastor who preaches to his congregation that they are “covered by the blood of Jesus Christ” should drive about town in bullet-proof armoured vehicles. Thundering like the master Jesus, he said: “when you tell your church members to sow seeds with their pittance earnings, leaving the church hungry, and trekking home, while you fly over them in private jets… you are nothing but a hypocrite.”

    On the crucible of the foundation for national development, Ozekhome identified the troika of family, faith and education as indispensable. He posited that the first world countries rode on the tripod and still retain their pre-eminence position in the committee of nation on the same triumvirate principles. He identified the church as the biggest influencer in Nigeria. Unfortunately while acknowledging Christianity as a heavy influencer, he observed that many adherents of the Christian faith and even other major religions do not live by the teachings and tenets of their faith.

    Doing a historical excursion, the learned silk, recalled how Christianity became a redoubt to preserve civilization during the dark ages. In modern African societies, the guest lecturer acknowledged the church as a vehicle for ‘social and political development, good governance and human rights.’ There is no doubt that the Catholic Church has immensely contributed to the transformation of the society using various church organs to fight societal inequality and injustice.

    A few examples stand out. There is the Justice Development and Peace Commission (JDPC), St. Vincent the Paul Society, the Catholic Prison Ministry, and the even the National Association of Catholic Lawyers and the Knights in the church, who use their resources to fight for, and propagate social justice. But all that is not enough, as the downward swing in societal morals portray.

    So, taking a swipe against the churches in Nigeria, the avant-garde noted that while Christians constitute majority of any faith in the country, their moral strength is not reflected in the daily lives of government officials and the society in general. The learned SAN raised a poser: “How do you explain a nation that records millions of people flocking annual religious gatherings and yet, ills such as greed, corruption, nepotism, injustice, impunity etc. are rife both in high and low places?”

    Ozekhome charged the Church to live up to the admonition in the Holy Bible in Proverbs 31:8, which ordered her to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed… speak up for the poor and helpless and see that they get justice.” He charged religious leaders not to act like the Whitewashed sepulchre. They must desist from the profanity described in Titus 1:16 thus: “They publicly declare they know God, but they disown him by their words.”

    The guest lecturer encouraged the churches to wear the garment of social crusaders. He urged them to work hard to eradicate poverty in the society, noting that “it is the primary mission of the Church to preach the gospel, teach the saved, provide a spiritual atmosphere, reproduce the character of Christ, and bring joy to mankind.” While acknowledging as Jesus did that the poor would always be with us, he noted that it does not imply that the poor should not be cared for. He quoted copiously the Old Testament where the society is obligated to ensure better life for the poor.

    In conclusion, Chief Mike Ozekhome, argued that Christians must live according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. He pointed to Luke 6:46 wherein Jesus asked: “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and yet you don’t do what I tell you?” And what did Jesus ask from his followers? To be socially responsible, by visiting prisoners, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, or the captives. Ozekhome urged for Christians to participate in government, but warned the church not to engage in partisan politics. He noted, the Church can only engage in prophetic ministry by speaking truth to power on behalf of humanity in general.

     

  • General of all seasons

    Lt. Gen. Ipoola Alani Akinrinade (rtd) always reminds you of pleasant deja vu — didn’t  we experience something this pleasant before?

    For Ripples, growing-up times were dominated by Awo and his wondrous deeds: the magical strides in the pre-independent Western Region; the fiscal rectitude as Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s federal commissioner for Finance, and Spartan aura as the first vice-chairman of the Gowon-era Federal Executive Council (FEC).  Besides, there were the great expectations — twice dashed — of a glorious 2nd Republic Awo presidency.

    Still, Awo belonged to the partisan political plain, with its contrasting passion of extreme love and extreme hate.

    But outside that scalding lane straddled a pair of non-partisan but progressive minds: Prof. Wole Soyinka, the famed intellectual that needs little introduction; and Dr. Tai Solarin, he of blessed memory: no less famous educationist, religious iconoclast and founder of Mayflower School, Ikenne, Ogun State.

    In Ripples’ rather impressionable young mind back then, nothing could possibly go wrong, so long as these two were around!

    That is the pleasant deja vu — though the times are now much diminished and the mind no longer that impressionable — can things really go wrong, as long as this progressive-minded General is still around?

    That is a big deal in these stark and troubled times — as the flower of the Yoruba and the pride of contemporary Nigeria gathered to celebrate General Akinrinade at 80, on October 3, in Ibadan, the Yoruba scholarship, culture and political capital.

    In a Yorubaland riven by peer envy and partisan bile; and in a Nigeria where partisan opposition has plumbed into scalding hate and rabid resentment, it’s good to see the General, self-effacing and generous of spirit, tower above the abiding toxin as a credible soul.

    It’s the making of the General as a man of all seasons, the durable Omulabi of the finest crust and the quintessential Nigerian patriot.

    Indeed, a man of all seasons is apt summary, for the General’s rich and illustrious life.  Somewhat he is always there, at critical junctures of Nigerian history, with its many tragedies.

    He joined the Army as cadet trainee in 1960.  But when he was coming of age as a young officer, Nigeria’s first post-independence power pact had come a sad cropper, with the former sweethearts from North and East falling upon themselves, in a fight-to finish.

    The politicians, less focused on nation-building, more driven by ruthless peer destruction, had made a mess of the new dominion.  The naive Army stumbled into the fray; and as E. M. Forster quipped in A Passage to India, the military got a problem fixed but created a thousand others!

    Thus a bloody coup fetched an even bloodier counter-coup.  In-between were the pogroms in the North.  The malady peaked with a Civil War that was anything but civil, in its sheer scale of destruction.

    It fell on Akinrinade and his fellow corps of young officers to make a sense of the mess.  The General, then as a lieutenant-colonel, was an alpha and omega, of sorts.

    When Benjamin Adekunle’s 3 Marine Commando Division (3MCDO), in a military rapid fire, prised the eastern-most fringe of the segment now known as the South-South from the old East, he was there.

    But when things appeared stalled, in the Igbo heartland of the East, he was also there. After a transition from Adekunle to Olusegun Obasanjo as 3MCDO boss, he somewhat authored, with Godwin Alabi-Isama, also then a lieutenant-colonel, the final manoeuvres that extracted the instrument of surrender from the opposing camp.

    All these war exploits, with pictures and maps to boot, were captured in Alabi-Isama’s The Tragedy of Victory, even if they were somewhat blacked out from My Command, Obasanjo’s rather narcissist Civil War account. Ay, the defeated camp sucks some cold comfort from Alabi-Isama’s intriguing title.  But there are hardly any saints in a war of kill or be killed!

    Still, the war done and dusted, the military started falling upon themselves — and again, Akinrinade was at the thick of the theatre.

    When the Dimka coup despatched Murtala Muhammed, Akinrinade was part of the counter-manoeuvre that not only foiled the coup but also ensured no harm came to the No. 2, Obasanjo, who then became Head of State.

    When that regime vacated power for the civilians in 1979, Akinirinade was left behind, by the exiting junta, to stabilize the Shehu Shagari elected presidency — until the new president committed the tactical blunder of kicking his chief of Army staff (COAS) “upstairs” as Nigeria’s first chief of defence staff (CDS).  Akinrinade’s six months as COAS is the shortest-ever by any holder of that post.

    But Shagari would reap the strategic ruin of his tactical blunder — the military comeback, though fully goaded by the media and the losing segment of the political elite, after the travesty of the 1983 general elections.

    By then Akinrinade had long left that government.  Still, what would have happened had the General remained, till 1983, as COAS?  Would he have tried to steer the military away from poisonous power, no matter what — and probably lose his life in the process?  Only God knows!

    Even when Ibrahim Babangida came, and started profaning everything, Akinrinade was one of the credible figures that did honest work for that regime — he with the incomparable Prof. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, who left a shining legacy of primary health care that, if followed through, would have made a great difference.  The General said he quit when the IBB dog was becoming stone deaf to the hunter’s whistle.

    Of course, the June 12 validation war and the Sani Abacha tragic intransigence, sparking the NADECO-Abacha epochal confrontation was an out-and-out classic: the making of the general as a daring democrat, giving his all!

    That titanic battle consumed MKO, the legit mandate owner and Abacha, the tragic usurper; aside from condemning IBB, the cunning annuller-in-chief to the status of the living dead — at least from the point of view of those that felt short-changed.

    To the General, however, the thereafter was yet another battle.  Though “democracy” had come, the national question remained unsolved.  So, as President Obasanjo was playing to the gallery to please his electoral sponsors, at the expense of his own people — and other Nigerians — the General was marshaling the Agbajo, to work hard at settling the national question.  Even as he clocks 80, he is still hard at work on that, without favour or malice to anyone.

    An intimate window into that Agbajo battle was opened by Dr. Femi Orebe, in his weekly column, in The Nation on Sunday of October 6.

    So, if the General drew both the Ooni of Ife (the spiritual head of the Yoruba) and the Alaafin of Oyo (the imperial head) to sit on the same table without ruffling feathers, aside from gathering an A-grade unpretentious crowd, all come to testify to his generosity of spirit, you know it is a man condemned to high honour and celebration, even if he would rather remain self-effacing.

    At 80, the only thing missing for Gen. Akinrinade is writing his  story.  We would have gauged the true temper of the age — for he won’t paint others bad to make himself good!

    But that trove might be lost to history, because Abacha-era vandals razed the Akinrinade personal library of Alexandria.

  • Yet another sombre anniversary

    IT is again that time of year when Nigerians, contemplating their country’s troubling past and uncertain future, engage in an orgy of collective self-flagellation, when an anniversary that should be an occasion for rejoicing  and renewal breeds, instead, recrimination and resentment.”

    Those were the opening lines of my column for this newspaper on September 29, 2009, as a preface to the National Day, our independence anniversary,  a day when, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, many Nigerians consider their country’s unflattering profile and wonder why, and many others contemplate what their country could be and ask: why not?

    In his National Day Broadcast four days later, the guileless President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, of fond memory, would warn that the anniversary should not be turned into an occasion for “self-flagellation,”  using the very term I had employed in my preface to the milestone.  It is not the kind of term you find in presidential speeches.  Even for the most practised speakers, it is a tongue-twister, and the meaning is unlikely to be immediately apparent to the general audience.

    I claim no copyright on the term, to be sure.  Still, I could not but be gratified that, although the speechwriters employed that term as warning against what the day should NOT consist in, and might even have intended a gentle rebuke to this columnist rather than what Oscar Wilde designated the sincerest form of flattery, its invocation by the president was heartening evidence that the column commanded attention in high places.

    Even while warning against self-flagellation, Yar’Adua enjoined in the 1,040-word speech that the day should serve as “a forceful reminder of the promise yet to be fulfilled, of the dream deferred for too long, and of the work that is still outstanding.”

    Yar’Adua’s warning was right on the mark.  Considering all and kvetching and inveighing pervading the anniversary, it might as well be called National Lamentation Day.  Or National Moaning Day.  Or National Self-loathing Day.  Or National Self-flagellation Day. This anniversary will be no different, I wager.

    October 1, I suspect, is also the day policy-makers and political officials dread most on the national calendar.  What can they claim to have achieved since the previous anniversary that they had not claimed the year just past with great eloquence and even greater vehemence, and for the year before that?

    I don’t envy those who write the speeches and those who make the speeches for that day.

    I am here reminded of the budget writers who plan to buy for the Presidential Villa the kitchen equipment and accessories they had bought the previous year and the year before that, as well as computers and servers and communications hardware they had purchased the previous year and the year before, and to sign a contract they had awarded the previous year and the year before for that geo-strategic bridge that was “nearing completion” at the time of the last appropriation.

    In his 2009 Budget speech, Yar’Adua spoke about “positioning” Nigeria, “sustainable development,” providing electricity on a “sustainable basis,” and about “holistic measures” aimed at “ensuring requisite macroeconomic stability.”

    That was ten years ago today. Those goals and terms are strewn over practically every National Day Broadcast since then. I will be surprised if they do not perfuse President Muhammadu Bihari’s National Day Broadcast today.

    Since then, a thousand conferences have been staged on national development, housing for all, food self-sufficiency, water for all, electricity for all, mass transit for all, and generally on how to move Nigeria forward, to translate its vast potential into actual power.  Yet the image it conjures up is that of a stalled caterpillar, its antennae probing in every direction but its body inert.

    They say, following the great writer Chinua Achebe, that the problem is the failure of leadership, by which they mean the political leadership.  Taking a related but different tack, others locate the problem in the accession to power at independence.  The prize, they say, was presented on a “platter of gold” to marginal actors for the most part, not to those who were bloodied and jailed and exiled in the struggle.

    If it was the latter that had succeeded to power, they argue, Nigeria’s history would have at the very least mirrored, in terms of development, that of former colonial dependencies in the same league, like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the so-called Asian Tigers.

    Who knows?

    Of course, leadership matters.  Leaders dream great dreams, define and articulate goals, enlist public support for the goals, map out strategies for pursuing them and stay steadfast on the long road to actualizing them.  They set the tone for public discourse.  They strive to see that rewards and sanctions are distributed justly.  They lead by example, not by precept or preachment.

    They see their position as a summons to service, not as an invitation to “come and eat,” as one former minister memorably phrased it.  They appreciate that public service should not be a path to great personal wealth.  They will not engage in an obscene display of wealth from that provenance and dare the pubic to do its damnedest.

    When they call for sacrifice in the national interest, they do so from a moral pedestal, having slashed their own perks and privileges.   You cannot call for sacrifice when you appropriate unto yourself as monthly “wardrobe allowance” twice the monthly minimum wage of N30, 000 you are loath to pay.  You cannot, under the guise of making laws for the good governance of Nigeria, allocate more than one-tenth of the national budget to meet your fancies and fantasies.

    Leaders are rarely solitary figures.  They work with like-minded persons to define goals and seek solutions; they seek actively to bring others of a different persuasion to the fold. But when necessary, they are prepared to act alone and take responsibility.

    In the Nigerian experience, such figures are rare.  Yet they constitute what Nigerians have in mind when they bemoan the failure of leadership.

    Others blame the structure of the federation, the obsessive drive for uniformity in the guise of unity, for the failure of the promise of independence.  The answer, as they see it, lies in restructuring the polity to achieve “true federalism.”

    Nigeria’s present structure is without question a serious impediment to development, what with too many unviable states, and funds that should have gone into meeting worthier goals being used to maintain a bloated political bureaucracy that serves little purpose.  But that is only a part of the answer.

    If leadership in Nigeria has been dysfunctional, what of the followership?

    Can leadership be divorced from followership?  The one and the other are but two sides of a single coin.  Thus, the failure of leadership in Nigeria is no less remarkable than the failure of followership.

    When the followership behave as subjects rather than citizens, when they continually make excuses for bad leadership, when they embrace policies that are not merely inimical to but are actually subversive of their interests, when they are easily bought off or bribed, they become an integral part of the problem.

    When followers do not see it as their duty to help maintain facilities and structures built at great expense for their benefit, no leadership can accomplish much in the area of infrastructure.  To take as an example:  Where today are the guard rails for the bridges and highways built in the 1970s and even more recently?  Why are the drainage systems clogged with solid waste and even disused tyres days after they were decongested?

    Nigerians of all classes will kvetch and moan and lament as usual on this independence anniversary, the followership more than the leadership.  But the followership has been an equal-opportunity actor with the leadership in perpetuating the national malaise, and must resolve to be an equal partner in ending it.

     

  • El-Rufai and f(r)iends

    El-Rufai, the son, arriving a public school, provokes a storm. El-Rufai, the father, faces the resultant blitz, of praise or blame.

    It’s the making of El-Rufai and f(r)iends!

    The governor may have bucked a sickly trend — of the Nigerian ruling elite keeping own children off the leprous public schools they run.

    That ought to come with some well-earned praise — for the governor’s action is welcome pinch, on the conscience (or lack of it) of his ruling peers.

    Yet, reaction has focused less on the action per se — noble, if you ask Ripples.  El-Rufai’s fiends would rather raze him for their perceived colour of his politics; and their sworn evil of his motive.

    It’s all perfectly contemporary Nigerian: it’s not enough to do good or evil.  What matters is the perception of friend and foe.  Donald Trump’s alternative facts syndrome is finding safe local anchor.

    Strictly, it’s ugly to fair-minded eyes.  Facts are nothing. Bias is everything.  It’s the paramountcy of shadow over substance.

    Yes, it’s true: Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State, does not suffer fools gladly, as the Brits say, of that clinical putdown.

    Some say that is because he has a sharp, acute, piercing mind that is rather impatient with those who waffle and dodder, no thanks to a wobbling and blunt mind.

    Others spurn that as crap.  El-Rufai, they insist, is just a brat with zero emotional intelligence. That dire challenge, they add, clothes him with combative and arrogant pride.  So, he holds others — particularly those who disagree with him — in contempt.

    He may indeed be brilliant — they reluctantly concede his razor-sharp mind — but it’s brilliance without humility or charity, which is a waste, they jeer in final triumph!

    Indeed, if you have read El-Rufai’s The Accidental Public Servant, you would marvel at his self-projection as clinical and severe, battling against all environmental odds to do good!   You then wondered if blood flowed in his veins!

    Now, was this a mind courting controversy as a political weapon?  Or just a single-minded dynamo determined to do his bit, whether anyone liked it or not?

    So, when the news hit the waves, that El-Rufai just enrolled his son Abubakar, 6, to start primary one in a public school, Capital School, Malali, in Kaduna, with the camera in tow, all hell simply broke loose, among friends and foes!

    In all the hullabaloo, however, some salient points got conveniently glossed over.

    To start with, the entry age into public primary schools.  To many parents today, it’s infra dig to enrol a six-year old — too old for primary one, they would bawl! — even if that is the entry prescription; just as a holiday is inconceivable without the so-called “summer classes.”

    The all-knowing, all-busy adults have decreed childhood and its sweet pleasures out of their children; the career-pushing parents have expunged play, fun and spark from their kids’ holidays!

    Therefore, it is rather refreshing that a governor, in 21st century Nigeria with all its empty conceits and grand pretences, is using his own blood to reiterate this sanity.

    Yes, little Abubakar is a product of some elite pre-primary schooling.  But that his father isn’t leveraging that for a higher class would appear total, solemn submission to the rules.  That is a leadership model that should excite everyone.

    Then, the inviolability of promises, by public servants.

    For whatever reason, the governor made a solemn promise: when his son turned six, whether he was still governor or not, he would enrol him in a public primary school.

    Everyone moved on. Not a few forgot. Most probably would not have remembered, had the governor played dumb, and allowed his promise to quietly slide. But should anyone dare remind him, to walk his talk, he would probably have put out some cant.

    But again, El-Rufai remembered — and kept his word.  That ought to earn due praise.  Leaders’ words ought to be their bond.

    Indeed, Olusegun Obasanjo always brags: my  word is my bond.  Let’s just say, El Rufai has just acted that, with little or no fuss — though the cameras were in tow, which seem to have enraged not a few!

    Obasanjo!  That name echoes the many battles of El Rufai in the public space, birthing a hardy and controversial public figure, more feared than loved!

    In The Accidental Public Servant, El-Rufai’s Obasanjo years ministerial memoirs — and a high-flying and very visible minister at that — the future governor gave his president the short-shrift: Obasanjo’s denial, of an attempt at an illegal “third term”, was a fib!

    “No third term – no Nigeria”, he quoted the president to have bragged inside Aso Rock, in February 2006.  Raising that “smoking gun”, El-Rufai declared, with utter irreverence, the president had tumbled, from the high pedestal he once held him!

    Not a few thought that was harsh — and brash.  Others felt it was plain ingratitude — to a president that offered El-Rufai the world.  Yet others craved more grace, no matter what.

    But an unfazed El-Rufai won’t waffle: it’s honour or nothing! Your word ought to be your bond!

    In another high-octane war, a Pentecostal cleric, the Edo-based Johnson Suleman, once crossed swords with El-Rufai, over some religious edict, in Kaduna State.

    When the push came to the shove, the pastor threatened a pastoral fatwa — a holy curse that threatened the governor with near-instant death!  It was a new low in ecclesiastical rascality!

    But it was the pastor that ate crow.  El-Rufai has not only lived, he had gone on to claim a second term!  But the man of God, it was, hobbled and humbled by a scandal!  See how the holy stumble?

    Of course, “second term” reminds you of Shehu Sani, the former Kaduna Central senator that also rumbled with the governor — but lost out on second term (replaced by another Uba Sani), even after the ruling party tried a stalled cohabitation.  El-Rufai could prove a formidable, unforgiving adversary!

    Poor Shehu Sani!  He has been apoplectic, since the El-Rufai-son-goes-to-school story broke; spinning tales of alleged deceit; of how the governor allegedly spent “N195 million on a particular school … take your son and the media to that school and think you have done anything different.”

    Sani went on Kaduna’s gubernatorial binge of worthier governors: a Balarabe Musa that shunned Government House, during his short governorship in the 2nd Republic; and an Ahmed Markarfi, whose children, he claimed, also attended that same school, without Markarfi bringing down the media roof!  Nasir’s was all comical stunt for 2023, see?

    But as poor Sani fumed, it was clear who stole the thunder; and who harvested the anger!  A grape never tasted so sour!  El-Rufai and fiends!

    Indeed, El-Rufai is as controversial — and combative —  as they come.  He especially loves to shut up the hyper-educated southern loud mouths, who sadistically glory the North is dumb; so it ought to listen, while they thunder!

    Nor does he necessarily hide the political Machiavelli in him.  He once rued the North as comparable human development laggard; but also relished its blind advantage as captive voting bloc, warts and all!

    Yet, on this one, El-Rufai has earned due and legitimate praise.  If every governor takes his cue, and enrol their children in public schools — primary, secondary and tertiary  — there would be added vim to fix crumbling public education.

  • Nigeria @ 59

    Thanks to one particular WhatsApp group among the countless others I belong whose subject can range from nothing to just about anything under the sun, I found myself in a long drawn debate over the state of the nation, with particular reference to our institutions vis-à-vis the civic responsibility of the citizen, and the interplay of the two in the current morass in which the country has found itself.

    The particular forum, appropriately named Lagos- Ibadan Road Update, created in the wake of the on-going construction works being undertaken by the German firm, Julius Berger at the Lagos end of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, not only sought to provide regular, periodic updates on the hellish traffic situation to group members but for members an avenue for engagement on wider range of issues. For yours truly, the chat group has since become a must – a daily companion for the most part of the nearly four harrowing weeks on that traffic corridor. As one might imagine of such groups, discussions, more often than not, tend to veer into the railing against just about everyone deemed complicit in inflicting the needless pain on the “innocent motorist”: the federal government, the police and the traffic management agencies, and of course, the construction company – Julius Berger.

    It is as one might expect of the typical Nigerian Public Square where rules are not only expendable but readily dispensed with. If you discount the indulgence – by some- for disinformation, the penchant to trade fiction for facts, the bombasts, the uncivility of the language deployed to drive arguments, you probably have enough left to make sense of any issue in focus.

    And so it was that the chat group suddenly erupted on Sunday afternoon. This time, the big news was that the contractor, Julius Berger, had allegedly dug a giant canal on the alternative earth road known to have provided some succour in the last four weeks that the closure has lasted.

    What could be the basis – many had wondered? To some, the move was to discourage impatient motorists using the bye-pass to cut their ordeal even as it always turns out, that they end up further complicating the nightmare down the road. The big question was – whodunit?

    Was Julius Berger truly responsible? No one could be sure. A giant earth moving equipment allegedly sighted in the vicinity moments before the act would seem to suffice! Time it was once again, to call out the company for its ‘wickedness’, atrocious speed, indifference to the agonies of the road users and its evident lack of social responsibility given the scale of dislocation that have attended the construction job.

    Having been on the road for more than three years now, could the company not have made better plans not to talk of mobilization? How come, many ask, that JB couldn’t work 24 hours? Are they not being paid? This wasn’t the JB they knew; the one they knew would not only work 24/7 but at breadth-taking speed! The ranting went on and on…

    I perfectly understand the outbursts given the needless pains forced on the commuters on that stretch long arguably as the nation’s busiest traffic corridor.  If you have had the experience of enduring a minimum of four hours of stress in the terrible traffic in the course of eight hours work, you’ll probably understand not just the basis of their frustrations but why their anger is justifiable

    We must agree that Julius Berger has made a mess of the job. After all, it has been four weeks of hell on the highway. True, we may not have seen Nigerians dropping dead on the highway at this time; the same cannot be said of the slow, instalmental death which will surely come in the fullness of time.

    I mean, it would not matter if in the end, the stretch is paved with gold; the idea that a construction company in this day and age, could dispense with the niceties of good corporate behaviour and robust community relations/engagement obviously says a lot about how much premium the company places on the citizens. Ever heard of a doctor putting a patient through the rigours of a major surgery without anaesthesia? But that is what JB does to Nigerians!

    Yet, there is a sense in which our anger is misdirected. In treating Nigerians the way it does, Julius Berger may have in fact stretched outlawry to the limits; nothing however compares with the criminal indifference of Nigeria’s absentee government. Nigerians are supposed to be grateful that the government is finally minded to deliver the road; nothing, it would appear, matter after. The needless death and the public health issues from the lack of attention to details of planning and management are simply taken as necessary derivatives by a government that would rather mouth change than give it practical meaning!

    But then, if the Works Ministry is indifferent, the police, the FRSC and the other agencies of government deployed on the road are worse than pathetic. Good thing that they have not – at least not yet, set up tolling points; they have neither the sense of duty nor the understanding of what their duties demand at a time like this. When they are not indifferent to lawbreaking, some have proven to be abettors of indiscipline – the chief reason why chaos rule on the road.  Forget professionalism; we are yet to see evidence on display on that small stretch of the highway. At best, our uniformed men are mere bystanders!

    Nigerians are truly an impatient lot; not only that, they are certified wailers. They complain about everything under the sun – from the crass incompetence of their institutions to the legendary insensitivity of their government. The truth however is that they are no less complicit in condoning bad behaviour. Imagine how the antics of a few people, driving against traffic at peak traffic periods, turns the entire scene into bedlam. The next thing you hear is let him go – without so much as a demand for penance for the pains inflicted on other road users or the thought that this might constitute an incentive for others to follow the bad example. The trick is to tolerate and complain later!

    I would wager than a good number of motorists would readily present as a good case for the shrink. That is what the scale of chaos suggests. More than that however, it takes a high degree of permissiveness for bad behaviour for the chaos to endure. It is part of the intriguing mystery of how our society still manages to function – albeit minimally as a structured human entity. At best, the agony daily experienced on the Lagos- Ibadan expressway is a window into how we have sunk as a nation.

    Happy Independence Day celebration!

  • Save Satellite Town

    After 59 years of existence as a country, Nigeria is supposed to be celebrating laudable legacies. But instead, she is bogged down by basic existential challenges. Unfortunately, some of these challenges are manmade, and unless we change the way we treat ourselves and our national assets, we may continue tottering on the brink, when our nation’s contemporaries are leapfrogging to conquer space.

    Last Saturday, while journeying to participate at the official visit of the Rotary District Governor of District 9110 Nigeria, Dr. Jide Akeredolu, to the Rotary Club of Satellite Town, a drive that should take less than twenty minutes from Festac Town to Satellite Town, in Lagos, turned into a nightmare, necessitating the abandonment of the vehicle I was driving at a filing station, after wasting hours behind trailers and articulated vehicles.

    As the Assistant District Governor, seconded to supervise the club, I had to ride a motorbike, to ensure my boss doesn’t get there before me. The District Governor on his part journeyed for hours trying to navigate his way to the venue. Without any notice, a major exit artery off the expressway into the Satellite Town was blocked by a caterpillar, forcing the governor to pass the exit-road leading to the venue of the event.

    While the service lane of the expressway from around Ojo barracks down to Festac 3rd gate, is a nightmare, the inner roads of Satellite Town is worse than a nightmare. It is hell on earth. All the inner roads are spectacles of craters and emergency ponds. Whether you are driving on the inner roads of the federal government owned estate or the nearby communities, you are bound to wonder whether that part of Lagos has been at war for decades.

    Embarrassingly, some of the nations that Nigeria rubbed shoulders with in the 1960s, after she gained independence from Great Britain have so much to show off each time they celebrate their independence anniversary. Whether in the economy, military, science or technology, many of them have made significant achievements, and some are rubbing shoulders with the first world countries in science and technology.

    If Nigeria cannot compete in science and technology, it should not be a laggard in maintaining motorable roads, which does not require much exertion. The present leaders should at least maintain the infrastructure developed when Nigeria had the resources from the oil boom, such as the Satellite Town. It should also worry about the public health challenges that come with motorist staying for hours on the traffic.

    If the federal government has abandoned the Satellite Town which it built, the Lagos state government and the local government that controls the area should not abandon the people in the estate and its environs. The level of neglect is so palpable that a visitor would think there is no government office within the estate. So, I was surprised that a local council area has its office within the estate, and yet the entire area is looking like a dungeon.

    But Satellite was not always like that. It was developed as an adjunct to the Festac Town built to host African Nations to the Festival of Arts and Culture in 1977, when our central bank was over flowing with foreign exchange. In a record time, the federal government built the famous Festac Town, where it quartered participants and treated them to a lavish party. Part of the benefit of the African party was arguably the best planned estate in Africa at a time.

    Since Nigeria was awash with petro dollars, the federal authorities decided to build an adjunct to that town. So, a smaller but equally well laid out town was built across the West African trans-highway leading to Benin Republic, which became known as the Satellite Town. That smaller town, though less sophisticated in planning and execution than Festac Town, hosts the Central Bank of Nigeria Estate and several other estates owned by major oil companies and other industries in the 1980s.

    It is inside these enormous housing estates and adjunct communities that the Rotary Club of Satellite Town is tucked in. As the District Governor Akeredolu noted during the club’s presentation of exercise books and grants to selected students of the Satellite senior secoundary and Navy Town senior secoundary schools last Saturday, the Satellite communities have the potential to host a large Rotary Club. But that is not the case, and there is no doubt that the decay of Satellite Town had affected the health of the club, founded in 1982.

    So, those who allowed the town to dilapidate have not only downgraded the quality of life in the estate, they are also denying the residents the benefits that could come from hosting a vibrant Rotary club with all the attendant benefits. To restore the lost glory, the federal government, owners of the major estate in the Satellite town must lead the way. They should be supported by the state and local council authorities, since the extensions have more or less interwoven with the original federal government estate.

    The local council authority should borrow a leaf from the Amuwo-Odofin local council, which maintains the inner roads in Festac Town, even though the estate is owned by the Federal Housing Authority, a federal government agency. A planned urban renewal program is an emergency that would do everybody a lot of good. Whether for the enhancement of the value of the huge investment in housing in the area, or the quality of life of the residents, or general public health, the three levels of government and the residents association should work together to renew Satellite Town.

    The Federal Ministry of Works, which behaves like an irresponsible landowner must mend its waywardness. While allowing the estate to become an eyesore, it still collects levies on transactions on properties it owns in the estate. It even collects development levy, yet there is no iota of development going on. Without equivocation, one can say that if those Africans who marveled at the   beauty of Festac and Satellite Towns when Nigeria showed off its economic prowess in 1977 and beyound should visit now, they will be ashamed at the level of decadence and backwardness of the estate.

    I urge all government authorities to emulate the Rotary Club of Satellite Town, led by Rotarian Vera Nwagu, who despite their environmental challenges, still find a place in their heart to engage in doing public good. Other public spirited individuals resident in Satellite Town and its environs must seek out where the club meets and join them. As one of the best managed international non-governmental organizations with enormous potentials, Rotary stands in good stead to show how to save Satellite Town.

  • Our diminished universities

    As if our universities have not been diminished enough by a proliferation that follows no rhyme or reason,  gross underfunding, loss of esteem, plummeting standards, sex scandals, cultism, infrastructure deficit and lack of direction, they have now been reduced by the news media to firms run by managers.

    Thus, one reads daily about “the management of ABC” university explaining such and such a policy or embarking on such and such an action.

    Previously the body that ran a university used to be called an administration.  What has changed?

    Nothing as far as I can tell, only an imprecise usage gone viral.

    The universities are not firms, ladies and gentlemen of the press. They are not run by managers. They are collegialities run by administrators.

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