The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Made in Nigeria heist

    So much for the national outrage ever since the most distinguished Senator Shehu Sani opened the lid on the outlandish perks awarded by our lawmakers to selves. Now, everyone seems to be falling over themselves in the wake of the so-called revelation if only to be reckoned among the counted. Even the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) – the somnambulist agency in charge of fixing salaries and allowances has woken up from its slumber to join the orchestra.  The senators’ N13.5million monthly running cost, it said, is outside of their purview. The executive branch has been quite characteristically mum since; ditto the National Assembly management – which of course leaves the issue of its justification and authorization hanging. Remember, we are talking of funds whose expenditures are guided by the strictures of Financial Regulation and the General Orders.

    Hopefully, the office of the Accountant General of the Federation will, at some point, step in to resolve the riddle.

    Now that the lawmakers have been called out, shall we now go a step further to do what the irrepressible lawmaker from Kaduna has asked the rest of the moral majority to do –that the executive and the judicial branches open up their own salaries and perks for all to see? Fair, after all, is fair. Even at that, Senator Sani seems to have left out the bureaucracy – that cranky machine that somehow manages to serve itself first before any thought for the rest of us; I would rather the institution is added considering its place as the engine room of the bazaar we call governance. For much as the political actors – given their brash and ostentatious lifestyles – are the bad boys we love to hate, it seems to me that we pay too little attention to the viperous brood: the anonymous players in the rank of the public sector. They include the messenger whose salary, although cannot take him home yet manages somehow to put a decent shelter in the sprawling suburbs of the capital cities; the middle level bureaucrat with their fleet of gleaning SUVs who somehow manages to put up half-dozen apartments in choice areas; and the top echelon with their luxury homes in Europe and Americas, whose wards travel executive class and attend the best schools in the world. They have one thing in common: lifestyles inversely related to their earning power!

    You say these are exceptions rather than the rule? Perhaps. But why condemn one while seemingly condoning the other?

    The public sector is unfortunately not alone in this. Wait until you know what the fat cats in the so-called private sector award themselves in the name of executive compensation. I do not here refer to the board-sanctioned performance-based (or lack-thereof) compensations which are legit – or the corporate freebies that makes players outside the corporate suites green with envy; but rather of the countless gravies massed below the scrutiny of the boards and regulators in the name of entitlement.

    Want to check out companies’ annual reports? What do they reveal? Not much – you say?

    Well, those who know can easily point to the single line item called “management expenses” to underline the alliance of the corporatist class against the rest of us. In an era of below par services, shrinking accounts and out-of-control redundancies, there seems to be no stopping the upward spiral of those perks! That is how our self-help republic runs! The few who can manage to extort some privilege from the system consider it their lot to take maximum advantage of things even that means blowing up the ladder for the coming generation. The rest merely bid their time hoping for when their chance will come to repeat the cycle.

    We sure know how greedy the political class is. Theirs’ however, is not any worse than those of other actors in the system hence the Hobbesian struggle that now defines our national lives. If the truth be told – our lawmakers, hardly the only sinners, merely reflect the reality of the self-help culture; the pervasive failure of our institutions – an indictment of the unthinking brood running the affairs country.

    And so it goes: between the overpaid lawmaker and the low level messenger, the difference is hardly about the greed quotient as it is about their access to power and privilege. Both relish the good life and could be expected to act one way or the other to get there. Whether it is in the do-or-die politics; the cheating, the mindless killings and the wave of cultism, they merely express what the American Sociologist, Robert Merton eloquently explained as the typology of individual adaptation when faced with limited means to reaching socially approved goals. This is where institutions become necessary – to create pathways (means) to socially-sanctioned goals and to punish bad behaviour. Here, we not only suffer dearth of institutional capacity, those charged will fixing the problem will rather suffer the indulgence of cornering available opportunities for selves and cohorts. There, in short, lies the tragedy of Nigeria’s myopic elite.

    In our self-help republic, patience is everything. For the politician, it comes to understanding that the four year electoral cycle would barely suffice to create the war chest for the next cycle of elections. The salary being paltry needs an augmentation that only a fat running costs and contractor-tied constituency project can offer.  Why bother to think about overhauling the mortgage system, the credit system and other quality legislative work when there is so limited time to take care of their individual life insurances?

    For the young, out of school graduate being uncharitably described as unemployable, there will obviously enough time to offer endless platitudes. For those brimming with ideas and can’t get finance to push their ideas off the ground, all they need do is wait for the time when the distinguished fellows announce the next round of poverty alleviation schemes. For the budding entrepreneurs who, somehow manage to pass the front door of finance houses and told to bring wife or mum – or both – as collateral, they are well advised to do as they are told; never mind the usurious charges and interests he would be called upon to pay in the end. Same for those lucky to get a reasonably-paying job and needs to pay two years rent upfront to get an apartment, including those desirous of a used car for which they are expected to cough out princely millions, the can find succor either in the word – patience or miracle! For sure, either helps in the Shithole republic. So much for their legitimized heist – and tragically, so much for a country in dearth of leadership.

  • Between PMB, Obasanjo and Danjuma

    The triad of Muhammadu Buhari, Olusegun Obasanjo and Theophilus Danjuma number among that post-Yakubu Gowon military elite, gathered behind the short-fused but short-lived Murtala Muhammed (1938-1976).

    They prided themselves the post-Gowon military’s golden reformers, on account of Gen. Gowon’s failure to deliver civil rule, which they did under Gen. Obasanjo.  With that, however, they awarded selves a huge dose of patriotic entitlement, which an uncritical media parrots as sacrosanct.

    Still, as a class, but with different degrees of culpability, they delivered more tinsel than gold.

    Despite that shortfall, as a collective, they are loudest in trumpeting a monopoly of public sainthood; with the hollowest grating the loudest, of the holy noise.

    On this scale, Gen. Obasanjo is clearly first. Under that dynamics, he has grossed a two-term elected presidency, essayed a disastrous third term, and canonized himself Nigeria’s No. 1 public conscience — at least, among the obtuse, the gullible and the naive.  That was aside from becoming accidental military head of state, after Murtala’s assassination in 1976.

    President Buhari, clearly with the most reasonable claim to decency in the public space, even after tenure as military head of state, is clearly last.

    That virtue, of personal probity, propelled him to a democratic era presidential encore in 2015, after the accumulated decadence of his peers almost crashed the republic, under the effete President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Gen. Danjuma, taciturn and respectable, is in-between.  As chief of Army staff, he was military enforcer of Obasanjo’s tenure as military head of state (1976-1979).  Also, as Defence minister, a key player, during Obasanjo’s first term as elected president (1999-2003), though the two would later fall out, in a bitter public spat.

    To this triad, you might add a fourth: Gen. Ibrahim Babaginda who, as self-named “military president”, spawned the most decadent government in Nigerian history.

    This brief background is imperative, for the triad of Obasanjo, Babangida and Danjuma are involved in some media grandstanding of late, with the usually taciturn Danjuma’s the latest rally.

    It is nothing but an elite gang-up, which again the unwary, among the deprived public, is programmed to cheer as some redemptive push.

    There is nothing redemptive about it all — just another selfish gaming, to clothe base, selfish interests, in immaculate public-spirited garb.

    Why, the empty racket is even aided and abetted by a sensational media, bawling: the generals are speaking!   Which generals?

    It is the tragic hysteria of a howling media, that boasts no institutional memory; nor is guided by history, the rich fount of that memory.

    But more tragic: the most decadent segment of former military plutocrats are on the war path; and, as of right, decree thunderous public applause.  What hubris!

    They hide behind the present challenges under PMB to goad an unwary public into rebellion.  What conceit!

    In a high season of high cynics, even IBB saw no irony in his so-called letter to PMB.  Well, he first wrote.  Then, he didn’t.  Finally, he did, but …!

    It was the classic IBB hee-haw!  But it was enough.  There is nothing more telling than opportunistic grief, in a land of piercing pains!

    Of course, IBB clambered on the back of Obasanjo’s “press release”, excoriating PMB, strafing both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the doomed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which, by the way, he thoroughly ruined during his presidential years.  He now  pushes yet another racket, in his so-called Coalition for Nigeria (CN).

    It is the latest Trojan horse: the Hobson’s choice from Obasanjo’s hypocritical stable of holy mischief, to which the gullible have a democratic right to embrace.

    But then, this caveat: the self-consecrated holy pope of Nigerian politics — and governance — has a clear, demonstrable record of nexus between public strain and private g(r)ain.  Whoever trades at his stall and goes home with a bargain?

    Still, folks are entitled to their democratic follies and foibles!

    That brings the discourse to the Danjuma put down — a ringing denunciation of the security forces under PMB, that must be taken seriously.

    After accusing the security forces of siding with “Fulani herdsmen” to kill his Taraba locals, he slammed the military as a “Fulani” hegemonic army and called on the Taraba people to “defend” themselves.  He spoke at the inaugural convocation of the Taraba State University.

    These are grievous allegations, made even more thunderous by Danjuma’s natural taciturnity.  Might there be any truth in it all?  The Buhari Presidency must get to the root of the matter fast.

    Even as a mere allegation, any supposition that the Nigerian military is beholden to any ethnic group is explosive enough; and should worry everyone.  Like Caesar’s wife, the security forces must be absolutely without slur.

    Still, why is Gen. Danjuma projecting the Taraba conflict as a one-way killing spree?  The objective situation on the ground negates that claim.

    The whole swath of Taraba, Adamawa, Benue, Plateau and Kaduna are a near-eternal belt of conflicts, with the Fulani taking on the Junkun, the Junkun taking on the Tiv, the Tiv taking on the Fulani, and the Christians and Muslims, of southern Kaduna, sizing up one another for combat.

    In this explosive vortex, fired by mutual hate and mass poverty, the politics of religion often ruthlessly imposes the religion of politics; with zero-sum winners and losers pushing aside present fate to plot future wars for dear faith!

    Incidentally, Kaduna and Danjuma’s Taraba provide the latest spooky examples.  Under Jonathan in December 2012, Patrick Yakowa, Kaduna’s first Christian governor, died in an air crash.  The Muslim lobby could not wait to correct that historical blip.

    In Taraba, in October 2012, Danbaba Suntai (now dead), the state’s umpteenth Christian governor became gravely ill, from another air crash.  But the Christian lobby there dug in, stonewalling any prospect of a first Muslim governor for the state.

    In the politics of religion and religion of politics, therefore, there appears no love lost between both divides: in Kaduna (tilting Muslim) and Taraba (tilting Christian).

    So, that is why Danjuma’s one-sided killing theory can hardly stand logical scrutiny.  And the general himself, with all due respect, cannot claim total neutrality in the matter.

    The patriotic love that drove him to cry out for his people also drives the Fulani to look out for their own.  But what is bad — and must be condemned — is the wilful spilling of blood on both sides.

    It is on this high pro-life principle that both sides must unite and force a stop to the carnage.  That cannot, however, be with Danjuma’s Taraba call to “defend yourself”.  That borders on the anarchic, a perfect recipe for more bloodshed — of the poor and the vulnerable.

    Though PMB’s profile doesn’t quite fit into that devious fellow that would turn the Nigerian security forces into a Fulani ethnic army, the government should look out for such rogue elements in the security forces and root them out fast.

  • Ortom’s necromancy

    Raiding the dead, to procure a mandate for the living, is not new.   Peter Obi, then sitting Anambra governor; and his then protégée, Willy Obiano, traversed that track in Anambra 2013.

    So if Benue Governor, Samuel Ortom, appears to play devastating politics with the dead, for the deadly benefits of the living, he is hardly novel.

    But the question is: when would the Benue living wake up to the dire risk of this deadly political necromancy?

    In 2013, a certain Chris Ngige needed to be defeated, by all means necessary.  So Obi, with Obiano in tow, made electioneering sorties to the grave of Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, to seek the blessing of the dead, for their living candidate.

    Indeed, those Jew-versus-Gentile missions were never complete without Victor Umeh, then national chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), but now a senator of the Federal Republic from Anambra Central.  Until he died, Ojukwu was regarded as the spiritual leader of APGA.

    So, APGA’s Obiano was the Jew.  All Progressives Congress, APC’s Ngige was the Gentile.  It was all decided at the holy grave.  Political necromancy never yielded sweeter fruits, as Mr. Obiano romped into office!

    But all, it appears, is turned gall now — at least in the Peter Obi camp.  Perhaps believing, after nudging his ward to victory that the dead stay dumb, Mr. Obi found new fortunes with the then federal ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Four years later, Obi came hoisting a different banner.  But the old necromantic army lay in wait.  Before you could holler “Peter!”, the former governor, as a political force, was unhorsed.

    Was that the dead dishing out political death for political harlotry?  Or the miffed living, railing at unprincipled politicking?   Who knows?

    For Obi, however, it was macabre electoral symbolism gone frightfully awry, with a dire prognosis of looming political death.

    Yet, in comparison to Benue, Anambra’s was innocuous, if opportunistic, symbolism.

    The current Benue version is far more deadly, for it is devastating politics, tugging at the soul of the dead (who should rest in peace); to bait the living (whose lives are useless without peace).

    Benue has been home to unfortunate killings, traced to the high-wire tension between herders and farmers.  A party to the dispute has alleged it’s ethnic cleansing, for which it fingers the “Fulani”; and accuses the federal authorities of grave collusion, because the sitting president is Fulani.  Maybe.

    But another school of thought thinks it is nothing but brutal economic survival, manifesting as personal and collective tragedies, which pathos cut deep; assuming ethnic hues, among the common victims.

    Whatever it is — and the tragedy and blood-shedding is to be regretted by all — currying explosive sympathy, by subversive external elements, playing nothing but soulless politics, won’t solve the problem.

    Parties in the dispute, with their professional sympathizers — genuine or subversive, laying wreaths all over the place — should learn from the Rwandan experience (see the accompanying story by retired Col. Azubike Nass), where orchestrated Tutsi-Hutu hate baited nothing but avoidable catastrophe.

    Still, after all the emotional madness, the same Hutu and Tutsi have settled down in their country, probably more than ever, appreciating the worth of peace.

    Let the Benue and federal authorities learn from the Rwandan experience — which Genesis, incidentally, is another herder-farmer confrontation — to bring back the peace, so the Benue people get their lives back.

    That is the sane way to go.  Political necromancy does nothing but plants the seeds of more hideous future tragedies!

    The dead are dead.  It is the living that feel the pains.

  • From Rwanda: herdsmen vs farmers

    I am a member of Senior Course 26 of the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Kaduna.  I was for the course in 2006 and it was during the course that I met two very fine officers from Rwanda.  They were both Lieutenant-Colonels; and they were both Tutsis.  Both of them were battle-hardened and one of them had battle scars to show for it (lost one eye, lost many fingers).

    These two officers gave me a better understanding of the Rwandan conflict from a herdsmen/farmers perspective; and how it was resolved.  I believe we could draw lessons from them.  Below is a narrative of what they told me:

    1. Tutsis and Hutus are basically the same ethnic group.  They speak the same language and they belong to the same religion: Christianity.
    2. Traditionally, the terms Tutsi and Hutu were social classes: a class difference based on ownership of cows.  If you owned more than 10 cows, then you were a Tutsi; and if you owned less than 10, you were Hutu.
    3. Traditionally, you could move from being a Tutsi to a Hutu and vice versa, according to the increase or decrease of your cows. (Their colonial masters tried to tweak it but that is another story).
    4. Tutsis were only 15 per cent of the population, as of the time of the Rwandan conflict.
    5. The underlying factor/remote causes of the conflict, according to the officers, was the dwindling livestock; and a homeland status for the Tutsis. (Many of us know the other political, humanitarian and economic issues).
    6. A bitter conflict ensued and the Tutsis emerged victorious (if that is the correct terminology).  Paul Kegame, who is a Tutsi, became the president.

    Winning the peace

    The people of Rwanda decided to win the peace after the conflict through a “no victor, no vanquished “ arrangement, amongst other deliberate policies.

    This entailed addressing the root problems/causes of the conflict.  One of such problems was addressing the herdsmen (Tutsi)/farmers (Hutu) problem.

    It was agreed that the Tutsi were to be settled with their cows.  The government  would embrace a zero-grazing policy through a feedlot arrangement (not ranching) — feedlots are very small spaces that hold a high stocking density of livestock.  Many people do not realize that ranches occupy large spaces.  The ideal stocking density is two cows per hectare in open grazing.  A hectare is two football fields, side by side — 100 metres/100 metres or 1000 square metres).

    Steps taken

    The government embarked on land demarcation, infrastructure development and replacement of the Watutsi (the Tutsi cows, just like the White Fulani or Red Bororo), with more exotic cows like the Friesian Holstein, that had more milk yield per individual cow, at a ration of 1:3, or even, 1:4.  That meant that the Tutsis could have fewer cows with more yields. Incidentally, one of the officers was then the chairman of the Friesian Holstein Cattle Owners Association of Rwanda.

    The herdsmen (Tutsis) were then encouraged to exchange their Watutsi cows with the more exotic breeds; and to move their cows into feedlots where they could get additional government support/incentives from the government.

    Both groups agreed and the policy was implemented.  They eventually came to realize the importance of each group and their interdependence.  This created a new economy at the grassroots and it was a major contributory factor to peace in Rwanda.  I saw a similar arrangement in Ethiopia in 2010; and it was also working there.

    Rwanda has taught us that the problem of clashes between herdsmen and farmers could be solved/resolved to the benefit of all.  I believe that it could work in Nigeria, with careful planning and execution.

    Lesson learnt

    1. Herdsmen/farmers conflict could happen even amongst people of the same ethnicity and religion, for socio-economic reasons.  We should therefore avoid looking at the current challenges in Nigeria from an ethno-religious point of view.
    2. The settlement of herdsmen is a process and not an event that could happen overnight.  Governments should realize that it would take more than laws to address the challenges.  It would require careful planning by the government at all levels, building of infrastructure, development of a support mechanism, application of realistic  laws and organizing the people for mutual benefit.
    3. The challenges of clashes between herdsmen and farmers are not insurmountable. They could be solved/resolved to the benefit of all in Nigeria.

     

    • Col. Nass is a retired officer of the Nigerian Army and a veteran of the Sierra Leone conflict, where he served as one of the ECOMOG field commanders

  • Politics in the Age of the Internet

    The power of information technology was again splendidly displayed this past week as millions in some 800 locations across the world marched in solidarity with American students spearheading  protests against the gun violence that has turned their schools and streets and other social spaces into killing fields.

    “March for Our Lives” was a triumph of mobilisation and organisation.

    Not since worldwide protests in 2003 against the imminent invasion of Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom based on transparent falsehoods has the world witnessed such a display of common purpose.  The rallies did not stop the invasion, perceived a “disaster” in its immediate aftermath, and now regarded as a crime, the horrid dimensions of which unfold with each passing day.

    Last weekend’s rallies may not in the short or even medium result in significant gun regulation in the United States where “the right of the people keep and bear arms” intended by the framers of the Constitution as legitimation for raising “a well-regulated Militia” essential to “the security of a free State,” has almost become an adjunct of “the right to the life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” clause of the Declaration of Independence.

    But it cannot be said, even now, that the rallies were unproductive.  They have served notice on lawmakers beholden to the National Rifle Association that the marchers and their supporters will henceforth employ the power of the ballot to challenge the power of the bullet that the NRA has relentlessly underwritten and sanctioned in the political and social life of the United States.

    That is no idle threat.  The NRA itself has in the wake of the protests lost much of its vast portfolio                      of its corporate endorsements and sponsorships.  It is not about to collapse – far from it.  But its stranglehold on gun legislation may slacken under sustained pressure from “March for Our Lives.”

    Steve Ballmer, co-founder with Bill Gates of Microsoft, said some ten years ago that the state of information technology then was no more advanced than that of the Model T Ford motorcar of the 1920s which, among other benefits, guaranteed its purchaser any colour so long as it was black.

    There was no Facebook then, no Twitter, no Snapchat, no Skype, no Instagram; none of the thousands of internet platforms and applications large and small that have become commonplace since then.  I say nothing about AI, or International Intelligence.

    With information technology, the possibilities are truly limitless, and so is the power.

    But it is a weapon that cuts both ways.  Its power can be harnessed to multiply human happiness or deployed to deepen human misery, to foster solidarity or to promote hatred and war, to cure and heal, or to kill on an industrial scale.

    When the fax machine came on stream in the mid-70s, it was hailed as the latest in a long line of “technologies of freedom” which, by making point-to-point and group-to-group communication through word and image feasible and affordable, has dealt the censor a severe blow on the way to ending his or her creepy occupation.

    They called its latest manifestation social media, as distinct from the older media that promoted a unidirectional flow of communication for the most part, with scant feedback opportunities.  Social media would democratise communication and move the world closer to what the Canadian media philosopher called a “global village.”

    Back in 1945, the British science writer Arthur C. Clarke had hinted at the feasibility of designing such a world. In a paper for the technical journal Wireless World, Clarke raised the possibility of placing “artificial satellite” at such a distance from the earth that the satellite would stay stationary relative to the same spot and lie within optical range of half the earth’s surface.  Three repeater stations set 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, Clarke postulated, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire plant.

    As Clarke saw it, that was a project “for the more remote future – at least half a century ahead.”  Twelve years later, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite Sputnik.  Within four decades, fears were already being expressed that the geostationary orbit, the “parking space” for communication satellites 93 miles above the earth’s surface, would soon be crowded.

    How many people saw then that “technologies of freedom,” now symbolised most powerfully by the Internet, would within decades also come to be regarded as weapons of intrusion and invasion of privacy, for spawning and propagating conspiracies, conducting drug trafficking and human trafficking and child prostitution, spreading fear and hatred on a scale not previously known and threatening to strain even further the delicate consensus undergirding human society?

    Now, social media seems poised also to upend political community as we know it.

    Each passing day brings fresh indications that Russian security operatives acting on orders from President Vladimir Putin hacked into the computers of the Democrat National Council, vacuumed  material that would hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances and play to the advantage of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, and planted on Facebook false and scurrilous information designed to serve the same ends in those states where tight presidential races are won or lost  based on the electoral college system rather than the actual vote.

    Donald Trump’s presidency, it is now being said, and not just in the ranks of his implacable foes, was founded more on Putin’s designs than on the sovereign will of the American people or Trump’s personal merits.

    The evidence is less substantial, but there are many on the other side of the North Atlantic who hold that the Russian authorities had employed similar aid the Brexiteers in the campaign on Britain’s future in the European Union.  They won, but rarely has victory tasted so unpleasant.  One more victory like that, and Britain would become a European backwater.  Not that Nick Farrage and his followers would mind that anyway.

    Last month’s general elections in Italy, a metaphor for political instability, furnish even more dramatic evidence that information technology can be employed to alter the political landscape almost beyond recognition.

    Italy’s trainload of traditional parties was almost swept off the political tracks, leaving in substantial reckoning only two: the Five Star Movement and the League.

    Five Star is a web-based party platform called Rousseau that promises to deliver “direct democracy,” a vehicle for articulating and ventilating resentments and fake news run by tech-savvy Italians. Like its 31-year-old leader, Luigi di Maio, who was elected through Rousseau, Five Star stands for little else. The party swept the impoverished south, eclipsing the Christian Democrats in their traditional redoubt

    In the north, it was the League that triumphed. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, is a fiercely anti-immigrant nativist who has called for cities to be “cleansed” by the police.

    The center-left Democratic Party took just 18.7 percent of the vote and its leader, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, is set to quit.  In the age of television, the three-term former prime minister and one-time media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who resembles Donald Trump in so many ways, was the politician to beat.  He still owns several influential television channels but with the Internet ascendant, his centre-right Forza Italia limped through the race with just 14 percent of the vote.

    The League and Five Star Movement have the numbers to govern, but they will not find it easy to put together a government.  Months of horse trading lie ahead.  Even for Italy the near future will be nothing familiar.

    Now shift gears and fast-forward to Nigeria’s general elections scheduled for April 2019.  The indications are that it will be most bitterly contested in memory.  Much of the contest is going to be waged on the Internet, to reach tens of millions of Nigerians connected to that global network with a steady drumbeat of lies half-truths and with hate-filled propaganda.

    Nigeria is, of course, not the United States, nor Italy.  Tribe and religion and careerism may fuel bubbling resentments, but they may also temper them.

    However, given today’s shifting alliances and the insurgent new formations, growing public disenchantment with the existing political order and the likely deployment of information technology on a wide scale but with scant inhibition in the forthcoming general elections, is it entirely inconceivable that the outcome may bear some resemblance to recent election outcomes in the United States and Italy?

  • Police: Another peek in the mirror

    With the revelations emerging from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation in the aftermath of the implementation federal government-ordered Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), it has become clear that the rot in the Nigeria Police is actually deeper than we thought.  Before now, the nation was led to believe that the trouble with the Nigeria Police was the disproportionate number of its men engaged in extra-regimental duties – that aside the rank corruption, impunity and mind-boggling inefficiency that have come to define police operations in these parts.

    By the former, I mean the astounding stats of a 400,000-strong police meant to cater for the policing needs of 180 million people – a quarter of which are deployed to guard our big men – the so-called  VIPs. To think that yours truly only very recently drew attention to the racket on this page!

    Well, I am told that the racket remains alive and thriving. President Muhammadu Buhari may have handed out his order to get the men back on their police beats since August 2015, both the Ministry of Police Affairs and the Police Service Commission are yet to know what to make of his order three years after. As if to remind us of how ineffectual the order by the President is, the incumbent Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, just like Ogbonnaya Onovo and Solomon Arase before him, has since issued his own version of “immediate withdrawal” order on all police orderlies attached to private individuals and companies. The latest is that order that has since been suspended by one month.

    What is the strength of the Nigerian Police?

    Like the public service of which it is only a branch, the actual number has, up until now, remained in the realm of guestimates.  Now, thanks to the federal government-ordered Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), the riddle appears to have been resolved – finally. As against the 400,000 figure often bandied, we now know that police strength currently stands at 291,685. But then, that is only one half of the puzzle. The other half is that some 80,115 ‘ghost officers’ are also on the payroll – drawing monthly salaries and emoluments up till – we are told – February this year!  Now, that is one ghost officer to four living policemen – including those on VIP escort duties!

    Imagine fellow citizens worrying about 100,000 – a mere 30 percent – offering their services for elite protection – and additional ghosts accounting for 25 percent on the payroll? Imagine further that between the 30 percent on VIP duty and the 25 percent on ghost-duty, the luckless 180-something million citizens are left with barely 150,000 policemen to watch their backs! Shouldn’t that itself qualify for a place in the Guinness Book of Records?

    Imagine further that the humongous wages and emoluments for the 80,000 ghosts actually end up – not in any celestial account – but a local account operated by a living person. And finally, think of the tragedy that the operators of the accounts, despite the Know-Your Customer rule mandated by the apex bank, will never be known to the anti-graft bodies for a just restitution! That is the summary of the revelation from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation on the status of the police personnel payroll.

    By the way, who remembers a certain Senator Isa Hamma Misau that thinks the he has the problem of the police all figured out? The senator from Bauchi – himself a former cop and son to an ex-AIG – it was who insisted that the problem with the police is not so much about lack of funds but the top brass that insists on feeding fat on the misery of the rank and file?  Remember his reference to the pay-as-you-go racket starring the police top brass, the banks and oil companies said to rake in billions that are neither part of police appropriation nor accounted for in the books? Where is he today? The last we heard of him was being dragged before the courts to answer charges for the high crime of opening his mouths too wide!

    For sure, Nigeria is an incredible country. Here is a country that would not take care of little things yet would insist on getting people into Mars. And so it goes that a country whose public service is riddled with ghosts would have far less to worry about than a vain pursuit of restitution by the thieving band that sees itself as the leadership class.

    How much have been saved? Billions – we are told. How about an audit or forensic trail of where the humongous monies went? You bet; it won’t happen. For Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun, it probably suffices that billions have been – or are being – saved. And so the farce called public service reforms goes on and on.

    As for the rest of us, condemned to the daily deprecation of the activities of the men on patrol, their unprofessional obsequiousness and beggarly disposition in the course of duty, it seems only too convenient to ignore the activities of the shadowy players ensconced in the cozy offices responsible for bringing the police institution to ruin.

    For me, I verily believe that the average policeman deserves more understanding than the angry, frustrated public is often willing to give. Now, that is saying a lot about the activities of operatives who prefer to act the bully when civility would simply do. But then, the truth is that the ‘crimes’ of these little men pale into insignificance compared with the pillaging being done in their name by a privileged few.  Seems about time citizens focused on the activities of the thieving band.

  • Rose in the house

    She is — she insists, just Mrs: “because of this ring”; lifting her left fingers to show off her wedding ring, with the mirth and glee of the newly wed — Folorunso Alakija (FA).

    But she is known around, in the charity and well, spiritual world, as Rose of Sharon.

    Still, before charity came business.  So, there was Supreme Stitches (SS), one of the marquee players in Nigeria’s fashion world, when stark tailoring was morphing into the sheer art of design.  Of course, SS would rebrand into the tonier Rose of Sharon House of Fashion, which shaped the couture of the high and the mighty.

    And, the real deal, FAMFA Oil, the Alakija family’s oil exploration and production business.  FAMFA is somewhat reminiscent of the great MKO Abiola, perhaps a philanthropist of no equal in all of Nigeria’s history.

    Though already rich in solid billions, when he hit crude with his Summit Oil, MKO still reportedly gushed in Yoruba: “Obe ree!” — this is the read deal!

    But Mrs Alakija did not come to The Nation to discuss business, except when it interfaced with her women empowerment efforts.  So, to charity we shall return.

    Her charity agency is called the Rose of Sharon Foundation (RoSF).  Its spiritual arm, Rose of Sharon Glorious Ministry International, she disclosed, started as a house fellowship in her home, but now boasts a sizable number of worshippers.

    Even then, FA — Folorunso Alakija — would pun her initials, for yet another worthy cause: Flourish Africa (FA).  That NGO is a network of women devoted to one another’s welfare, care and empowerment, especially of widows, which led Ripples to crack a good-natured banter — who takes care of the widowers!

    Still, the most moving question,  on the day, came from Steve Osuji — ravaging hunger, and allied misery, in the North East.

    Her response was instructive.  It showed  the perils of sloppy reportage and wayward commentaries, on corruption, the nemesis of the most vulnerable segment of the Nigerian people.

    Mrs Alakija acknowledged the dire situation in the North East, but appealed to everyone to chip in their bits, adding that the so-called billionaires could not do alone.

    Still, she would wish raising money for such were more transparent, suggesting an online process, from which the likes of Avaaz and other credible international agencies, raise great sums, in small amounts worldwide, to fight specific causes.

    What drives those campaigns, she insists, is trust — trust that the fund would be used, fully and faithfully, for the cause it was raised.  Not here, where “you could be told a snake had swallowed millions!”

    That provoked uproarious laughter, by the assembly gathered, at The Nation Boardroom in Lagos.

    The snake-swallowing-millions bit was straight out of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), that alleged Jonathan era cesspool of graft and sleaze, that its present management is trying to cleanse.

    But the reportage of this otherwise laudable effort, by JAMB’s current managers, has been so sloppy, and commentaries on it so wayward, you would think Prof. Ishaq Oleyede and co were flaunting their own decadence.

    Yet, the reverse is the case — no thanks to a media that loves to sensationalize, tantalize and demonize.

    But how does all of this affect charity, and therefore the society’s most vulnerable?  Simple.  If charities flinch from committing resources, because the process is opaque, the most vulnerable, that sorely need help, get hit.  That could make a difference between life and death.

    So, when a local charity, which is in the vortex of the crisis, gets skeptical about pushing resources, to ease a clear catastrophe, the harm becomes even clearer.

    Yet, an anti-corruption crusade ought to achieve the exact opposite: make the system more transparent, raise confidence all round and funnel help to those who need it most, either by routine government intervention or through charity NGOs.

    That is why the media should always keep in view the full picture, no matter the immediate pull to tantalize, to sensationalize or to titillate.

    But talking charity, and judging from the literature the Alakija entourage dropped with their hosts, the Rose of Sharon group would appear to have done a lot.

    On this score, FA — Flourish Africa — seems especially impressive, with the breath of its focus on every gamut of the woman’s life.

    Indeed FA, by its website, adopts a total approach, to improving the life of the modern woman: “living” (basic and motivational tips on focused living); “health and wellness” (the routine exercise, with an eye on the beauty regime); “career” (the path of the modern woman as a successful professional); “love-relationship” (the core of a woman’s life, which could make or mar).

    The other major planks includes: “inspired” (more pep talks on focus: “Cut out the noise, focus on doing the right thing, making an impact on opening doors for others to come … “, that from Uche Pedro, a female motivational speaker, under the rubrics of  ”Monday motivation”), aside from news about other impactful women: their career, fashion and styles, videos on relevant interests, and a virtual shop, to buy books and relevant information materials.

    FA would appear clearly elitist, from its subjects and packaging.  But it could be aspirational too, for lower cadre woman, working towards better their lives.

    Still, the Rose of Sharon Foundation (RoSF), with its focus on empowering widows, their children and orphans, appears in the vortex of offering raw succour — and with the fulsome testimonies, from its many beneficiaries, it would appear doing a good job.

    Especially laudable is its stress on women empowerment and skills acquisition, in bag making, jewellery designs, wig making, catering and baking, tie and dye textiles design, print technology, fashion design, tying of headgear, make-up artistry and detergent and insecticide production.

    Its grand strategy would appear making small-scale entrepreneurs out of this otherwise disadvantaged and disoriented segment of the female population — good!

    Still, a lot remains to be done, even among women not so vulnerable, but no less embattled.

    Stella Monye, ace musician and hard working entrepreneur, still runs around trying to raise money for surgery to save her only child, Ibrahim.  Ibrahim had a freak domestic accident at 13.  Years later in his late 20s, he is still bogged down, after many failed surgeries.

    Against great odds, Stella, the doting mum, is determined to save her son — or die trying.  She needs help.

    So does Moses Alabi-Isiama, 33,  a first class graduate of Energy and Petroleum Studies, from Novena University, a private Nigerian university.  The Nation Saturday columnist, Segun Ayobolu brought his plight to the fore, in his column, on March 17.

    A N609, 000 debt, owed to his former university, according to the Ayobolu column, separates him from his dream: becoming a professor of petroleum engineering.  He needs help too!

    The intervention of the likes of Rose of Sharon is not that everyone that needs automatically gets one.

    It is rather that in a caring society, some fellow citizens would always stretch a helping hand, even when not most convenient.

    That ray of hope could make all the difference — and that perhaps, is the beauty of having a rose in the house.

  • Our much-maligned lawmakers

    It says a great deal about the extraordinary forbearance, the calm self-possession and the dignified restraint of members of the National Assembly that they have for so long put up with the most provocative falsehoods circulated and re-circulated about their compensation package and refused to be drawn into any discussion or debate on the issue.

    Their remit, remember, is to make good laws for the governance of Nigeria.  A discussion of their compensation package would therefore have been not merely a distraction; it would also have been subversive of that sacred mandate.

    A principal aide to one distinguished lawmaker told me that nothing would have been easier for the National Assembly to invoke its sweeping powers to teach these career calumniators a lesson they will never forget, and that the Assembly in fact came frequently under pressure to do just that.

    The aide was corroborated by one of the 25 personal assistants of another lawmaker whose ambition is to be elevated from the ranks of the merely honourable to the league of the actually distinguished. That aide was in turn corroborated by the deputy chief driver for another lawmaker’s fleet of exotic motorcars.

    But the collective wisdom of entire Assembly usually prevailed.

    Don’t dignify these frustrated malcontents whom we shall unfortunately always have among us:  don’t dignify them by answering or chastising them.

    Better to let them stew in their envy and drown in their cacophony, those so-called civil-society activists on the prowl for the next commissioned hit job, brown-envelope journalists sounding off as if they were crackerjack investigative reporters, frazzled charge-and-bail lawyers in their threadbare gowns and mouldy wigs, shoes misshapen from pounding court houses in search of clients, and self-styled anti-corruption crusaders so used to hearing their own jaded voices that they can no longer hear anything else.

    Day after day, in season and out of season, they carped endlessly about what they gave a gullible public to believe was the compensation package of our lawmakers – a package it would be courteous to call unconscionable and downright obscene even if was only 50 percent accurate.

    Each of these groups put out its own jaundiced and discrepant figures, but a public only too willing to believe the worst about persons of great consequence was not in the least troubled by the inconsistencies.

    In fact, the more improbable the figures, the more enthusiastically they were embraced by the public.

    Going by one of the more brazen publications, merely honourable lawmakers took home some N40 million every month.  Forty million Naira each month in the year, it is necessary to repeat, lest those of our countrymen whom time and tide and circumstance left behind think the figure represents the official compensation for an entire year.

    Distinguished members carted home some N2 million more each month, according to the publications under reference, satisfied that though insubstantial in monetary terms, it represented at least a tacit acknowledgement of the difference between being merely honourable and being truly distinguished.

    And these figures pertained only to above-the-table-payments, the traducers said, leaving it to the public to fill in, as its warped imagination dictated, what must have passed under the table.

    They had calculated that this strategy would goad the lawmakers out of their silence and engender a debate that was sure to trap them irretrievably in syndicated sleaze.  If they say their earnings are not a monumental scam and a shameless one at that, let them spell out their earnings clearly and unambiguously.

    Actuated as always by the finest traditions of noblesse oblige, the lawmakers refused.  Their slanderers who probably think that noblesse oblige is a delicacy specially confected to tickle the palates of the degenerate lawmakers argued that the lawmakers’ stony silence stemmed from nothing higher than the animal instinct for self-preservation.  They kept piling on, hoping that the wall of silence would develop a crack if the battering was kept going long enough.

    And so, the inventory of acts and non-acts for which they said the lawmakers were lavishly compensated just kept growing and growing.

    At one point, it included the following:  sitting, standing and maintaining every position in between; for meeting and not meeting; for clearing their throats to talk, talking, and not talking; for not clearing their throats; for belching and refraining from belching; for staying in one place and going everywhere; for picking their teeth; for the upkeep of their harems and their cars and their pets; for their clothing, right up to their intimate apparel, and generally keeping up with the latest fashion trends;  for hair care, manicure, pedicure, face and body massage; for sleeping on the job or staying awake.

    They even put it about that our lawmakers had parlayed what in their ignorance they called “the sedate and cushy job” of making laws into a punitive hardship that must be bounteously rewarded in cash.

    So unremitting was the malevolence of the calumniators that, instead of applauding our public-spirited lawmakers for submitting to debate a proposal to cut their allowances by a hefty 30 percent when they could have preempted discussion or raised their emoluments to keep pace with soaring inflation and the misfortunes of the Naira, they quipped: 30 percent of what?

    Now we know the truth.  And it has come, not from the jaundiced calumniators aforementioned, but from the least expected source–the Senate itself.

    According to Senator Sani (APC, Kaduna Central), the consolidated salary and allowances for each member of the Senate stands at only N700, 000 a month.

    In addition, each senator receives N13.5 million, being only unspecified “running costs” that must be accounted for nevertheless, and is thus strictly not a part of the so-called compensation package.

    To top it off, each senator is awarded a grant of N200 million a year as grant for projects to be sited in his or her constituency.  Contrary to what the calumniators have been claiming, the grant does not come as a cash handout.  The project is executed not by the lawmaker but through a private arrangement between him or her and a certified government agency.

    The arrangement leaves plenty of room for chiseling, Sani has acknowledged.  But it is nothing like the organised swindle the calumniators have been calling it.

    Prorated, the entire package may well gross out at some N42 million per month for each senator.  But that is emphatically not a monthly salary as the public had been led to believe.

    Even if you added the costs of all those luxury cars that the lawmakers are always acquiring with public funds and the unspent funds they share out at the end of each year as if they came out of a trading surplus, any objective commentator would give our lawmakers high praise for judicious fiscal husbandry.

    As I see it, they deserve an immediate and unconditional apology from their calumniators.

    But that is not the way the lawmakers see it.  Sani has said far too much for their comfort and pulled one stunt too many, they have been saying.  I hear they have ordered the senator representing Kogi West to bring out the knives – as if he needed any prompting.

  • Senatorial perdition

    That coup-is-still-possible quip, by Ike Ekweremadu, deputy Senate president (DSP), echoes one Yoruba saying: ”Omo yo tan, o npe baba re l’eranko!”

    A brat, at the apex of his filial hubris, dismisses his doting parents as idiots!  Surely, such surfeit munificence is nothing but supreme parental folly?

    That fairly epitomizes this 8th Senate — indeed, the two chambers of the National Assembly.  After gorging silly, from the ceaseless milk of the civil order, the prodigal, in cloud seven, now dreams military rule!

    That about captures Ekweremadu’s gaffe.

    Yet, there may be something spiritual about it all.  To start with, Ekweremadu’s subsistence as DSP has nothing to do with  the so-called “beauty of democracy”.  Instead, it is the very ugly gargoyle of opportunism.

    Bukola Saraki, desperate to sell his All Progressives Congress (APC) parliamentary mandate, to at all cost become Senate president, was clear-eyed about his perfidy.  Even then, he needed a devil-may-care collaborator-opportunist.

    Enter, Ike Ekweremadu, last-term legit DSP under David Mark but now willy-nilly DSP, procured by the rotten fruits of stolen goods!  For where else does a minority party in parliament land the DSP?

    One that scrambles to high office, by absolute dishonour, is spiritually fated to fatal mis-jives!

    Still on honour, take a close look at the two captains of the executive: President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; and the National Assembly equivalent captains: Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara.

    In each bloc, one is Muslim, the other Christian.  Yet, each  group throws up diametrically opposed vibes — why?  Personal conducts.

    Call Buhari many names over, but that he is a thief, to gobble public money, is never going to wash.  Tried and tested many times, his squeaky clean image and Spartan ways have held steady, in the midst of so much decadence among his contemporaries.

    Vice President Osinbajo is rich — but not in money (still, by any standard, he’s no pauper) but in value.

    Every dime he has earned — and that’s a good many — is from his sweat as a Law professor and active legal practitioner.  In Lagos, his first port as a public servant, he left a trail of punishing devotion and high record of excellence.  His sterling legal reforms, as Lagos attorney-general and Justice commissioner (1999-2007), now being adopted at the federal level and by other states, are living testimonies.

    No wonder, the presidential duo strike the image of the straight-and-narrow, that elixir a decadent Nigeria needs to scale these trying times.

    That contemporary Nigeria deliberately underplays these stellar traits shows how too far gone, from that narrow path to salvation, the Nigerian elite — particularly the so-called (wo)men of God — may have strayed.

    But the National Assembly?  The direct contrast: glum, free-for-all, celebrated decadence.

    Saraki, the Senate president, has no conviction record.  But his politics stinks to seven heavens.  The soulless manner he sold his party’s birthright to DSP for personal profit, cutting the dishonourable PDP and its Ekweremadu a sickly slack, is brazen proof.

    Long after the spoil of office is long putrefied in the belly, that treachery and twin opportunism would define the political profile of both.

    And long after this 8th Senate is gone, its effete succumb to such perfidy would question its group essence, despite the presence, in the conclave, of a few well and truly decent (wo)men.

    House Speaker Dogara appears placid on the surface.  But with his reaction to “budget padding” allegations by Abdulmnmini Jibril, former chair of the House Appropriation Committee now languishing in suspension exile, he would appear as ruthless as they come.

    Both the Senate and the House are unrepentantly yoked to turning their so-called house rules into some big whip, to thrash the Constitution on citizens’ rights.  But can a conclave, by its rule, banish a member for a long spell, when that member, by law, represents a constituency?

    Which one is supreme — the parliament’s right to maintaining discipline among its own ranks; or the Constitution’s diktat that every citizen must have representation?

    That is one issue the courts should thrash out, for that core representation makes Parliament the first estate of the realm.

    Yet, this 8th National Assembly has exalted group norm over the grund norm.  Because that often negates its very essence, the result is perceived impunity inside its high walls.  That translates into crass opacity, to citizens outside, who have a right to know.

    Of course, such opacity breeds explosive scandals, the latest of which is Senator Shehu Sani’s sensational claim that every senator pockets N13.5 million a month, aside from other perks, in holy gravy!

    A stunned Senate might just dispatch Sani to Golgotha, for infringing on its “privileges, integrity and rights”.  No tears for Holy Shehu, Glorious and Conceited, who immaculately talks down on everyone!  Still, that would be barring the gate when the stallion had galloped clear!

    Indeed, unfazed institutional opacity breeds the many Senate escapades.

    First, it tailors public laws to its private benefits, simply because it’s charged with that chore.

    Then, it instals itself as the decadent alternative to the President’s war against corruption, with its running battles with EFCC’s Ibrahim Magu and Nigeria Customs’ Hameed Ali, two citizens, like Buhari, virtually killing themselves to deliver a better Nigeria.

    With the executive calling its bluff on Magu, the Senate throws tantrums, decreeing itself AWOL from crucial confirmation duties.  Yet, this is a job it pays itself at an obscene premium!

    The other day, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was even appealing to the Nigerian Senate to confirm some crucial Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) nominees!  A thoroughly deluded Senate dubs it “protest”.  But its political masters, we the people, call it  unpardonable subversion that must be punished.

    Besides, it’s March and this 8th National Assembly is still playing yo-yo with the 2018 budget.  Is there loading a repeat of last year, when it switched votes from crucial roads nationwide, that would have given the economy a fillip, to useless constituency projects, for brazen personal egos?

    Indeed, an opaque parliament is a blight on any democracy.  No wonder, in its arrogance turned hubris, this National Assembly has installed itself champion of anything decadent; and virulent opposer of everything diligent.  Sad!

    It is from such free-for-all decadence that an Ekweremadu would practically call for military rule, in the very hallowed chambers of the Senate!  Any further proof of how  these characters have re-shaped the house in their hollow images?

    Still, Ekweremadu is only a son, out of the too many children of perdition, plaguing the Nigerian Senate.

    They are all beyond redemption.  That is why, come 2019, they must all be swept clean, into political Siberia.

  • Sinators and their wages

    Never mind what his colleagues may do or not do to him in the coming days, Senator Shehu Sani has done a public duty of opening the lid on how much our lawmakers take home every month. Now we know that in addition to the over N750,000 monthly consolidated salary and allowances of each member of the Senate, there is a special provision for running cost which bleeds the treasury by a whopping N13.5 million per senator each month.

    In a country where treasury receipts could be obtained for few thousands of crisp naira notes, one imagines the cost of procuring the variegated bundles sufficient to retire N13.5 million expenses on monthly basis. Now we know why the folks in the old Gutenberg business, despite the biting economic recession aren’t exactly complaining. Just imagine the volume of monthly requisitions for receipts covering such provisions as “inconvenience allowance” and other such allowances for all sundry purposes under the sun all of which combined, makes the job of lawmaking such a risky business. All of this representing the printers’ share of Abuja cash hauls on monthly basis. As it is, there is no hazarding what the operators in the lower chamber take home; most probably, the figures will be in the same range. Trust me; it is only a matter of time before one disgruntled rank-breaker steps out to supply the other half of the figures leaving the rest of us with our tongues wagging.

    Couldn’t our lawmakers have thought of a better way to reflate the economy?

    By the way, the tidy sum does not exclude the so-called constituency fund the vote of which the senators peg at N200 million for themselves.

    Here is how the most distinguished Senator Sani puts it: “You will be told that you have N200 million with an agency of government for which you will now submit projects equivalent to that amount. And it is that agency of government that will go and do those projects for you.

    Guess it’s not meant to be all pork: “Now, the corruption comes when the projects are not done and the money is taken. But right now, it is difficult to do that because NGOs and transparency groups have come into it. They track every allocation made to you and where they are being used…So, it’s becoming difficult for what used to happen in the past to happen now.

    “But I can tell you that I would love a situation where we do away with running costs, constituency projects and leaves senators and members of House of Reps with salaries”.

    Well said. That was Senator Shehu Sani last week. Senate spokesman, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi obviously thinks that the Kaduna senator has said nothing new. To him, it suffices that “various line items like travelling, medicals, consultancy and the rest were captured in the budget”! And so for the love of our senators, they are supposed to live large even at the risk of running the economy aground!

    We can debate the figures from now till eternity; the sheer obscenity and immorality of the provisions in a country where the least paid worker takes home N18,000 after 30 days of exertion. Those minded of the economics of law-making can go as far as computing the unit cost of the meaningless resolutions, the countless self-serving bills that in the end provides no respite for a floundering nation, not to mention that associated absurdities which continue to assail the rest of decent society; in the end, the rest of us can only gape in horror at the proclivities of the pillaging band. It is a far cry to imagine the folksy leopard changing its spots. It won’t happen; at least not until it is made to happen.

    The scandal of course is that the figures are supposed to be set by law – and so are deemed lawful. In other words, every item of expenditure is supposed to be captured in the instrument of appropriation called the budget. Now, you understand why the instrument is such a secret document with access restricted to a few; the basis of the yearly ‘territoriality wars’ between the executive and the legislature over non-issues; and the farcical process under which a vital public duty is reduced to a hollow, meaningless charade.

    One thing is clear though; the budget is meant to be a disciplined business. Carefully applied, it can make a world of difference between life in shithole and one in modernity. It begins with formulation – a step by step activity that starts with justification, costing; it extends to consideration by relevant authorities and eventual passage into law by lawmakers after which it reverts to the Ministries, Departments and Agencies for implementation – with every step guided by regulations. Implementation in particular is further subjected to the rule of process; in fact, disbursement is supposed to be governed by the strictures of extant regulations – the General Orders and the Financial Regulations, and the Procurement Act – all of which constitute the Bible for all operatives in the public service.

    Thanks to Senator Sani, we now know that such niceties no longer exist in the public service; imagine paying each senator N13.5 million upfront, and en bloc– a freebie to be covered by multiple invoices even when no justification is made apriori nor services expected to be delivered. Picture also the constituency projects, inserted at the lawmakers’ fancy and allocated the block vote of N200 million per member – only because those overpaid fellows insist on retaining the power to alter the vote. Now you understand the cat and mouse play under which the budget never gets passed on time and implementation fraught with bad faith.

    To start with, it takes a terminally diseased public service to subject the discipline of our extant financial regulations to the whims of ill-tutored political operatives. However, it needs to be said also that it takes a morally delinquent, but privileged few, to unleash the kind of carnage on the scale being wrought by our lawmakers. And to imagine the greater tragedy of the men and women elected to make laws for the rest of us being no more than lawless operatives.

    Even if we agree with Senator Abdullahi that his colleague, Shehu Sani revealed nothing new, it does nothing to remove the stain of being the most spendthrift and arguably the most unproductive law-making chamber in the entire universe. Not that it matters anyway to the insular fellows.