The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Destination Lampedusa

    As I write this, I can picture a family somewhere still praying and hoping against hope that their ward from whom there has been no word since s/he embarked on the now famed trip of no return to Libya or wherever will somehow emerge at the destination city paved with gold. Never mind the cold reality that the odds of making the trip alive are 1: 100; there is supposed to be a god somewhere who carries a Nigerian middle name available to shepherd the crew to a safe berth. Why then worry when you can pray – or better still, summon the will to ignore the gory pictures daily streamed live as it were in the social media – hoping against hope that by happenstance their own Citizen Anonymous will make it to Lampedusa?

    Today, we are told that some 5000-odd fellows are stranded in Libya. Those of course are the numbers known to the Nigerian authorities. There will, invariably, be countless numbers held by the scores of militia calling the shots in Libya’s vast ungoverned spaces. By now, if one expected the folks of those whose ‘loved ones’ left home for months without contact to have stepped forward to assist the government to generate the numbers of those involved, nothing of the sort has yet happened.  Not even some hastily-staged vigil at the foreign ministry by distraught family members whose wards went by that route even if merely to fulfil some righteousness. They would rather – as some suggested – be found making supplications – not so much for their safe return – but for those luckless wards to somehow beat the nets of the Libyan militia as they press forward to Europe!

    Poor expendables.

    The other day, one of our hordes of our Libyan returnees actually said something about going back at the earliest opportunity; in the eyes of our returnee, the well-meaning arrangement put in place by the state government is beneath her expectation. Surely, Edo State government, she was quoted to have said, can do better than some emergency, ad hoc rehabilitation measures in the name of welcome.

    Not too long ago, I stumbled into a young Nigerian awaiting deportation from Dubai to Lagos. Somehow, we got talking and he told me of his odyssey; his trip, he told me, started via the long Trans-Saharan stretch; somehow he made it to Europe but even the reprieve ended up being temporary. From Europe, one thing led to another and he found himself in Dubai only to fall into the hands of the country’s stern immigration officials.

    That however is not the end of the story. He made clear to me that he didn’t come that far to be ferried like a fowl to Lagos! His family, he said would wish that he would simply vanish without trace than return with no visible accomplishment to show!

    The story of how the young fellow managed to slip from the eagle-eyed immigration officials prior to embarkation would remain the stuff of a movie. The point is – I was somehow relieved that the guy was somehow left behind, particularly after his subtle threat to bring down the giant metal bird rather than make the trip alive!

    That is how bad things have gone in a country where the chance of youths getting a good education is zilch, where the prospects of making a decent living thereafter statistically tends to zero; a country where youths haven long given up hope of ‘making it’ here, would rather embrace the illusory life painted of Europe and America. Never mind the current heart-rending tales of scarification, the accounts of horror and terror, dehumanization and slavery, it is possible that some of our current returnees would need no persuasion to return, were they to be availed a re-entry pass– since home offered no passable alternative.

    At the heart of the issue is the big question of what lures our youths to risk their limbs if not lives in what is aptly described as the new era slavery. That question, to me has not been fully interrogated in all the discussions about the tragedy currently playing out in the Mediterranean.

    The search for the good life? I understand that things are quite bad in the country. I do not think that the point can be sufficiently made that our governments at various levels have failed us – in terms of their failure to expand the opportunities for the youth, to develop of infrastructure and hence upgrade the living standards of the people, to equip the youths as indeed every segment of the population for a meaningful, productive existence. As a result, our young ones troop out in droves to Ghana, Benin, Europe and America in search of quality education; the less advantaged ones among them of course find their ways into unimaginable places on planet earth in search of hustle and in the process court trouble.

    The uncomfortable truth however is that the current madness needs to be appropriately located in the complete collapse of the value system, of the family as an institution. These, however, are nowhere near the tragedy foisted by the grotesque religiosity that has turned the once highly structured moral order upside down; the crisis of the licentious theology that promotes wealth over and above the rigours of work, of product (outcomes) over and above the process and supplants the rigours of thought with ignorance, superstition and cult worship.

    Clearly, if there is any issue that best underlies the pathology, it is – GREED – a lethal affliction that makes no distinction between socio-economic classes. Whether it is the bulging balances from stolen wealth or the most prized toys ever rolled out by factories in Europe and America being shamelessly flaunted by leaders who should know better, the quest to join them even if it means risking dear lives to the bargain is merely a variant of the morphology of the same organic disease.

    Welcome to our world of hedonists; a world of faith mendicants and proselytes of hope, of miracle workers and their hordes of ignorant consumers. Still in wonder as to the nursery beds of our foolish voyagers?

  • The Osborne Towers Haul: Matters arising

    The Osborne Towers Haul: Matters arising

    By any reckoning, the Osborne Towers Haul has got to rank among the top 10 stories from Nigeria in 2017, given the way it broke and has continued to unfold, its many turns and twists.

    It remains, without question, the largest fortune any person or institution ever chanced upon in a single location since Shell Darcy struck oil in Nigeria in Oloibiri, in present-day Bayelsa State, 61 years ago.  And it transformed one of the most exclusive addresses in one of the most opulent neighbourhoods in Nigeria into a crime scene.

    Footage of the unearthing of the haul, some $43 million stacked in packs of mint-fresh $10, 000 bills, in a fire-proof steel cabinet in Flat 7B at the Towers, not forgetting small change in hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, made the headlines and front pages of the news media across the world.

    Early reports claimed that the haul was part of the “security” money former President Goodluck Jonathan had squirreled away for fighting the 2015 presidential election that he should have known he could not win.  He had been so crushed by his defeat, they said, that he forgot the money.

    Even if Dr Jonathan remembered, how could he have come forward to claim the money, especially when his wife, the formerly excellent Dame Patience, was fighting desperately to re-possess some N54 million in bank deposits that the courts had ordered forfeited on the suspicion that it was the fruit of crime?

    Those who expected his consort, the formerly excellent lady aforementioned, to weigh in with an affidavit that the money at issue was her birthday gift to him when he turned 59 the previous November must have been disappointed.   Give it to The Dame:  she knows that there are only so many fronts on which even a person of her omnivorous appetite can fight.

    EFCC operatives who had swooped on Apartment 7B following a tip-off from a whistle-blower were still totting up the haul when Governor Nyesom Wike declared that it belonged unquestionably to the Rivers State Government, being proceeds of assets his predecessor and current Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi had “fraudulently” sold

    “We will follow due process of the law to get back the money found at the Ikoyi residence, “he told Channels Television. “This money belongs to the Rivers State people. We have conducted our checks.

    “We will stun Nigeria with this matter. We will come out with our evidence at the appropriate time.”

    Wike’s plan was at full throttle when the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, a spook whom few outside the community of spooks had ever heard of, stepped forward to claim that the money belonged to the NIA.

    The fund, he said, was duly appropriated by the Federal Government at the time of Dr Jonathan for projects that could not be named, that Oke had periodically reported on those projects to the complete satisfaction of the authorities, among them National Security Adviser Babagana Monguno, and by extension President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Premium Times (May 5, 2016) has confirmed that much in a painstakingly documented piece that has not been rebutted as far as I know.  The editors tell me they stand “perfectly” by their reporting.

    In 2013-2014, the paper reported, Ambassador Oke’s immediate predecessor, Olaniyi Oladeji, had proposed to the Jonathan Administration an upgrade to NIA’s intelligence gathering techniques. On taking over from Oladeji, Ambssador Oke had fleshed out the proposal in a memo he submitted to Dr Jonathan on Feb: 14, 2015.

    Goal: to “upgrade and professionalise agency operations” in order to “engender an effective clandestine communication systems central to the working of an intelligence service.”

    Project Schedule: 2015 – 2018.

    Price tag:  $89, 202, 282 to be expended on 12 high-level projects.

    According to the report, Dr Jonathan approved the request February 16, 2015 and directed the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke, to release the funds.  Several weeks later, the NIA received the full amount in cash from the Central Bank.

    Eleven months later, in January 2016, the report continued, the NIA gave progress reports on the projects and a detailed breakdown of its expenses in a letter to NSA Monguno.

    Thereafter, Premium Times continued, a three-man panel from the National Security Adviser to inspect the projects.  In its February 29, 2016 report, the team expressed its satisfaction with the way the $289 million operation was being implemented.

    Some ten weeks later, on May 5, 2016: Mr. Monguno visited the NIA Headquarters for the first time since he assumed office in July 2015 and, according to Premium Times, wrote in the Visitors’ Book:

    “On the occasion of my maiden visit to the NIA since assumption of official duties as NSA, I am extremely delighted by the warm reception and hospitality shown to me by H.E. Ambassador Ayo Oke, DG, NIA, the quality of works in progress is notably breathtaking but very inspiring also.

    “All the facilities being constructed have demonstrated that the NIA is far ahead of its sister agencies in terms of foresight and dealing with 21st Century intelligence issues.

    “It is my fervent prayer that the NIA achieve all the goals it has set for itself so that all other institutions of government, particularly the intelligence community, will bring about the desired change for this great country,” Mr. Monguno wrote in the NIA visitors’ book on May 5, 2016.

    Two weeks later, on May 17, 2016, the NSA informed the NIA that President Buhari had been briefed about the ongoing projects and that the president expressed his gratitude to the NIA personnel, the paper reported.

    Roughly a year later, the EFCC recovered $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23,218,000 from Flat 7B at Osborne Towers.  Oke would be suspended from office, and dismissed subsequently by President Buhari, following the unpublished report of a panel headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, tasked with establishing the “circumstances in which the NIA came into possession of the funds, how and by whose or which authority the funds were made available to the NIA, and to establish whether or not there has been a breach of the law or security procedure in obtaining custody and use of the funds.”

    The Osborne Towers haul has since been forfeited to the Federal Government, on the orders of the Federal High Court, Lagos. But the ownership of Flat 7B remains disputed.

    The EFCC says it was purchased by Mrs Oke in the name of a company, Chobe Ventures  Ltd, of which she and her son, are the directors.  But Union Bank plc claims that it holds the mortgage to the property.

    Ambassador Oke is set to face trial, most likely in secret court, because of the sensitive nature of the office he once held.

    But how did matters come to this desultory pass?

    How come Oke’s request for the vast sum at issue was approved in just two days, and apparently without discussion or debate at the National Security Council?  How come the money was released to the NIA in one fell swoop, and in cash?   How did a project that had reportedly earned high praise from the National Security Adviser turn into a national scandal with no redeeming grace less than a year later?

    Was the NIA dissembling all along?  Was the Office of the National Security Adviser also dissembling? Was the National Security Adviser merely being collegial in its effusive report?  Or was his team caught up in the NIA’s web of deception by its own credulity or worse, gullibility?

    Is Oke being made a fall guy?

    Because the matter centres on national security, we may never know the answers.  Yet the questions are worth asking.

    Matters got even murkier regarding the identity of the whistleblower who stood to receive, by way of gratuity, one-tenth of the recovered haul, which would make the person an instant millionaire.

    At first, there was only one whistleblower.  The EFCC said the person had been identified and handed his reward.  Then they said the person would soon be paid.  Later reports said the person was undergoing psychiatric evaluation, for fear that the person might lose his or her mind on account of coming so suddenly into a vast fortune.

    They were still wrestling with these issues when a rival claimant to the title of whistleblower and the fortune that goes with it surfaced.

    This being Nigeria, a third is guaranteed to surface shortly.  And a fourth.  And a fifth.

     

  • And now Paris Club refund 3.0

    And now Paris Club refund 3.0

    If most Nigerians missed the story of the boycott of the monthly conclave described as the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) penultimate week, it would seem unlikely that anyone would miss the gracious offer of final (?) tranche of the Paris Club refund by President Muhammadu Buhari to the states the following week.  In the week that the Forum of Finance Commissioners were to have met to share what was on offer in the distributable pool, a seething discord over an alleged transparently opaque bookkeeping by the perennially out-of-date national oil corporation would cause an enraged forum chairman Mahmoud Yunusa to tell his colleagues to go back home to await further instructions “until we reconcile the figures in the accounts”.

    “I sincerely apologise for keeping everyone, but this is the position of our principals through the chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, even though the matter was discussed at length during NEC when all the governors were present. So we should all take our leave and wait for the next date which will be announced later”, he reportedly told his anxious colleagues.

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as it appeared, had not been quite forthright on the matter of the whopping N460. 649bilion said to have been illegally withheld from the Federation Account in the period between January 2016 and September this year; this is aside another $172,913,617.30 million said to be outstanding from the NLNG Feedstock sales, Chevron Cheetah Project, Royalty Oil Sales Value lifting by TEPNGA MCA, RDP Price Review and others which, left to the NNPC would take aeons to resolve. Obviously peeved that such huge cash from crude oil sales revenue will be tagged “outstanding” by NNPC since 2010 not to talk of the unending ritual of account reconciliation, the commissioners, acting at the behest of their principals, insisted they could take it no more.

    Yet again, we must pity the club of desperate governors most of whom in the past few months have been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. If the presidency had imagined that Bailout 1.0, 2.0 and Paris Club Tranche 1 and 2 making a dent on the albatross that salaries and allowances of serving personnel and pensioners had come to constitute, the reality has turned to be a far cry from the initial projections.  And now, few weeks to the year’s end and with things looming gloomier by the day, the matter could not have been anything but desperate.  You can then imagine their joy at the gracious offer of the Paris Club balance by the President at time many in the states had looked forward to a bleak Xmas, one filled with tears and gnashing of teeth.

    Now, before we get drenched in the latest rain of Paris Club refund, let’s look at how far we have come if only to appreciate what the future portends. In Bailout 1.0 we had the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) put up a special intervention fund of N300 billion to help the states to defray their backlog of salaries; included in that package was a debt relief programme coupled by the Debt Management Office to help the states restructure their commercial loans put at over N660 billion. Bailout 2.0 would follow under which President Buhari, acting on the recommendation of the 66th meeting of the National Economic Council, NEC ‘graciously approved’ the suspension of the deductions from March 2016 allocation to states. The gesture, a breather of sorts to enable the states grapple with the crisis fostered by dwindling oil revenues was expected to pool some N10.9 billion into the states’ coffers. And then the Paris Club refund of N522.74 billion – of which the first tranche of N388.304 billion was released in December 2016 and the second, totalling N243. 795 billion would follow in July this year. And now, Paris Club 3.0.

    In all of this, Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun never failed to remind of the gratuitous ‘conditionalities’ attached chief of which is “a Fiscal Restructuring Plan to be prepared by each state with clear measurable objectives”.

    Nearly two years on, Nigerians are in the best position to judge whether the twin objectives of clearing the arrears of wages and pensions, and, the restructuring of state bureaucracies have been achieved.  However, that the chants for intervention have grown louder with every passing cycle of the monthly conclave would seem a reflection of how far those objectives are from being achieved. In any case, the fact that majority of the states are still owing their workers and pensioners, while the quest to get the states to restructure their workforce has somewhat reached a dead end would seem to indicate the futility of the therapy.

    Now, I haven’t quite touched upon the corruption and wastes known to be ravaging the states almost without exception. That, no doubt is a topic for another day.

    So, what would the third tranche achieve? Certainly nothing more than the previous interventions have achieved in terms of providing temporary succour to the states in their hours of distress – particularly the workers and perhaps to a lesser extent, the pensioners most of whom directly bear the brunt of states insolvency.  And so while the beleaguered workers can look forward to a merry Christmas, it seems inevitable that the daemon of insolvency would return much sooner than later, that is, barring real changes in the formula for sharing from the pool and renewed drive for internally generated revenue.

    And when will this end? Pretty difficult to tell – I must admit. One however takes a bet that there will always be something from the piggy bank to throw around whenever things get sticky. Remember, we still have the Excess Crude Account to service just about any purpose(s) under the sun? Has anyone yet thought of the ‘ways and means’ – an art long perfected by apex banks all over the world to save the skins of irresponsible governments?

    It is a brand new political economy of bailouts. All are enjoined to enjoy while it lasts.

  • Uncle Bob in retrospect

    Uncle Bob in retrospect

    What’s the news about Uncle Bob?”

    It is the kind of question a solicitous relation or friend of Uncle Bob’s would ask another friend or relation of the same Uncle Bob.

    But we were meeting for the first time, in a lounge at Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport for  connecting flights, he to Nairobi, Kenya, en route Juba, South Sudan, where he is serving on the UN Mission to that war-torn country, and I was bound for Chicago.

    “Uncle Bob” cued us on magically.  You would think we were friends of Uncle Bob, who had not seen each other in a long while.

    It so happened that at the time I started talking with my new acquaintance, he was at that precise moment surfing the Internet for the latest news on Uncle Bob

    “Uncle Bob” is of course Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, most recently , and for all of 47 years, First Secretary of the ruling ZANU-PF and President of Zimbabwe.

    That is the name by which he is known in Zimbabwe, from a curious blend of respect, fear, and loathing.  He commanded all three in roughly the same measure, the loathing manifested in the dancing in the streets, the wild rejoicing.

    The respect, if not the fear, was indicated in the courtesies the putschists accorded Mugabe right from their announcement that they were stepping in to clear the “criminal elements” that had surrounded him.  It was evident in his being given the usual escort, though watered down to preside over the Convocation at the Open University.  And it ran through the Inaugural Address of the new President, Emerson Mnagagwa, who described Mugabe as his leader and mentor.

    The whole thing was surreal. Zimbabwe’s armed forces showed before the whole world the class that Mugabe himself always displayed even at his most disagreeable.  You could never accuse him of coarseness.

    He had come on the scene with a sure-footedness that proved almost infectious.    He galvanised his compatriots.  You saw response in the quiet pride that radiated on the faces of officials high and low.

    I made the first of my five visits to Zimbabwe in 1985, five years after the country’s independence.  The new spirit, the confidence set off by the event, was almost palpable.  One incident from that visit clings in my memory.

    Rather than pay the custom duties on the goods he had brought in from an overseas trip, a military commander verbally abused and threatened the young customs officer.  The young woman stood her ground and refused to be overawed.

    When the papers reported the incident the next day, the public was outraged.  In the face of mounting censure, the commander apologised to the customs officer.

    How could this happen in an African, or Third World, nation

    The answer was to be found in the revolutionary Leadership Code adopted in 1984 by ZANU-PF.  Grounded on Socialist principles, the code imposed on leaders a strict regimen, a leader being person holding executive authority in any branch of government, local authority, armed services.

    Such persons, the Code maintains, must not deal arbitrarily or arrogantly with members of the public, or indulge in conduct that can bring ZANU-PF into disrepute or ridicule.

    They must not be found drunk in public place.  They must not commit acts of immorality or dress slovenly.  They must comply with orders from above but may decline if they consider the order improper, in which case they should immediately report, stating their reasons.

    Leaders must not own a business or share interests in a business organised for profit.  They cannot  accept inducement to carry  out or desist from carrying out an act.  They cannot use public funds to produce false reports.  They cannot collude with others to secretly obtain favours.  They cannot refuse to disclose personal interest in any project.  They cannot own real estate or other property from which they receive rent or royalties.  And so on and so forth.

    The Code was backed by an elaborate enforcement mechanism.

    The revolution seemed on course, despite the upheavals in Matabeleland Province, and Mugabe’s determination to emasculate the Opposition into a one-party state.  The shops were chockful of consumer goods, though only a small fraction of the population could afford them.  Grocery stores were well stocked.   The export market boomed with agricultural products, minerals and tourism driving commerce.  All the books you always wanted to read but could not find or afford were on tantalising display on four floors of a cavernous bookstore in downtown Harare.

    In the hotels, all-you-could-eat breakfast came with the room rate.   Buffet lunch and dinner were sumptuous and affordable.  Coffee houses and restaurants bustled.

    With each of my subsequent visits, signs of distress were palpable.  The US dollar, worth 4 Zim dollars  during my first visit in 1985, went up to seven and then 25 within two years.  The bookstore had shrunk to two floors, then occupied a corner of just one floor, the bewitching volumes replaced by shabby publications, some of them bordering on the pornographic.

    I watched Zimbabwe’s 10th independence anniversary celebrations at Harare’s Rufaro Stadium in 1990.  A fly past by combat jet planes and pinpoint landing by parachutists gave more than a hint of the country’s combat potential.

    Workers and students sang and praised and danced to ESAP and the wonders it would bring to the economy – the same scheme — SAP – that had virtually paralysed the Nigerian economy.

    Sanctions imposed by the West because Mugabe insisted on reversing a pernicious system whereby one percent of  white Zimbabweans owned 70 percent of the most fertile  land crippled agriculture.  Foreign exchange virtually dried up.  Hyperinflation set in, with one US dollar exchanging for one million Zim dollars at a point.

    At Mugabe’s ouster, Zimbabwe’s currency had collapsed. Trade by barter had replaced cash-backed transactions.

    By the time Mugabe was ousted, the commitment, conviction, honesty and dedication espoused in the Code had all but evaporated.

    The experiment that had begun in 1980 with such great promises ended in despair and misery on a scale almost beyond belief.  Perhaps if the Leadership Code had been implemented faithfully and the land repossession had been pursued more pragmatically, the course of Zimbabwe’s history under Mugabe might have been different.

     

  • Straight-and-narrow

    Nigeria perpetually treads the wide and merry way, which the bible says, leads to destruction.  The result is the present sorry state, which everyone hates.

    But each time it makes for the straight-and-narrow, which leads to salvation, these same people kick and scream and bellow and holler and screech!

    It is the children of Israel all over again.  For their foul-tempered bedlam over short-term pains, they prolonged a 40-day breeze through the wilds, to a 40-year odyssey to their promised land.

    Will Nigeria replicate the manna-gobbling, do-nothing, ever-grumbling ancient Israelites?  Or seize the times and bite the bullet that comes with harsh rectitude, after merry, free-wheeling turpitude?

    Golden dreams!  But the prognoses are dire.

    Opinion shapers, piqued by some short-term hurts, have turned the media space into a plebeian din, condemning everything under the sun.

    Yet they, at this delicate and decisive historic juncture, ought to be tempered patricians, countering the plebeian babble, explaining issues with rare wisdom and illuminating insights.

    Pray, which country ever gets it right, when its media is the unfazed redoubt of plebeian screeches?  That about approximates the present Nigerian situation.

    Yet if education is expensive, goes the saying, try ignorance.  If rectitude is expensive, try turpitude.

    Fortunately, between rectitude and turpitude, Nigeria has had two excellent examples, with Muhammadu Buhari ironically at the vortex of both.

    Between 1984 and 1985, a certain Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, with grim and dour lieutenant, Major-General Babatunde Idiagbon (now dead), was at the centre of a brave attempt to pull Nigeria off self-induced catastrophe.

    President Shehu Shagari’s 2nd Republic had just collapsed in the throes of a rigged election and unprecedented decadence.

    It was a historic prelude to the immediate post-Goodluck Jonathan era: the national wealth was gone, no thanks to unconscionable and thieving politicians.

    So was the national pride.  Indeed, it was vaunted patriotism to flee from the Nigerian debacle.  Remember the (in)famous Andrew, in the NTA commercial, who strutted like a peacock, while piping his decision to “check out”?

    Besides, it’s tribute to the shallowness of the Nigerian media that the present salary crisis is reported as if it were something novel.  No, an earlier version came with the pitiful collapse of the 2nd Republic.

    Now, the Buhari-Idiagbon regime stands condemned for its general high-handedness; unprecedented brutality and queer ethnic-equalization formula to democratize punishment, even if that meant punishing the innocent, if only to tar all the ousted politicians.

    That was an eternal blight, especially on the all-important front of fairness and fair play.  But even that, history might excuse as nothing but a draconian method to tackle a most daunting decadence.

    Look no further for proof: the Buhari regime was succeeded, via a palace coup, by far the most decadent and most wayward — perhaps bar the Jonathan meltdown —  regime in Nigerian history.

    The way became giddily wider; the party recklessly merrier; and a fun-loving people, who grumbled all through the Buhari cramp, cheered full-throat, at the dawn of the Ibrahim Babangida era.  It was, indeed, a sweet and intoxicating path that led nowhere but unqualified perdition!

    But after the stark Sani Abacha, he of jumbo sleaze; the giddy but empty messianism of Olusegun Obasanjo’s second coming and the ill-fated Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the tragic chicken finally came home to roost in Jonathan-era ruins.

    Then a dazed and raped nation finally came to its senses and zeroed in on a superman to bale it out of its own self-induced folly — Muhammadu Buhari!

    But why this hated nemesis-turned-doted-messiah tale?  While others thoroughly messed themselves up during the wild, partying years, Buhari kept himself whole and sane.

    Enter then, Buhari’s second coming, courtesy of the epochal 2015 elections.  But it is clear the president himself didn’t reckon with the Nigerian Israelites’ syndrome — do nothing but demand instant manna — even if the situation is not helped by Buhari’s own natural tardiness.

    But as it was during Buhari’s first coming, there are more fundamental problems beyond speed or tardiness.  It was the morning after the wild party; and the head-splitting hangover would naturally slow things down.

    Besides, some gluttons of the present have gobbled up the future.  The economy was not only in ruins, it is structured towards eternally boosting already thriving foreign economies but sapping the Nigerian real economy.

    So, a ringing re-thinking was called for.  Though the administration captured it in “make what you eat and eat what you make” — a catching phrase, if any, towards agricultural renaissance and re-industrialization — the Nigerian mind would appear firmly hooked in the slovenly past of little work, bountiful manna.

    Factor in the paralyzing corruption — and how the Church generally turned a deaf ear — the electricity power conundrum and the sundry telling distractions: Niger Delta Avengers, wild Islamization allegations by CAN, Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB’s cacophony of searing ethnic hate, etc, and you’d realize how almost everyone has been tragically distracted.

    Of course, all of these would not have been if the media had not devoted itself to chasing the mundane, thus shunning fundamental issues a citizen-media should tackle, at a crucial historic juncture.

    It became the merry voices of ethnic champions, and the lionization and demonization that come with that.  It also became the unfazed ombudsman for appointment equalization — no crime, to be sure, and quite legitimate.

    But in its howling jeremiads, it hardly has time for a concerted anti-corruption push — except when arguing forcefully why it would not work — which could make or mar Nigeria’s future.

    Goading itself to pushing a bigoted agenda, it all but blinded itself to vital developments that could sweep away the present mess: in less than three years, terror-induced slaughter was down by 90 per cent.  So is Nigeria’s importation of rice, with a bright prospect of 100 per cent local rice sufficiency by 2018.

    In Nigeria’s greatest hour of need, its media, self-trapped in ethnic laagers, is too distracted to focus on the real issues.  If therefore the country breaks a new mould, it would be in spite of the opinion moulders in the media.

    If it fails, the nihilistic media would have preserved its niche — like the Israelites, eternal lamentation in the eternal Nigerian jungle — even as the whole world moves on to things new.

  • Neither law nor public interest

    Of all the many twists and turns to the Abulrasheed Maina saga, the more intriguing must be the latest spin by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN on his role in the embarrassing episode.

    Let’s recall that Vanguard newspaper had in October challenged the country’s number one law officer to clear himself of alleged complicity in the backdoor re-instatement of the ex-pension czar – Maina into the public service. Quick to advertise his pedigree as “legal practitioner…always guided by law and public interest and (who) will therefore not do anything that deviates from the law or breaches public interest…” he had then promised a comprehensive response at the appropriate time: “Nigerians are entitled to know the truth in the entire saga and I am ready to speak directly to them when I appear before the Senate since I have been summoned by the legislature, which is investigating the matter…I look forward to addressing anxious Nigerians on the matter when I appear before the senators”.

    Well, the moment came Thursday last week. Not before the Senate as originally planned but the Ad hoc Committee of the House of Representatives investigating the “disappearance, reappearance, reinstatement and promotion of Maina.’’

    Asked whether he actually initiated the controversial memo on the basis of which Maina was surreptitiously recalled, deployed and promoted, he responded, not like an attorney sworn to law and public interest but like one programmed to hatch mischief: “There was correspondence from Maina seeking the intervention of the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation for his reinstatement into the public service.

    “Maina made available court processes, judgements and orders for the consideration of the Attorney-General of the Federation…Judgement and orders were generally obtained between 2013 and 2014 before I was appointed the Attorney-General and was not appealed”.

    And then, quite significantly, he added: “However, as at October 5, 2017, Maina’s issue which has been confirmed by subsequent correspondence in my file was indeed a work-in-progress. So, the letter giving clear directives could not have genuinely emanated from my office’’.

    Some newspapers actually reported him as claiming that the so-called directive from his office was a ‘forgery’.

    Between the long-awaited but poorly-crafted gobbledygook, a concoction designed to confound and confuse and the other testimony by the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, restating her earlier testimony that her office did in fact receive a letter from AGF to the Federal Civil Service Commission directing that Maina be reinstated, Nigerians by now, ought to be in good position to judge as which of version of the truth is credible or believable.

    However, because the number one law officer staked the law as his forte and public interest as justification, we must insist on putting his response in the context of what is already public knowledge and against the renewed efforts to pull the wool on the eyes of exasperated citizens.

    What do we know?

    First, that Maina was not only recalled in circumstances that would ordinarily be deemed highly irregular, but that he had been drawing his pay from, presumably, the federal treasury since March. Mind you – if you thought that the fugitive’s ‘rapid dialogue’ with his feet proved nothing about the comeback bid, how about President Muhammadu Buhari’s swift directive to the relevant authorities to terminate the charade?

    Second, we do know also that the Department of State Security allegedly provided him a safe house of sorts. And third, that the EFCC which was practically on AWOL while the processes of his reabsorption into the federal bureaucracy lasted has since launched into the overdrive – marking buildings and renewing expired orders – as if those buildings, suspected to be proceeds of crime, sprouted overnight! And fourth, that the Office of the Head of Service dithered – and this is crucial – in lending its weight to the grand subversion – which explains much of the current hoopla.

    To get back to Malami’s first anchor of defence – the law. It is interesting that AGF Malami talks of ‘court processes, judgments and orders obtained by Maina apparently exculpating him from alleged multiple felonies. In a country where all manners of things happen under the cover of darkness and where the art of fact-checking a nigh impossibility, it seems the least that the chief law officer of the federation could have done was to avail the distinguished lawmakers, if not Nigerians, the particulars of the judgments, if truly they exist and their proper context.

    Could the AGF have had Suit No. FHC/ABJ /CS/65/13 – Abdulrasheed Maina vs the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and eight others in mind –  a fundamental human rights case which came in the wake of an arrest warrant issued by the Senate against him?  Could he have been referring to the voiding of the warrant procured by EFCC on October 27, 2015 by an Abuja Magistrate Court?

    I urge Nigerians to read Jiti Ogunye – Maina: Malami Did Not Act in the Public Interest, published by Premium Times, October 28.

    To be sure, neither of the judgments in respect of the two cases could be deemed as so infinitely elastic as to involve the far reaching consequential orders being pushed under Malami’s watch, which makes the claim about being in defence of the law suspect.

    Or, are there other cases that Nigerians are not aware?

    This naturally throws up the billion dollar question about the author of the memo titled – “Re: Demand for Update on the Reinstatement of Mr. Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina as Director in the Federal Civil Service”?

    To quote the relevant portion of the letter:

    “In my said letter, I directed your office to give a consequential effect to the said judgment which voided the warrant of arrest issued by the Police against Dr. Abdulrasheed A. Maina, which warrant of arrest formed the basis for the query referenced MI/30040/1/1, dated the 15th day of February, 2013 and his eventual dismissal from the service of the Federal Government of Nigeria on the 5th day of March 2013…

    I hereby write to reiterate my earlier directive and further direct that you give a consequential effect to the aforesaid judgment by taking necessary steps to ensure immediate reinstatement of Dr. Maina to his duty post as a Director in the Federal Civil Service to enable him continue his service to the Federal Government of Nigeria”.

    The letter speaks for itself. Suffice to say that if, as Malami claimed before the House last week, that he gave no directive to effect Maina’s recall, then somebody somewhere either within or without the bureaucracy must have penned those lines which clearly suggested otherwise. Surely, that would be a case of forgery – actionable under the very law that the AGF is sworn to protect. If however he did authored the letter – as some insist that he did – then we would be talking of grave violations of his oath office and acting against the public interest.

    Either way, there should be serious consequences – if you ask me.

     

  • ‘A coup in slow motion’

    ‘A coup in slow motion’

    This was a BBC correspondent’s prescient characterisation of President Robert Mugabe’s dilatory antics just two days after the March 29, 2008 general elections were concluded in Zimbabwe.

    Early returns suggested that Mugabe had been voted out (“massacred,” as a jubilant spokesperson for the opposition MDC said) after 28 years in office, and that his ruling ZANU-PF had lost its parliamentary majority for the time since Zimbabwe won independence in 1980.

    Zimbabweans and all those who had followed the country’s precipitous decline on virtually every front could smell change in the air. With the man who wrought this disastrous regression gone, there would be no swift return to the relative prosperity that Zimbabwe once enjoyed—the food self-sufficiency, a booming export market for tobacco, coffee, fruit, flowers, solid minerals, and the huge revenues from tourism.

    There would be no swift return to well-stocked grocery shelves, no immediate relief for millions ready and willing to work but unable to find any meaningful jobs.  The hundreds of thousands who had flocked into neighbouring South Africa through perilous routes might hurry back to friendlier climes, but to hardly any other relief.  With some luck, consumers will not have to trundle a truckload of Zim dollars to the shop to buy a family-size loaf of bread.

    Mugabe’s exit would however arrest the drift and decay, and create a climate in which the task of rebuilding could begin in earnest.

    But instead of departing, Mugabe launched a coup in slow motion.

    The electoral commission released the results of the parliamentary elections in tantalising driblets — calibrated to make the opposition feel that power was within its grasp and at the same time make the government feel that its viability was under no serious threat.  After several days, it seemed as if a stalemate was in the making, with neither the MDC and ZANU-PF coasting to victory.

    Relieved that the rout that had been widely forecast was unlikely to materialise, Mugabe unleashed the awesome powers of incumbency.  He warned darkly that proclamation of victory by the opposition would be regarded as an attempt to stage a coup and visited as such. As the stalemate dragged on, Mugabe let it be known that, contrary to public speculation, he was not averse to running against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai if no clear winner emerged in the presidential election.

    By the time it was officially announced that the MDC had indeed wrested parliamentary majority from ZANU-PF, attention had shifted, not to the presidential election whose outcome was being awaited, but to a likely a run-off between Tsvangirai and Mugabe.

    At this writing, the results of the presidential election had not been formally announced.  The working assumption is that the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won a majority of the votes but did not score enough to avert a second ballot. Under Zimbabwe’s electoral law, a run-off should be held within three weeks.

    Given the strange trajectory of the general elections, the question must be asked:  Within three weeks of what?  If it is within three weeks of the first poll, then it is past due.  If it is within three weeks of declaring the official results, Mugabe can take his time and delay the results for as long as possible. Having recovered his balance, he can then deploy the powers of incumbency to ensure an emphatic victory in the run-off.

    Nor is it inconceivable that the results may never be proclaimed.  There is a precedent for it.

    I have in mind the June 12, 1993 presidential elections.  The military government of General Ibrahim Babangida launched against it a coup that dragged on in all its murder and melodrama and absurdity for two months until he was caught in his own snare and dragged off the scene in ignominy.

    It is now clear that Mugabe is not prepared to vacate office.  It is also clear that, having driven  Zimbabwe to the edge of ruin, he can offer only more of the same – blood, agony, despair and tears, in pursuit of no nobler goal or vision than self perpetuation.

    How can he as a Christian, a person of faith who almost became an ordained priest – how can he  reconcile himself to the depredations and privations that his own policies have brought upon the people?  Has he become so isolated that he cannot hear them cry?  Is he inured to their pain?

    Does it not bother him that his compatriots now feel obliged to wage a chimurenga (Shona for “struggle”) against the very man who had led their historic chimurenga against colonial and settler rule?  Does he not feel diminished that he is now more loathed and detested in the public consciousness than Ian Smith, the last white minority ruler of what was then Rhodesia?

    As the brazen assault on the popular will in Zimbabwe unfolds, African voices have been tepid  at best.  The Africa Union showed up briefly in Harare during a meeting with Mugabe, then went missing in action.  The African Peer Review Mechanism, the vehicle through which African leaders are supposed to b e able to tell each other unpleasant truths and demand redress went into abeyance.

    Africa’s pre-eminent diplomat and peacemaker, Kofi Annan, most recently secretary-general of the United Nations, was stuck in Kenya, trying to broker a solution to another election stalemate that had resulted in slaughter and displacement on a scale almost beyond belief.

    South African President Thabo Mbeki, speaking ahead of  last weekend’s summit of the Southern Africa Development Community member-states, said the debacle is the Zimbabwean way of  handling elections and that the authorities should be given time to announce the results.  Not much is to be expected, then from the summit.  Malam Musa Yar’Adua knows his own dubious path to power too well to speak out.

    Nelson Mandela is in the twilight of his remarkable life.  He may be working behind the scenes and the headlines.  Even so, he is known for his loyalty to his friends, among whom he counts Mugabe. Those expecting him to denounce Mugabe are likely to be disappointed. That is not the Madiba style.

    Twelve years ago, General Olusegun Obasanjo would have been the statesman for these times.

    He held no formal office; yet his voice was respected all over the world.  His counsel was sought far and wide.  He talked with a moral authority that commanded attention.  He spoke truth and wisdom to power.  His every utterance was backed by the force of personal example.

    Today, he is hobbled, his influence severely diminished at home and abroad on account of a record of performance that belied his vaunted commitment to democracy and the rule of law  during his eight years as president. Each passing day brings new startling allegations of sleaze against his administration and even members of his family.

    Nor has the so-called international community proved an honest broker. Zimbabwe’s former colonial suzerain, the United Kingdom, says it has set aside a billion pounds to kick start rebuilding once Mugabe vacates power.

    If  the UK and the United States had made that kind of money available to help Mugabe buy white-owned farms for redistribution to landless Zimbabweans in keeping with the Lancaster House protocols, Mugabe would not have embarked on the measures that have brought his country to grief.  Besides, the UK’s latest promise only strengthens Mugabe’s hands in portraying his opponents as agents of British imperialism.

    Nearly three weeks after the election, the coup continues apace in slow motion. In the latest installment, Mugabe is claiming that the parliamentary poll was rigged in favour of the MDC and is demanding a recount in some 23 districts. If and when the result of the presidential election is released, Mugabe will probably embark on a new stunt.

    In this unfolding tragedy, Archbishop Desmond Tutu stands out almost alone as an honest broker, committed not to expediency and opportunist compromise, but to justice and upholding the sovereign will of the people.  Those who truly wish Zimbabwe well and do not want it to  go the way of Kenya must heed his voice.

     

    • This piece was first published in this newspaper on April 15, 2008. It will be the point of departure for next week’s column

  • Tisa, no teach me nonsense

    In periods of national foibles, the immortal lyrics of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, himself the Abami Eda (strange creature), comes to mind.

    In one of his vintage numbers, he was at his irreverent best: “Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense”!

    That, to be sure, was brash.  But at least the Fela persona, even if a pupil, knew enough to rebel and challenge his teacher.

    The poor Kaduna children, whose teachers the Kaduna government accuses of dispensing ignorance, might not have been that lucky!

    That generational evil is, therefore, the tragedy.  Whoever now cares about the half-baked children, grinded out under the tutelage of these teachers (?), but consigned to a bitter future of half-education, which the popular idiom says is dangerous?

    For that blighted generation, there is no union to plead their cause.

    On the contrary, it is the wrong and the faulty now playing the victim.  That is the long and short of the orchestrated wail of the teachers and allied unions.

    They have — is there no more shame in this land? — launched an emotive blackmail to retain a name — teacher — they never deserved; and a pay they never earned, simply because — a harvest of whimpers and a bucketful of tears — they must “feed their family”.

    Some satanic feeding there, after pumping other families’ offspring with thumping ignorance!

    Of course, for Nigeria, where a sense of right-and-wrong appears to have vanished, this is yet another controversy.

    That would appear the lot of the country since 1993, when a reckless cabal in the military cancelled the June 12 presidential election; but sustained the crime because all it evoked was, not bristling outrage at a monumental injustice, but a sterile controversy to justify the unjustifiable.

    That loss of innocence Nigeria still battles till today, despite the return of democracy since 1999; and a deliberate ploy to placate the South West, with an Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, for the MKO Abiola injustice.

    But that is one direction the Kaduna teachers affair must not be allowed to head.  Education is just too important to be sorted out by political compromises.

    Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), the British clergyman and Industrial Revolution-era economist it was, that raised the spectre of wealth growing at arithmetical proportion; but population booming at geometrical proportion, thus forecasting mass misery and anguish.

    That didn’t come to pass, because the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), as well as the discovery of the so-called new world (America, Brazil, Australia, etc) drew not a few Brits away, whether as outlaws shipped off as punishment; or just adventurers looking beyond the tiny British isles.

    But Malthus could also be applied to a looming tragedy, if this Kaduna case is not rightly resolved, without recourse to any sick political compromise.

    The 1999 Army Arrangement (again, apologies to the Abami Eda), which compensated the South West with an Obasanjo presidency, looked like political retardation, in “arithmetical proportions”; until the 2015 elections halted the Obasanjo era descent at its very nadir, the Goodluck Jonathan years, during which everything was going to crash.

    So long for political compromises, with neither soul nor equity!

    But the Jonathan-era political collapse would appear a child’s play with the current education debacle.

    Indeed — and back to Malthus — if politics and governance had collapsed by “arithmetical proportion”, education would appear collapsing by “geometrical proportion” — and the root is a rotten foundation, as exemplified by the Kaduna teachers scandal.

    That is why those who cry and wail about giving the quacks who claim to be teachers in Kaduna some soft landing entirely miss the point.  Indeed, such a stand would appear insensitive, if not outright unconscionable.

    Yet, there is a lot to be said about the rotten processes that installed these quacks; and the imperative of dealing with the rot from the fundament.

    For starters, how could the Kaduna teacher recruitment system be riddled with so much self-ruin, to the extent that those that lexically challenged end up as “teachers”?  And their victims, young impressionable minds, whose families are probably the society’s most vulnerable, given their lowly demographics?

    But before you point fingers at Kaduna, that state might well point to a nationwide rot.  That is why the Kaduna government should spare nothing to get to the root of the problems and ensure any racket in the teacher recruitment system is smashed; and there are vibrant checks-and-balances to henceforth continuously sanitize the system.

    All these point to a past where the abnormal had been so brazenly pushed it has now become the norm.  The Nasir El Rufai governorship holds it a sacred duty, to the coming generation, that the rot is completely reversed.

    Then the below-par teachers and their so-called welfare, on which the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), have screamed and bawled, in the mistaken belief that you win a discourse by raising your voice, not your logic.

    Strictly speaking, if welfare is linked to work privileges, any Kaduna teacher deemed to have failed so dismally in his or her teaching duties is not entitled to work-related welfare.  This is trite: for you to enjoy, you must deliver value.

    Besides, it is not charity.  Indeed, in this very case, to resort to an appeal to charity is nothing but double jeopardy, for such failure ought to attract stiff sanctions, not reward, given the harm it has done to the victim-pupils.

    Still, in dealing with citizens, hardly any government would want to, Draco-wise, strictly apply the law, without mercy or compassion.  That would appear the only pillar on which the Kaduna teachers, with proven dereliction of duties, can access any favour.

    But whatever happens, present and future generation of public school pupils should not be made guinea pigs, in that laboratory of mercy.

    Except for the few that can be retrained, the others should be shipped off to that segment of the civil service, where they would cease being a menace to the future generation.

    To this legion, teaching must be strictly off-limits, more so with the evidence that there are qualified teachers ready and willing to fill the vacated positions.

    For those who could neither be retrained as teachers nor fit into other areas of the civil service, however, the Kaduna government should end their appointment but promptly pay them their dues.  That way, they can get on with their lives, with little or no dislocation of the lives of their equally innocent dependents.

    That is the line the teachers union and organized Labour should push.  Otherwise, NUT would be fairly charged as undermining its own professional essence; and organized Labour legitimately charged with, by its empty grandstanding, pushing no dignity in honest labour.

  • Still on the trouble with Nigeria

    I don’t know if many Nigerians read the report about the plan by the federal government to outsource the forensic study of its Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) to foreign experts? Until last week, I had actually thought that Nigeria had moved beyond the point where the authors of a supposedly home-grown economic recovery strategy would be pounding the streets of foreign capitals in search of ‘experts’ to assist them in dealing with what is fundamentally a domestic problem.

    Until last week.

    Thanks to Minister of Budget and National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, we now know that some Malaysian experts are coming to assist the federal government “conduct a forensic study that will boost the implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP)”.

    Indulge me, dear reader, with the text of the rather long quote from the minister lest I be accused of playing semantic and/or lexical games:  “Today, the Federal Executive Council approved a memorandum that was brought by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning to retain some consultants to help us to conduct some pilot laboratories. This is part of our implementation strategy for the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and so, we intend to conduct three labs – one in agriculture and transportation, one in power and gas and one in manufacturing and processing.

    “The key objectives of the labs are as follows: one is to identify all relevant key stakeholders from the public and private sectors that are crucial in the delivery and implementation of the ERGP initiative so as to create ownership early in the development process. We will review and re-evaluate the ERGP and sectoral plans against set targets and progress and will include identifying gaps in the current economic system and the key success factors.

    “It will further deliver detailed a three-phase implementation programme line by line. We will identify entry point projects. We will identify key performance indicators, breaking down silos and encouraging key players. Now, the focus of the labs is to mobilise private sector investment to finance specific capital projects as you know public resources are limited. So, these labs will bring in private sector players. We will look at the various areas including: infrastructure, manufacturing and bring them in and mobilise private sector financing and resources for the labs.

    “So, what council has approved today (yesterday) is that we bring in some consultants who did a similar thing in Malaysia (emphasis mine) to try to help us build our own capacity. They will just help us at the beginning and after that, we will take over and do it ourselves,” he said.

    For this, the strained treasury will cough out a less-than-princely N458 million. And all of these for job that spans three months.

    At three hundred and sixty something naira to one United States dollar, that isn’t supposed to be a lot of money by the way – coming to a mere US$1.5 million. Much as we have not been told that the money will be paid in the Malaysian ringgit, the greenback or in the local currency, the indulgence, at a time like this, would ordinarily fly in the face of pretensions about doing everything to keep products and services it can undertake on its own at bay.

    I already see in my minds eye, some smart foreign consultants putting one or two of our local brains to work for peanuts only to hand the federal government the hefty bill with possible variations for a job well done.  Ever heard of the tragedy of a country that imports what it has in abundance while exporting what it lacks?

    I say this based on the common knowledge that tomes of similar reports already exist in the countless bureaux in government offices.  Moreover, I do know of countless number of Nigerians in the Diaspora that would willingly avail their country of the benefit of their expertise at a time like this for a nominal fee. But then, we would not be who we are if we don’t go after just about anything foreign including those things we do not need.

    Let me put things this way: what the consultants purport to seek in Sokoto is already in the nation’s proverbial Sokoto (trouser). Moreover, it is hard to see any new issues that could be thrown up that Nigerians are not already familiar given what has become the over-dissection of the economy. Trust our number-numbed compatriots: they have enough of the game of numbers not to recognise the latest one for what it is: something to get them talking!

    Honestly, I understand the economic management team’s anxiety to deliver. The truth however is that we have been on this path before. Between 1999 and now, we have had the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), the 11-point Agenda, and Transformation Agenda. Each, aside aspiring to the same broad objectives of deepening the nation’s economic base, also claims to be home-grown as well as understanding of the nuances of the Nigerian environment in their making. Although I cannot recall any of the previous strategies outsourcing any aspects of its strategy to a foreign outfit, I do understand that this might sometimes be necessary to bridge knowledge and expertise gaps in a universalist and interconnected world. It seems to me however that the Buhari administration has neither laid out a good case for bringing in the Malaysians to sell its ERGP to the citizens nor has it undertaken any preliminary steps to sell the plan to its own organs on the basis of which it might seek to even proceed with implementation.

    So, what do we know about ERGP? My answer is – pretty little. The problem however is no so much in any ballyhooed strategy but in our lack of attention to little things. Imagine a nation that can’t fix its road infrastructure; a country where the main road linking its major port lies in ruins; a country whose railway development have remained a permanent campaign item; where power sector is still deemed rocket science and where productivity counts for nothing – and yet aspires to the moon.

    Let the Malaysians come. They are welcome to the Nigerian feast.

  • Media under-developing Nigerian politics?

    Remember Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, that seminal work first published in 1972, which audacious thinking set the academia on fire?

    In the Nigerian university campus of the 1980s, you didn’t belong if you hadn’t read the book; and pressed, into service, its enchanting quotes.

    Given the current media temper, marked by slanted stories, unfazed finger-pointing and pseudo-analyses, perhaps a Rodney follow-up is due: How the Nigerian media underdevelop Nigerian politics!  Is any media scholar game?

    Were you to transpose media fare today back to the 1980s, the unceasing stream of jeremiads, on the alleged  hopelessness of the Nigerian situation, would probably have inspired another band of military pseudo-saviours to storm the Bastille.

    But maybe the media had always misled the polity with sensational reactions, when a reflective, introspective and well-reasoned option would do.

    Maybe that had always helped to derail the state, and feed it to a military train, clanging and chugging to nowhere.

    And maybe, present media howling aren’t producing past follies simply because the media, in its fatal hubris, is blissfully shackled to the past — far behind the society it has thrust itself to lead!

    That’s why its havoc on politics — and the polity — would appear humongous indeed; but which the fourth estate, in its holy rage, appears to least appreciate.

    Ringing renunciation from within?  Perhaps!  But maybe ringing media naivety, always passing the routine as the novel, explains why.

    Take the hysteria over the so-called “cabal”.

    The word cabal crept into pubic consciousness, during the Goodluck Jonathan presidential cause of 2009-2010, when a Katsina power bloc tried to stonewall the then Vice President, in the name of fatally ill President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

    It was a battle well fought and won, in the best tradition of Nigerian media crusading; dating back to the era of the old masters: John Payne Jackson and his son, Horatio (Lagos Weekly Record), George Alfred Williams (Lagos Standard), James Bright Davies (Times of Nigeria) and Herbert Macaulay (Lagos Daily News) to mention just a few Titans in the early Nigerian press.

    Since then, however, no thanks to analytical naivety, if not outright analytical corruption, “cabal” has seized a section of the southern media.

    From Yar’Adua’s “Katsina cabal” to Muhammadu Buhari’s so-called “Daura cabal”, you would think a governmental inner caucus was novel.  It isn’t.

    Indeed, between 1967 and 1983, approximating early military rule and President Shehu Shagari’s 2nd Republic, the southern media was fixated with the so-called “Kaduna mafia”.  That was at the apex of the northern power hegemony.

    Even if “Kaduna mafia” was justifiable southern angst against blatant northern political domination, a “mafia” or “cabal” is a harsh power reality.

    Indeed, where two or three are gathered to form a ruling bloc — over an association, town’s union, government or even churches and mosques — there probably is a cabal.

    Why, even President Jonathan, of the minority of minorities, had his “Ijaw cabal”! So did the all-powerful Afenifere of old.  Or why did some peeved Oyo-speaking partisans back then rail at the so-called “Ijebu mafia”?

    But make no mistake: a cabal or mafia that skews public policy, in favour of its narrow clan, deserves ringing condemnation.  Thus, the Yar’Adua era “Katsina cabal” deserved all its knocks.  So does the Buhari “Daura cabal”, if charges are proved.

    What is not right is freezing extant cases — proven or speculative — hold them up as novel but eternal and proceed to approach every matter, no matter how harmless, from that skewed prism.

    That is the cul-de-sac much of the southern media have run themselves into. At best, it is analytical mischief.  At worst, it is analytical fraud, which full wages may yet, in future, plague a southern president.

    After all,  no section of the country boasts a monopoly of terrorism — media or otherwise.

    Take the needless controversy over the reported Buhari instruction to the World Bank to concentrate developmental efforts in the “North”.  In a media driven by good faith, that should sound asinine to anybody.

    For one, Nigeria’s North East, scene of Boko Haram’s humongous destruction and grave human misery, couldn’t have been in the “South”, whether by Nigeria’s politics or geography.  Are fellow Nigerians up there not entitled to some quick relief?

    For another, the statement clearly issued from the naivety of the World Bank president,  Jim Yong Kim, whose honest statement was wilfully slanted to suit Nigeria’s explosive political geography.

    The controversy raged nonetheless, with full venom, based on the faulty premise — but sweet emotions — that  a northern cabal, with full presidential charter, was there, at the ready, to do in the “South”!

    A fierce, anti-south northern cabal must also have driven the sensational report, by a business newspaper, that President Buhari’s “appointments” were skewed eight-to-two, in North’s favour.

    It was a scandalous stacking of cards, toward a preconceived direction, to suck in the unwary.  Brandishing a “fact-check”, its skewed “facts” indeed “proved” Buhari’s presidential appointments were 81 per cent “northern”.  But arrayed against fairer parameters, one-sided cynicism never barged so loud!

    Incidentally, the report excluded — cleverly? — ministerial appointees, perhaps because that did not paint the one-sided picture it was pushing.  Yet, that opened a more even vista into the subject.

    From the breakdown later given by presidential sources, the South West got the highest (40, after delivering 15.7% of presidential votes), even above the president’s native North West (30, which nevertheless gave him 46% of the votes).

    The newspaper’s mischief, if not outright malice, was even more manifest from the South East tally.  For 1.3% of the vote, that region got 22 ministerial appointments, only two less than North East’s 24 (18.5% of the vote), but one more than North Central’s 21 (for 14.7% of the vote) and a clear two above the South-South’s 20 (for an equally lowly 2.7% of the vote.)

    So long for reportorial fiction from a southern media, unfazed about cutting its nose to spite its face!

    Still, the ever ready riposte — where are the “juicy” portfolios?  Simple: if you want “juicy” portfolios (whatever that means) deliver juicy votes.

    Frankly, it is dishonourable and unconscionable to deliver minuscule vote but insist on ministerial juice!  The juice is no manna from heaven. Some citizens put it there by their votes.

    Still, this is no ringing endorsement of the Buhari presidency.  For its blunders, it must take adequate knocks, if only to show that the people are the masters in a democracy; and that the media is their chief agent to assert that right.

    But in seeking to chase a northern cabal, the southern media has itself developed a cabalistic mindset, which spews nothing but hate, malice and bigotry.

    That is a self-imposed tragedy — which shows how it might be under-developing Nigerian politics — and polity.