The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Kukah cooking poisonous broth

    Kukah cooking poisonous broth

    Holy Father, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, may be cooking a profane broth that may well smudge his frock.

    When that broth is done, we may witness the merriest push at self-demystification in the history of global Catholicism!

    That is hyperbole, of course. But not a few have wondered why the goodly priest was so cavalier at leveraging his integrity on Jonathan-era opacity, the unconscionable sleaze from which has near-emptied the public till, and caused nationwide anguish.

    Yet, all the holy priest could volunteer, from his August 13 bully pulpit on television, was harangue President Muhammadu Buhari to forget the alleged humongous graft and “move on”, because of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s “spectacular” deed of losing election and stepping down!  Pray, was Jonathan supposed to veto voters’ will?

    Father Kukah was so imperious on behalf of his do-gooding National Peace Committee (NPC), now self-transformed into National Peace Council.  That body, of eminent Nigerians, midwifed the testy peace before, during and after the general elections; and closely guided the peaceful transfer of power from the defeated President Jonathan to opposition candidate, Gen. Buhari, for the first time in Nigerian history — kudos! Indeed, every Nigerian should salute NPC’s patriotism.

    Still, securing peace anchored on justice is one thing.  Pushing for peace founded on fraud is another.

    If the Jonathan-era NPC earned due praise for pushing for peace founded on justice (an election loser should surrender power, shouldn’t he?), the Buhari-era NPC risks ringing condemnation for pushing for peace of the graveyard.  Or how does one situate Father Kukah’s rather quaint crusade to gloss over serious regime fraud, simply because the regime head quit power after sound electoral rejection?

    Might the holy father then be Nigeria’s 21st century equivalent of the Pardoner, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, whose pouch bustled with papal indulgences, hot, fresh and smoking from Rome?  And by that, he already secured, for the Jonathan regime looting gang, some celestial pardon, mass cry for justice and national anguish be damned?

    In his holy rail against a sacred presidential duty to retrieve allegedly stolen funds, Father Kukah somewhat betrayed the Catholic Church’s historical nemesis of suspect fidelity to the state, no matter how profane its cause.

    When Fidel Castro made his famous prediction — a virtual impossibility that nevertheless just came to pass — that the United States would re-open relations with Cuba only when America had a Black president and the Catholic Church had a Latino pope, he probably had in mind the stinging rebuke of Liberation Theology to Catholic orthodoxy’s secular failings.

    An intra-Catholic protest movement had, in the 1950s, started in South America.  But it was not until 1971 that the Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutierrez, coined it a name, via his 1971 work, A Theology of Liberation.  Liberation Theology accused the Church of siding with the mighty and powerful, against the poor, meek and gentle, the Biblical beloved of the Christ Jesus.  Other proponents of this thinking included Spain’s Jon Sobrino, Uruguay’s Juan Luis Segundo and Brazil’s Leonardo Boff — all Latinos from continental Europe and South America.

    Such near-heretical soil hardly nurtures a pope?  Yet, today Pope Francis from Argentina (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio) is sovereign of Vatican City; and Barack Obama is US president — a tribute to the inevitability of truth and justice, no matter how secular overlords of orthodoxy — and political bosses — play the game.  From Father Kukah’s rather arrogant intervention in a suspect cause, there appears but a thin line between the two!

    The bitter irony though is that Nigerian Catholicism, since the dawn of the 4th Republic in 1999 and indeed throughout the jungle of military rule, had been nearest to telling truth to power — and resonating with a longsuffering public — on a consistent basis (witness Anthony Cardinal Okogie, retired Archbishop of Lagos).  That much cannot be said of the bulk of the Pentecostals, with their prosperity preaching and equal opportunity influence peddling; and the resultant ultra-closeness to any government in power.

    ‘President Buhari must take his historic duty of cleansing Nigeria directly to the people, whose shoes painfully pinch; and not some manipulative elite, whose comfort zones are assured’

    Which leads to the next point: had Father Kukah carefully x-rayed his NPC membership, he would perhaps have been more nuanced, strutting his holy violin with reckless abandon, for the “stop-the-probe-of-looters” orchestra.  Take Pastor Ayo Oristejafor, sitting Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) president, also in the NPC delegation to Aso Villa.

    With all due respect to the good clergy, Pastor Oritsejafor somewhat reminds the historical-minded of the Russian priest, Gregori Rasputin.  Indeed, what Rasputin was to the doomed Nicholas II, the last czar that ended the Romanovs’ over 300-year reign in imperial Russia, Oritsejafor is to President Jonathan, who ended PDP’s 16-year political hegemony in Nigeria’s federal democratic republic.

    Now, down in history, Rasputin appears a penumbra.  To many, he was the very devil.  To others, he was a court saint, undone by peer envy.  To yet others, he was the dialectical grey, between the fierce pull of black and white.  But the historical consensus: his spiritual influence, particularly on the Empress, aided the doom of the Russian monarchy, though he would be murdered before the Romanovs and their monarchy joined him in the grave.

    Pastor Oritsejafor has outlived the Jonathan Presidency — praise the Lord!  Ripples wishes him many more years yet in the Lord’s vineyard.

    Yet, not even the most fanatical of Oritsejafor adherents would deny his influence in the Jonathan presidential court; the arms purchase scandal that involved the pastor’s private jet, and CAN’s orchestrated campaign, under Oritsejafor’s presidency, to turn the presidential election into a Christian Vs Muslim plebiscite.

    After all of these, the pastor would coolly stroll into Aso Villa, with other NPC members, and the Father would have us believe the lobby is altogether selfless?  Excuse me!

    Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar too!  No doubt, the former head of state has done well for his country.  Quite sensibly, he hurriedly ended military rule.

    But the Army Arrangement (apologies to Fela) they put in place since 1999, with President Olusegun Obasanjo at the helm, had so alarmingly decayed that President  Jonathan was only a fall guy, even if he, through his fecklessness, more than contributed his own quota to the crash.

    Indeed, in his sacred passion to save Jonathan’s neck (hardly a crime), Father Kukah conveniently forgot the NPC election-time derring-do was as much do-gooding to save the polity, as it was an establishment rally to forestall sinking with Jonathan.  For all his famed polemics and brilliance, Father Kukah is no iconoclast but only an elite purifier and stabilizer.  But again, that is no crime.

    NPC is welcome to its self-defined historic role of stabilising the Nigerian polity.  But it must guide against morphing into a historic nuisance: a bastion against draining off the dross of roguery and robbery, that put Nigeria in this sorry pass.

    In the final analysis, President Buhari must take his historic duty of cleansing Nigeria directly to the people, whose shoes painfully pinch; and not some manipulative elite, whose comfort zones are assured.

    From the Kukah holy show on TV, it is all but clear that even the cleanest of this regnant establishment might just be too filthy for a new Nigeria where everything works.  Yet, Buhari must strive to save this elite from itself.

  • Osun: Options before the ruling party

    Going by the objective of this piece, one of the articles I wrote some six years back could be described as the first of a two-part piece. The article, titled ’Options before the opposition’, came at a time the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was not only in control of affairs in Nigeria, it also held five of six states in the Southwest by the jugular. Osun, the then ’State of the Living Spring’ was one of them.

    While the grip lasted, Osun State was not only regarded as PDP’s world, the party’s word was also law. At the helm of affairs were impertinently capitalistic and haughty hawks in whose eyes progress was measured only by what went into their pockets. Emergency democrats of Hitlerian antecedents hijacked power and the best they could offer was the mortgage of the state’s fortune for thirty shekels of silver. A strange amalgam of contradictory traits, PDP became law onto itself, eloquently ridiculing humanity with blatant contradictions and comical sincerity. The ’do-or-die’ party ruled the state with titillating indignation and it was as if tomorrow was a thousand years away.

    Nothing, as the saying goes, lasts forever! Like a broken-winged bird that could no longer fly, PDP lost power in Osun State and its fortune immediately took a nosedive. Trends turned and fates twisted: the ‘Power’ party not only lost in terms of men and materials, its loss also became the gain of the new party in the saddle. But, unlike the wasteful son who, when he came to himself, penitently went back to his father, PDP’s attempt at seeking righteous repentance after a downward spiral and crash has in the course of years past taken some dangerous twists, the latest being an incautious haven in the ’financial crisis bedeviling the whole of the federation which Osun State is part of.’ Regrettably, rather than treat the current salary challenge as a national crisis which demands collective prayers and efforts to resolve, PDP has seen it as an opportunity to blackmail Governor Rauf Aregbesola as well as discredit whatever dividends of democracy his administration has delivered to the people. For instance, interrogating the debt status ofý other states in Osun’s situation in relation to monthly deductions from their Federation Account allocations would have led us into why they are also in salary default to their workers. Peradventure, its outcome would have allowed for an appropriate classification of their governors either as prudent or reckless managers of resources – as Aregbesola is being unfairly labeled.

    “Politics”, according to Henry ‘Groucho’ Marx, ”is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Recent events in Osun State tend to have confirmed the worrisomely volatile nature of politics which Mao Zedong once described as war without guns. As a matter of fact, that PDP as the main opposition party now blames others for its misfortune is not any surprise. After all, Nigeria’s ’Five Majors’ blamed the ten percenters for that unforgettable insult on our national psyche while Yakubu Gowon and his band blandly blamed Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi for what eventually befell his (Aguiyi-Ironsi’s) gang. Olusegun Obasanjo blamed ’Unknown Soldiers’ for the murder of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and, when he again failed as president, he simply asked us to take our case to God. When Olusegun Agagu lost at the Tribunal, he attributed his loss to the work of some invisible hands in government, even when he was an integral part of that government. PDP blamed Card Readers for its woes at the 2015 general elections while Goodluck Jonathan, its presidential candidate, blamed unfriendly friends for his inability to keep a promise. Remember Godsday Orubebe? He blamed his embarrassing outbursts on frustration!

    But, the opposition’s inherently defective and incurably incomprehensible distractions notwithstanding, it is a transparent fact that Aregbesola’s name remains untainted; his record, impeccable; and his popularity, unswerving. Unlike others who have drunkenly adapted to the exigencies and the contingencies of living in denial, the governor is a man of demonstrable accomplishment who sees the salary challenge as an unfortunate pass which would soon ”smoke off in the state”. Little wonder he has set timelines for the completion of most of the outstanding projects initiated by his administration. For example, the Akoda-Gbongan-Ede Road is expected to be completed before the end of next year while the airport project at Ido Osun will become a dream-come-true before his second term expires. He has given his word that Osogbo will attain its promised world class capital city status while the School Feeding Scheme will not be sacrificed on the altar of wicked politics.

    In any case, these are trying times for the ruling party in Osun State. Understandably so! We also know that the race to 2018 actually began the day 2014 governorship election was won and lost. And with an opposition party as desperate for power as PDP, docility in whatever shape or form on the part of the ruling party is not always a viable option. In other words, while we concede that the opposition reserves the right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable, its penchant for mischief should neither be underestimated nor its capacity for treachery overlooked. Also, while APC, as it is presently constituted, may be a collection of sincere and strange minds; and that it may take some time before the wheat is separated from the chaff, events on our hands present a lucrative opportunity for holistic evaluation of possible roles played, in particular, by fifth columnists and ‘enemies within’ as this will go a long way in repositioning the party.

    ‘For APC to remain the party to beat in Osun State, especially within the context of the Nigerian socio-political landscape, it must continue to be guided by the fundamentals of democratic tradition’

    This brings me to the all-important issue of internal democracy. For APC to remain the party to beat in Osun State, especially within the context of the Nigerian socio-political landscape, it must continue to be guided by the fundamentals of democratic tradition. For a fact, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that crushing the drama and the trauma of the Justice Oloyede-compliant ambush automatically translates into the suppression of the opposition’s penchant for devilish logic. No, not at all! Since they aren’t unsophisticated in their agenda, PDP and its agents have only temporarily switched into a ‘retreat and re-strategize’ mode! This is the more reason why some suggestions as canvassed by Jacob Adekomi and Obisesan Daramola at a summit recently organized by Osun Legislators’ Forum on how to move the state forward may not all be wished away. Gleaning one or two lessons from aftereffects of Bisi Akande’s downsizing of the state’s workforce in the early 2000s may also be helpful at a time like this. The culture of internal democracy and involvement of younger blood in the scheme of things are equally essential ingredients of democracy which the ruling party must continue to embrace.

     

    • Komolafe wrote in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State.
  • Between ‘national icon’ and iconographer

    Between ‘national icon’ and iconographer

    A “national icon” turned 82 the other day.

    No, it wasn’t the literary titan and Nobelist, Wole Soyinka.  It wasn’t the great legal scholar and jurist, Professor Ben Nwabueze.  It wasn’t the statesman, First Republic Minister of Mines and Power and  Second Republic Ambassador to the United Nations, Yusuf Maitama Sule.  It wasn’t even Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, “Leader of the Ijaw Nation” and lately confidant, counsellor and father-confessor to yesterday’s man, former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Unless you were like me a pertinacious consumer of the newspapers, including advertisements ranging from the self-indulgent to the flagrantly-seditious and everything in between, you would have missed the full-page announcement in one of the better national dailies of the grand arrival of this “national icon” at that epochal milestone.

    To persons of an even temperament, given neither to excess of praise nor censure, the accolade might seem over the top.  But considering the subject’s transcendent achievement as set out in the advertisement I cited earlier, qualifying him as a “national icon” might on deeper reflection seem a back-handed compliment.

    If I did not know the reputation, forthrightness and judgment of the iconographer, I would myself have accused him of engaging in denigration by faint praise.

    That would have been unduly hasty.  For, the advertisement goes on full throttle to elucidate, for contemporary society and posterity, just what the subject’s iconic status consists in.

    “A leader of uncommon achievement,” the iconographer declares languidly about his subject, preparatory to ramping up the adulation.  “Keeper of the peace of the nation, a political heavyweight and mentor to the upcoming generation, an elder statesman and a leader of indomitable mien.”

    Even so early in the game, I can almost see the reader scratching his or her head and wondering just who this “national icon,” this paragon of political virtue, is.

    Surely, our iconographer cannot be talking about Frederick Lugard or Herbert Macaulay or Nnamdi Azikiwe or Obafemi Awolowo or Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, or Abubakar Tafawa Balewa or Anthony Enahoro or Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu or their contemporaries who might still be among us?

    Who, then, is the “national icon” he is eulogising so rapturously?

    “No doubt, yours has been a life of consistent hard work, total commitment to higher principles and unalloyed loyalty to the national cause,” the iconographer continues, gathering pace.

    Total commitment to higher principles and unalloyed loyalty to the national cause in a land where the leadership has been defined by the absence of a commitment to higher principles and often to no principles at all, except for brief shining moments, a land that has espoused no national cause beyond preserving its so-called territorial integrity and is still seen by a large bloc of its inhabitants as a  “geographical expression” more than 50 years after independence?

    By now the reader is scratching his or head maddeningly. Who is this “national icon,” this paragon of civic virtue?  Where was he in all these years that Nigeria has been like a stalled caterpillar, its antennae probing forlornly in every direction, its body inert?

    Patience, reader.

    “The story of your achievements and the status you occupy, “ the iconographer continues his impassioned exordium, is (sic) an eloquent testimony to a life of discipline spent in sacrifice and sincere devotion to a nation that today expresses its gratitude…

    “Sincere devotion,” you hear.  No faking.

    That would be iconic indeed, if true; indeed, for a country mired in every pathology known to political science, nothing would be more iconic. But the reader cannot tell whether it is true until he or she knows the true name and identity of the subject of the exordium – the “national icon,” in other words.

    As for the nation “expressing its gratitude,” when did that happen?  By now, the reader who belongs in the attentive audience for public affairs is thoroughly frazzled.  He or she cannot recall a recent public event honouring the singular individual who has wrought such transcendent feats of public devotion and dedication and commitment and nation-building, but by design or default remains largely unknown and unsung.

    The reader cannot recall any national thanksgiving ceremony at which the “national icon” was presented on the national stage in appreciation of his iconic service, nor the proclamation of a federal holiday to mark the canonisation.

    Can it be that the iconographer was the only witness at the event who was not solemnly sworn to secrecy?

    Then this, up close and personal to the “national icon” from the iconographer: “Chief, there is nothing more for you to prove.”

    There you have it, a verdict for the ages is definitive and admits of no equivocation. Not even the most inventive revisionists can assail it.

    In their unwisdom, philosophers of antiquity warned that we should call no person good until he is dead.  But we have it on the authority of our latter-day iconographer that his subject is virtue personified.

    All that remains is a prayer, dutifully entered by the iconographer that as he”gracefully” adds to his years, the “national icon” may be granted longer life and good health “to continue with selfless service to the nation.”

    The mystery deepens, if not the awe. Where most people spend that time of life contemplating the hereafter, this “national icon” thinks of nothing but continuing his accustomed “selfless service” to the nation.

    Pray, who is this “national icon”?  And who is his gushing iconographer?

    It can now be revealed, as a reward to the reader who has stayed through this tortuous puzzle, that the “national icon” at issue is none other than Himself the Arch Fixer, Chief Tony Anenih, Iyase of Esanland, best known for his uncommon skills in turning election winners into losers and losers into winners.

    I can also now reveal that the gushing iconographer, joined by his wife Fati and their children, is General Abdulsalami Alhaji Abubakar, Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, former head of state, under whose custody President-elect Moshood Abiola was murdered for refusing to submit to the pernicious bargain that Anehih had made of his sweeping victory in the presidential election of June 12, 1993, and now a much sought-after international mediator:   in short, a “national icon” himself.

    It takes one “national icon” to identify another.

    Correction

    In this space last week, I blamed Kogi Governor Idris Wada for derailing a plan to site a federal university in Kabba.  It was his predecessor Ibrahim “Ibro” Idris who scuttled the plan. I regret the error.

     

  • Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio and crying wolf

    Akpabio, Akpabio!

    Let off that hail in The Nation Editorial Board suites, and you probably would elicit equally passionate but contradictory responses.

    Commendation: a socially responsible and historically conscious former governor, whose laudable education policy was aimed at ridding his people of the “houseboy/girl and cook syndrome”, by making education free, compulsory and attractive; and gifting his state monumental physical infrastructure, easily a generational reference point.

    And condemnation: a brash narcissist, who always thinks he remains the issue.  Whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous, he tends to feel that, because he says it, confers on it the wisdom of Solomon and the depth of Socrates.

    That is Ripples’ honest sweet-sour impression of Godswill Obot Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, and newly minted Senate Minority Leader.

    That much is clear from Senator Akpabio’s latest crying wolf, over President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war, DSS’s alleged partisanship in election matters and of course, the restive Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) staff, agitating against a 50 per cent pay cut.

    “We can no longer run to the Villa for cash, so we don’t have the wherewithal to maintain that large number of secretariat workers”, Himself, Akpabio the Infallible, barked, in company with Uche Secondus, acting PDP national chairman, at a press conference.  “The workers should understand that they are in a master-servant relationship, in which you cannot force an unwilling master to keep a recalcitrant servant.  We are definitely going to downsize.”

    Pray, what was that?  No, not the master-servant stuff in employment matters.  That is trite, though a being less infallible would sure have been sweeter, less stark and less combative.

    Rather, it was the bit about running to the Villa for cash.  Was that a Freudian slip?  An Akpabio-istic hyperbole?  Or a hedge-and-be-damned combative war cry from He, who cannot be wrong?

    Whatever it was, was the PDP dipping its hands into the public till to run its business, simply because it ran the Presidency?  Mr. Akpabio’s dismissive roar tended to suggest such.

    But even if it were just the impassioned hyperbole from the House of Akpabio, it was harmful no less: for the senator’s arrogant diction seemed to portray the rump of a regnant impunity, that peaked in the power hubris, that finally smashed the PDP Humpty Dumpty.

    Imagine referring to your own party workers as near-contemptible urchins that must take it or chuck it!  Still, the least said on that the better: post-power PDP — and its workers — appear perfectly capable of carrying their cross!

    Which takes the discourse to the Akpabio and Secondus latest campaign on DSS’s alleged satanic activism on electoral officials allegedly linked to contentious polls; and President Buhari’s allegedly skewed anti-corruption war.

    Just as well the DSS, through Lawal Musa Daura, its director-general, has responded to the partisan allegations.  It’s left to the public to decide the more credible — the accuser or the accused.

    But, for Ripples, the issue is simple: a key security pillar of state becoming a partisan rod, does no one no good.  Under President Goodluck Jonathan, DSS was notorious for such brazen abuse.  By that same logic, it can’t be popular under President Buhari, if that vile habit has continued.

    If true, that would be a negation of building state institutions.  After all, to paraphrase US President Barack Obama, strong institutions deepen democracy, seldom strong personalities.

    It is, however, rich Mr. Akpabio is raising hell now.  What was his reaction to DSS excesses during the Jonathan presidency, when “golden girl” Marilyn Ogar became the stylish “Charlie’s Angel” (remember that American crime-busting TV series, that aired on ABC from 22 September 1976 – 24 June 1981 — and much later, via syndication, on NTA?) in the Jonathan government’s unending war against the opposition?

    On 8 August 2014, Lai Mohammed, then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) spokesperson, with Sunday Dare and Salisu Shuaibu, were celebrated DSS pre-Osun gubernatorial election “prisoners of war”.

    On the spot, a DSS trooper alleged Alhaji Mohammed always “abused” Jonathan.  Even, if abusing the president was a crime — which it is not, though it may be tort if it is slander or libel — when did DSS become the courts to settle the matter in a one-way adjudication of summary arrest?  But Ms Ogar soon moved in to clear the air: those in the net were nabbed for “loitering” (another novel crime)!

    The same Ogar swiftly moved in to canonise DSS’s illegal raids — twice: the second, an open defiance of an express court order — on an APC IT facility in Lagos, brutalising the staff, wrecking assets.  The angelic Ms Ogar again weighed in with a plethora of “evidence”, suggestive of alleged electoral subversion.  True, Prof. Attahiru Jega’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would pour cold water on the DSS supposition, but the immaculate Ms. Ogar had spoken!

    Now, what was Mr. Akpabio’s reaction to these clear abuses, though then he was both Akwa Ibom governor and chair, PDP Governors Forum?  Perhaps as muffled back then, as his hell-raising now is shrill!

    Sure, that would appear immaterial, particularly if the allegation is true — for, ad hominem, his preferred reaction does not affect the objective reality on the ground.  But it pushes a legitimate case that Senator Akpabio, for partisan motives, might just be crying wolf where there is none.

    Besides, the states under reference, Akwa Ibom (where Akpabio was involved as a partisan) and Rivers, are instructive.  Media reports before, during and after the elections, in the two states, strongly suggest probable cases of grave electoral subversion (with lost lives and limbs to boot!), with alleged criminal collusion from ranking electoral officials and security agencies.

    The tribunals are adjudicating the allegations.  Still, the Akpabio-Secondus tag-team is not deluded enough to think that just crying partisan wolf would force the authorities to back off those with genuine cases to answer?

    The alleged Buhari one-sided corruption war speaks of a particularly virulent strain of political nihilism: accusation and counter-accusation soon democratically spreads the muck among a gullible people, uh?

    Though the Presidency itself has given a fitting response, the states where the PDP points a finger of guilt, Rivers and Lagos, are rather interesting.

    Even under PDP banners, Rivers under Rotimi Amaechi, from all objective analysis, had a lot going for it: its futuristic public schools, its effective post-militancy security infrastructure before murderous politicking set in, by a desperate but doomed presidency; and its huge investment in physical infrastructure.  The allegations would, therefore, appear a once sweet song turned sour — without prejudice to whatever the probing authorities may find.

    And Lagos under Babatunde Fashola?  Arguably, in his 2007-2015 set, Nigeria’s brightest advertisement for democracy.

    Even if he did nothing else, his clinical tackling of the Ebola virus remains a global reference.  If Lagos — and Nigeria — didn’t collapse under Ebola, Fashola earned all the plaudits.  Pre-Ebola, his place, in sane and responsible governance, was secure: a tremendous blessing to his generation. Besides, how come Fashola ran Lagos with admirable pluck, that earned a national reference?

    Rubbishing due praise is political nihilism taken too far.  More than the target individual, the system loses the credible dream of a glorious repeat.

    That is a loss a growing democracy can ill afford.

     

  • Africa’s great Polio legacy

    In 1995, polio affected all countries across Africa and paralysed more than 75,000 children for life. The following year, Nelson Mandela launched a new campaign: ‘Kick Polio Out of Africa.’ His hope was that polio would follow the only human disease ever consigned to the history books: smallpox. Today we are one step closer to achieving that goal.

    Today August 11, for the first time in history, thewhole of Africa reached one year without a single case of wild poliovirus being confirmed. Just three years ago, Nigeria was home to more than half of all global cases of wild poliovirus, and outbreaks in the Horn of Africa and central Africa in 2013 made some question the feasibility of global eradication.

    ‘Health workers have been the true heroes of Africa’s polio programme. Daily, they overcome conflict, trek through marshlands to reach remote villages and build trust with communities to ensure that all children receive lifesaving polio vaccines.Community ownership and social mobilization have also been vital. Across Africa, we need to invest in and empower health workers,making sure they have the training, skills and incentives to continue delivering for our communities’

    Nigeria is the only remaining country in Africa still on the polio endemic list. However, there hasn’t been a recorded case since July 2014. Last month, President Muhammadu Buhari committed to ending polio in Nigeria and sent a powerful message across the country by vaccinating his own granddaughter. Once all the lab samples for the past year have been checked and surveillance standards are fully satisfied –Nigeria could be removedfrom the polio-endemic list.

    Africa now stands on the brink of being polio-free. Our collective efforts to combat polio have left behind important lessons that we must build upon to ensure that no child dies from vaccine-preventable diseases.

    First, government leadership at all levels is critical to success. Leaders across Africa prioritised and resourced the fight against polio. We now have a blueprint to tackle other health and developmental challenges. To protect the health and improve the lives of our citizens across the region, it is crucial for African leaders to deliver on the 2001 Abuja Declaration commitment to spend 15 percent of national budgets on public health.

    Innovation is also crucial. In Nigeria, major investment in seven Emergency Operations Centres and a strengthened surveillance system enabled early identification of new cases and enabled a quicker response. The infrastructure set up for polio proved invaluable when Nigeria was confronted with an incipient Ebola threat and was able to quickly snuff it out in its largest city, Lagos.

    ‘The polio campaign in Africa has shown us that when we invest in health systems, strong leadership, health workers and vaccines, overcoming even the most difficult health challenge is achievable. A year with no new confirmed cases of wild polio in Africa is a step in the right direction for the entire continent – and certainly a cause for celebration’

    Health workers have been the true heroes of Africa’s polio programme. Daily, they overcome conflict, trek through marshlands to reach remote villages and build trust with communities to ensure that all children receive lifesaving polio vaccines.Community ownership and social mobilization have also been vital. Across Africa, we need to invest in and empower health workers,making sure they have the training, skills and incentives to continue delivering for our communities.

    Another model of success has been theunique public-private partnership that has driven progress against polio. Working with governments across Africa and around the world, Rotary International, the World Health Organization, Unicef, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have helped generate public, political and financial support for polio eradication.

    Final and lasting success of the polio campaign in Nigeria and across Africa willnot be possible without life-saving vaccines. With the eradication of polio closer than ever before, leaders must commit to financing polio eradication, strengthening surveillance and improving routine immunisation performance. The first-ever Continental Ministerial Conference on Immunisation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this November will call upon every African health minister to ensure that lifesaving vaccines – against polio and other preventable diseases – reach all children.

    The polio campaign in Africa has shown us that when we invest in health systems, strong leadership, health workers and vaccines, overcoming even the most difficult health challenge is achievable. A year with no new confirmed cases of wild polio in Africa is a step in the right direction for the entire continent – and certainly a cause for celebration. However, we cannot become complacent. Now is the time for us to redouble our efforts.

    We have an unprecedented opportunity to make good on Mandela’s vision and create not only a polio-free Africa, but also an Africa where children survive and communities thrive. Let’s do it together.

     

    • Dr. Matshidiso Moeti is the World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Africa.
  • Kogi: The unending mess

    Kogi: The unending mess

    “THE mess in Kogi” was the not-so-nuanced title of the article I posted in this space on February 2, 2012.

    How I wish time and tide and circumstance had softened that judgment. Rather, they have, if anything, reinforced it.

    Then Kogi State was, and is even more so now, a political unit administered by the Igala largely for the benefit of the Igala, with scant regard for the interests and well-being of the Yoruba – the so-called Okun people of the former Kabba Province, the Ebirra and the Nupe who were corralled in a state that treats them as colonial subjects.

    You see it at every stratum of the public service and in every aspect of the governance.  It is dominance most unsubtle.  When they bother at all to respond to the complaint of those whom they are lording it over with such in-your-face brazenness, they tell them it is all a game of numbers.

    They assert that the Igala people outnumber all the other ethnic groups combined and should by that fact exercise the dominance that comes with that endowment. Theirs is a game of brute numbers in which equity and fellow-feeling have no place.

    Those at the receiving end of this kind of treatment must therefore have felt sorely galled to hear Governor Idris Wada declaim the other day that he had brought equity and justice and fairplay to governance in Kogi.

    Hear him, in a wide-ranging interview with Thisday (July 23, 2015)

    “…We try to unify our people for a common purpose of development and transformation of Kogi State by being fair in the distribution of amenities and projects across the three senatorial zones of the state and we try to attend to the needs of our people in an equitable manner and this has helped to propel our agenda for unity and transformation …”

    This declamation can perhaps be understood in the context of the gubernatorial election in which Wada will be seeking a second term. Outside that context, it flies in the face of the facts.  It is even flatly contradicted by other claims Wada made in the wide-ranging interview.

    The claim that he is building a university teaching hospital and a vocational training centre and an “ultra-modern” parking garage and 500 houses and has “electrified” more than 400 villages and built 300 motorised boreholes and renovated “countless” number of schools even while building many more may be well-founded.

    The critical question is:  Where are these projects located?

    It is the contention of this column that the “equity” and “fairness” that Wada trumpeted in the interview under reference hardly informed the siting of the projects. The siting of the Federal University in the state and Wada’s role in it makes that point abundantly clear.

    Word had come, apparently from on high that, finally, a major federal project was likely to be sited in Kabba, in the much-neglected Yoruba area of Kogi State. The entire area was agog with excitement and great expectation. The town already boasted a thriving College of Agriculture, an affiliate of Ahmadu Bello University, set up during the First Republic when Kabba belonged in Northern Nigeria.

    With that solid infrastructure in place, and with plenty of room for expansion, the proposed university would be taking off on a sound footing, in an area where education is the major industry.  It would, withal, serve as a catalyst for economic development.

    The joy was short-lived. The university, Wada insisted, had to be sited in Lokoja, to make up for what he called a deficit of federal presence in the neighbourhood.

    If anything, Lokoja already enjoyed a surfeit of federal presence as befits a state capital. It is host to a Federal Medical Centre, a branch of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Inland Waterways, a military garrison and a police area command, among other institutions.

    According to corroborated media reports, Wada led a visiting National Universities Commission delegation to the premises of a secondary school in serious disrepair and told its members that that would be the home of the new federal university. And at the end of its visit, NUC Chairman Professor Julius Okojie dutifully announced that it had indeed accomplished its mission of locating the best site for the new institution, namely the premises of the derelict school, aforementioned.

    To be fair to Wada, he is not solely or even principally responsible for the blazing inequity and the grasping propensity that have under the ruling ethnic group in Kogi become the defining characteristics, if not the fundamental objectives, of the governance of the state.

    The template was set by the imperious first elected governor, Abubakar Audu, who invested himself with royal airs and an ornate, outsized wardrobe to match. It was notorious that he conducted business from a throne-line chair while his fawning appointees had to stoop before him to take their orders.

    He reluctantly agreed to set up the state university in the nearest town, Ayingba, when it became clear that his village lacked the absorptive capacity for that kind of project.  Even so, he had it named for himself by subterfuge.

    A student delegation from the institution had gone to meet Audu in Lokoja to complain about a dearth of facilities at the institution.  The students, so the story goes, were dragooned into a room and asked to draft a petition urging the Kogi Assembly to name the university for Audu.  The petition was forwarded to the Assembly, which assented post haste.

    That was how it came to be called Prince Abubakar Audu University –not just any Abubakar Audu but the princeling – with the hilarious acronym PAAU.  The institution has since reverted to its original name.

    Audu’s successor Ibrahim Idris, the carpenter they called “Ibro”followed the same path, but without the flashes of urbaneness that Audu often radiated even at his most imperious.  Wada has been a good and faithful student of the duo.

    If Wada wins the PDP’s nomination, he will face re-election in November in a profoundly altered political environment. The superior numbers the PDP had relied upon over the years to win and retain power in Kogi without serious challenge is no longer assured.

    The PDP retained control of the State Assembly in the general election this past March, but the strong showing of the APC in that poll, not forgetting that it is now the ruling party at the centre and that it has thrown up candidates with far wider appeal do not bode well for Wada and the PDP.

    One more thing: The voting pattern in the general election suggests powerfully that, contrary to what has been the dominant assumption in Kogi all these years, the Igala do not constitute a bigger voting bloc than all the other ethnic groups combined.

    If they play smart, those groups can effect a power shift, especially if the PDP is seen to be offering nothing but continuity.

     

  • Again, NASS comes up short

    Remember Salisu Buhari of Kano?  He was the first Speaker, 4th Republic House of Representatives.

    He was everything: rich, handsome, genteel, debonair, street-wise and dashing — until a certificate forgery scandal laid him bare.  He was also accused to have fast-tracked his age to make election into the House of Representatives, and eventually, its Speakership.

    But when the forgery scandal came, he came hurtling off his high throne.  He promptly got convicted too — and like the comet, he blipped off the public space.  Nevertheless, the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency granted him pardon, after conviction.

    But not so (at least in the public eye) the House, and by extension, the National Assembly which, from then, has somehow notched up the rather unsavoury image of chambers of eternal scandals.

    It was supposed to be a new beginning of democratic rectitude, after years of waste, driven by military turpitude.  But clearly, the National Assembly wouldn’t be part of that renaissance.

    Aside from Citizen Buhari’s trip, the late Evan(s) Enwerem, first president of the 4th Republic Senate (3 June 1999 – 18 November 1999) and Imo governor in the aborted 3rd Republic, was stewing in his own corruption juice.

    His nemesis was the dreaded “banana peel”, from which also the flamboyant Oyi of Oyi, Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo (now dead), second Senate president (18 November 1999 – 8 August 2000), would slip.  They were both unhorsed in quick successions, no thanks to scandals, real or induced.

    Though Anyim Pius Anyim, the third incumbent (8 August 2000 – 29 May 2003) , would complete that turbulent but sole term (even that, at the expense of forfeiting a return to the Senate), the “banana peel” soon claimed its third scalp, Adolphus Wabara.

    Fourth senate president but only first president of senatorial term 2003-2007, Wabara was forced to resign (2005) via a bogus corruption scandal, reportedly pushed by a tag-team of the Obasanjo presidency and Nwabara’s own Igbo rival-claimants to the Senate presidency.  But a court later quashed the allegations, for lack of fair hearing.

    Ken Nnamani (2005-2007) would enjoy a relatively peaceful tenure as senate president, even, with regal panache, halting President Obasanjo’s illegal third term bid.  But the Senate presidency, assailed by scandals from the “Eastern home front”, proved a hideous churchyard for many a prominent South East politician.

    Meanwhile, the holy President Obasanjo, fiery commander-in-chief of the war against graft, who would share his glory with nobody, thought nothing of throwing the National Assembly to the wolves on “furniture allowance”.

    He made it known that the National Assembly (NASS) was some unconscionable allowance glutton, out to ruin his new age of rectitude.  But mum was the word, on the perks his own ministers and special advisers were grossing — no matter!

    The media loves sensation.  It even enjoys the more, roasting the proverbial high-and-the mighty.  The National Assembly’s goose was cooked.  It was the final departure — and NASS never made it back in the good books of public consciousness.

    Some 16 years down the line, from the first Buhari House of Representatives scandal, another Buhari is appearing on the anti-corruption horizon.  He is Muhammadu Buhari, president of the Federal Republic.

    From the previous historical back-grounding, President Buhari may well appear, like President Obasanjo before him, as another one come with executive swagger, to crush the longsuffering Nigerian parliament.

    The shriller the anti-corruption rhetoric, the more endangered the NASS, right?  And, as an endangered species, NASS has a right to defend its democratic territory?

    Indeed, there are interesting parallels between President Buhari and former President Obasanjo.  Both were former military heads of state, who secured democratic mandates.  Both enter their democratic era jobs as radical anti-corruption stalwarts.  Finally, both promise(d) a new dawn, after so many years in the woods.

    Still, with all due respect to President Obasanjo and all his anti-corruption activism, what he promised in 1999 has turned out nothing but a false dawn.

    If President Goodluck Jonathan pitifully crashed out of office in 2015 — and that, at the ruling elite’s scramble not to sink with him — the genesis of that rot was the Obasanjo presidency from 1999.  Its progressive decay climaxed in the Jonathan fiasco of 2015.  That has even made President Buhari’s anti-corruption stand all the more pressing and credible.

    Obasanjo’s systemic blackmail and muscling of the National Assembly (both the Senate and House of Representatives in perpetual near-permanent war state, almost always traced to some executive-fuelled intriguing), only led to a thorough subversion of the separation of powers/checks-and-balances doctrine.  That further underdeveloped the already disadvantaged parliament, since it stayed suspended in the military era.

    For the democratic polity, the severe result of such subversion is institutional shrivelling, with parliament becoming punier and the executive bigger; and corruption spiralling out of control.

    So, could the Buhari new anti-corruption war be a ready executive excuse to further pulverise the legislature?  Maybe.  Maybe not — though Buhari’s lean, ascetic and Spartan profile appears much more reassuring, for a genuine anti-sleaze war, than Obasanjo’s flabby, hedonistic and materialistic persona.

    Still, much as a strong, just and disciplined leader can, hopefully in Buhari, redeem the dawn of rectitude that the Obasanjo era so painfully promised but never delivered, a strong set of institutions would serve better the democratic polity.

    That is why the Senate must snap out of its present costly drama — costly to its own institutional health; even costlier to Nigeria’s ever delicate democratic project.

    ‘Senate President Bukola Saraki may have kicked off the Buhari era in a dust of scandal, as Speaker Salisu Buhari kick-started the Obasanjo era with a whiff of forgery’

    There are credible allegations that the Senate leadership election of July 9 held under a forged set of rules — Standing Orders 2015 (as amended) which magically replaced the extant rules at the end of the 7th Senate: Standing Orders 2007 (as amended).  Police investigations reportedly suggest there might be a prima facie case of that grave allegation.

    If that holds true, it means Senate President Bukola Saraki may have kicked off the Buhari era in a dust of scandal, as Speaker Salisu Buhari kick-started the Obasanjo era with a whiff of forgery.  That adds no shine to the legislature’s image, as a bastion of change — change for the better.

    Yet, the Senate response to this grave charge is a sickening espirit-de-corps, which tends to flex emotive muscles on the executive-legislature divide, instead of addressing the weighty question of alleged forgery of rules.

    Should the courts decide the case, and the worst fear is confirmed, NASS’s image, as a responsible and responsive legal citizen, would dip further.  An illicit but wilful cover-up is a war the Senate cannot win.

    Either way, it just might be prone to more executive bullying, should Buhari develop an Obasanjo-like messianic complex; and essay Obasanjo-era blackmail and muscling.  That must be avoided at all cost.

    That is why the Senate should do an unflattering introspection, and do what is right, by law and by morality.  Otherwise, NASS would come short again, and not illegitimately, be perceived as wilful obstacle to the present anti-corruption effort to bring the country back to life, from the grave of its past graft.

    That would be well and truly unfortunate

  • The way the cookie crumbles

    The fate that has befallen the parallel segment of Nigeria’s foreign exchange market in the last one week reminds me of James Hadley Chase thriller with the above title. For a market whose staying power has been in its ability to defy the laws of gravity, it says a lot about the changing tides that the naira which has been on a free fall in the last three weeks not only regained its verve but did in a rather dramatic manner.

    On Saturday when the news that the naira has recovered ground first broke, yours truly initially considered it as one of the offerings from the rumour mill. A quick check would confirm that the naira which had traded in the low band of N240-N245 in the parallel market segment for three weeks running had truly gained strength (it sold for between N210 and N215 at the weekend); the reason would emerge later: domiciliary account holders had been barred from paying into their foreign-denominated accounts!

    Of interest to me was that a measure which seeks to set the currency on an irreversible course – and which has expectedly brought much wailing and gnashing of teeth to currency speculators – was actually effected by the monetary authorities without the usual fuss.

    I considered that as too good to be true. And to think that no one actually saw the measure coming; at least to the extent that the CBN did not – officially – do as much as firing a shot to bring this about!

    Was it a case of the newshounds missing in action when it really mattered? Apparently, not even the CBN website had much to offer by weekend. The press release, issued by the apex bank only on Saturday, titled Renewed Vigilance to Prohibit Illicit Financial Flows in Nigeria’s Banking System – at best ex-post factum explanation – neither gave anything away nor said anything really.

    Yes, it expressed concerns about the report by the Global Financial Integrity group, which ranked Nigeria as one of the 10 largest countries for illicit financial flows in the world, and which estimates that about US$15.7 billion of illicit funds go through the nation’s financial system annually.  It reminded the public of the existing protocols on illicit fund flows, money laundering, and terrorism financing both in Nigeria and around the world, followed by a terse warning that “the CBN will increase its vigilance to ensure that Nigerian banks are not used as conduits for illicit fund flows, especially in foreign currencies”.

    In the end, it merely acknowledged that “Nigerian banks have started to curtail the acceptance of foreign currency cash deposits, much the same way as customers in other countries cannot just walk into banks and make foreign currency cash deposits without proper documentation” – and with it, a reminder that the apex bank’s “foreign exchange rules have many windows for accessing foreign exchange for legitimate business as well as for personal commitments including payment of medical bills, school fees, mortgages, demand notes and other bills”.

    There was simply no suggestion of any specific measures taken aside the general assurances to “all citizens seeking foreign currencies for legitimate personal and/or business interests that there remains ample opportunity to do so within the law”. To imagine that the operators were at this time were already counting millions in losses.

    To be sure, not a few Nigerians would be happy that the so-called Black Market is being served the same bitter potion it enjoyed administering on the economy. The truth of the matter is that only in the context of the inexcusable paradox of Nigeria’s traumatised economy can the suzerainty of the unofficial market be rationalised or even condoned. For far too long, we have seen the so-called parallel market not only rule; we have watched as the operators insist on setting the direction for the monetary authorities to follow.

    Before now, I actually wondered what made the black market tick. Convenience? The so-called ease of transactions said to flow its lack of stringent rules? In the past, that would probably be true. In today’s world, technology has made all the difference. With a plastic card or at a touch of a button, you can effect payments in financial jurisdictions that would have been unthinkable only a while ago. I recall that yours truly once kept a domiciliary account. The idea behind it was to enable me pay for magazine subscriptions. Five years after, the account would be rendered redundant –superfluous. Really, Nigeria may third world in several areas of its national life, its payment systems currently aspires to first world status – and that is the truth!

    The real story of the weekend is however the unspoken part. We know the story behind the panic which the PDP amazingly sees as the flight to communism. It is the morbid fear of what would happen to their castle of dollarised economy in the event of the rules finally closing in. That their trove of dollar holdings would shed nearly 10 percent under one week must truly be a frightening proposition. Seems about time the malcontents brought out their vast hoard of forex to save our dear naira.

    After all, a firm naira would be good for the economy, particularly the small and medium scale industries currently gasping for breadth.

    The reason I wonder why the CBN couldn’t simply step in and make it real. Or is it a return to the familiar game of playing the ostrich?

    ‘Only in the context of the inexcusable paradox of Nigeria’s traumatised economy can the suzerainty of the unofficial market be rationalised or even condoned. For far too long, we have seen the so-called parallel market not only rule; we have watched as the operators insist on setting the direction for the monetary authorities to follow’

  • Musings on the Senate’s Order-gate

    Musings on the Senate’s Order-gate

    The jury is now more or less out on the validity of the legal instrument  on which Dr Bukola Saraki and his confederates relied to foist him on the Senate as its president and Ike Ekweremadu, a stalwart of the minority PDP, as deputy president.

    The most generous construction one can put on it is that it is a desperate interpolation.  The police who have scant regard for nuance have called it a forgery.  Others have gone farther and called it a brazen forgery, and a transparent one for that matter.

    Don’t take my word for it.  Read the report of the police, as summarised in the weekend papers.  Even more crucially, read attorney Jiti Ogunye’s brilliant and indissoluble forensic analysis for this newspaper and some online publications last week.

    There was always something underhanded, insidious and smart-alecky about the process through which Saraki, in stark pursuit of his personal ambition, conspired with all 49 members from the opposition PDP and nine renegades from the APC to wrest control of the Senate from the ruling APC.

    In execution, the whole thing was shot through and through with indecent haste, in the absence for good reason of roughly one half of its 108 members, the goal being to create on the ground a set of accomplished facts. Too bad if the operation came across as the parliamentary equivalent of a street mugging, the usual apologists said.  Politics is a game of wits and one side simply outsmarted the other.  Get over it and play smarter next time.

    The old rules stood formidably in the way of this creepy project.  So, new rules had to be devised and pressed into immediate service.  To create the illusion that everything was being done by the book, make it clear from the outset that the exercise was undergirded by the Senate’s own rule-book, to wit:  Standing Orders 2015 “as amended.”

    That phrase, designed to assure the public that scrupulous adherence to law and lay at the heart of the process that threw up Saraki and Ekweremadu as the Senate’s leaders, has instead given away the game in a way the conspirators could not have imagined. For it immediately begs several questions:  Amended by whom?  When? Where?  And how?

    When the 7th Senate was prorogued, the law in force was the Senate Standing Orders 2007  “as amended,” according to the best authorities.  And until the Senate convened to elect new officers, it transacted no official business whatsoever.

    So, how did Standing Orders 2007 as amended morph into House Standing Orders 2015 as amended?  Was this the handiwork of ghosts?  Almost everyday, we hear of ghost teachers, ghost public servants and ghost towns.  But ghost senators?

    The closest thing to an answer to this overarching question has come from an unidentified official of the Senate’s secretariat.  The 7th Senate had ended its run, but the 8th Senate was yet to be inaugurated.  So, there was a vacuum.  Nature abhors a vacuum.   So the vacuum had to be filled — if only to avert nature’s wrath, he might have added

    The extant rules had served the Senate well.  If they had not, they would have been thrown out long ago.  The problem was that, as they stood, they could not be employed to advance the agenda of usurpation that Saraki and his confederates had in mind.

    The dodgy 2015 enactment, it is now clear, was a disingenuous solution to a manufactured problem, the problem being to get Saraki ensconced in the Senate president’s chair at all cost and by whatever means, and Ekweremadu in the deputy president’s chair, as a reward to the PDP for giving aid and comfort to Saraki’s personal agenda.

    It was designed to establish facts on the ground that the polity would have to live with.  It did not matter that the process by which they arrived at it was in flagrant breach of the Senate’s standing rules, an impregnable barrier to the ignoble project they were about to launch.

    The 2007 Standing Orders (as amended) enjoin any member seeking any amendment to the rules to give a written notice to the Senate president, providing details of the proposed changes.  Within seven days of receiving the notice, the Senate president will send a circular detailing the amendments and have it printed in the Order paper.

    The member proposing the changes will get a chance to talk about them from the floor. Following that, the Senate will decide by a simple majority whether to consider or reject the proposed changes. If the Senate votes against the changes, the matter ends there.

    But if the Senate decides to take up the matter, two-third of the members must vote affirmatively before the proposals become a part of its rules.

    This foregoing is the process the Senate should have followed if it was minded to respect its own rules.  But why submit to a labyrinthine process with an uncertain outcome when you can “amend” the pesky law in question, an amendment in this case meaning, for all practical purposes, cooking the statute books?

    Even in Nigeria where “anything goes” and nothing is impossible, this is without precedent.  The Senate in whose name this tawdry transaction was consummated is going to come out of it hugely discredited.  So also will those members who orchestrated and have been celebrating it as an achievement that will guarantee the “independence” of the legislature.

    They have by their shabby tactics cast a penumbra of uncertainty over the prospects of the new administration’s agenda and the national yearning for change expressed so unambiguously in the recent general elections.

    The public they claim to serve is surely entitled to feel betrayed.

    The whole thing is being seen, rightly, as a test of President Muhammadu Buhari’s resolve to root out corruption in the body politic.

    Thus far, he has handled the challenge with credit.  If this had happened in the time of former President Goodluck Jonathan, it would have been smothered by all the obfuscation and the dilatoriness that rented crowds and hired publicists masquerading as “Abuja-based public affairs commentators” ever ginned up. The police leadership would never have risen to the professional challenge.

    The matter is now before the courts.  Given the issues at stake, the courts will have to accord it accelerated hearing. Until it is disposed of, the Senate cannot in good conscience transact any business, with Saraki and Ekweremadu officiating.  Any such business will come tainted with a  heavy presumption of illegality, given the overwhelming evidence that their ascendancy was founded on illegality.

    The Senate will therefore have to stand adjourned.

    Sure, the administration has already lost a great deal of momentum by its excessive caution and stands to lose more if the Senate goes into a long recess.  But it is better for the polity, for democracy, and for the rule of law, to ensure that when the Senate acts, it does so with unassailable integrity and authority.

    This is no time for shabby compromises dressed up as a “political solution.”  The ongoing criminal investigation must be allowed to work its way through our institutions.  For, in an exact sense, Senate Order-gate is also a test of the capacity of those institutions to guide and lead at a time of grave national crisis.

  • JAMB of trouble

    This must be a difficult time for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and its helmsman, Dibu Oyerinde – a professor. If you can imagine the miracle moment when Jesus Christ had the arduous task of feeding 5,000-throng band of followers with two fishes and five loaves of bread, you will probably understand the dilemma of the egg-head on whose head lies the burden of placing 1,475,600 individuals in barely available 500,000 spaces in the nation’s tertiary institutions. Unfortunately, not even the knowledge that he is no Jesus Christ – nor a miracle worker – seems likely to spare him the sentence that befell the Christian avatar with hundreds of thousands already demanding his sack – if not his head on a platter!

    We saw a bit of that at the University of Lagos gate last Wednesday when hundreds of angry, placard-carrying candidates and parents marched to demand the removal of the professor over the so-called new policy. On that day, yours truly actually received nearly a dozen calls from friends and relations – all frustrated parents –  alleging that their wards were denied opportunity to write post-UTME tests into the University of Lagos for reasons which, according to them, they found difficult to comprehend. There was a specific case of a parent, who claimed that his daughter who had applied to study Mass Communications scored 254 – a figure slightly above the University of Lagos adopted cut-off point of 250 – and yet was excluded in the list forwarded by JAMB to the university authorities for the post-UMTE test. The gripe of the protesters was that by raising their cut-off point to 250 as against JAMB’s 180, the University of Lagos authorities changed the rules midway.

    The protesters obviously deserve a sympathetic ear. After all, last year, the cut off point was the same 180 – and everyone was invited to the meal that everyone knew would barely go round a quarter of the famished souls lined up for the feast. Now, everyone wonders why things would be different this year. Imagine, we are back to the same cycle of recriminations; the futile search for solution of the arithmetic of making 500,000 spaces go round 1.5 million candidates. They forget the basic difference between an academic and a miracle worker!

    And the new policy? Allow individual universities to determine their cut-off points while JAMB redistributes applicants!

    Yes, they have a point – as always even if in the end they win the argument and come critically short on the issues at stake.

    Let’s also admit that the defence by JAMB is just as persuasive. JAMB’s head of media, Fabian Benjamin, for instance, told us last week for instance that the national cut-off marks of 180 for universities and 150 for polytechnics, colleges of education and innovative enterprise institutions in the 2015 UTME were merely benchmarks to set the tone for this year’s admission exercise. They were, according to him, no more than ‘guides’; ‘pruning’ tools to give the institutions manageable candidates to choose from.

    As far as his JAMB is concerned, “universities and other levels of tertiary institutions are at liberty to go higher, but not lower, depending on their peculiarities and the performance of candidates that choose them…”

    Really?

    On the widespread criticism that has greeted the new measure, he insisted that the decision… was done in good faith not to jeopardise the right of candidates due to individual cut-off set by some Nigerian tertiary institution. Those candidates who do not meet the cut-off marks of such institutions will be placed in needy institutions within their geopolitical zone depending on available space in such institutions”.

    The man in the eye of the storm, Dibu Oyerinde, was, as one might expect, conciliatory, if not altogether defensive. He says “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are saying…We are actually helping the candidates not only to get admission but to get it on time. The big universities are overloaded. Can you imagine 8,000 students seeking for admission to study law in a university that will take only 250 candidates for law? The remaining 7750 candidates will wait endlessly and hopelessly till the end of the admission. Or imagine 7500 candidates seeking for medicine in a university. Of these 7500 candidates, 2000 scored above 250 in the UTME. The university has a carrying capacity of only 150 candidates for medicine. The remaining 7350 who scored above 200 will be wasted. Particularly, 1750 candidates who scored above 250 will be wasted while other universities either do not have enough candidates or high scoring candidates. Courses like Biological Sciences, Agric Engineering and related courses are lacking in candidacy!”

    Not done – he says “We are saying, let’s give them a feel of chance somewhere else that has not gotten enough candidates by sending the names of these HIGH scorers to “needy” universities. The names of such surplus candidates are being distributed to first, federal institutions, then state and finally private institutions in that order depending on – availability of space in other universities, choice of the course of the candidate, geographical zone of the choice of the candidate, and performance of the candidate”.

    See the huge cost of being misunderstood? Or why the search for a fall-guy or the attempt to skirt around the main issues at the heart of the brouhaha merely postpones the evil day?

    A quick one for JAMB. Can anyone explain the essence of asking candidates to indicate their preferred institutions only to have JAMB redistribute them for whatever reasons? Why should it be JAMB’s headache that one million candidates applied for 1,000 spaces in Lagos even when there are 100,000 spaces to be filled in Kaura Namoda? A case of the god of bureaucracy insisting that things could only be done its way?

    Questions of course remain. In today’s Nigeria, tertiary level admission is akin to a fundamental human right. Yet, we know that the performance paints a different picture across the board. In the 2015 UTME for instance, only 455,639 of the nearly 1.5 million actually scored 50 percent and above. That was the minimum threshold in the good old days. Why not stick to this manageable number? Why make things worse by lowering the threshold when available spaces are not enough?

    More fundamentally – why not raise the profile and number of technical colleges to shore up the pool of technical manpower? And what’s the big deal churning out hordes of certificated illiterates only to have them end up pounding our cities in search of jobs?  Why not bring back the old Trade Test system under which artisans and skilled trades were graded and remunerated as befitting their status?

    ‘Why not raise the profile and number of technical colleges to shore up the pool of technical manpower? And what’s the big deal churning out hordes of certificated illiterates only to have them end up pounding our cities in search of jobs?  Why not bring back the old Trade Test system under which artisans and skilled trades were graded and remunerated as befitting their status?’