The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Why Buhari should support Kwankwaso

    Why Buhari should support Kwankwaso

    General Muhammadu Buhari is an accomplished statesman, an officer and a gentleman, a patriotic citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), a committed nationalist, a man of honour and integrity, a selfless and visionary leader, a former Head of State and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, a former Chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), a former governor North Eastern State (Borno, Yobe, Taraba Adamawa, Gombe and Bauchi state) and former Minister of Petroleum Resources.

    Buhari was also the General Officer Commanding 3rd Division of the Nigerian Army Jos and veteran of the Nigeria Civil War where he had held many frontline positions in the fight to keep Nigeria one. A task which had to be done.

    General Muhammad Buhari had served Nigeria faithfully, loyally, honestly, creditably and has continued to do so at a great personal cost to his life. One can go on and to either state the achievements or virtues of this septuagenarian.

    At 73, he has accumulated all the requisite qualification and experience to continue to serve his beloved country Nigeria at the highest level. Most recently, he offered to serve again in 2003, 2007 and 2011 but was not opportune to do so. Should he offer himself again 2015? That is, however, the question demanding rational answer.

    The challenge of the 21st century Nigeria and the world will require a relatively more energetic, youthful leader who is loyal, faithful, honest and equally courageous and visionary to carry the baton from the General for national leadership in 2015 election under the platform of APC.

    Developed countries, especially USA and Britain, with strong historical, political, social and economic ties with Nigeria have turned around to elect their leaders amongst the younger generation. Take for instance, Tony Blair and David Cameron in the United Kingdom and George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama in the United States, one would easily sample the crop of leaders in vogue in this century. Even the current US Secretary of State, John Kerry and Senator McCain, both veterans of the Vietnam War, were politely asked to step aside by the electorate.

    It therefore goes without saying that the presidency of Nigeria in this time and age should be a person who belongs to the generation of the leaders of the two great nations mentioned earlier. In a digital age dominated by Google, Apple, Microsoft and driven by information technology and the social media, Nigeria will need a contemporary of the leaders of the two nations to lead.

    General Muhammadu Buhari will serve his beloved country better if he chooses to be an influencing factor in policy formulation; and become a fountain of knowledge and wisdom for the leadership; to be the power behind the throne and heart-beat of the administration.

    In the circumstances, a time tested leader Engineer, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who has been grilled through the mill of Nigerian politics easily comes to mind as a successor to the General. He was a highly successful student leader in the late 70’s and has equally demonstrated such purposeful leadership quality in the National Assembly of the botched 3rd Republic as the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a charismatic leader and an achiever on the governorship seat of Kano State from 1999 to 2003 and a disciplined and pragmatic Minister of Defense in 2003 – 2007. As a loyal and patriotic Nigerian, he was appointed Nigeria’s Special Envoy to Dafur during the Sudanese crises of internal revolt. He was also appointed to the Board of Niger Delta Development Commission because of his fairness and equity in the face of formidable challenges facing the Niger Delta region.

    Most importantly, as the governor of Kano State from 2011 to date, he has recorded a huge success and made giant strides in giving Kano State excellent leadership which prepared it for the challenges of the 21st century in education, infrastructural development, youth and women empowerment. He placed Kano on the path of becoming knowledge-driven society in sciences and information technology. He has equally uplifted the status of Kano as one of the most attractive investment destination for both foreign and local investors in Nigeria. His approach in confronting security challenges was superb and has been able to minimize the impact of the menace of Boko Haram to the barest minimum. Similarly he was prudent in the management of the state finances through adherence to budgetary discipline and probity.

    Kano State under the credible and purposeful leadership of Kwankwaso has confronted the long standing social problem that has bedeviled the state for many years. The state has sponsored the marriage of thousands of couples who would have remain unmarried thus curtailing the spread of HIV/AIDS. He has also curtailed the sale of hard drugs in Kano and established an institution for the rehabilitation of the victims of drug abuse. His government has also enacted a law prohibiting street begging and child labour in line with United Nation charter and Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

    To all intents and purposes, General Muhammad Buhari will find in Kwankwaso a true man of honour, credibility and integrity worthy of his support and APC has found a committed Nigerian who symbolizes its aspiration in its quest to giving Nigeria the leadership it deserves at this time and age to be its flag bearer at 2015 presidential election.

    In comparison to other presidential candidates that might emerge, Kwankwaso stands a better chance of denying the PDP another chance of hoisting its flag on the Presidential Villa. His proven leadership credentials and the impeccable track record of honesty, hardwork, tenacity, commitment and conviction to a cause make him the much awaited leader Nigeria deserves.

     

    • Ringim can be reached via email: mahmudshuaibu@yahoo.com

  • As Wamakko becomes politicians’ politician

    As Wamakko becomes politicians’ politician

    Governor Aliyu Wamakko of Sokoto State very well fits in as a grass root politician even before joining any known political party.  Years back, while as a Teacher, Local Government Administrator, a Civil Servant and a Permanent Secretary, Wamakko was all through the years involved in everything and anything good for the people.

    If politics is about mobilizing people, organizing people, working for the good of the people and improving the living standard of the people, then it is incontrovertible that Aliyu Wamakko, the Sarkin Yamman Sokoto, practices politics in its true design.

    Looking at the array of Awards of Merit conferred on Wamakko by various associations, organizations and corporate bodies since his foray into public life, it is enough to classify him as an individual who has paid his dues in the sphere of being a friend to all. It was natural that the then All Peoples Party (APP) found him worthy of serving as its 1999 Gubernatorial running mate against the backdrop of his rich proximity to the people at the grass roots. As a humble gentleman, Wamakko was able to construct a formidable bridge of acceptance between himself and the people all over the State.

    Party politics is about carrying the people along, and Wamakko does this with great humility, as people want to be accorded due recognition and respect.  His personal residence at Gawon Nama area in Sokoto metropolis is a Mecca of some sort, people troop their daily to interface with him for one favour or another; and he obliges all manner of visitors without grudges.

    His accessibility to all has earned him the respect and admiration of the commoners who see his residence as their own, as they have unfettered access to him anytime.

    It would be recalled that, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Sokoto State facing rejection at the polls in 2006 had to draft him as its Gubernatorial flag bearer as its last hope. He led the party to victory in the election. That particular event was an eloquent testimony of Wamakko’s political worth and relevance in Sokoto State.  He revived the PDP, nurtured it and made it vibrant through his unrivalled political sagacity.

    All over Nigeria, the then Sokoto PDP under Wamakko’s  leadership was the only chapter with 100% success story in all elections from the Local Government Councils to the National Assembly.

    As a further confirmation of his political dexterity, Wamakko very well balanced himself between execution of people-centered projects and empowering the people economically and socially.

    The popular slogan in Sokoto politics, ‘SAI ALU’ is not just a slogan but a slogan with a difference.  It surfaced in 2006 when Wamakko contested against then Governor Bafarawa’s Democratic Peoples Party (DPP).  Despite the incumbency factor and the intimidating machinery of government at DPP’s disposal, Wamakko’s political worth came to bear heavily as the then PDP roundly trounced the DPP.  The ‘SAI ALU’ slogan is still very much alive in Sokoto politics.

    The numerous court cases that trailed Wamakko’s defeat of the DPP, the annulment of his election and the fresh election which he won fair and square all testified to his political relevance and worth in Sokoto State and how dear he is to the people.

    His leaving the PDP for the All Progressives Congress (APC) was not self-serving as he and some Governors became alarmed with the trend of events in the PDP which proved unfavorable to the fortunes of the party.  They left the party as there was no mechanism for making necessary amends.

    His defection to the APC with all the 23 Local Government Chairmen, State Assembly Members, all Commissioners and all special Advisers was another proof that Wamakko’s political calculation is very sound.  Before joining the APC, the party in Sokoto  had virtually no suitable office accommodation anywhere in the State; but today the APC is everywhere in all the wards in Sokoto State.

    As a mark of his political acumen the national body of the APC mandated Wamakko to steer its maiden National Convention exercise.  Perhaps, the national body of the party reckoned with the success recorded by the Sokoto APC in conducting its various congresses from the Wards to the State level.  The Sokoto APC congresses were held successfully without rancour, unlike in some states where the congresses where mired in controversies, but later settled.

    The APC at the national level wanted a taste of the Wamakko spirit at the convention, hence the choice of the Sokoto State governor to lead the exercise which turned out to be another success story for the party.

    Again, the APC conceded the inauguration of the North West Zone executive council of the party to Sokoto State as a mark of honour and trust to Governor Wamakko.  The Inauguration was a huge success as all the seven states within the zone were massively represented.  That singular feat has gone extra miles to illustrate Wamakko’s mobilization and organizational abilities.

    Today one is safe to posit that, APC is on its way to forming the next government in Sokoto State come 2015, because all the requisite signs are there with the undying Sokoto SAI ALU slogan still renting the air.  The bottom line is, Governor Wamakko has not betrayed his people, so the people are solidly behind him, he understands what democracy is by carrying everybody along.

    Now that the leadership Newspaper had found Governor Wamakko worthy of its prestigious award as its politician of the year, it is another loud testimony of his ever – rising profile as a politician worth his salt, a politician who knows his onions, a politician who knows politics inside out and a politicians’ politician.

    It is normal to bestow honour on whom it is due, recognizing Governor Wamakko as an indefatigable politician is appropriate as this will further spur him to greater feats politically as we approach 2015. And this can only be good for both his party, the APC and Nigeria as a country. So as he takes his bow for this great honour it is our hope that other Nigerian politicians, especially those in public service will learn a thing or two from Wamakko’s life of service to humanity.

    • Mohammed S. Umar is President, Sokoto Liberal Democrats Media Foundation (SOLID) Sokoto. 
  • Who says the rains are not here?

    Who says the rains are not here?

    If there have not been loud protestations from the 36 states capitals – minus the Abuja behemoth – about the declining flows into their treasuries, it isn’t because the situation is not sufficiently alarming. Not only is the picture across most states of the federation one of struggles to meet recurrent bills, capital projects have since been put on hold. Had the mad scramble for the outstanding 33 Government Houses in 2015 not dwarfed every other issue, Nigerians would probably be in the right frame of mind to appreciate what is increasingly becoming a dire financial situation facing the states and the local governments. Trust our eternally-optimistic politicians to insist that things would somehow get better – or that the good times would soon return – even if they have not lifted a finger to make that happen.

    At this stage, let me state that it is still a long way from the predicted downpour. While there is no basis as yet, to compare the current situation with the crises of the 1980s which forced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) on us, the truth of the matter is that the tell-tales of an astoundingly maladjusted economy are just as telling.

    Nigerians are of course familiar with the outlandish picture of growth posted over the last decade. With enough in the foreign reserves to cover more than eight months of imports as against what obtained in the eighties when we couldn’t afford to pay our import bills, not to talk of the $1 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund, aside the piggy bank known as the Excess Crude Account (ECA); add that to the fact that oil price, despite predictions of massive slump, has held fairly steady – perhaps longer than any other time in recent memory; it becomes at once, tempting to see some of the fears as overstated.

    But then, as yours truly has always stated, the reality on the Main Street paints an entirely different picture. While Nigerians are fast learning the difference between real growth and the stuff in economic textbooks after more than 10 years of so-called hyper-growth,  the picture of badly shrunk treasuries across the states and local governments is perhaps one that have hardly been fully comprehended.

    Governor Rotimi Amaechi puts the issue in clear perspective when he observed: “The problem we have is that the federal government, out of outright stealing from NNPC, is not able to pay to the states the required funds the states are entitled to; to enable them not only pay salaries but to run state affairs. We are going back to the Shagari days when they owe everybody. The only reason we have not gotten there is because the governors are very ingenious: they are doing everything to ensure they can pay salaries, but some states cannot pay. Wait, election is coming and the opposition will begin to publish their names.”

    Ingenious? That is debatable. It is after all an open secret that many states are broke. Many are in fact are as good as bankrupt. Kogi State, where yours truly comes from, according to reports, is broke. I know of local governments in the state owing nine months in arrears of salaries. In Abia State, primary and secondary school teachers have not been paid for four months running. Benue has been owing teachers for as long as anyone can remember. Bayelsa, the President’s home state is said to be contemplating going for the drastic measure of staff rationalisation. Overall, the picture across the states, with very few exceptions, is the same.

    At this time, I don’t want to go into the debates about the viability of the states. The issue of whether or not their tax bases are too narrow to sustain the appurtenances of governance is as debatable as it academic. Suffice however to state that while the debate may have some grains of truth, the same could also be said of the federal government, which aside, cornering far more revenue that it can ever wisely use, has neither demonstrated the capacity to protect its revenue source nor shown better imagination in the utilization of its own share of revenue.

    Let’s look at the issue more closely. According to the Budget Office documents, using the 2012 figures of N4.24 trillion, the nation recorded a dip of N1.4 trillion in oil sales; in other words, compared with the 2012 earnings, it actually made N2.81 trillion –some 33.69 percent less. Some countries, faced with the same situation, would have declared emergency. Not Nigeria! Of course, the trend has persisted – hence the rancor which has since become the feature at the Abuja monthly conclave for sharing oil money.

    What do we know? Obviously, the world knows us better than we probably know ourselves. The world describes what is going on as industrial-scale theft, our federal government shops for platitudes – blaming production-shut-ins which it knows is a derivative of the former on the shrinking revenue! So where is the difference? Are we really serious?

    And what has the federal government beyond the annual ritual of lamentation? First, it embarked on a meaningless shuttle diplomacy to persuade its ‘partners’ not to accept Nigeria’s stolen crude. You ask; what has happened to the navy’s famed capacity to protect Nigeria’s Exclusive Economic Zones? Does anyone still wonder why Nigeria continues to be the butt of jokes in foreign capitals?

    I have heard quite a few theories swirling around the industrial-scale theft of oil said to be going on. One sees it as deliberate, an extension of the financial scorched policies designed to bend the states’ will as 2015 election nears. I have also heard that the federal government knows those behind the theft but that it is powerless to do anything about them. The point is, there are simply too many theories flying around, none of which is any flattering to the federal government!

    One thing however seems clear to me. It appears that this federal government does not give a damn even if the states’ bureaucracies collapse. Forget that it takes 54 percent of the pie, it would soon be time for the hierarchs of the administration to offer free tutorials to states whose take-home average is less than one percent – on frugality. That is the way it has been. And as it seems, no one can do anything about it!

  • Yoruba ronu

    Yoruba ronu

    The 2015 election is just another set of elections in Nigeria’s Fourth and longest running democratic republic, right?

    No.  It is rather an acid test — and rude challenge — to the fundamental ethos of the Yoruba South West.

    But why the South West?  Why not Nigeria?  Well, a Nigeria establishment that rewards Sani Abacha’s gargantuan sleaze with a posthumous centenary award, tolerates Olusegun Obasanjo’s costly megalomania and suffers gladly Goodluck Jonathan’s glaring vacuity, needs its head urgently examined, even as it unravels and grinds to its inevitable end.

    In contrast, the South West has a rich legacy in the Obafemi Awolowo phenomenon: people-centred governance, modernising vision, systematic development, all yoked in an overarching progressive template, robustly pushed by an electorate that hugely reward performance but promptly punish governmental failures.

    This golden legacy is at peril — under President Jonathan and his Peoples Development Party, PDP’s scorched earth, win-at-all-cost and by-whichever-means South West strategy, en route to 2015.

    That is why Yoruba ronu (Yoruba think), the great Hubert Ogunde’s clarion call and battle cry during the Western Region political crises of the First Republic (1960-1966), must be pressed into service yet again.

    Ekiti ronu (first published on these pages on 22 October 2013), made a grand intervention during the mess before the Ekiti crash.  Now, in Ekiti, the barbarians are at the city gate.

    Order has turned chaos.  The courts are prostrate, made so by the same state coercion constitutionally meant to make them inviolate.  Talk of security, paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, leading to conspiracy!  It is yet another from the desperate Jonathan (un)presidential bag of tricks.  With an eye on 2015, the administration must embrace outlawry to cripple Ekiti court processes, in aid of a governor-elect with a penchant for outlawry.

    Even the traditional order, the Ekiti royal fathers, are bawling, shrieking and screaming, beckoning on the barbarians to come in, post-haste, and smash up their civilisation!  Ekiti’s humpty-dumpty is smashed.  Not even all of the king’s horses and horsemen could put humpty-dumpty together again!

    This Jonathan prehistoric ploy may have started and shown its ugliest manifestation yet in Ekiti.  But the tell-tale of the desperate agenda is clear in other South West states.

    Ekiti birthed with the illogic that sterling performance deserves electoral drubbing.  That is Kayode Fayemi’s fate.

    But the noxious gas from that thinking is already choking the neighbouring Oyo State, with tested and failed former governors, Rashidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala, two relics from the failed mainstream era, passing themselves off as new messiahs.

    Why, Mr. Alao-Akala even reportedly tore up ballot papers at an intra-Oyo PDP congress, a sad echo of former President Obasanjo’s heroics at the election for the Owu royal stool, in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    True, many claim — and not without merit — that sitting Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s toxic tongue is the principal trigger of the problem.  That is very sad.

    Still, it is alarming that the penchant to scorn solid performance (given the governor’s unparalleled record in infrastructure and the environment, in stark contrast to the stone age performance of his predecessors turned putative opponents), for empty demagoguery, ala Ekiti, appears a-foot in Oyo.

    Another strain of the Ekiti debacle: decry solid performance but toast glaring failures and push them for additional terms, is playing out in Ondo State, where the Iroko, Governor Olusegun Mimiko, has shipped himself, his party and every furniture in his government into the PDP.

    It is a gripping irony: Iroko stands for nothing but crass personal convenience.  So, the person of nothing just cancelled out Labour Party (LP), the platform of nothing, ever ready to whore with any character of nothing, but with enough cash to flash!

    The Ogun LP may have decried the Mimiko treachery and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) distanced itself from it.  Still, LP’s notoriety as a cash-and-carry platform — ideology be damned! —  was firmly secured, well before the Ondo meltdown.

    But Mimiko’s reason for his grand subversion is even the more interesting gist.  He went back to the PDP that stole his vote because he wanted to help President Jonathan win re-election — this same Jonathan whose government boasts perhaps the most incompetent record in Nigerian history, with its eternal scandals; and its painful deficit in both hard thinking and compassion; as proven in the Chibok girls kidnap case?

    In pristine Yorubaland, such pro-Jonathan pitch would earn instant electoral shellacking.    But in the Jonathan dream Yorubaland for 2015, the people must bite the bullet of electoral self-ruin.  Worse: in Fayose (Ekiti) and Mimiko (Ondo), the eastern-most recesses of Yorubaland appear yoked to the Jonathan nightmare!

    Errant regimes, for own selfish manoeuvres, often try to clone new Yoruba leaders.  Oladipo Diya, as Sani Abacha’s high flying No. 2, was busy pushing Dr. Bode Olajumoke’s Imeri Group as the regime’s anointed Yourba leaders, even while doing verbal gymnastics of standing on, by, above and below June 12.  But it was genuine Yoruba leaders, bent on actualising Moshood Abiola’s presidential mandate, that stood up for Diya, when he entered the Abacha coup trouble.

    Even then, Jonathan’s version of the politics of new Yoruba leadership is nothing but sinister.  PDP’s South West gubernatorial choices are instructive: Ayo Fayose (Ekiti) — he of mob tactics and unfazed anarchist, given his role in the Ekiti courts bedlam; Iyiola Omisore (Osun) — he of perpetual scowls and threats, coarse reputation and sinister public image; and, to come, Buruji Kashamu (Ogun) — alleged fugitive from American laws over alleged drug offences!  Just as well Kashamu has denied any gubernatorial ambitions!

    This dark profile the Omoluabi Yoruba would not touch for all the money in the world.  Yet it is what the Jonathan PDP deliriously push, as dark messiahs to fetch the president Yoruba votes!  Indeed, the barbarians are at the city gate!

    Even worse is the fierce assault on the long-settled religious amity in the South West.  Traditionally, the Yoruba have a pantheon of gods, under the Almighty Olodumare, which adherents freely embrace. Before Jonathan’s better-forgotten presidency, Christian-Muslim divide played absolutely no role in Yoruba politics and politicking.

    In Second Republic Lagos, Action Governor, Alhaji Lateef Jakande governed with his Muslim Deputy, Alhaji Rafiu Jafojo.  Back then, nobody noticed the religious hue of that ticket.  Now, 31 years after, about everybody still applauds its superb service delivery.  Ditto for Ogun: where the Christian pair of Olabisi Onabanjo and Sesan Soluade ruled; Oyo, with the Christian pair of Bola Ige and Sunday Afolabi; and Ondo: with Adekunle Ajasin and Akin Omoboriowo, both Christians.

    Now, in the South West of 2014, that paradise appears lost.  En route to Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 troubled electoral vision, Lagos is buried under the din of the religious colour of its putative electoral ticket, not the reasoned and rigorous probing of its ability to deliver!

    Political barbarians, led by an unscrupulous president and a visionless party that has run down the country and brought Nigerians sheer misery, are bent on destroying the settled political ethos of the South West.

    That must not happen.  Yoruba ronu!

  • When GEJ finally gave a damn

    When GEJ finally gave a damn

    The usually somnolent Presidential Villa in Abuja spurted into damage control last week when several Nigerian newspapers, quoting an online magazine RichestLifestyle.com, reported that Dr Goodluck Jonathan ranks sixth among the wealthiest African heads of state, with a personal net worth of U.S. $100 million.

    The report thus elicited from on high what a barbarous assault on the Judicial Branch that same week had failed to elicit. It also moved an apparently incensed Dr Jonathan to lapse       into an absurdity that was entirely lost on him.  If the publication was not retracted, he would file lawsuits against the first publisher of the alleged libel and all media organisations that republished it.

    Where?

    In the same courts, in the desecration of which he has connived, by act and omission?  The  very courts he has eviscerated out of raw partisanship?  It is preposterous that Dr Jonathan would effectively, even if temporarily, oust the jurisdiction of the courts out of self-interest,  and then threaten to use the authority of the same courts to affirm his self interest, namely,   the reputation he is asserting.

    The whole thing was clearly an over-reaction that proved nothing and settled nothing.  And it is emblematic of the utter humourlessness at the top, as I will demonstrate presently.

    To return to the publication that sent Aso Rock into a tizzy:  In absolute terms, the amount  reported as Dr Jonathan’s personal net worth might seem staggering, especially when most Nigerians live on no more than two dollars a day.  But when compared with the reported net worth of the Top Five in the League of Africa’s Wealthiest Rulers, it is piddling.

    President Eduardo dos Santos of Angola tops the League with a personal net worth, or “known wealth”, of $20 billion, according to NewsRescue.com, which seems to be domiciled in Nigeria. The Moroccan monarch, Mohammed V, comes a distant second, with a personal net worth of just $2.5 billion. Thereafter, the graph falls precipitously, with Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea at third place with a personal net worth of $600 million.

    This last has got to be a huge undercount.  Mbasogo’s playboy son, known simply as Teodorin, blows close to that amount every year in his escapades in the most notorious fleshpots of Europe and the United States.

    Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, on the saddle for just one year, comes in fourth, worth some $500 million, followed by the wily and durable Paul Biya of Cameroun at fifth, reportedly worth $200 million.

    Only then does our JEG figure in the League, tied for sixth place with, of all people, the hugely concupiscent King Mswati of the landlocked, hardscrabble state of Swaziland, with Idris Deby of Chad ($50 million) and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe ($10 million), after nearly three decades in office and in power, bringing up the rear. Mugabe seems to have been tucked into the mix as an afterthought.  They never miss a chance to tweak what is left of Uncle Bob’s moustache.

    Personally, I am even more enraged than Dr Jonathan can possibly be, though for an entirely different reason.

    He is clearly not in the league of Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Folorunsho Alakija, or even  Femi Otedollar – beg your pardon again, Ote$, beg your pardon one more time, Otedola. Even after former police chief Tafa Balogun was dispossessed of sizable  chunk of his gazillions, he may still well be worth close to, if not more than the amount over which they are working themselves into a froth in the Villa.

    In Nigeria, it is no longer news that even middling “civil servants” and customs officers  now tote up their net worth in the hundreds of millions of naira. That kind of money is no more than pocket-change to the syndicate of wheelers and dealers and smugglers who control the petroleum industry.

    How then can it even be newsworthy that the man who sits atop Nigeria’s re-based economy, the largest in all of Africa and 16th largest in the entire world (take that, South Africa), with a run-away annual growth rate conservatively estimated at six per cent, to say nothing of a Transformational Achievement Index in the stratosphere:  how can it be newsworthy then, it  is necessary to ask, that the President of such a country has a personal net worth of just N100 million, unless the purpose is to canonise him for modesty and restraint and prudence, the rarest attributes in our clime?

    How can it be deemed equitable that Uhuru Kenyatta, who took charge in a Kenya with a struggling economy just a year ago, should have a personal net worth five times that of our own JEG who has been running Africa’s most prosperous economy for the better part of six years?

    Dr Jonathan’s inveterate critics will put down his puny personal net worth to lack of ambition or imagination or enterprise – or indeed, all three – on his part. And the gullible as well as the unpatriotic, whom we shall always have amongst us, just might believe them.

    It is at these – the inveterate critics and their gullible and unpatriotic followers, especially the  unpatriotic —that Aso Rock should have directed its indignation when it finally chose to give a damn, a mistake it must now be regretting.

    It should have stuck with its practice of not giving a damn in matters of this kind.  By breaking its own code, it has merely emboldened all kind of meddlers to wade into matter and stir things up.

    Instead of applauding Dr Jonathan’s forthrightness, some of these people are taunting him, saying that it is not enough to deny that he has personal assets worth $100 million. If Aso Rock disputes that figure, they say, why won’t it supply the correct one and lay the matter to rest?

    That was exactly what President Mobutu Sese Seko did in the 1980s at a point in his crisis-ridden reign in Zaire, now Congo DR, when the news media were saturated with reports that he had stashed away a personal fortune of $500 million in coded offshore bank accounts.

    Not so, he said at a news conference.

    How much was he worth, then?

    Only $25 million, he said, adding that, after 25 years of selfless service to the people – who, he once said in a moment of exasperation, had forfeited his confidence—he did not consider $25 million an unjust recompense.

    At a million dollars a year, that was a great bargain for the people of Zaire.  The matter never came up again.

    The challenge Mobutu faced is exceedingly courteous compared with the one that some of the unpatriotic elements, aforementioned, have launched. They say if Dr Jonathan still has enough faith in the courts he has locked up to repair there for redress, they will meet him there with iron-clad proof that he is worth a great deal more than the $100 million he is kvetching about and that the reputation he is claiming rests on shaky ground.

    Strong stuff, indeed.

    All because Dr Jonathan decided for once to give a damn.

    But all is not lost. There is an authentic Nigerian formula he can employ to get out of this unforced error.

    Accused in the 1960s of pocketing £3,000 — the equivalent of a cabinet minister’s salary for a year then –in what came to be known as the Ijora Land Deal, Dr Kingsley Mbadiwe responded with the bonhomie that became him so well.

    The money about which his detractors were working up so much fuss, he said, was “chicken feed in an elephantine mouth”.

    Loosen up, GEJ.  Take a vacation.

     

  • Silk, at last, for a doughty sentry

    Silk, at last, for a doughty sentry

    For Dr Gabriel Olusoga Onagoruwa, erudite legal scholar, brilliant advocate and a crusader  for human rights long before that subject acquired high salience in national and international politics, and Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation in the Sani Abacha junta, the road to silk has been long, thorny and tortuous. Every sitting Attorney-General of the Federation had by virtue of that office been elevated to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). Onagoruwa was the sole exception.

    The forces ranged against him – the same forces that were ranged against Gani Fawehinmi in his quest for silk — were implacable and unyielding. It took the intervention of the Chief Justice of the Federation,  Mariam Aloma Mukhtar, to break the choke-hold that a cabal in the Legal Privileges and Ethics Committee had kept on Onagoruwa’s translation to SAN, just as it had required the intervention of another chief justice, Mohammed Uwais, to break the cabal’s veto on Fawehimi’s accession to SAN. When it ran out of excuses to deny Fawehimni the rank he had earned many times over in a career with few parallels, it conferred the distinction on him for his contributions to the legal literature, not for his brilliant advocacy and recondite forensic skills. When it finally came, restitution was almost meaningless. Fawehinmi‘s court appearances were few and far between; he was already battling the cancer that eventually claimed his life.

    Restitution has come to Onagoruwa at a time when he cannot profit much from it.  This unconscionable delay is of a piece with the string of persecutions he has suffered in a career marked by courage, outspokenness and commitment to justice. Onagoruwa’s erudite commentary in signed newspaper articles and pronouncements on the lecture circuit marked him out as an adversary of military rule. So unyielding was his opposition to the structural adjustment programme and so unsparing was he of the other depredations of the Babangida era, that the so-called security services were mandated to destroy him.

    They went from one media house to another, peddling forged documents purporting to show that Onagoruwa had cheated at the Bar finals in the Nigerian Law School. They found no takers. They prosecuted him for carrying and using an unlicensed weapon.

    The “weapon” at issue turned out to be some over-the-counter spraying device to stun would-be assailants.They suborned a relation to file a criminal complaint against him charging that he had failed to deliver some money he had received on her behalf in a land transaction. It turned out that the complainant had sold the property to two different persons, and Onagoruwa was holding the money against the claims that were sure to follow.

    They tried to gin up an appeal that would reverse the court’s verdict so that they could pivot on it to block Onagoruwa’s appointment as Federal Attorney-General as well as his taking silk, if not to bar him entirely from legal practice. His privations would be compounded by his ill-advised service as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation in the junta of the loathsome Sani Abacha.

    Onagorowa will contest this judgment on his cabinet appointment fiercely, as he has on countless occasions. He will insist, as he has done again and again, that President-elect Moshood Abiola had urged him to accept the appointment; that he had gone into the cabinet to help realise the progressive agenda, including the actualisation of the June 12 mandate, and that his presence on the Abacha team had, in the final analysis, been beneficent.

    The plan, as another member of the cabinet, the late Chief Silas Daniyan, stated for the record, was that Abiola’s nominees would go into the Abacha cabinet for a stipulated period, first to help legitimise it in the public consciousness, and then to soften the ground for the validation of the June 12 mandate.

    You could accuse them of credulity or perhaps even naiveté, but that was the agreement. With each passing day, it became clearer that Abacha had come to entrench himself in power, not to validate Abiola’s mandate.

    Those who had thought they could do business with Abacha finally saw their error, but not those they had pressed into Abacha’s service. And so, when they were asked to pull out of an agreement that the other party had virtually abrogated, they sat tight, inventing one self-serving rationalisation after another. To his credit, Onagoruwa resigned after stating publicly that he knew nothing about the decrees the regime churned out daily, and that his name was being taken in vain.  By then, the damage was already done.

    He had become alienated from the progressive community. As punishment for Onagoruwa’s daring, Abacha sent his goon squad to murder his son Toyin, a young attorney full of promise.

    The regime used every means at its disposal to block Onagoruwa’s elevation to the rank of Senior Advocate – an elevation he had earned several times over. That is a fearsome price to pay for one single misjudgment.  It is a heavier burden still for a man who had already suffered so much and paid a high price for his principled commitment to the public good. Time has not fully restored him to the esteem he once enjoyed. When he turned 70 in 2006, they brought out the drums and the trumpets. Justice Kayode Eso, one of the most honourable jurists who ever served on the Bench in Nigeria, graced the occasion with his distinguished presence.

    The reclusive Guardian publisher and Onagoruwa’s former cabinet colleague, Alex Ibru, was in attendance with his wife, Maiden. Dozens of practising lawyers who had learned and honed their forensic skills in Onagoruwa’s law chambers turned up to pay homage-more.

    The drums rolled out all right and the trumpets wailed.  However, for a man once venerated as a doughty sentry of our liberties — I recall sharing a public platform with him during the Buhari-Idiagbon era at which he declared, within an earshot of the Government House, Ilorin, and without the slightest tremor of voice or twitch of countenance, that by enacting the infamous Decree Four, the regime had declared war on the people of Nigeria — the drums and the trumpets were muffled.

    Representatives of the worthy causes Onagoruwa had served to the best of his great ability earning in the process a solid reputation for courage and principle were for the most part missing.

    The news media, whose freedom he had championed and defended for decades, registered no presence.

    The human rights community sent no delegation. In the dark days after June 12, 1993, when the two official political parties engaged each other in a brutal fight to demonstrate which could better assist military president Ibrahim Babangida to throttle the popular will, the Movement of National Reformation (MNR), led by Chief Anthony Enahoro, came closer than any other single organisation to expressing that will with clarity and eloquence. Few remembered then or now that Onagoruwa was its general secretary. All because of one misjudgment.

    But few will contest Onagoruwa’s courage, his commitment to freedom and justice, and his essential decency. Fewer still will contest his great learningand his forensic skills, especially his devastating courtroom cross-examination. That it took the Legal Privileges and Ethics Committee so long to acknowledge Onagoruwa’s undeniable eminence in the legal profession speaks to the pusillanimity and manipulability that have often corroded its proceedings.

     

     

  • Ekiti and doom foretold

    Ekiti and doom foretold

    Obuko de, oorun de” is the sententious dismissal, by the Yoruba, of not unexpected knavery.  Where does the obuko (billy goat) go without its overpowering body smell?

    “To be thus is nothing,” Lady Macbeth warned her regicidal husband in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, “but to be safely thus.”

    It was shortly after Macbeth’s murder-usurpation of King Duncan.  But not even the phantom promise of Macbeth’s three witches, with Lady Macbeth’s own concentrated evil, could steel the mind of this most evil of women, against the ultimate futility of evil.

    Add a third, another Yoruba saying: “Nwon pe l’ole, o ngbomo eran jo” (They call him a thief, yet he capers with a newly stolen kid), and you would probably get the full impact of the macabre drama now gripping Ekiti State.

    Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi’s branded Ile Iyi, Ile Eye (Land of Nobility, Land of Honour), had plumbed from the apex dream of a philosophical king to the violent nadir of a plebeian’s stupor.  A people’s collective folly, and happy self-ruin, never haunted so early in the day!

    Between outgoing Governor Fayemi and Governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti’s evolving tragedy is out in bold relief.

    The one cannot lift the people to his dizzying heights.  In a moment of mad rage, the people threw Fayemi out of power — and with a vengeance too!

    The other must pull the people to his base trough.  In a moment of mad passion, laced with subversive joy, Ekiti Kete nose-dived into Fayose’s rough-and-tumble netherworld.

    Wherever Plato the Greek is right now, his eyes must be sparkling with mischief: for in Ekiti, 21st century Nigeria, both the folly and wisdom of his philosophical king theory have validated themselves.

    In Dr. Fayemi, the distant, all-knowing philosopher king, with a permanent chip on his shoulders for the manifest goodness of his deeds, has proved a misfit — indeed, a disaster.  His sterling performance in office earned him sterling thrashing at the polls; with the people blind to their future and, like Roman plebs, howled after “stomach infrastructure”, blind, deaf and dumb to solid evidence of infrastructure to a soaring future.

    But in Ayo Fayose also, Plato’s fear of democracy petering out into mere mob-ocracy, is painfully playing out.  The man that won a glorious election under the law, though with plebeian tactics, has resorted to inglorious means, nay brazen outlawry, to consummate his mandate; using mobs to sack the courts.  Pray, if the courts stay sacked, which institution of state would swear in Fayose on October 16?

    Yes, yes, Fayose and his promoters claim he was set up.  Maybe — for you cannot put anything past the politician: and even the best of politicians is still a politician.  Maybe not.

    Still, it is instructive that, after four short years, the grand re-entry of Fayose into Ekiti politics also marks the grand re-entry of hooliganism into Ekiti, in its most virulent form.  Obuko de, oorun de!

    With all due sensitivity to the feelings of the dear ones they left behind, the late Busari Adelakun, the inimitable Eruobodo, and Lamidi Adedibu, the kingpin of amala-and-gbegiri politics, in all their chequered career as dreaded grandmasters of rough-and-tumble politics, were meek as lambs in the hallowed precincts of courts.

    Yet, the highest either attained in formal office was a commissionership — Eruobodo was commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs under Governor Bola Ige in old Oyo State (now Oyo State and State of Osun).

    Ayo Fayose is Ekiti governor-elect.  Yet, that putative high responsibility of state — to which he is not even new, having been governor once (2003-2006) — did not stop him from storming the High court precincts in Ado Ekiti, ferocious thugs in tow!

    And after all the defilement and travesty, all Fayose could essay was empty bluff and bluster, thinking he could bluff his way out of trouble.  Is there no more shame in this land?  Is there no more honour in Ile Iyi, Ile Eye?

    Which one is more annoying: Fayose’s eternal yakking that he crushed Fayemi in all local governments — isn’t that a notorious fact? — and his lobby’s clearly unintelligent comparison of the fracas at the Ado Ekiti High Courts complex and elsewhere?

    Fayose carries on with the bluster of a student who eternally brags that he worsted all during a qualifying examination, as cheap bluff against crippling fears he would be worsted by all during the real course.  Must a governor-elect, charged with most un-gubernatorial conduct, eternally remind everyone that though he was tiger at the polls, he lacks the brains and temper to serve as governor, even before gaining office?

    And the brainless comparison between Fayose’s mob sacking the Ekiti judiciary, simply because a judge ruled he had jurisdiction over a case; and the public assault and battery of another judge, simply because he reminded Fayose to act civil and gubernatorial.

    The cheek of it: these low-lifers in the public space even childishly accused Justice they had mugged of bias, in a case they would rather stall, out of blind panic!  Ingenious, isn’t it?  Indeed, the guilty are always afraid!

    Back to the pseudo-comparison between the Ekiti court bedlam and others in the land.  Did the Kogi case, cited by the Fayose lobby trying to question the shutdown of Ekiti courts, involve a party to a case sending thugs to sack a court in session, chase out the presiding judge and shred court records?  Did it involve a gubernatorial thug  that allegedly supervised the assault and battery of a judge?

    Unfortunately, those who should know have even weighed in on the side of anarchy.  Ripples thinks of no other than the reported claim by David Mark, president of the Senate, that nobody can stop Fayose’s swearing-in.

    Nobody should do that, to be sure.  But even if someone did — assuming without conceding, as lawyers would say — must the complainant embrace jungle justice as Fayose clearly did?  And is Senator Mark endorsing such infamy?

    Let Mark and other deluded players in the Jonathan Presidency beware of Somalising the polity.  In Somalia, there is no president, no senate president, no governor, no fancy professional, no nothing.  Everyone is ruled by the rabble bearing arms, and low-lifers call the shots!

    For Ekiti Kete, it is a serial tragedy of doom foretold, if totally avoidable.  From hubris-smitten “progressives” that left a fatal chink in their armour; to a “man of the people”, far worse than Chinua Achebe’s fictional Chief Nanga, MP, taking full advantage of the mess, with the full support of plotting and colluding federal authorities, for short-term partisan gains; and finally, a people who merrily cut their noses to spite their faces.

    Enter, the Ekiti Rehoboam!  Compared to the whip of his inglorious first coming, from which he exited in disgrace, Fayose appears set to tan his dotting people with scorpion, starting with the Ekiti court ruckus: the ominous morning presaging a hopeless day.  But then, that is the beauty of democracy!

    Ekiti Kete, it is morning yet on howling day!

     

  • To Dimgba and Auntie Remi

    To Dimgba and Auntie Remi

    It is often said that when people are about departing this world, they do some things that were not normally associated with them. I don’t know if this was true of Mr Dimgba Igwe, the ‘twin’ brother of Mr Mike Awoyinfa, both of who can claim to be the ‘father’ of tabloid journalism in Nigeria.

    As we gathered at the domestic wing of the Murtala Mohammed Airport, Ikeja (MM2) that Wednesday afternoon late August on the way to Katsina for the 10th All Nigerian Editors Conference, I saw Dimgba Igwe seated as I entered the departure hall and I made my way to where he was to pay homage to a former boss and senior colleague. ‘Ah Waheed how are you’ he said and stretched his hands towards me as I bent down in greetings. ‘This man is unusually warm towards me’ I said to myself.

    Later as I was discussing with NGE president and Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of Sun Newspapers Femi Adesina, Dimgba came over and started chatting with us. This looked strange to me as I was not really close to him to the point of sharing banters with him.

    At the conference proper in Katsina, Dimgba was active throughout in a way I had never seen him before. ‘This is a new Dimgba’ I thought, different from the man I knew in our days at Concord Press and later The Sun Publishing. ‘Dimgba of the people’!

    I had never seen that side to his person before or maybe I didn’t look closely. Dimgba to me was a man devoted to journalism and serious work and had no time for throwing of banters or even ‘unionism’ as to be associated with the NGE.

    As we returned to Lagos, I still had that mental picture of him and I was beginning to look at myself and those stereotypes of me that some people have. Then the news came. Dimgba is no more. I couldn’t believe it. How? Where? When? I was asking nobody in particular. Then my mind went straight to my last encounters with him at the airport and in Katsina and I asked ‘was he saying goodbye in a way’? And what a way to say it!

    Dimgba, whichever way you look at him, made his mark in journalism and together with his good friend Mike Awoyinfa will be remembered for making Saturday newspapers in Nigeria a delight they are today. Prior to the emergence of Weekend Concord from Concord Press stable, which both pioneered, Saturday papers were the weakest links in the chain of most newspaper organizations in Nigeria and the readership was expectedly poor. But Dimgba and Mike brought life and dynamism into Saturday journalism and the weekend papers have never remained the same ever since. They took journalism to the people and the people loved it. And if there was any doubt that this genre of journalism could succeed on a daily basis, they put that to rest with the phenomenal success story of the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s first daily tabloid. Everybody now seems to be on the bandwagon, thanks largely to the efforts of Dimgba and Mike.

    They were like Siamese twins, seemingly inseparable. What Mike lacks you found it in abundance in Dimgba and vice versa. They were an example of what Nigerians could achieve if only they could put religion and ethnic differences aside. What a place Nigeria would be if we could have more Mikes and Dimgbas around.

    In different ways, Mike and Dimgba were good examples to the younger breed of journalists then at Concord Press as we looked up to them and tried to be like them. While Mike could turn anything into a story or smell a story a thousand kilometers away, Dimgba was the painstaking one who would put your story together in a way that as a cub reporter, you’ll love, crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.

    He was the listening type, thorough and no time for frivolities; the enforcer. I don’t know whether he had a social life, but what he probably ‘lost’ there he gained by devoting his other life outside journalism to his Christian faith. As he begins his final journey home this weekend, we wish him eternal rest in the bosom of The Lord. Goodnight Dimgba.

    Just as we were trying to get over the loss of Dimgba, tragedy struck the journalism family in Nigeria again, last week when it was announced that Auntie Remi Oyo, one time President Nigerian Guild of Editor, Presidential Spokesman during the presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, and immediate past Managing Director News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) had passed on. I don’t know whose death was more shocking to me, Dimgba’s or Auntie Remi’s.

    Since the day I met this woman some time in 1990, she remained not just a big sister or senior colleague, but like a mother to me. I recall the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU) holding its Information Ministers Conference in Abuja some time in 1990 and I was assigned to cover the event for Concord Press. Then Abuja was not what it is today. We were all holed up at the then NICON-NOGA Hilton Hotel, the only 5-Star facility in town, so everything had to be done there. In the course of the conference, I took ill and this woman I never knew from anywhere took care of me like her younger brother, took me to the clinic in the hotel, ensured that I got treated and insisted I used my drugs as prescribed. Auntie Remi made sure then Information Minister Prince Tony Momoh was aware of my situation and I was given a VIP’s treatment. She was God sent to me as I had nowhere or no one to turn to in Abuja. Auntie, I pray that God will also send a helper to your children wherever and whenever they need help. Though you are no longer with us, wherever you are I pray that God will grant your soul eternal rest and perfect peace. Amen. Goodnight Auntie.

    As Fayose’s episode continues…

    On this page last week I called for support for Ekiti State Governor-elect, Mr Ayodele Fayose as we move towards his swearing in on October 16. Some read that as an endorsement of the mayhem he visited on the state judiciary a couple of weeks ago; far from it. I strongly hold the opinion that he should be punished for whatever part he played in the reign of terror that he led his supporters/thugs to unleash on judges and others on that fateful day. I belief he is unworthy of the office of the governor of Ekiti State into which his people have ‘voted’ him. But what can I do? It is only the people of Ekiti State and their judiciary that can address the situation, but the constitution must be allowed to prevail. The judiciary must fight for itself while the people must also take their destiny in their hands. Fayose and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have set a dangerous precedent. It is left for Ekiti people and the judiciary to act. But the rest of Nigeria is watching.

     

     

  • Slackers @ 54

    Slackers @ 54

    The excellent performance of the Falconets in the recent FIFA World Cup was a source of pure unadulterated joy to many of us.  I stayed up late into the night and watched all their matches, for apart from being good entertainment, those teenagers exhibited such flair and dexterity in a game previously monopolised by men.  The wonder girl Aishat from Ikorodu mesmerised the opposition.

    The Federal Government, but particularly, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu – the Minister of Health; the Lagos State Governor Raji Fashola and his team deserve tons of encomium for the speed with which the wicked Ebola virus disease was contained and kept off limits and at bay.  Those two recent performances made me walk tall as a Nigerian.  We cannot of course let our guards down as our borders are extremely porous and there are still many Patrick Sawyers lurking around seeking whom to devour.

    As the big brother in Africa, it is my considered view that it is now time for Nigeria to export our expertise in EBOLA DISEASE MANAGEMENT to those sister African countries that are still hurting.  Their grief must be shared with all who can help and we must not leave this to the United States or Europe.

    The examples given demonstrate convincingly that we can win if we try hard enough.  Nigerian students, especially at the post-graduate level have demonstrated repeatedly their ability to hold their own against the best in the world.

    The great mathematician and physicist adjudged by Time Magazine as the greatest genius of the last century was once eulogised by his peers for his brilliance.  His response was that it is not a matter of brilliance.  The difference between him and his peers was that he stayed at problems much longer than his colleagues.

    Every birthday is a milestone whether celebrated or not.  There is a class of people who forget their birthdays but this is a minority.  Each birthday is therefore unique.  Age 54 which Nigeria has just celebrated is nothing special.  The more important milestones are 50, 60, 70, 75, 80 and for those genetically richly endowed 90 and above.

    Age 54 is also time to redefine our goal as a nation and reassess our road map to that destination.

    Please pause for a brief interjection.  There is this unfortunate but misguided phobia in some of the President’s men.  These see any criticism of government or governance as an attack on the President.  Reflexively, they mobilise with all cylinders firing in defence.

    For avoidance of doubt, let it be clear to all who care to listen that government as defined by the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) is the sum total of the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary working in synergy.

    For further clarification let us also be aware that there is a fine dividing line between the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the person Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.  You can call this line a thin permeable membrane if you will.  Enough for the detour.

    There are a few questions which a country at 54 must address.  Have we achieved all we are capable of? If not, why not and can we do better going forward?  Have our levels of efficiency or inefficiency in routine administrative matters affected or slowed us down in our march to Eldorado?

    Why is it that in October 2014 (three months to the end of the financial year) only 30% of the capital projects in the 2014 Appropriation Act have been implemented? Why must it take the whole life of the current 7th National Assembly to pass an important bill like the Petroleum Industry Bill?  Why must anybody, including all government departments award contracts without capturing the necessary payments funds in banks?

    My fellow compatriots can we really be talking transformation if these basic and fundamental issues are not addressed and rectified?

    The Nigerian Project is our collective march but the direction to a large extent is determined by the helmsman.

    Each month the Federal Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Finance roll out a lot of figures – most of which try to convince us that our economy is getting better.  The reality on the street and that is what matters most as any straw poll will show is totally different.  The average Nigerian says life was better 10 years ago than today.  The money in peoples pocket has diminished purchasing power and there is insecurity in the land.  Night life don quench – to put it in Fela’s language.

    Our newspapers and media houses have a sacred responsibility to write and reflect the true state of the nation.  For purposes of emphasis, let us take one more look at the time we waste in processing documents for this is crucial.  A director literally sat on a file  to be processed for C of O for a period of 12 months.  That director has no business being in the civil service and the Permanent Secretary who continues to shield him is inflicting terrible damage to Nigeria.  Both of them are enemies of this country.  The explanation when queried is that it is the Nigerian system or factor.  That of course is rubbish as there is only one acceptable system and that is efficiency system.

    I understand that Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Premier of Western Region made sure no file stayed on his desk for more than 24 hours.  He also did not take any office work home.  Paul Ogwuma, as Managing Director of Union Bank adopted Chief Awolowo’s style but went one step further and could see as many as 20 customers in an hour leaving all of them satisfied.  The current Head of Federal Civil Service straight from petroleum ministry may like to explore this route.

    Not too long ago, I was in a discussion with a foreigner who said he was frustrated out of investing in Nigeria because of delays and bureaucratic bottlenecks.  Another doctor friend of mine who retired from the Federal Public Service has been processing his retirement benefits for two years and is still counting.

    The reality is that all these need not be so.  A paradigm shift is our work ethics is an urgent desideratum if we want to join the league of developed nations.  This transformation can happen in a few short years as Singapore has shown.

    To achieve this, eminent dermatologist and author Professor Anezi Okoro is convinced some loose screws upstairs need tightening.  I, on the other hand am convinced it is a matter of passionate committed reorientation from top to bottom.  It is impossible to escape the positive trickle-down effect.  Murtala Muhammed, for the few short months he ruled, did it.

    At 54, one commodity that Nigeria has a surfeit is sycophancy.  We seem to be lacking in courage on the other hand.  As we move forward to building a virile and prosperous nation that will be a source of pride to us all, my prayer is that God will grant Nigeria and Nigerians courage to know when to stand up and speak and also courage to know when to sit down and listen.

    • Hon. Dr. Mbadiwe is a member of House of Representatives

     

  • Military and its demons

    Military and its demons

    The arraignment, last week, of another batch of 97 soldiers by the military authorities for offences ranging from mutiny, assault and misconduct to tampering with military property, would appear to suggest that the rot in the Nigerian military may have been understated after all. Coming after the fierce debates provoked by the death sentence passed on an earlier batch of 12 soldiers charged with the same serious charge is yet to abate, Nigerians who have expressed opinions might yet find them to be premature in the light of more terrifying revelations of the arrest, at the weekend, of a serving Brigadier-General attached to the 3rd Division of the Nigerian Army over allegations of “negligence”.

    The charge of course is that the, Brigadier-General, commander of a whole Brigade in the North-east, together with his Chief of Staff and troops, took to their heels at the sight of advancing Boko Haram insurgents in Bama. This was supposed to be a Brigade with two units of a battalion each, supported by 122 medium artillery guns with shilka and tanks.

    Of course, the insurgents not only secured free entry to the armoury of the Brigade Headquarters, they carted away military vehicles, tanks and weapons, which they deployed to attack the infantry battalion at Konduga. Ironically, the commander and his Chief of Staff would later be rescued by the same battalion in Konduga stationed about 15 kilometres from Bama!

    Strange? Shouldn’t be. Similar strange things have been known to happen in the past. In 2008, a General Military Court Martial sitting in Kaduna sentenced six soldiers – one of them a Major – to life imprisonment for selling arms to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

    Were things to be normal, the resort to applicable service laws would seem the natural order of things.  But then, just like the debates that followed in the wake of the conviction of the 12 soldiers on September 16, the process, as important as it is, seems unlikely to settle anything. Aside the fact that the larger society is prone to being eternally divided on just about everything under the sun to the point of being permissive of wrong-doing, the military itself has not proven that its standard of justice is nearly fair and equitable. In the circumstance, we may well prepare for another round of muddled debates that in the end serves neither the military nor the larger public cause!

    The issue under focus is indiscipline in the armed forces. Perhaps, the much that can be said is that the daemon is as old as the institution itself. A little more than two decades ago, the then Chief of Army Staff Lt-General Salihu Ibrahim had described the Nigerian army as “an army of anything goes”. His other comment, although less publicised, obviously bear more relevance to the problems at the moment.

    I quote:  “It is an open secret that some officers openly preferred political appointments to regimental appointments, no matter the relevance of such appointments to their careers…we became an army where subordinate officers would not only be contemptuous of their superiors, but would exhibit total disregard to legitimate instructions by such superiors…We created such a situation whereby we were operating mini-armies within the larger Nigerian army.”

    That was some 21 years ago. Today, the seeds of soldiers wedded to non-combat, non-regimental duties has not only matured, (the military did practically nothing in the intervening years to exhorcise the ghost), it has produced an army so flat-footed that it would run from a rag-tag army of insurgents. That is what Boko Haram has done: exacerbate the ingrained delinquencies of the body as a fighting force.

    Again, it goes to the point that the problem has long been understated. The military, we are all agreed, is in a mess. Truth is – a good number of the men currently bearing arms have no business in the disciplined profession. We see evidence of this daily among the lower ranks when they serve their brand of ‘justice’ on hapless civilians, or, as is also not infrequent, when their officers wilfully act in ways as to suggest being above the law. The difference is that the virus has been taken to the war theatre where obedience to orders may mean life or death for the troops. And to imagine the possibility that what is currently before the public is only a tip of the ice-berg!

    Yes, the demon of indiscipline is one the Nigerian military as an institution must confront – and win! The issue however is whether the mess can be cleaned up by the draconian justice that the military has long perfected – and one that makes no fine distinction between dissent, no matter how legitimate, and the more grave charge of refusal to obey lawful orders. That appears to be the point being made by those opposed to the maximum sentence imposed on the convicted soldiers.

    The debate is of course ‘live’ and open, and, as it appears, one that would endure for a while. To be sure, it is one unlikely to be obviated by reductionist argument about the military court-martial being an inescapable component of military justice system. For while the soldiers truly signed to die fighting for their country, nowhere is it implied in the service rules that they could be treated as expendables! Indeed, their preparedness to lay their lives down for their country would seem to impose the onerous burden on society, and no less their primary constituency – the military – to discharge their own burden of equipping them and watching their backs! This is what the military call espirit de corps; it’s what gives colour to the patriotic spirit. It seems about time the military high command reflect on those.