The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Cross River: Audacity of vision

    Cross River: Audacity of vision

    As yours sincerely set out for Calabar, the Cross River State capital last week, the mood was one of high expectations. If my earlier visit in June 2013 – set in the background of the anniversary of the loss of the state’s derivation revenue exactly a year earlier – was one of tempered expectations, this was to be entirely different. Shortly before that 2013 visit, I could not but recall that the state’s last derivation cheque in the sum of N345 million came exactly a year before the visit – the aftermath of the July 2012 apex court ruling terminating its membership of the oil-producing club. That was subsequent to the ceding of its entire 176 oil-wells to its neighbour, Akwa Ibom. While that particular development came as dampener to any serious expectation, the visit turned out to be most revealing – or rather a most rewarding one. In the end, I could only surmise that while the state may have lost those prized oil wells, it has demonstrated that it had a lot going for it in the iron-clad determination of its leadership to turn things around in quick time.

    Of course, the main highlight of that visit was the ground-breaking ceremony of General Electric’s $1 billion manufacturing and training facility at Calabar, said to be one of two of its kind under the corporation’s Greenfield investment drive. But then, it was also an opportunity for the officials to showcase the impressive strides recorded in the area of direct foreign investment through the activities of the one-stop shop – the State Investment Promotion Bureau. Top on the list of the gains was Wilmar Limited’s $400 million investment in agriculture and agro-processing – which unfortunately I could not visit on that occasion. There was also the Brentex Petroleum $300 million pipe mills manufacturing; the $700 million Essar Power Limited 660MW Integrated Power Project; Southgate Cocoa, and the Artee Group’s investment in shopping malls –more than mere proofs of a state determined to move against the tide.

    You can therefore understand the basis of my heightened expectations as I flew into the state capital, last week. In a sense, it was for me an opportunity to play catch-up on the earlier visit.  Today, I can confirm that what whereas the state may have lost something in excess of N20 billion in the more than 22 months of non-receipt of derivation funds, it is, presently, not only fully poised to recover them through the burst of entrepreneurial energy to be unleashed from the massive investment in infrastructure and human capital, it appears even more determined to push new frontiers of development.

    This is no exaggeration; whether one is talking of tourism, sports infrastructure, urban renewal, agriculture rural development, education (particularly vocational education) or, health, the sense of urgency in the mission by the Imoke administration to lay the foundation for a prosperous, sustainable future is discernable.

    In Calabar, it was sheer marvel to behold the world-class Calabar International Convention Centre springing up, next to the Tinapa complex –both set within the sprawling Summit Hills – an integrated lifestyle real estate development complex. If ever a project would claim to speak to the determination of the state to become a force in global tourism, this would be it. And for Tinapa, it would be a case of the dream coming into realisation whenever it finally comes through; after all, nothing better speaks to the imperative to address the challenge which had rendered the utilisation of the multi-million dollar Tinapa investment sub-optimal than the coming of the 5,000-seat capacity auditorium, to be linked with it by mono rail. At completion, the centre would also host a 200-bed Convention Hotel under the state’s Public Private Partnership model; to complement these is the New Calabar Golf Course.

    Also in Calabar, the U.J Esuene Stadium is beginning to wear a new look under the massive rehabilitation going on; we saw the NYSC Demonstration Secondary School – one of the prototype schools conceived under the Cross River standard – a model of what a learning environment should be – with libraries, laboratories, ICT facilities and modern conveniences. At the newly built Institute of Technology and Management, Ugep, in Yakurr Local Government, we saw evidence of a state determined to change both the face and the paradigm of vocational education.

    In the area of road infrastructure, we drove through the newly built airport road bypass; the hundreds of kilometres of rural and urban roads, stretching from Calabar to Ikom, to Ogoja right up to Obudu – the ranch town; along the way, we inspected water and stadium projects in Ogoja and Ikom. Throughout the entire journey, we observed a deliberate effort to redress the neglect of the rural areas; so also is the effort to maintain the delicate balance between man and environment.

    For me, two projects particularly stand out as deserving of mention.  The Songhai farm complex in Abi; the other, the multi-million dollar Wilmar farm complex in Akampa. The former, a demonstration farm promoted by the state government to train the youths, is an integrated system under which waste products from plants, birds, fish ponds, which are ordinarily disposed off, are recycled as inputs. Earlier on, I had mentioned the huge agricultural complex owned by Wilmar, a multinational company. Both, aside showcasing the immense possibilities in commercial agriculture, offer immense promises in skills transfer for the youths of the state but also in the area of agro-processing.

    Let me conclude by summarising the lessons I learnt in the course of the tour. The first is the power of vision. I guess it makes all the difference that the state strives “To become the leading Nigerian state with prosperous, healthy and well educated citizens living in harmony with people and Nature; and pursuing legitimate interest in freedom moderated by good governance”.

    I consider that a clear, powerful statement to run with.

    The second lesson is the importance of continuity. Here, it is so easy to draw upon the lesson of Tinapa which is that the project, as well conceived as it appears, could never have come to its own without the Calabar International Convention facility. By picking up from where his predecessor stopped, Governor Imoke simply gave life to what is potentially, another white-elephant project. The good people of the state would, in years to come, have Imoke and his team to thank for this.

    Finally, I guess the point cannot be sufficiently made about how dysfunctional our practice of federalism has become. Asked about the terrible states of federal roads in the states at the Town Hall meet, the governor couldn’t agree more with the view that the notion of federal road in state jurisdiction is a strange.

    I should add that the National Assembly consider turning over the budgetary allocation for maintaining federal roads to the states. From what I saw of the quality of Cross River roads, I have no doubt that the state could deliver a far better job than the federal maintenance agency could ever.

  • FAAC: The road not taken

    FAAC: The road not taken

    To state that the 36 states in the federation plus Abuja have fallen on bad times in the last one year is to state the obvious. The truth is that most, perhaps with one or two exceptions, are already tottering precariously towards insolvency – the result of the industrial scale theft said to have taken out nearly one-fifth of the domestic output of the nation’s crude. All across the 36 states capitals, the story of massive cutback in capital spend has since become the rule rather than exception. With shrunk monthly allocations, most states have barely enough to take care of recurrent expenditures let alone take on development projects. And with paltry Internally Generated Revenues, many have had to resort to borrowing to augment their finances. In the circumstance, it should be easy to understand the renewed clamour by states under the aegis of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to hive off petrol subsidy; it smacks of attempt to shore up the distributive pool and hence boost their share.

    Now, this is something that would have been unthinkable a few months ago. Indeed, the nationwide protests which greeted the January 2012 attempt would have rendered such contemplations a death wish. That the nation is back – or nearly so – where it left off in 2012 is a measure of how much the issue will simply not go away.

    To be sure, we have heard of the denial by President Jonathan during his last media chat that any such plan to hike petrol price was in the offing. However, I don’t think Nigerians can be fooled by such tepid assurances in the background of the rather insistent and strident pressure by the commissioners on the federal government to take the issue on. Moreover, it is hard to miss the import of recent findings by the controversial pollster – NOI polls – which suggest that more than 90 percent Nigerians are already buying their fuel above the official prices. Nigerians understand the game well enough to appreciate the theme as part of an elaborate, choreographed plot by the Jonathan administration to force the bitter pill.

    Of course, knowing how emotive Nigerians are when it comes to any discussions on the subject, one can only infer that the reason citizens have not bothered to denounce the still unfolding “satanic agenda” is because they have more serious issues to worry about in Boko Haram at the moment! Even at that, I do not see them yielding any grounds now or in the near future in any further discussions on the issue given the apparent lack of sincerity and bad faith on the part of government since that last time out in 2012. The indications are that the citizens would in fact be more resolute next time around.

    And why not?

    The reason(s) is at the heart of the story underlying the clamour which seeks to draw more of our blood. The single official line of course is that the FAAC hasn’t enough to share. In other words, the nation could not meet up the daily crude production target of 2.5 million barrels per day as set out in the 2013 budget. We have been told that for nearly the whole of that year, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its principal, the federal government, could only deliver, on average, four-fifths of the projected budget output. And that the situation seems unlikely to change in the current fiscal year. In other words, our federal government, under President Goodluck Jonathan, is unable to tame the black market economy of oil theft.

    You think it’s hard to imagine the scale of industrial theft and associated production shut-ins in which a nation would be bled by nearly 400,000 barrels of daily crude output? You guessed right: Only in Jonathan’s impunity republic would such quantum of losses be conceivable. Like their Boko Haram counterparts, the oil-thieves are evidently ghosts!

    But then, think about the fact that no hard questions are asked nor explanations given as to how the army and navy would sit idly by while watching the nation loose a fifth of its projected earnings. And now imagine that state governments, co-beneficiaries from the federation account that couldn’t take the lead to demand that the federal government rise up to its responsibility and NNPC to give proper renditions of its accounts beyond the monthly show of walkouts to protest revenue shortfalls now assuming the leadership of the remove-the-subsidy orchestra! We are talking of an industry in which the overseeing minister is on record to have shelled out N10 billion for the love of the luxury toys.

    By the way, what does our body of finance commissioners know about the nation’s transparently opaque oil industry? How much of its rentier value chain that feeds fat on the citizens’ misery do they know? What do they know of the bungling Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the so-called oil industry police that looks on while all manners of economic saboteurs carry on with their rape and plunder? How much of the activities of the department do they know? Or their kith, the club of fuel importers and their allies in the bureaucracy who between them are known to have fleeced the treasury of trillions of naira in illicit earnings in the last few years?

    And then you ask: of what value is the monthly conclave FAAC beyond the monthly ritual of sharing unearned money?

    I haven’t exactly said that the states could not do with more money. As a matter of fact, they do. I would even go as far as to argue that they deserve far more than the paltry 24 percent they are getting under the existing revenue sharing formula. Even here, my understanding is that states are not even seriously considering pushing this route. Or even the more enduring route of tapping into their latent potentials, preferring, as it were, the usual route of easy money without breaking a sweat. This is where the problem lies.

    For the purposes of clarity, I need to make the point: the case for the states needing more money can also be made for the need to enhance citizens’ disposable incomes. Whereas the states need funds to execute their programmes, the larger economy needs citizens’ enhanced disposable incomes to run. It is called cash at hand –economists call it effective demand. As it is, the Nigerian citizen is overburdened enough with governmental inefficiencies without the need for the cyclic rod of affliction.

    Does that amount to a foreclosure on the subsidy debate? Far from it. Yours truly has never denied that the argument for the subsidy removal is anything but compelling. It is a matter of cold, rational economics. The point of departure is whether to treat the subsidy as cause or effect. For me, only when citizens and the government come to a common understanding on this point can we begin to make headway. For now, the states will do well to consider thinking out of the box to boost their revenues. It is the smart thing to do.

  • Abia: Of development and succession

    Abia: Of development and succession

    Abia State governor, Chief Theodore Ahamuefule Orji assumed office as governor of Abia State in May 2007, 17 years after the creation of the state from Old Imo State. Within those years, military administrators were in-charge for eight-years, while their civilian counterparts held sway for nine years. Within this period also, the state received monthly federation allocations and generated Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) that ran into billions of naira with nothing on ground in terms of infrastructural, economic and social developments to show for it.

    Those who presided over the affairs of the state for the 17 locust years and their allies were never brought to book. During this era, the state haemorrhaged and decayed in all ramifications, while the looters of the era smiled to the banks, and even ploughed the loots into the state politics in 1999 to hijack the democratic process. They took charge, and decided who got what. By 2007, there was no concrete or solid foundation as the state was laid waste.

    That was the sorry state of affairs in Abia State in 2007 which one Uche Igwe in a recent article in The Punch of May 21 titled “The Struggle to succeed failure in Abia State” failed to acknowledge in his bid to run down Abia State governor and his family, his government, and the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan ahead of 2015 general elections. It is said that a man who was not around when a corpse is buried would definitely exhume it from the head. I do not know when last Igwe came to Abia State before engaging in his fictitious article. However, every Nigerian familiar with Enugu/ Aba/ Port-Harcourt Expressway, a major federal road that has suffered severe neglect by successive governments in the country, will appreciate how much it has received and continue to receive attention since President Goodluck Jonathan assumed office. Several portions of the road have been removed completely and asphalted afresh, thereby making it accessible.

    The Aba axis of the road such as Osisioma junction which was an eyesore for several years before now is wearing a new look today with a well-flowered garden and streetlights courtesy of the present government in the state. The same effort has been extended to major intercity roads and federal roads in the commercial city of Aba and environs, a city that was once made a pariah by the rampaging kidnappers for months. The present government expended billions in tackling the kidnapping saga which brought about the restoration of peace and security in the state without minding whose ox is gored or apportioning blame to anybody. If such funds had been channelled into developmental projects, it would have gone far, but there will no development in an unsecured environment.

    To pontificate that nothing is happening in Abia state in terms of infrastructural, economic and social-cultural developments is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism as there are so many verifiable on-going and completed legacy projects across the state today. Among them are the Ubani Ibeku Modern market, Amuba Housing Estate, Isieke Housing Estate, Abia Diagnostic Hospital, Abia Eye Centre, Amachara General Hospital, Ohiya Power station, the International Conference Centre, the new Government House, 250 health centres in rural areas, 350 kilometres of roads constructed and rehabilitated, the radical reformation of the state civil service, the intervention in education sector with the building and rebuilding of state-owned public schools and tertiary institutions and other achievements. These legacy projects were non-existent before 2007. So the question should be; what happened to the state funds for 17 years before the present government came into office in 2007?

    The reality is that despite the initial menace of a godfather that hamstrung Governor Orji’s government for the first three years, the government has continued to turn the state round with massive infrastructural developments to the admiration and acknowledgement of the people, and disappointment and envy of the cabal who had always wanted status quo to remain. What the armchair critics of the state government have failed to realize is that the government since 2007 has been using state funds of seven years plus to address the ineptitude and failure of successive governments before it.

    As for allegations that Governor Orji’s son is one of the major contractors in the state, it is part of the Pull Him Down syndrome orchestrated by the known enemies of the state ahead of 2015. It is unfortunate that these days when Freedom of Information (FoI) Act has been signed into law, people still peddle fiction on the pages of newspapers.

    Clearly and expectedly, all these sponsored machinations against Governor Orji and his family are not unconnected with politics of 2015, and who succeeds him office. To douse unnecessary tension and political acrimony among the party stakeholders in the state, the governor, who also doubles as the state leader of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after due consultation announced that his party will be zoning the governorship seat in 2015 to Abia South senatorial zone. A good student of political history of the state since 1999 will agree that PDP’s decision in that direction is equitable and justifiable, considering that Abia South is the only zone that has not produced governor for the state since 1999.

    Orji and his party’s position on the governorship seat in 2015 is not far from what obtained in the last Anambra governorship election, and the position of Enugu State governor, Sullivan Chime and the state PDP ahead of 2015 gubernatorial election in the state. This is fast becoming a political trend in our polity, especially in states that are not dominated by one particular major ethnic group like Benue State that are predominantly Tiv against the minority Idoma.

    Again the State PDP and Governor Orji have not endorsed or anointed anybody as Orji’s likely successor, having known that such will amount to distraction and illegality at this point in time. Meanwhile, the senator representing Abia Central zone, Nkechi Nworgu has not said anywhere that she has been anointed by the wife of the President, Dame Patience Jonathan to succeed Governor Orji come 2015. Governor Orji has also not publicly or privately declared that he will be running for the senatorial seat in 2015 talk less of swapping seat with Senator Nworgu.

    On the issue of non-conduct of local government election by the state government, what needs to be borne in mind is that the exercise requires huge funds. Besides, the state government is yet to offset the huge debts incurred by the last council chairmen under the watch of the past administration.  Finally, measuring the performance in public office like that of a state governor in Abia requires assessing the performance of successive governments in the state before 2007, where were on ground in the area of infrastructural developments, the challenges and the human indices and then compare them with what are on ground now.

     

    • Chukwu, wrote Bende, Abia State   

     

  • Baba’s new racket

    Baba’s new racket

    “A bi omo l’Owu, o ni ako tabi abo ni, ewo ni yio se omo nibe?” (“A child is born in Owu and you ask, male or female: which will be a proper child?) — Wale Adebanwi, “How (Not) to be a Proper Yoruba”, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency.

     

    Their Baba is off to some new racket: in Jigawa Governor, Sule Lamido, he is well pleased as Nigeria’s new president, come 2015.  He said that himself.

    But some deep throats have added the racket is a twin-gambit: Baba that pushes for Alhaji Lamido in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), may also be pushing for Kano Governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, of the rival All Progressives Congress (APC)!  It is dawn of a great presidential straddle!

    As the Yoruba would say “Eyi je, eyi o je” (roughly, “head you win, tail you win”, perfect hedge!). It is the high-octane power equivalent of playing the lottery, Baba Ijebu!

    Despite the fiasco of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s earlier attempt at presidential selection, it would appear morning yet on his presidential creation day!

    Nigerians endured the ruins of the Umaru Yar’Adua presidential months; just as now, they are grand victims of the infernal anomie of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential years — both courtesy of the former president.

    Still, for Baba, it would appear one era, one gambit; as he appears to have moved on to new conquests!  Might this power restlessness result from a missed past opportunity (as his foes jeer) or a patriot’s elixir to fix the future (as his friends cheer)?

    Ripples, though no foe, is inclined towards the former!  And the reason is clear.  Baba left office with no worthwhile aftermath.  The Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, it of suspect moral provenance, is stark brick-and-mortar showcasing the vanity of power, that would decay and die with time.

    Even in his native South West, political mainstream, which the old soldier tried to impose as alternative to the progressive mainstream, has spectacularly collapsed — with Baba and disciples hollering, “We’re alive!” from underneath the gurgling flood; or from the rubbles of collapsed power dream.

    Contrast that to the odyssey of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  Awo never gained the Nigerian presidency, a failure Obasanjo mocked in his book, Not My Will.  Yet, his winning ideas on productive federalism have powered political and economic restructuring, that could still save Nigeria from looming disintegration.

    Awo is dead — since 1987— yet his ideas live.  Obasanjo is alive, yet his ideas are dead.  That biting paradox probably explains Baba’s fixation with making and unmaking presidents, thinking such arid thinking would breed a legacy.  No, it won’t.  It only breeds vanity.

    But Baba is too far down the long road to nowhere to turn back now.  Nigerians have him to thank for the crises of the Yar’Adua, and chaos of the Jonathan eras.  But not even that would banish, from his mind, a phantom future hope in Lamido or Kwankwaso — not unlike some Don Quixote that shuns reality for fantasy, in all comic chivalry.

    In Obasanjo’s case, it is fond fantasy that power vanity can land legacy.  But longsuffering Nigerians are the unhappy guinea pigs.  Just as well for a people who suffer fools gladly!

    Still, Obasanjo is as much a powerful symbol of a puppet gone unhinged as he is of a puppeteer run out of town.  That drives the matter right back to the opening quote, and Wale Adebanwi’s concept of proper and improper Yoruba, in his new book, Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria, in the context of fierce contestation for power in Nigeria.

    The putdown quote on the Owu newborn is hardly extant.  It was used in the context of intra-Yoruba sub-ethnic rivalry of the 19th century, which climaxed in the Kiriji War (1877-1893).

    But it does offer clear illumination on Obasanjo’s portraiture, in Yoruba Elites, as “improper Yoruba” — at least from the eyes of the South West progressive mainstream, that Awo inspired and nurtured.

    That perception was hardly lost on the northern oligarchs, as they shopped for their own Yoruba, to placate the proper Yoruba for the rash annulment of MKO Abiola’s presidential mandate.

    They wanted some executive puppet to hold power in trust, until the North regained it.  Obasanjo perfectly fitted that bill.

    But in power, the puppet ran his northern puppeteers out of town.  Obasanjo claimed he did it for “Nigeria”, for which his flatterers pronounced him “Father of modern Nigeria”.  The emotionally swindled and confused claimed he did it for his fellow Yoruba — even if Obasanjo is of an improper hue! — or for some fuzzy “South”, as if political Nigeria has a “South”!

    The truth is Obasanjo did it for nobody but himself.

    But Karma-like, what goes around comes around.  Yesterday’s puppet that threw off his puppeteers is today’s puppeteer, thrown off by his own puppets.

    Obasanjo’s first power nemesis was the ill-fated President Yar’Adua.  His current nemesis is President Jonathan, who might be confused about anything but his sworn determination not to be Baba’s puppet.

    That explains Obasanjo’s present over-drive to plant new puppets in either Lamido or Kwankwaso.  But if the fatally ill Yar’Adua and the clueless Jonathan can throw off Baba’s yoke, why would hardy Lamido and Kwankwaso not do so, even if the gambit succeeds?

    On the corporate plane, the North’s ploy to endure no more than eight years of powerlessness, before bouncing back for another eight years, spectacularly backfired — and Obasanjo, from his vantage commander-in-chief fort became the North’s traducer-in-chief.

    First, the grand irony of grim payback in realpolitik: as the North located in Obasanjo their Yoruba man, Obasanjo located in the ill-fated Yar’Adua his core northerner — to boot, with his full northern aristocracy!

    And when Obasanjo’s Umoru’s health gave way, the former president, to pave the way for Jonathan, the new hoped-for puppet, shrilly denied the existence of any zoning formula.

    The snag is: Jonathan won’t play the presidential puppet; and Baba is done with hyena laughs!  Now, Baba has hinted Jonathan indeed signed a one-term pact.

    Maybe he did.  Maybe he didn’t.  But falsely crying wolf in the past is making it hard to believe there is really now a prowling wolf!  That dead end could well have pushed the latest “Baba shopping” for presidential candidates.

    Those adept at emotive reaction to crises, only after they are fully brewed, should note this — and perhaps call the former president to order.

    The present anomie bordering on total anarchy, creeping failure of the Nigerian state and even looming disintegration of the country are fallouts of Baba’s Hobson’s choice of Yar’Adua, whose failed health produced the disastrous Jonathan.

    Even in Baba’s very word, Jonathan is clearly “overwhelmed” — an accidental president whose (mis)handling of things could turn his country into an accident of history.

    What future disasters await Baba’s present presidential gambits — and how much more can Lugard’s crumbing empire take?

  • Funding our military

    Funding our military

    At the height of the pro-democracy protests over the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election, the rumour mill was very active churning out one story after another, feasting on the mood of the populace.

    In the camp of those opposed to the cancellation of the poll, it was generally believed that the United States and other western allies were going to send troops and equipment to help topple the Abacha government and restore the winner of that election, Bashorun MKO Abiola. It never happened.

    Such was the belief among pro-democracy activists and their supporters that the Americans were going to put boots on the ground and chase away Abacha. They were utterly gutted and felt let down by the US when at the end of the day, Washington sent neither soldiers nor equipment and Abiola died in detention without actualising his mandate.

    You can imagine the skepticism when the rumour mill came alive again in the aftermath of the abduction of over 200 Nigerian school girls in Chibok, Borno State, over a month ago by Boko Haram insurgents that America was going to help Nigeria militarily to find the girls. Once beaten twice shy? But this time around the Yankees are living up to expectation.

    And you need to see how relieved many were last week when after several weeks of expectation, President Barack Obama finally approved the deployment of 80 US servicemen and equipment to join many international well wishers collaborating with the Nigerian military to find and bring back our girls.

    The relief was however dampened in some quarters when it emerged that the US Air Force personnel and equipment would be based in Chad, Nigeria’s northern neighbour and not on Nigerian soil. The arrival of the American surveillance aircraft and personnel came in the wake of a similar deployment by the United Kingdom of its state-of the-art surveillance aeroplane-The Sentinel- to Accra, Ghana to also help Nigeria in the search for the Chibok girls. Many view the stationing of these two aircraft and the accompanying personnel outside the shores of Nigeria as a sign of lack of confidence in the Nigerian military by America and Britain.

    In the fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the US military not only operated from neigbhouring Pakistan, but has substantial men and equipment on ground in Afghanistan to fight the terrorists. What are the Americans afraid of in Nigeria?  In order to be seen as patriotic, one could argue that only the Americans can say why they chose Chad over Nigeria in that troop deployment and that our military is up there among the very best in the league of medium powers. ‘We have the capacity to host and collaborate with the US military or any other superpower military in this rescue mission’, one could blindly argue, but regrettably this doesn’t seem to be the case.

    And in a tacit endorsement of the position of the skeptics on the operational readiness and competence of the Nigerian armed forces to fight the war on terror, the Nigerian Army last week cried out over the poor funding of our military, especially the army. The slightly over N4 billion annual budgetary allocations to the army, the service say is grossly inadequate to equip the troops, not to talk of training and other needs of the modern soldier. The army high command is calling on government to look at other sources of funding and equipping our military to meet with the changing times and security challenges.

    Before the Americans open snub of our military in their troop deployment, not a few have expressed serious doubt in the ability and capability of our armed forces to effectively fight, contain and defeat the Boko Haram insurgency. And their position is strengthened so to speak by the ease at which Boko Haram strikes and spreads terror in the land with little or no response from the Nigerian military and other security forces.

    If Boko Haram could strike at a military base in the north east, a supposedly secure location, and several months after the perpetrators have not been brought to book, why should the Americans or any other serious military for that matter trust our military base to secure their men and equipment? Why would any other military want to use our military base when our ‘boys’ in the theatre of the insurgency and heart of a military base, could rebel and fire at their commander in frustration and protest?

    I am not an expert in military or security matters and I don’t have to be one to know that common sense dictates that a man who is not safe or secure in his house cannot guarantee the safety of his visitor. The Nigerian military as it stands today cannot offer that guarantee to any other armed forces on our soil. It is as simple as that: let the truth be told.

    Why are we in this mess or how did we get into this mess that we cannot even provide safety for someone who wants to help us? Simple! Years of neglect and corruption. Self-centredness and wickedness on the part of our successive leaders, have almost reduced the Nigerian Armed Forces, once the pride of Africa, to a band of Boys Brigade. And the military has a hand in the systematic destruction of this once national institution and pride. The soldiers have spent more years at the helm in this country than the civilians and each left the military worse than it met it. Why? Greed!

    It is easier to blame President Goodluck Jonathan and the present leadership of the Nigerian armed forces for the sorry state of our military today and the failure of our soldiers to effectively defend the nation’s territorial integrity, but the rot did not start with them. It goes way back.

    The only blame Jonathan would have as commander-in-chief is if he leaves the military as it is by the time he is leaves office and thus expose our nation to more danger. He should heed the call of the army for improved funding of the military and galvanise the private sector to engage in the local production of what I would call ‘below the belt’ military equipment (uniform, beret, helmet, boots, small arms et al, for now) to conserve foreign exchange for the importation of real military hardware that can stand us in good stead in the 21st century warfare. After all the primary duty of a commander-in-chief is the protection of the territorial integrity of his nation.

    This is a call to arm, President Jonathan; before you go let’s have a robust and effective fighting machine called the Nigerian Armed Forces; the ones that can defend us and we’ll be proud of. As your administration winds down, I am afraid the time is short, but you can do a lot by setting the ball rolling. You can do it if you want to and if you fail to do it, Nigerians will never forgive you.

     

  • Matters miscellaneous

    Matters miscellaneous

    As long-time followers of this column know, “Matters miscellaneous” is the rubric under which it tries in short takes and with broad strokes to catch up on the glut of occurrences, lest some people feel ignored.

    I was mightily relieved that President Goodluck Jonathan chose not to go to Ado-Ekiti to help  rouse the PDP faithful and mobilise them behind their candidate in next month’s governorship election.  If the President who could not visit Chibok on a mission of sympathy and solidarity with  the parents and relations of the more than 200 abducted school girls and communities in the area traumatised by Boko Haram terror were to headline a political rally in Ado-Ekiti, he would have brought upon his own head something far worse than the domestic and international sandbagging he has already suffered – nothing less, to be sure, than maledictions of the blood-curdling kind.

    Dr Jonathan and his advisers got it right this time.

    Fayose is putting a bright face on it, but I hear that, deep down, he is sorely disappointed.  There will not be, at least for now, an infusion of the Federal Might, plus the planeload of cash that he was counting on to animate his ho-hum campaign.

    Many Ekiti residents are distressed too, I gather. They had been counting on Dr Jonathan to demonstrate up-close, for their benefit, the intricate azonto dance steps he had performed so splendidly in Kano the other day at a rally to welcome back under the PDP umbrella some prodigals who had migrated to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).  Residents of Ekiti will now have to wait for another opportunity.

    There were also those who were expecting that First Lady Dame Patience would also be on hand to enliven proceedings with the captivating routine that has endeared her like nothing else these past weeks to the global television and social audiences.

    I have bad news for Ekiti residents who might still be looking forward to a re-enactment of the bullying and the wailing seen and heard across the world:  It won’t happen. Herself the Dame  doesn’t do re-enactments.  She is always striving for something different, fresh, more riveting.

    But there is no guarantee that the première will be staged in Ekiti.

    In light of the Jonathan administration’s exceedingly maladroit handling of the international fallout from the Chibok abductions, I found myself wondering whether Nigeria has a foreign minister.  Surely there must be such an official, I reasoned.  But I found I could not put a name to the title.

    So, I looked it up.

    And sure enough, there is indeed such an official, and he is by no means an obscure personage.  He is Aminu Wali.  He is more politician than career diplomat, but having served as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and before then as the country’s ambassador to China, he surely must have along the way garnered considerable skill in international crisis management.

    So, how come he was allowed to go missing in the handling of the Chibok fallout?

    Why also was the much-accomplished Professor Viola Onwuliri, Minister of State (1) for Foreign Affairs, shut out of the matter?  And where was Minister of Foreign Affairs (II) Dr Nurudeen Mohammed while all the fumbling was going on?

    Why was the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs missing in action while Nigeria and its leadership were being savaged daily in news networks across the world?

    It was left to Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to fill in the gap, as if her double-barelled designation as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, to say nothing of her playing host at the on-going Abuja World Economic Forum on Africa, was not enough burden.  It has to be said to her  credit that she did a commendable job under the circumstances.

    When it mattered most, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, also went missing.  First, he agreed to be interviewed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.  Then, he did not show up.  Did he duck, or was he held up by more pressing matters of state?

    In whatever case, he must have learned from his few encounters with the international news media that mouthing slogans and throwing tantrums at high decibels is not the best way of conducting government business or winning friends for one’s course.

    Within several hours of a crisis breaking in the United States, the President appears before the nation on television, flanked by the officials charged with handling the matter. He makes a brief statement, then yields the podium to the officials to brief the public about what is developing and what is  being done.  The President and the officials take a few questions, and then depart to face the crisis at hand.  Periodic updates follow.

    If the Chibok abductions had happened in the United States, President Barack Obama would most certainly nave appeared on national television flanked by the Defence Secretary, the FBI Director, the National Security Adviser and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in full military regalia.

    That spectacle communicates strength and resolve, if not control.  It reassures the American people that even if the authorities are not “on top of the situation,” to employ a locution that has become highly discredited in these parts, they are grappling with it hands-on.

    It may well be that the Minister of Defence and the National Security Adviser and the military top brass were at work behind the scenes devising strategies for freeing the Chibok abductees from their diabolical captors, without the benefit of television cameras.  But in this age of what the Americans call “optics,” it is not enough to be doing something; one must be seen doing it.

    In the event, it was as if they too went missing when it mattered most that they be seen in action.

    Finally, some self-indictment, at least in so far as it relates to my constituency and my calling:  the Nigerian news media.

    Chibok, and indeed Boko Haram’s mindless campaign of murder and mayhem, was a domestic story, our story.  And yet some of the most insightful reporting across the print and electronic media, and the best film footage, have come from the foreign media.  They should have been quoting us as sources and for background.  Instead, we have been quoting them, sometimes without the nice sense of discrimination the situation calls for.

    In a sense, therefore, it can be said that the Nigerian news media largely went missing over Chibok.

  • An illustrious wordsmith at 70

    An illustrious wordsmith at 70

    Yesterday, one of Nigeria’s most accomplished journalists and wordsmiths, Daniel Ochima Agbese, clocked 70. He was born on May 20, 1944 into Agila royalty in Okpowu Local Government of Benue State. It speaks volumes of the man’s character that few of his acquaintances,  and proportionately fewer still of the millions of readers he must have gathered in his long and illustrious – but hardly materially rewarding – career as a columnist, journalist and author, ever knew he was a prince. All his life he’d always referred to himself as simply Mister, apparently because he did not suffer from the superiority complex of your typical Nigerian Big Man.

    Yet Dan, as those on a first name basis with him call him, had sufficient virtues to make him feel proud and superior to most Nigerians. To begin with, God gave him a good head and a way with words. This was obvious from his academic career which begun in earnest when he returned to the classroom in 1970 after a three-year teaching career followed by another year as a library assistant and ending with a four-year stint as a staff writer with the New Nigerian during its heydays in the late sixties.  Before all this he had attended Government Teachers Training College, Keffi, between 1960 and 1962.

    It was as a staff writer under the tutelage of Malam Adamu Ciroma, the first indigenous editor of the New Nigerian and the creator and principal author of the famous humour columnist, the anonymous Candido, that Dan left to pursue a degree in Journalism at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the second university in the country after the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), to establish a degree course in the profession.

    At UNILAG, Dan became a prize winning student and, upon graduation in 1973, earned himself a second class upper division. That, in combination with a three-year stint as the chief sub-editor of the Nigeria Standard, then published by the then Benue-Plateau State, must have earned him a place in 1976/77 to do a Masters degree at probably the best Journalism school in the world and custodian of the most prestigious journalism awards world-wide (The Pulitzer) – the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University, New York City.

    As with UNILAG so it was with Columbia; there he became the best of the 16 international students in the class and among the best of its entire 160 students.

    Dan’s fascination with and love of the written word probably dated back to his days as a library assistance – possibly before. His move from there to the New Nigerian seemed then natural enough; after all, the written word is the principal commodity of both.

    Once he returned to class to read journalism it seemed he had made up his mind to stick with it as his life-time career and forget about being a librarian. However, as the man himself said in an interview with the newsmagazine Verbatim (October 21, 2013) which looks like an offshoot of the defunct (?) Newswatch he co-founded in 1985 with the late Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed – all three of them among the country’s best and brightest journalists and columnists – he developed second thoughts about remaining a journalist after graduation while still a student at Columbia.

    “Actually as far back as 1977, when I was in graduate school in the US,” he said, “I didn’t think I was returning to journalism, I thought I was going into book publishing. This was because I had had a long association with book publishing from the period of my youth service in 1973/1974. I was a reader for Heinemann educational books in Ibadan, and so I picked up a lot of interest in writing books. And I had hoped that if I returned I would set up a book publishing company, but it didn’t work out that way.”

    As things turned out, Dan stuck to Journalism. However, even though he did not become a book publisher, he wrote several of them. Indeed he wrote enough to make him the most prolific author among Nigerian journalists since time.

    So far the man has six books to his credit, three of them (The Reporter’s Companion, The Columnist’s CompanionandStyle: A Guide to Good Writing), practical guides to Journalism that should be compulsory reading in all our Journalism schools, one (Nigeria, Their Nigeria), a satirical dig at Nigerians and their country after the fashion of that famous evergreen, How to be a Nigerian, by Peter Enahoro, whose editorship of a national newspaper at 26 in the early sixties remains unbeaten, and two (Fellow Nigerians: Turning Points in the Political History of Nigeria and IBRAHIM BABANGIDA: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria, to date, the most authoritative and most definitive biography of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the man whose eight-year military rule has re-defined the country’s political economy like no other before and after him) on Nigeria’s politics.

    Dan has also edited three books, Newswatch Conversation With Babangida, The Energy Crisis in Nigeria andIn the Service of My Country: Selected Speeches of Abdullahi Adamu, the two-term civilian governor of Nasarawa State.

    All books are a reader’s delight for their readability, insight, humour and precision. Take, for instance, his virtue of readability. Dan began Chapter Two of the book with a quote from Jim Rohn, the late American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker. “Learn to express, not to impress,” he quoted Rohn as saying. Dan kept faith with the motivational speaker in all his books and columns; he never wrote to impress anyone. Instead, he used everyday words, used concrete words instead of the abstract, used simple rather than convoluted sentence structure, etc. In short, the man was a stickler for all the rules in the manuals on how to write well.

    Five years after Newswatch came out, the company decided to compile its house style. “I was,” he said, “assigned the task. I still don’t know why.” This wasn’t false modesty; all his three colleagues were good to write the house style. But then even the most casual reader of the man could see why; of all the magazine’s four co-founders, he was the most experienced, and arguably the most expressive, writer.

    Take for another example, his virtue of humour, one of the several tools he listed in The Columnist’s Companion as useful, even necessary, for effective punditry. In  his preface to The Reporter’s Companion which he dedicated to his first daughter, Aje-Ori, who had paid the ultimate tribute to her father by going one better in taking a doctorate degree in Mass Communication and teaching it at a university abroad, he said he had intended it to be a guide for sound editorial judgement for editors. “More or less midstream,” he said, “I changed horses – for the love of reporters. This book is evidence that you can change horses midstream.”

    Obviously all those Peoples Democratic Party chieftains, most notably Chief Bode George and Dr Amadu Ali, who told Nigerians in the heat of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Third Term campaign in 2005 that it would be disastrous for Nigerians to change horses midstream never read Dan’s book.

    Again in his introduction to Style, which took him ten years to write, he said he missed several deadlines which he could not explain. “Several deadlines,” he said, “were given for the completion of the style book. All of them were breached…Well, if you wait long enough for a miracle it always happens. So there.” It’s hard to beat such self-deprecating sense of humour as a tool for effective writing.

    Among Dan’s virtues were not only his good head and a way with the written word. The man also possessed the courage of his convictions and a diligence for accuracy, balance and fairness in pursuing news stories. I saw these and other virtues first hand as his deputy when he edited New Nigerian between 1982 and 1984.

    Before him I had acted as the editor for 11 eleven months. I was denied confirmation because the management and chieftains of the ruling National Party of Nigeria said I was too headstrong. Instead, Dan was brought in as editor at the time he was the Director of Information in Benue State, then also ruled by the NPN.

    Clearly there was politics in his appointment but it was an appointment no one, certainly not I, could quarrel with; Dan was older and much more experienced as a journalist than me by the time he was appointed.

    Four years after his appointment, if those in authority thought they had a lapdog for an editor it became obvious to them that they made a great misjudgement. Day in day out Dan published stories and ran editorials that they found uncomfortable. When he was not running such awkward stories he was rejecting stories the authorities tried to foist on him that were clearly more public relations than news.

     

     

  • A plea for the military

    A plea for the military

    It is understandable that the military authorities would strive to pass off last week’s embarrassing skirmish by soldiers in Maiduguri’s Maimalari Cantonment as a mere storm in a tea cup. For a military whose activities have come under global scrutiny in the last one month, it is natural that it would seek to downplay any untoward developments that can only further dent its image. However, after the reassignment of the General Officer Commanding the Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed barely 24 hours after the Maimalari Cantonment incident, followed by the convening of the Military Board of Inquiry to probe the incident, I don’t think anyone, least the military authorities would dare to suggest that the events are anymore, routine.

    There is simply no denying that the military is on the spot. That, in fact, is an understatement. As far as the current state of insurgency goes, the institution would appear to be on trial. Indeed, the Maimalari Cantonment blow-out has merely brought to the fore, a dangerous dimension to the current unease across the land, a plausible explanation for what is increasingly the military’s inability to contain the Boko Haram menace.

    While the outburst of anger by some disgruntled soldiers as widely reported may not have come as a surprise given the not too infrequent reports of grumblings among the ranks of the fighting men in recent time, the development would appear to mirror a deeper problem in the rank which the military institution, nay the nation as a whole, can only ignore at its peril.

    The problem here isn’t just that the soldiers were said to be disenchanted with their top brass; there are in fact, insinuations that their bosses, by acts of omission or commission, are increasingly complicit in bringing their men in the harms way. That obviously is a new dimension, a dangerous one with grave potentials for the management of the insurgency. It is one fire that the military authorities will have to douse, and very quickly too.

    However, as yours truly has always argued on this page, the problem with the Nigerian military is not in any significant sense different from the problem of the larger society. While the idea of an army riven by the Nigerian cleavages of ethnicity and religion is hardly anything new, and, in any case, it isn’t as if the military institution as an organic part of the society can be insulated from the general societal debility, the extent to which the current orgy of bashing is justifiable is what I consider open to debate. Now, I would go as far as to argue that the virulent testimonials in the wake of the Chibok abductions are unhelpful. By this I do not mean the outrage against the abduction – which is justifiable; I do not think that anyone denies that the military’s response is anything but lethargic particularly given the blanket state of emergency imposed in the North-east states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. I refer to the picture of an ill-equipped, undisciplined and terribly ill-motivated Nigerian army being served the world in the last one month. It is quite frankly, exaggerated. In the same vein, the brutal denunciation of the military which has lately become fashionable is, most certainly, unwarranted.

    I have said it before, if there is anything that the raging insurgency in the North-east in particular has revealed, it is the comprehensive failure of our institutions across the board. Indeed, if the Nigerian military stands accused as a failure, it is only because other institutions of the Nigerian state which ought to give the military the wing to fly have also failed. They failed them as much as they failed us. From the confederates of Abuja who ought to have provided the institution with the necessary logistics and equipment but neglected to do; the military top brass alleged to have sat on personnel rations while fighting men go hungry; authorities at the state and local levels who yielded the ground to the anti-social elements thus allowing their reign of impunity to fester; to these we may add the hordes of local leaders – better described as dealers – whose indifference helped create the environment for the monster to thrive. See how everyone is now chanting #BringBackOurGirls!

    We need our girls back alright – all in one piece. The job is for none else than the military. We might as well admit it: the military needs help – not vilification. No doubt, there is a lot that our emergency friends can do to help us; pulling our chestnuts out of the raging fire for us is not one of them. When the chips are down, it is our fighting men that would still be required to clear the mess called Boko Haram. Admittedly, the Nigerian military may not have done nearly enough to court a working symbiosis with the civilian population; the truth also is that the citizens haven’t always done nearly enough either to provide useful intelligence to our armed forces. I guess– it works both ways!

    By the way, I have heard quite a few citizens celebrate the heroism of the Kala-Balge who not only stood up to the terrorists but inflicted massive casualties on them. For me, aside shattering the myth of invisibility, if not invincibility of the loonies, what it does is reinforce the immense possibilities in the partnership between the locals and the military. Much as the single act of communal bravery is welcomed, it comes to the question of whether such limited self-help is what is needed at this time. It might even turn out to be counter-productive in the long run.

    As for the current global spotlight on the military, my view is that it may yet do some good to the institution itself. More than anything, it offers the institution the rare chance to redeem itself, to purge its ranks currently believed to be infested with fifth columnists. Time to begin the long walk back to the disciplined path which once commended it to the world as effective fighting force – one able to hold its own against the best in the world. If only for the sake of itself and the nation, it simply has no choice but to return to that path.

  • What shall we tell the President?

    What shall we tell the President?

    President Goodluck Jonathan is no doubt a listening President. Many curious observers and the legion of objective and rabid critics of his administration would readily score him high on his listening skills, especially when compared with some occupants of the exalted position of President and Commander-in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces in recent times. Whether President Jonathan’s ability to listen could match his ability to deliver on promises is however open to debate.

    Many times the President has demonstrated his ability to listen as well as his openness to discussion and consultations to the consternation of many. Some critics even argue that his penchant for wide consultations on knotty national issues account majorly for his seeming and sometimes apparent inaction when it matter most. This, they point out, is responsible for his slow pace of delivery- a development which has made many Nigerians become impatient with the President.

    The President, I fear may likely be treated to this avalanche of criticism when he arrives Ekiti State this week. Whereas the President would be coming to Ado-Ekiti, the state capital to flag off the electioneering campaign of his party-the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate,  Ekiti people surely have a dozen questions for the President which they would demand answers. Already the planned visit of the President, and the concomitant promises and deliverables have dominated major group discussions at vendors stands, drinking joints, market place and even on campuses, where both the well informed and barely-informed citizens take time to review what the “GEJ years” portends for Ekiti and Ekitis and what questions to ask or cause others to ask the President.

    President Jonathan’s Thursday visit will be his second to Ekiti State since he was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces on May 29, 2011. The state has yet to witness a state (working) visit by the President. His first visit in October 2013 was a private one- to witness activities marking the first convocation ceremony of the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti. Even though there were plans for him to visit the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, which is a walking distance from ABUAD, the President departed Ekiti shortly after the ABUAD event.

    As short as the ABUAD visit was, it was remarkable for Ekiti and Ekitis because it afforded the citizens the opportunity to raise some posers for the President. This they did through the speech delivered by the Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi at the event. The speech which was greeted by a thunderous applause by those present at the event which was broadcast live on NTA, bordered on the apparent neglect of Ekiti State by the federal government.

    Fayemi, cashing in on the President’s presence in the state capital, had carefully pointed out instances of glaring neglect and short-change of the state by the federal government for the President’s consideration. The Governor’s speech which many saw as an abridged score card of the Jonathan’s administration on Ekiti matter was re-echoed in different fora by well meaning Ekiti elders, youth, artisans, workers as well as its cream of professionals and academic.

    Some important take away from Governor Fayemi’s list to the President include the need for the President’s urgent intervention in fixing some federal roads in the state and the need to reimburse the state government for the billion naira it has expended on rehabilitation and reconstruction of some federal roads. The Governor pointed out that of the N14.752 billion expended so far on fixing of federal roads in the state, only N2 billion paid to the immediate past administration in the state had been received as reimbursement, thereby complicating the state’s financial situation.

    The ecological challenge in some parts of the state was another major point raised by the state government, which had spent over N3 billion to tackle ecological challenges in Ado-Ekiti, Moba, Ikere, Ekiti West and Ijero local government areas and require about N5 billion more to effectively tackle the menace.

    The failure of the federal government to build a federal secretariat in the state, thereby making Ekiti state the only state in the federation without a federal secretariat was also a major poser by the governor, just as the inability of the planned Ekiti airport to take off because the federal government has yet to make available the budgeted N400 million to match the state’s N300 million counterpart funding for the establishment of the airport project for  which a budgetary provision has been made since 2011.

    Whereas some have argued that airport is not a major priority of the people of Ekiti, yet no one needs the power of clairvoyance to know that the children and “children’ children” of these sceptics would one day land on the Ekiti Airport. Suffice it to say however that if other states have airports built for them by the federal government or through collaborative efforts between the states and the federal authorities, Ekiti should not be an exemption. And the President remains the only one that can give the Ekiti people a convincing answer on when the airport would become a reality.

    As reported in the media however, the President had in his response to Governor Fayemi’s posers at the ABUAD event,  directed relevant authorities involved in the various areas of neglect to provide answers (I had thought corresponding action) to the posers raised by the governor, while promising to look into the matter. Prior to the President’s comments however, the then Minister of Police Affairs and PDP Chieftain from Ekiti, Navy Capt Caleb Olubolade (rtd) had , in an apparent breach of protocol, grabbed the microphone and announced that the Presidency was already attending to most of the posers raised by the governor.

    But seven months down the line, there has not been a single corresponding action from the federal authorities or so it appears, judging by what is on ground. And while efforts by the state to get some reprieve from the ecological fund had met with deliberate stone- walling, the Presidency, had during the same period doled out whopping N2billion each to some “friendly” state governments to fix real and imagined ecological challenges, while Ekiti and a few others are left to continue to writhe in the pains of profound ecological challenges.

    These and a few new posers are some of the issues the President would contend with when he arrives Ekiti this week. The people surely have a lot to tell and ask from the President and would require that he takes some time off the partisan podium of his party to address these pertinent issues so that correspondent actions could be taken and urgently too to redress the situation and redeem his image.

    Ekiti people by nature are irrepressible- They would talk and would continue to agitate for a better deal from the Presidency and the coming of the President is yet another opportunity for such an engagement which would go a long way in building confidence or distrust. But would the President  answer the people and match his words with corresponding action this time…..or would that be deferred till the President deem it fit to pay an official (working) visit to Ekiti State…..Only the President can say.

    • Oluyomi, a journalist and public affairs commentator writes from Ayegbaju Ekiti
  • Between columnist and reader on JEG

    Between columnist and reader on JEG

    My last column “GEJ:  No second term” (May 13, 2014) drew some 90 sms text responses, the third largest since I started writing At Home Abroad.

    A casual textual analysis suggests that some of them were written by the same person under different names or no names at all. A friend in my line of business tells me that an army of retainers, funded by shadowy organisations fronting for the Presidency, is on permanent alert to manufacture responses to articles critical of that institution.

    The responses break down roughly into 55 per cent for President Goodluck Jonathan, and his undeclared but undisguised second-term bid, and 45 per cent for the column’s position­ that he should not seek re-election.

    What follows is a representative sample, edited where necessary for clarity and good taste.

    I am not sure that the authors are who they say they are, and I do not wish to attribute to any person even inadvertently  a view he or she may not hold and may not have expressed.  So, I  have omitted the names.

    The tenacious Lai Ashadele, who never lets a column in The NATION pass without comment even if the comment is often grounded on a complete misapprehension, will no doubt recognise his comment even without his name.  So will other correspondents represented in this selection,

    For GEJ:

    I am not surprised you must write what you write to be in the good book of Bola Tinubu your pay master. Jonathan will contest.  Please allow the voters decide who they want.

    No 2nd term for JEG is your wish/personal opinion or that of your paymasters? I don’t know your faith but the Bible let me know that God is the maker of kings and rulers! Beware, you may be cursing one of God’s anointed! O God, forgive us all for we know not what we do, Amen.

    Your comment is too abusive and aggressive. You need to respect that office . Security of a nation should not be left to the President alone. What of the governors, (local government) chairmen and individuals for information?  Even you journalists.  Let us be constructive and make positive suggestions.

    As Jonathan is not qualified, you can declare your intent to contest in your party APC.  I have it on good authority that you are a heavy drinker so when you become APC President you can drink till day break.

    Whether you and your paymasters the sponsors of Boko Haram like it or not, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will win landslide in next year. If your paymasters like, let them turn Northern Nigeria to another Somalia.  By the way who is the APC presidential candidate or are you people planning to adopt President Jonathan? Well that should be your best move in order to avoid humiliation.

    What you should do as a card carrying member of APC is to defect to PDP and vote against President Jonathan during d PDP primaries.

    Who in Nigeria is unaware that Jonathan’s problems are brewed by people whom God taunted to declare their plans against him before his ascent to presidency? Even his most virulent foe is now opting to team up with him to quell a device he designed to frustrate Jonathan which backfired at him. Whoever plans to undo God’s deed calls for His wrath upon him. Such a one is in condemnation on earth and beyond. Shettima had an opportunity to save the Chibok girls when WAEC advised him to shift base of their examination to a safer haven. He never provided security as Chief Security Officer of the state. Steer clear of God’s wrath. Be fair in judgment.

    I want to draw your attention to some facts about President Jonathan.  He rose from university lecturer to deputy governor to Vice President to Acting President to President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. All these positions, almost effortlessly, when Zik, Awo, Abiola and other prominent Nigerians worked hard and even died to be the President of Nigeria.  God’s hand must be in this project – Jonathan.

    Are you and other NATION newspaper columnists not tired of your vendetta against Jonathan? Jonathan will seek re-election and win by a landslide. He is doing well. You are not blind to transformation in the agric and power sectors, the massive airport, road and rail rehabilitation. Try to be objective.

    It is quite a shame that people like you find yourself in chop-chop journalism. You leave out the main issue at stake in the country, and talk politics, shame to you and your sponsors.  You were once a good and respected journalist, but you have lost touch and respect of journalism.

    You are a Yoruba man going by your name and an unrepentant member of APC.  Can you if made the President of Nigeria do better?  Let’s agree that your kinsman the former President Olusegun Obasanjo was the best thing that happened to Nigeria.  GEJ will at the appropriate time declare his interest. After all, God has always been on his side.

    Even if you like, fill the whole pages of Tuesday in The NATION with flimsy and irrelevant reasons why Mr President shouldn’t contest for a second term, it makes no difference because no one cares for your opinion.  If he (president) is a Yoruba man will you publish that rubbish? You are a tribalist and the likes of you are not good for our great nation (Nigeria).

    Is the presidency of this nation Nigeria the preserve of the Hausa’s and Yoruba’s only?

    Against GEJ:

    Bless you for today’s column “JEG: No second Term”. Regrettably the man has even stepped further into more infamy by ordering the arrest of anybody who protests his failure. Sometimes I wonder if he really earned the Ph.D. he parades. Most regrettably the PDP is Nigeria’s worst enemy but we don’t seem to be tired of this govt’s cluelessness. They think that governance is the same as mere grandstanding. A pity.

    Your today’s article as usual is fantastic and I entirely agree with what you said.  Please continue the excellent work you are known for.

    JEG should pack and go in 2015. All the religious, traditional leaders supporting him will be disgraced because of all evils perpetrated by this administration through corruption and bad leadership. Looking at JEG, one can see that he is unserious.

    Do you know that you have spoken the heart of Nigerians?  Mr President has disappointed Nigerians. He should leave in 2015.

    Your column is a scientific assessment of an inept, corrupt and visionless government that came on board by accident and I am afraid if the political mess foisted by a cabal will not also be uprooted by a bloody accident.  JEG is not prepared to quit.

    For once you’ve abandoned satire for reality. And you are angry. Good. But what the SA told you, I had already shared with my officers that the man should go for councillorship or a junior pastor. Thank God for little mercies, you’ve seen the light but where did u get the name “FAKA” for the DAME? Keep angry, please.

    Thank you for JEG: No second term. There is nothing anybody can add to what you have written. Indeed, Nigeria deserves much, much better.

    I have never been afraid for Nigeria and Nigerians as in the last three weeks. We are saddled with a leader who seems not to have the strength nor words to bring out the best in us. I salute your courage for speaking the truth.

    I have said it times without number that GEJ is not supposed to lead Nigeria.  Look at the mess he and PDP have put us into.  It is time Igbos take over the government and progress and peace will reign.

    I have been following you for years. Just finished reading your article…No second term. Wish we all had your guts. Think seriously about seeking a public post. You will have my vote.

    Hmm, where did you get the courage to write these truths! I dey fear for your life o!

    Your article “JEG:  No second term” is reflective and blunt.  It is straight to the point and a masterpiece. Please expect visitors from Aso Rock and the PDP.