The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Nigeria bleeds and it needs all of us

    Nigeria bleeds and it needs all of us

    Nigeria’s current security situation jars the mind and troubles all those who have a touch of conscience about the plight of their fellow man.  We have been brought to the point where we must now admit that basic security no longer exists for a vast segment of our people. This means too man of our people have been cast into the no man’s land where law and order, justice and respect for human life and dignity do not abide. These harmless people now live in harm’s way. Once again, innocent people have been turned to sacrifices on the altar of evil.

    The terror of Boko Haram strikes and strikes again for nothing but wicked purpose. Through their indiscriminate killing and destruction, they seek to destroy the spirit of this nation and pit us against each other. They want Christian to curse Muslim and Muslim to curse Christian. They want to pit Southern versus Northerner. By the spilling of innocent blood, they hope that we come to blame each other for what they are doing to us. We shall never fall into this fool’s trap and, though they may win the moment, they shall never prevail in their vile scheme.

    We stand united against this threat to our national existence. The twin-bombings in Nyanya are a challenge to us all. The explosion was a craven attempt to demoralise the nation by striking an important transportation hub in our beloved nation’s capital. The second bombing stands as an act of evil defiance of constituted authority. The terrorists now try to frighten us by showing that our security forces are unable to stop them, even in our nation’s capital. However, whatever terrible lesson they think they teach us, we refuse to learn.  Our classroom is life, liberty and justice. We do not take lessons in oppression, fear, hatred and death from them or anyone else. Whatever they think they won by this bloodletting, they have lost. They have made implacable enemies of every man, woman and child in Nigeria. We shall prevail. Boko Haram shall lose.

    Yet, it is not enough that they have the courage and moral fortitude to withstand the injury they inflict on us, it is long past time that this menace to progress and order be subdued. While they can never claim our hearts they have already taken too many lives. The carnage must stop so that our walk to a better Nigeria may continue unhindered by this weak presence.

    What I say next is not to curry political advantage but to state the obvious. No matter my political differences with the current administration, what I am about to say I wish were not true. Like every Nigerian, my heart aches because of the lowly state of our security. No matter what and no matter who is in office, our security should never sink below to a level where widespread death and destruction can descend on us with impunity. Yet the Nyanyan bombings and the abominable kidnapping of over 200 girls from their hostels in Chibok have brought to fore the weak underbelly of our security apparatus.

    The people neither deserve the feats of terror against them or the defeat of the security system meant to protect them.  Unfortunately, this is our lot.

    While I have no interest in partisan bickering at the moment, I also cannot allow the mere fact of my political affiliation to silence me on this transcendent issue. All Nigerians have a right and responsibility to let their voice be heard on this matter.  Thus, I say what I believe must be said. If you think I do it for political purpose, so be it. Yet, I say it that I fulfill my civic responsibility as a citizen whose nation and way of life has been placed under siege by a hidden and sinister force. In this, I believe what I will say speaks for most progressives today.

     

  • North and the ogre of Rehoboam

    North and the ogre of Rehoboam

    The conceit of Rehoboam, son of Solomon; and the conceit of some Arewa elements need bold comparison, if Nigeria must escape self-imposed catastrophe.

    The Bible says the hubris of Rehoboam, son of the great Solomon, was to fulfil Jehovah’s prophesy to Jeroboam, son of a nobody called Nebat.

    Still, a version of the same Bible recorded that Rehoboam hearkened the voice of “worthless young men”, against wise and seasoned elders.

    So, the scion of the wisest man of all time embraced the greatest folly of all time: promising his people more pain but expected them to clap?

    And how does Rehoboam’s self-sealed fate compare to the Greek, King Oedipus, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, or as locally adapted, King Odewale in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are not to Blame — two tragic heroes fleeing a supposed curse, only to end up with that fate, because vengeful gods had decreed it so?

    Rehoboam’s hubris — arrogance and unconscionable pride — split the united kingdom he inherited, into Judah and Israel.  But the base of that empty pride was injustice of the most brazen kind.

    The Jews, at least according to the Bible, are a divine race.  But not even that perceived divinity could, in ancient Israel, hold together their primal nation, in the face of clear injustice.

    So, if injustice can smash Israel, the divinely favoured, how would Nigeria fare, Lugard’s mere creation of colonial greed, for the sole economic pleasure of the British?

    Like Rehoboam’s, the arrogance of the Arewa demand at the ongoing National Conference (NC), unfurled by its delegates in a 47-page document, is stunning, the stuff of which clear hubris is made.  How can a region that contributes least to a common wealth insist its words must be the Nigerian dicta?

    But to start with, there is pretty little difference between the power elites of the North (particularly the segment hooked on old patriotic freeloading) and the Niger Delta.  With the ascendancy of Goodluck Jonathan, both have resorted to the threatening language of power; and seldom the civil language of reason.

    That is why, for instance, old man Edwin Clark would bait his presidential protégé to “sack” North East governors, under the guise of dismantling democratic institutions for Boko Haram emergency.  Now that Boko Haram is making Nyanya, Abuja, its new satanic play ground, do we now call for the dismantling of the Presidency, to proclaim an emergency?

    See the vacuity of the language of power — no reason, no rigour, no justice, no equity, no fair play, not even common sense: just contemptible flexing of muscles, because it feels the other party could be vanquished?

    Though the North’s NC demand document is reportedly authored by the medley of northern governors, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation — hardly a profile that fits Rehoboam’s “worthless young men” — its demands match the biblical experience in sheer recklessness.

    Are these seasoned patricians not beyond the rashness of Rehoboam’s callow youths?

    Fitting enough, the document opens with sheer conceit: “Northern Nigeria, the backbone and strength of Nigeria” — how so?  Still, self-delusion is no crime.  But the document went on to brag about its “extremely understated” population.  So, population quantum, even of the laggard by all objective parameters, is something to brag about?

    Then, nice try: the Arewa as “accountant-general of the federation”, tallying who has got what since 1999!  South-South: N17.74 trillion (six states).  Northern states: “only” N10.53 trillion (for 19 states).  Combined South West and South East: N8.79 trillion (11 states).

    So now, what?  A pan-Nigeria gang-up against the Niger Delta because their majesties, The North has hinted so?  A pitiful appeal to pity, not because of what is said, but what is left unsaid.

    Will the weeping Arewa and its hoped for snivelling ensemble push for anything less than even 50 per cent derivation, were they to bear oil and its massive environmental poisoning; with the proverbial irresponsibility of the Nigerian state?

    True, the Niger Deltans could be thoroughly annoying with their bleating of “our oil, our oil”.  And true too: it might not be totally unfounded, the North’s document’s insinuation, that a South-South lunatic fringe might be toying with the idea of annexing the oil wealth for the locals’ sole pleasure.

    Still, is this speculation enough for the North to insist on rolling back derivation to five per cent, forgetting too soon that its pre-12 June 1993 brazen excesses, which climaxed with the reckless annulment of Nigeria’s best ever presidential election, forced the increased derivation on the country?

    And the so-called Article 76 on territorial waters, of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — how does that law relate with extant municipal conventions, and even common sense, so much so that a part of the country thousands of miles to an oil deposit would question the primacy of host communities over such deposits?

    But of course!  A North that told hideous lies about selling off its groundnuts and cotton wealth to “solely” win the Civil War (1967-1970) cannot be trusted with comprehensive conscience on such matters.

    Indeed, if the Civil War claim is true, why the Yakubu Gowon joker of carving the then four regions of East, Midwest, North and West into 12 states?  Was it not to seize, from Biafra, the minority oil producing areas of the former East?

    Again, the most tragic thing about the North’s latest manoeuvre is mass distraction.

    The ruling party and leading opposition feud over the papers of a crashing house.

    The Middle Belt, whose Christian segment always chafes at the slightest hint of Islamic domination by the core North, stay blissfully quiet, even if it is listed as part of the 19 northern states that authored this latest insouciant and reckless document.

    And the over-fed and over-pampered NC committee members on restructuring?  They are busy putting white coating, like the Biblical whited sepulchre, on the extant centrist structure that could yet be the grave of Nigeria.

    But let the tiny northern hegemons behind all of this get this for free.  The very hubris that pushed the North to its plunge after the rash annulment of June 12 will yet bait it, by its provocative demands, to fragment Nigeria.

    Should that happen, no region would rue Nigeria’s break-up more than the North — not the innocent masses who are only pawns, but its freeloading elite.

    Besides, such catastrophe would not be a poor King Odewale running away from a curse only to end up living that curse, but a rash Rehoboam bringing ruin upon himself.

    Unlike the Jewish nation that survived the Diaspora, however, Nigeria will be totally blotted out.

    So, those who love Nigeria had better speak up now on the side of justice and equity before it is too late — or  forever be mute.

  • Meddler-in-chief?

    Meddler-in-chief?

    Whoever advised Dame Patience Jonathan, wife of President Goodluck Jonathan to stage last week’s mock trial of the Borno State government couldn’t have meant well for her person and least for her husband’s presidency. For while Nigerians are by now familiar with the trade-mark impetuosity of the self-styled Mama Peace, not even her affective pretences on the fate of the missing 276 schoolgirls could mitigate the public relations disaster of last Friday’s sham parley. And that was merely setting the stage for the mother of all fiasco – Sunday’s botched meeting which ended on a tearful note for the convener.

    And what was the parley said to have drawn unnamed governors’ wives, women opinion leaders, and key women organisations to the seat of government coming 17 days after the unfortunate abduction of the girls meant to achieve?

    To rally Nigerian women to take on the Boko Haram? To buy time for the fumbling administration?

    I have in the last few days struggled to find the rationale for the Abuja parley and even more for the botched expanded parley which the governor’s wife was supposed to have featured but which eventually failed to hold on Sunday.

    Was it about joining forces with well-meaning organisations to find a way out of the national shame and embarrassment? Was it part of the making of a budding pressure group to prod the President to summon the will to do the needful to bring the girls safely to the comfort of their homes? Was it about bandying together to provide psychological support to the families visited by the unprecedented tragedy of the abduction?

    Nothing of the proceedings would however suggest anything along that line. Quite to the contrary, what came off was a mission steeped in hubris and mischief of a heinous kind, an image laundering mission – a strategic, well-timed motion to take the winds off the sail of the agitation demanding action from the federal government – the ultimate mark of Nigeria’s outsourced presidency.

    Indeed, media account of the meeting revealed a bare-faced chicanery packaged as part of efforts to find the missing girls. The session was vintage Mama Peace – blunt but unfair; present in good dose was the vintage obtrusiveness – a defining style but which is increasingly hard to associate with the good offices of a presidential spouse.

    Although the high point was the presentation by the Head of the National Office of WAEC, Charles Eguridu, it was clear that all was about Goodluck and Jonathan. That presentation, I must say, left little to imagination about what the Dame set out to accomplish – to hold the Borno State government as the chief culprit in the abduction saga. And here, it turns out that the evidence was no more than the serious concerns raised by the examination body in addition to the advisory on the state government to take the examination centre out of the crisis-prone area. Aside that, the testimonial from the WAEC boss added pretty little to what is already in the public domain about the missing girls.

    This leads to the pertinent question of what the game plan was. It seems to me that the strategy is take the wind out of the rage spreading across the land over the pathetic handling of the rescue efforts by the federal government while taking due care to deflect attention from the failure of the federal government to contain the insurgency. Heaping the blame on the Borno State government would in the circumstance be fair game.

    As for the parents of the 276 girls and the entire citizens looking up to the exalted institution of the Presidency to bring the girls home, they are to look elsewhere since according to the Dame, the Borno State government knows more than it has admitted on the story of the missing girls. Her charge: “By Sunday, we must have our children. If not, we will march to Borno and ask the governor to give us our children. We will march to the National Assembly to see the Senate President and will also march to see the president”. How about from Mama Peace – Mother of the Nation!

    She would however not end without a curious offer to lead Nigerian women on a march provided of course that the object of their march is on the office of the state governor! Again her resolve is unmistakeable: “Within three days, something will happen. We will get to the root of the matter. I don’t come out and go back empty. I have come out and something must happen. We will not fold our arms and see our children kidnapped, our husbands, sons, daughters also being killed. We should be more concerned. We will form a committee to call on the appropriate persons to come and answer questions…” Does anyone still wonder as to who is in charge?

    Now, let’s even accept that the state government is guilty as charged.  The overwhelming evidence however, is that the federal government under whose watch the girls were ferried away despite the blanket of emergency is by far more complicit. Today, there are even suggestions that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the individual on whose desk lands, the daily security briefings knows only a little more than the rest of us know. Or how else does one explain the establishment of a Presidential committee on the abducted girls in the midst of the crisis and coming after Nigerians opted to take to the streets?

    See where we have landed ourselves?

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ode to Lai Ashadele

    Ode to Lai Ashadele

    As Lakunle Ojo, he was among the iconic cast of Village Headmaster, weekly tele-drama of the 1970s and 1980s, that featured the likes of Oloja of Oja (Dejumo Lewis), Chief Eleyinmi (later Oba Funso Adeolu, of blessed memory), Bassey Okon (JAB Adu), Sisi Clara (the late Elsie Olusola) and Councillor Balogun (later Oba Wole Amele, also of blessed memory).
    Those were the days!  Even in Lagos, you could count the number of television antennae on roof tops; and colour television was unheard of.
    Lagos Island of the early 70s was a close-knit community. So, from the famous Channel 10, Village Headmaster was something of communal celebration, with its talking drum signature tune sending everyone scuttling to the nearest television set.
    Pa Lai Ashadele, as Lakunle Ojo, was among those stars neighbourhood children in Lafiaji, Lagos, whose parents did not have the rare fortune of owning TV sets, huddled together to watch.
    As we all “giraffed” through the window, stretching our necks as long as possible to catch the action, the hosts regarded the kids as some pests.  But since Village Headmaster was sheer communal pride, they tolerated the weekly pestilence for the 30 minutes or so the drama ran.
    Ripples remembers, quite clearly, as he and other kids gawked at these larger-than-life stars. You could then imagine his wonder when Pa Ashadele bobbed up on Republican Ripples and declared himself an avid reader!  Pa Ashadele for real?
    But mutual creative tension, between writer and reader, has since cooled that initial excitement. The weekly impassioned argument is on how best to fix our country.
    Now, Pa Ashadele may be an avid reader. But he is no one’s favourite reader — if “favourite” means uncritical acceptance and blanket endorsement of a point of view. On his views, he takes no prisoners.
    Many a Nation columnist (Sanya Oni, for one; Waheed Odushile, for another) has complained of Pa Ashadele’s ringing condemnation (if he disagrees); and fulsome celebration (if he agrees).
    With Ripples, the relationship is bitter-sweet. He regards Ripples as a gifted but partisan writer, always at the beck and call of some “paymasters”.
    Ripples regards him as a closet conservative, maybe a tad reactionary, who thinks little of pressing into service, the African dictatorship of the elderly, if only to have his way.  The result is always fearsome exchanges, with both sides taking no prisoners.
    But beyond all that is mutual admiration and respect, even if the exchanges are often combustible stuff!
    Pa Ashadele did not like “Poisoned chalice” (April 22) one bit and he came blazing.
    “Abimbola,” he opened as he usually does, “are unity rallies campaign stunts to breach the electoral law?  Should government close shop because sponsored beasts wreaked senseless havoc at Nyanya? So, what is the big deal in Jonathan attending to official assignments after a mishap?  Your insinuation that Jonathan bribed delegates at 2011 PDP presidential primary is libellous and unfortunate. Your use of words like “unthinking at best, callous at worst” on the first citizen is an abuse of the moral and cultural values of the Yoruba.  Sad!  You were not suggesting Olubadan’s centenary birthday should have been cancelled? Would Jonathan’s absence have brought to life victims of Nyanya’s bombing? Why place the mayhem now on PDP zoning instead of a presidential aspirant who promised to make Nigeria ungovernable under Jonathan’s presidency? Your call for truce is sensible.”
    Ripples charged right back.
    “Thanks for your response sir,” he retorted, “but I regret to say, to use judicial imagery, I found you no witness of truth. So, if those who perished in Nyanya were relations, would you be so sanguine about Jonathan’s scandalous misconduct? As for ‘bribing’ nomination delegates, I didn’t insinuate anything. The president said it with his own mouth.  Pray sir: when did self-indictment become libellous? As for a truce, how do you do that when you don’t even admit Jonathan’s crass opportunism, with Obj’s conspiracy, brought us to this mess?”
    To which Pa Ashadele fired back, all sarcasm: “Thanks for calling me an apostle of untruth, in coined legal parlance.  If you consider your position altruistic, who am I to take it otherwise? Pardon my failure to realise that some are usually wiser than all others; on all issues.”
    Though Ripples recognised the appeal to pity in the sarcasm, he struck a conciliatory tone: “Baba, I’m sorry if I sounded curt but I didn’t intend to be rude. Some elite deliberately cause trouble and the masses, who were never part of it, get killed. I’m just angry!”
    On “Scrapping a toxic presidency” (March 4), Pa Ashadele was game as always: “Abimbola, a first reader of your piece would have been hoodwinked that it was some masterpiece. But it soon collapsed into vilification of set political characters, in tune with the veiled modus of intention of The Nation columnists, in favour of their political masters in APC. It went awry at eventually dehumanising chosen targets, to please the author’s bosses.  Kudos to faithfulness and dependability!  Toxic leadership is not limited to the presidency. A simple responsibility of managing a newspaper column, with all the powers to churn out anything at the columnist’s whims, could fall foul of “toxic prints” — still “TP”. Going to equity?” he concluded with a flourish,  “watch out!”
    To which Ripples fired right back: “You know sir, you’re right: toxic leadership also includes toxic readership, which comes with toxic fixations about paymasters, hack writers  and preferred partisan tempers, borne out of toxic imaginations! With all due respect sir, your hatred for certain tendencies is bordering on the bigoted. Please let yourself go!  Otherwise, all you will bring to the table are imaginary demons which, believe me sir, are toxic!”
    But Pa Ashadele was not done: “Abimbola, if my hatred for certain tendencies are bigoted, yours are ‘trigoted’ — and by that all you bring are true demons that call for toxic reactions to their masters’ ploys. ‘With due respect’, no one has absolute control over reasons. It takes maturity to accommodate others’ views.  Imagination precedes actualisation. Have a swell day and greet your wife o!”
    “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Ripples snapped back. “But of course, tolerance or intolerance of others’ opinions is mutual!  Nice day, sir.”
    To which Pa Ashadele simply screamed in his text: “Abimbola o o!”
    And so, it is, week in, week out — for there is no Republican Ripples piece that Pa Ashadele does not painstakingly read and react to in long texts. And as he does for this column, he does for other columnists of The Nation.
    To Pa Ashadele, kudos.  Though he is no ideological friend of Ripples, his passion and his engagement are gripping, when he could have retired to his comfort zone, in his winter years, keeping mute. Wish him many more years of verbal jousting and cross-shellacking!
    See how citizens, victims all, tear themselves apart because of the nasty choices of our bad rulers?  Still, it’s morning yet on Misrule Day!

  • Jonathan’s burden

    Jonathan’s burden

    You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips” says Oliver Goldsmith. “No matter what claims a leader may make, his behavior as actually observed by the followers will be the most persuasive communication says Robert M. Fulmer. Machiavelli in The Prince also asserted that the prince is judged by the calibre of people he appoints into his cabinet. The pertinent question is: How can an erring leader change course when patronage hunting pack of sycophants keep on drumming into his ears how great he is, what a heaven-sent messiah he is. Because President Jonathan won 2011 presidential election without much difficulty and oblivious of the fact that he had squandered his goodwill, he thought he is also going to have an easy ride in 2015.
    As Aristotle rightly puts it, “The good of man must be the objective of the science of politics”. It is however unfortunate that in Nigeria today, especially at the centre and PDP-controlled states, in the last 15 years of the locust, political leadership is hardly associated with nobility of purpose and public spiritedness. It is a well-known fact that poor governance is at the heart of Nigeria’s problem. If the current situation of things in our beloved country, Nigeria is any thing to go by, many will readily agree that at the moment, there is no government in Nigeria. A government, I believe can only lay claim to that name when it touches the lives of the people, ensure the security of their lives and property. A government like that of President Goodluck Jonathan, which has failed to make any meaningful impact on the lives of the people is not fit to bear that name. Good governance is possible only where there is political commitment at the highest level of government. It is also possible where governance is put ahead of politics, unlike what obtains in our country today under President Jonathan’s watch, for Max de Waal rightly observed, “governance is government minus politics”.
    These are not ordinary times; as such, they require extraordinary solutions. It is our collective duty to prevent our country from sliding into an era of “deceptive” silence or stolen voices. We cannot afford to be indifferent to what goes on around us, because our indifference more than anything else, may mark the final death of democracy and our dreams for societal self-improvement. For the sake of Nigeria’s democracy and the country herself, I make bold to say everything must be done to review the kind of system that threw up unwanted leaders that have afflicted Nigeria in recent time. Machiavelli, in one of his treatises said “the best fortress that exists is to avoid being hated by the people, if you have fortresses yet the people hate you, they (fortresses) can not save you. The case of the self-acclaimed largest party in Africa, PDP can not be an exception. In the last 15 years, because of its penchant for subverting the democratic will of the people, that is, not making people’s vote to count, the party has continued to display a shallow understanding of public opinion. In the words of former American president, Abraham Lincoln, “With public opinion on its side, nothing can fail; with public opinion against it, nothing can succeed”.
    The foregoing explains why the tide of public opinion is against PDP today. It is no news that the self-acclaimed “largest party in Africa”, the Peoples Democratic Party has since acquired for itself a disdainful stature of being a notorious congregation of gangsters. Poignantly, not only has the party leadership remained unperturbed about its inglorious stature, it has continually taken it upon itself , even against wise counsel, to ensure that Nigeria remains perpetually backward and a laughing stock in the comity of nations. It must be said that whether or not the political philosophy cum ideology of the PDP is one aimed at attaining the unprecedented height of ridicule, the PDP, in its continued mess has brought wanton shame and agony to the country, and this makes the people a party in the matter. It is doubtful if anyone will argue the position that Nigerians of all walks of life are sick and tired of the foisted agonizing reign of the PDP, which has brought to the country nothing but pain and misery. It is on record that the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo single-handedly imposed late President Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan on his party and Nigeria at a makeshift PDP convention, under the guise of consensus candidates, despite stiff opposition from all strata of the Nigerian state. Obasanjo was privy to the deteriorating health of Yar’Adua, but chose to play the all-knowing ruler whose will must supersede the people’s desire. The result is where we are today: A culture of imposition which led to lack of internal democracy within the ruling party, PDP, which also, consequently, led to the emergence of an ill-prepared, ill-equipped and grossly under-performing President Goodluck Jonathan.
    It is obvious that Jonathan is neither in charge, nor in control. It is confounding that the ruling party, PDP finds it so difficult to evolve a political culture that attracts the best material to public office. This explains why it prefers the current electoral system that has become a pastime of men and women who are prepared to engage in the vilest of activities to capture public office and the key to public treasury. Since PDP captured power 15 years ago, the quality of leadership, especially at the centre has continued to nosedive and the impact of governance is almost non-existent at the three tiers of government controlled by it. The major emphasis is on acquiring and retaining power with little or no responsibility to the citizenry. In spite of the fact that we complain about the poor quality of leadership, PDP has continued to boast that a man that ought to throw in the towel, or be forced to resign, must not only be re-elected, his party, PDP, must win all the well-governed states control by the major opposition, the only credible alternative to PDP, the APC. The example of Osun and a neighbouring state, Ekiti is a major evidence of PDP maladministration at the state level before it lost the two states to the APC.
    The long-suffering people of the two states can now compare two eras: The better forgotten PDP era when they were pauperized as compared to the present populist era of the APC governments when they are being empowered on a daily basis. Is it therefore not in our own interest to heed the advice of a public commentator, Bobson Gbinije, by working for the “de-PDPfication” of Nigeria? To say that PDP has become a gangrene that must be exorcised from Nigerian polity, if this democracy is to survive, is merely stating the obvious. Unless we seize the bull by the horn, that is, take our political destiny in our own hands, PDP will completely ruin our future, the future of our children and the country herself!
    • Aminu is National Coordinator, Oodua Youth for Good Governance

  • Lessons from South Korea

    Lessons from South Korea

    In the aftermath of last week’s resignation of South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won following the unfortunate Sewol ferry tragedy, I found myself compelled to join the debate earlier stoked by my colleague Segun Ayobolu on the cultural/ethical dimensions of the Nigerian dilemma. Of particular interest to me in the context of the current frenetic pace to rework the country’s political architecture, is what I consider as the exaggerated expectations from the possible restructuring of the polity in the absence of fundamental attitudinal re-orientation by the leaders and the led.
    The story of how the South Korean ferry with 476 people aboard – most of them students and teachers – sank on 16 April is by now familiar. Despite the scores of questions still unanswered as to how and why the ferry could have gone down, the gaps in the management of the rescue operations which hint at systemic failures, many of them as outrageous as they are inexcusable perhaps made the resignation inevitable. Not when the slip-shod manner with which officials handled the operations had warranted a stinging rebuke from the opposition which described government as “thoroughly irresponsible” and a “cowardly evasion” of responsibility.
    The big news is that the Prime Minister Chung Hong-won had by the weekend thrown in of the towel. Not for him the resort to the blame-game. Hardly time to go fishing for a fall-guy either. As leader of government, the minister obviously knew that the buck stopped on his desk for which no thousand rationalisations, no matter how plausible, could ever assuage. He simply did what had to be done, first by apologising to the people, before quitting his post.
    His brief televised statement said it all: “The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.  On behalf of the government, I apologise for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster”.
    He would equally note that – “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”
    But then, top of it was his unmistakeable sense of personal responsibility when he averred that the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”.
    By the way, he will remain on the post to clear the mess with the rescue job still largely undone.
    It is just as well that we celebrate the exemplary act by the leader of government business admitting the culpability of the government which he led in the making of tragedy.  Not only would such acts seem utterly inconceivable here, to contemplate what the South Korean leader did in these parts would be akin to a grave act of folly. Not when there are ethnic and religious factors to be thrown into the mix; countless enemies that could be held for blame; innumerable reasons why the lone official couldn’t be expected to carry the burden of a sick nation; or even when other officials, known to be guilty of more atrocious dereliction of duties, are still in holding on in public office!
    I have argued elsewhere that there can be no understating the need to restructure the current dysfunctional political structure as basis for the elixir of a stable, prosperous future that we badly crave, and also as a necessary step to guarantee its very survival. Today, I would add that without a complete reordering of our values as a nation, that future which we badly crave stands imperilled. The point has been well made by my colleague Segun Ayobolu in his back page column of penultimate Saturday, where he posits that “When the prevalent values in a society promote impunity, corruption, inefficiency, lawlessness and nepotism, these vices will be subversive of any structure no matter how expertly constructed”.
    Clearly, while the quest to farm out a new political architecture would be desirable, the part that has not received equal and commensurate attention is how to  erect our notion of ideal society on the wobbly substructure of poor citizenship culture.
    Part of the tragedies of modern times is that nothing is held as sacrosanct – good and bad have since become relative. From the school pupils who cheat in public examinations to the public official caught stealing public funds, there are no longer abiding standards in public morality. A public official abuses his office but rather than hide his head in shame, he or she goes to make a plea of self-justification.
    Once upon a time, public service used to be exactly that – public office; today, it is neither defined as public in the real sense of it, or service in any shape or form. It is today a veritable mission in self-help, an institution where occupants not only live large but would also insist on blurring the dividing line between what is private and what is public. The situation explains why a serving minister would cause the parastatals under her to buy armoured cars for her exclusive use; another would allegedly gobble N10 billion of taxpayers money to hire private jets; it is at the heart of the immigration tragedy in which 19 Nigerians would perish simply because one minister could not organise a recruitment test after collecting money from the applicants to defray the cost of recruitment.
    I ask, what difference would a restructured polity make to all of these? I stand to be educated.

  • Ekiti: The PDP’s morbid obsession

    Ekiti: The PDP’s morbid obsession

    When Vice President Namadi Sambo the other day declared Ekiti and Osun “war fronts” in which   the PDP was set to do full battle to win back power in the looming gubernatorial elections, the attentive audience might well have dismissed the vow as delusional, and the metaphor as over-wrought.

    This, after all is the silly season, the time for political hot air.

    To react in that manner would be dangerous, however.  For it fails to take into account the PDP’s morbid obsession with the two states, especially Ekiti, of which Sambo’s declaration was merely   the latest expression.

    Against all indications to the contrary, spokesperson after spokesperson in the PDP has claimed Ekiti not merely as a state in which it has a respectable following but as their stronghold, a “PDP state” in their phrasing.

    Vincent Ogbulafor, the former PDP chairman now standing trial for criminal breach of trust, said so.  His successor Okwesilieze Nwodo, who was dismissed from the post well before his tenure was up, said so.  Bamanga Tukur, who succeeded him and ran the party like an overbearing school principal, said so before he was deposed and dispatched to use his management skills to whip the railways into the mid-20th century.

    Ekiti was PDP territory until four years ago when the gubernatorial elections in that state and Osun were stolen from the PDP through judicial legerdemain, Namadi Sambo and company have been saying, and that recovering those offices in the forthcoming elections, come what may, was the PDP’s firm resolve.

    Whatever it may be, Ekiti has never been a “PDP state.”

    In the 1999 general elections that terminated military rule, Ekiti elected a State Assembly in which the Alliance for Democracy (AD) enjoyed a controlling majority, and a governor on that party’s platform.  More tellingly, it rejected in overwhelming numbers the presidential candidate of the PDP.

    Four years later, a general election that local and international observers said was far and away the most fraudulent they had witnessed  anywhere, literally buried the ACN in Southwestern Nigeria bar Lagos, where the canny Governor Bola Tinubu who honed his political skills in the toughest streets of Chicago had correctly anticipated and foiled the grand design of the fixers.

    That monumental heist delivered the PDP to Ekiti, with a political nonentity, all flash and no substance as governor, and a razor-thin majority in the State Assembly.

    Ayo Fayose’s time in office is largely remembered as an encounter of the unprepared with the unforeseen.  Ekiti lurched from one crisis to another as he amused himself flying over its compact territory in an executive helicopter.  Not for him the cratered roads crying out for repairs. He conceived no scheme more sophisticated than a so-called integrated poultry project that gulped billions of Naira without producing a single egg.

    He became a liability even to the PDP that had steamrolled him into office and was impeached.  The EFCC sandbagged him with a charge sheet so comprehensive that, if convicted, he would need several lifetimes to complete the cumulative sentence.

    But the PDP was determined to hold on to its stolen trophy.  It rigged its candidate Segun Oni into office at the election that followed.  Instead of voiding the entire poll, the courts ordered a re-run in those constituencies where it had been marred by violence and irregularities.  The PDP repeated the offence with brassiness on a scale almost beyond belief, leading the Returning Officer to declare that she could not in her Christian conscience announce the results handed to her.

    Several days later, without formally renouncing her faith, she put aside her Christian conscience, dutifully read the confected returns, and urged those who felt aggrieved to go to court.

    The ACN pursued the matter all the way to the Appeal Court, which declared that its candidate, Dr Kayode Fayemi, had been duly elected governor of Ekiti State.

    In those towns where Fayose and Oni were not frankly despised, including the state capital, Ado-Ekiti, they were accorded only a tepid welcome.  But even with Federal Might and “Africa’s biggest political party” behind them, they spent so much of their time and the state’s resources trying to shore up their insecure hold on power that they had little left to pursue meaningful development.

    Since Dr Fayemi took office, Ekiti State has been a different place.  He has reached out to the state’s legion of learned men and women whom Fayose and Oni alienated to generate ideas and programmes of development.  He restored education to the centrality it has always enjoyed in the life of the people.

    He has completed the roads Fayose and Oni abandoned, and constructed new ones.   He inaugurated a social safety net that provides monthly stipend for older residents, the first in Ekiti and one of the first nationwide. For the first time since its establishment, the Ikogosi Warm Springs can now be called a resort, and a tourist destination.

    Dr Fayemi has accomplished all this and much more quietly and almost unobtrusively, without the histrionics that marked Fayose’s era or the smug vindictiveness of Oni’s time.  Ekiti is thriving in ways it has never known. There, “transformation” is not a slogan; it is a lived reality.

    That is also the case in the state of Osun, where the scope and the frenetic pace of development cannot but astonish those who knew what the place was like under PDP Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and what it is now under Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, who was elected on the platform of the ACN.

    Now the PDP wants to put an end to all that.  It has not phrased its quest as starkly as I have done here, but it cannot complain that I have misjudged its intent.

    Only such an intent, plus overweening contempt for the Ekiti people, can explain why it drew Fayose out of his den and with scant regard for due process pressed him into service as its candidate in the gubernatorial election scheduled for June.  That the process which produced the ticket was supervised by a hugely discredited former PDP governor the courts said the police must never arrest merely underscores the PDP’s desperation.

    But that desperation is rooted in a morbid obsession, a consuming craving that knows no bounds and no restraints for what one cannot have.

    It is a dangerous affliction.  In the end, it drives its victim to destroy the object of his or her desire that refuses to be possessed.  That is the psychology of morbid obsession.

    Those who have been warning that the PDP will resort to blatant rigging to conscript Ekiti State into its fold, unmindful of the chaos that is sure to follow, cannot therefore be dismissed as idle alarmists.

    Unless it is too far gone in its delusion, the PDP must know that it cannot win a free and fair election in Ekiti, much less with a candidate who has nothing to offer, and that if it turns Ekiti and Osun into “war fronts” for the forthcoming elections, it will have to do battle with their newly empowered residents.

  • Poisoned chalice

    Poisoned chalice

    What was that all about — President Goodluck Jonathan’s unthinking rally in Kano; and Governor Rabiu Kwakwanso’s alacrity to sweep away the president’s supposed ill-fated footprints from his territory?

    Even as no less than 75 innocent Nigerians perished in a terror attack in Nyanya, Abuja, and same terrorists abducted at least 100 secondary school girls in Borno State, the president must go on a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “unity rally” in Kano — and less than 24 hours after this twin-tragedy?

    No less blameable: Jonathan must stand on his presidential dignity to thumb his nose at the Electoral Law, which spirit, if not letters, the president and his party serially and cynically breach by the so-called “unity rallies”? Is the president then above the law that created his office?

    And Governor Kwakwanso — what, beyond partisan grandstanding, did he mean that the people of Kano would not welcome the president? Could “the people”, de jure or de facto, have stopped him, given the Federal Government’s monopoly of the security agencies?

    And the high drama of sweeping away the president’s footprints! That was hilarious politics to be sure! But that hilarity brought both the offices of president and governor to high lows, given the bitter partisan exchanges between the two.

    Unfortunately, the president did himself and his office no credit by unabashedly romping in the sewers at the Kano rally. He childishly suggested he induced voting delegates (euphemism for bribery?) at his 2011 presidential nomination; and went ahead, with child-like naivety, to bomb the governor for alleged non-delivery on the gratification!

    Doesn’t this president know that both who gives and takes bribes are culpable?

    To keep what he has, President Jonathan must rally in Kano — unthinking at best, callous at worst. Meanwhile, the country mourns the victims of the Abuja bombing; and parents of the abducted girls are a nervous wreck on the fate of their loved ones, again kidnapped from a government-owned school!

    Perhaps the most damning to the Jonathan Presidency, on this latest terror attack, is a two-picture montage now making the rounds in the social media. Picture 1 shows the British High Commissioner in Nigeria donating blood in aid of the Abuja blast victims. But picture 2 shows President Jonathan making merry at the Olubadan centenary. The contrast is devastating!

    Now, the president visiting the Olubadan on such an auspicious occasion was no crime. Indeed, it was duty. But the timing was awfully wrong. The president’s friends could argue he postponed it by a day, to visit the scene of the blast and see some of the victims in their hospital beds.

    But the merry smirk on the president’s face at the Olubadan’s, combined with his gaiety on the hustings in Kano, were so out of tune with the country’s dolorous mood that one begins to wonder, with all due respect, at the quality of his sense of judgement. It was a most reprehensible escapism, that was anything but presidential!

    Why does the president give the sorry impression that Nigeria and Nigerians are nothing but winning in 2015 is everything? And over what — the poisoned chalice that he now drinks from?

    Yet, warts and all, President Jonathan would rather keep what he has!

    And Governor Kwakwanso, and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), would fight tooth and nail to have what the president has — that same poisoned chalice!

    No doubt, Kano Governor Kwakwanso was spot on in his high moral criticism about the president gallivanting about on “illegal” rallies instead facing his job of tending hurting Nigerians. But the partisan base of the manoeuvre was all too clear — no crime, there!

    Still, with all due respect to the APC democratic right to contest for power, what is the worth of this poisoned presidency to anyone now? All the bitterness by innocent victims and galloping evil by the Boko Haram anarchists, will they just vanish because power has changed hands?

    Nigeria appears frightfully on the way to Kigali. A heightened recklessness may shoot it straight on the road to Magadishu! All too soon, the dire prediction that Nigeria would break up by 2015 does not look so fantastic after all.

    Can a power change of guard halt the creeping disaster? Maybe. Maybe not. But the omens are not so convincing — without a conscious and deliberate attempt at healing and reconciliation.

    That puts the ball right in the court of the ongoing National Conference. But that is if it rises above the suspicious circumstances of its birth; and seizes the moment to make history.

    Everyone is teary right now, but it is high time we started asking the hard questions. All this mayhem has its roots in the summary junking of PDP’s zoning, that gifted Jonathan the presidency, but clearly embittered a section of the North.

    So, where is former President Olusegun Obasanjo? He wanted to build a dynasty of puppets, so he could call the shots from behind. Though that scheme spectacularly collapsed and the puppet can no longer hear his puppeteer, the old general is cool and comfy at home. But not so the innocent victims of mass murder, who continue to pay with lives and limbs, in a plot they had no part!

    And Citizen Goodluck Jonathan? He is right there, in the virtual valley of the shadows of death! Even as president, he cuts the picture of abject power opportunism gone awry, a stiff price for a breach of agreement.

    What is his presidency worth, when everyday he is greeted with the slain being shovelled into trucks after each mass massacre, and the gnashing of teeth of the dying and the wounded, being rushed to hospital?

    The agonised public — where were they when the power dealers were cooking their anti-zoning brew? Didn’t they, back then, lose their sense of outrage, simply because the power plotters were their friends and kin; and the hurt victims, their foes and just “other people”? Did they not, Nigerian-style, pounce on the victim, while hailing the aggressor to ride on?

    And the embittered segments of the North — if really by their threat to make the country ungovernable, for a Jonathan that allegedly stole their power patrimony, they are behind this anomie — what do they intend to gain?

    Wipe out the whole country and later gain power over ghosts? Some northern rascals, after all, annulled June 12 and a Sani Abacha came to kill and maim the victims for their audacity to complain! A case of galloping injustice consuming its own children?

    As in the June 12 issue, the present crisis results from rogue politicians plotting dangerous power games and the people playing dumb when they should have shouted down the blatant injustice. Now, everybody is paying so dear!

    Nigeria needs healing. Today’s victims were yesterday’s aggressors. Today’s aggressors are tomorrow’s victims. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of glory. So, this madness must stop.

    The National Conference must seize the times and work on healing old wounds, aside from genuine federal restructuring.

    Should all this madness continue, sooner than later, it might just be “To your house, O Israel …”

  • When terror strikes

    When terror strikes

    As had been feared, Boko Haram was behind last week terror attack at Nyanya Motor Park in Abuja killing no fewer than 75 with many more wounded. The terror group confirmed this in a 25 minutes video message at the weekend by its leader Abubakar Shekau with a further threat of more attacks in the nation’s capital.

    The readiness or lack of it of our security agencies to confront the growing trend of insurgency and most importantly, terrorism in the country and the tardy nature of the political response to this threat to Nigeria’s unity and her territorial integrity are beginning to cause concern among the rest of the populace.

    While the bereaved in the Nyanya attack bury their dead and scores of school girls abducted in Borno State by the terrorists are being held captives, most probably as sex slaves in the forest, our political leaders have been busy passing the buck with the leadership of the two main parties engaged in blame game. What a shame!

    Meanwhile the security agencies have been trying without success to convince us that they are doing their best to contain the terrible situation. We wish them luck.

    In the last couple of weeks the politicians have behaved most irresponsibly in their response to the Boko Haram attacks. Playing politics with the lives and security of Nigerians is a betrayal of trust and utterly condemnable. I do not know what the leadership of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) stand to gain from the verbal assault on each other’s position on this national crisis.

    Most irresponsible was the claim by Olisa Metuh, spokesman for PDP that the opposition, meaning APC knows a thing or two about what Boko Haram is doing and most probably in support. Equally annoying is the seeming grandstanding of the APC on the matter at hand. Both parties seem not to understand the enormity of the security challenge facing the nation and are looking for avenues to make cheap political gains from the deplorable security situation in the cautery, particularly in the north east region, all in readiness for the 2015 elections.

    Yes, it is in the nature of political parties to try to maximize every opportunity to their political advantage but as it is done elsewhere in well established democracies, when national interest is at stake, all the parties rally round and queue behind the Commander-In-Chief. It is in the light of this that the decision of the leadership of the APC to postpone its states’ congress to enable its governors attend a meeting called by President Goodluck Jonathan on the security situation in the country is commendable. But the party must do more than this. It must not only proffer or suggest credible solutions to the crisis, it must show its commitment to it and also rally its governors, especially in the north to bond together and fight this terror.

    To whom much is given, much is expected. The Commander-In-Chief to borrow the words of former Information Minister Professor Jerry Gana must also chiefly command well. If everybody is behind you then you must lead from the front, lead well and responsibly too. Dancing ‘Owambe’ in Ibadan and cutting birthday cake (no matter whose birthday it was) while the Nyanya attack was still fresh (following day) and frolicking away while our girls are still held captive by terrorists in the forest is to say the least irresponsible of President Jonathan. No apologies here. It would also be good if some of our state governors and also presidential spokesmen guard their utterances in the course of this crisis because we are in a delicate period that calls for sober reflection and all hands being put on deck.

    Now that all our political leaders from both sides seem to have come to their senses, it is hoped that the President’s meeting with the state governors would be fruitful and chart a way out of this Boko Haram problem and restore peace and security to the north east and all other trouble spots in the country. One meeting certainly cannot achieve this but a good beginning will send the right signal to the terrorists that our leaders are ready and serious to confront them. There have been instances of the federal government hampering the efforts of some states to combat insecurity in the area, just for political gains, especially in states not controlled by the PDP. And not surprisingly, most of the states in the north east are not. The president must behave and act presidential in the interest of Nigeria, no room for sentiments. As the Yoruba would say, the name of the king during whose reign the town was peaceful would never be forgotten or erased, same for the king under whose reign there was chaos. A word is enough for the wise.

    Much has been said and written on this page about what the security agencies have done or failed to do in arresting the security situation in the country that it might be pointless repeating them again. But the point has to be made that Nigerians are not happy with them and they should rise up to expectation. Whatever has to be done must be done to defeat terror, defeat Boko Haram, drive the terrorists out of our country and restore peace and security to the north east and other areas under threat of terrorism and, most importantly, restore the trust Nigerians have in one another to leave anywhere in the country peacefully.

    But then security is not the business of the security agencies alone, we are all involved. It would be foolish of a man to leave his doors or gates open and go to sleep just because there is a police patrol around. Security of lives and properties starts from the home. Not just locking the gates and doors but also being security conscious and instilling the right security consciousness in our kids. At work, school, play and anywhere there is or going to be a large gathering, security measures must be put in place by those concerned to protect lives and properties.

    In the aftermath of the Nyanya bombing, I had a lengthy telephone discussion with someone who claim to be a member of one of the security agencies and he was quite disturbed at the amount of criticism directed at the security agents for their inability to bring Boko Haram and similar organisations to their knees. He claimed that they are doing a lot to arrest the situation and urged Nigerians to be patient both with the government and the security agencies. There is no debating the fact that they are doing a lot, but whether they are doing enough is where the debate is. Be that as it may, suffice to say that you cannot fight a 21st century problem using a 20th century method, it won’t work.  To defeat terror in Nigeria, we must outgun, outspend, outsmart, outmaneuver, (out whatever) and overwhelm Boko Haram and their sponsors with all our military might. No amount spent would be too much if at the end of the day Boko Haram is routed and Nigeria gets back to business.

    The guy from the security service said operators of Motor Parks, including the leadership of the various transport workers unions should share in the blame of this seeming lack of security at the bus stations.

    “What are those union leaders doing at the Parks”, he queried. “ They just sit there collecting money, drinking beer and ‘carrying’ women without any consideration for the security of not just their members but also the traveling populace. Instead of organising themselves and providing security at the Parks, all they do is to ‘enjoy’ themselves. Not even basic security measures are put in place. You find all manner of people at the Motor Parks. Can anybody just go to the airport anyhow?”

    He went on and on and on and I could see he was very angry. I share some of his sentiments and concerns and believe that these transport sector unions, the likes of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) et al need to organise themselves better, they need to be security conscious and re-orientate their members accordingly. The traveling public and indeed the general public need to key in to this project as well.

    The business of security is everybody’s business. Nobody is immune to terror strike. When the terrorists strike, all of us are touched one way or another. May GOD safe Nigeria and deliver us from BOKO HARAM.

    Did I hear someone shout Allelujah there?

     

  • Abia’s strides in education sector

    Abia’s strides in education sector

    Education is obviously the most powerful weapon that can be used to change the world says the late great freedom fighter and legend, Nelson Mandela. But how far have we as a people and a nation strived to promote quality and affordable education as a means of changing our great country Nigeria for better?

    Before now, Nigeria’s education system was ranked among the best in the continent of Africa. Then there were few schools mostly public, and governments at all levels lived up to expectations in funding and promotion of good and qualitative education. The country was good for it and a lot of Nigerians benefitted from it.

    But since the policy of private ownership of schools came into existence, the rat race for proliferation of schools became the order of the day, not for affordable and sound education, but purely for commercial purposes. Beneficiaries of public schools who are in position of authority today loot public treasury at ease, refuse to fund public schools, and at the same time use the looted funds to establish their own private schools using their stooges as proxies to run them. In the face of all these, the education sector continued to dwindle unabated with shocking performance year in, year out. That is where we are today as a country.

    But despite all these challenges, the present government in Abia State has from inception taken the bull by the horn in addressing the age-long rot and challenges that has bedeviled education sector in the state. Before the inception of the current administration, the state of educational infrastructures, conditions of service for workers and learning environment for students in all the state-owned schools were pathetic and appalling.  That was why coming on board in 2007, the Theodore Orji administration increased the monthly subvention to all the tertiary institutions in the state. The state Scholarship Board that had been moribund was reactivated. With the reactivation of the Scholarship Board, the regular bursary disbursements to indigent Abia students was resurrected and beneficiaries have continued to enjoy it till date. The board also reactivated the Overseas Scholarship Scheme through which it has granted bursaries to over 40 students of Abia State origin studying in the United States of America, United Kingdom, South Africa and Asia. Students of Abia origin currently in Nigeria Law schools across the country were recently paid bursary by the state government.

    The governor also instituted a private scholarship scheme – the Ochendo Scholarship Scheme which took off with 25 undergraduates in various disciplines within the country as beneficiaries. The project which was strictly private has the respected Catholic Bishop of Umuahia, Most Rev. Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji as its Board Chairman. One of the beneficiaries of the Scheme, Solomon Odochi Chibuzo of the Department of Animal and Environmental Biology Abia State University Uturu emerged the overall best graduating student of the university in 2013 with CGPA 4.8. He was granted automatic employment by the university.

    The government also increased the fleet of buses in its Free-School-Bus Scheme for students in secondary and primary schools while equally repackaging the scheme to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. Teachers’ salaries and allowances are being paid regularly and as at when due. The same goes with their promotions and entitlements that accompany it which hitherto were stunted.

    Since 2007, the government has embarked on massive rehabilitation and construction of standard classroom blocks, offices, and other facilities in schools across the state. Presently many of the rehabilitation and construction works at the schools have been completed. They include construction of classroom block at Nde Ebe Primary School Abam, Arochukwu, construction of many administrative blocks at a school in Okeikpe Ukwa-west, construction of administrative blocks and borehole at Ogbor Central School old Umuahia. At Isikwuato High School, three classroom blocks and a toilet were constructed. The same facilities were also constructed in Community School Umuobala, also in Isikwuato council area. Also not left out were Leru Secondary/ primary schools Leru in Umunneochi council area where several classrooms were constructed. Across the state, massive on-going reconstruction and rehabilitation works are on-going at a pace unprecedented in history of public schools in the state.

    With the completion of works in a number of the schools, the state government returned them to their origin owners to manage, while still paying the teachers salaries. The government, through the Ministry of Education ensured strict supervision and monitoring of the activities of private schools in the state the result of which was the closure of some of that were caught cutting corners.

    Some Nigerians may be surprised at the superb performance of Abia State in the recently released 2013 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination WASSCE in which they emerged the overall second best in the country behind Anambra State. It is nothing but a confirmation and the result of the present administration’s massive investment in education in last seven years.  With what the government has invested in the sector, the WASSCE feat is just a tip of ice berg; certainly the state will do much in the years to come when the sector must have consolidated the gains of the government’s interventions.

    State-owned tertiary institutions were not left out in the ongoing education revolution in the state. Recently, the state governorn approved a raise in the monthly subvention of Abia Polytechnic Aba from N25 to N90 million.  And towards the end of last year, the government released the sum of N5.4 billion to the management of the state university, ABSU to tackle infrastructure projects in the school. The government also restored peace and harmony between the university and its host community, complete liquidation of the arrears of six months salaries of staff, which gulped a whopping N960 million. The government also redeemed her promise to implement the 2009 FGN/University Staff union’s package in the university from January 2011 which cost the government an additional N528 million.

    Before now, the university Surgery and Medicine programme was facing the threat of de-accreditation by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. The government has since rescued the university by providing all the requirements for full accreditation of the programme. The governor approved and awarded contracts for two major projects for the school – the Medical Complex and an auditorium for the University Teaching Hospital located in Aba. The projects have been completed and handed over the management of the school since.

    The government interventions in the educational sector has already started bearing fruits as can be seen from the plethora of laurels and awards garnered by the state at various national and zonal competitions. Sometime ago, the state took the overall best position in the Universal Basic Education Commission Good Performance rating for the entire South-East zone; the state also came second in educational performance in the South-East zone, and was rewarded with a plaque and cash prize of N70 million naira. Truly, the state has now arrived as a pacesetter in educational development in the country.

    • Mrs Ozuobi, a teacher wrote from Umuahia, Abia State