The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Where are the soldiers?

    Where are the soldiers?

    The Nigerian military since inception has proven not only to be a good, effective and efficient fighting machine but also a strong vehicle for national unity and cohesion. When the country was on the verge of disintegration following the crises that led to the unfortunate 30-month civil war, it was the patriotic soldiers that fought to hold us together. The patriotic slogan then was ‘To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done’ and the Khaki boys were up to that task.

    When the likes of the murderous Maitatsine religious sect decided to strike in Kano and later Maiduguri in the 80s, the military moved swiftly to wipe them away from the face of the earth so to speak and Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief.

    Even across our borders in the ECOWAS sub region in the 90s, the Nigerian military proved its mettle first in Sierra Leone and most importantly Liberia where a band of rebels had moved in from the bush to destabilize the legitimate governments. Leading soldiers from other West African countries under a sub regional military group called ECOMOG, the members of the Nigerian armed forces drawn from the Army, Navy and Air Force fought heroically to restore peace to the two countries and saved West Africa from a crisis that could destabilize the entire sub region.

    Let’s forget about what went into those wars in terms of human and material resources and who got what and not, the fact was that even opponents of the Liberian/Sierra Leonean adventure by the Nigerian Military were proud of our boys even if they failed to openly admit it.

    The roles our boys have played in peacekeeping operations around the world have earned praise for Nigeria not only from the United Nations but also other big players in the international arena including the United States.

    With all these domestic and international accomplishments not a few Nigerians believed that our military could rank among the medium powers in the world in terms fighting capability and efficiency. I remember Babangida’s Foreign Minister, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi even floating the idea of what he called a ‘Concert of Medium Powers’ to bring together those countries that are slightly below the two super powers of that era and their allies. He believed Nigeria qualified to be in that league; not many argued with him. The belief then was that we could take on and crush any opposition at least in the sub region, and if push comes to shove, our military could raise our flag high even in the continent.

    Between that time and now a lot has happened to our military as a fighting machine and in the last four years or so the Boko Haram insurgency has really exposed or rather confirmed the fears of most patriots that the Nigerian Military is no longer what it used to be.

    Since the insurgency began somewhere in Bauchi State in the north east some four years ago, the terrorists have been waxing stronger and stronger and the Nigerian military seemingly unable to contain let alone crush them.

    Each time I hear stories of how armed insurgents drove into villages in convoys and spending hours unchallenged killing and maiming innocent people my heart cuts and I ask, where are the soldiers? Sometime in 2012 I went round the country campaigning in the run up to the then upcoming national elections of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). Nowhere in that region was as militarized as Borno and Yobe States yet the insurgents were still able to sneak and cause death and destruction.

    In Yobe State as you approach Damaturu, Potiskum and such other big settlements there are military check points at almost 200 metres interval and you have the impression that if this is replicated in almost all parts of the state then the people are or should be safe. The same situation is obtainable in Borno and lately Adamawa State. So, when one now hears that Boko Haram insurgents have struck again and our soldiers were nowhere to be found one gets confused. It is more confusing when one throws the Air Force into the equation and one begins to wonder how could a band of at best rag tag insurgents operate in a place for hours and our fighter jets or helicopter gunships could not go there to bomb them. Where is the pride of the Nigerian Air Force if it cannot police our air space and pick out enemies from the air, especially in the desert and destroy them?

    When vehicles move in convoys, especially in the desert and in day light, they can easily be spotted even at night and should be easy targets. Markudi where the Air Force Tactical Air Command is located should be within two minutes flying distance to anywhere in the North West for our fighter jet. So, even if NAF cannot put them on ground at Maiduguri Airport or Air Force base for whatever reason, its pilots should be able to reach and bomb any target from Markudi within seconds. Why are we not doing this?

    All militaries in the world rely heavily on air power to subdue their opponents in any warfare whether conventional or not. The Air Force is regarded as the teeth of the armed forces; go in there, subdue the opponent, then the foot soldiers (Army) can then move in and finish the task. Where are the teeth of our own armed forces in this battle against terror? Where is the Nigerian Air Force in the war against Boko Haram?

    It is easy to blame the Babangida era for the rot in the Nigerian Air Force and to some extent the rest of the armed forces, but then we have had 15 years of civilian rule during which if we are serious, we would have rebuild our armed forces to such an effective fighting machine capable of routing irritants such as Boko Haram in a matter of weeks. But here we are, four years or so on and we can seem to make any head way.

    Until we address the problem of the Nigerian military the war on terror especially against Boko Haram would be difficult to win. It is not just about personnel alone, what kind of training are we giving them? The war on terror is not a conventional one and we need to master the tricks of the terrorists and outwit them before we can defeat them. Let’s not play politics with this war, it is not President Goodluck Jonathan’s war or his problem, it is our problem, our war and together we must fight it and win.

     

  • A Centennial and its discontents

    A Centennial and its discontents

    The Nigerian Centennial was always going to be a tough sell

    How do you celebrate and invite the world to celebrate with you an act that millions of those in whose name you are rolling out the drums regard as a monumental mistake? How do you bring on the trumpets to celebrate an entity regarded by millions of those inhabiting it as a mere geographical expression and a dysfunctional one at that, in need of radical re-composition, if not outright dissolution?

    Wasn’t the whole thing a misapprehension? After all, the cobbling of the autonomous territories and peoples inhabiting the area around lower Niger and Benue into one political unit by imperial fiat — “amalgamation” is the soulless term its progenitors called the process and by which the natives denote it — produced no amalgam.

    Something went horribly wrong in the foundry.

    One hundred years later, calls for reverse engineering of the process are growing louder and more insistent among the natives. But those determined to stage a huge fiesta would not let such considerations and even much more sobering thoughts get in the way.

    The run-up to one of the major events of the celebrations and the days following could not have been more sobering. Elements of the terrorist organisation Boko Haram broke into one of the symbols of “national unity”, the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, in Yobe State, and killed at least 29 and perhaps as many as 40 students in yet another orgy of bestiality. Troops guarding the school had reportedly withdrawn some 12 hours before the attack.

    The day following this slaughter of innocents, two car bombs flattened a neighbourhood in Maiduguri, killing at least 51 persons, most of them young men and women attending a wedding or watching a soccer game at a television viewing centre.

    Emergency responders were removing the bodies when Boko Haram struck again in Manioc, near Maiduguri, and burned down the entire town. Some 39 residents were killed in the raid, bringing Boko Haram’s grisly harvest in the last two weeks to some 300 defenceless Nigerians.

    As they were clinking their wine glasses at the Centennial Dinner in Abuja, petrol stations across Nigeria were running out of supplies. Where supplies were available, prices rose sharply, more than two-fold in some cases. Long queues at filling stations backed into the highway, paralysing traffic. Long-scheduled travel plans and social engagements had to be abandoned.

    Motorists and travellers across Nigeria, this newspaper said in a round-up of the situation, “could not have had a worse weekend”.

    In Abuja, they went into a rhapsody on the Transformation Agenda and the great wonders it has wrought. As they must have known, the television stations covering the centennial feast were in all probability running on generators, and at least one-half of the national audience was viewing the show on generator-powered television sets. But all that is about to be fixed, permanently.

    How about one more toast then, Your Majesties, Your Excellencies, Lords Temporal and Spiritual, not forgetting the distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen here assembled: How about one more toast, to the coming Industrial Revolution.

    In what is billed as a year-long bash, there may yet be highlights to beat all highlights. But Centennial Medal awards will be talked about long after the celebrations have ended, for better and for worse.

    In a refreshing departure from entrenched practice, the nation honoured some of its best and brightest, persons who have held and can hold their own among the best and brightest anywhere, and who have made imperishable contributions to the political, social, material and cultural life of Nigeria. Of them, it can be said truly and finally that their labours were not in vain.

    No list can do justice to all the deserving, of course. Still, some of the omissions are puzzling. By any measure, Chief Simeon Adebo, who headed a regional civil service ranked among the best anywhere and went on to serve with distinction as Nigeria’s first Permanent Representative to the United Nations, should have been a recipient of the Centennial Medal.

    How could they have glossed over Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, who told the mutineers that if they must kill his guest and commander-in-chief, Major-General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, they would have to kill him as well? Can it be that they are strangers to this kind of loyalty?

    Professor Ishaya Audu, the first indigenous vice chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, the economist, Dr Pius Okigbo, first indigenous Federal Economic Adviser, former ambassador to the European Economic Community and public intellectual of the first rank, as well as the legal titan Professor Ben Nwabueze, qualified to be named recipients.

    The educator and social critic, Tai Solarin, widely regarded in his time as the conscience of the nation despite one or two memorable gaffes, surely belongs among those cited for courage and moral integrity.

    Emmanuel Ifeajuna’s gold medal in the 1954 British and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Australia, was a first for Nigeria. Should his part in the 1966 coup have effaced this epochal achievement and rendered him ineligible for centennial recognition?

    If these and several other omissions are curious, some of the entries on the list are scandalous almost to the point of vitiating the entire list. I will dwell on just four such entries.

    For eight years, General Ibrahim Babangida ruled Nigeria virtually unchallenged. Like no ruler before after him, he was handed a chance to propel the country to greatness. Instead, he drove it to the edge of ruin with one duplicitous, self-serving scheme after another until he was forced into a ragged retreat from Abuja. The nation is yet to recover from the depredations of his time.

    Ernest Shonekan, who was supposed to oversee the transition from military to democratic rule, connived in subverting the process, emerging as prime beneficiary of the subversion. Among his own people, he is justly reviled as a quisling. Yet Abuja conferred him with a Centennial Medal.

    The psychopathic Sani Abacha was far and away the most loathsome and the most debauched leader Nigeria has ever had. If he was not also the most corrupt, he cannot be far behind. He stole and plundered like a raven.

    The say they are honouring him for rescuing the Nigerian economy from the depredations of the Babangida era. But was Abacha not for eight years Babangida’s confederate? In any case, where were the manifestations of the miracle a year after he expired in an orgy of concupiscence?

    They should have used the good offices of the Minster of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to beseech the IMF and the World Bank to endow a professorship in his honour at Stanford or the University of Chicago.

    Abdulsalam Abubakar bears moral responsibility for the death of President-elect Moshood Abiola. Rather than free him from the infernal detention into which he had languished for years for refusing to bargain away his election mandate, Abubakar stalled and schemed until Abiola was murdered in his custody.

    It was cynical in the extreme and downright indecent to accord victim and oppressor the same honour. Even where the oppressors have shown remorse and atoned, which is not the case here, honouring them and their victims in the same act would still be reprehensible.

    Our compatriots who feel insulted by this conflation and rejected the Centennial Award showed far greater moral integrity and judgment than the people who approved the final list of recipients.

     

     

     

  • Jonathan feasts, the nation sinks

    Jonathan feasts, the nation sinks

    GOodluck Ebele Jonathan, president of the Federal Republic, feasts with his centenary crowd, over their centennial wonder.

    But the nation — or more correctly, the country — over which he and his foreign and local revellers swoon, sinks more into the quagmire, of a hundred years of pretence.

    The grim trophy: slain school children and mass bombing by Boko Haram; and paralytic fuel queues that show the Nigeria of Jonathan’s celebration is no more than a centenary joke!

    That was the grand contrast, that faced luckless Nigerians, in the last week of February.

    Even at a crucial crossroads, there appears no link between Nigeria’s rulers and the ruled.

    In that cynical spirit, President Jonathan beatified a horrible past, with the fond hope that would blot out the hard present, which portends a grim future. Some hope!

    Dazed Nigerians, not a few caught in a debilitating ennui, could only look on and wonder!

    Talk of the beatification of horror, and the so-called centenary honours list jumps into the mind. Sitting atop the list is Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, Lord Frederick Lugard and even his girlfriend — as far as the Nigeria story goes — Flora Shaw.

    Now, the queen is a wonderful personage, adored by her people. But as far as Nigeria’s British colonisation goes, she heads a bandit state — every empire is a bandit state — that stole from, and raped the peoples of Nigeria, simply because it had superior arms and inferior conscience. And all these under the grand hypocrisy of Pax Britannica!

    So, for beatifying the queen in the context of Nigeria’s colonisation, is Jonathan endorsing that evil? That is house negro complex taken too far!

    As for Lugard, he did his job as a patriotic Briton. But that boon to Britain was — and still — is a mess to Nigeria. That Lugardian mess is still being sorted out by the Nigerian people, even if the Nigerian state appears to have made its peace with the unconscionable Lugardian court.

    It is only such a soulless court that can proceed to celebrate as epochal, a non-event as 100 years of Nigeria’s slavery — and, to boot, in the midst of intense anguish in sections of the country, especially in the North East.

    There, Boko Haram continues to spill innocent blood, the most outrageous being the 29 minors, killed at the Federal Government College, Boni Yadi, Yobe State. Phew! A federal government that cannot secure the lives of its young citizens, in its own secondary school, must find time to clink glasses! Does it not know it is the raw blood of its slaughtered youngsters it drank as wine?

    Away from foreign colonisers, Jonathan’s centenary honours list crawls with local colonisers. To start with, the ace thief, Sani Abacha! Abacha was a classic example of how not to be a citizen; yet, no thanks to the mechanical balancing of the dysfunctional Nigerian state, he is a Jonathan winner!

    Still, none of the rabble of ex-Nigerian leaders that queued for the so-called centennial honours could be said to be morally superior to Abacha. Sure, Abacha was their collective image at its most decayed, but their image all the same!

    Gen. Yakubu Gowon would perhaps enjoy most of history’s sympathy. His, from military rule’s days of innocence, is perhaps a charge of culpable omission. Not the others!

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida wilfully annulled the freest election in Nigeria’s history. He stands legitimated charged, for Nigeria’s current rotten public morality.

    His two successors, Abacha and Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, take the can for the fate that befell MKO Abiola, winner of that presidential election of 12 June 1993.

    For insisting on his mandate, Abacha locked up MKO and threw away the key. MKO died in custody under Abdusalami’s charge, even if the general had the presence of mind to quickly release Olusegun Obasanjo. Yet, the duo are honoured as national builders, while their acts, by commission or omission, could well have pushed the country over the cliff.

    Gen (President) Obasanjo was, of course, key to the continuation of the old order under a new guise. So, scratch the Ota farmer, and you probably would locate the roots of the current unease. He is the author and finisher of health-challenged President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose death in office has brought about the peculiar mess of the Jonathan presidency.

    Though Obasanjo now cries the cry of the innocent and the wronged under Jonathan’s onslaught, perceived or real, it is rather the deserved shriek of a plotter snared by his own trap!

    As for Chief Ernest Shonekan, who neither staged a coup nor won an election, his sole ticket to centenary honour was being the chief tool of sustaining the crime of annulling MKO’s mandate. Now, how can that be a motivation to Nigeria’s generation next — that perfidy pays?

    These were the unconscionable leaders that have left Nigeria in a ditch at the turn of its first century. Yet, these leaders (more of power dealers!) toast themselves to high heavens, not caring a hoot about how prostrate they have left the poor people in their charge!

    Indeed, reading Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s book, Adventure in Power Book Two: The Travails of Democracy and the rule of Law, clearly showed Nigeria’s leadership crisis started from the very beginning — at independence.

    Instead of envisioning a bright future for their new country and working hard towards it, the federal leadership at independence was rather fixated with crushing Awo’s Action Group (AG); and with it, all its developmental strides.

    But even if Awo was biased for himself, as he articulated his own case in his own book, how the Tafawa Balewa federal government milked the Western crisis to get at their perceived nemesis is all too clear, from accounts from that troubled era.

    But the moral, in the context of Nigeria’s centenary mis-celebration, is that that fixation turned out a grand distraction, with the tragic consequences of a relay of bad leaders, of which Jonathan is only the latest.

    But just as well: the bright sparks in Nigeria’s opaque skies — Wole Soyinka, the families of Gani Fawehinmi, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the grand martyr of Nigerian democracy, MKO — have rejected the centenary awards.

    Still, the irony is that, pound for pound, they are far more deserving of the awards. Despite the long haul in the wilderness, they have shone brightest; and demonstrated what dazzling heights Nigeria can attain under the right leadership.

    If any good can come out of a gaffe, the Jonathan honours list, with its parade of leadership fat cats, has shown something: those leaders are the direct opposite of what Nigeria needs to be great.

    So, as the country takes its first gingerly steps in its next century, Nigerians must vote the direct opposite of these past leaders. Much more importantly, the National Conference must radically restructure the country for productivity and sustainable development.

    If not, a second centenary for Nigeria would be a pipe dream, for Nigeria would have sunk without trace, in the violent ocean of its own contradictions.

  • Jonathan, Sanusi and opacity

    Jonathan, Sanusi and opacity

    There is a Yoruba saying that states an elder worth his or her name crunches kola nut with reckless abandon.

    It is not just the African dictatorship of the elderly that entitles the elder to such reckless crunching, the sort that could even jerk awake a light sleeper. It is rather his or her moral impregnability — that heavy responsibility that earns the exalted privilege of elderly impunity.

    This is, of course, no expose on African tradition. It is rather linking African mores to the Jonathan presidential suspension (read sacking, with a sleight of hand) of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

    Mallam Sanusi had earlier rebuffed a presidential threat to “resign”, insisting — and rightly so — that by Section 11(2)(f) of the CBN Act of 2007, only a presidential request, backed by two-thirds of the Senate, could sack him.

    Of course, in the immediate post-sack hubbub, the law and its intendment have fallen prime victims. Outside the grey area between sack and suspension, the infusing of the Nigerian presidency with a Kabiyesi [Yoruba for unquestionable] syndrome appears on the ascendancy, no matter what the law says or does not say.

    If Sanusi must continue to blow the whistle on the government, why didn’t he resign, goes the emotive query. To be sure, that is not unreasonable, if morality were to be the issue: a whistle blower is, after all, a “traitor” exposing a peer. Fine morality!

    But if a probable crime had been committed, and the law to which all the parties concerned had sworn to protect insists on somebody squealing? Which one trumps the other: the morality of silence or the legality of squealing?

    But let’s even assume (without conceding, as the lawyers would say) that morality prevailed; and President Goodluck Jonathan, incensed by (im)moral outrage — the law be damned! — moved to sack the CBN governor, why the virtual tip-toe in doing it?

    Why didn’t the president, like the iconic African elder, crunch his kola loud enough by announcing the sack with a flurry, with the CBN governor in-situ? Why watch on tip-toe, like a conspiratorial Tom, the CBN governor safely away in Niger Republic, before announcing his ouster? Perhaps a classic study in presidential cowardice?

    Whereas the president of the Federal Republic appears to hug, like a second skin, opacity in state matters, the CBN governor would appear sold on transparency, at least when the issue is alleged humongous stealing of oil money, using the ever-opaque Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as conduit.

    Still, the you’re-shielding-oil-money-thieves Vs you-spend-CBN-money-recklessly controversy, which led to Sanusi’s sack through the back door, somewhat echoes the inimitable Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, in one of his ever memorable numbers: “You be thief/I no be thief; You be rogue/I no be rogue, You be armed robber/I no be armed robber … argument, argument, argu; argument, argument, argu …”

    But even if the argument is between two camps of rogues, as Jonathan’s presidential spinners are slanting the Sanusi sack saga, it is perhaps cold comfort that one roguish camp is at least transparent in its claims! But the Jonathan camp can’t even claim that credit — which is a pity! Not for the Jonathan Presidency the Caesar code: Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion!

    Mallam Sanusi has cried himself hoarse there is alleged systematic stealing of oil money, which scale this country had never witnessed, even with its A++ record in public graft, under the Jonathan Presidency.

    At the beginning of the end, Sanusi wrote Jonathan a secret memo that there was a “crater” of US $49.8 billion in the nation’s purse, and pointed fingers at some smart alecs at NNPC. Jonathan did nothing — until former President Olusegun Obasanjo, fighting his own battle of relevance, included the allegations in his ill-tempered letter to the president.

    Predictably, Jonathan’s ire was not at those who allegedly short-changed the treasury, but at Sanusi who raised the query. The boy who once upon a time had no shoes has become a man comfy with alleged humongous stealing, that may condemn millions of current and future Nigerian kids to be shoeless! When eventually some reconciliation was done, between US $10.8 billion (NNPC’s claim) and US $ 12 billion (Sanusi’s claim) still remained unaccounted for — except for some hocus-pocus that NNPC used to explain it away!

    The end of the end came with the Sanusi allegation, before the Senate finance committee probe, that another US $20 billion (more than the 2014 budget) could also have vanished! Now, that was not a CBN governor grandstanding at a press conference. That was a CBN governor, using hard evidence, to make a presentation before parliament, in the best tradition of open societies.

    But today, there is no satisfactory answer to that query — though the probe continues. Jonathan’s classical response was to kill the messenger, with the fond hope the bad message would disappear! It is a moot point if that query would die with Sanusi’s illegal sack. But again, Jonathan has proved himself a champion of opacity, whose body language is mad at probity but frolics with fiscal iniquity.

    To counter the missing US $20 billion charge, the Jonathan Presidency would appear to have initiated its own charge of N168 billion, which the Sanusi CBN administration allegedly recklessly spent. The presidential whistle-blower is the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN), which findings suddenly jumped into the fray, like some Deus-ex-machina in a Greek tragic play.

    For all you know, there could be substance to the anti-Sanusi allegation. But the circumstances of its making, combined with the reported threat of a Sanusi trial, all point to a not-too-unfamiliar tactic of muddying the waters and bandying threats.

    All that portrays the Jonathan Presidency as a dog that barks, not out of strength but out of fear. But it would take its chances, that not a few would fall for such cheap bluff and bluster.

    Mallam Sanusi has many faults. He is a gadfly; and he is a tad too voluble when taciturnity would do just fine. Besides, playing CBN governor-activist in a sleaze-rich administration is tantamount, to parody that tennis term of unforced error, to unforced fatality.

    But he has been consistent on government transparency as the Jonathan crowd has been on opacity. He therefore appears to have put the fear of God in the Jonathan ensemble.

    It is a classic match-up between powerless conscience and conscienceless power! Still, history has shown conscience is not so powerless, as not to eventually trounce conscienceless power.

    After the Justice Ayo Salami saga, the Sanusi case is yet another red alert at the clear and present danger of an opaque presidency, particularly when the issue is alleged mindless exchequer raid. But when asked to probe these allegations, President Jonathan gets grumpy!

    Fortunately however, election times are nigh. With all these allegations of sleaze and negative presidential reactions, can you entrust your exchequer to this man for four more years?

    It is no time to sit on the fence!

  • So, Jonathan is nice?

    So, Jonathan is nice?

    What was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the suspended Governor of the Central Bank on Nigeria on President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

    Not a few Nigerians would be surprised that the former boss of Nigeria’s apex bank could have some nice things to say about the president given his strident criticism of the administration, especially its lack luster fight against corruption.

    I am a bit surprised myself but then I remember this wasn’t the first time I would be hearing such a comment being made about the president. I’ve heard from quite a number of people who are very close to him or have access to him that Dr Jonathan is a very good person who meant well for this country but is surrounded by bad people. And each time I hear this I get annoyed. Why should a good man surround himself with bad people?

    Being soft spoken, courteous and nice to people are part of the qualities of a good person, but being good goes beyond that. The ability to attract good people to oneself is also a sign of goodness. You know a man’s character by the kind of company he keeps. Show me your friend, the cliché goes, and I will tell you who you are.

    True, according to Shakespeare there is no art in knowing the mind’s construction from the face, but then if one was deceived by the blandness or innocence of the face it shouldn’t take too long for a good man to discover the bad or rotten person around him.

    It has been a while now that President Goodluck Jonathan has mounted the saddle as Nigeria’s president and leader, and from day one, he has surrounded himself with some characters that not a few Nigerians are not comfortable with, yet he found them good company. What does that say of the president himself? Take the example of the former Minister of Aviation Madam Stella Oduah. I am not sure if there is anybody in this country who does not know that Stella was and still is Goodluck’s friend and it was mainly on the strength of that friendship that she was made a minister of the Federal Republic. She was so good to Jonathan particularly through her ‘Neighbour-to-Neighbour’ organization in the run up to the president’s election that he just had to compensate her for being there for him and she was made a Minister.

    Nothing wrong in that I guess, after all you work well with people that you know and trust. But not too long after, this woman became a square peg in a round hole and almost everybody except the president saw this and complained; to Jonathan, Stella could do no wrong. Even the President didn’t see anything wrong when the two BMW limousine scandal involving the former Minister and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) broke out. Not even the House of Representatives’ or the Presidency’s administrative panel indictment was enough to convince him to drop his friend.

    When he eventually did a couple of weeks ago, many believe it was just a desperate measure to rescue his seemingly doomed second term ambition; not out of conviction to fight corruption. The allegations against Madam Oduah are weighty enough to have warranted her immediate removal or suspension from office but the President chose not to act until he discovered that leaving Stella in office would be an unnecessary baggage that could jeopardize his re-election in 2015. Reluctantly, Stella had to go and for now scot-free.

    If Jonathan is such a good man as we are being told, then he shouldn’t have surrounded himself with the likes of Madam Oduah. Yes, nothing has been proven against the former Minister yet but the President would help Nigeria and his cause by releasing the report of the administrative panel that probed the car scandal and allow the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to handle the case and any other alleged cases of corruption involving her without any pressure or interference.

    If the President is such a good person then why is he still keeping Deziani Allison-Madueke as Minister of Petroleum with alleged cases of monumental corruption going on in that industry especially within the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). We’ve heard about 20 billion USD oil money reportedly missing for which the suspended CBN Governor was apparently being punished. Forget about the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria report on Sanusi’s CBN, it was just a convenient excuse to ease out a pain in the arse. Why wait till now to act on the council’s report that had been ready since March.

    This is not excusing Sanusi from accounting for his tenure as CBN Governor. If he had done anything wrong, particularly fraudulent, he should be punished. I am not one of his fans, but why punish him now after blowing the whistle on the missing oil money? And why not all those people involved in the missing money as well?

    The fraud in the oil industry dates back to the discovery of oil in Nigeria and has seemingly defied all actions taken by successive administrations to curb it. Most if not all of Jonathan’s predecessors are guilty, but then none of them has been described as nice the way Jonathan is being portrayed. So, if he is a nice and good person, then he should get rid of those bad people in our oil industry; he should start from his cabinet.

    If Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the coordinating Minister for the Economy as well as Finance Minister (whatever that meant) is sitting there comfortably with all these fraud allegations flying around, then I am afraid, she too had joined them. May be she is one of those bad people surrounding our ‘nice’ President.

    There are still many of them like that parading the corridors of power in Abuja. But like I asked earlier, why should a good person surround himself with bad people? The answer is simple, he too must be bad because like minds work together.

    Today we speak well of the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Alhaji Ahmadu Bello even after they are no more because of the good things they did when they were in power or had access to power. They didn’t achieve all those good things alone, they were helped by the good people they invited into their government. So, if Jonathan cannot attract or invite good people into his government, then he himself is bad. Shikena.

    One last thing to add. We’ve heard so much about how good and nice President Jonathan is, but people are not coming out to talk about his unforgiving spirit. I heard he doesn’t forgive. If you are in doubt ask former Bayelsa Governor Timi Silva or his namesake Timi Alaibe the former NDDC boss. Both are from Bayelsa State like President Jonathan. What a nice man!

     

     

  • Desperate president, haughty prince

    Desperate president, haughty prince

    He had it coming.” “It serves him right.” “About time.” “De man too do, sef”

    The subject of these sentiments and many more of like vintage, expressed again and again across media platforms, is of course Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who was sent packing from the gubernatorial suite at the Central Bank of Nigeria last week by President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Sanusi had planned to leave that powerful office on his own terms. In the manner of royals used to determining when they come and when they go and how long they stay, he had served notice that he would not seek an extension of the statutory term of five years. He might well have thought that, by that singular stroke, he had at once positioned himself to assert the autonomy that goes with the position and insured himself against the abject groveling and the shabby compromises that public officials often have to make to hold on to their jobs.

    He did not grovel. But he carried on in the manner of someone who could not be touched, said his numerous critics. He was all too ready to express an opinion on every subject under the sun and even beyond. He talked far more than he listened. It was as if he was conducting a crusade against the Establishment of which he was a part.

    He turned a purely technocratic job into a political forum and invested it with power and authority that went far beyond what its creators envisaged. He reveled in controversy. He dispensed public funds as if he was stricken with the Mansa Musa syndrome. Sometimes, it was as if he saw the CBN and its sprawling bureaucracy as an extension of the Kano emirate court.

    All in all, his numerous admirers countered, he has been a breath of fresh air in the mouldy corridors of high finance. He called attention to issues the authorities would rather conceal, such as the extortionate salaries and allowances legislators appropriated unto themselves under the table, and the opacity of the reporting system on oil export earnings. He spent public money judiciously, for beneficent ends.

    Above all, his numerous admirers said, he had rescued the banking sector from the grip of a powerful mafia that had since the time of military president Ibrahim Babangida turned the industry into an organised racket.

    Sanusi had three months left on his term. To Abuja which had been chafing under his strictures, three months seemed like an eternity. If he could not be removed, surely he could be neutralised and kept so busy fighting for his name and honour that asking inconvenient questions would be the last thing of his mind?

    So, they got the Department of Dirty Tricks to work up to the most intrusive and titillating detail an alleged dalliance between Sanusi and a female executive at CBN they said he had employed without following the rules. From intercepted text messages the twain were alleged to have exchanged, you could almost hear the moan of ecstasy and the joy of conquest.

    The Department of Dirty Tricks blanketed the media with these salacious reports, hoping that the public would rise in indignation, declare any public official involved in such conduct guilty of “moral turpitude” and unfit to hold high public office.

    There were indeed those who reacted in exactly that manner. Some even went one better, demanding that Sanusi be hauled before the nearest Sharia court, tried summarily and sentenced to public flogging or lapidation.

    But by and large, the stories gained no traction in the media or in public discourse

    So, the authorities fell back on the bureaucratic expedients of audits and queries. That didn’t work either. With his accustomed hauteur, Sanusi disputed the competence and authority of the sources of the queries that did reach him and refused to respond. Nor would he resign as President Jonathan requested.

    He says he heard of but was never served with the documents released after his ouster charging him with reckless and incompetent management of public funds and hinting darkly at big-time sleaze.

    That is hardly surprising. Abuja had had more than enough. It was time to unsheathe the sword of presidential power; time for the formerly shoeless boy from the creeks to teach the haughty prince from Kano who has never lacked for anything a lesson in realpolitik he seems to have forgotten: Power will always find a way.

    Didn’t Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna Sokoto, and premier of Northern Nigeria depose and banish to Azare, in what was then Bauchi Province, the now former CBN governor’s iconoclastic uncle, Muhammadu Sanusi, who served as Emir of Kano between 1954 and 1963? Did the heavens fall?

    So who or what can stand in the way of a President vested with the powers of a leviathan in his resolve to dismiss an official he can no longer work with? The Constitution only says the official cannot be dismissed without the consent and approval of the Senate. It does not say that you require any such approval to suspend him.

    So, go at him, and do so with petulant vindictiveness. Humiliate him on the world stage; suspend him from office while he is conducting business in Niamey, in Niger Republic, on the nation’s behalf.

    Such shabbiness harks back to what military president Babangida did to Prince Tony Momoh.

    For weeks, rumours of a cabinet shuffle had been swirling, and Momoh, the regime’s Minister of Information, was one of those being mentioned as likely casualties. So, before setting out at the head of a delegation to represent Nigeria at ceremonies marking the end of slavery in the Caribbean nation of Guyana, Momoh had gone to Babangida to ask whether he should proceed, in view of rumours that he was going to be dropped in the impending cabinet shuffle.

    “You believe that?” Babangida remonstrated. “Common, Tony. How can we drop our resident philosopher from the Federal Executive Council?’’

    Whereupon he wished Momoh a pleasant trip.

    Momoh’s plane was streaking across the Atlantic when Dodan Barracks announced that he had been dropped from the Federal Executive Council. By the time the plane touched down, he had been stripped of all authority to transact any business on behalf of the Federal Government.

    Sanusi’s media acolytes and retainers unwittingly contributed to his present grief when they dared Dr Jonathan to dismiss him and face dire consequences. Their taunts did little to restrain Dr Jonathan and may well have emboldened him.

    For now, Sanusi is gone. But the issues he raised will not go away until they are addressed forthrightly. Of these, none is more urgent than an answer to the insistent question: What happened to $20 billion in oil receipts?

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Inside Jonathan’s confab

    Inside Jonathan’s confab

    Want a peep into President Goodluck Jonathan’s impending National Conference (NC)? Just look back at the president’s pre-2011 election Attahiru Jega joker.

    But that doesn’t mean Jonathan would hold a monopoly of stunts at the NC. Good Lord, no! About every bloc coming there would stage manoeuvres; manoeuvres to outsmart the other bloc, and secure some short-term advantage. That would be perfectly Nigerian!

    Still, what is at stake is a future productive, truly federal Nigeria; as opposed to the present parasitic, pseudo-federal Nigeria, on auto-pilot to self-destroy.

    As things stand, and without being unnecessarily alarmist, it might just be the last opportunity for peaceful change; to reconfigure the country for sustainable development. Whoever wins in 2015, but with the present self-destruct structure unaltered, Nigeria would still be tethered to its old ruinous template.

    So, the confab should work towards a long-term solution to the perennial Nigerian crisis, and not short-term selfish manoeuvres. But it doesn’t appear the leading actors are thinking that way. They would rather game and push their luck.

    Besides, the build-up to the confab, its template of nominations and its general perception, have not betrayed any novel approach, judged against President Olusegun Obasanjo’s National Political Reforms Conference (2005) and Gen. Sani Abacha’s National Constitutional Conference (1994/1995).

    Yet, since these two confabs, rather than improve matters, the Nigerian polity has raced to the cliff at geometrical speed, to parody Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), that doomsday English cleric of the Industrial Revolution era (1770-1850).

    That brings the discourse back to the probable Jonathan motive by the confab, and the pre-2011 the Attahiru Jega joker.

    After the disastrous 2007 election, Maurice Iwu had come to the end of his tether. So, accidental President Jonathan allied himself with the popular clamour to remove Prof. Iwu and reform the electoral system; with the opposition making a feast of the Muhammed Lawal Uwais Electoral Reforms Panel’s recommendations.

    The president hit on the joker of Prof. Jega’s famed integrity — a sure winner, after Iwu’s Iwuruwuru years.

    But he did that without ceding, to the National Judicial Council (NJC), his sole power to appoint, subject to Senate confirmation, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chair and national commissioners, as the Uwais Panel had proposed.

    But even as President Jonathan rode the popular crest as electoral reforms (ER) president, he held close to his chest his decision to run or not to run. The not-so-hidden ploy was to shore up his credibility; and the not-so-unwritten script was to emerge the chief beneficiary from the ensuing reforms.

    Now, therefore, is a distinct sense of déjà vu. Then, it was ER. Now, it is NC. Then, mum was the word, on Jonathan running or not. Now, mum is the word on Jonathan’s re-run. Then, ER was a popular foil to build a callow president’s prospect. Now, NC is the platform to rebuild re-run credibility, after a president’s near-disastrous full term. As it was with ER, Jonathan’s mission is to emerge chief beneficiary of NC!

    The snag is, the deception is not so veiled this time round, if it was ever so veiled back then. Much as the president has tried, his lobbies continue to give the game away.

    Old man, Edwin Clark, keeps on alienating — as, by the way, he did with the North pre-2011 — with his vulgar abuse, other sections of the country he had decreed would vote his presidential godson. Young man, Asari Dokubo, keeps on his trashy threat of war, should Jonathan, his Ijaw kin, lose.

    Yet, the minority South-South lacks the number for Jonathan to prevail in a free and fair election. So, where will the tally come from — the marines?

    In the building scenario, the NC is as good a grandstand platform as any, for electoral harvest. That, of course, has fuelled leading opposition politicians’ wholesale dismissal of the exercise — another extreme, if you ask.

    President Jonathan apparently has tasted the sweet poison of Nigeria’s central coffers; and would appear in no hurry to surrender the honey pot — as the majority Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba, before him.

    Indeed, President Obasanjo so enjoyed the lollies he, without much ado, craved an unconstitutional third term, which he however continues to deny! The North, on the other hand, appears sold on the hubris that that honey pot is its divine right to keep — in perpetuity, if possible!

    Still, the Niger Delta continues to bear the ecological brunt of Nigeria’s oil wealth. So, it is in the South-South’s best interest that Nigeria be restructured so that region can, at least, marshal the cash to fix its oil-devastated ecology. So, should Jonathan go through the motions of another NC without radical re-tinkering of Nigeria, he would incur the boos of even generations unborn in the Niger Delta.

    Still, Jonathan and his lobby are not the only ones that would attempt to play games. The North, for one, with its siddon-look temper (apologies to the late Chief Bola Ige) may not have the clout to scuttle Jonathan confab.

    But it picks no bones about its preference for the status-quo, if sentiments from the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) are to be believed. That is apparently why the ACF has dismissed the Afenifere Renewal Group, ARG’s restructuring model, after its February 12 one-day Yoruba Constitutional Conference in Ibadan, Oyo State, as confederation bordering on disintegration.

    The South East is an interesting study in contrasts. While the extant partisan establishment over there seems resolved to put the future survival of their region at the service of Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential encore, Igbo Leaders of Thought, led by Prof. Ben Nwabueze, are insistent on cutting a fair deal for the Igbo nation in a truly federal and restructured Nigeria. It would be interesting how these two strands play out at the confab.

    But perhaps the most interesting manoeuvres would come from the South West. The traditional South West stand is radical restructuring ala Sovereign National Conference (SNC). That was basically the idea the ARG one-day Yoruba conference sold, even if the Jonathan confab is not sovereign.

    But immediate political exigencies have, somewhat, diluted this consensus. The current South West partisan lords of the manor would not touch the Jonathan confab. But the body language of followers, in that same ruling party, is much more nuanced and ambivalent.

    On the other hand, the Afenifere old guard, with a few young elements, are clambering on the Olusegun Mimiko Labour Party (LP) platform which, for sheer political survival, makes no secret of its Jonathan dalliance. As Mimiko courts Jonathan to survive, Afenifere courts Mimiko to fend off the looming hegemony of the Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC) group.

    The question is how much of its SNC ideals Afenifere would trade off, for the Mimiko-Jonathan support, in mortal fear of an APC hegemony? So, when ARG roared against anyone betraying the “Yoruba cause”, at its Ibadan one-day meeting, it was clear the message was for the Mimiko-Afenifere camp.

    Again, it would be interesting how all these play out inside Jonathan’s confab.

  • Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)

    Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)

    Up till sometime last week, I guess it was so easy to put the hiccups being experienced in the power sector to the birth pangs of the historic transition. However, unlike many among the army of critics of the transition, yours sincerely did not suffer the illusion that the singular event of the handover of the distribution companies to private sector operators would come near the magic wand being bandied; the same goes with the undue expectations that the problems that have dogged the sector would vanish overnight because some new owners said to have plenty of cash have suddenly arrived town.

    Beyond the question of whether the handover was historic or not, it takes a good understanding of the complex dynamics of the power sector to appreciate the fact that nothing was as yet (at least at this stage), given. Had the administration not been so eager to cart home the trophy before the final call of the game, it would have been more tempered in creating the climate of expectations and by so doing, spare itself, and the hapless electricity consumer, the orgy of celebrations of what is no more than a modest achievement of ceding the retail end of the electricity business to a disparate club of businessmen.

    And to imagine that is supposed to be the dividend of the reform odyssey that has taken nearly 10 years to berth. Now, it seems everyone, not least the government, would have to re-learn the lesson on the danger of counting the chicks before they are hatched.

    No doubt, the ugly experience of the past few months in the power sector must have been disappointing, to say the least for many Nigerians. And this is not just for the failure of the historic handover to fundamentally alter the electricity supply terrain but also for the fact that the harvest of new plants into the grid is yet to take the nation beyond the dark curtains. Presently, not only is the talk about the extant service thresholds taking a dip to unprecedented abysmal levels, the sad and uncomfortable reality is that the so-called jinx, which has held the sector down appears to have resurrected. While the current state of flux strikes at the heart of what the on-going reforms is meant to achieve, the latest fad of blaming the distribution companies (discos) for problems that are not their making is not only unfair but unhelpful.

    Two issues seem to me to be at the heart of the current crisis in the power sector both of which hardly present the government as anything but one running on alibis.

    The first is its continuing claim about the gas supply situation; linked to this is the recurrent claim of vandalisation of the gas pipelines by criminals.

    The second is the slow pace of completion of the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs) expected to boost the capacity of the grid.

    On the first, it seems taken that no substantial progress can be achieved without improvements in generation and the ability to evacuate the power so generated for sale to the end users. Unfortunately, it appears that our federal government has long resolved that the twin challenges of gas supply and the associated vandalism of pipelines and transmission lines are such that would require a millennium to tackle.

    Nothing, perhaps, can be more unflattering than the fact that nearly a decade after the coming of the Power Sector Reform Act, and seven years after the government opened the first tranche of the Letters of Credit for the procurement of the equipment for the NIPPs, we are not just stuck with worn alibis, the serial shifting of the goal posts for the completion of the plants continues unabated.

    By the way, who remembers these days the 700 KV Super grid projected to cost of $3.5 billion grid on which President Goodluck Jonathan once pronounced? What has happened nearly four years after?

    No wonder the hype about the transfer of the distribution segment to private investors; the whole idea, it would seem, is to present it as the weakest link – the major undoing of the complex chain when in reality, the interest in that last mile is no more than the typical desire to share in the nation’s booty by the privileged elite.

    It certainly may not have helped that the new investors and the regulators have not been forthcoming in terms of delivering a new framework for service delivery; it is however a different call to present the discos as the problem when they are actually no more than symptoms of the Nigerian Disease of mediocrity.

    Should Nigerians expect improvement in electricity supply anytime soon? For an answer to the question, we turn to the chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Sam Amadi as reported by The Punch. I may well add that I found his summary of the so-called transition milestone both interesting and instructive.

    Here is what he said: “Yes we have oversold the handing over as a panacea; may be because we had expected people who had enough financial clouts to take over but they did not…what the regulator is doing is manage the scarcity to see if we can get entry points for more power through regeneration!

    That was the regulator, barely stopping short of describing an exercise, touted as marking the turning point in the power sector reform as an elaborate farce!

    I need to make an important point at this juncture. I don’t for believe that the argument for the liberalisation of the power sector is necessarily weakened by the dilatory approaches of successive PDP administrations. Indeed, it seems to me that the argument for opening up the sector for competition has become even more compelling now. To start with, I don’t think Nigerians would find much troubles in answering the question of whether a quarter of what the PDP administration has sunk into the power sector would deliver by far more value to the grid if given to the private sector. Rather the more pertinent question is whether the nation can afford to leave the power sector in the hands of the utterly inept, visionless administration that have done little else than mismanage our expectations from the sector.

     

     

  • Stella Oduah; so much for native intelligence

    Stella Oduah; so much for native intelligence

    Those who are saying I should be removed are wasting their time, it is just beer parlour talk; this minister is here today, tomorrow and day after—Stella Oduah, Sunday 26 January, 2014.

    That was a boastful former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah at a recent “Aviation Masterplan Workers’ Buy in” programme held at the Grand Ballroom of Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lekki.

    The 3-day event had in attendance top management staff of the main parastatals in the ministry as well as a few others drawn mainly from her committee of friends carried over from the infamous “Neighbour-to-Neighbour” campaign group. Remember; the faceless group at the fore front of the campaign for Jonathan presidency the first time?

    Some of those in attendance even quoted her to have added; “yes, I may not have gone to school, but I have native intelligence.” Hmmmm!

    The sack last week of arguably one of the most powerful members of President Goodluck Jonathan’s government came as a huge surprise to not just a few Nigerians. The way and manner Madam Stella was conducting herself and the affairs of the Ministry of Aviation with near total impunity without even a mere rebuke from the presidency in spite of public outcry, gave little room to doubt that nothing, absolutely nothing, could touch her as long as Jonathan remains Nigeria’s president.

    Unlike that Ghanaian former female cabinet Minister that boasted that her mission in government was to make a few millions of dollars, a comment she was later to regret as she was promptly fired by the Ghanaian president, (for even harbouring the thought) Stella Oduah had reportedly said and done worse than that and nothing happened to her until last week.

    If truly she “may not have gone to school but have native intelligence”, little wonder then that she could not comprehend the enormity of the assignment given to her by the president, hence she ran the Ministry of Aviation based on how far her native intelligence could take her. Like a market woman put in charge of a hi-tech industry, Madam Stella did not know her right from left and presided over Nigeria’s aviation industry in the typical Oyingbo market woman style.

    Before I am crucified for saying this, let me make it clear that I am not a novice in aviation and count myself as one of those Nigerian journalists well informed about aviation matters worldwide, especially the Nigerian aviation industry, having spend over a decade actively covering aviation as a correspondent and still involved in the industry somehow.

    We’ve never had it so bad in the industry in Nigeria. Forget about the so called airport remodeling projects of Stella Oduah, those are just cosmetics, which only a market woman awash with cash and obsessed with ‘show off’, the ‘Sisi Eko’ mentality would readily indulge in. The tendency, when you have so much cash and not accountable to anybody, to build houses all over the place and acquire properties, without any thought of how to adequately equip and maintain them to make them continually functional. That in summary is the mentality behind the airport remodeling projects as far as I am concerned.

    Of what use is a ‘beautiful’ terminal building where the conveniences are not working or in constant good order; where uninterrupted power cannot be guaranteed; where pilfering goes on unabated? By the way an airport is not just the terminal building, it is more than that. What is the state of the navigational equipments at these remodeled airports? If the terminal building is the most beautiful and most modern in the world but the airfield is 19th century technology, you have done nothing but build a modern palace equipped with pit latrine.

    Well, the jury is still out on Stella’s airports.

    What is most disturbing is the financial management style of Madam Stella and the source or sources of the funds used for her airport projects in particular. It is alleged that not less than N150 million is taken by the Ministry of Aviation under Madam Stella’s watch, every month from the account of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), one of the agencies under the ministry. This is a serious allegation that requires urgent investigation by all the anti graft agencies of the Federal Government to confirm or disprove.

    Nothing is proven yet and Madam Stella is not guilty, cannot be guilty until proven guilty. It is a good thing that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says the matter of the N225 million bullet proof limousine scandal involving NCAA and linking the former Minister is still being investigated.

    You remember the BMW cars, two of them, allegedly bought by the NCAA for the exclusive use of Madam Oduah? Why the former Minister made spirited efforts to distance herself from the scandal insisting she directed the parastatal in question to do the needful, the House of Representatives found out that her hands were not clean in the matter while a presidential panel equally indicted her.

    That President Goodluck Jonathan found the courage to kick Madam Stella out, or forced her to resign is commendable, even though belated. But having gone this far, the president must take the next step and ensure that she is investigated by the relevant agencies of government and prosecuted for whatever offence she might have committed while in government, especially financial crimes as being alleged.

    It might not be a bad idea to conduct a forensic examination of the financial dealings and records of the Ministry of Aviation and its parastatals under Madam Stella Oduah, just to put the records straight. Apart from the NCAA, the accounts of the other parastatals were equally raided by the Ministry under her watch, such that most, if not all were left with nothing other than enough to pay salaries. Even training allowances for staff on mandatory local and/or international training programmes, especially at NCAA could not be met became money had been sent to Abuja.

    Trusting the EFCC to do a thorough job here is a bit risky. As the Senate has ordered in the case of the alleged missing money in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), forensic experts should be called in to look into Madam Stella’s book. A lot could be revealed. For instance there is this allegation that the former minister had squandered the funds realized under the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) Nigeria has with so many foreign countries. Some have said part of the money for her airport projects came from the BASA fund which under the law she had no power to spend. But some have equally alleged that the former Minister used her closeness to the President to cunningly get Dr Jonathan to sign a blank cheque for to spend BASA money. These are just allegations.

    As Madam Stella is kicked out of office, she would be remembered not so much by her accomplishments/achievements, (if any, think there is a few) but by the politics of her action (the Rivers State aircraft issue), the arrogance of power she exhibited and the native intelligence that reflected in all her actions. But above all, she would be remembered as a round peg in a square hole. GOOD RIDDANCE Madam and over to you President Jonathan, let the needful be done in her case.

     

     

  • Annals of awards and coronations

    Annals of awards and coronations

    In Nigeria, nothing succeeds like an award.

    It does not matter whether the award recognises recondite achievement or no achievement at all, for the award itself is often the achievement. And if it is of the latter kind, it has to be marked with lavish, multi-stage and multi-venue celebration, the type that only the most inventive local, state, national and Diaspora organising committees can arrange.

    Congratulatory advertisements fill the newspapers, crowding out the news entirely or reducing it to a mere adjunct. Not the staid, flat, monochromatic advertisements of a bygone era but visual delights laid out in living colour by some of the finest graphic designers in the business.

    Given the prominence of such features in our culture, is it not something of a scandal that no organisation, not even the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, has seen it fit to institute an award for The Congratulatory Advertisement of the Year Award? How can it be explained that there is no National Merit Award for the Designer/Producer of the Best Congratulatory Advertisement of the Year?

    But I digress.

    I was led to these ruminations by two congratulatory advertisements in this newspaper the other day, not for their visual quality, which is not particularly remarkable, but for the great achievement they celebrate.

    The first rejoices with Mrs Mercy Orji, first lady of Abia, God’s own State, on being crowned Most Valuable Governor’s Wife (MVGW for short), the lucky governor being His Excellency Theodore Orji. I am taking great liberties here, for this congratulatory advertisement does not actually mention her by name. Doing so, someone knowledgeable in such matters tells me, might be construed as carrying familiarity too far.

    Instead the advertisement, signed by Cosmos Nuke, Chief of Staff to the governor, refers to her as “Ochendo Global,” and as “Osinulomaranma,” the adoring titles the people of the state have conferred on her in grateful appreciation of her personal munificence.

    We learn from the copy that the award is a “fair and just authentication” of the “inspiring values” she exhibits. These values include compassion, magnanimity, a good heart and untainted love for the needy, not forgetting the raison d’être for the award — being a Most Valuable Wife to the Governor Orji, aforementioned.

    It is in the second congratulatory advertisement signed by Mrs Adanma Iheuwe who has the double-barrelled title of Permanent Secretary and Executive Secretary of the Abia State Planning Commission, that we actually learn the real name of Her Excellency the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife.

    We also learn that the distinction being celebrated was conferred on Her Excellency by the “independent” Organising Team for the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife, and that the crowning took place at the prestigious Abuja Sheraton and Towers.

    Why in Abuja where Her Excellency, despite her impressive credentials, is not a household name? Why not in the State capital Umuahia, where a mammoth crowd of her admirers could join in the celebrations, with a day designated a public holiday for that purpose?

    The choice of Abuja for the consecration was strategic, it can now be revealed. Going by the fine print in the congratulatory advertisement, Abia’s first lady was crowned the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife only for the South-east geo-political zone, a region of intense and pervasive rivalry.

    In Nigeria’s other five geo-political zones, you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief. There is no imputation whatsoever that the first ladies in those zones are anything less than Most Valuable. All is calm on those fronts, unless the organisers of the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife decide to nationalise the award.

    In that case I can see the police moving in swiftly to pre-empt the award ceremony in the interest of law and order and peace and stability, or a court of competent jurisdiction issuing a perpetual injunction prohibiting such an event.

    But imagine the turmoil that would have eventuated if the MVGW event had been staged in Umuahia. Stalwarts from the camps which lost out, sponsored or freelance, would have converged on the city to disrupt the ceremony and smash things up into the bargain from sheer envy.

    Do not for a moment mistake the apparent calm in the gubernatorial mansions in Awka, Abakaliki, Enugu and Owerri for resignation or acceptance, however. A great deal of seething is going on behind those high walls and the opulent splendour they protect. The first ladies, an unimpeachable source tells me, have jointly and severally declared that they regard the title in question as a gratuitous assault on their honour, and that it must be avenged immediately.

    Their discomfiture is understandable. In fact, it has to be said to their credit that they have displayed admirable restraint under grave provocation. The contest was not advertised. The criteria for winning were not spelled out, leaving the public to engage in idle and malicious speculation as to why the four first ladies were adjudged less than Most Valuable.

    I do not envy the first husbands. But what can they do?

    Organise their own version of the independent Abuja event and have their first ladies proclaimed Most Valuable Governor’s Wife? That would be four Most Valuable Governor’s Wives too many. Pretend that the award did not happen? But it did, and denying it explicitly or implicitly will only make the disaffected first ladies in the zone angrier.

    Declare the award bogus, the handiwork of a band of racketeers with an eye for the main chance? But that would smack of sour grapes.

    Create an award that covers a wider region? But even in an enlarged zone, there can be only one Most Valuable Governor’s Wife. What kind of enlargement anyway?

    You could not include the South-south without provoking the wrath of the state governors there. Nor could you reach deep across the Niger or the Benue Niger without courting a civil war by another name.

    Nor are the governors of Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo likely to be buoyed by reports now circulating that another independent organisation in Abuja has virtually completed arrangements for a ceremony at which the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife’s Husband in the Southeast will be crowned, to complement the Most Valuable Governor’s Wife award.

    You can expect the four first husbands who lose out in this race to be just as resentful and implacable as the first four ladies who lost out in the earlier race, with terrible consequences for good governance in the zone. And who knows what those merchants of awards will do next.

    Personally, I will not be surprised if planning for the Most Valuable African First Lady has already reached an advanced stage in Abuja, current headquarters of the African First Ladies Peace Mission, with the Organised Private Sector expected to foot the bill, and Herself Mama Peace the prohibitive favourite, unless the contest is fixed.

    In a city famous for gaudy celebration, the conferment will be the mother of all ceremonies, and a fitting climax to the Great Nigerian Centennial.

    Now this, just in:

    Sons and daughters of the historic town of Fugar, in the Etsako Central Local government Area of Edo State, at home and abroad, have unanimously resolved to send a message congratulating Dr Goodluck Jonathan on dismissing their disobliging and undutiful son, Mike Ogadiomhe, from the exalted post of the President’s Chief of Staff, and pledging their total, unconditional and unalloyed support, as they used to say back when politics was colourful and cool, for his laudable Transformation Agenda.

    Ogadiomhe’s sin? They said he ate alone, unlike their great son, the late and much-lamented Okhai Mike Akhigbe.

    Watch out for the congratulatory advertisements in the more influential newspapers.