The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A different kind of madness

    “Madness need not be all break down. It may also be break-through. It is potential libration and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.” R. D. Laing

     

    There is so much madness going on in our nation Nigeria that a youth leader once asked on his Facebook page “Has madness become normal in Nigeria?” Many of us are probably asking the same questions too!

    For months I have been asking myself the following questions about this madness going on in our nation. Who can stop this madness? Who will stop this madness going on all over Nigeria? Who will step up to the plate of leadership and give this “madness” a deadly blow?

    I like to turn problems, questions and challenges upside down and inside out just so that I can see and find solutions that are not obvious – unique solutions. I love to put a twist on things! So, I put a twist on this madness issue by asking a new set of questions about madness.

    Such as “Is it possible to have a different kind of madness? Is it possible to have a good kind of madness? Is it possible to have a constructive and a productive kind of madness? Is it possible to have a kind of madness that creates positive energy? Is it possible to displace and replace one kind of madness with another kind of madness?

    A French writer and philosopher Voltaire said of madness: “To have erroneous perception and to reason correctly from them?” To Indian-born British writer Rudyard Kipling: “Everyone is more or less mad on one point.” Spain-born American poet, philosopher and novelist George Santayana says “Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.” Italian poet and dramatist Ugo Betti alleged “‘Mad’ is a term we used to describe a man who is obsessed with one idea and nothing else.” German poet and philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche states “Insanity in individuals is something rare but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule.”

    Napoleon said “The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.”

    U. S. writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes said “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.” British rock star and songwriter Mick Jagger said “The only true performance is the one which attains madness.” Canadian-born American writer Saul Bellow said “Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness too.”

    French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal said “Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” American writer Robert M. Pirsig said “The insane person is running a private unapproved film which he happens to like better than the current cultural, one.” Russian-born anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin said “The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!”

    From what all these people have said about madness one can deduce that it is possible to have kinds of madness (a) the negative kind of madness that destroys (b) And the positive kind of madness that builds, constructs and is creative.

    So, what kind of madness do we need to create that will tip the scale in favour of a new Nigeria?

    The Irish poet and playwright once said “The best lack conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity!” How can we have a constructive kind of madness for positive change?

    Is it possible to have a madness of hope for Nigeria? Is it possible to have a madness of faith for the future of our nation?

    Some synonyms of madness are aberration, craziness, dementia, derangement, insanity, lunacy, mania, delirium, frenzy, fury and rage. Synonyms of mad are crazed, crazy, delirious, demented, deranged, distracted, insane, irrational, lunatic, maniac, maniacal, enraged, furious, rabid, raging, violet, angry, incensed, provoked, wrathful, distracted, infatuated, wild, frantic, frenzied and raving.

    When we look at these words we can use some of them to describe what is happening in Nigeria in the negative and also they describe how we should feel as Nigerian citizens. As Nigerian citizens shouldn’t we be angry with all the negative madness ripping destruction through our land like a hurricane?

    It is said that it takes ‘fire to fight fire’. I believe it also takes madness to fight madness! It takes one kind of madness to fight a madness of another kind. We must fight this negative madness of hate and death with a positive madness of love, hope, faith, goodness etc

    Nigeria needs patriots in this dark hour of her history. We need to start asking ourselves “Who are our patriots? Where are our Patriots? Why are our patriots not enraged, raving mad, furious, angry and incensed with all the negative kind of madness going on in Nigeria? Why?

    Shouldn’t our patriots stand up and be counted for protecting our country? Shouldn’t our patriots defend our land against negative madness? Shouldn’t our patriots fight madness for madness using the positive kind of madness?

    Different people at different times in history had either the negative kind of madness or the positive kind of madness. Germany’s Adolf Hitler had a madness of racial superiority. And Winston Churchill countered Hitler’s negative madness with a different kind of madness of hope, boldness and courage! These were his words to his people during one of Britain’s darkest hour “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight…in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!”

    Mother Teresa fought the madness of poverty with a different kind of madness, a madness of compassion. Gandhi had a madness of non violence and he used it to fight the madness of imperialist oppression in India.

    Fela Anikulapo Kuti had a madness of social justice and he used his music to fight the madness of social injustice. Gani Fawehimi had a different kind of madness, a madness of upholding human rights and equity. He used his legal practice to fight the madness of the violation of human rights in Nigeria.

    We need patriots that will renew our pride in Nigeria through a different kind of madness. We need patriots who will restore hope in our hearts through a madness of hope. We need patriots who will call fellow Nigerians to action through a positive kind of madness of love. We need patriots who will give us faith for the future through a positive kind of madness of faith in Nigeria in spite of what we see daily! We need patriots who will give back to Nigeria (and Nigerians) through a positive kind of madness of goodness by sowing seeds of goodness daily in our land! We need patriots who will bring out the greatness in Nigeria (and Nigerians) through a positive kind of madness of greatness!

    At this dark hour on the chequered pavement of our mortal existence, we need the negative kind of madness displaced and replaced with a positive kind of madness that only patriots have and can give! Evil, must bow before good in our land! Our patriots have been equipped to ensure that they run evil out of our town and nation Nigeria!

     

    • Simoyan, a creative leader, innovator and author writes from Lagos

     

  • Still planning–and polling-without facts

    Still planning–and polling-without facts

    Back in 1966, the American economist, Dr Wolgang Stolper, on secondment from USAID to help prepare Nigeria’s First Development Plan (1962-68) accented the difficulty of the task, with a book appropriately titled “Planning without Facts.”

    This past week, the World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie-Françoise Marie-Nelly, warned during a workshop in Lagos for statisticians that there could be no meaningful development or evaluation of national strategies without quality statistics to identify socio-economic challenges.

    Little seems to have changed during the nearly five decades between.

    They have continued to draw up plans on practically every aspect of national life without facts. without even knowing how many people they are planning for, nor how they are constituted.

    The point of departure for serious national planning is the population census. It is the body of data – the sampling frame – from which field investigators draw up a representative sample for the kind of study and analysis that will make it possible for them to apply their findings to the general population with confidence.

    But nobody knows the population of Nigeria to the nearest 25 million. From the 1950s, the population census has been padded, for political reasons. Instead of rectifying the errors of the preceding census, every subsequent census has reinforced and even amplified them. Each exercise has been in effect an exercise in programmed inflation.

    So much for the population size.

    When it comes to the distribution of the population, especially the pattern of distribution, census after census has been marked by a sharp departure from the laws of demography. The Sahel, much of it semi-arid, is credited with a larger share of the population than the coastal, forest and savanna regions.

    It is true that the North occupies a much larger area than the South. But even this larger area does not satisfactorily explain the population distribution as manifested in the national census. Neither the ecology nor the economy can support the large populations with which vast stretches of the North are credited.

    Even where there is a large population as in metropolitan Kano, not to be confused with the rest of Kano State – it still defies reason that, after Jigawa was excised from it, Kano is still credited with a larger population than Lagos.

    Nobody, it is necessary to insist, knows the size of the national population to the nearest 25 million, or, to be quite generous, the nearest 15 percent. Now, if a study reports findings with a margin of error of plus or minus 15 percent, we would reject it on the ground that it is no better than guesswork. Even if the findings fall within the acceptable margin of error, they would still be questionable because it is impossible to use flawed data to arrive at valid findings.

    But we continue not only to plan with the census figures confected every ten years, but also to invest them with the sanctity of actuality. This is the aeronautical equivalent of flying blind.

    And it explains, in some measure, why nothing in Nigeria works the way it was designed to work. To be sure, corruption and incompetence play a large part in the national dysfunction, but the dearth of reliable facts and figures must also be accounted a major contributory factor.

    Take as an example the oil industry, the lifeblood of the economy. Nobody knows how much oil is extracted from our waters or shores. In 1980, Professor Ayodele Awojobi, the University of Lagos polymath, revealed that the barrel used for lifting oil in Nigeria was four gallons larger than the standard barrel. The situation may well have been rectified, but the fact remains that nobody knows how much oil is actually lifted.

    When they say that as much as one-fourth of Nigeria’s oil output is stolen, that is just guesswork based on guesswork.

    Just as nobody knows how much oil is extracted, nobody knows how much oil is consumed. During the last oil ‘subsidy” crisis, the NNPC and the Department of Petroleum Resources gave wildly different figures for national daily consumption. It follows that, if consumption of petroleum products was indeed being subsidised, it was impossible to calculate the amount of subsidy. Yet a trainload of projects was rolled out, to be funded with the money that would be realised from cutting the alleged subsidy.

    Hardly a day passes without one official declaring with certitude how many billions would accrue to the federal exchequer from ending rice or wheat-flour or cement or sugar or poultry imports, and how many billion tons of cassava would be harvested in the next season as a result of improved seedlings provided by the government.

    Whenever they put out the inflation rate, you have to ask: “In what country do these people live?” For the figure bears almost no correspondence to the experience of the people. And just the other day, two government agencies gave different figures for the rate of unemployment, each of them guesswork at best.

    Because there is no reliable census data, and thus no reliable sampling frame, it is impossible to draw a probabilistic sample – one in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being represented. In the absence of such a sample, it is impossible to conduct meaningful public opinion polls in Nigeria. Yet, results of opinion polls conducted by the media or third parties are routinely reported in the news, especially during elections.

    In one notorious instance, a newspaper lavishly published “exit polls” on an election that was yet to be held. In another instance, the forecast for the presidential election published by the same newspaper, in conjunction with a foreign polling agency that refused to submit its methodology to scrutiny, was matched in every particular by the outcome. Nate Silver, the statistician who predicted Barack Obama’s victory in the 2102 presidential election with near-perfect accuracy, could not have done better.

    But given the flawed sampling frame on which the Nigerian poll was based, it is perfectly permissible to infer, as many commentators did, that the election result had been determined, and the task before the pollsters and the newspaper was to fix their findings to that result.

    The entry on the Nigerian scene two years ago of NOIPolls, a partner with Gallup USA qualifying itself as “the No. 1 for country-specific polling services in the West African region,” promises to improve opinion polling in the country. NOIPolls says it enhances decision-making across all sectors of the Nigerian economy by delivering “forward-thinking research and relevant data,

    Dr Goodluck Jonathan will no doubt be heartened by the finding in its August 2013 poll that that six of every 10 Nigerians (the actual figure is 57 percent) approved his job performance, up four points from the previous month, and the highest since January 2013.

    Not bad for a month marked by tumult within the ruling PDP, nationwide strike by university teachers, and killings the Boko Haram on a blood-curdling scale.

    He will most certainly be surprised to find, however, that his approval is strongest not in his South-South redoubt (66 percent), but in the South East (76 percent), followed by the North- Central (70 percent).

    To borrow the language of election analysts in years past, could Dr Jonathan’s strong approval rating in the South East be due to the Anyim Pius Anyim Factor – Anyim being the dynamic and high-achieving Secretary to the Government of the Federation? By the same reasoning, Dr Jonathan’s impressive approval rating in North Central will have to be attributed to the Namadi (Vice President) Sambo Factor.

    General Muhammadu Buhari, where are you, sir?

    No prizes for making it out that Dr Jonathan’s less-than-robust rating in the South South has got to be a manifestation of the Amaechi Factor.

    Dr Jonathan has nothing to fear concerning the Southwest, where 33 percent of the residents were neutral about his job performance, unlike the Northwest where 36 percent disapprove his performance. Could that be the Babangida Aliyu factor?

    NOIPolls is a huge improvement on what previously passed for opinion polling in Nigeria. Its latest poll, conducted from August 12 through 15, was based on a random sample of 1009 phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 and above in the six geopolitical zones. The reported margin of error is a healthy plus or minus 3 percent.

    One question arises from the survey, however. Do the findings also reflect the views of the 30 percent of the population that, according to a previous NOIPolls investigation, does not own phones?

    By the way, is it true that the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, owns the outfit wholly or substantially?

  • The giant totters on at 53

    We’ll probably hear the same old cliché repeated at several venues in the 36 state capitals plus Abuja today: our behemoth with the feet of clay has several reasons to celebrate at 53. As it was in the years past, so it will be this year, next year and perhaps forevermore. It is a ritual that Nigerians, long used to living on that intangible staple called hope and its derivatives are well familiar. It comes in the simple and perhaps familiar prose: the over-sold Nigerian dream and its infinite possibilities may have turned dross and forlorn, hope, abided still.

    And what do they say is proof? That the geographical entity called Nigeria still exists?

    Guess it’s time to paraphrase the lines of the scripture: in hope we live and have our being.

    At 53, no one denies that Nigeria is anything but a huge disappointment. Everything from the economy, to the infrastructure, politics, education, right down to the value system has suffered denudation to various degrees. Our fathers truly, may have munched the sour grapes; it is our generation’s teeth that are set on the edge. The sins of our fathers have returned to haunt us; so we hang on the straw of hope.

    Where is the hope in an environment where things continue to get progressively worse, not better? Where millions of children still die of malaria and other preventable diseases? Where is hope when in spite of the boom in numbers of educational institutions, the real indicators are of decline in access?

    Want proof? How about the record 10 million out-of-school kids? Or the 1.2 million candidates who, for reasons of limited spaces in our tertiary institutions, have no hope of securing a space. Where is the hope in an environment where it is possible to shut down the university system for three months running without those in charge wincing?

    The situation of the economy is all-too-familiar. We grew up in the 60s to behold the wonders of the groundnut pyramids, the stacks of the cocoa beans, the rubber, and the timber – all made for export. All that now belongs in the history books. Despite our record earnings from oil, we are comparatively a poor nation. Check this out: In 2012, that is, 52 after independence, our per capita income was US$ 1052.34. South Africa by comparison in 2012 had a per capita income of $6003 and Singapore $33,988. With monthly import bill of close to $7 billion, our manufacturing comes to zilch in real terms.

    So where is the hope when nearly every manufactured item is imported; where the few indigenous manufacturers are rendered uncompetitive by inclement policies of government?

    Today, one out of every four eligible Nigerians is believed to be out of work. Among the youths, one out of two has no gainful employment. At a time many more factories are either closing shop or about to, the government continues to make a song of foreign direct investment as well as outlandish claims of economic growth. As for inequality, this has since grown in leaps and bounds with few Nigerians displaying stupendous wealth in the midst of pervasive squalor. Once a thriving class, the middle class has virtually disappeared.

    So, where is the hope of security where such large numbers of youths are kept idle even as the few rich have no qualms about living ostentatiously?

    Today, the security situation is not only parlous, life, as in the famed Hobbesian jungle has turned brutish and short. In the East, citizens have the scourge of kidnappers to contend with; in the North-west, it is the Boko Haram; elsewhere it is everyone to himself and God for us all. How do we turn the tide without confronting the problem of under-performing economy which has since awakened the old daemons of religion and ethnicity?

    Now, I do not seek here to understate the structural problems of the Nigerian state. Only the most incurable believer in the unity would fail to be wearied by the tell-tale signs of Nigeria’s degenerative disease. Of course, I agree that our federal structure as currently practiced is not only problematic but clearly dysfunctional. My task is to point at the possibilities even within the current warped framework.

    The first challenge is to make the economy work. Part of the problem in my view is our increasingly bizarre definition of productive labour. To the extent that rent has remained a pervasive feature of the economy, there is at the moment very little incentive for work. That has to change if Nigeria will ever survive her current travails.

    One other thing that must happen is to ensure that the economy is made truly competitive. Now, the place of modern infrastructure in the making of modern competitive economy cannot be overstated; too bad that the attention has been either too slow or too late in this regard. The road infrastructure needs to be improved upon; ditto the railways. Electricity is of course given; just as the banks needs fixing to catalyse the economy.

    It seems to me however that one of the greatest challenges facing the Nigerian economy is how to develop and grow the critical skills pool for industry and the real sector. Once upon a time, the nation had a pool of artisans, masons and other crafts to draw upon; these were graded and remunerated accordingly. Today’s artisan class is a laissez faire class with poor work ethic – a class that seeks rewards over and above the value delivered. Improving their capacity seems to me the surest strategy to address the unemployment problem in the long run.

    Would these moderate the resurgence of incipient ethnic nationalism? It may or may not; I am convinced however that the chance of Nigeria’s survival depends on growing the economic base. A prosperous Nigeria would seem better positioned to deal with the centrifugal forces currently assailing her. The matter, as it is, goes beyond hope.

     

     

     

     

     

  • SNC: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

    The war to reclaim from Troy, the beautiful Helen Paris the Trojan had stolen from Sparta, had lasted 10 years. Yet, the Greeks could not sack Troy.

    Achilles, the charmed Greek with the fatal heel, had died in battle. So had Hector, the bravest of the Trojans, defending their city from the besieging Greeks. It was fated to end a bloody stalemate – until Odysseus sold perhaps the greatest war dummy in all of antiquity: the Trojan horse.

    Odysseus contrived to be built a gargantuan wooden horse, on which was etched: “For their return home, the Greeks dedicate this offering to Athena.” It was a sacred gift to Athena, the sea goddess, to pilot home the retreating Greek navy. But in its cavernous interior were hidden soldiers.

    The Trojans fell for the trick and pulled the horse inside their city. Once inside, the crafty Greeks wasted no time: Troy became history.

    Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!

    This is no foray into the Classics and its enchanting stories. But David Mark, senate president of the Federal Republic’s sudden conversion to the idea of a national conference – like some Saul turning Paul on the way to Damascus – is somewhat reminiscent of the Trojan dummy.

    Even more surprising has been the almost uncritical zest with which the traditional advocates of the Sovereign National Conference (SNC) have rushed at Senator Mark’s seeming conversion. The prodigal has finally come around; their body language seems to scream, so it’s time to celebrate that landmark!

    That, to be sure, is not completely out of place. For one, Mark was simply one of the most notorious anti-democracy elements of the military era, particularly after the annulment of MKO Abiola’s 12 June 1993 presidential mandate; with even some literature alleging that he threatened to shoot MKO should he become president, a charge the former army brigadier-general has denied.

    For another, Senate President Mark is one of yesterday’s many democracy anti-heroes that nevertheless sit pretty in today’s democracy. So, literally eating their cake and also keeping it, such scions of impunity, for whom “democracy” is just a continuation of perpetual power gravy in another guise, have no need to stomach any gobbledegook some quaint political geeks call SNC.

    So, maybe for a Mark to even acknowledge a national confab, under any guise, is a thing to cheer!

    Still, in fairness to Mark, even as a national conference seeming convert, via his September 17 speech welcoming the Senate to a new session, he has maintained his centralist essence.

    While the romantics talk of an unfettered talk of “ethnic nationalities” to chart a future for Nigeria – with the people through a grand referendum endorsing or rejecting their decisions, and not some dissembling parliament cherry-picking these decisions – Mark has insisted on a limited palaver with no-go areas.

    But that very preference ought to have triggered the alarm, immediately awakening a sense of the déjà vu.

    Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the greatest dissembler of them all, probably has the patent for “no go areas” when, during his imperious military reign, he declared the Nigerian national question as settled. Of course, he fancied himself some Juan Domingo Peron of Nigeria, who would march from martial rule to democratic triumph; and under his blissful suzerainty, everyone would live happily ever after! That was some dream – until it all blew up in his face!

    Then came Sani Abacha, the most virulent of them all, gifting a naive country some “National Constitutional Conference with full constituent powers”. All Abacha wanted was to buy time, get rid of the likes Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and consolidate his power. He succeeded more than he ever dreamed. But Nigeria went further down the mire, as a developmental disposition that should spawn prosperity for its longsuffering citizens.

    Olusegun Obasanjo too, during his second coming, in 2005, staged his own gambit, which he called National Political Reform Conference, not programmed for any fundamental change.

    It is the turf of centralist gamers, gaming away while their country sinks further in the mire!

    Even current national conference converts are not unlike a cluster of the blind, arrayed around an elephant. Some feel its tusk, and swear indeed, the elephant is as smooth as ivory. Yet, others feel its limb and swear, with equal vehemence, the mighty beast is as gross and coarse as they come!

    Indeed, aside from military-era centralist gamers, a southern lobby has of late been championing SNC, with Awo franchise-seeking elements from the South West, teaming up with Ijaw nationalists from the South-South. While the one seeks relevance in rapidly changing South West political equations, the other evinces a more civil approach to the Goodluck Jonathan presidential cause, beyond insane threats from the creeks.

    Only the SNC classicists, however, would appear clear in their mind, on what they expect of a grand national talk; and how its decisions must be handled. It is to see how Frederick Lugard’s amalgam of 1914, always threatening to abort at the slightest pressure, could somewhat be re-processed into some more enduring compound, that could stand the test of time.

    But even these classicists are no united phalanx. They are more like voices of Babel, which din somewhat drifts toward the same direction. In contrast, the confab gamers, with their perennial see-saw, appear committed to causing maximum distraction to buy time. The snag, however, is: time is running out!

    For the umpteenth time, SNC is no game. It is a last-ditch effort to restructure Nigeria – potentially great, but perhaps fated to carry its greatness to its self-dug grave, without ever actualising its potentials, unless something drastic is done – into a productive and prosperous entity.

    That is a much better and brighter vision than the present parasitic state, at war with itself; and its citizens, tragic sacrificial lambs on the altar of self-caused chaos – the latest being the September 29 Boko Haram slaughter of 40 students at the College of Agriculture, Gujba, in Yobe State.

    Incidentally, today is the last October 1 before the centenary of Lugard’s troubled amalgamation. But from shortly after 1 October 1960 independence when the young country ran into political storm, the initial duo of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (President) and Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (Prime Minister), had been succeeded by a relay of others on the anniversary dais: Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Obasanjo (second coming), Umaru Yar’Adua and now, Goodluck Jonathan.

    Each year, aside from plastic celebrations by those in power, the National Day almost always provokes a lament on the Nigerian question. This lamentation cannot go on much longer, with Lugard’s amalgam unravelling with avoidable tragedies.

    For gamers buying time, the game is well neigh over. Nigeria cannot afford a Troy-like dummy, though self-sold, that could consign it to history.

    To the establishment playing for time, therefore, the choice is stark: embrace SNC or go bust.

    That is the peaceful way to salvage Lugard’s patchwork – or lose everything.

     

  • Nigeria will still be great

    I  congratulate Nigerians on the 53rd anniversary of our nation’s independence. But as we celebrate, we must also take time to reflect on the state of the nation. The Nigerian project is a bold experiment in nation-building. It is an experiment that has proved to be a challenging undertaking. But, for me, building Nigeria is an experiment that is well worth the attempt.

    At independence, on this day in 1960, Nigeria was a country full of high hopes, and good prospects, with its diverse peoples filled with aspirations. But somewhere along the line, we got it fundamentally wrong, with the consequences that, today, 53 years on, we are still struggling to get the basics right. The country is faced with tough difficulties and mortal dangers on multiple fronts. Our efforts at nation-building are being affronted by manifold crises of under-development – bad governance; poor planning; industrial collapse; decay of basic infrastructure; socio-economic backwardness; political instability; insecurity; widespread poverty; social, ethnic and religious tension; high incidence of crime and criminality; and terrorism among many other woes.

    These are undeniably serious setbacks to our development march; but they do not amount to any permanent incapacity for us not to move forward. Indeed, setbacks are necessary but temporary impediments along the path to progress. Therefore, I am at one with American entrepreneur, Les Brown, who counselled that: ‘Anytime you suffer a setback or disappointment. Put your head down and plow ahead’. Hence, I remain convinced that the Nigerian project is a viable one. And I am optimistic that we may yet get it right as a country; and convert our much vaunted great potentials into actual benefits for our people. All we need is sound leadership and good governance.

    Indeed, our story on the independence path has not been doom and gloom only; it is also strewn with bright patches and shades of greatness. We have had sporting glories, a Nobel Prize in literature, representation in the top universities in the world and a Nigerian got in the Forbes 100 top list. For the most part, we groan so much at the cup being three quarter empty that we forgot it’s also one quarter full.

    As someone in leadership position, I set my sight firmly on the promises the future holds and the opportunities that our great country can offer. My aspirations are for Nigeria to be able to overcome its development challenges, and to become one of the top 10 economies in the world in the shortest time possible. But we need to work towards achieving these goals. As a matter of urgency, we must shift our economic paradigm from sole dependence on oil towards productive diversification. Agriculture is a viable alternative here. We must develop our agriculture towards achieving food security. We must give primacy to food production as a strategic national imperative, for it is a sure basis for sustainable economic development.

    Indeed, pursuing food security as a strategic value goes beyond merely feeding the people. Food security is a core pillar of national security. No nation can have genuine national security without food security. Therefore, if we make food security the driving force of our agricultural development, the accompanying spin-offs it will generate can only add greater value to our overall economic development efforts.

    My conviction about agriculture as a viable solution to our unemployment problem lay in the fact that, an agricultural economy that is grounded in food production cannot fail. People can give up luxury items if occasion demands it. But for as long as we remain human, we will eat; food is a biological necessity! Luxury item are a matter of choice. People for instance can very easily forgo chocolate; but it would be hard to imagine them forgoing staple food like rice or potato. Food security is an essential condition for national security.

    Related to this is the need to gainfully and meaningfully engage our youths by creating jobs and employment opportunities. Our present chronic youth unemployment situation is a potential source of social explosion. There is profound wisdom in productively engaging our youths. Young people are some of society’s greatest assets; but they can also be a major source of its problem. In Nigeria, youths constitute the bulk of our productive population, and that bulk is overwhelmingly unemployed! In other words, we have a potentially advantageous youth bulge in our population, which could also be turned into a bug by prolonged lack of employment.

    Young people are energetic, talented, innovative, aspirational, and daring. These are good qualities for economic enterprise. We only need to be creative to harness them for the rapid socio-economic transformation of our country. Again, agriculture presents enormous possibilities in this regard. Our huge population offers immense opportunities as a market, and for massive job creation, that can absorb our teeming unemployed youths, and help in eradicating poverty.

    Another area of great promise is information and communications technology. ICT also offers enormous possibilities for creating jobs and for meaningfully engaging our youths. After all, ICT is a field that is not only a product of innovation, it is driven by human creativity. Innovation and creativity are an area of strength for young people. They will have their imagination taxed and their minds energised. It can help focus the vibrant energies of our youths on positive development. In addition, it is a fertile area of almost infinite possibilities where the only limitation is the human imagination. Again, all we need do is to get our acts together; think and organise so that we can make the most of the opportunities available to us.

    Essential to modern life and any economic endeavour is power, but this is an area in which the nation has been badly struggling. The circa 4,000mw the nation produces is a huge joke. This, when the economy is in full throttle, cannot even serve the Ikeja business district. Admittedly there have been great efforts at addressing the problem but they have amounted to little. This is the time to discard the old approach and tackle the problem of power squarely. We must be jolted by the realisation that without sufficient electric power, all other efforts will come to nought.

    I am not trying to make light of the formidable challenges involved in making a success of the Nigerian project; my point is that the difficulties are not an excuse for failure. In fact, they are a compelling reason for us to try to overcome them. I am an unflinching believer in the assertion of George Bernard Shaw that ‘[t]he only real failure in life is the failure to try’. It is in our utmost interest not to fail to try. Success is only born of trying, and I am in no doubt at all that if we genuinely keep trying, we shall surely overcome.

    October 1st of every year offers us the opportunity to review the journey of nationhood and to come to the awareness that just as we have the prospect of greatness, so also are we faced with the grim possibility of tipping over the brink; the probability of outcomes now depends on the choices that we make. It is my fervent hope and prayer, however, that we will always make the right choices and realise our greatest potential.

    Once again, I congratulate us all and wish us happy independence celebrations.

     

    • Aregbesola is Governor of the State of Osun

     

  • Nigeria’s cup @53; half full or half empty?

    When students of College of Agriculture, Gujba in Yobe state went to bed Saturday night on September 28, 2013 at their hostel located within the school premises, 40 kilometres from Damaturu, the state capital, not a few among them expected to wake up to a bright, beautiful day the following morning. But agents of death operating under the umbrella (umbrella!) of Boko Haram decided to cut short their sleep and sent no fewer than 40 of them to their graves.

    Their massacre was shocking to say the least, but public reaction to the killings tends to paint a picture of a people growing thick skin to tragedies and related occurrences.

    Having grown accustomed to indiscriminate and unnecessary loss of lives in their hundreds, so to speak, Nigerians now react to such massacres as Boko Haram’s unrelenting killings of innocent people by mere shrug of the shoulder as if nothing serious had happened. Such is the situation in the country today that loss of human lives no matter the number, doesn’t seem to mean anything to us any longer.

    But it wasn’t like this before. A time there was when it was almost unheard of to see a dead body in public, no to talk of corpses littering the entire place. As children then, even if somebody died in the house we were kept away from the corpse, more out of respect for our own sensibilities as children than even the dignity of the dead. But what do we have today, mass killing, slaughter of even children under the guise of religion or ethnic purity/superiority.

    Some of our leaders have become ethnic champions, arming local militias from their ethnic group to fight ‘enemies’ from the other ethnic group, spilling innocent blood. The Police have been compromised. The military, hitherto a national institution is being corrupted, religious bigotry can now be found in barracks; religious zealots in uniform even open the armoury to their fellow fundamentalists to use public resources to prosecute their religious agenda,. It is that bad. But like I said earlier, it wasn’t like this before.

    Ninety days and we are still counting. Yes, the strike action embarked upon by academic staff of Nigerian university is in its third month now and there appears to be no end in sight soon. If the strike had not been called, the students would be rounding up another semester about now, preparing for the end of semester examinations. But they have been forced to stay at home doing nothing, at extra costs to their parents, in the immediate, but at a far greater cost to the nation on the long run.

    Yet those who put us in this trouble, those who are toying with the future of our youths, those who are putting Nigeria’s competitiveness in future in danger had the best of education anywhere in the Commonwealth here at home, uninterrupted. They had the Harmattan semester at its time and Rain semester when it was due. I am not talking about our leaders alone; the lecturers are equally as guilty as their counterpart in government. Yes, their counterpart in government. Don’t forget our president used to be a university lecturer.

    As head of the household, the man, if he is lucky to have a job, now sets aside a certain percentage of his meagre salary as budget for petrol to fuel his ‘I better pass my neighbour’ electricity generator just because public power supply is almost always not there. And yet he still has to settle his monthly electricity bill for power not supplied. Nine out of every ten times, there is no public power supply so most people go on generator, and so at night hardly sleeps because of the noise from the generators. 53 years after independence, we still don’t have uninterrupted power supply. It was better in the past, even under colonial rule.

    The few people amongst us who are lucky to own a house, the source of the funding for the house notwithstanding, have virtually built a prisonlike wall around the house to ward off robbers and burglars. People now secure their vehicles with all manner of security gadgets including ‘African Insurance’ to prevent them from thieves. Even when you honestly work hard to earn a decent living, you are afraid to spend the fruit of your sweat the way you want for fear of hoodlums’ attack. There is insecurity everywhere. Parents now keep extra watch on their children when they go to school, and are perpetually on their knees praying for their safe return. Why? There are kidnappers everywhere.

    Nobody is immune. Even men of God now go about with military-like security. What are they afraid of? Plenty. Most of them ride exotic cars, in fleet. Some even have private jets, majority of them are sole signatory or with spouse to their churches’ bank account. You see a jobless young man today, most likely a graduate, after a while, you see him again and he starts prefixing his name with Pastor, you ask him when he became one, he tells you he had just been called. By whom you ask? You know the answer.

    There are Pastors all over the place the same way some among the Islamic faithful call themselves Ustaz, yet the crime rate is multiplying, corruption is rising, Nigeria today is one of the worst destinations for investors, on paper, because of corruption, but the irony is that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Nigeria is one of the highest, if not the highest in Africa (according to Abuja), why? They say Nigeria is the only country in the world with the highest return on investment. So, in spite of the risk, some people are ready to bring in their money, if they are lucky they make it in two years what ordinarily should take ten years. Look at the telecoms companies, internet providers, even pay per view television. I am not inferring anything, but here anything goes, you can go to bed a pauper and wake up a millionaire, without even sweating. This is our Nigeria. Dubious people all over the place, 419s, fraudsters, you name them. They are here.

    But this was not the way our forefathers conceptualised Nigeria, even though the British forced us to be together, our founding fathers accepted it, and they, in their wisdom chose federalism, where each federating unit is allowed to grow and move at its own pace within the limit of its own resources. Today we are only a federal republic in name, everything so to speak is centralised. Nothing happens anywhere in Nigeria without Abuja saying so. And we say there is problem, why wouldn’t there be problem?

    There are many of them, yes, but then everything cannot be said to be all gloomy. We’ve had some doses of sunshine here and there to make our cup half full, but then if one looks at the flip side one is likely to see a cup half empty. Whatever cup you are seeing is Nigeria, but look in the mirror first before making any judgement. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY NIGERIA.

  • The drought here? Not, yet!

    It seems highly unlikely that many Nigerians paid much attention to the issues raised by the Rotimi Amaechi-led Nigeria Governors Forum outside of the body’s call for the resignation of the Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala last week. That would be understandable given that very little gets discussed these days outside of the prism of “Jonathan versus the G-7”, “PDP versus nPDP”, “GEJ and 2015: to run or not to run” etc.

    The call – coming from the governors whose opposition to the Jonathan-led federal government is well known comes with the temptation to dismiss the messengers with their message. Unfortunately, it seems that those who would rather dismiss the governors even without the benefit of looking at the merit of their position would appear just as culpable in foisting the reign of fiscal impunity on the polity.

    So, what is the problem this time?

    The text of the governors’ well-presented communiqué is rather explicit: The federal government stands accused of that fiscal iniquity called cheating. The governors not only believe that the federal government has something to hide; they insist that its accounting of the accruals into the federation account is fraudulent.

    As unsettling as that view may sound at this time; I don’t even think the view is anything new.

    Here is how the governors put it: “The non compliance with the revenue projections of the Federal Government of Nigeria 2013 Budget is a direct breach of the provisions of the Appropriation Act 2013. Members expressed concern in the management of the economy by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy and called for a strict adherence to the Appropriation Act 2013, failing which she should resign”.

    Flowing from that, the governors would restate their demand for “the separation of the office of the Accountant General of the Federation from that of the Accountant General of the Federal Government for accountability and better management of the economy”.

    I don’t think anyone should miss the point at stake. The issue primarily is one of the shrunk exchequer; the other demands like the separation of the office of the Accountant General of the Federal Government from that of the federation, and the resignation of the minister are at best ancillary and tangential.

    Let’s examine the issues a bit more closely. Before now, the idea that the exchequer is actually shrinking was not only scoffed at; indeed that the economy was in any form of trouble was, at least to the best of my knowledge, considered preposterous. Today, in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the massive revenue leakages from oil theft and associated production shut-ins, only the federal government can afford to live in the illusion that the economy – or the budget which relies on oil revenue for between 75-85 percent – is anything but in deep trouble.

    Here are few proofs. First is the claim by the 36 states of the federation that they are yet to receive arrears of N466billion from the federation account in the last three months. Indeed, few days after Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State was reported as bemoaning the imminent precarious situation, Niger State commissioner for finance, Alhaji Mahmoud Kpako Bello, would in Leadership newspaper on Sunday give the breakdown of the amounts due to the 36 states from the federation account. According to the Niger State representative on the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), the states are owed arrears of three months totalling N121 billion. Another N140 billion that ought to have been paid in August is said to be still outstanding. And this month, another shortfall of over N90 billion is already reported.

    The second proof is the decree recently rolled out by the federal government that revenue would henceforth be based on actual collections instead of the budgeted value. This is perhaps because the country only realised N4.39 trillion as the gross federally collected revenue in the first seven months – a shortfall of N443.76 billion from actual projections for the period.

    The issue here is not that the price of our sweet crude is in decline; on the contrary, the ruling price continues to exceed the price posted as benchmark in the budget. The problem really is the thriving industry of stolen crude.

    Only last week, a United Kingdom-based think-tank, Chatham House released a rather conservative – but nonetheless scathing – report on the theft now said to have reached an industrial scale.

    The report paints a daily average loss of 100,000 barrels – that is, some five percent of its daily crude output –in the first quarter of the year. As if to confirm the uniquely opaque character of the Nigerian oil industry in which integrity of industry numbers are assumed without verification, the report would also note that the amount does not even include the goings-on in the export terminals.

    Howbeit, the overall picture painted in the report is one of an industry riddled with poor governance, violent opportunism, and one in which organised crime has festered.

    Are the governors crying wolf where there was none? It must be admitted that the governors opted to play politics when they put the finance minister on the spot as against President Goodluck Jonathan on whose desk the buck stops. Not that the book-keeper is less of the sinning party; but then, why leave out the principal under whose direction the book-cooking took place?

    As it is, there are clearly two aspects to the governors’ grouse, both of which in saner climes would warrant drastic measures.

    The first is the absurd accounting practices under which the federal government hides to illegally short-change the other beneficiaries from the federally distributable pool.

    How much of the crude is stolen? Does our famed chancellor of the exchequer actually know? Is it 100,000 bpd as claimed by the think-tank – or the 400,000 being bandied by the administration? How much of this figure is stolen? What fraction is shut-in? Does our overrated technocrat know? Does anyone in the administration know? And shouldn’t those who do not know yield the space for those who know? How about getting everybody to a joint sitting to examine the books if one party has nothing to hide? Isn’t that what transparency is all about?

    The second is the shame of losing 400,000 barrels per day in output. At a conservative price of $100, that comes to $40 million dollars lost daily through the activities of oil thieves. Is anyone still in charge? Don’t ask me what the combined forces of the Army, Navy and the Air Force are doing to combat the scourge. The last time I checked, I was told that the business has been outsourced to our erstwhile creek lords.

    And yet someone has dared to complain about the drizzle; well, it hasn’t started raining yet!

  • Just following up

    Just following up

    We journalists are notoriously remiss in following up on the news that we usually report with such breathless excitement. All too often, we get caught up in the foam of events. Like bees in search of pollen, we hop from one event to another, oblivious of what had gone before. We rarely follow through.

    It is therefore by way of personal atonement that I return to three major issues that have all but vanished from the news horizon.

    Whatever happened to the government of Bayelsa State’s audacious programme to extirpate the epidemic of rumour-mongering that has been sweeping the riverine terrain and threatening to plunge all its glittering achievements right back into the swamps?

    The last we heard of the project, a high-powered committee comprising representatives of the secret service, the police, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (ha!), civil society and other relevant groups–I almost wrote “stakeholders” — was at work to produce a tough remedy that Governor Seriake Dickson would move the State Assembly to enact into law.

    The outlines are still hazy, but some hot lines and web sites would be dedicated to the project. Anyone who is not sure whether what he has heard is the gospel truth or just malicious gossip – which is often nothing but stark rumour – has only to call the hot line or consult the web sites to get the authentic facts from certified officials operating round the clock.

    Those who fail to avail themselves of this unique service and end up wittingly or unwittingly peddling rumours, however benign, will have only themselves to blame when the law comes into effect.

    Are the verification centres up and running?

    I ask because I would like to check out some rumour that has been gusting in Bayelsa lately.

    It concerns a mighty personage who wears, among other hats, that of permanent secretary-at-large in the state’s civil service. I hear that senior officials who have been murmuring that she is not qualified for the distinction and that her appointment was in every sense arbitrary have decided, under the aegis of Bayelsa Civil Servants for Due Process and Transparency, to take the matter to the next level.

    According to sources, who have asked me not to identify them lest they be persecuted, members of the organisation passed a unanimous resolution at a recent meeting declaring that the way the personage aforementioned has been carrying on is “incompatible with the ethos of the public service, and is capable of bringing the Bayelsa State civil service into disrepute if it has not already done so.”

    The resolution, they tell me, is only the first step to securing through the courts a cease and desist order that would, without prejudice to any other positions she may occupy or assign herself, have the effect of restraining the personage from parading herself as a permanent secretary in the Bayelsa State Civil Service in any guise or disguise, and from enjoying the benefits pertaining thereunto.

    Surely, you too must have heard the rumour, ladies and gentlemen of the Bayelsa Task Force on Rumour-mongering. For the benefit of the people of Bayelsa and indeed the teeming readers of this newspaper in Nigeria and abroad, I respectfully request that you confirm or dispel it at your earliest convenience.

    I have my own views on the matter, but they cannot be a substitute for the definitive verdict that only The Task Force can issue.

    Second, whatever happened to the National Good Governance Tour that Information Minister (and now acting Minister of Defence) Labaran Maku has been staging to showcase to all those who are too obtuse to notice and appreciate the great transformation the Goodluck Jonathan Administration has wrought across the land.

    The last time I wrote on the subject, Maku had just concluded a controversial tour of Edo State. I was definitely in error in stating that he was hopping from one site to another in an executive jet, and I hereby offer my remorseful apologies.

    I have since learned that he rides nothing more opulent than those passenger buses purchased for the public under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), and that the only reason he has not availed himself and his touring party of rail travel is that a good many of the sites are not accessible by train.

    When will he take his good governance gospel to Yobe, or Borno?

    Boko Haram or no Boko Haram, there are in those states shining examples of the irreversible Transformation the Jonathan Administration has wrought. Are they not worth showcasing, if only to give the lie to those who claim that underdevelopment is the cause of the insurgency roiling those cities, and to confound the insurgents themselves?

    The insurgents, knowing that he has the armed might of the Federal Government at his call as acting Minister of Defence, will be on their best behaviour while the tour lasts. The Honourable Minster may even succeed in charming them with his winning ways and his elegant tailoring into signing a permanent truce.

    Your move, then, Honourable Minister.

    In Bukola Saraki’s time as governor, wonderful things were said and written about how he had quietly transformed Kwara State into Nigeria’s breadbasket with his far-sighted agricultural policy and technocratic acumen.

    The vehicle for the revolution was the Shonga Farms, operated by 15 white farmers, who had lost out in the land redistribution programme through which President Robert Mugabe sought to empower his dispossessed people. With generous provisions of land and vital infrastructure and cash, the farmers were four years later producing lakes of milk, mountains of butter, and pyramids of rice and maize and sorghum and guinea corn, among other items.

    But there was one big problem. These products were available only in up-scale supermarkets in Abuja, so that, if Kwara was at al a breadbasket, it was a breadbasket only to the opulent denizens of the federal capital. Over time, the products vanished even from the shelves and cold stores of the up-scale supermarkets.

    What happened to Saraki’s revolution?

    It was over before it began. But the media took Saraki’s word for it that an agricultural revolution characterised by superabundance had indeed occurred in Kwara. Today, according to persons familiar with the place, Shonga Farm looks like an abandoned junkyard littered with the debris of broken machinery and structures, a monument to mass deception.

    Unlike the media, Saraki’s handpicked successor, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed was not fooled. Months after taking office, he was already laying the groundwork for his own agricultural revolution, this time through a partnership with Cornell University in Ithaca, in the sub-arctic clime of up-state New York

    Surely, the attentive audience is entitled to ask: How many agricultural revolutions can you have within five years in the same location?

  • ASUU strike and its many ironies

    The on-going Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, already in its third month, has come with grand ironies.

    These ironies are grand enough to evoke that famous personal rebuke from the straight-as-pin Parson, among wide-and-merry co-pilgrims to St Thomas Becket shrine at Canterbury, England, in Geoffery Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “If gold rusts, what would iron do?”

    The Tales of Chaucer (c. 1343-1400) was a biting sarcasm of the grand hypocrisy of Middle Age Catholic England. The goodly Parson, a humble priest with modest parishioners, found himself in the midst of the flower of the English Roman Catholic, laity and clergy: the Miller whose thumb was golden with stealing his customers’ grain; the Summoner, spiritual thug and bully who made corrupt living as local papal police; the Pardoner, another unfazed spiritual racketeer who claimed he had, in his pouch, papal pardon “hot, fresh and smoking from Rome”, available at the right fee; and of course the handsome Wife of Bath, whose chaste exterior was not unlike the Biblical white sepulchre: glittering outside but rotten within.

    In the midst of such mass degeneracy, the Parson, though a moral icon, always cautioned himself, against skidding into the wide and merry way: “If gold rusts, what would iron do!”

    That was in 14th century England.

    In 21st century Nigeria, the Parson-spirit would appear totally non-existent.

    Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, PhD, was an academic totally made in Nigeria – BSc (Port Harcourt), MSc (Port Harcourt), PhD (Port Harcourt). To boot, His Excellency even reportedly had a teaching stint in a tertiary institution, before succumbing to graver matters of state: Deputy Governor, Governor, Vice President, Acting President, President to complete the ill-fated Umaru Yar’Adua’s term and now President on his own first term, ogling a second!

    Yet, His Excellency cannot defend the integrity of the system that made him. He would appear not to “give a damn” about the anguish of millions of Nigerian youth, out of school for three months and still counting; simply because they have an unfeeling, insensitive and irresponsible government, which does not seem to care about their future; about the throes of former colleagues in the Academia, condemned to scrounging water from stone because the Nigerian state simply doesn’t regard education as priority; about the collapse of the university system, acutely distressed and seriously creaking!

    Indeed, how the president has handled the ASUU strike, vis-a-vis the implosion in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), paints the iron-clad difference between the politician and the statesman: Jonathan the politician would rather worry about the next election by focusing on PDP troubles, than on the next generation by suffering distractions from the ASUU strike!

    If gold rusts, what would iron do!

    Of course, if the fish is rotten in the head, what there is left of the body? Prof. Ruquayyatu Rufa’i, sacked former Education minister – sacked not for the tardy handling of the ASUU crisis but because she is an ally of Jigawa Governor, Sule Lamido: no friend of the president ahead the 2015 electoral sweepstakes – promptly declared she would head back to her desk at Bayero University, Kano (BUK).

    That prompted Citizen Obo Effanga to ask on his facebook wall: will she then join the ASUU strike? The irony was apparently totally lost on the former minister! Minister yesterday; lecturer tomorrow! Not even enlightened self-interest could make the minister defend the essence of her profession, when she had the opportunity! See, how far gone are the Nigerian state and its high officials?

    If gold rusts, what would iron do!

    You can dismiss Nyesom Wike, Education minister of state and current supervising minister. He is no gold in that sector, just a Rivers political battler moonlighting in the crucial Education ministry. No wonder: the rambler has since gone on the rumble in the Rivers jungle! Education, ASUU and allied distractions are all but fading echoes! That is proof of Jonathan’s regard for education!

    But there is every reason to worry about Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance minister and coordinating minister for the economy, who snorted her finance ministry had no cash to pay ASUU, even if the Federal Government had earlier signed an agreement to that effect. So, what does her ministry have cash for?

    How a brilliant woman with startling degrees from America’s Ivy League schools would volunteer such is well and truly amazing. If America had not invested in its own education, would she be so proud of her American training? And is it taboo for Nigeria to invest in its; so that its future graduates too would be a toast of the world, as America’s is today?

    But that is the point! Mrs Okonjo-Iweala would rather count the beans and declare “economic growth”, while local development indices roll back by the second. It is tribute to fuzzy thinking in high quarters that it isn’t glaring that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s economic policy is, in real terms, tailored towards underdevelopment. It must have the approving smack of Breton-Woods – and these blokes share their glory with nobody! Remember Kwame Nkrumah’s 1965 timely early warning: Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism?

    If gold rusts, what would iron do!

    It is amazing how hyper-educated Nigerians, at the acme of the Nigerian state, are education philistines; though they are living witnesses to other countries’ glorious investment in their own educational system; or even Nigeria’s past investment in this crucial sector.

    It is even more amazing that past beneficiaries of the golden age of Nigerian education, before the locust years of the military, have almost all drifted abroad for daily bread, giving their host countries a surfeit of their silky skills, while their own country bleeds – and future generation acutely thirsts.

    But the most amazing perhaps, are products of Nigerian universities who have bought into the philistinism of their misguided rulers. To them, there is absolutely no reason to fix the problem. Public universities are sheer poison; and lecturers there are nincompoops: nincompoops that drilled the now cocky former students into the present Socrateses, who now regard their former lecturers (read ASUU) as hare-brained!

    Their credo: amass enough cash, send your children or wards abroad, or to local private universities; and consign ASUU to rust with its umpteenth campaign for better funding of universities! Their Socratic formula: Flee! Typically Nigerian. But sorry, your problems will not run away from you!

    Besides, technology is not machines; but a way of life. So, if you are not in full control of your education, how do you forge a winning technology – your own niche to compete in the very unequal market the West fraudulently brandishes as “globalisation”?

    Those who abandon public universities to rust, because their children are not there, are as guilty as Jonathan’s gang of philistines. The mass thorns from public varsities will choke their own fanciful flowers from avant-garde schools here or abroad – except of course, the hope of a future Nigeria is the Diaspora!

    Nigeria has no choice but to fully fund university education. The time to start is now.

     

  • Westgate lessons for Nigeria

    Westgate lessons for Nigeria

    The world of terror as it seems, has no borders and Nigeria is an unwilling player. No thanks to the Boko Haram insurgency, Nigeria is now prominently placed among the league of countries troubled by agents of death.

    The new trend in consumer shopping that had seen the rise of big shopping malls as against ordinary supermarkets in the country has also put Nigeria, especially our big cities on course to become mega cities just like any other anywhere in the world.

    Now put the two, terror and shopping mall together and you get a picture of a dangerous world. A world of tears, sorrows and blood as exemplified by the weekend siege on Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya by Somalia based Al Shabaab militants, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda that has left no fewer than 65 people dead.

    The siege by the gunmen which began Saturday afternoon entered its third day yesterday as Kenyan Special Forces intensified efforts to clear the mall of the remaining militants and free the shoppers who are being held hostage by Al Shabaab.

    The innocent shoppers, unaware of the danger lurking had gone to the mall for their usual purchases, while some, as expected, were there to window shop against possible future purchases. But when terror struck, they (rich and poor) were all bundled together by Al Shabaab and their fate firmly in the hands of the terrorists.

    The shoppers were drawn from all over the world, not just Kenya. And this is understandable. Kenya is a favorite destination for tourists around the world and the country derives a large chunk of its revenue from tourism.

    Next door Somalia is a haven for terrorists following several failed attempts to have a government in place after the fall of the last central government in Mogadishu led by President Siad Barre over two decades ago. Barre died years later in exile in Nigeria.

    Instability in Somalia has been having a negative effect on tourists flow into Kenya and the country rightly took active interest in restoring stability to its neighbour. This include sending troops in 2011 to bolster support for the UN backed government in Mogadishu to the chagrin of Al Shabaab which views such interest as interference in internal affairs of Somalia. And Al Shabaab’s own way of teaching Kenya a lesson was to take terror to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and it chose to strike inside Westgate Shopping Mall, where it was sure to inflict maximum damage not only on Kenya but also the western world.

    The identities of the masterminds of the attack could be shocking as there were speculations that no fewer than five US citizens and a British woman whose husband was one of the attackers in the 2005 terror assault on London, Samantha Lewthwaite, better known as the White Widow were involved.

    As has become typical of all al Qaeda related terrorist attacks, religion and identities of the victims are secondary, what is of utmost importance is to cause death to as many people as possible just to prove a point that they are capable of causing chaos. All those talks about fighting the cause of Islam or wanting to create an Islamic state are just diversionary. All they are interested in is blood, and we have seen that in abundance here in Nigeria in the way Boko Haram has been carrying out its activities.

    The terror attack at Westgate Shopping Mall should be of major concern to Nigeria in particular. Not because Nigerians or a Nigeria has been found to be involved either way, (which is not impossible), but because there are so many similarities to be drawn from that experience with Nigeria. Like Kenya (in east Africa) , Nigeria is a regional power and part of the international community trying to rid west Africa of terrorists mostly linked to Al Qaeda. At home we have Boko Haram which is linked to Al Shabaab and by implication Al Qaeda. Most important is the new trend among Nigerians to patronize big shopping malls that are daily springing up across the federation especially in our big cities. The Westgate experience could encourage Boko Haram to want to try out such here. How prepared are our security agencies to foil or combat such attempts here?

    Drawing from the Kenyan experience which cannot be said to be a success yet, the lead agency spearheading the assault on Al Shabaab inside that mall was the Kenyan police. Can the Nigeria Police Force as it is today be entrusted with that task if it came to that here? This is not putting down the Nigeria Police but the fact today is that our policemen all ill-equipped, not well trained and improperly motivated to meet the challenges posed by terrorism as exemplified by Boko Haram to our country.

    The Federal Government needs to rethink the way it is funding and equipping the police. Allocating peanuts to the police as if the officers and men of the Force are just our Maiguard is nothing but recipe for disaster. Worse still, even the bulk of the money allocated don’t get to Force Headquarters as and when due.

    The other day the president was at the Police College in Ikeja after a local television station revealed the decay going on there, but after the noise from the presidency over the revelation, not much has been heard in the way of any improvement to the college.

    The police high command also needs to revisit its recruitment policy, training and promotion to give preference to competence high and above the principle of federal character. The Police must also resist the temptation to allow the Force to be an instrument in the hands of politicians. If the institution is well funded, insulated from politics and serves the best interest of Nigeria, it would certainly attract the best Nigerian brains available in that area, and also enjoy public support.

    As the shopping malls continue to multiply in Nigeria, it is about time a well planned and properly coordinated security measure is put in place to secure not just the facility but most importantly the lives of the shoppers. Nigeria cannot afford the Westgate experience. It would not be out of place to have a special protection unit of elite policemen created by the Nigeria Police Force for this purpose. Boko Haram has already put us in bad light around the world we should not give the terrorists an opportunity to make it worse.

    And as the Nigerian government continues to discharge its international obligations in the fight against terror it should be mindful of the backlash and prepare adequately. A stitch in time saves nine, as the saying goes.