The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

Aregbesola’s good turn…

In his robust and characteristically rigorous and highly readable defence of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the governor of Osun State, against an absolutely gratuitous attack by The Punch in its editorial of November 20 last year over his declaration of a holiday for the Islamic New Year on Muharram 1, 1434 which fell on November 15, Adamu Adamu, the Friday must-read columnist of the Daily Trust, described the governor as “one of the best, most humble and most upright governors in the country.” (Trust, January 11, 2012).

Anyone familiar with the man and the way he has governed his state since more than two years ago couldn’t agree more. Far from disagreeing, one can even argue that Adamu’s list of the governor’s virtues fell short by at least one, namely the man’s courage of his convictions.

The Punch had described Aregbesola’s declaration as “strange” and a manipulation of religion in a region “where harmony among the various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups is legendary.”

How the declaration by the governor of a holiday to celebrate a new Islamic year is “strange” in a state where more than half the population are Muslims and where such a holiday detracts nothing from non-Muslims, The Punch did not demonstrate convincingly. But this is a matter for possibly another day.

For now it’s hard, if not impossible, to deny that the man has shown in the more than two years or so that he has never been afraid to act on his convictions, in so far as they reflected the popular will and the greatest good for the greatest number of people of his state.

Convinced, for example, that in a federation – even one like Nigeria’s where power flowed from the centre instead of from its component units – there was something inspiring with a state having its own flag, slogan and state anthem, he initiated these symbols of statehood for his state.

Predictably, this attracted a virulent attack from the Peoples Democratic Party, the country’s ruling party, whose dubious victory in the state’s governorship polls in 2007 was overturned by the courts after nearly three years, thus ushering in the rival Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) into power in the state. Aregbesola’s action, the PDP said, was seditious, to say the least. Yet when Bayelsa State, where President Goodluck Jonathan comes from and where the party is in power, did a similar thing – even worse, some would say – the party, which prides itself as being the biggest in Africa, fell into a deafening silence.

Today, several states in the Southwest have their flags and anthems but that has not seriously detracted their loyalty to the federation. Certainly, it has not detracted from the governor’s well known faith in the potential of the country to lead Africa – and the black race – into being reckoned with and respected internationally, if only the country and the continent could get leaders that are competent, compassionate, selfless, humble and honest.

The man’s courage in charting new ways of doing things apparently led him to be the first, and so far the only governor, in the country to ask senior bureaucrats to choose a head of service through ballot papers with a list of criteria that focused on peer review of each other’s performance and personal integrity rather than on the usual one of longevity and seniority. The jury on this innovation is still out but its potential for making civil servants more transparent and accountable in executing policies and programmes of government is hardly in doubt.

When the man took over power from the PDP two years ago, the state routinely took loans from banks to pay the wages of its civil servants. He not only stopped that. He went on to restructure the state’s lean finances to make sure it stopped living beyond its means.

To be sure, the man took loans through, for example, issuances of bonds like many of his colleagues. But unlike several I know that have gone on a borrowing binge to build luxury hotels and similar non essentials, the Osun governor has borrowed essentially to invest in infrastructures like roads, drainage, water supply and schools. This much is pretty obvious for anyone who has been to the state since the man came to power. Certainly his sensible – and prudent – investment in infrastructure explains in part why, in spite of its many rivers and undulating topography, the state did not suffer from the floods that devastated many other states last year.

Obviously, the man’s achievements have not only been in intangibles, as the record of his successful massive youths employment programme in the state has shown. Youth unemployment everywhere has since become perhaps the biggest source of the violent criminality that has led to so much insecurity in the country. Few governors in the country have done as much as the Osun State governor to contain this scourge of youth unemployment.

For me, however, the man’s greatest achievement lies in the future. This will result from the highest priority he has given primary and secondary school education in his state. Virtually all over the country these levels of education have suffered devastating neglect resulting in the massive failure in, for example, the West African School Certificate examinations in recent times. In Osun State, the government has massively invested not only in building schools at this level. It has also done so in information technology that will enable pupils to learn as much at home or anywhere else as they do in schools.

It’s early days to be definitive about the man’s record. But if only he continues with his current level of performance he’ll certainly deserve another turn in next year’s governorship election for the good turn he has done his state. He deserves another turn because, unlike your typical Nigerian politician, the man is humble, honest, transparent and competent – and has the courage of his convictions.

On my frequent usage of the word “penultimate”

Please Mohammed, check the real meaning & use of ‘penultimate’. Rather unsettling for a columnist of your stature to keep falling into the common Nigerian error! Merry XMAS!

FEMI OSOFISAN. +2348033048383

I checked for the meaning of the word as Osofisan, one of the country’s literary giants, suggested and got even more confused because the meanings they gave suggested my usage was right. To clear my confusion, I emailed his text to the in-house linguist of sorts of Trust, Farooq Perogi, who teaches journalism in America.

Among my “offending” usages, in Osofisan’s eyes, were my columns of Wednesday December 26, 2012, and before then, probably that of May 2, as reproduced below:

General Muhammadu Buhari at 70.

“Penultimate Monday, i.e. December 17, General Muhammadu Buhari, former military head of state and perennial presidential contender since 2003, turned 70.”

Beyond Azazi’s controversial intervention at BRACED Summit

“Penultimate Monday, a (presumably) regular reader of this column sent me an sms from 08025720606, in apparent anticipation of today’s piece.”

Perogi replied my enquiry thus: Your use of “penultimate” in the sentences you quoted above is perfectly legitimate. I am mystified by Professor Osofisan’s charge that your usage falls “into the common Nigerian error!” Penultimate is just a grander, less familiar term for “second to (the) last,” or “last but one.” Contrary to Osofisan’s claim, it is in fact native English speakers, not Nigerian English speakers, who tend to misuse “penultimate.” Grammar enthusiasts here always rail against the tendency in native-speaker English, especially of the American variety, to use “penultimate” as if it meant “greater than the ultimate,” which is senseless because “ultimate,” like “unique,” “absolute,” etc are already superlative adjectives.

The only sense I can make of Osofisan’s criticism is that he is probably cautioning against the use of “penultimate” in contexts where the endpoint isn’t apparent. If the endpoint isn’t clear, it would be hard to isolate the second or next to it. He would probably prefer an expression like “the penultimate Monday in December” since December helps us easily locate the Mondays being referenced. But that argument neither makes grammatical nor logical sense since the newspapers in which your columns appeared have datelines that help the reader determine the days of the week you referred to.

At any rate, many prestigious English-language newspapers habitually use “penultimate” exactly the way you used it. See the following examples:

”At Mr Obama’s penultimate rally at a nearby arena earlier the same day, the crowd, although bigger, had been more muted.—Economist Nov 8, 2012.

“A few minutes later, Woods walked into the clubhouse in fourth place, already assigned to the penultimate pairing Sunday.”—New York Times Jul 21, 2012

“I am really excited to compete,” she said after completing her penultimate training session before the first day of competition on Friday.—Reuters Jun 27, 2012

“Squeezed by a royal wedding and bank holidays, parties are making the most of the penultimate day of assembly election campaigning.”—BBC May 3, 2011

January 23, 2013
Many faces of corruption

The pages of leadership history in Nigeria are saturated with unending stories of treasury looting, election-rigging, nepotism, tribalism, bribery and its twin, corruption.

This, invariably, result from public officers – both elected and appointed – regarding their positions, not as call to service to their fatherland but as a gold-mine.

Therefore, they get preoccupied with not how to initiate rewarding policies that would place Nigeria and Nigerians on a pedestal, but with the easiest and clandestine way of looting the country’s treasury and cause more damage to Nigeria’s already-comatose economy.

Interestingly, while we seem not to have a hope in hell in wriggling out of this social and moral hemlock, President Goodluck Jonathan became worried that corruption is becoming an albatross despite relentless even though puny fight against it. He had said that Nigeria’s problem is not corruption but the people’s attitude. His sincere comment on corruption raised some dust which has not settled. Trust Nigerians. They vilified and demonised him. One believes that these verbal attacks on President Jonathan are warped, lame and blinkered.

Moral gate-keepers have argued that an individual’s action is morally good not only because it conforms to moral law, but also in so far as it flows from a moral conviction. They also maintain that actions are deemed right or wrong according to experience and the conclusions of reason.

It should be noted that our idea about morality has changed, and majority of Nigerians believe that whatever produces happiness and well-being is, in the highest sense, moral. They forget that unreasoning obedience is not the foundation or the essence of morality.

It therefore follows that since every mankind has a moral responsibility which only his conscience can teach, it is imperative that one should be conscious of what one does. One has the need to rationalise what value one’s apparent damaging actions would add to the society.

Having recognised, sincerely or sanctimoniously, the deleterious effect which corruption has had on the growth and development of the country, President Jonathan had vowed to stamp the monster out of the system. But how committed he is to winning this fight against graft is left for posterity to judge.

Honestly, the President’s assertion is flawless. Corrupt tendencies are functions of the mind. Crimes are hatched in the mind before they manifest physically. If the mind constantly breeds evil, corruption will multiply. Corruption is simply a deformity of the mind.

This leads us to asking what constitutes corruption. Does corruption manifest only when money exchanges hands? This is a terrible perception. It is a matter of how refined, tacky or bestial our minds are. One who exhibits purity of mind may or may not be corrupt in a sense.

Again, any mind that is disposed to justice, mercy, honesty, and intellectual development is also not corrupt. But any man or boss, who is not willing to give to every mankind every right that is due he is just so much nearer a barbarian than Nebuchadnezzar.

The current humiliation of personalities that has become the lot of the mighty and the elite of our land has confirmed that corruption had never been a defining element of the Nigerian poor but a feature of the super class in our political milieu.

All those that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested for alleged financial crimes are celebrities, even though they are treated as sacred cows as it were. The war against fraud is directionless or so it appears. One believes that the fight against corruption should go beyond financial inducement as is currently construed. This is so because corruption is a multifaceted phenomenon.

The attention of the media, government and its anti-graft agencies is focused on inane societal contradiction that involves financial inducement. But there are other grotesque behaviours that are more sinister than bribery and corruption.

Therefore, anti-graft agencies’ searchlights should be beamed on people’s attitudes towards their fellow mankind and issues.

A boss who feels he is god, who despises his subordinates, robs them of their respects, denies them of their rights, regards them as beasts or less human, and denigrates them is corruption personified.

It is necessary that the boss should give every mankind every right he claims for himself. He should keep his mind open to the influences of nature. He should also receive new thoughts with hospitality.

Any man who is not willing to treat his fellow mankind with love, sincerity and openness is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. All these are manifestations of corruption.

Manipulation of issues in a terrible manner has often led to a creation of nauseating deformities so much so that the beauty of human mind and integrity seem somewhat subjected to malicious damage and insult both to self and others.

We seem to be less sympathetic towards a man who fails to adjust to a low level of expectation than we are to one who fails to adjust to a high level. We should have no pity for some corrupt rogues who steal money or exhibit uncongenial attitudes towards their fellow mankind simply because they are in position of authority because they succeed in defaming themselves. They are so poor that the only thing they have is money.

The present campaign against corruption should be serious, total and sustained. Any one implicated in any form of scam should be disgraced publicly and jailed. This way, integrity would be an integral part of our daily lives.

One significant question those whose minds have been darkened by their poor-quality attitudes should mull over is: would their reputation, integrity, honour, and good work be recognised by their character should they meet in the dark?

January 23, 2013
As Nigerian troops deploy in Mali

There is a saying in Yoruba that if your neighbour is feeding on house rat and you fail to warn him, by the time he begins to cough at night you will not be able to sleep. Since the fall of the Moammer Ghadafi regime in Libya about two years ago the rest of North Africa has not been able to sleep due largely to the terrorist activities of armed supporters of the late dictator displaced by the Libyan revolution.

Working in concert with other terrorist groups aligned with al Qeada in the Maghreb region, the ex Ghadafi boys trained by the slain dictator are all over North Africa causing havoc and are beginning to show their hands in West Africa.

For the over three decades that Colonel Ghadafi was in charge in Libya he harboured and trained terrorists from other African countries who later returned home to destabilize their countries. Remember Charles Taylor and his NPFL rebels in Liberia including Yommie Johnson’s? They were all trained by Ghadafi in Libya and funded by him to cause the civil war that later engulfed the West African country. The Sierra Leonean civil war and the general instability in the Mano River region including Guinea and to some extent Cote D’Ivoire could all be traced back to Ghadafi and his band of terrorists. The Chadian civil war in the 80s had its roots in Libya.

Throughout his stay in the Presidential Villa in Tripoli, Ghadafi was never at peace with his Arab neighbours as well as he was once accused of sponsoring an assassination attempt on late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at one Arab League summit. Yet with all his terrorist tendencies and destabilization activities in the continent and beyond well known, nobody in the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) did call him to order. Citing a provision in OAU’s charter that forbids member States from interfering in the internal affairs of another member country, African leaders looked the other way as Ghadafi was causing trouble all over the place even when his activities amounted to interference in those countries he was destabilizing.

Shortly after his fall these band of terrorists spread across North Africa and some, especially the Touaregs of West Africa moved back into the region with all their arms and ammunitions and West Africa has known no peace ever since. After unsuccessful attempts at having a foot hold in Mauritania, these terrorists took a large chunk of Mali, especially the north, last year and were beginning to spread to the south on their way to overthrowing the government in Bamako when French forces intervened and drove them back.

France, acting under a United Nations resolution last week sent Special Forces and fighter jets to Mali to confront the rebels and their al-Qeada allies pending the arrival of a West African force to be led by Nigeria’s Major General Shehu Usman Abdulkadir. The Nigerian led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) will draw troops and equipments largely from Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin Republic.

Last week the Nigerian senate approved a request by President Goodluck Jonathan to deploy 1,200 Nigerian troops to Mali and over the weekend the Nigerian Air Force sent two fighter jets join the war.

Not a few Nigerians are worried about the deployment of our soldiers in Mali and their worries are well founded. In the 90s Nigeria was at the head of a West African intervention force called ECOMOG that was dispatched by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to intervene in the Liberian civil war. Our troops were also involved in Sierra Leone where another civil war was raging. In both instances we had bitter stories to tell. Though the wars were eventually halted and peace restored in the two countries, our soldiers were bruised and our efforts largely unappreciated especially by Charles Taylor who eventually became president of Liberia. The cost of the wars to Nigeria, especially Liberia’s was enormous both in terms of human and material resources. Many Nigerian civilians were massacred by Taylor and his NPFL rebels in Liberia just because our troops came to intervene in the war. Many of our soldiers were killed and millions of dollars spent (much of which was wasted) prosecuting the war which most Nigerians believed we had no business being part of. I doubt whether Nigeria has recovered fully, especially militarily from the effect of that war and now that we are getting involved in another West African war, the rule of engagement and the tenure of our involvement must be well spelt out to avoid a repeat of what we went through in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

While some might want to argue that Nigeria being far away from the theatre of war in Mali has no business sending soldiers there, the fact that some of the Boko Haram militants threatening the peace in northern Nigeria had reportedly confessed to receiving training in Mali is enough to convince that the Malian civil war is a threat to the Nigerian nation. The facts also that some elements of al-Qeada have been found to be offering support to Boko Haram and the weekend attack and killing of two members of Nigeria’s contingent to AFISMA by a hitherto unknown terrorist group somewhere in Kogi state are further justifications for our involvement in Mali.

But in sending our troops to Mali, care must be taken to ensure that all the necessary equipment and logistical support were provided for them, including their allowances. It is hoped that those being sent have been properly trained both in peace keeping and enforcement, and the rules of engagement properly spelt out. The scandals that accompanied our involvement in ECOMOG must be totally avoided in AFISMA. Our soldiers must behave well especially in their relationship with local civilians including the women.

Now that we are in Mali, the likelihood of the terrorists and their allies in Nigeria particularly Boko Haram targeting strategic places and even military installations in the country should not be ruled out hence the need to scale up security protection around such places. Areas with high civilian congregation should also be properly protected while some high profile individuals both within and outside government should also be given increased protection. Nobody could say for sure the reason behind the gun attack on the convoy of the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero in Kano at the weekend. People like him could be vulnerable.

It will also not be out of place for the Foreign Affairs Ministry to issue a travel advice to Nigerians living in Mali in particular and neighbouring West African countries to be less visible and avoid volatile areas where they could be singled out for attack by the terrorists or their sympathizers.

January 22, 2013
Obama 2.0: Retrospect and prospect

One of the high points of my two-week visit to Germany in 1993 as a guest of the German Foreign Office was an interview with the publisher of the influential weekly, Die Zeit, in the northern port city of Hamburg.

My interviewee was no ordinary publisher, and professional issues were the last thing on my mind as I was ushered that crisp September morning into his capacious office. Ringed by bookshelves reaching up to the high ceiling, it was like a busy but well-kept library.

Behind a cluttered desk commanding almost a full view of the room sat the man I had flown from Berlin the previous day to meet, one of the major world figures from the West who in the 1970s sought to inaugurate a new, more hopeful and more just international order even as the Cold War raged with deadly violence across the world.

There was Jimmy Carter in the United States, and next door, in Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Jim Callaghan held sway in Britain, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in France, and Guilio Andreotti in Italy. Down Under, in Australia, there was Malcolm Fraser.

In West Germany there was the longest serving and easily the most outspoken of them all, Helmut Schmidt, who served as chancellor from 1974 -1982, the man behind the desk in the capacious office at Die Zeit, the man they called “The Lip” because of his volubility and his habit of dispensing advice whether it was solicited or not.

He lived up to that reputation during our discussion that went on for more than an hour. Ask him a question and he would launch a tutorial worthy of the masters at Oxford and Cambridge.

He did not flaunt it, but he left you in no doubt about his great learning

The euphoria over the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany was still in the air, though much subdued, and I asked him whether he ever thought that Germany would be re-united.

He said he never doubted it, but he never believed it would happen in his lifetime.

It happened just eight years after he left office. And Helmut Schmidt is still very much alive.

I doubt whether any adult American alive today ever believed that a black man would be president of the United States in his life time. Dr Martin Luther King’s famous dream did not go that far. Nor can it plausibly be advanced that “the promised land” he said he had seen in the Memphis speech that prefigured his assassination the very next day was one in which a black man would be president and commander-in-chief.

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, it is true, did seek the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 1984 and 1988, as had Shirley Chisholm, the black Congresswoman, in 1972. Both knew that they did not have a ghost of a chance of securing the nomination, much less winning the presidential race.

They sought the nomination because they could; they sought it to make the point that, not merely in theory but also in practice, any qualified person can seek any elected office in the United States, regardless of skin colour.

But here we are today, in the lifetime of some of Dr King’s closest associates and disciples, celebrating the second inauguration of a black person as president of the United States and commander-in-chief. It is more than the stuff of dreams; it is the stuff of fantasy. What began as an unpromising journey— even Michelle Obama thought it was a quixotic quest – is now one of the most inspiring political stories of our time.

“RACIAL BARRIER FALLS IN DECISIVE VICTORY,” The New York Times proclaimed on the front page of its Late Edition for November 5, 2008. This was true in a narrow sense; in the larger sense what followed was the precise opposite.

In a tribute to what has been called “American exceptionalism,”Obama had proclaimed that only in America was his story possible But instead of embracing, even celebrating him as a glittering product of that uniqueness, those who felt that his ascendancy had upturned the natural order of things denounced him as a rootless impostor who had been insinuated into the system to destroy everything they hold dear.

They had to “take the government back,” their government, by all means.

Just three months ago, one of them, a political hack who bears the quintessential American surname Sununu, was publicly denouncing Obama for not having learned “how to be an American.”

Deconstruction: He is not one of us. He doesn’t belong.

Too bad we could not stop him first time. Take all means necessary – block every initiative he launches, suppress the vote, stir things up, focus anger and resentment against him, hint darkly at assassination – take all necessary measures to ensure that there will be no second time.

And, for a quite a while, it seemed Obama’s time was up. The TEA Party was set to run him out of town, and all those who could be identified with him or his policies, however remotely. A year before the election, pollsters were reporting that if the election were to be held then, a “generic Republican” would defeat him. With the economy in distress and the jobless rate north of 8 percent, all that a Republican – any Republican — needed to do to win was to show up.

The rest is history.

Obama can already point to some significant accomplishments. When it takes full effect, his Affordable Health Care Act will provide insurance cover for some 30 million Americans for the first time. He saved the auto industry. He curbed the predatory propensities of Wall Street and the banking industry and the securities market. He created a path to legal immigration status for millions of undocumented aliens. He arrested the economic decline.

That is achievement enough.

On the international scene, he ended the misbegotten invasion and occupation of Iraq. He reduced global tension and made the world safer by sublimating the American impulse to war

He enters his second term with his place in history already secure.

Now, he must have an eye on the legacy of his Presidency. Great challenges lie ahead, not the least of which is forging a partnership with a Congressional opposition that has turned calculated obstruction into an instrument of legislative policy.

He has to restore America to economic prosperity through investment in education and innovation. He has to see the unfinished work of comprehensive immigration reform through. He has to address climate change and its consequences forthrightly.

Gun violence in America has taken on frightful dimension that requires action. Obama will have to lead the effort to regulate access to guns and assault weapons and bullets designed for human slaughter, despite the militant opposition of the powerful National Rifle Association.

Because he has no illusions that he can forge a partnership with a Congressional opposition, he is turning over the awesome machine that helped put together the winning coalition in 2008 and 2012 to a movement that will be in permanent campaign mode during his second term, championing his agenda.

There is perhaps no greater symbolism than the fact that Obama took the oath of office yesterday with his hand on one Bible that belonged to Abraham Lincoln, the legendary 16th President who freed enslaved blacks, and another that belonged to Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, who led a titanic struggle to make that freedom real and meaningful, and on whose birthday, anniversary, an official American holiday, Obama’s second term was launched.

Hail to The Chief as he navigates the rough road ahead.

January 22, 2013
Oyinlola taku

Oyinlola taku [Oyinlola stays put] – that resonates well with “Akintola taku”, that 1962 Daily Times immortal headline that captured the constitutional crisis in the First Republic Western Region. This was after Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA) had rebuffed a parliamentary sack by the Western House of Assembly.

The resulting impasse, and the contrived state of emergency piously orchestrated by the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa federal government, was the beginning of the end for that republic. But the Balewa government’s contrivance had the fond hope of nailing, once and for all, Obafemi Awolowo, officially the Federal Opposition Leader, but the central government’s Political Enemy No. 1. It ended up nailing that republic.

Nevertheless, like history repeating itself and petering out into a farce, the present Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) power in-fighting is a poor copy of the original.

To start with, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, embattled PDP national secretary, has not, in the classical sense of the word, “taku”. After initial threats to ‘storm’ his office, after his latest court-ordered sack, the man the Court of Appeal had earlier booted out from the Osun governorship, after illegally occupying the post for more than three years, beat a tactical withdrawal.

If he is staying put at all, it is more de jure than de facto. De jure [in the eyes of the law], he insists he is still PDP national secretary. That is the long and short of his appeal, now before the Court of Appeal. But de facto [in reality], at least for now, he is out in the cold – and that is where the rich stream of ironies surrounding Oyinlola’s present odyssey is so sweet and refreshing.

For some three-and-a-half years, Oyinlola was de facto governor of Osun, while Rauf Aregbesola, the de jure governor, languished in political wilderness. How long will Oyinlola languish before he gets justice, one way or the other?

Then Kunle Kalejaiye, SAN, the attorney alleged to have engaged Justice Thomas Naron, chairman of the first Osun State Election Tribunal, in allegedly indecent telephone text exchanges, is also the attorney leading Oyinlola’s cause at the Court of Appeal, to over-turn his client’s sack by the verdict of Justice A. Abdu-Kafarati. It is a grim irony that both client and attorney, on the attack to save Oyinlola’s illegal rule as governor, are now on the defensive to save an ill-fated job as PDP national secretary.

Again, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the do-or-die electoral philosopher of 2007, is reportedly in the checkmated Oyinlola camp. Though Obasanjo’s ancien regime offered Oyinlola the pad to launch his ruthless gubernatorial heist 2007, both philosopher and acolyte would appear fated to languish in the evolving Goodluck Jonathan PDP hell. The allegation is rife that Oyinlola’s ouster is to clip the wings of Obasanjo, in the hot proxy war for the soul of PDP, en route to 2015 presidential candidacy.

Indeed, if the allegations that the legal instrument PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur, used to post-haste oust Oyinlola is skewed, is it not sweet irony that the grand philosopher of do-or-die politics and one of his foremost acolytes are seeping the bitter taste of their own galling brew, before the judiciary clears the wilful mess, if it ever does? Ah! So the rich also cry?

To be sure, no one can be sure how the Oyinlola conundrum would pan out. Though the Bamanga Tukur camp appears set to consign the embattled Oyinlola into the dustbin via a legal technicality, with the announcement of Onwe Onwe as acting PDP national secretary, another faction of the party has propelled Victor Kwon, PDP national legal adviser, to ask a federal high court in Abuja to stay execution on the verdict. It is instructive that a counter-manoeuvre is on to replace Kwon with a “more experienced” lawyer.

Still, if the status quo remains and Victor is victorious, Oyinlola gets a breather. If not, it is sure political Golgotha. Some lobbies, perhaps with a morbid sense of humour, are even proposing Obasanjo – Obasanjo, a principal part of the hurt Oyinlola party – to meet with Tukur to resolve the crisis! Some resolution!

Why, even Jonathan, on January 19, offered his own flattering sop, claiming his administration was building on Obasanjo’s legacy! Some building! Reminds one of a certain pounded yam feast before the final, ruthless daggering!

This is cynicism of the highest order, even if there is a surfeit of bad faith in both warring camps.

But the sweetest irony may well be this – and Justice Isa Ayo Salami, the sacrificial lamb to appease the PDP gods, for abject failure to sustain their brazen gubernatorial robbery in Ekiti and Osun, must love it: a petition alleging probable miscarriage of justice has hit the Court of Appeal, Lagos, causing an indefinite adjournment.

Ironically, on this one, Tukur and Oyinlola are in the same corner, against the Adebayo Dayo-led Ogun State PDP executive committee, which had earlier in a Lagos federal high court, kayoed the Tukur PDP national executive committee, on a case to determine the lawful lord of the manor in Ogun PDP. But an allegation, rather wild, had popped up that Justice Amina Augie, head of the appeal panel, was likely to be biased, since some highly placed personages had allegedly bragged she was in hock with them.

So, to preserve justice, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, acting president of the Court of Appeal (PCA), had frozen the process, pending the investigation of the allegations – right step.

Still, how can Goodluck Jonathan’s latest Trojan horse against Justice Salami’s legitimate return as PCA, no matter how well meaning the Honourable Justice Bulkachuwa is, be perceived as guarantor of justice? How can the Court of Appeal, under its present contrived presidency, deign to push for justice and fair play when it is itself a sorry captive to, and culpable conspirator with, the Jonathan Presidency against justice for its own rightful president?

This streak of ironies and its current victims are a lesson to all – which, however, is not saying much. The Nigerian political class, as Socrates said of the Athens of his day, is such a slow-witted mule, almost unable to learn any lessons, even if it is always stung by a gadfly. The people themselves have a terrible penchant to suffer fools gladly.

If Obasanjo, now a putative victim if not an actual one, had scaled the Mandela heights during his presidency, instead of roughing it up in the power trough, he would have bequeathed this republic with high ideals, below which his successors would find difficult to levitate. But alas! So, why would his successors not, with his own patented impunity, splatter his face with executive mud?

As for Oyinlola, it is sweet irony to taste a long agonising wait for justice, as Aregbesola did, if indeed he was rightfully picked as PDP national secretary. But if he wasn’t?

The collective tragedy is, of course, that these are costly distractions for a country that needs more than its fair attention span in the race against time for development. Pity!

January 22, 2013
Police and the President’s indignation

Whichever way one looks at the Channels TV’s searchlight on the Police College Ikeja and the presidential indignation to which it gave rise, the programme conceived as a talk-shop under the TV station’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative seems to have achieved more than it could ever have intended.

If we can discount the presidential gaffe of describing the affair as a smear campaign, it was perhaps sufficient that the President was roused by the graphic imageries as shown on TV to visit. What it means is that changes may be in the offing for the orphaned establishment. The question of whether they would come in the sense of creating the institutions that would ultimately redress the decadence of the state institution is however, an entirely different matter.

Most likely, some heads would be broken to assuage the Presidential anger. Indeed, some dozen careers would most probably be herded to Siberia ostensibly to presage the presidential charade of an intervention. We know what will follow: a classy, all-stars’ cast of a presidential committee to look at the problems that are so obvious to all – except the government! And we also know where it always ends: billions of naira intervention funds. The latter should gladden the hearts of government contractors.

Now, what do I make of the Presidential outrage? In a context, it would seem perfectly in order, if the President can show Nigerians proof of what his administration has done –differently– on which his exaggerated expectation of the police institution could be grounded.

Accusing unnamed citizens of embarking on a smear campaign against his administration – or attempting to cow the police hierarchs into silence – only because the images shown of the college affront the senses, without evidence of what his administration has done to change the situation would seem out of order. It is un-Presidential and cheap; needless to state that it is unhelpful both to the cause of the police and the image of the Jonathan administration.

So, the President is outraged because the Police College Ikeja looks like some refugee camp?

He needs one night of vigil to see the trainees as they troop out daily clutching empty buckets in search of the essential commodity called water as if the chore is a necessary part of endurance training for cadets. He would also need another day out at the police forensic laboratory somewhere in Alagbon, Ikoyi where officers trained with millions of dollars of tax-payers money loaf around – waiting to accompany exhibits requiring forensic investigations abroad – for no other reason than obsolescence of vital equipment.

And the police communication rooms in the various commands? These are said to belong to the Stone Age. And the hell-holes called police barracks? The less said, the better. Obviously, those are no subjects of presidential outrage.

Far from suggesting that the administration is responsible for the state of the police as it is today, the issue is to put into proper context, the factors responsible for the decapitation of the institution. At the heart matter is the issue of finance – the gross under-funding of the police, which although was more pronounced under the military, has since been sustained under the current democratic dispensation. While these factors predate the Jonathan administration, the administration has clearly not lifted a finger about redressing the situation –the reason it stands as no less complicit.

Let’s turn to the numbers. In Budget 2012, the entire budget for the police was N331.2 billion. Of this, the Ministry of Police Affairs took N5.8 billion leaving the Police Formations and Commands with N307.9 billion. Of this, N290.7 billion went for personnel costs for the nearly 400,000-strong personnel. The overheads for running police operations was a mere N8.1 billion. We are here talking of the amount set aside to run 1,115 police divisions, 5,515 police stations and 5,000 police posts spread across the six-geopolitical zones of the federation.

The reader is here invited to read Malam Nasir El-Rufai’s illuminating piece on the police in Thisday of March 2, 2012 to have a fuller appreciation of the odds facing the police. There, he showed in some graphic detail, how the per capita allocation to a police division came to no more than N696,000 annually, a further breakdown of which came to less than N2,000 per day – a sum just enough to purchase 20 litres of gasoline for an operational vehicle – and this supposedly to run a police station in the age of kidnappers and the Boko Haram!

Does it therefore surprise that the police training institutions would cut the picture of neglect?

By the way, N851 million was voted for training, with an additional N55 million for associated travels in 2012 – in a nation where billions are earmarked for presidential gourmets! These are verifiable facts.

The obtuse public finance system under which the police gets whatever peanuts that a benevolent executive grants, though a major part of the problem, is however one part. The other part is the culture of criminal denial of the extant rot – a chief example of which the Presidential visit merely illustrate. Like the President, the police authorities are just as complicit, if not more, as their principal in this culture of denial. Asides, both also share in the pathology of being utterly uncreative, if not entirely clueless, when it comes to evolving a workable funding strategy. This is why it came as a surprise that the Police authorities gleefully threw the institution open to Channels TV’s filming crew!

Like the example of Lagos and some states in the South-west where the Police Security Trust Fund have kicked into operation have shown, the problems facing the police institution does not require any magic wand to solve. What is required is a willingness to think outside the box, meticulous planning, an iron will to follow the chosen course through and, above all, demonstrable commitment to transparency. The states that have adopted the Trust Fund idea would seem to have substantially addressed the question of whether a sustainable mechanism for funding police operations – outside of the anachronistic, rule of thumb budgeting process – is possible. What the President does not need is the superfluity of the recent mock show to get at it.

January 22, 2013
Stemming the tide of fire disasters

How much is human life worth in our dear country, Nigeria? This question has become necessary considering the spate of avoidable catastrophes in which scores of lives of our countrymen are terminated and billions of Naira worth of goods and property destroyed. In recent times, fire disasters particularly have become so incessant that it now occurs on daily basis.

Even though the risk of fire outbreaks is higher in the dry season, it is very scary the number of fire incidents that have occurred in quick succession across the nation in the last few weeks. The fire explosion that rocked the heart of Lagos on Boxing Day killing one person and destroying over a dozen houses was still on our minds when the following day the news broke that the country home of former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was on fire. The same day, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, got burnt. Since then, the trend in fire disaster has moved to Ogun State Government Secretariat, Abeokuta, the Ogbomoso tanker fire, INEC office, Abuja, Feleye Market, Ibadan, NNPC mega station, Bashorun-Akobo area, Ibadan, Oko-Baba Shanties, Lagos, the palace of the Alaafin of Oyo, Oyo State and most recently the Arepo explosion that killed scores of petrol pipeline vandals.

All these happened in the new year barely a fortnight gone.

The statistics for the year ended 2012 coming from various states in the federation is equally frightening. In Rivers State for instance, the government has announced that 73 persons suffered different degrees of injuries and that no fewer than 230 persons lost their lives in 222 fire incidents in the state in 2012. Another statement from the Oyo State Fire Service Department indicated that about N1 billion worth of property were destroyed and a total of 38 people were killed in 607 fire incidents across the state last year. In just the first two weeks of 2013, the department received 46 distress calls over fire disasters in different parts of the state in which three persons were killed.

This trend is worrisome because of its consequences on our socio-economic life. The cost of fire incidents is obviously enormous. It results in pains and deaths to victims, wastes time, money and materials and damages equipment and structures. It is disheartening to know that most of these disasters are not acts of God but rather the products of human errors and carelessness. Nigerians attitude to accidents’ prevention is lethargic! Some of these fire disasters could have been avoided if we have been more safety-conscious. It is only in this part of the world that people store petrol, a highly inflammable material, in their living rooms. This is usually the manifestation of the product’s scarcity. The Lagos Boxing Day fire disaster is reported to have been caused by ignition and explosion of tons of fire crackers, warehoused in a crowded commercial area. This is sheer recklessness.

Our responses to catastrophes in this clime are usually reactive. The fire-brigade approach of rushing out to quench fire all the time, rather than figure out how to put in place measures to prevent fire outbreaks is a direct manifestation of our nationalistic tendencies for lack of prescience. We must accept that safety simply means being pro-active. Many of us still leave our offices at the end of the day without ensuring that all electrical appliances are shut down to prevent outbreak of fire in case of power surges. In almost every household in Nigeria, matches and other ignition materials are kept within the reach of children.

A research conducted by a non-governmental organisation with a focus on fire prevention, control and management, Fire Disaster Prevention and Safety Awareness Association of Nigeria (FDPSAAN), shows significant low level of awareness on fire safety in Nigeria, less than two percent of the 140 million inhabitants of the country’s population have the required basic fire safety knowledge. This is a shame of a nation. The ‘Not My Portion or God forbid’ syndrome has also been the bane of developing an attitudinal change framework for achieving a safer society in Nigeria. Some people, out of ignorance, still harbour the cultural belief that to make provisions for the prevention of hazards is to actually invite the occurrence of such misfortune. This is why many of our people do not subscribe to simple fire and safety tips that can keep disasters at bay.

The issue of safety which once occupied a major place in the programmes and plans of every level of government is now treated with levity. Within the context of Nigerian laws on safety, the National Fire Safety Code, for instance, seems to have been dumped in the thrash-can. The code is a set of rules guiding fire prevention and control in all public buildings in Nigeria. If we, as a nation, are desirous of halting the embarrassing trend of preventable fire incidents in the country, it is therefore imperative for the government to strengthen and enforce strictly all existing laws on safety with a view to achieving a safer society. Those who breach the laws must be brought to book and punished accordingly.

The Lagos State Government initiative in establishing a Safety Commission for the state since 2010 is quite laudable. The commission has since its establishment been at the forefront of creating awareness on the dangers of unsafe practices that cause fire and other disasters in the state. Its role in dealing with issues relating to safety practices in the state has been quite commendable. Since it is the primary responsibility of governments, at all levels, to ensure safety of life and properties of its citizenry, all levels of governments, through their relevant agencies such as the fire services must immediately embark on a massive public enlightenment and awareness campaigns to educate the people on the dangers of unsafe practices most especially in the dry season as it is obvious that only legal approach cannot stem the tide of incessant fire disasters in Nigeria.

• Ogunmosunle is of the Features Unit, Lagos Ministry of Information and Strategy, Ikeja.

January 22, 2013
On Buhari at 70 and Govt College, Bida at 100

Last week, I promised to reproduce today some of the responses I got to my columns of the previous two weeks. The tribute to General Muhammadu Buhari elicited 43 texts while the subsequent one on the centenary of Government College, Bida, my alma mater, got 53. Both also elicited a few emails.

My usual approach whenever I decide to publish readers’ reactions to a previous piece is to write on my topic of the day first, and end with the feedback. This time I started out with copying and pasting the reactions I’d promised before writing the week’s piece. By the time I’d copied and pasted the more interesting and insightful responses, 11 on Buhari, 15 on my old school, they added up to nearly 2,200 words; about 700 more than the word limit for the column.

So I was left with a choice between devoting the entire page to the readers and writing still. I chose the former because, besides giving me a week’s break, the reactions, as the reader would probably agree, were germane to the crises of political leadership and education that have bedevilled this country, what with the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, for instance, threatening to implode over jockeying for vantage positions by its heavyweights ahead of the 2015 general elections.

In choosing to devote the entire page to the responses, I had, of course, to reduce the number from the original 26 and edit several of those left to fit the column space and spell out the text spellings and jargons. I hope you find the reactions as insightful as they are interesting.

First, on Gen Muhammadu Buhari at 70…

Sir,

I am an admirer of Gen Buhari. He represents the ideal of humanity and our collective hope to rebuild a new Nigeria. But Buhari’s greatest obstacles are the Northern elites that have been manipulating and skewing electoral processes to favour their candidate whom they trust would protect their interests. Buhari, to them, would pursue policies that are likely to send them to the gallows. The North betrayed Buhari in 2011 through the governors elected on the platform of PDP. If the North supports Buhari in 2015 most southerners will queue behind him just because we are tired of this inept and corrupt leadership.

The question is, is the North ready to queue behind Buhari?

Kolade Ilesanmi, Ise Ekiti. +2348030640311

Sir

The ‘MORTAL’ fear of my people is that Buhari will ISLAMISE Nigeria. I strongly doubt this because he can’t play God. I need information on how to join his party.

+2348030968000

Sir,

Gen. Buhari remains the darling of many Nigerians. The media war against Buhari was symbolic of the cynicism of the other parts of the country towards Chief Obafemi Awolowo when he was alive. His respite only came after his passage. In the case of Buhari I hope we will not count our loss much later. Tunde Esan +2348033109878

Sir,

You are speaking for Gen Buhari as if he is a saint. We have not forgotten history when he chose to cancel bridge construction in Lagos. Most of the PTF roads he constructed were done in the North on a ratio of 4:1 against the South. This same man refused pardon after backdating the sin of Bartholomew et-al. Shagari (the president) was under house arrest while Ekwueme (the vice-president) was jailed by Buhari for years. Several southerners were also jailed while few Northerners like Rimi were jailed because they talked.

Peter +2348187896640

Sir,

I never loved this man, Buhari. In fact in 2011, I not only did not vote for him but vigorously campaigned against him. But if he comes out today, I will not only vote but will campaign for him because I have come to realise that he is the only man neat enough to clean our beloved country from its excreta of corruption. GEJ, who has lost the capacity to lead, has failed us and any attempt to give him a second chance will be catastrophic for our nation. We need nationalistic leaders now and not presidential ethnic champions.

Comrade Chris E. Onuoha +2348033423615

Sir,

Northerners feel the media is against Northern leaders. Not true. Tell me which Nigerian leader, from the colonialists to President Jonathan that has not come under the fierce and relentless fire of the Nigerian press. I have come to see that it’s God’s democratic way to ensure that Nigeria never ends up with a Mobutu or a Gaddafi. Notice that no Nigerian leader, military or civilian, no matter the scheming, has been granted by the Almighty to reign up to 10 years. The media hounds them out.

Anthony +2348032913085

… and the GCB Centenary

Sir,

I refer to your article of January 2nd 2013, extolling the college and singing the praises of our heroes and shining stars. But here I come again. In paying tribute to the fallen GCB heroes you omitted Capt. Haruna A. Auna. He was the one quoted by you in an earlier article on Magaji Danbatta’s autobiography “Pull of Fate” and erroneously referred to therein as Capt. Abdu Auna. Capt. Haruna Auna was in the same class as Gen. Wushishi. He was killed during the July 1st 1966 riots in Kano because he tried to stop the mutinying soldiers from doing as they pleased.

Buhari A. Auna. Gwarimpa, Abuja.

Sir,

Your piece on Government College Bida’s centenary was quite revealing except for your omission of some notable old boys like late Ambassador lsa Koto (1920), renown educationist, late Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene and His Royal Highness OHIMEGE Igu Kotonkarfe (1922).

Secondly in your mention of outstanding premier secondary schools in the north you left out Okene College, now Abdul Aziz Memorial College, renamed after the former federal super permanent secretary who was a prince of Okene.

Please next time you are writing a piece like this you should be fair and generous because some of the ones omitted also made sacrifices just as those mentioned. You should not concentrate on military products alone as you appear to have done.

Rufai +2347058339096

Sir,

Your write up as an alma mater of G.C. Bida on its one hundred years of establishment is commendable! But one missing old boy worthy of note is the late Alh Idrisu Alhassan Kpaki (1956-1961), Chief Imam of Kpaki, Niger State, and one time Minister of State, FCT. He became the first old student to serve as its principal.

A.M.YAKATUN +2348037001954

Sir,

A slight correction, if you will, on your take regarding GCB as, “the only secondary school to have produced two military leaders of this country…” Barewa College, Zaria, had Generals Gowon and Murtala. Also then Rumfa College, Kano, too had General Murtala Mohammed and General Sani Abacha.

+2348035901911

Sir,

Military School, Zaria, has produced the highest number of generals in the armed forces.

+2348033110112

Sir,

Except for your mention of late Col Taiwo, I would have accused you of beaming your searchlight on Northerners only! I became a friend of the College in 1955 through Ladiji Gbadamosi, my age mate and bosom friend. He was of 1958 set, an all-round athlete who represented the school in many competitions and one of the first boy-scouts to visit Britain with my own classmate, late Gen Martin Adamu. Ladiji was a bank manager who travelled all over this country before retiring to become a world class businessman.

Deacon Fehintola, +2348033835939

Sir,

In your write up on Govt College Bida Centenary you mentioned Col Garba Dada Paiko as late. We belong to the family of the late Col Abogo Largema who was killed in the 1966 coup in Ikoyi Hotel. Col Dada served as his ADC. We lost contact with him for some time until I read your write up. May his soul rest in peace.

Alhaji Ali, Maiduguri. +2348033141078

Sir,

This is wishing your old boys’ association the best of luck as you set about redeeming its lost glory. However, like Caesar the poet, the school deserves a few knocks on the head for producing the highest number of dictators and feudal lords.

Ogacheko Opaluwa, Abuja +234806709090

Sir,

Your column on Government College Bida Centenary makes interesting but shocking revelation i.e. the dismal failure of its last WAEC result – less than half a dozen of 200 students had four credits and above. We came to GSSB (then) in 1966 as the first batch of HSC students, about 21 of us. At the end three of us were withdrawn due to inadequacies in WAEC, 15 were directly admitted to universities while the remaining three came in through back-up preliminary studies. That was the Bida we knew and cherished. Alhaji Yunoos F. Oyeyemi, the principal at the time, is very much alive and active. May be BOSA may need to change strategy now to qualitative HUMAN RESOURCE SUPPORT. For me it was a very remarkable two-year sojourn.

Mohammed A. Ahmadu. +2348032103986

Sir,

Please why have you not mentioned the Sokoto Middle School, now Nagarta College, among the older Northern schools? I think it is older than the Bida. Sardauna himself went to the college. So also did former president Shehu Shagari, late Sultan Abubakar III, Sultan Dasuki and host of others.

Mohammed Augie. +2348039660007

Sir,

Note Alhudahuda College, Zaria City, established in 1910, has been outstanding too.

Bulus Saliyuk. +2348055125945

Sir,

Ambassador J.T. Kolo was never SSG in Niger State. He was Head of Civil Service.

Baba Akote +2347083581112

January 16, 2013
One bad term …

Clearly the most damning irony about the controversial Goodluck Jonathan 2015 campaign poster, which copies flooded Abuja, is its claim that “One good term deserves another”. But even the most rabid of Jonathan supporters would concede his has been a bad, nay, terrible term.

So, what does a bad term deserve? A re-sit, as Gabriel Igbinedion, the Esama of Benin, reportedly quipped in pleading the case of his son, Lucky? Lucky’s 2003 “re-sit” and the subsequent 2007 vote-fiddling meant to block positive change, only made Edo a near-total paralysis before the redemption of the Adams Oshiomhole era. Lucky for Lucky. But absolutely terrible for Edo.

Yet the Edo paralysis was nowhere near the chaos and gridlock that is the Federal Republic under Goodluck Jonathan. Yet, the good luck president ogles a second term!

If free and fair election were guaranteed, it would have been electoral suicide for President Jonathan to seek a second term; and supreme electoral folly for his party to present him.

Indeed, so sure would have been the electoral rout to come that the opposition would have flocked into churches, mosques and traditional shrines for pre-election thanksgiving, doubly assured that the sitting president was a lamb being led to the slaughter, by virtue of his woeful performance.

But alas! Nothing is assured, not the least free elections, in Nigeria’s peculiar politics. That is why a personage that logs the record of perhaps the most incompetent president Nigeria has ever had would deem to flex muscles and yearn for a second term! It is a salute to the contempt with which the ruling racket holds the Nigerian people, as well as the electoral process.

Still, to be fair to the president, he has denied authorship of those posters – fair enough.

The snag, however, is there is a feeling of déjà vu over the incident: a very vivid sense that we have seen all this dissembling before.

Under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the self-made “military president” would say something and his alter ego, the trinity of Dr. Aitkins, Arthur Nzeribe and Abimbola Davies’ Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) would canvass the exact opposite, with sickening patriotic piety.

Under Gen. Sani Abacha, Daniel Kanu’s phantom Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA!) urged a thoroughly hated iron dictator and power usurper to go ahead and transmute, prompting The Economist, the London weekly, to write, in its 23 April 1998 issue, a tongue-in-the-cheek article it entitled, “Abacha, for ever, and ever”. Only “divine intervention” put paid to the Goggled One’s inordinate dreams.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, after hiding behind a finger over a botched term elongation gambit, invoked Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” cheeky nonsense; declaring that if he really wanted a third term, and had asked his God, his God would have given it to him. In Nigeria’s political jungle, Obasanjo had found his own variant of Maradona’s Hand of God!

And even Goodluck Jonathan, in his caretaker presidency days, was asked whether he would run for president, during the raging zoning controversy. Instead of a simple and straight answer, he lurched into a long and winding story of how he could run for president, or team up with someone as vice president, and how, in mid-sentence, he suddenly realised he was not even thinking of such things!

Can someone please compare and contrast Jonathan’s answer back then to his current refrain that he is too busy on his job right now to be messing around with 2015 posters?

Of course, the unsure caretaker president later became absolutely sure he would be real president for only one term – the one term he is making a hash of. Though now he disowns these satanic alter egos pasting Abuja with his campaign posters, he is now even more unsure whether to stop them or tell them to continue, because he is too busy with state duties! It is the making of Goodluck Jonathan as a presidential dissembler!

It is clear therefore that, despite the empty anti-corruption posturing of the Obasanjo years, little has changed in Nigeria’s sick power chamber. And President Jonathan: his might have been a shifty, parlous and near-hopeless tenure. But the president has been clear-eyed and sure-footed in the power lessons he has allowed himself to learn. To the chagrin of long suffering Nigerians, he is no different from his far-from-illustrious predecessors.

That is why Jonathan’s pre-election dissembling could well have been from a manual straight out of the Obasanjo, or Abacha or Babangida years. When IBB was swearing for the sanctity of this so-called transition programme, state money was being funnelled to his alter ego trinity to create so much chaos that, at the end of the day, a brow-beaten nation would “beg” the military president to please exchange his uniform for baba riga and continue his good work. Fortunately for Nigerians, the IBB scheme collapsed on his head.

Everyone, of course, knew state money was responsible for Kanu’s thunderous YEAA for Abacha; and also behind the cacophonous racket by the musical soldiers of fortune that were part of the gravy. Goodluck Jonathan spawned his own musical mercenaries with his Eagle Square Abuja Goodluck Nigeria concert, which has turned nothing but bad luck for Nigerians. Obasanjo, to this day, denies the alleged hefty money that changed hands for his term elongation gambit. He can tell that to the marines!

Not surprising, therefore, pre-election manoeuvring are afoot – again, straight from the IBB/Abacha/Obasanjo-era ignoble books.

Up, from nowhere, has popped a 10 million cell phone-purchase programme for farmers. Ibukun Odusote, permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, disclosed N60 billion (about US $384 million) would be blown on this sweetheart deal. Akinwunmi Adesina, Agriculture minister, claimed otherwise after a public uproar.

The making of another scam? Might this sudden quixotic love for Nigerian farmers be to 2015 what the oil subsidy voodoo payment was to 2011?

Inside the PDP, a civil war has broken out – and not unconnected with 2015, even if the theatre of war is the party’s Board of Trustees (BOT). President Jonathan wants his man to head the BOT and help storm-troop delegates; and harvest nomination. Obasanjo, doomed to life-long political hustling when he could have earned post-presidency authoritative influence is, Don Quixote-wise, throwing his hat into the ring for a laughable candidate. To these party bosses, intra-party manoeuvres to skew the nomination process are even more vital than the long-suffering electorate!

And outside, the cement cartel, unfazed poster children of Nigerian crony capitalism that reached its zenith during Obasanjo’s era of transparent corruption, is staging its own civil war! Might this high-stake manoeuvre be a bid to extract concession from a government whose party would soon come, cap in hand, for election donations?

These bewildering dramas, not what the incumbent has done or not done, are why Jonathan could deign to dream of an encore, when his present tenure is nothing but disaster. But it is also left for Nigerians to counter: one bad term begets absolute electoral rejection.

But will they? The day they do, all this rascality will stop.

January 15, 2013
Yet another pipeline fire

Given the dearth of accurate statistics in Nigeria, the number of lives lost to oil pipeline explosion/fire can only be estimated in hundreds considering the number of such disasters in the country in recent times, yet we don’t seem to be ready or in a haste to end this self inflicted tragedies.

For the umpteenth time oil thieves burst a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline at Arepo village in Obafemi-Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, just a stone throw from Lagos State to scoop fuel for sale at the black market.

But since every day is for the thief and one day for the owner of the house, the seemingly unforgiving spirit of the petrol flowing in the pipeline decided enough was enough and fought back, blowing up in a loud explosion causing a huge ball of fire that consumed no fewer than 30 lives, according to initial reports in the media, with hundreds of others badly injured. The criminals and accomplices were believed to constitute the bulk of the dead while some innocent bystanders/villagers were also affected.

Another round of fuel shortage is expected in Lagos and surrounding states as a result as the Pipeline and Products Marketing Company, the arm of NNPC in charge of the pipelines has expectedly turned the tap off to stop the flow of petrol through the Arepo pipelines.

A day after the Arepo incident oil thieves struck at another NNPC pipeline at Oviadge, Oghara in Delta State and were lucky to escape with their lives as no fire was reported. As it is often the case among thieves, quarrel always occur not during the operation but during sharing of loot. The Arepo thieves were reportedly arguing over whom among them should scoop the fuel first after they had successfully burst the pipeline when suddenly one of them shot into the crowd and the bullet ignited the fire that consumed them.

The questions begging for answer here is why is it so easy to vandalise our oil pipelines and why are they so vulnerable to such attacks? What are the security agencies and the NNPC doing to safeguard this all important oil facility? I remember in the 70s, when these pipelines were being laid, as school children we were wondering what the engineers and technicians were doing, but when we were told they were laying pipes to take fuel to different parts of the country, we just accepted as one of those things government do, even when we couldn’t comprehend the import of that. But since they were located far away from human habitation and buried deep in the soil, we were always on the look out for danger (keep off) signs put up by NNPC near the pipelines on our way to school and tried to avoid igniting any fire or lit a match around the area so as not to cause explosion, as if the petrol was flowing on the ground. That was our mentality then as school children and we grew up as adults to respect and appreciate the economic importance of the pipelines to Nigeria. Call it economic patriotism if you like but we were proud of it, to us it was a great achievement.

I am sure those pipeline vandals are mostly youths and young adults and I wonder what they think of these pipelines; a passport or gateway to quick and easy wealth or what? What on earth would drive some one to burst a pipeline to scoop fuel illegally knowing the dangers involved; not even the possibility of arrest but the likelihood of losing his/her life to an explosion? Well it could be argued that a hungry and jobless person could do anything to put food on his/her table, but then at what cost both to himself and the larger society? Now these people because they wanted quick money went to burst these pipelines and now they are dead, putting their families in sorrow and anguish and the society at the risk of another harrowing fuel shortage. This is the kind of selfishness that is killing this country; nobody thinks about the interest of the other person it is self first and self alone and always. The oil thieves/pipeline vandals don’t care what happen to the rest of us as long as they make their money, and we also encourage them by buying the stolen fuel from them even when we know they don’t own or work in a filling station. Go to any of our villages and even suburbs of our towns and cities and you see people, Okada riders, grinding machine operators and owners of ‘I better pass my neighbour’ generators buying fuel from hawkers selling by roadside or even in front of their house, at home. Where do you think they get the fuel from?

Government must begin to think about our welfare as a people, how we get the fuel that we use. If the fuel is available everywhere at the right price, nobody will patronize the hawkers and the pipeline vandals will be put out of business. It is not as if they sell this fuel for cheap.

Again the argument over joblessness is not a justification to go into criminality. And to worsen the matter, some of these vandals and their collaborators could be gainfully employed if they so wish and live comfortably within their means. A medical doctor was arrested in Kogi State sometime ago for being a member of a syndicate that specialise in pipeline vandalisation and sale of stolen fuel. His argument was that the money he gets monthly from medical practice (N100, 000 or so) is too small to maintain himself, his aged parents and siblings. What a load of rubbish. It is true a lot of our professionals out there are just roaming the streets with nothing to do. It is also true that an idle hand is a devil’s workshop, but, these idle hands should not allow the devil to use them as the consequences are grave. The society, especially the government should also not push them into the hand of the devil.

Government owes it as a duty to the governed not only to provide employment but also create a conducive atmosphere for job creation. Most of our graduates are unemployable because they went to school to learn the wrong or old things that are not in tune with the demands of a modern economy. Government should look into that area and make our graduates not only employable but also competitive internationally.

Back to the issue of security of the pipelines; who protects them? Oil pipelines in the Niger Delta were recently farmed out to ex militants in the area to protect against vandalisation; who protects the pipelines here (Arepo et al) and other parts of the country? Should we engage OPC to do it since the government, going by the Niger Delta example has shown it is incapable of protecting this important economic facility?

On a more serious note, shouldn’t we revisit the issue of the setting up of a National Guard in this country as mooted by the Babangida administration then? May be it wasn’t a bad idea after all.

January 15, 2013