The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • The vandals of Arepo

    The vandals of Arepo

    It is no accident that the casualty figures from the vandalisation of the so-called System 2B pipelines in Arepo, Ogun State have been somewhat indeterminate – days after. How about a nation that has had very limited success counting itself taking so much trouble counting the hordes of the expendables blown into the creeks as a result of greed? But then, what does it matter – that scores of Nigerians have swelled the legion of the nation’s expendables?

    One thing that cannot be suggested of the weekend pipeline disaster in Arepo Ogun State is that it was entirely unexpected. However, it seems to me that we are at the turning point – the terminal stage of the pathology described as the Acquired Institutional Delinquency Syndrome (AIDS), a measure of how far the culture of self-help has metastasized.

    Let’s go back a bit. In August last year, the same System 2B pipeline – the main artery for fuel distribution in the South-West was destroyed by the vandals. For weeks running, the nation could not put out the fires. Or, rather, the security agencies had much trouble putting out the fire as a result of the difficult terrain. It also emerged that they had to contend with the intrepid vandals who could not sit by and watch their criminal enterprise ruined. Why should they not fight since their very lives depended on it?

    We know the rest of the story. A group of NNPC engineers called in to repair the broken pipelines were gruesomely murdered; so was the attempt to retrieve their bodies from the creeks resisted by the goons. The vandals of Arepo obviously thought little of the security agencies and perhaps far less of the authority of the federal government. It took weeks before the goons were dislodged from their gangland republic and only after did the NNPC move in to fix the pipelines.

    That was in September. And the pipeline was not even put into use until December 2012. The entire affair is best described as pathetic.

    So, who is feigning surprise at last week’s disaster? The security agencies lulled into sleep after claiming premature victory August 2012? The national oil corporation yet to figure out how to secure its pipelines and make them safe? Or the federal government that is as good as clueless when matters about evolving strategies to secure vital national assets pops up? How about a nation rendered complicit by fact of indifference?

    I do not know where the idea came from that the derring-do vandals have suddenly become less daring or perhaps born-again because the security agencies managed to arrest a few persons.

    Should it surprise anyone that the NNPC does not seem to have learnt anything from the previous incident which claimed the lives of three of their top engineers and disrupted of the fuel supply chain in the South-West? Isn’t it the way the business of governance is conducted in these parts?

    I watched Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State on TV as he bemoaned the complicity of the national oil corporation in the tragedy. So unsparing was the governor as he charged that: “NNPC with their inaction, they are part of this problem. I want to believe that they are part of the people aiding and abetting this pipeline vandalisation”. That obviously was an understatement. The corporation seems to me the root and branch of the problem.

    I do not think anyone can deny the criminal complicity of a good many of our institutions in the countless instances of mass murders in the country. Do we begin with the death traps described as highways? Or the health-care system that dispenses deaths in their thousands? Or the educational system as purveyors of tradition, ignorance and superstition? Are these institutions not part of the making of the criminal state called Nigeria?

    The question of course is why anyone would expect the NNPC to be different.

    There is however, another way to view last week’s development. There are those who will argue that the Arepo incident is only a tiny dot in the nation’s slow regression to the famed Hobbesian jungle. No doubt, they are right to the extent that what we see is actually no more than the extension of the elaborate, individualized self-help scheme that governance has become in the country.

    Of course, what we call governance is actually no more than an institution in the service of a few oligarchs, a two-way affair between beneficiaries of unearned wealth: the contractors, fuel merchants, beneficiaries of all manners of duty waivers and their cohorts and the dispensers of patronage. It is between the two that the wealth of the nation is shared. We are here talking of wealth running into trillions of naira annually. So what could be wrong with some hoodlums taking their turn?

    So much for our collective outrage at what the vandals have done to themselves and the society. The question is; are they more culpable or even more rapacious in the despoliation of the nation than those whitewashed criminals in public service? Between those public servants who routinely help themselves to the public till while denying service to the public and the pipeline vandal, which is there to choose from? Howe about the high net-worth businessman whose worth is actually no more than access to the nation’s marble palaces? Are they not of the same class, the same species? Do they not represent the symptoms of the same disease of self-help, of impunity?

    I do not think that anyone should suffer the illusion that they are different. They are not. That is what makes the future so frightening.

  • Unequal justice as state policy

    Unequal justice as state policy

    As trials of drug offenders before his court drew to a close, the late Justice Muri Okunola usually prefaced the sentencing with a lament that the drug law enforcement authorities were always arraigning the minions, the cat’s paw as it were, never the cat not the kitten.

    Even when splendidly visible, the baron or baroness was untouchable.

    I was reminded of Justice Okunola’s pained lament the other day by a news story with the giddy headline “Oil Theft: Two Women Bag Three-year Jail Term” (Saharareporters, January 9, 2013) detailing the conviction of two women by the Federal High Court, Asaba, Delta State, on a two-count charge of illegal dealing in petroleum products and conspiracy. The sentence came with a N300,000-fine option.

    Back in May 2009, the women were, according to the story, caught trucking 136 plastic drums of petroleum products somewhere in the Isoko country without a licence by operatives of the Delta State Command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, who then handed them to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for investigation and prosecution.

    In a sense, justice was not only done; it was seen to be done. Prosecution was swift and diligent. No indulgent adjournments were sought or granted. The judge was punctilious, and the court process worked as it was designed to do.

    The women broke the law, and fully deserved their punishment. Some might even say that they should consider themselves lucky that they got off so lightly. After all, in some parts of the country, people have been sent to jail for up to seven years for stealing a goat.

    But if this is indeed justice, it is justice most unequal.

    Although the capacity of the plastic drums was not specified, let us make the very generous allowance that each has a volume of 400 litres. That would make the volume of petroleum products they were trucking illegally 50, 400 litres. In absolute terms, that might seem substantial. It could fuel a small fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs for a year.

    But in relative terms – relative, that is, to the thieving that goes on in the oil industry every day and even as you read this piece — it is less than piddling.

    No fair comparison can be made even between the volume at issue and the volume of gasoline products ferried to neighbouring countries daily in tankers. These are registered vehicles that drive on paved highways and across checkpoints manned by officials of immigration, customs, and national security, as well as the police, and finally through international frontiers to their destinations.

    A Nigerian international civil servant told me several years ago that he counted 18 such tankers in one day in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, waiting to discharge, and that he had it on good authoritythat this was not a chance occurrence.

    These tankers are never intercepted. Their cargo is never confiscated. The drivers and their mates are never arrested. If anything, they are guaranteed unimpeded passage.

    Only those who can afford to own or hire the oil tankers, those who have access to oil, and those whom the law-enforcement authorities would be crazy to mess with—in short, only the well-connected – can play in this league.It is therefore no surprise that they are never brought to justice. Even their minions are untouchable.

    I once told in this space the story of how a Nigerian diplomat in Latin America travelled to a city hundreds of miles from his base to check on the welfare of some Nigerian sailors who had been detained in the local jail for mutiny on the seas. The half-starved sailors, it turned out had committed no greater crime than demanding their wages for working the ships that ferried oil from Nigeria across the south Atlantic.

    His investigations uncovered an elaborate smuggling operation. Refined diesel was loaded on to the ships, which were then escorted to safety by the Nigeria Navy vessels that were supposed to be protecting the nation’s territorial waters. It had been going on for years

    The diplomat sent a detailed account of his findings to the Abuja and waited for instructions. None came. He forwarded a reminder. Weeks later, he was invited home, for what he thought would be a full debriefing. After waiting for weeks in Abuja without getting to see any person of consequence, he returned to base.

    Waiting on his desk was a letter brimming with contrived indignation from the Latino boss of the syndicate smuggling refined diesel oil from Nigeria. Attached to the boss’s letter was a copy of the diplomat’s cable, courtesy of those he called “his friends” in Nigeria.

    Thankful that neither the syndicate nor Abuja demanded his scalp, the diplomat learned to mind his own business. It is a fair guess that the smuggling continues. Didn’t a detained ship laden with smuggled oil vanish just like that from Nigeria’s waters the other day?

    The still-unfolding “subsidy” racket shows just how mired in sleaze is Nigeria’s oil industry. Trillions of Naira has gone from the nation’s coffers to reimburse oil marketers for petroleum products that were never delivered.

    The only qualifications a good many of the partakers in the feeding frenzy is closeness to power as exercised by the Federal Government and the ruling PDP. If the public had not risen in sustained indignation against the so-called subsidy the government said it was set to end, the freeloading would have continued.

    Prosecution of the suspects in the racket has been perfunctory at best. The suspects continue to live like the potentates that easy money has transformed them into. They are free to travel, and to carry on as they please.

    These are not the kinds of people that prosecutors strive with might and main to deny bail on the grounds that leaving them in circulation would fatally undermine investigations. That recourse applies only to ordinary suspects.

    We should even be thankful that they have not procured the best attorneys and judges that money can buy to block the investigation that led to their arraignment, although that is no guarantee that they will face trial and be punished if found guilty.

    The women convicted by the Federal High Court, Asaba, had neither the sophistication nor the resources to employ such tactics; hence the asymmetry between them and the subsidy freeloaders on the hallowed scale of justice.

    He probably wanted it celebrated as another “breakthrough,” but it is nothing if not pathetic that the Minister of Trade and Investments, Olusegun Aganga, announced with breathless excitement only three weeks ago that. “for the first time,” the Federal Government had authorised measures to stem the leakages in the oil and gas industry arising from meters that are not working, or that were installed in the wrong places.

    These measures are coming more than 30 years after it came to light that the bucket being used to lift crude from Nigeria’s oil fields was four gallons bigger than the standard international barrel. Taking the intent for the deed as is the habit of the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, Aganga said the measures would this year alone result in savings of $3 million and add N1.74 billion to the government’s receipts from oil and gas.

    And yet, the public was bombarded incessantly with the infantile propaganda that government “subsidy” of gasoline was the problem with the Nigerian oil industry and that the industry would die if the subsidy was not terminated.

    It is an index of the asymmetry of justice in Nigeria that, whereas two women were shafted with a three-year jail sentence for illegally trucking petroleum products, supervisors of an industry in which vital meters were not installed, were installed in the wrong places or not installed at all, have never been charged – not with dereliction nor even culpable negligence, much less criminal collusion.

     

  • Boosting education in Lagos State

    Boosting education in Lagos State

    Presently, the education sector in Lagos State is receiving an unprecedented boost from the Lagos State government. When Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) took over from the Asiwaju, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he made a pledge to the people of the state that he would continue the policy of free education in both primary and secondary schools in the state. This pledge has been carried many steps further since more than five years he has been in the saddle.

    Not only has the free education policy for which the state has been known for years been intensified and improved upon in many respects, Lagos State has come to occupy an enviable position in the annals of West African School Certificate Examination (WAESC) and National Examination Council (NECO) in present times. To cap it all, the government has just established what it rightly tagged Lagos Eko Secondary Education Project, a project that is being assisted by the World Bank.

    This idea, in the reasoning of Ms Ronke Azeez, Special Adviser to Governor Fashola on the project, is to ensure that this World – Bank assisted initiative provides the required grants to schools to improve on students’ welfare, teachers’ training and ICT exposure and provision.

    The retraining of teachers and principals of schools have since attracted the priority attention of the Lagos State government. The reason for this is to help refocus attention on teachers’ welfare so that they can impact meaningful and quality knowledge to the students. Essentially, Governor Fashola believes strongly that if teachers are in the right frame of mind and are equally given what is due to them, they can perform better.

    This is why the Lagos Eko Education project as initiated by the government has come handy to solve a lot of knotty problems in the sector. Until recently, the students of the state were not performing as was expected in WASC and NECO exams. But according to Azeez, the project was able to encourage the students to have an improved rating last year in the WAEC examination. Given the general porous results of WAEC in 2012 throughout the nation, the Lagos State over all result, nonetheless, stood out. This is highly commendable.

    In public funded secondary schools, the state recorded 38.5 percent. The interesting thing here is that many students, even above the expectations of many, recorded credits in both English and Mathematics. This is a total improvement from previous results and Azeez believes that the students can do much more in subsequent years if more teachers are exposed and retrained. In other words, this exercise is an on-going one.

    Mrs. Elizabeth Omolaoye, a principal in the state, reacted to the issue like this: “You must have heard about the Eko Project. It helped many students because we were able to purchase all that we needed to teach the children. Teachers are being trained. And we principals were also trained. I am a beneficiary of the training.” Omolaoye’s enthusiasm has also rubbed off on other such principals and teachers in the state who feel much more at home now to teach with more dedication and care.

    The Eko Project, in the thinking of Governor Fashola, is to completely overhaul education. It is established to improve education tremendously in terms of upgrading ICT and other infrastructural facilities in the sector. As the students become more exposed to the modern forms of education, so do their level of intellectual acumen and sense of reasoning.

    In its third year now, the Lagos Eko Project has overcome its initial teething problems. It is now totally embedded in the principle of impacting on the students, expanding and improving the lot of teachers and making them more responsible and responsive to the needs of their students. In addition to providing grants for equipments and other learning facilities, the primary focus of the project revolves around manpower empowerment and training. This, being the core area of its focus, has been wholesomely pursued in the past three years.

    Part of the focus of the project is also to grade schools and give them awards. It is a sort of an encouraging exercise so as to keep the standard high and competitive. Azeez said: “Schools are rewarded based on their average performance. This has helped the teachers and principals to be more interested in enhancing the overall performance of the students. Indeed, the unique thing about this is that we looked at the whole schools and then rewarded those whose students made up more on the average performance” In the process of doing this, schools that did well got more funds to perform more feats.

    For a government that is serious, the training of teachers is number one step towards improving the standard of education. This is what Governor Fashola has promptly done given that students cannot get anything good if they are not getting the best from both the government and their teachers. It is equally great to learn that Lagos State has re-introduced Saturday extra-murral classes to help students with low acumen and learning process.

    In this regard, a lot of teachers are being encouraged to take heed so that their students can benefit from this benevolence. Tagged Mathematical tonic and English clinic, it is formatted to impact more in these two key subjects where students have shown poor ratings in recent past.

    Based on all these modalities already in place in the education sector in the state, it behoves on both the students and teachers to capitalise on them to make education prosper. The state government has demonstrated its love for the people. It has shown that leaders of tomorrow should be guided well for the responsibilities of tomorrow. Therefore, Governor Fashola needs to be commended for his foresight and direction in all spheres in the state. Eko oni baje .

    • Udoka, lives Ikeja.

     

     

  • Cement armada? No, just drama

    Cement armada? No, just drama

    The theatrical-minded may well dub the trade tiff between Ibeto Cement Limited and the Dangote Group a play called Cement Armada.

    It is a grim drama all right, being a real-life trade scuffle between an entrenched interest and a competitor that wants to break in but feels illegitimately blocked.

    But there is certainly no armada, for if there were, cement prices could have come crashing. They have not. That therefore locates the trigger of this grim drama beyond the two corporate gladiators; and right in the other-things-being-unequal extant business atmosphere which, if not corrected, is fated to cripple everyone in the long run.

    That is the correct interpretation of this drama, which the powers-that-be must address. But first, the claims and counter-claims.

    The Dangote Group, heavy player and clear market leader in essential consumables like cement, sugar, salt, flour and pasta, fired the first salvo on 6 December 2012, when it announced it had shut down its Gboko, Benue State, cement plant; on alleged glut resulting from “dumping” of cheap cement imports, contrary to the Federal Government’s policy of complete local manufacture of cement.

    Lafarge WAPCO Cement, a co-player and once-upon-a-time market leader, has weighed in on Dangote’s side, affirming indeed imported cement was hurtful to the local manufacturers; and therefore to Nigeria’s long-term economic survival. Is this the hand of Esau and the voice of Jacob?

    Lanre Opakunle, Lafarge’s plant manager for its Ewekoro II, Ogun State, plant, certainly does not think so. He said 60, 000 tonnes of cement remain unused in the plant’s silos while 220, 000 metric tonnes of clinker, an intermediary cement product, literally chokes its factory, just like Dangote Cement’s woes of a glut of 38, 000 tonnes of cement, and lots and lots of clinker.

    Like Dangote Cement, Mr. Opakunle lamented the high energy costs, with low pour fuel oil, which has jumped from N25 a litre in 2009 to N107.76 a litre by November 2012; making a 331 per cent leap. High haulage costs, in the absence of efficient rail to truck the cement bulk, add another 20 to 25 per cent, to the price of cement, therefore pricing the product out of the reach of most.

    The dire situation could well threaten no less than 46, 000 jobs from the Dangote end alone, if Joseph Makoju, ex-WAPCO, special adviser to Aliko Dangote, president of the Dangote Group and president, Cement Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (CMAN), is to be believed. That would be horrible indeed, were it to happen, in a country already crippled by mass joblessness.

    Musibau Lawal, Lafarge WAPCO’s production manager, not unfairly links the current local cement challenges, vis-a-vis imported cement, to the comatose Nigerian local textile industry, perennially at the mercy of imported fabrics.

    With alleged cement glut in China finding a haven in the Nigerian market, he argued, a “paltry” duty of 20 per cent and a levy of 15 per cent make imported cement not only very cheap, but also an open tomb for local cement manufacturers. So? The government, he clearly suggested, must jerk up these duties.

    Fine and legitimate argument – until, of course, you ask the question: how much of cement is imported? Ibeto Cement, on whose neck the local cement manufacturing lobby is about hanging a charge of cement-import Judas, has provided an answer: 1.5 metric tonnes yearly; which it claims is less than five per cent of the Nigerian cement market.

    Again, if cement is a regional business because of its bulk, can sole importation into the South-East/South-South market, where Ibeto plays, lead to a “glut” in the whole of the country? That is doubtful, by the very illogicality of the argument. Ibeto’s import could not therefore have caused it, even if rival local manufacturers in the South-South, and to some extent, the South East, would feel short-changed by its “cheap” imports.

    So, what did? Cement is most probably over-priced because the industry is an oligopoly; and the local producing cartel is, at worst, blaring a business nationalism orchestra to keep prices up; or at best, reeling from the inclement local production weather.

    If the problem is the first, then it is most regrettable and unpatriotic, even if ironically, the cartel plays on a high-pitch patriotic orchestra. If it is however the second, that is for the government to sort out: radically improving on those key indices – power, rail, policy inconsistency, financial infrastructure – that make local production sheer hell.

    It is certainly not by goading the government to go back on its commitment to Ibeto, to rectify the 2005 unjust closure of its Bundu Ama, Rivers State factory, canonised by a judgement order of court, after free and unfettered negotiations.

    That is what WAPCO’s Mr. Lawal seems to suggest. But changing the cement-import template, from the Ibeto agreement, would do no one no good. Hiking the import duties would push up prices, and make cement even more unaffordable, with disastrous consequences for local cement. Besides, it would put the Federal Government in hot legal waters.

    Dangote and Ibeto, in the trade tiff, have stacked cards on each other to win an argument. Dangote tried to paint Ibeto as the import Judas standing between Nigeria and self-sufficiency in cement production. It also threw in the scarecrow of factory shut-downs and loss of jobs. Ibeto counters by painting Dangote as a monopolist leading a local cement cabal of oligopolists to elbow out legitimate competition. All is fair in a trade war, as Dangote is no devil any more than Ibeto is a saint.

    Ripples’ interest is strictly for upholding the right of law-abiding citizens to legitimate business opportunities in a republic erected on law. Much too long, this Federal Republic has been captive to business lobbies, and would appear quite adept at conspiring with powerful interests against the legitimate interests of other citizens who, though less powerful and influential, the government, by its oath of office, is sworn to protect.

    That would explain the Obasanjo Presidency’s reckless shutdown of the Ibeto factory in 2005 and the concerted current campaign against redressing that injustice. But at least Ibeto spoke out and decided to fight.

    Not so the late Captain Israel Ademola Haastrup, patriot and sundry investor, who quietly bore his own scars to the grave, when he died late 2012. His Haastrup Jetty in Port Harcourt, got shut down only after two years of operation in 1982 and his interests in Omega Bank got lost in a troubled Spring Bank after consolidation – because the captain believed, according to his biography Captain in the Storm of Life, authored by yours truly, that the government wanted to get at specific powerful interests which it was not man enough to face. Also his Spaceworld Airline business collapsed in the hysteria of dropping planes, while Eagle Cement, in which he had substantial interest, was also clobbered by the local cement cartel.

    Now what is a Federal Republic if it cannot guarantee its citizens equal and equitable opportunities under the law? That is the crux of this cement drama.

     

  • Be a man Jonathan, own up

    Be a man Jonathan, own up

    A colleague told me recently that he met repentant Niger Delta militant Asari Dokubo in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia during last year’s or 2011 hajj operation (can’t remember which year now) and their discussion naturally veered into politics and the comrade was at his vintage best.

    Dokubo he said wasn’t happy with what he perceived as the discriminatory way Muslims from the north treat their southern counterparts and would therefore not go to the north in the run up to the 2015 presidential election to campaign to them on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan. He would rather do his campaign for the president in the south and leave others to handle the north.

    While one is not in a position to verify the alleged position of El Hadj Asari Dokubo on northern Muslims, one can safely say at this moment that the man is not likely to campaign for Jonathan’s 2015 presidential project anywhere in Nigeria or even outside. He is simply fed up with the lackluster performance of the president and he has in all intent and purpose told the man to count him out of his second (or is it third?) presidential bid and carry his own cross.

    His grouse with the president is simple. Jonathan he opined has failed to live up to expectation and deliver on his promises. And he (Dokubo) an Ijaw man like Jonathan can not in good conscience go before the rest of Nigeria to canvass support for him for another term. What would he tell them or us?

    Expectedly the President’s attack dogs saw Dokubo’s comment as an attempt to derail their principal’s fresh presidential bid and have spared no word in condemning the ex militant. They called it bad belle, that the man was annoyed that the president had refused to renew his multi-million-dollar security contract for the protection of oil pipelines in Rivers State against theft/vandalisation.

    Recall that the presidency sometime ago discreetly awarded multi-million-dollar pipeline protection contracts to ex. Niger Delta militants covering the oil facilities in Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers States and environs. Many, including this writer saw it as a nepotistic gesture on the part of Jonathan to settle his own people, buy their support and loyalty (for 2015) and reward criminality. The contracts to Asari Dokubo, Ateke Tom, Gens. Boyloaf and Tompolo were not made public by the government until a foreign news agency scooped on it and revealed the details to the world. In criticizing the deal then, one had argued that it was not likely to deter fresh attack by militants in the region on oil facilities there, as those outside the loop of beneficiaries would see any successful attack on the oil facilities as a way of telling the president that they also want a piece of the pie.

    Recent pipeline attacks, oil thefts and piracy in Rivers and Bayelsa States have affirmed this position while the jury is still out on the success or otherwise of the contract awarded to Tompolo for pipeline protection in Delta State.

    As an aside, it is good to note that Tompolo is carving a new image for himself by veering into humanitarianism using the money he made from militancy and the pipeline protection contract to set up a foundation to take care of the less privileged in the society.

    If the pipeline protection contract was meant to shut Dokubo and co up and buy their loyalty, it failed and it remains to be seen whether the termination of his own contract was punishment for being critical of government or failure to secure the pipelines. What is clear however, is that the president is using a multi-prong approach to buy his way into the heart and mind of the society instead of working/warming his way into society through performance, to secure majority support from Nigerians for his 2015 project.

    If Jonathan wants to re-contest in 2015 he is free to and he should be bold and man enough to say so instead of beating about the bush and looking for scapegoats among critics of his abysmal performance.

    While he is denying interest in the next presidential election for now, it is no secret that he wants another shot at the presidency and his foot soldiers are already on the field trying to hoodwink us into buying a bad and failed product. It is in this light that one would want to view the half-hearted denial of any link to the Jonathan for 2015 posters now all over Abuja, by the presidency, as another of the character weaknesses of President Goodluck Jonathan. What is he afraid of? As the saying goes man dies only but once, but cowards die many times before their death.

    It is a matter of yes or no for Nigerians in case he decides to throw his hat into the ring and the earlier he throws his hat in there or keep it with wife Patience the better, instead of accusing imaginary enemies of trying to distract his attention or derail his programmes with the Abuja posters and similar campaigns for his 2015 project currently being carried out through proxies.

    From his first day in the White House, it was clear President Barack Obama was going to seek a second term barring any catastrophe and even when the US economy was wobbling and unemployment rising he was still able to convince his party and the rest of America that he remains the best man for the job. And they obliged him with a second term, but not without anything tangible to show as achievement. He was proud to point at his bailout package for the auto industry that saved millions of jobs and affirmed his commitment to strengthening the middle class, even as he vowed to extract more tax from the very wealthy Americans who constitute 2 per cent of the American society.

    These with a combination of other factors including the killing of world renowned terrorist Osama bin Laden won him a second term even when the situation on ground economically was so grim that were the times to be different or his opponent Mitt Romney better, he would have been rejected.

    Pray, as bad as things are in the country today, especially the deteriorating security situation, is there anything or a combination of things that Jonathan has done well for us to deserve another term even if he is entitled to it?

    I am sure it is this fear of what do I tell them that is driving the man into using third parties to sell his second term ambition while publicly denying them. We know the trick Mr President, you don’t need to hide behind one finger. If truly you or your people are not behind the Abuja posters and similar subtle campaigns for your 2015 project why don’t you direct that the posters be put down or ignore them? Why are you labouring to convince us you knew nothing about the posters? Conventional wisdom dictates that when someone tries strenuously to convince the other person or a people about his own position, the likelihood of lies somewhere in the explanation should not be ruled out.

    What has been lacking in Jonathan since fate put him at the helm first in Bayelsa State and now at the Presidential Villa in Abuja is a firm, strong and decisive character who knows his onions and ready to act at all times in the best interest of Nigeria and not given to nepotistic tendencies.

    It’s been argued rightly or wrongly that part of the weaknesses of his character is his inability to rein in the alleged excesses of his Ijaw kinsmen both within and outside the government. Not that his predecessors were any better or his critics would behave differently in this regard, but because of his level of education Nigerians expect a much better performance from him.

    One can go on and on pointing at his character flaws, but what we as Nigerians are not, as Jonathan probably thinks we are, is that we are no fools. We know where his going and we are waiting for him. And as we like to say here, he should not tell us a dog is a monkey.

  • Investing in people: A senator’s example

    I clearly remember not paying much attention as my room-mate ranted about having to meet his relatives anytime he had to pay his school fees. In my mind, I could not comprehend having to meet relatives anytime I needed money as a student. According to Tonye, that is my room-mate’s name, he needed the financial support of several different ‘uncles’ and ‘aunts’ to enable him remain in school as a student. I had always envied how he carried along, doggedly pursuing his academics despite his financial challenges which was all too glaring. While other students had spare cash to involve in luxuries of parties, eating choice foods, even if for a while and engaging in frolicking, Tonye never participated in that. He was too busy chasing his sustenance.

    However, I thank God that Tonye has since qualified as an electrical engineer and now works with a multinational. He now lives the good life but as I reminisce, I can’t help but wonder at what would have been Tonye’s fate if he didn’t have ‘benefactors’. Or the fates of some others like him who were not so fortunate?

    It is in this vein I’m saluting the intervention of Senator Magnus Abe who represents Rivers South-East Senatorial District in the National Assembly. While I have not benefitted directly from his largesse, as someone who I have been following my heart goes out to all the indigent students which he helps in providing good education for. And for that, I believe he should be commended.

    In a recent discussion of philanthropists, especially concerning education, his name kept bobbing up. There is a wise saying that goes thus: ‘Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you have fed him for life.’ By giving indigent students opportunity to get an education is like sowing a seed – the result which is mostly bountifully. That exactly seems to be case of senator Abe’s involvement in education.

    As a lawyer, Senator Abe definitely understands the reason for being not only lettered but also ‘learned.’ Hence, I find it not particularly surprising that he has invested in the educational lives of members of his constituency. As part of his 2012 constituency projects, he commenced construction of two primary schools in his constituency, located in Rumusoya community in Oyigbo and Sogho community in Khana Local Government Areas of Rivers State.

    Also, Senator Abe procured Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) forms for 378 indigent students. Till date, 567 stdents have befitted from the scheme which started in 2011/2012 with 189 students. He also paid the school fees of indigent final year students from his constituency in institutions across Rivers State. Benefitting from this were about 320 students drawn from the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State University of Science and Technology, University of Education, Rumuolumeni and Polytechnic Bori.

    Not forgetting students aspiring to becoming his professional colleague, Senator Abe also gave scholarships to 40 students to proceed to the Nigerian Law School. Being in touch with ordinary folks, he surely understands that funds could be stumbling blocks for many of them realising their goals of becoming lawyers. Surely, beneficiaries of his scheme won’t forget him in a hurry.

    And recently, Senator Abe pledged to push for a laboratory for the Department of Anatomy in the university through the National Assembly. Definitely, the man knows the import of education.

    Apart from doling our money to students for their needs, Senator Abe also listens to them, coming down to their level. Watching him at a parley, I couldn’t help but admire how he engaged the students in discourse. While campaigning to be senator, he had promised to intervene in the area of education. It is noteworthy that he is living up to his words.

    Also, since becoming a senator, he has beamed concern for the mangrove Niger Delta environment. And knowing that fishing, which is the traditional occupation of his people is under threat by reckless oil prospecting he, as Chairman, Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), in conjunction with the federal government, is instituting a better oil production process. This is commendable as it prevents environmental degradation.

    And to encourage the fishermen in Oyorokoto community of Andoni Local Government, Senator Abe donated fishing gear to fishermen in the area. The gear included 100 safety vest, fishing nets, marine twines, assorted crayfish nets, anchors and marine ropes.

    Of course, while it is not directly in his schedule to canvass for such level of developments, methinks the senator is on the right path. Personally, I think it is worthy to having a lawmaker who not only influences law to suit his people and by extension, many others, but one who is concerned with even the ‘mundane’ of procuring funds for his constituency members to access a better life.

    At the moment, the rumour-mill has it that, on the behest of people, he plans on going back to the senate for another term. Surely, while I think others can aspire to that position, I must concur that Senator Abe is indeed loved by the people as his praise is being sung in nooks and crannies of his constituency. And from what I gather, the senator has a genuine love for his people, a love seemingly reciprocated.

    For these reasons, Senator Abe would do good to continue to throw his hat in the ring in the race to be part of the nation’s highest lawmaking organ. Should he win, that victory will not be for him but for the whole of Rivers South-East Senatorial District because unlike some other political aspirants in our clime, Senator Magnus Abe is indeed a man of the people.

    • Nwinee writes from Port-Harcourt

  • A President’s endless distractions

    A President’s endless distractions

    There is no end to some people’s malevolence.

    If  they could not give Dr Goodluck Jonathan another jet plane to add to the burgeoning Presidential Fleet, or a cassava plantation to supply the raw material for his favourite breakfast loaf, or a pond for breeding fish for the gourmet pepper soup that is the best accompaniment for cassava bread, or a shipload of his accustomed beverage, couldn’t they at least have said a perfunctory “Happy New Year” to him and carried on with their lives of desperation?

    Or, since he is scholar and an intellectual, they could have presented him with a basket of books carefully selected from the best-seller lists of the leading trade journals.

    Instead, in the dead of night as 2012 faded into history and 2013 was emerging from the womb time, they slunk out of their malignant dens and painted the entire Abuja, government buildings not excepted, with election campaign posters warning those who might be thinking of challenging Dr Jonathan in the 2015 presidential race to perish the thought.

    “2015: No vacancy in Aso Rock in 2015,” the posters, bearing a portrait of a half amazed and half bemused Dr Jonathan in his trademark fedora, proclaim sententiously.

    Anticipating the querulous who might be led to ask why there would be no vacancy in Aso Rock, the poster declares: “One good term deserves another.”

    A grand distraction – in fact, I am almost prepared to call it the Mother of all Distractions – this malevolent, cantankerous, and unpatriotic NewYear present to Dr Jonathan.

    Dr Jonathan is of course no stranger to distraction. In fact, distraction has been his constant companion since he took office. Well before he could spell out the details of his much anticipated Transformation Agenda, Boko Haram launched a campaign of indiscriminate murder, its object being to destabilise the Administration as a first step to setting up an Islamic Republic in Nigeria.

    When the Transformation Agenda finally got under way, it quickly fell victim to the mass protests that broke out across the nation, following termination of gasoline subsidies that had virtually paralysed the economy. The protesters and their manipulators could not see that only a few privileged persons were profiting from the pernicious subsidy, and that ending it was in the public’s best interest.

    For the nine days the protests lasted, Dr Jonathan was so distracted that he lost track of the Transformation Agenda altogether.

    Then followed yet another distraction, from Dr Jonathan’s village, of all places. The Italian contractor Gitto Construziani, I gather, had refurbished the old village church in Otuoke from its own abundance and in the finest tradition of social responsibility and corporate good citizenship.

    But Dr Jonathan’s political adversaries claimed that he had knowingly solicited a gift from a contractor doing business with the Federal Government, and that at the very least, the whole thing was shot through and through with conflict of interest, if not actual sleaze. Some have even gone so far as to demand his impeachment or resignation, or both.

    Even the elements conspired to add to the distraction. Raging floods swept away tracks laid for the nation’s first bullet train, paralysed newly commissioned power plants, washed away vast farmlands bursting with the first fruit of the agricultural revolution Dr Jonathan had initiated, and destroyed thousands of silos chockfull of grain and other produce

    What Dr Jonathan has now been confronted with, however, has got to be, as I was saying, the Mother of all Distractions.

    Instead of focusing with his accustomed laser intensity on the plans and programmes and projects he has drawn up to make 2013 our annus mirabilis, he has to waste precious time and resources disowning the election posters and dissociating himself from a project that is not even a part of his iconic Transformation Agenda.

    The people behind the posters do not wish Dr Jonathan and Nigeria well. They fear that if he is allowed free rein to transform Nigeria, they will cease to have any political relevance. For they cannot say they are coming to transform what has already been transformed.

    Hence their strategy: Keep him so busy denying that 2015 is on his mind that he will not be able to pursue the Transformation Agenda with vigour. Then seize on that failure to pre-empt his candidacy, and thus send him packing out of Aso Rock…

    Some gullible people whom we shall always have among us seem to believe that Dr Jonathan had fore-knowledge of this diabolical scheme and might even have endorsed it.

    If they need indissoluble proof that Dr Jonathan did not have and could not have had anything to do with it, however remotely, they need look no farther than the contemptuous manner in which some of the posters were displayed.

    A good many of them were wrapped around refuse bins or posted on dumpsters. Are the malevolent elements behind the campaign not thereby saying that any ambition Dr Jonathan might be nursing for 2015 is destined to end up in dust bin?

    Assuming – just for the sake of argument – that Dr Jonathan is interested in running for re-election in 2015, can it be supposed that he would denigrate his own aspiration in this manner? Not even his most implacable critics have ever accused him of masochism.

    The Jonathan we know is a sportsman in the pristine sense of that term.He loves genuine competition, and he is so secure in his person that losing means nothing to him. When he plays squash, he tells his opponents at every opportunity: “Don’t be coy. Defeat me if you can.”

    Contrast this, if you will, with your typical president whose unspoken message to the fellow across the net is: “You think you are smart? Defeat me if you dare.”

    Is the Dr Jonathan we know the kind of leader, then, to resort to a tawdry poster campaign to pre-empt a challenge in a race that will not even come up until 2015?

    Proxies of the agents of distraction have been going round asking why Dr Jonathan has not unleashed the forces of national security to smoke out those behind the poster campaign if it is true that he knows nothing about it and if he is genuinely distressed by it.

    The more despicable among them are asking whether it is mere coincidence that Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State has been buying acres of space in the newspapers to proclaim, just when the “No Vacancy” posters surfaced in Abuja, that he does not intend to seek the office of President, has never harboured such an intention, and never will harbor it.

    Persons of this diabolical cast of mind forger that Nigeria is now a constitutional democracy where freedom of speech and of press is guaranteed in equal measure to the ambitious and the unambitious, and even to agents of distraction. They forget that the days of authoritarian rule, of government by decree, are gone forever. They want to goad Dr Jonathan into playing Goliath.

    They will do well to remember that he did not become President and has not remained in that exalted office by submitting to blackmail of any stripe.

    The distraction must stop forthwith… Collectively, we must say to them, with the utmost indignation: Enough. Let President Jonathan be. Leave him alone so that he can devote all his energies to accomplishing the urgent task of National Transformation.

     

    Correction

    The historian Segun Osoba has written that he was not present at the 1989 Guardian Lecture I referred to in my December 18, 2012,column (“Omoruyi: A scholar’s lament”), and could not therefore have reacted in the manner I described.

    I and a Guardian staffer monitoring the audience must have mistaken a look-alike for him.

    My regrets.

     

  • David versus Goliath (The cement war)

    David versus Goliath (The cement war)

    Lanre Opakunle, Plant Manager of Lafarge WAPCO’s Lakatabu Ewekoro plant in Ogun State gave rather insightful contribution on the raging controversy as to the cause(s) of the so-called-cement glut over which Dangote Cement had drawn the shutters on its Gboko Cement plant. (See The Nation December 31, page 6). It could not have been better timed given the raging low intensity corporate warfare between Dangote Cement and Ibeto Cement, the fringe player now accused of flooding the local cement with imported cement.

    No doubt, the Lafarge chieftain helped put, in perspective, the problems plaguing indigenous industrialists. Unfortunately also, he left a gaping window on what I consider a troubling aspect of the corporate behaviour of our indigenous venture capitalists. I shall return to that later.

    Let me attempt a summary of the views of the Lafarge chieftain on the rage over the so-called glut in the cement said to be a grave threat to the multibillion-dollar investment in the industry.

    First, he confirmed the glut, which he attributed to the increase in local production of cement and the continued importation of subsidised cement. Secondly, he acknowledged – and I consider this important – the problem of low sales and high inventory – the logical consequence of weak and ineffective demand. While admitting the cyclic nature of demand for cement, he could not understand why sales have not lifted since the onset of the so-called peak season.

    His words are particularly instructive: “the market was dull during the rainy season. The current period is supposed to be the peak of production and demand. But the reverse is the case as there is no demand. It means something is wrong. About 220,000 tonnes of clinker are on ground, not being used…Most of our workers are roaming. Ninety percent of our trailers are idle. We are operating at less than 50 percent capacity. The cost of production is high. Our plants are experiencing challenges…Once the place is filled up, we have no choice but to shut down”.

    Unfortunately, he would in the same vein lapse into the same deliberate misdiagnosis of the problem – the issue of the so-called glut arising from the influx of cheap, substandard foreign cement. He would bemoan the fact that cement importation has continued despite the glut in the local market, a situation he says, “calls into question, the backward integration policy of the federal government”.

    Some of course would argue that it comes to no issue that two foremost players in the industry – Dangote Cement and Lafarge WAPCO – have found a common enemy in Ibeto on which to hang all of the problems facing the industry. I started this by referring to what I consider a troubling aspect of the corporate behaviour of our indigenous venture capitalists. The point I seek to make is that the near paranoid anti-competition instincts of the typical local venture capitalist has never been given the attention it truly deserves. Given their grave implications for our trade and market practices, I think the time to beam attention to these practices has come.

    Lest I be mistaken, I have not sought to understate the problems of the industry or even industries generally. The problems are real as to be indisputable. And as I have always argued on this page, the local industry needs all the muscle that a federal government can give by way of tariff walls, duty waivers, and other forms of direct incentives to make them truly competitive. But then, the question that most Nigerians have not bothered to ask is where will the Dangotes of this world, the Lafarges and other thriving multinationals without the hefty support in the first place? And should they be allowed to deny others the use of the same ladder with which they rose to their pre-eminent positions?

    The point therefore is that the so-called survival quest of the local venture capitalist must be balanced by considerations of consumer interest. Year in, year out, we read of billions of naira declared as profits to shareholders – nothing wrong as that is what keeps business going. Of course, we do know that the other leg of what keep businesses going is the ability of the consumer to make a purchase. At this time, no one seems to bother. And the future: to get as many players as possible on board and hence unlock the vice-like grip of the current players on the industry.

    How many Nigerians can afford to buy a 50kg bag of cement at the ruling price of nearly N2000? Given the reality of declining disposable incomes, the answer would seem obvious: fewer and fewer Nigerians. Where is the housing industry in which the industry is expected to make its bumper sales? Or even the construction industry?

    But more pertinent is whether the price actually represents the best price in the circumstances? To start with, it is doubtful that many Nigerians would agree; even more doubtful is that government will agree going by its tepid attempt in the past to get the producers to bring down the price. The problems of the industry are certainly not new; the problems affect the cement manufacturers as indeed other players in the economy. The yarn about the influx of foreign cement is obviously designed to court the sympathy of Nigerians. Of course, with the prospects of another factory closing shop at a time of high unemployment, government’s back would expectedly be on the wall.

    However, the larger issues remain. Clearly, the suspicion has lingered that the pricing regime is sustained by the current structure of the industry – which permits the existence of a few dominant players, a situation which effectively renders the consumer a price taker. The emerging oligopoly should ordinarily be troubling in an industry where the consumer should ordinarily be king. But more troubling is the failure of the government to anticipate the possibility of collusion and other anti-competition practices in the absence of anti-trust legislations.

    Above all, we must shudder at the one-sided equity in which few manufacturers would enjoy some incentives while denying others the same; clearly, the Santa Claus image of government as one that dispenses favour to operators by the rule of the thumb, or one that is aligned to special interests, must be deplored.

    I need to make the additional point that the so-called war is not about the cement consumer. It is about access to the Nigerian gravy – the winner-takes-all industry where only the fittest survive. The consumer is only a hapless bystander in a game they are programmed to lose. So we watch. And enjoy.

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  • Government College, Bida centenary

    Government College, Bida centenary

    For two days early December last year, Government College, Bida, where I had my secondary school education between 1965 and 1969, celebrated its centenary. As you can imagine it was a great homecoming for many of the students of the school which, by sheer longevity alone, has produced some of the most pre-eminent citizens of this country.

    The celebration was prefaced by the sad and sudden demise of one of the school’s most eminent old boys, Ambassador James Tsado Kolo, Waziri Doko. JT, as his friends called him, was among the pioneer senior staff of North West State, today’s Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto and Zamfara states. A humble, diligent and upright gentleman, he rose to the rank of permanent secretary in the old state and eventually served as the Secretary of the Niger State Government before he ended his civil service career as an ambassador.

    Ambassador Kolo was billed to deliver the keynote lecture about the journey to date of his alma mater on the night of December 7, the first day of the celebration, and had indeed prepared his paper. He died at 74, apparently from heart failure, a little over two weeks before the lecture and a day after the very day the centenary organising committee put out the first newspaper advert announcing the programme of the event.

    In the end it fell on his old teacher as a secondary school student, Professor Jonathan O. Ndagi, himself one of the most eminent educationists in the country and pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, to deliver the lecture. The occasion was chaired by former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Alfa Modibbo Belgore, who though not an old boy, had sentimental ties to Bida as the closest childhood friend of Alhaji Umaru Sanda, the late Etsu Nupe, whose late father, Alhaji Muhammadu Ndayako, was one of the emirs in the North to plant the seed of Western education in the otherwise conservative and hostile region.

    As you’ll expect Ambassador Kolo’s history of his alma mater was full of reminiscences about the good, but at times not-so-good, old days of diligent and stern teachers, simple but delicious meals, notably nyanboci, the Nupe staple food of tuwon shinkafa served with bean soup or gbegiri soup as the Yoruba with their affinity with the Nupes, would call it, and of the senior boys all too often lording it over their juniors, etc.

    The one thing Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the pioneer premier of Western Nigeria, was justly famous for was his policy of free education in his region. In a sense his Northern compatriot, Sir Ahmadu Bello, was one better than the chief; JT Kolo and his fellow pupils not only enjoyed free education, they were actually paid to learn. For, in addition to free tuition, primary and secondary school pupils in the North right up to the seventies enjoyed free meals and free uniforms, and received allowances which were princely sums in those days. Such was the great store the great Sardauna put on education and such was the strength of the momentum of his legacy.

    As the college celebrated its centenary its good old days seemed light years away. Although academically it was not in the premier league, to use a football metaphor, it produced a few odd brilliant students that went on to set academic records in other schools. One such student was Malam Yunusa Paiko whom Professor Ndagi singled out from the audience for mention in the course of reading Ambassador Kolo’s lecture. To date Malam Yunusa’s record of six distinctions in West African School Certificate examination in 1959 remains unbroken. He went on, according to Professor Ndagi, to set a similar record in King’s College, as a Higher School Certificate student where he made three straight A’s.

    Modest as the school’s academic record is, it has produced more than its fair share of the country’s most pre-eminent citizens. It holds the record as the only secondary school to have produced two military leaders of this country –Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar – both of them Class of ‘62. The same class has also produced the single highest number of senior military officers in the country. These officers, with the exception of Colonel Sani Bello who was retired as military governor of Kano State, left the military as major-generals. These were Muhammadu Magoro, now a senator, Muhammed Gado Nasko, a former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Sani Sami, the current Emir of Zuru in Kebbi State and the late Mamman Vatsa, he too one time FCT minister. Another exceptional classmate of theirs was Garba Duba who retired as a three star Lieutenant-General.

    The trail blazer for them all, however, was Lieutenant-General Muhammadu Wushishi who was their senior by two years. Along with the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, the military governor of the old Kwara State who was killed in the coup attempt against General Murtala Muhammed in 1976, and late Col Garba Dada Paiko, they were the first to be enlisted into the army by their old teacher, Alhaji Tako Galadima, as Nigeria’s first minister of state for the army.

    The military, however, was not the only sector in which the early products of the school proved their mettle. In the judiciary, broadcast, banking, bureaucracy, academia, and among traditional rulers many of its students have come to occupy prominent positions. In the judiciary, for example, a recent former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi was a student (Class of ’54) and its head boy. Then there was Justice Abdullahi Mustapha, one time president of the Federal High Court. Again there is the current Chief Judge of Niger State, Justice Jibrin Ndajiwo, and before him a few other chief judges. This is not to mention many serving judges at various levels of that arm of government.

    Among traditional rulers the school has produced the late Lamido of Adamawa, Sarkin Sudan of Kontagora, Alhaji Sa’idu Na Maska, the longest serving emir of Lapai, Alhaji Muhammadu Kobo, who was both student and teacher in the school, the current emir, Alhaji Umaru Bago II, the late Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Muhammed Sani Omolori, the current Sarkin Zazzau of Suleja, Alhaji Awwal Ibrahim and Sarkin Sudan of Wurno, Alhaji Shehu Malami.

    Several of these old boys, along with some of their teachers, notably Professor Ndagi, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu – now famous for his hard hitting speech during the submission of the report of his presidential committee that investigated the 2011 post-election violence – the late Professor Albert Ozigi, also a prominent educationist, and the ageless Malam Iliyasu Bida who is most likely in his eighties but is always looking 60, came up for award on the second day, December 8, of the centenary.

    Of the seven categories of awards on that day, the most interesting and telling for me was the Special Award that went to two of the school’s pioneering students – both of them females. Telling because, first, mixed schools were rare, if not unheard of, in these parts at that time. This apparently explains why the old boys of the school who initiated the establishment of their association in October 1975 chose to name it Bida Old Students Association (BOSA). Second, I thought the award was interesting and telling because the elderly Hajiya Jibabatu Mohammed, who, of the two recipients of the award, was present in person to receive her award, spoke such perfect English in accepting her award you would be pardoned if you thought she attended some of the best schools in England; you would never imagine that all she got was Middle School education between 1945 and 1948, when the school’s status as mixed came to an end.

    Certainly, it would make you wonder whatever happened to Western education in the country, especially in the North which had been a laggard in that field.

    However, even by the school’s rather modest academic performance, the last result of its WAEC was exceptionally dismal; out of 200 of its students who sat for the exams in June, less than half a dozen had four credits and above.

    All stakeholders in the school – students, teachers, parents, old boys and the state government – must share in the blame for the terrible decline of the college. But the least blameworthy are the old boys for the simple reason that under the chairmanship of Col Sani Bello, BOSA has done virtually all that any group can do to restore the past glory of the college. Along with his team, he has used a judicious combination of carrots and sticks to get many of the high-net-worth old boys to rehabilitate the schools buildings, infrastructure and equipment.

    So successful was he as chairman in the last five years that the school today stands out among its contemporaries like Barewa College, Zaria, Rumfa College, Kano and Government College, Keffi, as probably the best in these three areas.

    If the old boys are the least to blame, the worst culprit must be the state government. Like most states in the country, especially in the North, education seems to be Niger State’s least priority, whatever the state authorities, going all the way to its self-styled chief servant, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, may claim to the contrary.

    And unless the state authorities begin to give primary and secondary schools their due and unless there is transparency and efficiency in the handling of what goes into the sector, things can only get worse than the dismal record of the school in recent times no matter what anyone else does or says.

     

     

     

     

  • Annus Horribilis 2012

    Annus Horribilis 2012

    Tatalo Aremu, The Nation on Sunday columnist that takes no prisoners, as he snoops around, launching his fearsome Sunday-Sunday heavy bazookas at those who trouble Nigeria’s Israel, plumbed the depth of pessimism the other day.

    In his 23 December 2012 piece he titled “An avoidable tragedy”, Tatalo wondered why, with a touch of combative hyperbole, Nigerians could in all good conscience regard 2012 a horrible year, when their irresponsible leaders had always connived and conspired to make things horrible for luckless Nigerians in their care.

    “What you have in Nigeria,” he thundered with patriotic rage, “is not Annus Horribilis but Homo Horribilis”! That is as dire a sentence as can ever be.

    Is Tatalo justified? Maybe. Maybe not.

    But nature and nurture did conspire in 2012 – a horrible year by all accounts – to expose the dirty underbelly of Nigeria’s unconscionable power elite, and their antediluvian thinking; as well as the masses who they so ingloriously mislead to, not to love their neighbours as themselves as the Bible and the Quran command, but to hate with passion on as intensely private a business as religion and ethnic make-up.

    In 1899, Joseph Conrad found the European Heart of Darkness down the river in Belgian Congo, in blind and mindless greed. In 1954, William Golding, Nobel Prize winner located, in his Lord of the Flies, that the human core might well be more evil than good, contrary to previous thinking.

    Both Conrad and Golding, were they to still be alive, would have found further validation, for their fictional theories, in 2012 Nigeria; with mass murder and free-wheeling mayhem that have been the evil signature of Boko Haram; and the bumbling response by the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency, which spread the fog of hopelessness beyond measure.

    Year 2012, the Annus Horribilis Nigerians would rather forget, had pretty little to cheer. But it at least showed the troubled republic in its true state – closer to the Thomas Hobbes’s pre-Social Contract state of nature, where life was nasty, brutish, cruel and short; than to the modern welfare state, where the security of the citizen is guaranteed; and the welfare of all is the chief business of state.

    Taraba and Kaduna states, united in religious chauvinism, though on opposite sides of the religious divide; and ironically too, united in grief, epitomised the dysfunction of the Nigerian state, as much as did a year of limitless tragedies.

    Taraba, a state that would, only over its dead body, harbour a Muslim governor, finally faces the spectre of one – spectre, because to the power lobby in that state, the sceptre of power in wrong religious hands, is nothing but some hell, never to be contemplated.

    Yet, the 1999 Constitution puts citizenship above religious leanings; and therefore guarantees, at least on paper, access to political power to whoever is qualified, no matter his or her faith.

    Since the unfortunate aircraft crash of Governor Danbaba Suntai on 25 October 2012, Taraba has waited with bated breath. Everyone hopes and prays the governor would be all right. But what if it goes the other way, should the state suffer a needless crisis? And not because the Constitution is not clear on what should be done but because the power elite over there think their own will should trump the Constitution?

    This is one institutional shallowness that the horrible 2012 exposed, despite grand pretences. That power heart of darkness – shaped, no doubt, by past decades of illicit domination across the religious divide – must have triggered the reported rash attempt to expel, from his official quarters, the then deputy governor and now Acting Governor, Alhaji Garba Umar, as if such rashness could vitiate constitutional provisions in case of any eventuality.

    That the man is acting governor now, and may well become governor, underscores the futility of passion over-riding cold constitutional provisions, when the rule of law, and not arbitrary passion and power, is the issue. But it shows a dangerous gulf between the cold print of law and the hot, not-so-lawful ardour. That may yet be explosive, if that gulf is not bridged.

    But flip the coin and you are faced, at Kaduna, with the Muslim opposite of the power drama playing out in Taraba. Kaduna power players, who would tolerate a Christian governor only over their dead bodies, got subdued when Goodluck Jonathan nominated Namadi Sambo as his vice-president, and the former Kaduna governor yielded the gubernatorial seat to the long-suffering, tested but hardly trusted (it would appear, given developments after his tragic death) Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa.

    Before his ascendance to the Kaduna power pinnacle, Governor Yakowa had done everything that could possibly earn him the office – a top grade state and federal civil servant, a loyal and amiable two-time deputy governor and a level-headed governor that, from reports, saw neither Christian nor Muslim but one Kaduna.

    But at his death in that chopper crash, religious lunacy ate at the soul of the state. What the law had compelled, technological freak had undone – and it was time for the religiously bigoted to rejoice! Why, a lunatic even posted praises, on his Facebook wall, to his peculiar “Allah” for the death of another, who never did him any wrong!

    To the conventional mind, these were raw savagery, unbefitting of 21st century Nigeria – just as the conventional global mind expected the British public school tradition and discipline to have held Golding’s fictional school boy characters in Lord of the Flies from descending into savages, just a few days after being marooned on an island, after an air crash.

    But just as Golding’s novel was a wake-up call for the darkness of the human heart, though the globe boasted civilisation and evolution, the Kaduna and Taraba tragedies and the evil reactions to them by the power elite, accurately reflected the darkness of the Nigerian power mind, which needs a blinding flash of constitutional reforms to treat. Add Boko Haram, the mass murderous gang to the mix, and the stark, tragic reality of today’s Nigeria is all but clear.

    The greater tragedy, however, is that while the grim situation is all but clear, the authorities efface comical optimism that borders on wilful determination to see the house entirely collapse, while playing the ostrich.

    The Nigerian state is terribly sick. It is weak and tottering, bordering on total collapse. To be saved, it needs a radical constitutional fix. Yet, with the current attempt at constitutional amendment, the federal pretenders offer no more than effete palliatives, reminiscent of the failed efforts of the Abacha and Obasanjo eras.

    This may sound a dire New Year’s Day pronouncement, ala Amos the Biblical prophet of doom; but the political elite and the powers-that-be must work harder at an all-inclusive constitutional talk, where nothing is taken as given.

    Anything short of that radical restructuring may well make the horrible 2012 the signifier of a well and truly horrible era for a country battling for survival. That won’t make 2013 much happier than 2012!

    Despite this dire prognosis, a happy New Year to you all, readers of this column.