The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • On the trail of a fugitive

    On the trail of a fugitive

    The hegemonists must be ruing the day they dragooned Yahaya Bello, an obscure former chief accountant at a ho-hum federal parastatal, into the Kogi State gubernatorial race.
    The race had been determined more or less. The APC candidate, Abubakar Audu, a former governor of the state, and his running mate, Abiodun Faleke, won. In an uncanny turn of fate, Audu slumped and died before he and Faleke could be declared the official winners.
    In the perception of the public, no knotty legal or political issue was thrown up by Audu’ssudden death. It did not invalidate the fact on the ground: The Audu-Faleke ticket won the election. So, recognize Faleke as governor-elect, and leave it to the APC to produce a deputy governor-elect according to its own rules and usages
    This, at any rate, was what commonsense dictated. But in Nigerian politics, commonsense has no place.
    The APC’s national chairman, John Oyegun, allowed himself to be inveigled into referring the matter for resolution to Abuja, where an arch-hegemon was firmly in the saddle. It would be hard to find a more preposterous legal interpretation than what came out of the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN.

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    Discountenance the election entirely. Stage a fresh gubernatorial primary and a re-run. Faleke declined to partake in the travesty, from which Yahaya Bello, who had been clobbered in the primary that had produced Audu, was declared winner.
    A reptile judiciary steeped in obfuscation and perjury would endorse the sophistic claim that the Audu-Faleke ticket belonged to the APC. If this is true, why stage costly, elaborate primaries to winnow the field of aspirants? Why not put forward the contending parties themselves as candidates, and leave it to them to designate whomever they please as the candidate for the position at issue?
    All that fudging was in aid of an objective dear to the heart of the hegemonists: Kogi, being a “Northern” state, must remain in the North’s orbit by all means. Allowing it to be governed by a Christian and a person who cannot pass the “northern” test, would pluck it from that orbit and eviscerate the North’s agenda.
    From that epic sleep of reason and judicial legerdemain was born and bred a monster that today haunts not only Kogi but Nigeria’s body politic.
    Nobody who has followed Yahaya Bello’s brutal and capricious tenure in Kogi will be surprised at the corruption that has lately been documented about his time in office, and which I had remarked in four previous columns for this newspaper.
    His tenure is a study in gangsterism. Who else but a gangster would at every turn employ the pa pa pa rhythm of automatic gunfire to dare anyone to transgress his gubernatorial will?
    That was Yahaya’s standard practice whenever he deigned to address the people directly – the very people he took a solemn oath to serve.
    Yahaya Bello’s contemporaries are learning to cope with life after office and life out of power. But he is basking in what has eluded every elected president or governor in Nigeria since the return to party politics in all its confections: A third term.
    He bequeathed to his handpicked successor, Usman Ododo, his entire cabinet and personal staff and has for good measure remained holed up in the official residence. It is a measure of Bello’s continuing grip on power and of Ododo’s fealty that Ododo has solemnly declared that wherever and whenever his command conflicts with Bello’s preference, Heaven forfend, Bello’s will automatically supervene.
    Until Ododo was thrust into office in an election that will not stand the most cursory examination, Ododo was chief accountant in the bankrupt Kogi Local Government Service, where employees were paid, not their statutory salaries, but whatever Yayaha Bello deigned to dole out to them, a practice Bello instituted shortly after he took office eight years ago.
    Not knowing what they stood to receive at the end of each month, public servants were at the mercy of Yahaya Bello’s caprice. Even at its most generous – I employ that term advisedly – it was never more than 60 percent of their statutory entitlement. Employees’ unions that were not conscripted to sing Yahaya Bello’s praise learned not to stir things up.
    Fear of the little Napoleon was the constant companion of public servants in Kogi, from the highest rung of the judiciary and the administrative class down to the lowliest functionary.
    It was the same hegemonists who led Yahaya Bello to believe that the Presidency was his for the bidding. The office had been “zoned” to the North Central, and no one among the sitting northern governors favoured for the position was better qualified than he. It was not for nothing, they assured him, that he was President Muhammadu Buhari’s favourite governor.
    Having no superior qualifications nor achievements to flaunt, Yahaya Bello parlayed his age — a youthful 47 years – into a unique selling point. He then placed the Kogi exchequer at the service of his quixotic quest to become President of Nigeria.
    The Kogi State capital, Lokoja, became a Mecca for obtainers. One week, Bayelsa Youths for Yahaya Bello would bob up at a well-publicised ceremony to endorse Bello for president, based on his youthful vigour and unparalleled achievement in transforming Kogi from a backwater into the Dubai of Africa and destination of foreign investors flocking to the state with their footloose in numbers that could not be contained.
    The following week, officials claiming to represent teachers would embark on a pilgrimage to Lokoja to proclaim him the best candidate for president, given the mouth-watering pay and conditions he instituted for them. It made no difference that when Kogi teachers were paid at all, they were paid only a fraction of their entitlements.
    Hard on their heels would follow officials claiming to represent journalists, there to pay homage to Yahaya Bello for making media practice a soul-uplifting delight, shorn of the arbitrariness that constrained it elsewhere, and for making Kogi a land where the rule of law reigned supreme.
    The week after, Zungeru Youths would surface in Lokoja to proclaim their solidarity and unflinching support for a Yahaya Bello presidency. The following week, Kaura Namoda Youths would storm Lokoja to declare their support for Bello, the only presidential aspirant capable of lifting Nigeria from the doldrums into a global power with immediate effect.
    In subsequent weeks, Sambisa Youths, Okirika Youths, and Agbanikaka Youths, to mention only a few of those proclaiming support for a Yahaya Bello presidency, would converge on Lokoja to press their advocacy.
    Youths for Yahaya Bello from Kogi were missing in the parade.
    To supplement these carnivals. Yahaya Bello sponsored all manner of conferences,organized by entities of dubious provenance.
    They came, they obtained, and they went back laden with bounteous rewards. And they deluded Yahaya into believing that he was the Great Khalifa Nigeria was waiting for.
    In the presidential primaries, he was handed a shellacking that would have sobered the most obstinate creature. Not Yahaya Bello. Instead of elbowing him out as a bad advertisement for its cause, the APC humoured him by designating him its emissary to Nigerian youth and pressed his successor Ododo into service to supervise the party primaries for the gubernatorial race in neighboring Ondo State.
    Ododo’s attempt to import into Ondo the tactics that his principal Yahaya Bello had employed to win every election in which he figured in one guise or disguise collapsed spectacularly, just when the EFCC was closing in on Bello.
    Yahaya wangled an injunction from the compromised state judiciary restraining the EFCC and the police from summoning him for interrogation or arresting him, as well as his appointees. Just as he had dismissed as enemy agents visiting officials from the Federal Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and expelled them from Kogi, he denounced the EFCC as a cesspool of corruption out to besmirch the rectitude that pervaded official transactions in Kogi and sought to restrain its officials with a bogus injunction from a kept judiciary.
    Posing as a champion of states’ rights, he dismissed the agencies as interlopers barred from operating outside federal territory.
    Every bully is at heart a coward. Yahaya Bello, the arch-bully, is at this writing in hiding,a fugitive from the law.
    The EFCC chair, Ola Olukoyede, is to be commended for his determined pursuit of the former governor. His iron resolve to bring the fugitive to justice is admirable. But zeal is no substitute for due process, which presumes every individual innocent until proven guilty. He should allow the process to work itself out, using every lawful means in his remit.

    –

  • Wages of perfidy

    Wages of perfidy

    Karma!  The Edo revolution — sorry, perfidy — is consuming own children! 

    Embattled Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, just became history, vide his April 8 impeachment by the Edo State House of Assembly.  Doom foretold just dawned!  No tears from here.

    Governor Godwin Obaseki, the second hand in the anti-Oshiomhole perfidy, ironically played the crushing conk, sitting in judgment over Shaibu, his comrade-in-mischief, after months of hide-and-seek. The duo that danced and frolicked, after Oshiomhole’s stumble, have set upon each other!

    Both Shaibu and Obaseki had betrayed their joint benefactor, former Edo Governor Adams Oshiomhole, now the Edo North senator — the one, a mentee that scorned his mentor; the other, a “technocrat”, picked over and above many loyal confederates in Edo succession politics (including Pius Odubu, Oshiomhole’s own deputy governor), that nailed his benefactor.

    But sure enough, Obaseki’s own comeuppance comes in earnest.  If angry Shaibu and co didn’t go for broke to scuttle Asue Ighodalo’s election as Obaseki’s adopted heir, a future Governor Ighodalo himself reserves the right to blight Obaseki, as Obaseki had rubbished Oshiomhole.

    The double parallel in there is rather gripping: Asue, the “technocrat”, trumps conventional politicians, as Godwin did; Beneficiary Ighodalo gobbles own Benefactor Obaseki, as Obaseki did of Oshiomhole!

    In the explosive drama of long-term politics and sundry relevance, Godwin seems fated — to borrow that cutting phrase from Macbeth, the Shakespeare tragedy — to have murdered sleep, so Obaseki would sleep no more! 

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    The outgoing Edo governor had better get used to watching his back, for his savage but inevitable blow can’t be far away!  The Lagos-based “technocrat” and serial ingrate that took Edo by storm, crowing “Edo no be Lagos”, seemed leaving power with far less friends than when he grabbed it.

    It’s karma the immutable!  There’s little anyone can do about it. Karma has an elephant’s memory.  It never forgets!

    When that crushing conk comes swooshing, there would be no tears for Obaseki from here.  One who betrayed another is himself fated to betrayal by others. Karma!

    Still, let none of all of these be construed to mean Oshiomhole himself was more sinned against than sinning, to filch that memorable phrase from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. 

    Far from it.  The famed “Oshio Baba” repaid the likes of Deputy Governor Odubu with flagrant disloyalty, ogling instead the tinsel of a “technocrat”, when he could have had, in his loyal deputy and other confederates, the raw gold to cement his legacy.

    Karma on three feet? — since Obaseki only paid Oshiomhole with the disloyalty coins Oshiomhole himself had repaid his loyal lieutenants?  Intriguing!

    Still, leaving the spiritual for the physical: it was the macabre jinx plaguing deputy governors all over again — a veritable kiss of death in the governorship sweepstakes.

    While deputies are good enough to run and win a joint ticket with the governor, they are seldom good enough for the reciprocation of succession.  That, again, ironically has played out in the Obaseki-Shaibu fall-out.  Loyalty is simply not enough!

    The big difference though is that while Oshiomhole, warts and all, stayed true to his political habitat, Shaibu, dashing but callow, risks vanishing into a political quicksand — scorned in APC, not exactly loved in PDP — while Obaseki remains the ideological vacuum he was while he took power.

    Obaseki’s credo?  Loyalty to no one but self-in-power, as both Oshiomhole and the Edo Legacy PDP have bitterly found out!  So, the end always justified the meanness!

    How all of these would play out in the fortune — or misfortune — of both parties in the looming election is yet not clear.  What appears almost certain is Obaseki may be heading for post-power doldrums. 

    You can’t, post-power, wield influence if all you left were rueful predecessors and bitter successors.  That appears the true and logical portraiture of Obaseki’s governorship.

    Still, away from men whose present jinxes their future!  Now, to democratic institutions, which continuous abuse continues to undermine our democracy.

    The Shaibu impeachment has again rubbished the office of the Deputy Governor, as if the occupier were some feudal serf, at the mercy of some feudal lord; and not a democratic institution, which the 1999 Constitution created and guarantees.

    We all saw how President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar desecrated the two highest positions in the land with open and graceless feuding. 

    Somewhat, through mutual respect for each others’ persons, both President Goodluck Jonathan/Vice President Namadi Sambo and President Muhammadu Buhari/Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, managed to nurse that high office back to dignity.

    At the gubernatorial level, however, the governor, as irrational “boss”, still rules the roost.  That’s why Citizen Obaseki (because he is governor) would punish Citizen Shaibu, for pushing his inalienable constitutional right to run for governor.

    Worse: it is the worst form of democratic feudalism (a jarring contradiction in terms), for both the Legislature and the Judiciary, hiding behind crass legalism, to continue being captive to governors’ power whims.  That adds no shine to our democracy.

    By the way, how the grovelling Godwins Omobayo took office, and his frothy lullaby about how Obaseki’s Greek gift had honoured his native Akoko Edo, simply sucked. 

    His name may be Godwins.  But that obsequious persona wins no new dignity for himself, the office of the Deputy Governor, or even his Akoko Edo people.  Democratic power is a right given by the people, not mischief gifted by cynical politicians.

    But by far the most worsted, of all the democratic institutions, is the Edo House of Assembly, though that also came with a piquant tinge of irony.

    This same Obaseki it was, that stalled the inauguration of duly elected Edo legislators, till their tenure expired, just to prove he was crude lord of manor.

    Back then his avid collaborator, in unfazed democratic subversion, was this same Shaibu.  Shaibu would rather, to borrow the John Milton-speak of Paradise Lost, reign in Obaseki’s hell of realpolitik, than serve in the heaven of rule-based politics.

    But alas!  The same legislature Shaibu conspired with Obaseki to subvert, just became Shaibu’s own Golgotha, oozing with his crushed and mashed deputy governor bones!

    Still, the ultimate humiliation: the humiliated legislature was still pressed into (dis)service, to do its humiliator’s bidding. When will state assemblies begin to resist executive bullying?

    History’s remembrance of Obaseki’s controversial governorship won’t be too far from the Obaseki Ovonramwen perfidy of 1897, against the Bini throne.

    But on the balance, is the latest Obaseki a force for good or for evil in Edo politics? The jury is out — and time will tell.

  • Yahaya Bello as fugitive

    Yahaya Bello as fugitive

    Former Governor, Yahaya Bello, of Kogi state, who evaded arrest in Abuja last week, allegedly with the aid of his successor, Governor Usman Ododo, may prefer to be a fugitive, rather than submit himself to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The commission had accused him of laundering N80.2 billion, while he governed Kogi state. The attorney general of the federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, was short of naming Governor Dodo, as one of those who conspired to obstruct the course of justice, to aid Bello escape the EFCC’s drag net. 

    According to media report, while EFCC laid siege on Bello’s house in Abuja, Governor Ododo drove into the premises, and using official cover, scurried fugitive Bello into safety. There were reports of heavy gun shots as the governor drove out of the premises, and only the two men knows where Bello, is now hiding like a coward. Just like when he ruled Kogi, he seems to have coaxed Governor Ododo, to break the law.

    Governor Ododo and other beneficiaries from Yahaya Bello’s tenure, have been very audacious is declaring their former principal innocent, even before he faces trial in court. Before the recent attempt to arrest him, Ododo and company have been shouting from Kogi state’s roof top that no money is missing from the state coffers. Clearly, Ododo and his cohorts learnt no lessons from the James Ibori saga, where like Ododo, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, did everything humanly possible, to shield Ibori, from prosecution for crimes committed against Delta state.

    In Delta, like Kogi, the state officials kept claiming that no money was missing, to pervert the cause of justice, but woke up to demand for the returned monies, when after a trial in Britain, Ibori was convicted and millions of stolen foreign denominated monies, were returned to Nigeria. Interestingly, the trial of Ibori in Nigeria, yielded nothing, apparently because the state government may have refused to collaborate with the prosecution team, or even destroyed evidence needed to prosecute the various cases filed against him.

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    Such is the desperation of the governor of Kogi state to prevent the trial of his predecessor, that he had to abuse his office to ensure that a law enforcement agency, the EFCC, is prevented from performing its lawful duty. Interestingly, few hours after allegedly conspiring to flagrantly pervert the course of justice, Governor Dodo, was entrusted with presiding over the Ondo state All Progress Congress (APC) party governorship primary election.

    While he may have been penciled down for that responsibility before his display of undemocratic conduct in Abuja, last week, his performance in Ondo is stymied in controversy. Those who lost to Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, the declared winner, have called the party primary election that Ododo supervised, a sham. According to them, there were no elections in several wards across the local government councils. Whether the losers are merely sour, or are saying the truth, will be seen in the coming days.

    But for a person who was flagrantly willing to obstruct the course of justice, to be entrusted with birthing a free, fair and transparent election, is like asking a blacksmith to keep custody of a white linen cloth. Considering that the criminal code and penal code have substantially similar provisions, let’s take a cursory look at the criminal code, and what it portends for those who are preventing the EFCC, from carrying out its statutory duties.

    Section 145 of the criminal code provides: “any person who willfully obstructs or resists any person lawfully charged with the execution of an order or warrant of any court, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and is liable to imprisonment for one year, or a fine of two hundred naira”. Section 126 of the code also provides: “any person who conspires with another to obstruct, prevent, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for seven years.”

    Sub-section (2), further provides: “any person who attempts, in any way not specially defined in this code, to obstruct, prevent, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to imprisonment for two years.” Another provision which may interest the government officials, is section 123 of the code. It provides: “any person who, knowing that any book, document or other thing of any kind, is or may be required in evidence in a judicial proceeding, willfully removes, conceals or destroys it or renders it illegible or undecipherable or incapable of identification, with intent thereby to prevent it from being used in evidence is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for three years.”

    Governor Yahaya Bello’s saga, is not likely to end soon, as he appears determined to evade the course of justice. As this column is written, there are tales that he wants to flee the country, even though the EFCC had declared him wanted. The former governor who had called himself the white lion, is surprisingly behaving like a coward, and fugitive from justice. During Bello’s reelection campaign, he gave the impression that he was a fearless warlord, and people like the querulous PDP gubernatorial candidate, Senator Dino Melaye, were seen as wimps before the white lion.

    There was the insane allegation that Bello’s cohorts turned the sound of rapid firearms to a musical rattle, to scare their opponents. Sadly, in the run up to his second tenure as governor, there was so much violence in the state. While agreeably, Kogi is reputed to have several kilometers of ungovernable spaces, even before Bello became governor, his style of politics appears to have aggravated the already bad situation. Sadly, again, Bello failed to show gratitude to providence which trusted power to him.

    This column recalls the circumstances that threw the young Bello, who didn’t win his party’s primary, to power, after the sudden death of Prince Abubakar Audu, who apparently would have won the 2015 governorship election, which shortly after his death, the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) declared as inconclusive. Perhaps, to consolidate the power trusted on his laps by providence, Bello choose to rule the state with iron fist. If the allegation by the EFCC, is anything to go by, he also ruled with his hands in the state’s cookie jar.

    By running from the long arm of the law, Bello gives the impression that the allegations against him are true, and he is afraid of going to goal. But for how long, and how far, can he run, from the Nigerian criminal justice system, which even favours his ilk? For he is deemed innocent, until proven guilty. Again, if ever he is convicted, he could still come out a hero of his people, if the experience of Ibori and the recently released kidnaper, Wadume, are examples to go by.

  • Misguided Yoruba agitators

    Misguided Yoruba agitators

    One wonders what the ragtag army of Yoruba Nation Agitators, sought to achieve with their invasion of Oyo State Government Secretariat, last Saturday. According to the Nigerian police report, the police “successfully thwarted an attempt by hoodlums suspected to members of the ‘Yoruba Nation Agitation Group’, driven by a separatist agenda in attempt to forcefully take over the Oyo State Government Secretariat, Agodi-Ibadan.” While speaking to the press, the police accused the misguided young men of treasonable felony.

    Section 41 of the Criminal Code provides:

    Any person who forms an intention to effect any of the following purposes, that is to say – (a) to remove during his term of office otherwise than by constitutional means the President as Head of State of the Federation and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces thereof, or

    (b) to likewise remove during his term of office the Governor of a State, or

    (c) to levy war against Nigeria in order by force or constraint to compel President to change his measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon, or in order to intimidate or overawe any House of the National Assembly or any other Legislature or legislative authority; or

    (d) to instigate any foreigner to make any armed invasion of Nigeria or of any of the territories thereof; and manifests such intention by an overt act, is guilty of a felony and is liable to imprisonment for life (emphasis mine).

    In their reaction, the Nigerian Army reported that “upon encountering own troops, the Yoruba nation adherents engaged the troops in a shootout. Troops, utilizing superior firepower, successfully subdued the attackers, who subsequently retreated in disarray.” The X (formerly twitter) message went on: “as a result of this engagement, nine members of the irredentist group were apprehended while one Semi-Automatic Pump Action rifle and ammunition were recovered.” The army went on to assure the public that measures have been taken to bring the situation under control.

    The Oyo state police command subsequently reported the items seized from the 20 suspects arrested following the incident. They include “three Pump Action guns, 291 life cartridges, two expended cartridges, 67 cutlasses and five bulletproof vests.” Other items recovered include “six pairs of boots, 10 megaphones (public address system), three Oodua Nation Army camouflage uniforms, one unregistered Nissan Urban Caravan Bus and three TVS Motorcycles.” Unless there are more surprises, could these be the war chest with which the agitators sought to overawe the federal military power, to establish the “interim government for the Yoruba Nation”?

    According to this paper on Sunday, Professor Banji Akintoye who washed his hands and that of Chief Sunday Igboho off the “treasonable felony” offence, said the information available to him is that the agitators had appointed “interim government for the Yoruba Nation.” He however properly situated it, when he said “I learnt they are engaged in some sort of insanity in Ibadan.” He reiterated that “we are the people fighting for Yoruba nation freedom and we will win the war peacefully and in an orderly manner.”

    But for the hunger pangs and the heat pains, which are real, Nigeria, sometimes portrays as a comedy of illusions. It will be interesting, if one could pry into the minds of the starry-eyed young men, who were involved in the invasion of the secretariat, to understand their mental acumen. How did they conceive in their minds, or get convinced by another person that with their motley crowd, and scanty arms and charms, they could overawe the government houses across the six states that make up the southwest?

    Perhaps, they hopped to charm the Yorubas, as their modern day saviors? Or in their delusions, they hoped that the people will rise and join their bouts of insanity, apologies to Professor Akintoye? If they were recruited by a woman from a prominent family in Lagos, as Prof suggested, what could she have promised them, that such outlawry would achieve? Prof described them as a lunatic fringe, vowing that those of them in their type of struggle would not engage in such a manner.     

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    The days ahead will determine what happens to the alleged lunatic fringe. Would the state move against them and charge them with the high crime of treasonable felony, or with minor offences from which they could get out few months down the line? Regardless of what they are charged with, it is worrisome that these young men have been trained to handle weapons, which shows that theirs was a premeditated action. And the fact that they had flags and uniform, suggest that there may be other persons of like mind, perhaps working with them.

    So, while charging them to court may be the easiest thing to do, the southwest states must brace up for more challenges, if they have other members embedded within the public space. Also important, is to find out what motivates them, and why they decided to engage in the high risk of taking up arms against the state. There actions can not be wished away as violent reaction to the economic difficulties assailing Nigerians. Unless of course, the ragtag team are deluded that they could easily take over the government and be in charge of governance.

    Across the Niger, under the banner of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) a lot of young men suffer similar delusion; that with a ragtag army they can overawe the government and take over power. While the armed wing of the IPOB are far from their motive, the devastating impact of their sundry activities have left the states in the southeast gasping for economic breath. What initially stated as a joke sooner than later turned to a monster, as their strange decrees soon became diktats, obeyed by the people.

    Hopefully, the southwest states will learn from what happened in the southeast, and take necessary measures to end the mutating danger, if it is not already too late. While localizing the challenge to the southwest, the federal government should worry that the number of non-state actors, with access to arms and ammunition, and with intent to cause havoc in the nation, is increasing. Virtually all the other zones are already inundated with security challenges, with southwest until now, considered relatively peaceful.

    Hopefully, the national economy would rebound, on the wings of strengthening naira, and stanch the descent into anarchy, as portrayed by the Yoruba Nation Agitators, last week in Ibadan. While economic hardship is not an excuse for criminality, there is no doubt that unemployment and hopelessness associated with it, increases the vulnerability of the youths to crime. It is hoped that the federal, state and local governments would make hay while the sun shines.

  • Trial of Bobrisky

    Trial of Bobrisky

    Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS, in his Jero plays, “spoke” of The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis.

    In Nigeria’s distracted polity — with its penchant to focus on the utterly irrelevant — we just witnessed the trial (more of judicial inquisition, really) of the deviant cross-dresser that calls herself Bobrisky, even if he was born male: Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye.

    But like Jero, a likable rogue of an Aladura (white-garment) priest, gaming the naive on the Lagos Bar Beach of the late 1960s and early 1970s, will Bobrisky, post-jail, morph into even a worse cultural rebuke, as sure-footed Jero metamorphosed into a more sophisticated scam?

    That’s the risk of the iron-fisted verdict on Bobrisky!

    Meanwhile though, the finger-pointing moral police are busy celebrating their grand trophy.

    Bobrisky just got thrown into the can for six months, without options of fine, for abusing and mutilating the Naira — at least that read the charge sheet of the prosecuting Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    But EFCC and the entire panoply of judicial prosecution can tell that to the marines!

    Everyone — at least anyone that can read between the lines — knows Bobrisky’s real “sin” is her flamboyant cross-dressing, which jars on the prudish nerves of rabbis, mullahs and sundry judgmental ensemble: puritanical folks that just can’t deal with Bobrisky’s culture-jarring audacity.

    The EFCC and its swift docking and conviction of Bobrisky echo that Chinua Achebe quip: when a bully sights anyone he can maul, be becomes hungry for a fight! 

    EFCC knows — don’t we all? — that many among the well-heeled had committed more brazen abuse of the Naira.  What’s that Christ’s quip again: he without sin, let them throw the first stone?

    Yet, hardly anyone in that rank — untouchables? — had been rushed post-haste to court and sensationally sentenced, though it’s fair too to add even that can’t justify Bobrisky’s own recklessness.

    Yes, Bobrisky is well and fairly convicted for mutilating the Naira, in an open court.  The accused pleaded guilty and begged for mercy. 

    As allocutus, Bobrisky even offered, as a social media influencer, to start an anti-Naira mutilation campaign on her social media platforms, to which no less than five million doting souls are reportedly captive.

    The judge, on her own part, was blameless for exercising her discretion under the law: she not only opted for the lowest sentence by the law (six months, when she could have pronounced the maximum of five years); she also decided against giving her the fine option, to serve as warning to others.

    Still, why does the judge’s act, with all due respect, taste more like the benevolence of Pontius Pilate, who though cleared the Christ Jesus of any crime, nevertheless threw him to the Jewish mob baying for blood, though he washed his hands clean of whatever crime that mob might commit after?

    Besides, what is it with a first offender, with no previous criminal record, that jail without option of fine would be the wisest remedy, even while (s)he was all remorse and cooperation, promptly pleading guilty; and neither wasted the time of the court nor public resources on a lengthy prosecution?

    The answer, of course, might be the clear elephant in the room: it just might be more about Bobrisky’s cross-dressing; and her penchant to show off as a woman, when indeed he is a man; and less about Bobrisky’s Naira mutilation.

    For starters, EFCC’s “elimination by substitution” was quite intriguing.  Bobrisky was hauled into the dock for money laundering, aside from Naira abuse.  But the more serious money laundering charge was dropped without much ado.

    That, by the way, is laudable — the judiciary promptly dismissing any charge not sustained by proven facts. 

    Still, might the EFCC have been stacking its cards, using “money laundering” as a mere decoy, knowing even Naira abuse might be good enough to put Bobrisky away for her cross-dressing — a moral rebuke that is nevertheless no offence under the law?

    That might sound like some conspiracy theory.  But given the peculiar circumstances, it would appear a legitimate poser, under the guise of a citizen’s legitimate choices, which though might assault other citizens’ moral — or even cultural — sensibilities, are no crimes under the law.

    Besides, what was all that over Bobrisky’s gender in the open court?  Okay, the court could argue — and logically so — that were it to sentence the accused, it had to be clear, since the person in question is rather ambivalent about his — her? — gender.

    The court got the answer — Bobrisky’s admission (s)he is a man, instead of the woman he makes out to be. The prison authorities, flush — with triumph? — pronto announced they’d keep Bobrisky in a male cell, and protect her from sexual predators. Bravo!

    Still, might citizen humiliation be now part of our legal system?  Under desperation to escape jail, Bobrisky — self-named Mama of Lagos — recanted.  Yet, all her recant could gross him was a six-month jail term! 

    Humiliation complete!  Mission accomplished!

    Still, nothing from this piece should be construed as endorsing Bobrisky’s gender deviancy.  Even, readers could testify to this piece’s uneasy interchange of pronouns, between Idris the man and Bobrisky the woman.  It’s not pretty — lexical and cultural.

    Still, deviancy is no offence, except it results in clear crime; though society that pushes acceptable mores and thresholds would scoff at it.  But deviancy could just mean harmless non-conformity, or just youth irreverence, or serious mental health. 

    Society should learn to manage such without necessarily criminalizing the deviant. Yes, the legalistic ensemble would howl in protest: absolutely no evidence Bobrisky was jailed for her cross-dressing!  They are entitled to their democratic delusions.

    Read Also: Bobrisky: Beneath the surface

    Still, why would Idris Olanrewaju Okuneye, a product of the high-brow King’s College, Lagos and graduate of University of Lagos — both among Nigeria’s local “Ivy League” schools — just abandon an otherwise assured life, for the now clearly risky world as Bobrisky, transgender and cross-dresser?

    Shouldn’t a caring society be more concerned with his mental health, instead of sating rabid rabbis and mullahs’ appetite to toss him into jail? That’s a fair question to ponder!

    Meanwhile, Bobrisky’s scapegoating should make the rich and the spoilt, plus market folks that squeeze the Naira anyhow as routine, to think twice.   That’s good.

    But honestly, Nigeria has graver challenges than going after cross-dressers, drawing to them needless sympathy, thus exposing a dirty underbelly of stinking hypocrisy. 

    Perhaps the government could help with a half-pardon that sets free Bobrisky, yet, as community service, condemns her to using her social media platforms to push for sane Naira handling, as entry point into a mental health therapy that could wean her from the willy-nilly fixation with being a woman?

  • Electricity, like gasoline, like food

    Electricity, like gasoline, like food

    When the Minister of  Power, Adebayo Adelabu, revealed the other day that mindless consumption of electricity was to blame for the perennial shortfalls that have in turn necessitated an upward review of tariffs by more than 200 percent, many an outraged consumer must have dismissed him as flippant, if not downright petulant.

    The Honourable Minister may not have realized or intended it, but he was following a long line of political officials and policy-makers who reflexively blamed the hapless victims for the privations their acts and omissions occasioned.  He is likely to go down as a successful politician.  For, in politics, nothing sanctifies like self-exculpation.

    At a time of disquiet unlike the present one in the Babangida era, his nominal deputy, Vice Admiral Augustus Aikhomu blamed urban consumers for the high food prices.  They were too lazy to repair to the rural areas where costs were lower, Aikhomu said.  And unlike that feckless breed, he volunteered, he returned to his ancestral village in the Esan country of Edo State ever so often to replenish his supply whenever he ran out of gari.

    The Minister of Agriculture, the usually well-tempered and solicitous General Alan Akinrinade, explained that the problem was not that food supplies fell short of demand but that consumers were too picky.  They would rather have a bowl of imported oatmeal than a bowl of our own home-grown, healthier, ogi or akamu.  And if the oatmeal is not available, they will carp endlessly about a shortage of breakfast cereal.

    If the same over-pampered, spoiled elite cannot snack on grilled Cornish hen, if they cannot get their favourite cuts of beef from cattle reared in Australia or Argentina, or mushrooms from the Iberian peninsula, or fish from the South Atlantic, they will be in a sour mood.  Do not even tempt them with the local equivalents or substitutes.

    Their bread has to be baked with imported wheat.  Not for them bread baked with cassava flour which one administration after another in the past three decades has designated the National Loaf. And if canned baked beans is in short supply, nothing can induce them to make a meal of the wholesome, unbaked variety that is available all-year-round here.

    Some of them are so discriminating that they will not touch lager beer unless it is brewed with water from the melting glaciers of the Arctic Circle.

    No government, not even one sworn to uphold the human rights of all citizens as Babangida’s was, could cater indefinitely to the degenerate taste of a parasitic elite, Akinrinade could have added were he not an Officer and a Gentleman.

    Much the same reasoning was advanced to justify the cutting of alleged subsidies on petroleum products.  Gasoline was obscenely cheap, so much so that you could obtain one gallon of that precious combustible for less than the price of an 8-oz bottle of soda or filtered water.  When it          was not being mindlessly wasted, it was being smuggled on an industrial scale to other climes where it was guaranteed to earn windfall profits that belong by right to Nigeria’s exchequer

    Because gasoline was so cheap, consumers purchased and pressed into service far more motor vehicles than the road network could accommodate.  The resulting wear and tear cratered the roads and the highways, endangering the lives and property of innocent road users.

    Gasoline was cheap because it was so heavily subsidized that the authorities might just as well have given it out free, especially since, as we learned only recently, the cost of producing one gallon of gasoline was $3.40, whereas the pump price was at the material time about a tenth of that amount.

    The subsidies deprived the government of the funds it could have invested in building more oil refineries, prospecting for more oil, expended on research and development, and propelling Nigeria to the ranks of the G-20.

    The remedy, they said, was to cut the subsidy bit by bit until there was nothing left to cut.  But the more they cut the subsidy, the bigger it grew., and the more remained to be cut.  The more they patched up the clunky refineries of the analogue era, the more dysfunctional their performance. But new refineries never got built.  There was only scant investment in the new technologies.  They unbundled the government-sponsored oil behemoth, the NNPC, but its spirit and its proclivities continue to animate the parts.

    Importation of refined petroleum products became the main vehicle through which the politically well-connected amassed huge fortunes by dirty tricks until President Bola Tinubu declared that enough was already too much.

    Read Also: Simple ways to check your electricity tariff Band

    Even now, they are hinting darkly in fiscal circles that those insidious subsidies have crept back into the industry again, and that they will have to be rooted out very soon.

    The narrative has now shifted to the troubled power industry that has long been notorious for  what it doesn’t supply:  electricity. 

    Those who snagged bits and pieces of the old NEPA when it  was unbundled in the hope of making fortunes have proved no more adept at generating and  distributing electricity,  Not even the most generous stakeholder will rate the industry as a supplier of light.

    The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says the fault is in the consumers, not in the corporate providers.  Mindless, wasteful, reckless consumption is their defining attribute.  They keep their freezers powered when the contents are frozen rock-hard and will remain so for days if the power is turned off.  Their empty offices must be chilled hours before they arrive at work.

    Ditto their homes when they are away at work or out of town for the weekend.

    Even when hurricane lanterns, candles and oil-wick lamps can provide adequate illumination,            they must light up their homes with fancy light bulbs.  They have consigned the good old coal-fired pressing iron to the junkyard, and would rather use the electricity-powered variety that is a relentless juice guzzler.

    Not for them those efficient kerosene-fuelled cooking stoves, much less those squat and sturdy locally-fabricated stoves which impart the unique flavour of the blazing firewood under the pot to whatever is cooking, and can get the job done much faster than any electric variety.

    The Honourable Minister almost forgot to mention their washing machines, dishwashers, carving knives, blenders, mixers, toasters, shavers, and all such appliances powered by electricity and to insist their use carries the grave danger that indigenous expertise in performing chores in our traditional ways traditional may be lost irretrievably.

    These unconscionable habits persist, says the Minister of Power, because electricity is too cheap.  It is that cheap because it is heavily subsidized. For that same reason, there is not enough electricity to go around.

    The subsidy will therefore have to be cut and the proceeds invested in generating and distributing more power to those who claim that they cannot live without it, so long as they are prepared to pay the real cost as dictated by market forces.  Current practices, he has warned, are simply unsustainable.

    The common denominator in these three-fold crises, not forgetting the looming water crisis, is the consumer.

    Why don’t we abolish the pesky lot?

  • Abandoned Enugu coal mines

    Abandoned Enugu coal mines

    Enugu, in the southeast of Nigeria, became famous at the beginning of last century, following the discovery of coal, in Udi Ridge, by Albert Kitson, a British mines engineer in 1909. To mine the coal, which became the main source of energy for the booming industrialization in England and other parts of the world, mining tunnels stretching several kilometres were dug under the ground. Shipped through the newly created port, in Port Harcourt, coal fired Enugu to regional and national prominence.

    Coal was used domestically to fire the wagons as rail transport developed across the country. Also, coal became a major source of energy to fire electricity power plants as Nigeria inexorably matched to modernity. The Ogbete mine came on stream in 1916, with the production of 24,511 metric tons of coal. The Nigerian Coal Corporation (NCC), was incorporated in 1950, and with the opening of other mines within the area, coal production hit an all-time high of 790,030 metric tons in the fifties.

    Following the discovery of oil in Oloibiri, in 1956, federal government’s interest began to shift to the use of that other hydrocarbon, for the locomotive engines, and for the production of electricity. A further blow to coal production was the Biafra/Nigeria civil war, from 1967 to 1970. And the production and use of coal continued to plummet until it stopped completely in 2010. At the height of its glorious era, coal was a major source of revenue and foreign exchange for the country.

    The NCC which managed coal was one of the most iconic places to work, before and after Nigeria, gained her independence, in 1960. And many leading lights in the country, particularly from the Eastern Region, are scions of the employees of the NCC. At that time, working as a clerk in the NCC, was akin to working in an oil company, in modern time. Just as the quantity of coal export expanded, so also the tunnels dug underground what became the city of Enugu and the surrounding communities.

    Sadly, the effort to mechanize coal production did not yield much result, and as revenue from oil increased, interest in coal dipped.  By abandoning coal production, the several kilometres of underground tunnels and mines, littering Enugu-underground and the surrounding communities, have also been abandoned. The abandoned Nigerian coal deposit is estimated at about 2.8 billion metric tons.

    But, the diverse expansive assets of the coal corporation, especially buildings and landed properties, was an incentive for corrupt practices, as those appointed to manage the corporation, especially during the military era, were more interested in asset striping than improving the mining fortune of the corporation. While the country can choose to abandon the enormous coal deposits, which could be used to generate electricity, amongst other benefits, it cannot abandon the tunnels which pose existential danger to those living in Enugu, and the surrounding communities. 

    Presently, one of the challenges bedevilling the coal industry is the ownership structure, after the attempted privatization exercise. Like most other solid minerals across the country, the much needed private capital, is not attracted to the coal industry. The effort by the federal government, since the advent of democratic government, to give fillip to solid mineral development, has not yielded much result. The campaign by industrialized countries, against the use of hydrocarbon sources of energy, is also fuelling campaign against coal, to fire electricity production. 

    Yet, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal was the third largest energy source, for the U.S. electricity generation in 2022, which is about 18%. Until electricity generation system was decarbonized, few years ago, coal used to generate a third of Britain’s power, and presently, gas and coal power plants made up a third of the UK’s electricity supplies in 2023. Within the European Union, coal generates about 25.6% of electricity, and while the numbers are low in some countries, it is higher than 50% in some, with Germany having 42.7%, as recent as 2015.

    Conversely, in Nigeria, despite the abundance of coal, and the paucity of electricity generation, only 570 gigawatt hours of electricity, were generated from coal in 2022. The neglect of coal in Nigeria is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, as there are no known plans of the federal government, which by law, owns all mineral resources in the country, to use coal, as a major source of electricity production. The state governments of Enugu and south-eastern states, which could benefit from coal, to generate electricity, appear too timid to push their common interest.

    So, the abandoned underground tunnels of the coal city of Enugu and surrounding communities pose existential dangers to the people living above the ground. According to the Journal of Environment Science and Technology, examining the impact of the tunnels on the water bodies, with respect to coal mining in Enugu, “the quality of the water is significantly influenced, by acidic mine drainage and its impact on human health could be severe”.

    Also, Enugu State is reputed to suffer the worst erosion in the entire country, and the report attributes that to un-reclaimed mines and unregulated artisanal mining at abandoned mine sites, scattered across the state. The danger posed by the abandoned coal mining tunnels, appear to have awaken the interest of a socio-cultural organization, substantially made up of the communities most impacted by the abandoned mines. The forum, known as Agbaja Leaders of Thought (ALT), organized a zoom meeting, where, Hon. Uche Ani, an environmentalist discussed the looming dangers.

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    Among the concerns raised is that the “long abandoned coal tunnels created some voids and vacuum causing underground flood and water saturation resulting into vertical soil movement to the topsoil of some parts of Agbaja landscape giving rise to possible landslides in places like Ngwo and Nsude”. He also said “some dangerous chemical constituents in these open underground mine tunnels arising from mining operations years back have mixed up with flood water and found their way into some of the major rivers/streams in Agbajaland and other places”.

    These are grave issues, which require the attention of the federal government, which own the mines, as well as Enugu State and local governments within the area, considering that the security and welfare of citizens, is the primary responsibility of government. This column has in previous write-ups, argued for the exploration of the abundant coal in the region, for the benefit of the people and its government. Now, with the Electricity Act of 2023, allowing subnational governments and private investors, stake in electricity generation and distribution, the southeast states, should consider the revitalization of the Oji River power plant.

    To achieve that objective, southeast governments can enter into a mining lease agreement with the federal government, to operate the cluster of coal mines within Enugu State, to feed the revitalized power plant with coal.

  • A minister’s albatross

    A minister’s albatross

    Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu. Few Nigerians today remember the Minister of Power for his high octane visits to Zungeru, Shiroro and Kainji Dams in the quest for power stabilisation. Rather, the talk is all about Friday’s miscue regarding how Nigerians should consume less of what is not available. For this, most Nigerians who have spoken of Friday’s ministerial outing have been as unsparing as they are uncharitable. Some have dubbed it a disaster. It’s probably worse. 

     “A lot of people will come back from work and they want to have dinner or they want to play with their colleagues down the road, they switch on the AC for the room to be cooling before they come back.

    “Some people will be going to work in the morning and their freezers are left on for days… when all their items are frozen. This is because they are not paying enough.

    “We have all been overseas before, we know how conscious the power consumers are to consumption of electricity; this will enable us to manage consumption”.

    Those were the minister’s words. And this was just days after the federal government hiked electricity tariff from N66 per kilowatt to N255 for a category of users.

    As one might expect, Nigerians’ reactions have been utterly predictable, with many understandably angry. And this is not necessarily because the minister spoke out of turn but because he said something that was considered out of sync with the general mood in the country.

    Couldn’t the government have waited until perhaps, when things calmed a bit, before another hike on utilities is slapped on hapless Nigerians – they reasoned?

    Others, perhaps less charitable have, while reflecting on the pervasive dip in power supply across the country, saw the press conference as more of a forum by a somewhat overwhelmed minister to market alibis as panacea.

    Most probably have a point. With the nerves already fraying, couldn’t the minister have spared the people the lecture?

    The point remains though: there can be no running away from the problem. Indeed, the problem would appear to be more fundamental than what the government has been willing to put out. In fact, it is multi-layered. From the problem of gas supply to the generating plants, to forex issues, a grid system so prone to fits that it is best described as ‘abiku’, and finally an analogue distribution segment that lives by robbing the consumer to keep afloat, the image of an ill-fitting contraption could not have been more stark.   

    Which is why the solutions often passed out as a possible way out of the conundrum have tended to  be either simplistic or plain opportunistic.

    To heap the blames on the current minister who has only been a few months on the job is to ignore the deep structural issues underlying the current rot.

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    And now that sector has turned full cycle with the problems still enduring, the minister has only resorted to a tough call – in the figurative sense of the chick and the egg –the matter of which should come first. Unfortunately, whereas most Nigerians would readily frame the problem as subsidy removal, the government sees the push as one of cost recovery! And both are damn right!

    Talk of full metamorphosis of the Nigerian electricity consumer. Remember the old National Electric Power Authority (NEPA)? Famed for ineptitude, inefficiency and its culture of corruption, it was everything a public utility should not be. It neither had a programme of expansion in anticipation of the ever-growing needs of its customers, nor a maintenance regime to keep its system performing. Instead of a structured funding plan to guarantee its sustenance, and lacking in the motivation to collect its due revenues, it managed to survive on the budgetary lifelines dished out by the government. Its successor, the Power Holdings Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was no better with Nigerians no sooner after rechristening it as Problem Has Changed Name (PHCN)! 

    And so came the Power Sector Reform Act (2005); a supposedly transformational legislation designed to address those age-long problems. The rationale was that the sector needed to attract fresh capital that was no longer available to the government. Secondly, that the stifling bureaucracy was such that would neither permit nor afford the expertise and operational models that was required to transform the sector. And finally, that a new governance structure had to be in place to get things moving. And with the private sector’s enormous financial muscle said to be available to draw out to the pool of expertise needed to turn the sector around, such was the picture painted of the future of the sector that could not have been anything but glowing. 

    Nearly two decades on, Nigerians know better. Indeed, the old problem has merely morphed! In place of the old behemoth, we have a motley assembly of anaemic service providers that are private only in name. Yes, they continue to rely on the government for bailouts and other financial guarantees. As for the electricity consumer, he is still in the business of procuring transformers and other service accoutrements which are immediately appropriated by the Distribution Companies (DisCos). He is also required to pay for electricity meters, pay for upgrades whenever this becomes necessary – all of these without as much a thought to fair, equitable dealing. And all of these under a so-called regulator, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) best described as ineffectual.

    Talk of the changing faces of the problem from season to season.  Olusegun Obasanjo – the supposed midwife of the farce packaged as reform blew billions of dollars away in importation of nearly a dozen turbines most of which never made it to the project sites. Umaru Yar’Adua freely bandied ‘emergency’ to underscore the enormity of the challenge until the word lost its meaning. Goodluck Jonathan may have unbundled the old PHCN behemoth into more manageable entities, yet, he is best remembered for handing them over to inept operators. Over all, he somewhat treated the sector as just another problem to be kicked down the road!

    As for Muhammadu Buhari with his ‘body language’, he offered what was at best a placebo to a problem that was organic! 

    I truly hope that those angry with President Tinubu’s Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, understand where the country is coming from and hopefully agree on the need to chart a different path going forward.  For whereas the minister may have touched the raw nerves of a frustrated citizenry on the matter of tariff classification, nothing that he said could be deemed to be outside of what is provided for in the Multi-Year-Tariff –Order (MYTO) as outlined in the NERC regulations. For yours truly, the minister’s sin is not about what he said but what he failed to say – which is when the current climate of darkness will lift! 

    Other than the tariff issue, Nigerians want to see those things being done differently.

  • Power as legacy

    Power as legacy

    It’s not exactly the Gen. Yakubu Gowon oil boom years of the early 1970s — with the glittering and new Eko Bridge, the Ijora Causeway complex of audacious flyovers, and the magnificent National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

    Besides, there was the newly designed Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) complex, from the traditional Lagos Race Course — aka “Odan”: Yoruba for lush green lawn, though this one had big tree boughs and mighty shades — where Ripples, with other kids in the Lagos Island public primary schools, went for schools inter-house sports; or just scurried there for sundry exercise and relaxation.

    Great era — that Gowon era — where everything looked spic-and-span; before the jumbo loans of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s first coming; where you felt a benevolent government in the air; and a child’s mind told you nothing could go wrong!

    Sweet reminiscences?  Maybe! That’s what you get cruising on the newly refurbished 3rd Mainland Bridge.  The tyres purring on smooth, black tar, was simply magical! 

    But watch it!  Anything above 80 kms-an-hour may cost you dear!  If you doubt, dare the cameras, and risk razing your pocket with avoidable fines!

    It’s good the Tinubu government has kept apace the infrastructural foxtrot of its Buhari forebear.  That Works Minister Dave Umahi has continued where the iconic Babatunde Fashola left off — and improving on it — is something to cheer!

    For the Buhari-era 2nd Onitsha Bridge, or the Loko-Oweto Bridge that links Nigeria’s South-South and South East with the North over the River Benue, the Tinubu era is touting the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway; and the Lagos-Abuja superhighway in six hours!

    Though work has already started on the Lagos end of the 10-lane Lagos-Calabar road, with a rail track in-between, not much is heard of the Lagos-Abuja road, after its initial announcement.  Minister Umahi should please fill us in.

    On rail, Abuja is set to join Lagos as only the second Nigerian city to have metro rail.  Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike, can’t wait to tell everyone about the great debut of Abuja’s urban rail, to mark the first anniversary of the Tinubu order.

    There are even talks of fastening pace on the Lagos-Kano standard gauge rail.  If that were true, that would be nice.  It just means, not very far away, travellers would have options: shuttling, say from Lagos to Abuja, by road, rail or air.  That would be nice!

    Still, were all of these infrastructural strides to be tracked; and branded according to administrations, none of them would belong to the Tinubu era, as laudable as the regime’s positive continuity is, in this critical sphere of road and rail infrastructure.

    Not even the re-emerging local refining of petroleum products would belong to the Tinubu era, though the current government has the golden chance to mainstream it.

    Read Also: ‘We’ll balance public, private interests in power solutions’

    With Dangote Refinery already pushing out diesel — and happy talks of pump prices “crashing” — the market can only look forward to the May date for the roll-out of the big one: petrol, formally called premium motor spirit (PMS).  It’s exciting times!

    In truth, the Tinubu government, also trying to re-jig the country’s tough financial infrastructure, is doing very well to still fix its eyes on the infrastructure ball. 

    That — need one re-state? — is the only way to energize and finally build the local real sector. That will finally earn the beleaguered Naira its real value.  Despite the “massive” gains of the Naira these past two weeks, it’s still too under-valued.

    So, despite its laudable continuity, it’s doubtful if the Tinubu era can earn itself the age of renewed roads; or of modernized rail; or even, of the return of local refining. 

    All three belonged to the much-maligned Muhammadu Buhari era, though it’s also nice to know that hysteria is wearing off, as the Tinubu era continues to find own feet.

    They would all be branded as belonging to the Buhari age simply because the old government did all of the heavy lifting — just as the Olusegun Obasanjo/PDP era fairly merits the age of infrastructure rust and bust — even as the Tinubu order is fated to flower on the Buhari age’s infrastructural bloom, if it continues on its current push.

    Still, there is a special space in history, that would trump all previous governments, if President Tinubu were to crack that ultimate conundrum: power. 

    It’s the ultimate power legacy! Can the president and his (wo)men reach out to grab it?

    Great question.  Except that, so far, the Power ministry, and all the power agencies under it: government, quasi-private and fully private, have been pretty unconvincing.  That would appear the weakest link so far in the administration’s infrastructure chain.

    Now, the Power terrain is intricate and complicated territory.  If you doubt, ask Fashola, whose campaign quip, during the 2014/2015 hustings, was that all you needed to get 24-hour power, was to vote out the doddering Goodluck Jonathan PDP government.

    Indeed, voters hearkened that call; and PDP and Jonathan became history, under the ferocious charge of APC’s “Change!”  Not only that: Fashola himself became PMB’s first Power minister, with his humongous tri-portfolio of Power, Works and Housing. 

    That Fashola quip has since become the butt of jokes on the irreverent social media.  Still, that the normally stream-rolling Fashola hardly made a dent on the Power problem exposes the folly of applying personal daring to a systemic problem.

    So, to just go for his jugular and dismiss Power Minister, Adebayo Adelabu, as “Minister of Darkness”, as the traduce-first-think-later denizens of X and allied social media are already doing, tends to miss the point.  That sector is too complex to just scapegoat an individual. 

    Yet, the minister himself seldom sounds convincing, in his seldom well thought-out public utterances. 

    If he’s not drivelling over cost-reflective costs, he’s giving galling counselling on why consumers should switch off their freezers in this severe heat, aside from running annoying jeremiads over the non-sustainability of the electricity subsidy regime, when folks still flail under the removal of oil subsidy. 

    And o: that was after emerging from impotent threats against electricity distribution companies (DisCos), thus cutting the sorry picture of either blaming the victims (consumers to which electricity is even becoming a bigger mirage), or indulging under-performing Power sector players, despite his public derring-do of impotent threats.

    Neither is good enough.  The crisis in the electricity market needs a clear thinker, who can both rally consumers to hope, yet marshal producers to deliver the goods.

    Still, it just might be frothing emotion to heap all of these blames on the current minister.  If it were a systemic problem — and Power is clearly one — changing ministers, even monthly, would likely return the same indifferent results.

    But what the government needs is do rigorous due diligence in getting to the root of the problem.  It can then tackle each problem from its source — generation (with its gas challenge); transmission (obsolete masts and lines needing massive upgrades), and DisCos (with their mass metering problem), etc.

    If the Tinubu government can give these discrete challenges discrete attention; and push discrete solutions, then it could earn the bragging right as the Power Age. 

    It’s a big legacy, and it won’t be easy.  But it’s not unachievable.  Let the regime give it a hard push.  How do the Americans spin it — no guts, no glory?

  • Obasanjo@87: A celebration and a lament

    Obasanjo@87: A celebration and a lament

    Former President Olusegun turned 87 on March 5.  

    Ordinarily, an 87th birthday seldom ranks high on the calendar of a person or organisation. But Obasanjo is no ordinary person, and his birthday was marked with a strong national and international flavour and a touch of scholarship, all emblematic of his statesmanship and abiding concern with issues of leadership.  And there was great merriment.

    The occasion featured a lecture on governance by a most unlikely personage: former President Goodluck Jonathan whom Obasanjo, perhaps forgetting that he had foisted him on the nation, repeatedly characterized as inept and ineffectual, and who had in turn compared Obasanjo’s tactics to those of a motor-park tout.

    It also featured the inauguration of the Leadership Academy at the Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) and a book on leadership, the latest volume in Obasanjo’s expansive bibliography. 

    Even without the grand party that followed on the Library’s grounds, it would have been a memorable Obasanjo outing.

    There he was, in baggy shorts, at an informal gathering in the foyer of the OOPL dancing in measured steps to the beat of talking drums and sekere and other traditional instruments suffused with praise songs; there he was sallying forth now only to retreat deftly, deflecting slightly to the right and to the left moments later, turning and twisting in perfect synch with the beat.

    But that was only the preliminary.  Obasanjo seemed to have reserved the most intricate elements of his choreography for the grand party on the Library’s grounds, where Ebenezer Obey and his band serenaded guests, men and women of yesterday mostly, and a good number of today’s people as they arrived on the scene or circulated in the crowd.

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    Decked out in a designer outfit – unlike some two decades ago when he seemed to have had a carpenter for his tailor, he took his place on the floor, weaving, swaying, crouching one moment and springing upright the next moment, a veritable past master.

    I mean no respect to the women present, least of all to the sedate Mrs Bola Obasanjo, but if there was a competition for the best dancer of the day, Obasanjo would have won outright.

    Not bad for an 87-year-old man.   He sure has the moves, as they would say here in America.   And he has the vigour as well as the spirit.  Age has not slowed him down.  He spoke off the cuff on leadership for some ten minutes with nary a miscue, a testament to his mental acuity.  As to his agility, look no further than his moves on the dance floor.   

     He seems set to go on and on with the years.

    After he came out of General Sani Abacha’s infernal prison with his mind and body unimpaired, whereas his friend and former deputy, General Sheu Yar’Adua had perished in another Abacha jail, Obasanjo used to trumpet his Born Againism.  But not for long.

    As the story went, an aide who was on bantering terms with Obasanjo tugged at his agbada to pull him out of his revelry at an event in his first term featuring some damsels wiggling to the pulsating  rhythm in a mesmerizing dance.

    “But sir, you are a Born Again,” the aide remonstrated gently.

    “Born again my foot.  It is only from the waist up,” Obasanjo reportedly replied, in what may well be an apocryphal story.  But I digress.

    It was an added delight to see Dr Matthew Hassan Kukah, Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sokoto, on the dance floor not doing a perfunctory shuffle but “digging the show,” to employ the local parlance.  Always, engaging, Archbishop Kukah.

    But there were some notable absences, two of which struck me the most, the first being that of Aremo Olusegun Osoba who, as APC Governor of Ogun State, had assigned the site of the Presidential Library to Obasanjo, only to be schemed out of a second term by the PDP’s Fixing Machine controlled by Tony Anenih, he of the fearsome reputation of turning winners into losers and losers into winners.

    There is corroborative evidence of fixing in the 2003 gubernatorial race in Ogun but it is not iron-clad.  The defenestration rankles to his day nonetheless, and I doubt whether any development can move Osoba to attend any ceremony Obasanjo is staging.

    The second absence would have been more telling if Dr Onaolapo Soleye, Obasanjo’s friend and confidante since their days at the Baptist Boys High School, Abeokuta, had not died some 10 weeks earlier, on November 15, 2023, four days after he turned 90.

    You could hardly find two public figures who enjoyed a closer relationship.  Most times when I was visiting Obasanjo at the Farm House in Otta, in the eighties and nineties, I would find Dr Soleye had preceded me or learn that he had just left or was being expected.

    He was a fixture at various fora organized by Obasanjo’s Africa Leadership Forum.  An exemplar of temperance and modesty, his wardrobe consisted almost entirely of clothes made from local fabrics, as Professor Babafemi Badejo of Chrisland University, Abeokuta noted in a fine memorial tribute in the online newspaper Premium Times. From his casual, avuncular bearing, you could not tell that Soleye was a well-regarded associate professor of sociology at the University of Ibadan.

    He was a good listener, and came across as a person with whom your secret was safe, and whose goodwill you could take for granted.  He was never one to raise his voice, however heated the discussion.

    Soleye came into the limelight when he was appointed Commissioner for Finance at the creation of Ogun State in 1976, due largely, it was said, to the influence of Obasanjo, who was second-in-command in the ruling military regime led by General Murtala Muhammed.

     Obasanjo is also widely believed to have influenced Soleye’s appointment as Minister of Finance during the first coming of General Muhammadu Buhari as Head of State, at a time not unlike the present, where consumer goods were scarce, foreign exchange was scarcer, and prices were steep.  The administration steered the economy out of the doldrums.

     Soleye was there at Obasanjo’s side during Obasanjo’s two presidential terms, unobtrusive as ever, but playing supportive roles.  His membership of the Board of the NNPC was perhaps the most substantive.  He figured prominently in the founding and running of Obasanjo’s Bells University of Technology, Ota. Their friendship and collaboration continued long after Obasanjo left office. 

     Then something snapped.

     What snapped, and when it snapped, have remained mysteries.  One no longer saw them together at ceremonies in which their presence would have been taken for granted.  Those who confirmed my observation had no answer to my questions.

     Not being “on ground” as the saying goes, I could not pursue the matter diligently.  I did not know how to reach Soleye.  The last time I had any direct interaction with Obasanjo was 2020 and was not sure how he would react to questions about what happened between him and Soleye. 

     He would have answered my questions in broad terms, I suspect, but would have held back on the most salient issues, being the very discreet person he is, especially on matters touching official secrets and national security, however tangentially.

     When Soleye died, I scoured the media for a tribute by Obasanjo, and a letter of condolence to, if not a visit with, Soleye’s family.  I did not see any gesture reminiscent of their decades of friendship that I had found exemplary and inspiring. 

     Maybe I missed it.  But persons who should know confirmed my observation.  I should add that, were Soleye alive, he probably would not have attended Obasanjo’s birthday bash.

     When my relationship with someone I will always regard as my brother from another mother and who more than reciprocated in the same manner broke up suddenly and inexplicably, I sank into a deep funk, distressed that our relationship did not have the enduring quality of the Obasanjo-Soleye model.  I grieve even today, years later.

     That model served the Owu people, Ogun, and Nigeria well.  I mourn its demise even as I rejoice with its surviving exponent.

     Many happy returns of March 5, Mr President.