The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Time for state police

    Time for state police

    State police is an idea whose time has come and it’s crystal clear why: Nigeria is too vast for a central constabulary.

    Here though, the irony is rich!  “Constabulary” could mean “an armed police force organized as a military unit”.  But the winning Nigerian model should mirror “the collective constables of a district” — another dictionary meaning.

    Since post-1st Republic (circa 1966/67), Nigeria has more or less adopted the bristling central force, supposed to menace felons, with its awesome arms. 

    But many times, it never boasts such arms; and is itself, progressively menaced — by non-state actors and sundry, formidably armed felons.

    True: politicians and local potentates had thoroughly abused the pristine constabulary, the well-feared “Olopa”, though it wielded nothing beyond the good, old baton!  Still, contrast the citizen awe of that “Olopa” of old, with the quiet scorn that often meets his rifle-wielding offspring today!

    The pseudo-messianic military pushed out the old Olopa and Dogari — for good reasons — just as they did the fumbling politicians that thoroughly abused them; replacing both with a uniform Nigeria Police.

    Indeed, the local police — either in the southern regions of East and West — or the no less notorious Native Administration police in the North — the Dogari (royal guards) — had become an intolerable instrument of citizen coercion, oppression and suppression.

    Still, over the years, the over-stretched central police has frayed at the seams, and left gaping holes in rural areas and extensive forests: voids that have turned shimmering oases of violent crimes and sundry insecurity.

    Now, from about everywhere comes a near-uniform cry: the stone the army refused might well become the security cornerstone of future Nigeria: state police! 

    An idea whose time has come?

    Bala Mohammed, Bauchi governor and chair, PDP Governors’ Forum: “There is need for the decentralization of the security apparatus so that we can deliver good governance by having state police.  We will,” he pledged, “work in tandem with the established best global practices rather than being forced to be using vigilantes …”

    That’s a not-so-opaque reference to the ad-hoc pressing of northern youths into security duties.  But formalizing state police would have admitted that systemic gap and applied a systemic solution, under the Constitution of the Federal Republic.

    Gen. Aliyu Gusau, a former national security adviser (NSA), at the sign-off of the Zamfara Community Protection Guard — yet another ‘state police’ all but in name: “Nigeria is a difficult country to secure.  Therefore, expecting a single Police Force to patrol and control such a large and complex nation effectively is a very tall order.”

    But news flash!  Gen. Gasau was one of the fundamental pillars, both as avowed military centralist and conservative politician, that balked for much too long against state police.  Indeed, this is pleasant epiphany, forced by local dire straits!

    Read Also: Police arrest six suspected kidnappers in Abuja

    Dikko Radda, Katsina governor, on the Katsina Community Watch Corps:  “The reason we chose these people is because they were directly affected: their parents were killed, their sisters were raped, so they have more courage to do this job.”

    In brass tacks, the recruits are victims of violence, in far-flung rural Nigeria, that the central Police can’t reach.  Yet, they too are citizens entitled to state protection from bandits.  So, the Community Watch Corps is desperate Katsina rural police, without being so-called. 

    The flip side, of course, is that policing here could spiral into naked vengeance — hunting down bandits that hitherto had killed, raped and hewn kith-and-kin — thus risking an endless cycle of violence. 

    But again for these bitter citizens, tempering vengeance with professional police training, could be the ultimate antidote — both for day-to-day survival and healing. 

    Besides, having a well-trained, well-drilled and well-armed resident cadre, made up of passionate natives, in frontline rural communities ravaged by bandits, is a powerful step towards dominating the security space; and plugging the present voids. 

    Imagine all of that as routine parts of an integrated federal police network, woven as state and central police corps, each working tick-tock to fend off crime — that tight structure erected on doughty checks and balances? 

    Imagine the intelligence trove that should be at the disposal of such a police set-up?  Imagine the prospect of crime prevention which active intel-harvesting offers? 

    Imagine the vastly increased numbers on police duties — of hitherto incensed and alienated youths, now making a career of earning a living to protect own folks?

    Imagine.  Just imagine!

    The beauty of the moment is that the call for state police is coming from nearly all parts of the federation — not from some hectoring South West Solon, thundering down other folks, too slow-witted to catch the sheer paradise-on-earth of “restructuring”!

    For the North, it’s ugly reality trumping romantic dogma, nevertheless erected, many times, on genuine fears that a restructured Nigeria would knock off the North.

    For the crowing South — particularly the always bristling South West — it’s a gangling failure of messaging, built more on anger and contempt, hardly on humble persuasion. 

    It’s nice that regional pathologies are vanishing in the face of the ugly nitty-gritty. State police is threat to none.  It is rather a win-win to all.

    Yet, weak dissenting voices abide.  Hope Uzodinma, the Imo governor, seems less hopeful or upbeat about state police, claiming states don’t have the cash to fund it. 

    As chair of the South East Progressive Governors, he seemed to speak not only for  his native Imo, but for the entire South East, where frankly the Ebube Agu, the South East’s regional security answer to the South West’s Amotekun, appears floundering rather than thriving.

    Still, that Seyi Makinde, the Oyo governor, has faced down the Uzodinma claim shows its relative unpopularity.  But it could also hallmark the relatively high unanimity in the South West for the federalization of the Police.

    Whichever way between Uzodinma and Makinde, something must fill the present security vacuum, if the present insecurity must improve.

    That brings the discourse to two critical concepts: federalization and liberalization. 

    To federalize the Nigeria Police is all but settled: if not by fanciful dogma, then by the terrible praxis.  Having a unitary police secure a federation is a catastrophe — and it’s ugly in our eyes!

    But then, liberalization takes care of those states who, despite the present peril, still cannot afford it.  Liberalizing the police structure would ensure those states maximize the use of the present central police.

    State police, for the umpteenth time, is an idea whose time has come. President Bola Tinubu should cut a deal with the National Assembly for it to happen — as early as yesterday, as they say in that street lingo. 

    Time is running out.  Delay is dangerous.

  • The university next door

    The university next door

    When Governor Yahaya Bello announced during the run-up to the gubernatorial election that he would establish a university in my hometown Kabba – please pardon my provincialism here – in the much-neglected West Senatorial district of Kogi State, and get it up and running in three months, I dismissed it as a cheap gimmick to mollify the locals.

    They are at heart progressive, the locals, and hence attuned to the ideology of the APC.  But Yahaya’s brutal and polarizing rule over the past eight years had alienated them to the point that their electoral support for the APC could no longer be taken for granted. 

    Their disenchantment deepened when, in breach of the general understanding that the post of governor would be ceded to a candidate from a different zone if the incumbent has been in office for two terms or a maximum of eight years,  Yahaya Bello foisted his homeboy and relation on the state as the APC’s gubernatorial candidate. 

    He would further alienate large swathes of the population by muscling in as state governor, Usman Ododo, who had served under him as auditor-general of Kogi’s muddled local government system.

    The whole thing was a sham.  Days before the poll, result sheets had been compiled in the governor’s constituency, according to several watchers.  Ododo had registered an unassailable lead.

    Was the proposed university a scam, the latest in a long line of scams that Yaya Bello has executed as state governor?  One recalls how he proclaimed Kogi Covid-free; how his administration had built and equipped six state-of-the-art covid-testing centres, distributed high-quality face masks to the entire residents of the state, and built six intensive care units for non-existing Covid patients, and how he had transformed Kogi into the investment capital of Nigeria and the ECOWAS nations.

    It is also necessary to recall how, under Yahaya Bello’s administration, statutory salaries were replaced by whatever amounts he directed state officials to pay into the bank accounts of state employees.  This was essentially a reprise of the Imo Formula devised by that state’s military governor, Brigadier-General Ike Nwachukwu, and the state’s Commissioner for Finance, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu.

    At the end of each month, officials would tote up the revenue that had accrued to the stated and prorate it among the entitled population.  At the enunciation of the Formula, a reporter asked what would happen if there was nothing to share.

    Then there would be nothing to share, Kalu replied,  brimming with the smug satisfaction that was his trademark.

    The proposed university was a welcome answer to the historic yearnings of a people who, household for household, rank among the most credentialed in Nigeria, and for whom education is the basic industry.  But its timing was suspect, and it called forth some poignant questions.

    The state’s flagship Abubakar Audu University, in Anyigba, has been struggling since its establishment more than two decades ago.  Funding has been epileptic at best.  The second one, at Osara, near Okene, has yet to take a firm footing and now, a third, starting with the rudimentary infrastructure meant for a technical college, and with just three months to begin operations? 

    Why the rush?

    In this frenzy, beg your pardon, flurry of construction belongs the government-owned Reference Hospital at Okene which Yahaya Bello has described, without fear and without research, as the best in Nigeria. In terms of layout and facilities, the sprawling complex qualifies as one of the best in the nation, according to informed observers. 

    But many patients who go there seeking treatment are referred to the Federal Medical Centre in the state capital, Lokoja, because the panoply of expertise that should be its hallmark is simply not there – at least not yet:  a reminder from the time of former Akwa Ibom governor and now senate president, Godswill Akpabio, that buildings, no matter how well-appointed, do not a world-class hospital make, any more than a hood, however fanciful, makes a monk.

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    The attentive audience in Kogi was skeptical.  The skepticism lingered even after Yahaya Bello steamrolled an enabling law through the Kogi State Assembly and set up an Implementation Committee with a mandate to cut through the bureaucratic and other impediments and ensure that the institution would start early in the new year.  It went to work in earnest.

    The appointment of the distinguished literary scholar and recipient of the National Order of Merit, Professor Emeritus Olu Obafemi, as chair of the Implementation Committee was reassuring.  So was its composition – a roll call of some of the best and brightest Kogi indigenes.   But you also ha to reckon with the state governor’s quick temper and zero tolerance for dissent of any kind on any issue.

    Would he allow the Committee to discharge its mandate with the minimum of interference?  Here again, one had the assurance that, under Obafemi’s leadership, the Committee would not roll over and let Yahaya Bello have his way on the fundamental issues, or allow him to take its name in vain, without adherence to the values to which its members subscribe collectively.

    One’s fears did not materialize.  Obafemi and his team delivered, on schedule. 

    They identified and recommended key officials of the university for appointment, designed its logo and motto and other items of its paraphernalia, offered admission to more than 1,000 students and got a grip on the logistics of office accommodation for faculty and staff, and hostel accommodation for students.

    After its first matriculation which was staged on its Kabba campus a fortnight ago, there can be no doubt that, as they say in Nigeria, the institution has come to stay. 

    Seeing the students gliding – I take that back – floating in their newly-minted academic gowns reminded me of the centrality of that item in the life of the Nigerian undergraduate. It marks and launches an inflection point.  Nothing will ever be the same with them again, even in these disarticulated times.  Nor will Kabba, its home, be the same again.

    The first impulse on being assigned the gown is to deck oneself in it and take pictures for the folks back home  The camera phone has made the task easy and cheap.  In my time, you had to go to a photographer’s studio to get the picture made. 

    For effect, you wore your regalia all the way from campus to the bustling Yaba Bus Stop and Surulere, sweating it out in a danfo.  Even today, when there is a university in every alley, it is always an arresting scene when the new undergraduate floats down the neighborhood, his academic gown billowing.

    Whatever the difficulties and uncertainties of the moment, the students who were matriculated in Kabba that Saturday should not doubt that going to university is the right call.  To them and the tens of thousands waiting to take that leap, remember:  The future belongs to the prepared.

  • Karma, overdog, underdog

    Karma, overdog, underdog

    The Rivers power drama, hot and explosive, may thaw (or harden) on the wisdom — or folly — of two (or even three) elders, but not the bristling combatants: Nyesom Wike, former governor and overdog, and Siminalayi Fubara, sitting governor and underdog. 

    Karma looms between both.

    One key elder is Chief Edwin Clark, Ijaw leader by own confession since 1975.  From his take on the Rivers crisis, Pa Clark wears, unfazed, the stark conflict binoculars of an Ijaw irredentist — and the old man picks no bones about it!

    Compare and contrast his hard stand with Dr. Peter Odili’s — first Rivers’ elected governor from 1999.  Indeed, the warring camps can be rightly tagged Odili boys and girls, much as you’d dub the present ruling elite in Lagos, Tinubu boys and girls.

    Yet, not for the former governor some stark war envoy, booming a no-retreat-no-surrender Ikwerre-Ijaw combat (ala Pa Clark)! Odili has rather nudged his warring wards into some reasoned detente, from open but mutually self-destruct fracas.

    But there is a “third force” of influence in this Rivers “civil war” — Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of the Federal Republic; and with his involvement, history beckons. 

    Very early in Nigeria’s 1st Republic, the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, took sides in the Western Region crisis.  It was a rogue intervention that eventually buried that republic, after less than six years (1 October 1960 – 15 January 1966).

    Now, 24 years into Nigeria’s 4th Republic — after decades-to-nowhere under best-forgotten military rule — the President has intervened in another regional crisis, this time in Nigeria’s oil-rich, often volatile, South-South.

    Now, is that intervention as rogue as Balewa’s? Or of compelling good faith to defuse a ticking bomb?  The jury is out.  Indeed, that is the violent contrast between the Clark and the Odili schools on the Rivers crisis. 

    Clark thinks Tinubu intervened to clobber his Ijaw ward in Governor Fubara, so the old man feels obliged to bawl Ijaw power, and bark Ijaw nationalism.

    Odili adopts a more even-handed stand — neither jumping on the side of the volatile Wike, now Tinubu’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, nor on Fubara’s.

    Indeed, for Wike and Fubara, feuding godfather and godson, it’s a fierce pull from two ends:

    Wike, to keep the “structure” that subdued everything to gift Fubara gubernatorial power (even if that means junking the errant godson); Fubara, to keep his cherished “red biro” — read, remain governor (even if that means burying the over-bearing godfather)!

    The stakes seldom get higher!  Still, karma menacingly lurks!

    Karma!  That should be Wike’s gravest worry.  So, it’s understandable if the bruising godfather sounds more and more belligerent, even as his mild godson sounds more and more amenable.

    The harsh prognosis is that in Fubara looms Karma: a terrible ogre that could well do to Wike, what Wike did to own boss, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi!

    Yet, Fubara is no saint any more than Wike is a devil. 

    Indeed, to be fair, Fubara stands fairly docked for perfidy to the collective structure — and personal mentor — that suppressed everything and everyone to hand him power.  So, if Wike dismisses him as a grand traitor, he’s not just talking gas. 

    As for Pa Clark and other Ijaw nationalists, now trenchant on activating their Ijaw “Sim”, as some Ikwerre plot to suppress the Ijaw, where were they when Wike, the Ikwerre man, was shutting out fellow Ikwerres, to make Fubara, the Ijaw man, governor?

    But for all his amplified perfidy, Fubara has been a study in civility towards Wike, never tires to call him “my oga” (my boss), even as the governor holds his own and throws his darts!  Talk of the mouse biting and soothing all at once!

    Still, that’s way more polite than Wike’s own coarse-and-gruff savaging of Amaechi, his former boss and benefactor.  He would, with undiluted contempt, slam Amaechi as some never-do-well predecessor. 

    But that’s not true.  Amaechi was a fine governor.  Though Wike achieved fame as Rivers’ “Mr. Project”, he only built on the gains of the Amaechi years, just as Amaechi did on the gains of the Odili years — before the 2015 politics of APC versus PDP fissured the Rivers ruling elite, once united under Dr. Odili.

    But beyond karma, Wike and Fubara seem to have done enough in mutual crippling, though, as always, the overdog’s crash appears more crushing than the underdog’s.

    For starters, Wike made a tactical error for thinking he could, just like that, bounce Fubara off the governorship.  That was clear from the failed impeachment move. 

    Yet again, rash, raw power has proved its impotent worst.  Fubara dared it — and survived — and the overdog is condemned to cutting the underdog some slacks!  So much for the limits of raw power.

    Worse news: the Wike forces, by the near-wholesale defection of the Rivers parliament from PDP to APC, have put their neck on the legal chopping block. They can only hope the law is Damocles, whose sword never swishes down — or else they could be toast!

    Still, that hardly transforms Fubara from a scurrying rat into a roaring lion.  He himself has committed grave infractions against democracy and due process — faults that can put his continued hold on power in lawful jeopardy.

    One is rushing the 2024 budget through a rogue parliament in 24 hours!  Parliament’s non-endorsement of the money bill is about the gravest crime in a democracy.

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    Another is, in blind panic, bulldozing the temple of the first estate of the realm — the parliament building, for whatever sugar-coated reasons.  That bombs the letters and spirit of democracy — for Parliament, the bastion of the people, is conceived to hold the executive in check.

    It’s from this prism of mutual jeopardy that the warring factions must, therefore, see the Tinubu presidential intervention.  Viewed with less baggage, it’s simply for both camps to freeze, and withdraw from their mutual excesses, read outlawry.

    Neither the ethnic rage of the Clark camp, nor the “structure” ire of the Wike army, can wish away both sides’ grave constitutional infractions.

    That’s why the president must keep a tight leash on both, save them from one another, so that the Rivers people can breathe.  But the intervention must be even-handed, and transparently so.  It’s good that the president enjoys the confidence of both camps.

    The Rivers elders must play own parts too — which is why the Clark camp must tap into the even-handedness of the Odili school.  There’s nothing ethnic about the Rivers power struggle.

    And the lurking karma? Maybe a Wike-Fubara rapprochement can nudge the Wike-controlled parliament to be less rash; and the Fubara-led executive to undo its budget outlawry.

    Who knows?  That might break the karma cycle!  That way, Fubara won’t treat Wike as Wike himself had rubbished Amaechi.  Neither would any future governor maul Fubara!

    Rivers people will be the ultimate winners.

  • Ndume: Hypocrisy of the northern elite

    Ndume: Hypocrisy of the northern elite

    If Nigerians ever needed ample evidence of how tenuous the band that holds the nation’s fabric has remained, and of how utterly hypocritical the leadership of a section of a country is when matters concerning the well-being of the country as a whole is concerned, the furore over the planned relocation of some departments by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to the nation’s commercial capital has since offered more than the country could have bargained for.

    For if it seems unimaginable that an exercise that should ordinarily pass for routine restructuring to enhance operational efficiency has led to the re-opening of old wounds as indeed the stoking of the age-long animosities that have held the country down, one only needed to be reminded that this is Nigeria – a country where nothing escapes the swirling attention of ethnic revanchists and allied conspiracy theorists.

    Short of pronouncing a fatwa on the Tinubu administration, a section of the country’s elite are suddenly up in arms, fearing the changing political calculus. From what began as barely subdued whispers about a phantom plan by the Tinubu administration to move the seat of the federal government back to Lagos few months back, our ethnic and regional champions, seems to have found some straws to latch to. And guess what, they have, not one but two, to hold on to!

    The first, an internal memo informing staff that the CBN governor, Yemi Cardoso, had pencilled the departments of Banking Supervision, DBS; Other Financial Institutions Supervision, OFISD; Consumer Protection, CPD; Payment System Management, PSMD and; Financial Policy Regulations, FPRD for relocation back to Lagos – an exercise in which 1,533 staff would be affected. 

    Said the CBN memo: “This action is necessitated by several factors, including the need to align the bank’s structure with its functions and objectives, redistribute skills to ensure a more even geographical spread of talent and comply with building regulations, as indicated by repeated warnings from the Facility Manager, and the findings and recommendations of the Committee on Decongestion of the CBN Head Office”.

    Hard to fault? Not so, at least to Nigeria’s sectional leaders. For all they care, the culture of indulgence and waste, under which a privileged few, are availed the monthly luxury of hefty duty tour allowances for what ordinarily should be a desk job, can continue ad infinitum.

    The second, a ministerial directive, ordering the movement of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to its operational redoubt in Lagos. And this would be followed by a more informed clarification: “Those affected by the decision to move the headquarters to Abuja have since returned to Lagos as there is no office space for them in Abuja. It was ill-advised in the first place to move the headquarters to Abuja when there was no single FAAN building in Abuja to accommodate all of them at once.”

    Yes: two separate but related developments, whose underlying motives were to inject efficiency, rationality and common sense into governance said to amount an open declaration of war on the north by the Tinubu presidency!

    And to imagine that the drum major for this nonsense is Ali Ndume, the chief whip of Nigerian Senate, a distinguished member representing Borno South senatorial district since 2011. Appearing on Channels Television the other day, he belched fire, rage and division, insisting that only a reversal of the two measures would bring peace, going as far as threatening the president with grim consequences should he fail to order a reversal of the measures!

    That is how desperate things can sometimes get.

    Truth unfortunately is that Ndume is not alone. A number of other northern groups have spoken of the measures as aimed at decapitating their beloved north – interpreted as degrading their beloved Abuja. Most notable is the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF). The body, in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Tukur Mohammed-Baba on Sunday, described the measures, as reeking in bad faith, and ‘a deliberate ploy to further under-develop northern Nigeria.’

    Said he: “The ACF wishes to remind all concerned that decades ago, the seat of the capital of the Federal Republic was moved from Lagos to Abuja for reasons that remain valid, it is constitutional even more so today, constitutionally so, although, of course, a section of the country never liked the decision”.

    As one writer recently noted, the ACF chieftain rather conveniently forgot that whereas the nation’s key military institutions are almost exclusively located in his beloved north, the south has yet to complain of the need for parity.

    What else have we not heard or read? I even came about an atrocious reportage (online of course) which suggested that relocating the affected departments, being the only departments mentioned in the BOFIA Act [Banking and Other Financial Institutions Act], is akin to stripping the institution of its essence. Yes; that the movement will strengthen Lagos and weaken Abuja – and thus render the latter almost useless. To yet another group, the measure would in the end punish married women from the north!

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    And all of these because, in the opinion of the CBN leadership, the institution would deliver better on its mandate were the personnel to be deployed optimally. Interestingly, FAAN would say exactly the same thing: that moving the institution – not the aviation ministry as disingenuously and erroneously conflated and projected by opportunistic hacks – to its operational base will better serve the needs of its constituency!

    I perfectly understand why the issue has become something of a hot button. Those who wonder what the matter is all about only need to cast their minds back awhile when Godwin Emefiele reigned at the apex bank. That was a laissez-faire era during which children of the powerful not only flooded the bank with their children and relations, but conferred on them the right to dictate the departments where they were to work.

    As one might imagine, it was only a matter of time before the corporate headquarters building exceeded its carrying capacity, following which the bank would surpass its personnel requirement.

    Thanks to the new leadership at the apex bank, that day appears to have come sooner than expected. With the affected staff now expected to live by the rules which others had long taken for granted, it seems hard to think of a greater punishment by a people whose access to power and the privileges it confers had long defined such niceties as an entitlement.

    Now, the joke in town is that those ‘crying adults’ are outraged because their children and wards are affected. How many or how true, we may never know. What we do know and which a former CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has since attested to, is that the measure contemplated by the apex bank makes eminent sense; and that those at the CBN corporate headquarters are no more Nigerian than those in the field offices in Minna, Yenagoa or wherever. And finally that those who can’t be seen to work within the rules of their organisations have a choice: to move on.

    Surely, Nigeria and Nigerians have seen enough of the blackmail, the negative, ultra-reactionary activism to call out their purveyors be they in high or low places.  It is time to remind them that this is 2024.

  • Senator Ndume as metaphor

    Senator Ndume as metaphor

    What ails Nigeria’s political leadership is the dearth of statesmen, and Ali Ndume, senate chief whip, epitomized that symptom the past week. Relegating his higher responsibility as a senator of the federal republic to the backseat, he projected himself as a northern irredentist. He gleefully claimed in a televised interview that transferring a parastatal of the aviation ministry and few departments in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), from Abuja to Lagos, amounted to anti-northern posturing by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s (PBAT) administration, warning that there would political consequences.

    The senator chose to ignore the sound reasons offered by CBN that “this initiative aims to ensure compliance with building safety standards and enhance the efficient utilization of our office space.” The bank reported that while the floor space was designed for 2700 personnel, the building is currently housing 4,233, and building controlling authorities have warned against the abuse. On its part, the Minister of Aviation announced that FAAN, which until 2020, was operating from Lagos, the hub of airliners, would return to their empty office space, instead of wasting public funds on rented apartment in Abuja.

    In pursuit of his narrow agenda, it never occurred to Ndume that by his stance, he was telling the rest of Nigerians that the claim that Abuja belongs to all Nigerians, irrespective of ethnic differences, is a ruse. He was in essence parroting that what guides his responsibility as the chief whip of the senate, is northern or even narrower interests, and not national interest. He was telling those who nominated or elected him as chief whip that he can never rise above parochial interest, damn common good.

    By rising to the defence of a few employees of the CBN and FAAN, Ndume was lending credence to the claims in the past that privileged Nigerians were flooding federal agencies and parastatals with their wards, while they lie to the rest of Nigerians that there was a ban on employment. It is such self-serving interests by power brokers that must have compelled the CBN to over employ such that a building designed to cater for 2,700 number of users, is now housing as many as 4,233.

    To protect the interest of the privileged few, the safety of the entire users was damned by the previous administrators of the CBN and by extension the presidency. As happens in the protection of parochial interests, Ndume is willing to risk the lives of entire CBN staff in Abuja, to promote his irredentism. But, a scratch of his promoted interest in the public domain, may show that it is his personal interest that he clothes as northern interest.

    It is possible he has a ward, some friends, or few relations that would be affected by the movement of the departments, or he merely wants to be seen as the protector of northern interests. Knowing that he cannot defend his opposition, against the sound administrative and economic reasons offered by the authorities, he chose to resort to base ethnic sentiment. But Ndume is not alone in pursuit of such narrow interest, which is at the heart of our nation’s underdevelopment.

    Whether as individuals or as groups, many leaders at the helm of affairs have little regard to national interest. But they smartly cloth their self-serving interests as national, tribal, regional or other group interests, and the undiscerning public jump on the bandwagon. One example is Farouk Lawan, formerly of the House of Representative, whose jail sentence was affirmed recently by the Supreme Court. One recalls that at the height of his public posturing, Farouk presented himself as an ultra-nationalist, determined to bring probity and transparency into public office.

    Back then, he was usually clothed in his white agbada, pontificating on how he and his ad hoc committee members were going to rid the fuel subsidy regime of the evil of corruption. Many swore that he represented the best of nationalists, but alas, all that posturing was to position himself to extort maximally from his victims. If not that Femi Otedola was his match, and exposed him for who he truly is, who knows what position of authority he would be occupying in government presently. 

    The same can be said of the recently disgraced governor of apex bank, Godwin Emefiele. At the height of his public posturing, he pontificated that his policies were the best thing to happen to the nation’s economy. While promoting his personal interest, including the ill-fated presidential ambition, he projected himself as the nation’s economic champion. He bestrode macro and micro economy of the country like a colossus. Until the bubble bust, many would swear that he was working for the best interest of Nigerians.

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    So, Ndume is not alone in creating a public illusion of his persona. In crying out against a mere routine administrative action, by the CBN and Ministry of Aviation, the self-serving Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) claimed the action was geared to underdeveloped the northern region of the country. Beclouded by parochial interests, they ignored the reasons offered by the authorities for the relocation. They rather stoked ethnic sentiments, and pushed the narrative that Abuja is a northern enclave rather than the Federal Capital Territory.

    Joining the bandwagon, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum also claimed that the administrative decisions were geared to the disadvantage of the northern region. Unfortunately, while pursuing a narrow agenda, they were claiming to be working for a national inclusiveness. According to them, since Abuja was chosen to promote national cohesion, the head offices of all federal government agencies must therefore operate only from Abuja. This column calls on their leaders to rethink such strategy, in the promotion of northern interest. 

    It also asks Ndume to review his aggressive pursuit of his political interests. The threatening of PBAT with political consequences, was debasing of his long standing in the National Assembly, first as a two-term member of the House of Representatives, and presently four-terms as a distinguished senator. He ought to know that the underdevelopment in the northern part of the country is not as a result of where the parastatals and agencies of government are located. Rather it is the mismanagement of the enormous resources the region had benefitted.

    If development results from mere political brinkmanship or siting of public offices, the northern part of the country would have been much more developed that the southern part. Part of the major challenge of the region, is the tragic sense of entitlement, which hinders the benefits of competitiveness. Ndume, should use his remaining years in the senate to promote national cohesion, opportunities for the teeming youth population and development of all parts of Nigeria. A united and prosperous Nigeria, will benefit the northern region more than where a few federal government offices are situated.  

  • Like scenes from Gaza

    Like scenes from Gaza

    Without captions, the television pictures, videos and still photographs seem at first blush  like scenes from Gaza, evoking the merciless, round-the-clock bombing that has reduced that enclave to rubble. 

    Homes obliterated, with the windows and doors of those that were still standing totally shot; a once-thriving community reduced to a scorched landscape of smouldering carcasses of cars and deformed remains of household objects; vehicles upturned and balanced delicately on large plastic water tanks. 

    Mangled remains of roofs, fixtures and fittings strewn all over the place.   Whatever was not obliterated was hurled out of place or bent out of shape.

    But that locale was several thousand miles removed from Gaza.  Nor was it even a theatre of war, recent or ongoing.

    The locale is the Old Bodija area of Africa’s largest city, Ibadan, the setting of arguably the most productive exercise in self-government that fell just a tad short of sovereign rule ever conducted in any colony in the British Empire.         

    Read Also: Tinubu explains reasons for cabinet size

    The genteel, upper-middle-class suburb has retained its character and defied the intrusion of hot new money and crass elements of urban sprawl and is home to some of the most accomplished retired and serving elements of Nigeria’s professional class – university professors, judges, lawyers, military officers, political leaders. retired public servants, technocrats, and cultural figures.

    A house gutted by fire here, and a storm-damaged home there:  that was just about all that all you would expect in Old Bodija.  You had little reason to suspect that it would be the epicentre of the massive blast that tore through that section of Ibadan last Tuesday and was felt miles away.

    Most residents, unless obligated by the terms of their mortgage, probably reckoned that they had little to gain, and probably a vital chunk of their income to lose, by insuring their property.

    The fortunate among them are being treated for their injuries or are counting their losses.  The less fortunate lost everything.  Now refugees in the twilight of their eventful and productive years, they have become wards of their children,  their relations, and the public health system. 

    A week ago today, at about 8 pm, local time, an explosion of elemental proportions ripped through Old Bodija and the surrounding areas, sending residents scurrying out of their homes for safety, leaping over or sidestepping the jagged remains of objects that had defined and structured their lives.

    Going by the accounts of law enforcement officials and first responders, five persons were killed and 75 injured in the mayhem.  If this is true, Providence must have supervened.   Only that could have accounted for these figures, given that no fewer than 50 residential homes were obliterated. And in a city where most residents are home by late evening, the figures could have been much higher.

    I suspect that the casualty figures will rise when salvage vehicles lift the collapsed beams and pillars and emergency workers sift through the rubble. 

    There has been no accounting for the missing.  Some indication of the number should emerge when traumatized residents recover sufficiently to step forward to file their concerns.  But do not expect a comprehensive or even reliable accounting.  We do not keep vital records here.

    Officials have been saying that the last was triggered by explosives stored by a mining company with business offices in the neighbourhood.  This explanation raises several questions.

    For how long have the explosives been in storage?  Who owns the house in which they were stored?  Who are the registered owners or proprietors of the mining company?  Was the facility authorized to carry on that kind of business in the locale?  If so, by whom?  Was it subject to periodic inspection to ascertain the condition of the explosives?

    Regardless of the answers, the existence of the explosives in that location constitutes a twin failure of intelligence and security, and a clear and present danger to lives and public safety.

    Some analysts have questioned the official account.  According to them, one solitary, thunderous bang from a single source must have caused the devastation.  There were no secondary explosions and no chain reaction, the type that would have occurred if one exploding package had ignited the next package, and the next,

    It was just one huge, convulsive bang, and then, silence.

    To produce the effect reported in Old Bodija, a single object packed with explosives would have had to be detonated, most likely by remote control, the analysts are saying.  In short, only a bomb could have caused the devastation.

    Their explanation may, to many of our jaded compatriots, smack of the conspiracy theories being injected into public discourse each passing day to account for the angst and the disequilibrium in society. 

    But it is worth examining.  Indeed, to get to the root of the matter, every theorem should be examined carefully.

    Days after the blast, the Malian entrepreneur officials identified as the head of a mining syndicate in Old Bodija and his local confederates are yet to be apprehended.

    Forensic evidence that could help determine the origin, manufacturer and properties of the blast instrument lay strewn all over the place and was trampled on repeatedly.  By now, it would have been compromised irredeemably.

    The watch was desultory.  They fenced off the immediate perimeter, but only the fear of being caught up in a secondary blast or being whipped kept the motor park crowd and gawkers and those hunting for items of immediate value at bay.

    Skillful deployment of heavy equipment to facilitate the search for persons who might have been trapped under the rubble was rather tardy.  Minutes can spell the difference between life and death when incidents like the Bodija blast occur.

    Given the poor record of law-enforcement agencies and the courts in matters relating to crime and punishment, a special prosecutor with powers of subpoena will have to be appointed to conduct the investigations into the blast under the aegis of a commission of inquiry.  It will conduct its hearings in public, and its findings, less material that could compromise public safety and security, should be published.

    That is the best way to ensure that the matter is not swept into the musty cabinets of the bureaucracy nor spun into another “inconclusive” narrative.  This is no occasion to create an illusion of momentum.

    The authorities must rise to the challenge of rehabilitating the victims of the blast, especially those who served Nigeria to the best of their ability, often going beyond the call of duty.

  • Betta and other matters

    Betta and other matters

    Even without the benefit of the findings and recommendations of the team empanelled to probe the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu, the unofficial jury across the board would seem to have turned in a verdict of guilty as charged on the embattled minister. Talk of a case being messy through and through; if ever there was yet another instance in which an accused public officer is presumed guilty until he or she is able to prove his or her innocence as against the standard prescription of innocence until proven otherwise, this latest case would be it.

    Understandably, Nigerians are angry. The particulars of the alleged offences, as contained in the leaked memo, would ordinarily be unnerving enough without the whiff of embedded criminal intentions. The outline is something that Nigerians have become only too familiar with: a public officer, who should ordinarily know better, flouting service conventions; going far outside of the rules of the Bible of the civil service– the Financial Regulations and the General Orders – to commit the treasury to such ends that are neither transparent nor entirely licit.

    Truth however, is that there are other aspects of the story – still unheard. Sure, while all the attention is currently focused on Betta Edu and all that she allegedly did wrong – ostensibly because she was a high profile public official; it is hoped that the committee empanelled by President Bola Tinubu to probe her and the ministry will in the end do justice particularly in helping to understand all that went wrong.

    By the way, the so-called Official Secrets Act, to which all levels of functionaries are sworn to its fidelity both in letters and spirit, would seem gone, forever. Not when, with a few kilobytes of data, and individual can, armed with a phone, choose to bring down careers built over decades, or if it comes to that, take down the impregnable walls of government secrecy at whim. Welcome to the new age. The sad part is that only a few are yet to appropriately read and digest the signs. Trust me: it is a raging inferno that is unlikely to be put out anytime soon!

    Read Also: Tinubu explains reasons for cabinet size

    To get back to Minister Edu; she was of course unlucky. Her crime, as it appears, was the route she chose. She requested Oluwatoyin Madein, the accountant general of the federation, to transfer the sum of N585.2 million from the account of the National Social Investment Office to the private account of one Bridget Oniyelu, the accountant in charge of the poverty intervention project –Grants for Vulnerable Groups – supervised by her ministry, last December. That was her mistake.

    Of course, the latter, a thoroughbred civil servant, refused to honour the request, noting that payments like N585.2 million “are usually processed by the affected ministries as self-accounting entities.” Advising the minister on the appropriate steps to take in making such payments in line with the established payment procedure”, she was mindful enough to put in a rather strong caveat: “No bulk payment is supposed to be made to an individual’s account in the name of the Project Accountant.”

    My question – would the case have been different had she not sought the payment from the wrong quarters as against her ministry where the funds were actually domiciled? In other words, where did the original advice on the funds request come from? Was she acting out of ignorance or plain naivety?

    And then her mistake number: failure to carry the hierarchs of her ministry along. Now, the question is – where in the world were her ministry officials? I mean those officials – the body of directors with the permanent secretary at the apex – that should have guided her to ensure that due process was followed in the processing of the payment? Like Pontius Pilate, their hands are supposed to be squeaky clean? Really? 

    How about the service rules, which designates the permanent secretary as the chief accounting officer of the ministry? And what role(s) did the official play in the entire affair?

    More pertinent: how was it possible for that powerful individual to have been shunted aside in the entire transactions?

    Better still, how did the N585 million manage to get through the layers of bureaucracy without the process being flagged at any point? Assuming the minister so directed that the sum be paid as conveyed in the memo, could she have forced the career officials to flout the rules when they are fully aware of the consequences? Could it be a case of quid pro quo?

    The best we can say at this point is that laws were broken. As to the extent, we do not yet know. However, thanks to  Jim Obazee, the President Tinubu-appointed Special Investigator of Emefiele’s CBN, we are finally coming to terms with the fact that the financial services sector is a major pillar in the national rot. In fact, the sector stinks to high heavens.  Unfortunately, few Nigerians recognise this let alone appreciate that no level fraud of any serious scale can succeed without the complicity of those entities. Call them the off-takers of all stolen funds; whether it is the story of Abdulrasheed Maina of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), and his theft of N2 billion in pension funds, or the similar one involving the one-time Accountant-General of the Federation, AGF, Ahmed Idris and his alleged pilfering of about N84.7billion from the treasury; it seems obvious that the roles of the banks in the continuing rape of the treasury is yet to be fully understood. Now we hear that some N44 billion somehow managed to disappear from the accounts of the National Social Investment Programmes Agency, (NSIPA), under the watch of its top gun, Halima Shehu as well as the laundering of another  N37.1 billion by officials of the same Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs during the tenure of its immediate past minister, Mrs Umar-Farouk.

    How come that none of the banks could flag the suspicious movements of the huge sums from the government accounts?

    It is unfortunate that not a few Nigerians still believe that a lone powerful official – in this instance, Minister Edu – actually pulled off the mess in question without the complicity of some individuals and institutional enablers. It explains why they want the minister kept behind bars with the writ of Habeas Corpus kept in abeyance until all matters – from investigations to her possible trial are concluded.

    Mercifully, the president sees things differently. A thoroughbred system’s man, he knows more than the mob currently baying for an individual’s blood that a thorough and dispassionate inquiry will, in the end, deliver more results than the current mob chants for crucifixion. In the end, there must be a world of difference between fundamentally changing the way things are done and a mob’s demand for instant justice. While the latter, as we have seen all too often, leads nowhere, the former could be sometimes too slow and tortuous. Yet, it is the one that best serves the society.

  • Tinubu serenades southeast

    Tinubu serenades southeast

    Just before the re-election battle which Governor Hope Uzodimma won last year, this column had enthused in a piece titled: APC hopes on Imo: “No doubt, the people of Imo State would fare better, if the ruling party in the state, is the same as the one at the centre, more so, with the acclaimed performance of the incumbent governor, Hope Uzodimma.” Apparently, the people listened, as they resoundingly returned the governor during the November 11, 2023, gubernatorial election.

    Uzodimma won with a total of 540,308 votes, which is much more than the 127,370 votes garnered by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, from the entire southeast at last year’s presidential election. As a political strategist, PBAT may have taken note of the invitation ad offerendum (inviting an offer), and has rewarded Governor Uzodimma and the people of the region with a presidential presence at the inauguration ceremony last week. This column had called for such rapprochement, after the Supreme Court victory of PBAT, in a piece titled: Southeast geopolitical interests.

    Tracing the disenchantment that propelled the vote harvest of the Labour Party and the potentials for PBAT presidency, the column said: “no doubt, the disillusioned electorate and the disaffected elites from the southeast region can be harvested for good or for bad, depending on the poaching skills.” It went further: “as the Tinubu era starts in earnest, following the Supreme Court verdict, the southeast political elite should engage in strategic analysis of the short and long term geopolitical interests of the region.”

    It concluded: “perhaps, the time for the much touted handshake across the Niger has come.” So, watching PBAT in his white attire with a befitting red cap stretching out his hand to acknowledge the two-handed clasp of former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the Dan Anyiam stadium, the venue of the inauguration ceremony of Hope Uzodimma’s second tenure, I acknowledged that PBAT has reaffirmed his masterly of political strategy. Presidents usually attend the inauguration of fellow presidents, but last week, despite a very busy schedule, PBAT darted to Owerri, Imo State, to reassure the southeast.

    Read Also; Akeredolu goes home February 23

    While the visit had the larger significance of giving hope to the southeast by identifying with Hope Uzodimma, who is arguably the preeminent leader of the southeast in the larger APC family, it was also a master counter strategy to have Obasanjo in attendance. Of major significance, Obasanjo had few days earlier held a meeting with the Ohaneze Ndigbo, the preeminent socio-cultural group in the southeast. This writer had ruminated privately after the media report that Obasanjo is posturing as a sympathizer of the region.

    While he may be, it was strategic for the president to also publicly show that he loves the people as much as, if not better than, the former president. In the mind game, the people of the region, seeing for themselves that in the present dispensation, the love from PBAT is more rewarding than that from Obasanjo, should make an informed opinion of which lover to go to bed with. For clearly, the jostle for 2027 is already afoot, and Obasanjo is hoping to have the last laugh, after the failed attempt to scuttle PBAT’s emergence as president in 2023.

    In his address, PBAT called for unity of purpose to achieve more. He said: “I am glad we are showing to be a very united country and moving forward. The relative peace that you are enjoying here will be better and we will work hard with you to achieve that peace. Before now, every one of us was enveloped in fear to come to Imo State, but today Imo is safe and ready for business.” He went further: “what we learned from this is for us to work together, join hands and pay attention to our internal security.”

    PBAT is no doubt making a deliberate effort to reconcile the southeast with the APC political family, and that should yield result. Unlike his predecessor, he ensured that despite poor showing in the votes from the region, the region has Hon. Benjamin Kalu, as the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives. Also, they are ably represented in national security apparatchik by the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla. Again, Dave Umahi, the former governor of Ebonyi State, as minister for works, is heading one of the most important ministries.

    With PBAT playing the right politics in the southeast, there is the need for the governors of the region to latch on to the emerging economic opportunities of the administration for the well-being of the people. This column is unhappy that nothing has been heard since, after the Economic and Security Summit attended by the governors in Owerri, in October, last year. In a piece after that meeting titled: Southeast reawakening, this column had praised the proposed South East Economic Development Fund, announced by the state governors.

    While no one expects the fund to be in place, already, there should be clear signs that what happened in Owerri was not another talk shop. In her remarks at that summit, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala bemoaned lack of unity amongst governors as the reason why similar efforts did not yield much result. This column hopes that similar trends have not set in, with every governor going his own way, despite the difficult macroeconomic challenges affecting even the world economy.

    The governors should understand that under such difficult macroeconomic conditions, the economy of scale would be an advantage. One manifest area for collaborative effort should be the power generation and distribution sector, after all, they are already grouped together in the diseased privatization programme of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, with regards to distribution. Thankfully, the Electricity Act 2023, which replaced the Electricity and Power Reforms Act 2005, has unbundled the over-centralization policies of the past, and so, the governors should set up a think tank on how states can individually and collectively benefit from the new law.

    The governors of southeast ought to know that the deindustrialization of the region is one of the reasons for the rise in armed conflicts and general insecurity in the region. While trading in imported goods brings prosperity to a few, trading in goods manufactured within the region would bring greater prosperity to the greatest number. To achieve prosperity for all, the twin challenges of insecurity and availability of electricity must be solved, as quickly as possible. Neither can be achieved without a collaborative effort of the governors and the people of the region. 

    As the southeast proverb says, one can decipher the taste of the soup from the aroma. Since PBAT is preaching a renewed hope agenda, and has shown signs of seriousness, this column urges southeast political leadership and people to take necessary steps to tap into it.

  • Between ‘Umoru’ and Aketi

    Between ‘Umoru’ and Aketi

    “Umoru, are you dead?”  

    That was former President Olusegun Obasanjo with ghoulish relish, at a live phone-in, on the stumps for the 2007 presidential election.  It was Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s spectral run for the Presidency.  It all ended in tears. 

    Yar’Adua’s illness was an open secret.  So, when Obasanjo was, in absentia, stumping for Yar’Adua, with the candidate rumoured to be somewhere abroad, the thick rumours that Yar’Adua was “dead” buzzed with added virulence.

    “No, I’m not” — Yar’Adua assured, to the thunder of cheers from the gathered PDP zealots.  But less than three years into his Presidency on 5 May 2010, he did.  Enter Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

    In 13 years, the spirituality of brash politics and stark politicking has again happened upon us, with the 27 December 2023 death of Rotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, the late governor of Ondo State.

    As it was then, just as it is now, everyone seems sucked in by the easy din of it all.  No one seems struck by the terrible quiet of its portent.  Contemporary Nigeria!  Yak, yak, yet fail to grasp the significance of many a grave situation!  

    Yet, Akeredolu’s link to it all — alive or dead — is nothing but stunning.

    Akeredolu, the fearless Aketi, was the fiery crusader-president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), thundering the “right thing” must be done on Yar’Adua; bashing the Yar’Adua ”cabal” that blocked Vice President Goodluck Jonathan from rightful power.

    Aketi thundered the right and principled things under the law, earning the respect of not a few, under those unfortunate circumstances.   

    But 13 years down the line, Aketi himself became the new “Yar’Adua” — and the Aketi “cabal” hee-hawed no less than the “Umoru” “cabal”!  Deja vu?

    Should Aketi have, even in his moral thunder, been more sensitive to the pangs of the Yar’Aduas, who not only pined at the inevitable but also wilted under the harsh censure of their dying patriarch? 

    The jury is still out.

    Read Also: Tinubu explains reasons for cabinet size

    To be sure, Aketi was no Obasanjo who egged on Yar’Adua despite — many swear — knowing his frail health; yet was the first to disown him on his virtual death bed. 

    Aketi was only the fiery archangel of the rule of law.  But would he have been far more empathetic, far more nuanced than brash, though his cause was just, if he knew he was yoked to Yar’Adua by fate, and would exit power — and life — much the same way the Katsina noble did? 

    Life!

    Yet, how Yele Sowore was yakking over the Aketi fate — as Aketi himself did over Yar’Adua — shows the enfant terrible of Saharareporters, and likes, have learnt nothing from these twin-fates, only 13 years apart.

    Does Sowore know what lies ahead of him 13 years on?  But more on that presently.

    Now, back to Aketi and Yar’Adua — a stunning parallel. 

    As Vice President, Yar’Adua had Goodluck Ebele Jonathan — and Yar’Adua’s “nemesis” was Jonathan’s “good luck”: luck so good it must survive poor Yar’Adua and claim his office, by law, by morality and by right!

    Aketi had something even more intriguing — a deputy governor with a triple name, a triple name forged for intriguing times: Lucky Orimisan Ayedatiwa!

    Lucky is lucky — self-explanatory in English.  Orimisan is Ikale — a Yoruba sub-ethnic group — reinforcement of lucky: dub it lucky raised to Power 2!  Then, came the clincher and picturesque nemesis: Ayedatiwa — the world has become our own!

    How — at least with the superstitious — could Aketi have survived his fatal odyssey, with a guy with such turbo-charged, treble-trouble names, waiting in the wings?  How?

    Then, throw in the perceived roles of Hajiya Turai Yar’Adua and Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, luckless wives doomed to become widows, under the harsh glare of hard gladiators, that take no prisoners, in merciless politics!

    Hajiya Turai was as taciturn as Madam Betty, the preening “Ada Owerri”, was vocal. Yet, both were charged — at least by the scandal-chomping media — as alleged heads of cabals: the one from Katsina though domiciled in Abuja; the other from Owo, though domiciled in Akure — or was it Ibadan?

    The soon-to-become widows — poor ladies! — were alleged to have given no quarters, dished out purported diktats in darling husbands’ names as the battle for power and control raged, while poor darling hubbies wilted in a futile clinging to life!

    Still, never gulp in all of these colourful tales, for the scandal-hugging media thinks nothing of spicing and sizzling up stuff!  But maybe there was no smoke sans fire?

    After the grim inevitable — Aketi gone, Lucky to take his place — Ayedatiwa became a subject of sundry tales.  A few growled over his “A ku oriire” — congratulations to us — comment. Yet, that could have been blown out of its innocuous context.  

    Others kicked the new governor for beaming with smiles all through his swearing-in —that was half-true, though — when a long, grave and sombre face would do.  

    Why, even our own Sam Omatseye bombed the poor fellow for satanic hurry to present himself for inauguration as governor.  Sam reasoned he ought to have tarried as a last mark of honour for Aketi.  The snag here though is that the law would scowl at such mushiness, no matter its ingrained nobility!  The harried fellow had little choice.

    But all of this nibbling missed the most devastating symbolism on Ayedaitiwa’s part: did anyone notice how the new governor had shaved off the extended grey beard he shared with Aketi, leaving just a grey moustache, with a trim grey goatee?  So long for identity politics!  That clearly died with Aketi!  Life!

    Still, why all of this bad blood, when all is vanity?  Make no mistake: between the Aketi and Lucky power gangs, no side was a saint.  Both sinned and fell short of civil glory.

    But what triggered the crisis was that penchant to scorn the office of the Deputy Governor (and Vice President), reducing the occupier to some glorified serf — at the mercy of some overzealous governor’s aides, many of them below cabinet ranks, never part of the winning ticket.

    That dysfunctional order often holds — if the governor lives through his term.  But if he doesn’t?  Kata-kata bursts — as it goes with that picturesque street lingo.

    That was what happened with Aketi — and with Yar’Adua before him.  The dead are dead.  But the living can fix the problem: give the office of the Deputy Governor the honour it deserves.  By that, you can drain needless bad blood and deepen our democracy.

    As for Sowore that turned another person’s death into morbid excitability, yakking as rogue coroner? That was uncalled for.  Every death tolls the end for the living.

  • Brood of vipers

    Brood of vipers

    Thanks to Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, it seems now unlikely that Nigerians will keep their peace over the activities of a brood that seeks profit in other citizens’ misery. Now that the brood has succeeded in drawing the proverbial ‘first blood’ from no less a personage than the former senator, it seems only apposite to call them out for what they are – brood of vipers. Having invaded the wasps’ nest – so to speak – the moment to unleash the venom of an angry populace may have dawned.

    Of course, it isn’t that the criminal act of hacking into people’s phone by such elements is anything new. In recent time, it would seem to have acquired the status of a sport – the stuff of which most Nigerians would either shrug off, as if nothing happens, or cast as some form of expensive jokes to which another mugu has fallen prey. Yet, when laid bare, the brazen criminality, the attenuating erosion of the public trust the corollary of which endearing relationships are sundered – with the victim, left battered and bruised and in a state of disbelief – are such that the rest of decent society should deservedly take up arms.

    Take one that most Nigerians are only too familiar: An ordinary innocent mid-afternoon call, purportedly, by a member of the WhatsApp group to which you belong, to remind you of a scheduled meeting to which you were neither aware let alone privy to which a code has been sent to confirm your participation. And then as always, a follow up ‘request’ that you let out the code as sent in the course of the usually one-way conversation!

    While those unfortunate to have fallen victims have nothing but bitter tales to tell, the real mystery isn’t just that the perverted technology appears to have long outpaced the capacity of the regulators to address their menace, but the fact that more and more Nigerians continue to fall prey to the devious antics of those fellow citizens apparently sworn to strip them bare.

    Of course, Senator Afikuyomi’s last week’s visitation by the criminal network is neither out of the ordinary nor is the method any new. It is something that thousands of Nigerians suffer almost on a daily basis. On December 23 last year, yours truly would experience the same treatment from the band of outlaws.

    It started with a chat:  ‘Good morning’. That was my sister’s WhatsApp line no doubt, but the line of conversation was so nebulous that it seems fairly easy to decipher that a hacker was at work!

    ‘Please I need a favour from you’

    ‘Oh yeah’ – I replied.

    And then, the garbled English:

    ‘Have been trying to transfer money to someone in Nigeria from my bank account but I have limited (sic) my daily transfer limit.

    And then, he or she went on: ‘I don’t know if you can help me make the transfer to the person’s account details is 200,000 naira is urgent…please will send it back to you first thing tomorrow morning’.

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    That was supposed to be coming from my younger sister in the United Kingdom!

    I chose to play along: ‘Ok. Send your account details. But I’ll do it after I leave my meeting by 1.30 pm.

    And then the ecstatic response: ‘No problem thanks’. He then sent his account details as Happy Amaechi, Account number 5540033816 ECOBANK with the closing words: ‘Please let me know once it is done!

    Guess what my response was: Thanks. You are in deep trouble. I’m sending the details to the police and the EFCC. You are a scammer. The owner of the account surely will have a lot of explaining to do’.

    I would also add, as if in anticipation of possible deletion of the details of the conversation on the WhatsApp that ‘I have already screenshot the details!’ And delete is what he did, promptly.

    But then, yours truly was at least lucky. That was how far things went. Needless to state that I would call a friend who works with one of the security agencies moments later and his advice was that I get my UK-based sister to write a formal petition to enable action to be taken! Well, yours truly is still consulting!

    The former senator wasn’t as lucky. He would later put out a statement, but only after those chaps had wreaked havoc: “Many of my friends so contacted quickly called me up on the regular phone while some others spoke with my aides to alert me. However, unfortunately, a few others did not suspect that anything was wrong. They innocently complied with the fake request and made transfers of millions of naira to the various account numbers in different banks supplied by the scammers.

    Sad; but then, like in every tale of misfortune, there is always some good. He would thereafter swing into action: “I immediately complained to the relevant security and regulatory agencies and I thank the Anti-Fraud unit of the police for springing into action immediately. Their efforts led to identifying some of the account numbers and the details of the respective owners through which the scammers collected various sums of money. The security agents are also already deploying technology to geo-locate the perpetrators. Investigations by relevant agencies are still ongoing”.

    While the result of the investigations are being awaited, he actually gave out the number used as – 0903 – 832 – 6507 said to have been registered to one Ajaye Jaji.

    More than that, he also informed Nigerians of the banks where the transferred funds went including their beneficiaries. One Obinna Emmanuel, with First Bank account number 3209319999 is listed among them. There is also Bolum Emeka Gabriel with a GT BANK account number 0892269924, Taiwo Asanat Moshood, with Sterling Bank account number 0505551217, David Adesina Odeyemi with GT BANK account 0887334716, Bolum Emeka Gabriel with Zenith Bank account 1005557964 and Ndagi Garba with UBA account number 2164307270.

    For those who had sought to pin the fraud on the usual Anonymous Incorporated, now we know that there is no such thing.  The crimes actually have faces and names attached to them.

    As it is, the part that should worry Nigerians is what appears to be the criminal complicity if not negligence of those charged with maintaining the integrity of our critical institutions. Clearly, if you ever wondered at the audacity of the outlaws in an age of a supposedly fraud-proof Bank Verification Number (BVN), an age when the much hyped Know Your Customer (KYC rules) which banks are expected to mandatorily subscribe subsists, still, countless questions must be raised not just about roles of those officials charged with compliance but also the purpose of the biometric exercise.

    No doubt, the good senator has raised the stakes. While his frustration was palpable and perhaps understandable, he has however, sworn not to be deterred: “I must at this stage express my dismay with the lack of due diligence in the bank account opening and maintenance system in our country. This is what has come out so far in the investigation of this phone hacking scam. The scammers opened so many bank accounts without supplying the banks with the necessary security checks and details required by the law. In the same manner, it is now obvious that some of the Over the Top Media Services (OTT) providers do not fully comply with the provision of Nigeria’s Data Privacy and Protection Laws”.

     As for his pledge “to do everything within the law to smash this evil syndicate that has brought pains and tears to many people within Nigeria and those in the diaspora”, it is surely something that deserves the support of every Nigerian.