The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • A prayer for the season

    A prayer for the season

    When all is said and done, Nigeria must consider itself lucky that there are still a few voices left to speak truth to power. Talk of the timing, relevance and of course the impact at a time the nation is adrift; it is certainly not a small thing that two clerics, from two different altars would come to the same grim conclusions on the state of the union while offering candid thoughts on the dangers lying ahead and the need for those entrusted with the task of governance to wake up to their responsibilities.

    Between Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Christian Church of God, and Abuja’s celebrated Digital Imam, Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, who was until recently the Chief Imam of Apo Legislative Quarters Juma’at Mosque in Federal Capital Territory, just about enough must have been said on the issues agitating the minds of the ordinary Nigerian, as indeed the underlying matters currently pushing the nation perilously towards the abyss.

    From the free-wheeling, industrial scale theft of the nation’s crude, the astronomic rise in debts vis-à-vis the unbearable burden of servicing them, the collapse of national institutions across the board and with it the gross devaluation in the quality of lives of the citizen, right up to the failures by government to secure the lives and properties of Nigerians; the duo has since served notice that the days of indifference are finally over!

    Of course, the sweetness in their message – if it could be so described – did not just consist in their timeliness; it is in the call out of an administration that has squandered a national will and has reduced governance to banality.

    But then, as this newspaper’s revered Sunday columnist, Tatalo Alamu has long warned of the cost of speaking out – whereas freedom of speech is something that one might find in the statutes, the notion of freedom after speech is entirely bunkum!  Thanks to those who believe they hold the yam and the knife and so could do as they please, it is perhaps not enough that our Digital Imam has been served the bitter pill of separation from his clerical position; those of his ilk – and this includes the administration’s growing army of critics – who see no good in the regime but ‘only talk of how you can’t travel by road, by rail, by air, and how nobody is safe anywhere in the country… and how federal government is allegedly overwhelmed by security challenges. …(and who) trumpet only the things that give the impression of total anarchy” – theirs is perhaps just as intolerable as the terrorists currently tearing the country apart – and so had better be warned of dire consequences lying in wait!

    You know who the ‘enemy’ is and their motives.

    “These instigators cut across all class of people. Former leaders, current political actors, pastors, imams, social commentators, talk show hosts (and hostesses), so-called human rights activists, socio-political groups, and many others. All they want is to give a sense of anomie in the land, and divert attention from whatever is going right…”

    That was Femi Adesina – the president’s spokesman. In his eyes, Nigerians are not only impossible; in failing to regularly count their blessings even for the tiniest, incremental mercies, they are also a most ungrateful people!

    Thanks to the administration, many are the wonders in the African Sun delivered under its watch. From the self-proclaimed showpieces – the Abuja-Kaduna rail, the Lagos-Ibadan rail, the Second Niger Bridge; there is of course the on-going work on the 150-kilometre Lagos–Ibadan expressway – never mind that the project is far from completed after nearly seven years of being in charge; the so-called progress in the power sector – again, never mind that this has since become an optical illusion; Nigerians are supposed to be eternally grateful that activities – which in other climes are mere routines –  are at least taking place.

    In all, the cry is that the administration has done far more with less – in comparison with the Goodluck Jonathan administration before it. However, the idea of benchmarking current ignoble performance with the low grade offering by an administration which Nigerians soundly rejected is entirely its making; it is not only self-serving but mischievous.

    And while we are at it; the claim to be doing more with less is itself debatable; for while the administration could truly claim to have had less accruals from the crude oil account, this it has since made up for in the trillions of naira loans for which present and future Nigerians are already burdened.

    And then of course the security sector which the administration is increasingly proving a monumental failure. For an administration that once boasted that it had technically defeated Boko Haram; that no inch of the Nigerian territory is under the control of the terror group, what exactly is the situation today?

    Bandits are not only holding vast territories across the Northwest and North-central, taxes and all manners of charges are levied by warlords on hapless farmers if only to be able to carry out their trade. As for the highways, they have since been rendered unsafe by terrorists with their free reign of kidnappings and abductions.

    Imagine; barracks, the sacred precincts of our practitioners of warfare are routinely violated just as rail and air transportation have since been added to those valleys of death to be dreaded by citizens as the terrorists leave no unmistakeable message about those truly in charge. And all of these at a time a veteran, supposedly battle-tested, retired two-star General is in charge.

    And to add to these woes the current record of daily theft of the nation’s crude. How much is stolen daily? Truth is – the figures being bandied are mere conjectures. However, if we accept the figure of an estimated 200,000 barrels from Bonny Terminal alone, we are talking of a conservative loss of $4 billion to the heist in 2021 alone. And this is in a country that is already short by some 300,000 of its OPEC daily allocation. Whereas that quantum of oil, were it to be stolen in other climes, would have called for a declaration of war, here in Nigeria, the same fellows who not only failed in curbing the massive theft but are complicit in the brazen rape on the economy would rather embark on the lecture circuit to educate other Nigerians on patriotism and the need to venerate those same leaders who failed them.

    So, between those who have chosen to warn about the dangers ahead and those who would rather have the dirty linens of the administration kept from the public view, we know who between them is serving the public purpose. May Nigeria not happen to us – is the prayer currently trending out there. For me, it is the wrong prayer for the season.  Our problem is the blight of inept leadership. It is that class that we must pray out of our lives.

  • Obey: To a legend at 80

    Obey: To a legend at 80

    It was 1969.  The Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) was grinding to a close; and ‘Ye mi (Ijebu dialect for Matriarch) had just died, very close to her 100th birthday.

    ‘Ye mi was the much beloved Madam Bamiyajo Onadipe, matriarch of the Onadipes of Erigo, the Siamese twin of Ogbogbo, tiny but powerful communities, in Ogun State’s Ijebu North East local government, near Ijebu Ode.

    The twin-communities boast illustrious natives: the Onadipes, Okeowos, Runsewes, Teluwos, Banjokos, and of course, Olufojudes, among many others.

    Ma Onadipe, Ripples’ maternal great-grandmother, was much loved by her great-grandchildren.  Her stock fish-soaked-in-egusi special delicacy was so, so irresistible!

    “Wa je golugo?” [“Won’t you like a treat of egusi stock fish?] she would croon in Ijebu, as super indulgent as ever, to which the thrilled bevy would beam and jump!  ’Ye mi’s cooking was sheer joy to the palate!

    So, when ‘Ye mi died at ripe old age, and everyone had howled and cried their eyes out, the Onadipes were determined to give their matriarch a burial to remember.  That began Ripples’ Ebenezer Obey story.

    At the pre-funeral meetings, the clear preference was either I. K. Dairo or Tunde Nightingale: the pair that then bossed Juju music, aside from other genre grandees like Ayinde Bakare and Adeolu Akinsanya, aka Baba Eto.  The hardworking, hard-partying Ijebu love their Owambe — and the bragging rights after — more than any other!

    But an auntie, the immediate younger sister to Ripples’ mother, kept insisting, in Ijebu: “Ebenezer Obey ma nseree; Ebenezer Obey ma nseree” (Ijebu for “Boy, Obey too can play!”).

    Long story cut short: the family decided on Obey.  On the night, the band bus, which boasted an ambulance-like strobe light, was parked on the Erigo main road. It bore: “Ebenezer Obey and his International Brothers Band”.

    The band itself was set, on the Onadipes’ vast forecourt.  The band boys were readying selves for an all-night groove: “Hello, hello … Testing, testing microphone … Hello, hello …”

    Before the post-Civil War advent of armed robbery, Owambe qua Owambe was all-night long.  Folks would eat, drink and wriggle to music all night, in choice Aso ebi!

    Even then, the great-grand kids rippled with own curiosity: who, among the band boys, was Ebenezer Obey?  And who, among them — the kids — would step out to find out?

    That would be bold, though the bragging right after looked great.  Ripples stepped forward, that audacious step strange even to him, an otherwise self-effacing lad.

    “Buoda, Buoda,” he asked, with a slight stammer, the one that appeared the leader, in Yoruba.  ”S’eyin ni Ebenezer Obey?” [Elder, Elder, are you Ebenezer Obey?]

    The face lit up.  It was handsome.  The smile was winsome — angelic really is the word.  The cute diastema, between his two upper front teeth, made the smile all the more arresting.  The man was simply debonair.  He nodded in the affirmative.

    That was Ripples’ first impression of Ebenezer Obey, then 27, as a nine-year old.  That impression has lasted till now: 53 years later — and thus began the deep love for the man and his music.

    Three years after, in boarding school at Oko Oke — that was what the boys at the  Odogbolu Grammar School (OGS), Odogbolu, Ogun State, then an all-boys school — called their serene, extensive school compound.  The boys, on social nights on Saturdays, would break into two antagonistic musical groups.

    One was for “Sunny” (Sunny Ade).  The other, for “Obey” (Ebenezer Obey).  It was the teens’ ode to the longest musical hegemony to come in Nigerian history, but then just starting.  Both straddled Juju popular music, like the true giants that they were.

    At the zenith of their reign, you were assured of four albums in a year, most of them monster hits that got people crowded in Lagos streets, gulping in the latest musical trove on vinyl.

    But back to Oko Oke. On such nights, Suraju Balogun aka Balinga, with booming, penetrating voice as strong as Sunny’s audacious guitar, would sing Sunny Ade’s latest release, complete with strumming its fetching guitar works, with his bare mouth!  His fellow boys would go berserk, dancing away in the Dining/Assembly Hall.

    But Ripples and co, in Obey’s quiet corner, would scoff at the happy bedlam: Sunny’s music was all dance-no-depth — which was quite untrue.

    Only our own hero, the Chief Commander himself, was well and truly evergreen — not untrue too!  Long after the sweet hullabaloo of the present-day dance hall, we’d brag, Obey’s timeless pieces would seize and rule the roost.

    That was at the beginning of the happy 1970s.  After the sobering peril of the Civil War, there was the gush of post-War can-do!  That was replicated in the very fecund Juju music scene.

    Season after season, Obey would unleash one monster hit after another; which framed his Miliki genre — languid, leisurely and thoughtful numbers:

    Board Members, Odun Keresimesi (the Christmas album), What God Has Joined Together (the wedding album for all seasons), Oya ka jo jo, Mukulu Muke Ma Jo, Aya F’Oba Mimo, Mr. Wise, Iwa Ika Ko Pe, Aye wa a toro, Alowo ma jaiye, the highly philosophical pair of  Eni ri nkan he and The Horse, The Man and His Son (aka Ketekete), Around the World; aside from early singles like Oro seniwo and London la wa yi.

    Many of these albums preserved cherished memories, private and public: of the Late Oke Aminu (Obey’s treasured star vocalist — the  Olohun Iyo — that passed away); the Late General Murtala Muhammed (mercurial, six-month military Head of State); and of course Immortality, Obey’s 1987 album that well and truly memorialized the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo.  There were also Obey at 7O and 80 albums — self-celebratory epochs.

    “Eniyan Ti Mo Feran Ju”, the flip side of the Awo album, with its concluding, “O se o, Jesu” was perhaps Obey’s last dancehall hit, before quitting regular Juju for the gospel genre.

    Many of his hits too truly documented Nigeria’s contemporary history: change-over from left to right-hand driving (1973), currency switch from the British Pound Sterling to decimal-friendly Nigerian Naira and Kobo (also 1973) and Operation Feed the Nation (OFN: 1976).

    Others celebrated socialites and businesses: the globe-trotting Olabisi Ajala, who Obey crooned “travel[led] all over the world”; Henry Fajemirokun (1926-1978), celebrated czar of the Henry Stephens Group, Alhaji I. S. Adewale, aka ”the boy is good”, and even Jimoh Isola, alias Ejigbajero, later hanged in 1975, for the murder of Raji Oba, over land matters.

    Fajemirokun might have died rather young, against Obey’s merry prediction in his hit album.  Ejigbajero too might have ended up in grief after his bubble had burst.

    Yet, for generations to come, the Chief Commander — no, chief musical historian of his age; and his rested Inter-Reformers Band — have recorded these great deeds, warts and all, for on-coming generations to savour.

    It’s classic music as true spirit of the age.  That’s the greatest tribute anyone can pay this living legend at 80.

  • Terror next time

    Terror next time

    The March 28 Abuja-Kaduna rail terror attack met the expected: a thunder of recriminations but hardly any empathy or cutting strategy.

    From a tally by The Nation, the AK9 Abuja-Kaduna train casualty figure: eight dead, 41 injured and a-yet-to-be-established number seized by the terrorists.  Terrible!

    Yet, the news broke — “breaking news!” — with the tone of the terrific: like the gleeful herald of some grand wedding or some sweet christening or some epochal bunting!

    Shortly after, a cartoonist strutted his stuff — and quite brilliant too: terrorists had taken full charge of Nigeria’s roads, air and rail!  You couldn’t move nowhere, unless you bought satanic tickets from them!

    That clear hyperbole connects with the angst of the moment.  But doesn’t someone, somewhere know that could be excellent oxygen for the terror attack next time — if not some dampener for security agents that often foil tens of attempts before one terror attack succeeds?

    By the way, did any heart go out to the battling security agents, who might have died so the rail terror victims could live?  Or their lives and families’ pains don’t matter?

    In trying times, the soul hurts.  The heart quakes.  The mouth wails.  Yet, wrong reactions to present peril could ensure future ones.  That’s a lesson in strategic communication our media must learn.

    Then, from the Nigerian Parliament, a huff of shame-and-blame.  A bilious House of Representatives passed a vote of no confidence on Nigeria’s security agencies (The Nation report: April 1).

    Now, what does that mean?  The wholesale junking of the security order?  And after that, what?  It’s all in tune with the anger of the moment, of course!

    Then, furious members bristled with sundry ire: one, that citizens be free to arm themselves and confront terrorists.  And what then?  Free-wheeling gun violence, ala America, even after terror attacks are distant memories?

    Another, that the House go on strike, like ASUU, if that would force President Muhammadu Buhari to take responsibility! Is our wise House imbibing ASUU’s culture of crippling strikes, with doubtful values?

    Another called for the removal of the National Security Adviser — hardly new.  Before the present set of security chiefs, there was wild clamouring to sack the old ones.

    Yet, that sack has proved no open sesame magic to the security challenge — even if the present occupiers try their best under grave conditions.  No NSA sack would do the magic either.

    Again, while all of these were legit and understandable responses to the angst of the moment, they add very little value to solving the problem.

    So, in moments of crisis, what Nigerians need from their leaders are reassurances, fired by penetrative thinking; not chamber echoes of helpless worries in the street.

    Besides, if the parliament would reflect more and point fingers less, why did it not birth a new federalized Nigeria police, in its latest raft of constitutional amendments?  Isn’t centralized police a major plank of the current insecurity challenges?

    From the executive, the mercurial Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State, fast becoming the epicentre of North West insecurity, weighed in with own executive hysteria — go into the bush and bomb terrorists/bandits into ash!

    The frustration of Mallam El-Rufai is understandable.  He has shouted himself hoarse, warning the federal authorities that the vortex of Islamist terror and opportunistic banditry is moving from the North East to the North West — and his Kaduna is being swamped by it all!  That perhaps explains his mercenary bug.

    Still, his umpteenth vote for go-in-and-bomb-them-all-to-hell harbours pretty little emotional intelligence.  True, the bandits-terrorists will get their due.  He who lives by the sword must die by the sword.  But what of their captives?

    For context, the terrorists kidnapped an undisclosed number during the March 28 rail attack.  Families and friends of these folks still worry sick about their fate, in the hands of those brutes.

    Would the government, in a bid to wipe out these felon-captors, be right to wipe out their captives too?  Shouldn’t our thinking be more pin-point and precise?

    Governor El-Rufai appeared to have given that a thought.  Yet, his best take was that every crisis harbours its own collateral damage.  That could well be.

    But bombing off captives with their captors doesn’t portray high emotional intelligence — an area where the Kaduna governor seems to lag, despite his acute mind.

    Still, Governor El-Rufai gave useful context to the flare of bandit attacks in some parts of rural Kaduna — much more than the media that seems to glory only in reporting explosive end-tragedies.

    The governor accused the local vigilante of reckless and arbitrary acts, suggestive of wrongful killings; which then attract revenge raids that put the victim communities in utmost peril.

    Again, with federalized policing and better training at handling such matters, such killings and revenge missions would greatly reduce, if not completely eliminated.

    So, Nigeria sorely needs a decentralized police system, with state police working in tandem with the central police.

    Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, also threw his Federal Executive Council (FEC) peers under the bus for allegedly refusing a N3 billion-plus rail censor and security deal, that could have averted the March 28 disaster.

    But a leaked memo has hit right back, suggesting that cabinet rejected the Amaechi request for alleged suspected conflict of interest, since the minister’s vendor-nominee didn’t seem to have the required track record, if not competence.

    This cabinet to and fro seems to expose needless turf wars, when concerted efforts should save lives and avert disasters.  Yet, there seem no enough facts to start ascribing ill motives to either side of the isle, even with the train disaster.

    It’s another chilly and lonely spot for President Buhari and his security chiefs!  Already, the ill-graced Ebora Owu is mouthing his umpteenth cant.  Olusegun  Obasanjo just can’t shine unless he bad-mouths others!  Still, the president must carry his cross!  Buhari must end his seeming fixation with central policing.

    So, what should happen now is for the federal cabinet to grant accelerated approval to secure every metre of Nigeria’s rail track, because rail holds the key to Nigeria’s socio-economic renaissance, despite the present gloom.

    To beat the terror next time, everyone must know the country is at war.

    To beat this war against terror, everyone must be at their best: the media, the government (state and federal) and the people at large.  All must work hand-in-hand.

    To ward off future attacks, there must be clinical forward-thinking; and vital fellow feeling to tide over the present gloom.

  • National quagmire

    National quagmire

    Those at the helm of affairs in Nigeria, whether as president, governor, minister, or local council chairman, particularly those who have made conscious efforts to improve the nation’s physical infrastructure, despite the debilitating economic challenges facing the country, must be confounded with the destructive tendency that seems to have overwhelmed our nation’s consciousness. The tragedy that has befallen Kaduna State in recent days draws attention to this national quagmire.

    In terms of physical infrastructure, Kaduna State is the envy of other states, whether in the northern or southern part of the country. Many northern elites, particularly those who have used their positions in government to help themselves, have their homes and investments in Kaduna State. Also, as the political capital of the old northern Nigeria, the northern power oligarchs who have held federal power longer than their southern counterparts, favour Kaduna State in the citing of infrastructure in Nigeria.

    Even recently when Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, was to be closed, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government used the opportunity to further improve Kaduna airport to world standards. Also, when President Goodluck Jonathan was in charge, he also prioritised the development of modern railway tracks from Abuja to Kaduna. So, after many years of comatose train services in Nigeria, the resuscitation programme effectively started from Kaduna.

    Furthermore, the Abuja-Kaduna highway is priority in terms of maintenance, and resources are not spared to ensure it is in good state. This column can attest that unlike the Enugu-Port Harcourt, Onitsha-Enugu, Onitsha-Owerri, Ibadan-Ilorin, Lagos-Abeokuta highways and perhaps many more, the Abuja-Kaduna highway was never left to decay as those earlier mentioned, since the living memory of this column. So, unlike some others, the Abuja-Kaduna highway has always lived up to its name as an expressway.

    Moreover, in the past few weeks that Kaduna has witnessed a resurgence of attacks by terrorists and their allied forces, the list of national assets, including military and para-military assets cited in Kaduna State, has been trending. The list include, 1 Division Nigerian Army, Nigerian Army Depot, Zaria, Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji, Nigerian Defence Industry, Nigeria Airforce Training School, Nigeria Police College, Nigerian Navy School of Armament, Nigerian Army School of Legal Services, Bassawa Zaria, Nigerian Defence Academy, Nigerian Army School of Artillery, Nigerian Army School of Military Police, and Army Operations Base.

    Many of the commentators described the state as no different from a military fortress, considering the concentration of military and paramilitary institutions in the state. Yet, ironically, despite all the advantages, Kaduna State has become one of the most unsafe places in the country to live. While the Southern Kaduna has become a killing field, because of the malicious activities of a murderous gang, who has been accused of an ethnic cleansing agenda, the Kaduna metropolis is also unsafe. Some few months ago, the attackers took their devilish agenda to the NDA.

    Few days ago, the attackers in a most brazen manner stormed the Kaduna International Airport and stalled the take-off of an air craft. While the nation was yet to get over that rude shock, the terrorists bombed the rail track and successfully derailed an Abuja-Kaduna bound train. Storming the derailed train, the terrorist kidnapped some passengers and killed a number of others. Some hours after the nation woke up to that horror, the criminals boldly menaced the Abuja-Kaduna highway, which was already turning to a death trap for travellers in the past few years.

    Considering the destructive tendencies of these terrorists, especially in Southern Kaduna, there are several conspiracy theories about the motive for these incendiary attacks. While alleged Fulani elements have been accused of an evil agenda to depopulate the place and take over the ancestral lands they despoil, other theorists ascribe the attacks to those hell-bent on carving out an Islamic Caliphate for their extremist agenda. As plausible as these theories may appear, we must take note of similar destructive tendencies outside the domain of the alleged evil agenda.

    One recent example is the destruction that greeted the Moshood Abiola Stadium following the ouster of Nigeria from the Qatar 2022 World Cup, by Ghana. While Nigerians may have shown emotional imbalance in the past over loss of a match, the malicious determination of the Abuja fans to destroy a stadium that took the ingenuity of the Minister of Sports, Sunday Dare to repair, shows a deeper malaise than what happened in the past. These fans are aware that but for the intervention of Aliko Dangote, following appeal from the sports minister, the stadium would still be in a dilapidated state.

    Yet the fans were determined to destroy the newly installed infrastructure. Of course, I believe that a similar vicious determination to destroy whatever the rioters could see, after the highjack of EndSARS protest, is still fresh in the minds of my readers. In addition to the penchant to destroy physical infrastructure, there is also the growing vicious predilection to kill or maim for little or no provocation, which is a matter for another discussion.

    While making effort to improve infrastructure development across the country, those at the helm of affairs must worry about the perverse mass discontentment, especially amongst the hoi polloi. For this column, it is not enough to send security agencies against the unhappy and destructive Nigerians. Indeed, it should be instructive that despite the huge emotional and financial investment of the Buhari’s government in the maintenance of law and order in the past seven years, chaos and disorder is on the rise. Perhaps, the problem is far deep-rooted?

    Could the trigger just be economic hardship, or a complete disenchantment or breakdown of the current social order? When despite 23 years of democracy, the nation still boasts of about 10 million Almajiris, does it mean that the abundance of disenchanted citizens has become a permanent feature of our country? When the statistics indicate that about 90 million, out of about 200 million Nigerians are unemployed; in the midst of double digit inflation, collapse of the power sector, amongst other challenges in the factors of production, will things get worse than it is?

    With the northern Nigeria in particular, degenerating rapidly, it is shocking that the practice of such perversions like Almajiri is still allowed to fester. If we heard the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Ameachi, correctly, it will require about N8 billion to restore the losses arising from the bombed rail infrastructure. With the bombers yet to be apprehended, are we in a vicious circle?

    This column believes that if we don’t get the human capital right, all the investments in physical infrastructure could be turned to waste by the disposed and disenchanted. Could it be that Nigeria is facing a peculiar national quagmire, without any answers in sight?

  • Pathetic leadership

    Pathetic leadership

    To those who have maintained the position about those in charge of our affairs at the highest levels of government being overrated, the spectacles across the political spectrum in the last few weeks must have provided, in addition to iron-clad proofs, volumes of literature on the tragedy that the benighted leadership of the so-called African Giant has come to represent.

    In a week of serial tragedies that began with the invasion of the sacred precincts of the Kaduna airport and the killing of one aviation personnel, spilling right through to the bombing of the Abuja-Kaduna railway leading to the death of nine and the abduction of scores of other passengers, and then the bombing of the Gidan train station along the Abuja-Kaduna rail track, capped with the siege on the Kaduna –Abuja highway and, of course the less reported incident of the gruesome killing of six soldiers from Zuma barracks, in Suleja, Niger State, Nigerians must have watched in horror as those charged with the business of governance done have done little else than switch from the lamentation mode to the blame game, from heinous rationalisations to solutions so hare-brained as to leave them in wonder on some people found their ways into government.

    So, what have we not heard? From Nasir El-Rufai, the Kaduna State governor, we have heard, for the umpteenth time, that the camps of those marauding bandits are not unknown just as their telephone communications are routinely monitored by the government. Why, he asked, should the security agencies not simply move in to bomb the fellows out of existence?

    Now apparently at his wits end, he says –  “I have complained to Mr. President and I swear to God, if action is not taken we, as governors, will take actions to protect the lives of our people…If it means deploying foreign mercenaries to come and do the work, we will do it to address these challenges.”

    Coming from a governor sworn to uphold the laws and the constitution of the republic, could this have come as something out of character given that the governor once paid hefty sums to buy the peace of some Fulani tribes, in what was supposed to be part of a frenzied search for home-grown solution?

    And where will the mercenaries come from – Futa Jallon, Libya or wherever?

    These are interesting times, no doubt.

    Back to last weekend tragedies at the railways. We have heard that the tragedies were not only predictable, but that the nation’s intelligence community actually saw them coming – (they did nothing to thwart them)? Of repeated intelligence which suggested that attacks were imminent but which the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, ignored. And finally, how the bureaucracy and some powerful but unseen actors should be held responsible for frustrating the efforts by the transportation ministry to procure the enabling security infrastructure!

    One would ordinarily have dismissed the latter as a sick joke except that it came from the mouth of the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi. To say that some things are better not said is to evaluate the weight of the minister’s reported submissions. Being the supervising minister in charge of the railways, he has, in the opinion of many Nigerians, come to personify the entire railway modernisation project and so his views are expected to count for something. Unfortunately, like a loose cannon that he’s wont to be, he has merely opened a can of worms whose overriding effect is to further savage what is left of the reputation of the administration that he serves as much as to call to question his stewardship in the transportation ministry.

    Merely by the extracts of the FEC deliberations that surfaced at the weekend, it would seem most uncharitable to describe the Minister Amaechi as being clever by a quarter! Sloppy would have been more fitting!

    So poor, inelegant and utterly lacking in the rigour of detail was that so-called presentation by the minister to the council; which obviously explains why he couldn’t to persuade his colleagues to budge. Now, some say that those who rejected it knew what they were doing…certainly not for altruistic reasons whatever that means!

    By the way, did the minister take steps to address the concerns of his colleagues as raised in council? If he did, he would to an extent be right – like Pontius Pilate – to wash his hands of guilt; if he did not, well… there is the verdict of history! Note that the deliberations in reference actually took place more than a whole year before last week’s incident and the ensuing blame game.

    Nigerians had better brace up for fireworks as more memos on the happenings in government get leaked in the coming days!

    One other tough question on the railway modernisation project: Why was the project not treated as turnkey since the package from start to finish are wholly Chinese? Given all that has happened in a short while since the latest cycle of modernisation under the Buhari administration began, from the deliberate gaps in the entire implementation process right up to the latest but embarrassing incident of faulty fuel gauge in the Lagos- Ibadan rail service as a result of which rail passengers were stranded in the bush, can anyone truly say that Nigerians are getting values for every kobo spent on their behalf?

    Finally, the attack on Kaduna Airport attack. The attack, by official accounts was supposed to be a minor ‘skirmish’ between bandits passing through the back of the Airport towards Riyawa village and the security personnel engaged by the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA to keep watch over metrological equipment.

    Here is what Brigadier-General Uriah Opuene, Garrison Commander, 1 Division Nigerian Army, and Air Commodore, Ademuyiwa Adedoyin, the Air Force Base Commander told newshounds on the reported breach:  “As you can see, this place is about six kilometres away from the Airport terminal. The bandits were only passing behind the airport perimeter fence when they saw the security man engaged by NAMA and they fired at him. There are several layers of security at the Airport, this is the first layer. Even this first layer was not breached, because from the moment of hearing that shot, it took our men just about three minutes to get here from the next layer of security”.

    The NAF Base Commander would add that security around the airport general area had been beefed up since the security of the nation’s elite military training institution – the Nigerian Defence Academy NDA, was breached last year.  Said he: “The bandits don’t have the audacity to attack Kaduna Airport.”

    In other words, what happened was no more than a storm in a teacup! And that was moments after the death of the NAMA security official and the subsequent scrambling of a fighter helicopter at the end of which 12 of the fleeing bandits were taken out.  Never mind that the aviation community considers the situation serious enough to halt subsequent flights into Kaduna.

    Poor NAF Base Commander; he obviously spoke too soon. The bandits – or terrorists – have since proclaimed their ‘audacity’ in no unmistakeable terms. Monday, they went for the Abuja – Kaduna train; Tuesday, it was the turn of Gidan train station; Wednesday, six soldiers at Zuma barracks in Suleja were felled. Thursday, former lawmaker, Shehu Sani, would report on the blocking of the Abuja-Kaduna highway – although the Kaduna State government would claim that the terrorists merely attempted to cross the highway but were engaged by security forces. And now Nigerians are asking – where’s next?

  • Tinubu as potentate – 2

    Tinubu as potentate – 2

    Today, Nigeria’s political landscape will quake from the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s political tremor. If the political acolytes of the great political tactician of the Fourth Republic have their way, Asiwaju’s 70th birthday celebration would be the pre-inauguration ball for the nation’s president come 2023. About this time last year, in a piece titled, ‘Asiwaju as Potentate’, I highlighted the trajectory of Asiwaju to political stardom, following the speculation that he might run for the office of president.

    But with Asiwaju declaring his interest to seek his party’s nomination to contest for the office of president in 2023, he has become a fair game for political pundits, hence this part two. No doubt, the hurdle to the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) would have been a walkover for Asiwaju, were politicians to be gentlemanly in their trade. After all, in 2015 President Muhammadu Buhari, relied substantially on the political sagaciousness of Asiwaju to win the party’s nomination and the presidency, and ordinarily as an act of reciprocity, he should be among those canvassing for Tinubu’s presidency.

    Indeed, prior to 2015, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had boasted that the party will rule Nigeria for 60 years. And before Asiwaju’s sagacious intervention, candidate Buhari, a retired military general had publicly surrendered his presidential ambition, because he felt it was unachievable. It took the political skills of Asiwaju to alter Buhari’s political destiny. While no doubt there were equally strong helpmates at that hour of need, history records Asiwaju as the champion of the political merger that resuscitated Buhari’s presidential ambition.

    So, if politicians are gentlemen, Asiwaju would be rewarded for his hard work at the last two general elections with untrammelled support from the president and his close associates to secure the party’s ticket. Indeed, in 2019, when many of the wayfarers who joined APC in 2015 and helped Buhari win the presidency left the party, for one reason or the other, Tinubu stood like the rock of Gibraltar, and helped the president to win a second term.

    But politicians are not gentlemen, and would not easily reciprocate kind gestures just for the sake of it. Perhaps, they have other determinants for their action, way beyond the contemplation of the ordinary people. So, regardless of Tinubu’s contributions to the success of President Buhari in 2015 and 2019, he cannot take the president’s reciprocal support for granted. Indeed, many of Tinubu’s detractors are already urging President Buhari to disappoint Asiwaju, peddling such prejudicial arguments that you cannot do a political deal with a person like President Buhari.

    Of course, this column does not suffer prejudices and biases and believes that President Buhari is a gentleman, and would give as much support as he received from Asiwaju towards the latter’s ambition. But, since the fact that Asiwaju helped Buhari to become president is not insurance for reciprocity, and that such support would guarantee success at the polls, it is germane to examine the critical factors that Nigeria urgently needs in a president, at this critical juncture, and the leave the public to judge to what extent Asiwaju fits the bill.

    The country needs above every other skill, a psychological healer, a sagacious political tactician who would be able to re-establish the broken socio-cultural bridges, which the present regime has perhaps inadvertently burnt in the past seven years, across the country. Clearly apart from the hooligans, who are engaged in criminal activities, in many parts of the country, there are many Nigerians who feel alienated by the policies of the present federal government which disproportionately favour the president’s ethnic stock.

    These aggrieved groups, which cuts across every other ethnic group, needs to be urgently reintegrated into the Nigerian project. This column believes that such psychological healing would affect many of the other challenges facing the country. One such direct impact would be the debilitating security challenge facing the country. Furthermore, the next president must be someone with a brilliant mind-set to segregate the immediate and remote causes of the insecurity plaguing the country.

    Nigeria needs such a brilliant mind, which will be able to isolate the economic, sociological, psychological, religious, and other factors fuelling the insecurity and offer immediate, medium and long term solutions to the problems. Of course, as part of the solutions, the country needs an economic wizard, a wealth creator and a monumental visionary leader who would lay the difficult but important economic foundation of a new Nigeria. The country badly needs a leader who would take a holistic look at the energy crisis facing the country, and offer solutions that would create work and wealth.

    Our country needs a modern day sociological behemoth, who understands that religion is a private affair of the practitioner, and as such would not drag the nation into the cesspool of religious corruption, as if it is the answer to the myriads of challenges facing the nation. A leader who would offer scientific or other empirical solutions to the challenges facing our country instead of using the name of God in vain, to explain the inadequacies of governance.

    Nigeria needs a leader who understands the social contract embedded in political governance. One who would not equate the surrender of the commonwealth to his care, as an opportunity to enrich himself or his lieutenants. One whose humanity has been tested, and as such will govern humanely, but also firmly when the need arises. A leader of leaders who will allow the percolation of ideas, and who has the capacity to assemble brilliant minds to mend our broken country.

    As Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu marks his 70th birthday, there is a multitude forsworn that he is the best candidate for the job. They will readily sight the cross pollination of his curriculum vitae. With a background in finance and management position in an international oil company, he is a tested technocratic. Having served as a senator, governor and political godfather, he is a political juggernaut. With footprints across the social and religious divide, he fits the sociological bill.

    For Asiwaju’s detractors, they claim that at 70 years Asiwaju cannot carry the burden of governing Nigeria. They claim that he is too steeped in prebendalism that has eaten the bone marrow of Nigeria. They claim his emergence will be unfair to the southeast, even as some of the protagonists support a northern candidate. One of his leading opponents has even forsworn to trek to Ghana if he wins the presidency.

    But despite the distractions, the Tinubu political train is gathering momentum, and the days ahead would surely be interesting. As an admirer of Asiwaju’s political sagacity, this column wishes the Jagaban Borgu a most memorable 70th birthday.

  • Grudge ahoy!

    Grudge ahoy!

    At 70, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is swarmed by grudgers — those who can’t but begrudge those who can.  It’s the perfect political dog in the manger.

    Yet, it won’t be the first in Nigerian history.

    The great Chief Obafemi Awolowo who also, like Tinubu now, marked his 70th birthday ahead of his presidential run in 1979, was so riled at such characters that he let fly this famous rebuke.

    “While many men in power and public office are busy carousing in the midst of women of easy virtue and low morals,” Awo quipped, “I, as a few others like me, am busy at my desk thinking about the problems of Nigeria and proffering solutions to them.  Only the deep,” came the final, crushing put-down, “can call to the deep.”!

    Still, the political Lilliputians of that era flailed at their perceived Gulliver, even if all they had were hate and spite.  Nigeria was the loser.

    If Awo played in “far-away” 20th century Nigeria, the 2015 Muhammadu Buhari story appears fresh enough.  Rapacious “yam eaters”, in President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, had cleaned out the common barn.

    A sunk, desolate nation was looking for the sole man of integrity to salvage the mess.  It wasn’t unlike Abraham driving a hard bargain with Jehovah, for that sole righteous soul that could well save Sodom and Gomorrah.

    Enter Buhari: who kept his head while his peers, with zest, lost theirs in sweet decay.  Yet, the vapid dogs-in-the-manger confected a certificate-less Buhari!  Many self-deluded souls have basked in that for the past seven years.  Well, delusion is free!

    Tinubu is at a similar pass: those who cannot pay his price are bitterly questioning his prize.

    Old man Bode George, as a young naval officer-governor of Ondo State, was a slithering snake on the smooth rock.  He left absolutely no trace or mark.

    Yet, he flies into a fit at the sight of Tinubu, who used his youth to leave indelible marks as Lagos governor (1999-2007), spawning a glorious set of brilliant leaders.

    Long before, the “me too” ensemble of the “Yoruba Nation” — a mishmash of acute modernists and stark atavists — had planted, in the South West political waters, enough anti-Tinubu toxin to literarily re-sink the Titanic.

    Yet, preening over routine bail for battling ram, Sunday Igboho, who had rammed himself into a ditch in Benin Republic, marked the zenith of their gumption.  How scalding hate cripples the brain!

    But hate, envy or mischief aside, Asiwaju Tinubu is the prime revelation since 1999.  If you doubt, compare and contrast him with other leading lights since then.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo inherited PDP as a solid military-conservative forces’ special purpose vehicle.  Fela would have called PDP Army Arrangement (AA).

    Yet, it took only eight years of imperial presidency and raw self-worship, ala Obasanjo, to crash that vehicle.  Another eight years after, the battered PDP crashed out of power — a ruin Obasanjo even celebrated with impish glee, because the ill-fated Goodluck Jonathan wouldn’t be his poodle.

    In 2003, Tinubu (no thanks to Obasanjo’s killer manoeuvres), was the last Alliance for Democracy (AD) governor standing, after the electoral perfidy of that year.

    Yet, from that meltdown, in 12 tumultuous years (2003 -2015), Tinubu led a progressive counter-charge:  AD to Action Congress (AC), to Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and finally, to APC: Nigeria’s first-ever successful political merger — and federal power.

    Away from party matters to policy and governance: the polity would have been much poorer but for Tinubu’s policy and constitutional activism as Lagos governor.

    Tinubu was part of the opposition lobby that shot down Obasanjo’s attempt at term extension.  Just imagine how the republic could have turned out, had that succeeded.

    Then, the law records teem with facts on how the Yemi Osinbajo-led Lagos legal team rang rings round Obasanjo’s Leviathan Federal Government, on core basic law matters, which negative resolutions would have chained the commonwealth.

    Tinubu, as governor, pushed radical concepts as independent power projects (IPP), away from the national grid; and liberalized railway corridors.  The dog-in-the-manger Federal Government balked at both, flexing sterile federal might.

    But today, both are near-routine under the Buhari Federal Government.  That explains Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu’s progress on Lagos urban railway projects (ideas, by the way, developed under Tinubu); and why the Kano government is building light rail.

    Still, just imagine what progress Nigeria today would have made on power, had the Obasanjo order been less hostile to fresh thinking in federalized electricity that Lagos, under Governor Tinubu, had pushed.

    Again, the Tinubu tendency in the APC takes credit for federal safety net policies: N-Power (youth empowerment and training), national home-grown school feeding programme and soft credit to the humblest of traders — a classic South West signature anchor on Nigeria’s federal ocean, brilliantly tested and patented by Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola during his eight-year Osun governorship: in OYES, O’Meals, etc.

    Yet, it’s on this home front that the Asiwaju, at 70, faces some dissonance, vis-a-vis his presidential dreams.  It’s quite a quandary: how could protégés you’d always come through for, be so dog-nosed cold at coming through for you this once?

    The most sensational tiff in the Tinubu camp would appear the Ogbeni-Asiwaju blow-out. That was unfortunate. Aregbesola should not have said all that stuff about Tinubu.

    Still, Aregbesola would appear more riled at Gboyega Oyetola, Osun governor, for his lack of fidelity to the legacies of the Ogbeni government, in which Oyetola served as chief of staff — and virtual prime minister — for eight years, than at the Asiwaju himself.  Still, that rumpus shouldn’t ever have happened.

    Be that as it may, what is required now is due reconciliation and mutual forgiveness.  The Ogbeni tendencies — left-left of social democracy, the Asiwaju himself being a progressive centrist and pragmatist — hold core strategic value for a Tinubu presidency, if the envious, baleful South West hyenas were not to query him, in supreme mischief, what his presidency had done for his native region.

    Femi Ojudu, celebrated guerrilla journalist and former senator, has also run his mouth in shocking antipathy to the Asiwaju cause.  Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Ojudu’s boss, has sealed his.  But even with malice to no one, clearly the adorable Veepee doesn’t hate the Asiwaju cause.  He only craves the Osinbajo deal — hardly a crime!

    The other day, Muiz Banire, SAN, commissioner in Lagos for 12 years, mounted a media “lecture”: both Tinubu and Osinbajo might be “too old” for president!

    The aging: is it of persons or of ideas?  And when did the learned silk find that out?  Before his long, long Lagos tour of duty or after? Strange times!

    At 70, Asiwaju Tinubu is fated to living his most famous quip: power isn’t served a la carte.  You go there and grab it!  The famed strategist and pragmatist may yet cobble together the needed compromises to blunt these backyard threats!

    But as folks gather for his 70th birthday colloquium this morning, it’s time to toast the celebrator! Happy birthday to the Jagaban: most consequential politician of his era!

  • War, our oxygen

    War, our oxygen

    Not being a historian, I cannot even pretend to know the origin of war – when the first one was fought and between whom; its causes and its outcome. Even in my youthful days when we’d beat hostel rules to go watch films at Rex Cinema or Ocansey Cinema, I was never enamored of war films.

    The Americans were always the victorious over the Japanese. And I kept wondering whether my Japanese underdogs would ever have the upper hand. Maybe, my humble beginnings have aligned me irrevocably with underdogs.

    However, I know — though I am no expert — the humongous budget of the global war industry. I know the research that goes into developing  military arsenal that is driving mankind with unaccountable haste to the edge of the precipice and annihilation.

    A few, just a few, powers are at the commanding heights of this industrial complex that produces armaments, while the rest of us in our multitude look on in awe of their destructive powers.

    The sight of new guns, launchers and other munitions, the steely coldness of their appearance, fascinates and sends chills down the spine of us laymen. We look on hopeless and helpless, as we contemplate those that will be the eventual victims of these murderous technologies – our youth, our women, our children!

    Scientists developing these deadly munitions are smug in their sense of accomplishment, seeing each deadly invention as toy, and gloating over what the human mind is capable of. When they talk about its unimaginable destructive power, they smirk with orgasmic pleasure and delight.

    At that point they rarely contemplate their inventions as instruments of human misery, agents of death, and tools for wiping out years of human civilisation. They only anticipate the billions of dollars that is the outcome of their dark exertions, which will be stashed away in coded accounts with invisible banks. And they itch to have their deadly inventions tested to demonstrate to the world their deadly potency.

    In the meantime, leaders of poorer countries who ought to agonize over how to develop their countries and secure the future of their citizens, are busy negotiating with the big murderous powers how their countries could become proud owners of deadly armaments. Warfare is more important than welfare! So, to the basement of development is cast welfare of their citizens.

    Arms sales and acquisitions are negotiated every waking moment in international corridors of power. Most times, with strings attached. You may do this.  You cannot do that. This is how you must run your country, if you must purchase our weapons.

    Talk of arrogance of power; and talk of ignoble servitude — all to possess the real Weapons of Mass Destruction of the poor! And thus, the rich countries feed off the poor and become richer, while the poor get poorer.

    Meanwhile, poor infrastructure in education, health care, roads and transportation, agriculture, nutrition — indeed, the parlous state of their economies, reverberate in the people’s lament in the poor countries.

    The bulk of the people are ravaged by poverty, disease and squalor; while the preference of their renegade leaders is warfare over welfare. And lick-spittle-subservience, over political astuteness and assertiveness.

    Can peace rule the world? What happens to the gargantuan armament industry if peace should reign in the world? Maybe, our own world will be better, yes? Meanwhile, theirs will be boring, gloomy and horrid.

    They will certainly loathe that kind of existence and will do everything to ensure that provocation drives the world. And appetite for weapons never ever cloys. The excitement of seeing the hapless die is intoxicating.

    They would ensure that world peace remains a mirage. And that brothers are always at war, at pistols drawn; that suspicion, power-mongering and hate characterize relationships among neighbours.

    Just contemplate what makers and importers of generating sets will suffer if Nigeria were to have steady, uninterrupted power supply. Do you think they will fold their arms and allow policies that will instal stable power supply to gain root and succeed?

    Or what would become of producers of pure water from wells and boreholes, if waterworks in state and local governments roar back to life. Not on your life!

    It is ultimately about not what we gain when there’s peace in the world, but what oppressors lose if there’s no war in the world. Are we really not “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”? — apologies to the master satirist, Jonathan Swift.

    We may want to throw into the mix the reaction of environmentalists and animal rights group if some of these deadly weapons are modified for game, to destroy our flora and fauna. Head we lose tail we lose. Finito.

    • Ray Yusuf, seasoned broadcaster and retired NTA top buff, writes from Ilorin, Kwara State.

     

    Not the West, not Russia, just humanity

     

    Prof. Alade Fawole, of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, is one of The Nation’s consistent corps of priceless contributors.

    Yet in “Ukraine: Forced into a war it can never win!” (March 17), Ripples wondered if anyone could start a piece with a fallacy but still execute a logical conclusion.

    The abiding thesis in Prof. Fawole’s piece was appeal to force.  Because Russia has overwhelming force, it can storm Ukraine and impose its will!

    In other words, might is right; and cross-border outlawry is chic!

    But John Donne, in “The Sun Rising”, a piece of solid poetic intellection, dismissed the notion of might-is-right: with a mere wink, a mere mortal could shut out the sun’s powerful beam!  Yet, the all-mighty sun decides whether it is day or night!

    That is the sheer power of human will!

    So, while Russia could brag there is no way it could lose this war (and good luck to President Vladimir Putin and his war generals on that), there is no logic to it.  It’s all a fallacy of force, which has no place in reasoned discourse.

    The professor sure has soft spots for Russia in its Ukraine grudge — no crime. Ripples too has soft spots for Ukraine?

    That Russia sympathy, from his piece, issued from the West’s annoying hypocrisy over Russia’s legitimate security fears.

    On that, the professor is spot on: do unto others as you want others to do unto you is no great virtue of the America-led West, as EU or as NATO.

    Indeed, in the West, there is too much cant to make Immanuel Kant, that rigorous, clear-thinking, straight-talking moral philosopher, to go hopping mad!

    Yet, neither western cant nor Russian grudge can summarily cancel out Ukraine’s sovereign right and will — including, if it comes to that, NATO membership.

    That, to be sure, would rankle.  America would kick were Mexico — or Canada — to enter into some security alliance with Russia.  Yet, that would still not justify a mad raid and severe bombing of Mexico as Russia now does of Ukraine, just because it could.

    It’s all the futility of force, when reasoned engagement would do.  In any case, after two World Wars, Putin ought to know playing Hitler all over would attract terrible consequences, even if Russia achieved a Pyrrhic victory on the battle front.

    But even on that, Putin and co are no longer so smug.  That explains why Russia seems to abandon the hot but stalled fronts, to savagely shell soft civilian targets.

    Everything, therefore, boils down to Ukraine’s will to pay the price to safeguard its sovereign rights.  That could well nurture a new international order anchored on basic humanity; from the present disorder driven by brute force.

  • Hope amidst hopelessness

    Hope amidst hopelessness

    This column recently advised President Muhammadu Buhari to watch out for his close aides whose actions bring disrepute to his regime especially in its dying days. In furtherance of that advice, this column urges the president to watch the antics of the chairman of his party’s Caretaker Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Mai Mala Buni, and his cohorts, whose short-sightedness almost landed the party into a state of hopelessness.

    While the legitimacy of Governor Buni holding another executive position in contravention of section 183 of the 1999 constitution should worry the party leaders, it appears that Buni and company were working to foist a debacle on the party at the last minute. Recall that a minority judgment of the Supreme Court in Jegede vs Akeredolu held that the Buni-led CECPC is illegitimate, though the majority upheld the election of Akeredolu on the ground that relevant parties were not joined in the suit.

    It should therefore worry President Buhari that despite being considered a contraption by a judgment of the apex court, the Buni-led CECPC continues to engage in shenanigans. But for the disagreement within Buni’s duplicitous camp, the political marauders had connived to hide an interim injunction by Justice Bello Kawu, of Abuja High Court restraining the party from organising the party convention. I hope the party has asked Buni to explain why he concealed the pending suit from the party.

    That anti-party activity by Governor Buni shows his utter contempt for the integrity of President Buhari, who put him in that position, and should not be swept under the carpet. When this column warned President Buhari to be wary of enemies within, some observers thought it was an exaggeration. But the fact that Buni and company could be playing ping-pong with the life of the party despite the president’s directive, shows beyond doubt that Buni is one such closet enemy.

    If the president is okay with hibernating with enemies in his closet, and there are still party influencers outside the coterie of president and CECPC hawks, such leaders must put on their telescope to scrutinise every action of the Buni-led CECPC towards the convention. To show that Buni is not repentant, he has flooded the most significant committees of the upcoming convention with his colleagues who care more about securing the party’s primary ticket for their second term, than organising a fair democratic contest amongst the party members.

    For the sake of history, it will be a shame if after working hard to cobble a party to win the presidential election in 2015, the president and his inner caucus cause the party to disintegrate, after his second term. Such fears is not far-fetched, for if the upcoming convention is manipulated in the same manner that Buni had deployed Buhari’s support to make mincemeat of internal party democracy since he was foisted on the party, then the party may well be on its way to the morgue.

    As should now be obvious to the president, even some members of his inner caucus are beginning to resist the dubious agenda of those who deceive him. So now that President Buhari has returned to the country, he should put Buni on the hot burner to allow a free and fair convention. The president should publicly declare his neutrality in the contest for party chairmanship position, and provide the enabling environment for a free and fair election. If the president wanted a consensus candidate, he should have done that earlier than now.

    So, instead of spending his energy promoting a candidate, the president should concentrate on returning normalcy to the electricity and energy sectors of the nation’s economy. It is a shame that the same time that the nation has been in darkness because of the breakdown of the nation’s power grid, is the same time that scarcity of fuel for cars, machines and airplanes have become the new normal.

    Concern for such debilitating factors that could return the nation’s economy to another recession should be the priority of the president, instead of campaigning for a chairmanship candidate being surreptitiously foisted on him by dubious members of his inner circle. If the president wants to know the truth about the economic impacts of his polices, he should ask for the price of rice, few weeks after the show of rice pyramids in Abuja. As I have maintained, the worst enemies of the president are those operating within, and he has many of them.

    Gloriously, in that state of hopelessness buffeting the nation’s economic and political space, Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, was inaugurated as governor of Anambra State. If the morning shows the day, then as promoted by this column, there is something refreshing coming from the eastern horizon. In a clear departure from the debauchery of political transitions that is common in our clime, Soludo chose a sane transition programme. He chose not to waste the scarce resources of the state, and has promised to rely on goods manufactured in the state for his private and official use.

    To walk his talk, he unveiled his official car, an SUV manufactured by Innoson Motor Company. He adorned his Akwete cloth, and entertained his guest with a fraction of the huge budget, earmarked for the occasion. A mere N20 million, instead of a humongous N600 million, originally budgeted. He went to work on the day of inauguration, and probably spent the promised eight hours, which is a day’s work. He spoke passionately to his people, urging them to partner with him for a new Anambra.

    He called ndi Anambra to return home, for the work of reformation. He called stealing by its name, and banned state authorized stealing in the motor parks. He invited the aggrieved members of the state, who have taken up arms to fight their cause to have a rethink, and come forward for dialogue. He raised the hope of ndi Anambra, the southeast and Nigerians. But he also noted that the challenges are many, particularly the structural challenge posed by a peculiar unitary-federalism, we practice.

    As this column noted when Soludo survived the armed attack at his home country during the campaign, ndi Anambra are a lucky lot, that he survived the attack. They are even luckier he won the election, and is now their governor. They should support him, for the good of their state and ala Igbo. There is no doubt that governance in Nigeria would gain a heft from the fecund mind of Chuwkuma Soludo.

    The Soludo Solution, predicted by this columnist, with his friend Emeka Agbayi, nearly 15 years ago, has berthed in Anambra. If Nigeria is lucky, Soludo could become a beacon of hope in the midst of hopelessness, pervading the national landscape.

  • Living on borrowed time

    Living on borrowed time

    To those who have long given up on the numbing mathematics of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and its principal, the federal government, the latest lecture circuit mounted by the minister of state for petroleum, Timipre Sylva, to sell a concocted a ‘strange alibi’ as this paper puts it in its editorial of yesterday must have presented a riveting epitaph of sorts. For while Nigerians may have been battered, pummelled and flummoxed beyond shockability – to borrow some of the typically extravagant phrases often deployed by one of the men of power to press their points home; and whereas the nation’s critical voices may have been dulled in the years of duelling with mediocre, egoistic personages running the affairs of state; there is mercifully enough left to suggest that the nation’s capacity to think have not been totally obliterated.

    Here’s the story – or shall we say the story behind the story. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, plus Russia, had, at its 25th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting last month, increased Nigeria’s oil production quota from 1.70 million bpd in February to 1.72 million bpd for March. By the way, the quota for January was pegged at 1.68 million bpd.

    As always, the cartel may well have spared their ink – and valuable time: Nigeria’s quota, simply put, was unrealisable. In fact, the nation’s total output has averaged 1.4mbpd over the course of the past 11 months.

    If you considered that a big deal in a country said to run on a tight shoe-string budget and, at a time when every nth kobo of the capital spend is borrowed, Minister Sylva, rather than see the emergency for what it is, has been in the wild goose chase for alibis. To him, not only are the international oil companies (IOCs) not doing enough, they are in fact, leaving too quickly for the nation’s health!!!

    And so for solution, he insists that we need to look – not at the enemy within, which the evidence leads, but at those without, for the source of our massive troubles in a sector that is fast fading. By the enemies without, he of course, meant the oil majors, who, apparently fed up with our oily ways, and hung on the new fad of green energy, are already looking far beyond our shores –beyond the allures of our once-upon-a-time sweet Light Bonny – for greener pastures!

    Now, thanks to Messrs. Tony Elumelu and Austin Avuru, the part, long denied is finally being discussed in the public square. The reality facing the country, they aver, is more nuanced, and certainly far more complex than painted by the minister or the government that he represents. In fact, the duo may well have said that the minister, in claiming that under-investment as against the brazen theft going on in the sector, not only told a lie but somewhat betrayed the nation’s hope in its struggle to break with an ugly past.

    Let’s look at what the duo said – starting with Elumelu: “How can we be losing over 95% of oil production to thieves? Look at the Bonny Terminal that should be receiving over 200k barrels of crude oil daily, instead, it receives less than 3,000 barrels, leading the operator Shell to declare force majeure… It is clear that the reason Nigeria is unable to meet its OPEC production quota is not because of low investment but because of theft, pure and simple!”

    True or false? Surely, Nigerians are not in doubt as to who, between the minister and the businessman, chose to bandy untruths!

    To return to Avuru. He on his part admitted that the IOCs have not made any meaningful investments in the last 15 years. But then, he also noted that this was merely a symptom of a bigger ailment – the crisis of governance – something more particularly renowned in the corrupt, rent-prone oil sector. He spoke of an entire export pipeline network surrendered to vandals and illegal bunkerers while observing that the phrase “crude theft” which crept into the industry about 2010 has since taken on a new meaning with “some pipeline systems now (particularly in the East), where 80% (eighty percent) of production injected therein does not make it to the terminal!”

    The result – every producer is now cooking up “alternative evacuation” schemes that cost four to five times what pipeline export would normally cost!”

    This stifling environment, says Minister Sylva, makes no difference. In his opinion, not only does IOCs owe Nigerians a living, they have no reasons to be leaving in droves as they are doing since the oil has not yet dried up. Trust the IOCs; they know better.

    For the Nigerian government, why bother with the activities of criminal gangs busting crude-bearing pipelines when officials could easily to take to the airwaves to deplore ‘incessant vandalisation of crude pipelines and theft’; when it costs nothing to make the right noises about the damage to the environment?

    In any case, who cares about the anarchy inadvertently loosed by a clueless administration with nary understanding of the national imperatives – in a clime where the government sees itself as a benefactor as against being answerable to the people? Who is talking about repositioning the African Giant in the fast-changing energy dynamics when there’s just enough gravy left to go round?

    It’s been nearly a year since the Auditor General of the Federation released its rather damning verdict on the NNPC’s creative accounting and its corollary, the massive heist reckoned in billions of unexplained and unexplainable discrepancies in account receivables. The report of the AUGF for 2019 specifically mentioned some 107,239,436 barrels of crude oil lifted for domestic consumption that could not be accounted for; PMS worth N7.06 billion claimed to have been pumped to the two depots (Ibadan-Ilorin and Aba-Enugu) between June and July 2019 not received by them as indeed other countless under-remittances by the corporation to the federation account. While no one has been called to account; and while the sector lies adrift; absent still are the hard, strategic thinking required to catalyse the sector, the fierce urgency that should ordinarily attend to them.

    Today, our un-leaders have reduced a once proud people to a joke – a terrible embarrassment to themselves and to the world.  A so-called giant daily revealed as one standing on the feet of clay. From railways running out of diesel as a result of faulty gauges, a perennially collapsing power grid with citizens left to duel on semantics of whether to treat the phenomenon as collapse or whatever.

    Sad how the midwives of incompetence – the same fellows – that not too long ago held the nation under the thrall of   ‘body language’ and change – have done little else than mouth rationalisations to explain away the current stasis after nearly seven years of being in the saddle.

    So where does all these lead? The answer is obvious – nowhere. Soon enough, Nigerians would get to know the difference between stasis and full-blown crisis. The signs already are palpable. There’s not enough oil export to cover our import bills; yet our non-export business are still very much at the most elementary levels. Our tax-to GDP revenues at 6.5 percent is a no-no. Inflation has hit the roofs while our manufacturers are gasping for breath. Unemployment, particularly of the youth has become something of a nightmare. Yet, the government is faced with a situation in which it has less and less to spend.

    The saying is true after all –you cannot give what you do not have. Hopefully, this season will somehow pass – not so much for the work done – but as Nigerians are wont to say – on the wheels of faith. Someone said the other day that we have seen worse. Really?