The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • It’s October 20, 2020 again!

    It’s October 20, 2020 again!

    One of the correlates of public discourse is that constant peril of being swept off in the battering waves of mindless emotion.  In a clime where fidelity to facts – that long tested rule that undergirds fairness and objectivity – are not only freely dispensed with, but those who dared to express dissent are put to vile retributions by a mob that sees ‘truth’ from their own prejudiced but jaundiced positions, it requires little imagination to understand why the country has bitten such ethical/moral and professional dust to a point that nothing is now held as sacrosanct.

    Unlike the hounds out there who swear that they have not only read the two-volume report, but have so thoroughly digested the 300-plus page to the point of becoming leading authority of sorts, this writer claims no such privilege. In any event, he couldn’t have on a document that was only released days back. And that is not even without the benefit of a reminder by those who should know, that the so-called document, already in circulation, could not have been authentic by the mere spectacle of public presentation until the government actually pushes out a white paper on it!

    And even that in itself could still be challenged in the court of law!

    So, here we are – with the government not only being hounded but accused of ‘bad faith’ on a matter that is at this point, ‘sub judice’; while a section of the media, the law profession, an emergency activists are already daggers drawn as if to re-enact, if not exploit, the associated tragedies of an event that should ordinarily present a teachable moment for all.

    Those who finger the media as culprit for running to town with a ‘suspect’ document while going as far as to draw some wild conclusions obviously have a point. It is sadly the case that a section of the media has long thrown professionalism to the dogs in matters that ordinarily call for circumspection and good judgment. We are today at a point where hard facts needed to illuminate the events and to aid the understanding of the reader are supplanted with raw ignorance laced with activism and then served as alternative facts. And now the greatest tragedy of all time is that our leading broadcast stations are a little more than echo chambers of CNN and their prejudices!

    I watched one spectacle – in which the counsel to the Lagos State government, a learned Silk, sparred with two anchors on prime time television. The former, with utmost reluctance had insisted on not being drawn into validating a leaked document. Citing the applicable law, he insisted that the so-called report in circulation, may well be a minority report in the circumstance that a number of the ‘findings’ did not match the evidence presented at the tribunal. Told by one of the anchors that a member of the panel was actually in the studio a day before to give wings to the findings which suggested that the leaked document was authentic, the learned Silk, coerced into putting the report to sword, described it as shoddy, amidst infantile protestations by the anchor who apparently mistook his duty of truth-finding for badgering!

    Talk of how dirty things can sometimes get!

    Nothing however compares with the gun literally held to the head of the Lagos State government by a conflicted panel member, who ironically also believes that the administration which set up the panel and at whose behest he served, could not be trusted to do justice to the report as submitted, with it the threat to release own copy should things not go as expected. That was for yours truly the turning point in what is now the needless drama that offers no serious pathway to either establishing the truth or drawing any meaningful closure to the terrible tragedy.

    How many fell victim to the EndSARS carnage? Whereas Lagosians and the entire country are supposed to wait for two weeks, it seems clear that some interested parties couldn’t stand the luxury of a fortnight to sell their version of narratives. Hence we are back to the immediate post-October 20, 2020 moments going by how the matter has been going back and forth.  Needless to state that the answer to that question continues to depend on the orientation of the individual doing the body count as in ‘we versus them’ – the class of hyperactive netizens versus the old, conservative school!

    Trust our fire-brand netizens and their network of NGO allies not to suffer the indignities of an inconvenient truth. It is after all, their world in which righteous indignation need not pass the muster of sifting the facts from the fiction. They can rest easy as the panel, by its strange conclusion that “the manner of the assault and killing could in context be described as a massacre”, has given validation to their quest.

    To be sure, this writer is certainly not interested the wearisome debate or even the semantics of whether or not the tragic incident at the Lekki toll gate was a massacre or a military/police action gone awry. Sure it was bad enough that lives were tragically lost. Suffice to say that it seems unlikely that the police victims at the other end of town, which actually number in scores, would feature among the lot of victims, which is tragic really given the extent of the carnage visited on the institution, the reports surely, cannot come close to being accepted as a credible, historic document.

    And to think that all lives are supposed to matter!

    In other words, if it seems ordinarily inexcusable that the terms of reference of the two tribunals were rather narrow and limited to one of securing restitution for the victims of police brutality including those allegedly felled by the military bullets at the Lekki toll gate; that media on its part failed to insist on a proper tracking of the series of events that took place if only to have a hang of how things turned awry despite the early promises of the EndSARS protest is not only tragic, it sure qualifies as a monumental abdication of public duty. Surely, a set-out of the timeline of events would have put paid to any doubts.

    And now as if to compound the abdication, such have been the denials and obfuscation as if the events right up to the late afternoon when the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, imposed the curfew and the even-time event October 20, 2020 are disparate and unrelated. It certainly will be interesting to see how the two-volume reports managed to navigate the challenge.

    Blaming the governor for how the events later turned out is certainly understandable.  After all, the buck stops at this desk. For now, no one is even talking about the extensive damages to public property. What no one has yet put out are the options left for the chief security after those goons not only sacked dozens of police stations but took the heads of dozen plus security personnel caught in their rage home for dinner. Apparently, those belong in Nigeria’s tribe of expendables, aren’t they!

  • Much ado about Lekki “massacre”

    Much ado about Lekki “massacre”

    The “massacre”, of the Lekki gate hue, must be some strong breed; and maybe enter the Guinness Book of Records for lexical delusion.

    In an impassioned season of “massacre”, real or phantom, that delusion itself must pass for wilful, wild and merry conceptual massacre!

    On the night of 20 October 2020, it was Aluta massacre.  The more known folks were pronounced dead, the more on the double, they bounced back to life.

    After the rogue-leak of the Lagos judicial panel of inquiry (JPI) report on the matter, it became judicial massacre.  The JPI swore indeed 11 were killed at that fatal gate.  But before even the ink dried on that report, one or two were claimed to have resurrected. Another one or two were confirmed living, cohabiting with the dead.  Yet, another name bobbed up twice — a resilient ghost, that!

    What would Fela the Inimitable, at his caustic, teasing, rascally best, have called all that?  Government magic?  No.  Judicial magic? More like it!

    Yes, Fela would have found himself in strange company, as anti-government and anti-establishment as he proudly was.  Yet, the Abami Eda would have crowed all his albums were based on verifiable truth, not cheap social media fibs!  Indeed, there was an era!  Too many Fela-wannabe liars, in their absurd social media lairs!

    Still pray: what might the Lekki “massacre” have morphed into, after the report’s official release, with its Lagos government white paper, in less than two weeks?  White Paper massacre, perhaps?  Only God knows!

    If there indeed was a massacre, would it have taken all this huffing-and-puffing, toing-and-froing, to prove it?  What do the Yoruba say of the elephant?  That massive bulk isn’t what you see “firi” — (Yoruba for) fleeting.  If you sight the Ajanaku, you’re absolutely sure you saw an elephant!

    And so it is with a massacre.  You don’t need a contextualization to arrive at a massacre, except of course you want to canonize a year-old lie, which is not about to turn true, by wishful lexical gerrymandering!

    By the way, a reader (drip! drip!), in-between streaming tears, growled to Sam Omatseye that this column dismissed DJ (S)witch as a witch, being among the first to peddle the massacre fib.

    I suppose fulsome apologies are in order, now that the Lagos panel has allegedly — allegedly because the official report is not out — defined, nay, canonized the alleged slaying of 11 (?) people as a “massacre”!

    It would appear the DJ “witchery” has taken flight on some lexical broomstick, to find home elsewhere!  Besides, it must be Nigeria’s 21st century contribution to English lexis — an 11-(wo)man massacre!

    But let’s be clear: no security agent, carrying arms bought by Nigerian common money, has a right to mow down even a-half Nigerian citizen.

    So, if there were proven abuses at that Lekki gate, on that night of 20 October 2020, let whoever was involved carry their can; and face the full weight of the law, as distilled by their service codes.  If that falls short, then, the open courts to curb state abuse.

    Still, to continue calling the alleged killing of 11 citizens a massacre — even without the many holes in the leaked panel report — is reckless evil packaged as good.

    It is brazen lies pushed by rights lobbies: emotion terrorists milking explosive passion, in bare-faced posturing for foreign grants.

    It appears nothing beyond holy racketeering: human rights do-gooders that boast a bogus platform, flash a recognizable name, and splash false claims and lying videos on the social media.

    This much was clear from the very first claims of “massacre” from the Lekki theatre: when all known names declared killed instantly resurrected.

    A similar howl is greeting the leaked JPI report: a deliberate, post-haste social media hysteria; a skewed Aluta narrative to rig public opinion, ahead of the official release.

    Why, even the peacocky CNN, that earlier ate crow with its barren Lekki report, was all flush and triumph, in celebration of a “massacre” of max 11 bodies — probably much less!  The huge cost of reportorial arrogance on an unfazed global news bully!

    So, the “gentlemanly” Lagos State government had better be wary of getting  scammed, by brazen blackmail, into unfair guilt.  It should be fair to all — not the least, itself.

    But back to the nitty-gritty — verifiable #EndSARS timelines: 20 October 2020.  Breakdown of law and order.  The curfew — and the Lekki gate stand-off to bust it.

    Then, allegations of “massacre”, which fed visceral anger that resulted in proven deaths, mainly the mob slaughter of security operatives.  Then, mindless arson and jail breaks, all over Lagos and the rest of Nigeria.

    If Lagos imposed a curfew to stem anarchy, why did the activists attempt to bust it?

    If they had de-camped and headed for their homes, even after the curfew take-off time had been shifted from 6 pm to 8 pm, would anyone be talking of “massacre”, real or fake, today?

    If they didn’t, do they not also bear vicarious, if not wilful responsibility, for whatever happened that night, without prejudice to security agencies’ duty to holding their conduct to highest civilized standards, even while breaking up the wildest of mobs?

    The same law which guarantees citizen liberty also empowers the government to act, when liberty spirals into dangerous licentiousness. That was #EndSARS’ tragic endgame.

    Now, if activists’ curfew-busting climaxed in catastrophe, do they think mouthing “massacre” a year after — even with an alleged JPI charter — would free them from that dreadful responsibility?

    Aside from luckless citizens consumed by near-anarchy, six soldiers and 37 policemen got slaughtered by sundry mobs.  Monuments were touched.  Police posts, gutted.  Private businesses destroyed.  On this score, both The Nation and TVC still lick their wounds.  Same for hundreds of other micro and small businesses, ruined till today.

    This Aluta leak is funereally silent on these verified victims.  Crusading angels for change should be truthful in small matters!  Nothing great is built on fraud and lies.

    When the English Parliament passed the Bill of Rights in 1689, the King was the sole, swaggering Leviathan.  The Americans, after adopting “democratic royalty”, in an elected president, made that Bill the fundament of their democratic practice.

    Today, there’s need for a Neo-Bill of Rights, fitting 21st century realities.  Aside from real anarchists, armed to the teeth and contending space with the state, there are also closet anarchists, ghosting as rights activists.  They sponsor discontent and subvert the democratic process.  But they claim to protect it.  And a section of the media too, that parrots every equal-opportunity visceral nonsense.

    That was the long-and-short of the #EndSARS debacle.  That’s why a report would go berserk over the alleged killing of 11, with no conclusive proof; but stay gloriously mum on the proven slaughter of 43 agents of state, on legitimate and lawful duty, by “democratic” mobs.

    Such bullying would be the end of the modern government as we know it, were such unconscionable double standard to continue!  Enough of this phantom “massacre”!

     

  • #EndSARS panel report

    #EndSARS panel report

    On November 15, the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution of Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters submitted its report to the governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. While some states had set up similar panels at the behest of the federal government after the tragic denouement of the protest that rocked many state capitals in October 2020; all eyes are on the Lagos panel, since the Lekki Toll Gate, the epicentre of the protests, is in Lagos.

    And even as the state government’s white paper is being awaited, the leaked report of the panel is already in the public domain and generating controversies. No doubt, it is the measure given to the Lagos State judicial panel’s report that will determine the measures to be accorded the other reports across the country. If the Lagos report is treated shabbily and discountenanced to worth a few penny, other states’ reports may likely follow suit.

    While this column agrees that the protest in Lagos and even across the country was hijacked for evil motives by forces yet to be identified, there is one fundamental fact, which must never be glossed over. It is the fact that the Lekki protest was peacefully organised, and even patriotic in its manner of operation (waving national flags and singing national anthem); yet some dark forces operating in the military went to the scene and shot at the protesters in a manner showing that their lives does not matter.

    Luckily, the Lagos panel’s report is said to have identified senior military officers who should be held accountable for the despicable conduct of the military personnel that went to the Lekki toll gate to shoot at peaceful protesters on that night of October 20, 2020. For this column, while the payment of damages is a sine qua non for a wrongful tortious act, it behoves on the federal government to identify the military culprits, and make them answer for their criminal conduct.

    Even more insidious are the criminal elements, who joined the rampaging military to clear the mess after the shootings and attempt to hide the fact of the shooting. Unfortunately, many respectful voices, has sworn on their lives that nobody was killed, because of the mastery way the military and their collaborators did a near perfect job of attempting to hide the truth. Uncharitably, the respected news media, the CNN which used scientific measures to confirm that the military used life bullets and killed protesters was vilified as harbingers of fake news.

    Now that the leaked report of the Lagos State panel confirmed that patriotic Nigerian youths were mowed down at the Lekki Toll gate by their own army, I hope everyone of the those who promoted the so-called massacre without bodies, would own up to their error and marshal as much energy expended to promote the falsehood, to excoriate the military and ask that those responsible be held to account. Of course, the chief promoter of the falsehood was the minister for Information, Lai Mohammed.

    Perhaps, because of how the minister is perceived by the public with respect to the manner of how he defends the government he serves, many may not give him the benefit of doubt as they would other persons who promoted the falsehood that nobody was killed at the Lekki Toll gate that night of Tuesday. To show how much he is vilified by many, there are already calls for him to resign for misleading Nigerians, and if he fails, that he should be sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari, who appointed him.

    While his resignation and sack is far-fetched considering the disposition of the government to such public opinion, the least the minister and his fellow defenders of the falsehood in government should do, is to own up to their error and ask for forgiveness of their sins. Those who killed defenceless Nigerian youths committed atrocity, and anyone who knowingly defended the evil, is accessory after the fact. Luckily, the first is not only evil, it is a crime, and the government of President Buhari owes it a duty to bring those involved to account.

    So, while President Buhari’s government can legitimately await the state government’s white paper, to buy time, the buck will eventually stop at the president’s table. Those who shot at the young Nigerians demonstrating at the Lekki Toll gate are members of the Nigerian armed forces and the Police, who are under the command and control of the president. Without doubt, the governor of Lagos State or indeed, the other governors have no control to initiate the trial of such culprits, and it will be unfair for the president to push the buck to the governors.

    Perhaps, with the information in the public domain that the military shot at the peaceful protesters, it is time for the federal government to set its own judicial enquiry to find out those culpable. Who gave the order to go to the scene with life bullets, who asked the soldiers to shoot, and the shooters should be dealt with in accordance with the law. Again, who are those who cleared the mess and tried to hide the facts from the public and the government? They too deserve to be exposed and dealt with as accessories to the murder.

    Unless of course the president had known all the while about the killings and the effort to hide it. If not, then the president should be interested to know how far up those in the know of the criminal actions concerning the killings at the Lekki Toll gate. To assuage the conscience of his government, President Buhari should take political responsibility for the misdemeanour of his officers and men and publicly apologise to the youths of the country and beg for their forgiveness.

    The attempt to conflate the peaceful #EndSARS Lekki Toll gate demonstrations with the mindless criminality, involving unconscionable incidents of organised arson targeted at public and private properties, in Lagos and across the country rankles. Those who give the lame logic that the peaceful demonstration led to the arson miss the point. The youths peacefully demonstrating what many have admitted as the criminal excesses of the special anti-robbery squads cannot be held accountable for the failure of the police to rein in criminal elements lurking around to cause mayhem.

    With the quality of the members of the Lagos State panel, the government of Lagos State has demonstrated their determination to unearth what happened at the Lekki Toll gate last year. What remains is to issue a white paper on the panel’s findings. For this column, it is only the federal government that is a position to hold those who shot live bullets at peaceful demonstrators to account.

  • A befitting clinic, at last, for State House

    A befitting clinic, at last, for State House

    Is it true?” a fellow expatriate Nigerian here with whom I frequently discuss the news from home in its perversity and occasional uplift asked the other day.

    “Is what true?” I replied, taken aback.

    “So you haven’t heard?”

    “Heard what?”  I said, almost losing my patience.  “Come right out with it, man.”

    “They are finally, after all these years going, to build an ultra-modern extension to the Presidential Wing of the State House Clinic that has been dysfunctional for decades.”

    “There you go again,” I cautioned him.  You’ve been consuming too much fake news.  Who told you it has been dysfunctional?”

    “Herself the First Lady.  Didn’t she tell a scandalized nation the other day they didn’t have syringes there, something they used to have in village dispensaries back when we were growing up?”

    “That doesn’t translate into dysfunction, except in your jaundiced mind.  About time they upgraded the old Aso Rock clinic anyway.  That would save President Muhammadu Buhari and whoever succeeds him all those foreign medical trips that provide voyeuristic satisfaction to European doctors and intelligence bonanza to their espionage outfits.  I say nothing about the huge savings in foreign exchange that will redound to the treasury.  Apparently you don’t like the idea?”

    “It is going to cost N21 billion.”

    “There you go again, peddling fake figures from the fake media.” I cautioned.

    “The figures were provided by the Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijjani Umar, to the Senate  Committee on Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs, while defending the budget proposals for the next fiscal year.”

    “Context, man.  Context.  Figures are nothing without their context.  What is the country, or rather, State House, going to get for the N21 billion?

    “Two operating theatres, two executive suites, two VIP suites, two isolation units, and a six-bed isolation area. The clinic, will occupy an area of 2700 square metres or roughly four soccer pitches on two floors.

    “That is a great deal of real estate and medical hardware for N21 billion, which translates into a mere $518 million and some change. But is that all?”

    “The clinic will come with x-ray facilities, laboratories, a well-stocked pharmacy.  Computerized surgical consoles.  And a ‘healing garden.’  And much more.”

    “At N21 billion, that is a great bargain.  State House may well get a Bargain of the Year Award from the Daily Supplicant. And to think that it will also have a garden where you just go and receive healing?” State House might unwittingly be competing with the Pentecostals and other miracle workers and faith healers.”

    “But the healing garden will not be for general, mind you.  Access will be highly restricted.  Even if they decide to commercialize it, only a few will be able to pay the bill. And the miracle centres will continue to do roaring business.  So I say to the Presidency, get on with it, before costs escalate.”

    “With an advocate like you, the authorities hardly need a press secretary of any stripe, or even a Minister of Information.”

    There is another benefit that you have omitted in your haste to scandalize the government.  The facility will serve not only the President and the principal officers of state, in the spirit of the African Union and ECOWAS it will be open to foreign heads of state and their spouses who fall sick while visiting, and generally curb medical tourism on the continent.

    “But why are they just coming up with this project, two years to the end of the administration’s tenure, when they are saying government is broke and must cut subsidies, raise taxes and take huge foreign loans?

    “Government is a continuous business, remember.  So that a tenure never really ends.  The new people continue where the former people left off.  The project was proposed back in 2012 by the Jonathan Administration. The present government is merely reviving and fast-tracking it.  Continuity is the name of the game.”

    “You are either being cynical, or making light of the whole thing because it implicates the so-called progressives you hang out with.”

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    “You are the one trying to dredge up a crime or a scandal where there is only continuity. Next you will be working up a fuss over why budgetary approval is only now being sought when construction has in fact begun as at November 1 according to the State House permanent secretary and will be completed in December 2022.”

    “Good question.  Why now?”

    “The pat retort is:  Why not now.  But there is a better answer.  There is something called ‘anticipatory approval.’  If you waited for a project to be approved embarking on it, you could wait forever.  Precious time would be lost, and the benefits that are supposed to flow to the public would never materialize.”

    “How do you proceed, then?”

    So, you make a bold declaration of intent, imbue it with a good outlay in sunk costs and let it gestate               in the files.  At the right time, you bring it up and if you have the right connections, it becomes a fait accompli, for which at least mobilization fees are guaranteed, if not the entire construction cost upfront.”

    “What if in the end the project is not approved?”

    “Not approved?  That would be strange.  Ask your friends in the technocracy.  Can they recall a single instance in which approval was denied for a project that had advanced that far?”

    “Why Julius Berger again?  Would another major contract be a distraction when they are still wrestling with their portion of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway?”

    “Again, continuity.  They built State House and all the strategic installations.  They know the place inside out.  Besides, it would be putting national security at risk to bring new contractors on site.”

    “Let us hope that, this time, they will equip the facility with fine, durable equipment.  Remember how in the time of Goodluck Jonathan, they were replacing the kitchen equipment every year.  His opponents said they wore out so quickly because they were being used day in day out to prepare his favourite meal of cassava bread.”

    “On that score,” I gather, “there will be no continuity.  Only the finest yet most durable materials that engineering science ever came up with will be used without sacrificing aesthetics and design. No clunky, soulless stuff.  Only stuff guaranteed to lift the spirit and promote rapid healing and sustainable good health.  No seven-day wonders.  Need I add that the clinic will be staffed with the best medical professionals in the world, including Nigerians abroad longing to return home and give back.”

    “A sprawling hospital complex with all the modern facilities you are touting was up and almost running in the Akwa Ibom capital, Uyo, in the time of the uncommon transformation wrought by Governor Godswill Akpabio.  Today it stands where he left it.  To make sure this does not happen to the new State House Clinic extension, shouldn’t they make Akpabio its chief political consultant and operating officer?  In a way, wouldn’t that signal continuity?

    “Abuja moves in mysterious ways.”

    My error

    In my column for November 9 (“The Minister and the Media”), I incorrectly entered July 14, 1999, rather than July 14, 2009, as the 75th birthday of Professor Wole Soyinka and the occasion for my presenting the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism Anniversary Lecture:  “Narrating the Nigerian Story:  The Challenge for the Media.”

     

     

  • Still on Ikoyi’s tumbled tower

    Still on Ikoyi’s tumbled tower

    Now that the Lagos State government is apparently done with the removal of the debris of the collapsed 21-storey structure at Ikoyi’s Gerrard Road and the no less gruesome task of labelling/identification of the victims, it seems about time to get into the other matter that has been largely ignored. From such systemic failings from physical planning to development control, from environmental assessment to engineering and other regulatory mishaps, we ought to by now be able to appreciate not just the depth of the rot, but the antediluvian states of the agencies put in place to regulate the way we do things.

    Next is how to ensure justice and adequate restitution for the two scores plus two victims.

    As it’s always the case when things happen; everyone’s been talking – from the layman to the journeyman; the emergency commentariat with their hare-brained analysis; the emergency experts brought in from the cold; suddenly, everyone claims to know a thing or two that ought to have been – but were never in place. There is even now a swirling religious angle about the chief promoter; never mind that this was at a time the man in question still laid under the pile of rubble. There have since emerged new angles – call it theories on the matter with which the building came down – whether by bomb or explosives – and with it insinuations of sabotage!

    In other words, we have had enough time chasing the structural dimensions of the tragedy while the human components of the disaster have been largely obscured. Chairman of this newspaper’s editorial board, Sam Omatseye first put up the question last week – although in a different context, when at the meeting, he broached upon the issue of compensation to the subscribers to the Fourscore Towers Project. He was of the view that the subscribers deserve compensation, since, according to him, nothing in the disaster could be traced to negligence on their part. It was, as he said, inequitable for the state government to compulsory acquire the property without addressing the issue of compensation to the innocent subscribers.

    Fair point, no doubt. If I understood the premise of his argument, it stems from the same logic that underlies the compensation of innocent depositors of failed banks. Picture a group of barely a dozen wayward bankers, plunging the entire financial system into distress the result of which the regulator had to pump some N1 trillion in rescue package to keep the system from tipping over.

    Of course, my reading of the affair is somewhat different: the apex didn’t bail out the investors but rather, the innocent depositors, whose savings in the entities were under threat.

    In fact, yours truly would argue that the case of the lot that died or suffered great injuries in the disaster is vastly different from that of the investors. The victims – not the investors – deserve the maximum compensation as would ordinarily attach had the promoter the good sense to comply with the relevant statutes. Whereas the investors merely put in their money in which case they could either win or lose; these individuals were in the building to render service; others for different purposes for which the law already mandates broad range of protection in case of injuries or death related to their activities.

    Thanks to this newspaper, we have just about enough information to suggest that statutory protections, which exist on paper, were not in place at the time of the accident. One refers specifically to the Insurance Act 2003, particularly Sections 64 and 65 which mandate existing buildings and those under construction with more than two floors must be insured against construction risks caused by negligence!

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    Indeed, both the Nigerian Insurers Association and the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB), the umbrella body of insurers and brokers, have stated categorically that they have no record of insurance policy on the building!

    But even more revealing: the now suspended General Manager of the Lagos State Building Control Agency (LASBCA), Gbolahan Oki, according to this newspaper, only called for a meeting with some insurance brokers to discuss insurance of public buildings in the state days before the Ikoyi structure caved in!

    Now, that’s as huge as the implication is frightening. We are not talking here of a motorist refusing to take a third party insurance against potential liabilities of a third-party nature in the event of an accident – which is itself bad enough, but rather, of an investor in a multiple billion-naira project neglecting to observe a statutory requirement under the law, while those meant to enforce the law, look the other way.

    Some would of course argue that we’ve seen worse. That this will not be the first time such terrible neglect, which border on the criminality, will be happening on the nation. They cite the infamous example of Sosoliso Airline, whose aircraft crashed at Port Harcourt International Airport on December 10, 2005 but which at the time had no valid insurance cover; yet was allowed to fly the nation’s airspace. The story then was that the original owners of the MD-83 plane, Yugoslavia JAT Airlines, was in the process of renewing the aircraft’s insurance when Sosoliso took it on a lease.  At the time it was leased, JAT had only paid a paltry sum out of the premium to its insurer while the Nigerian carrier, was to complete the process after. Well, that never happened – until the crash that dissolved some 103 precious lives in a terrible ball of fire.

    You and I know what happened after. Instead of the mandatory compensation of $100,000 to the beneficiaries as required under the international aviation regulations, beneficiaries would later be coerced into a backroom settlement with a non-disclosure proviso attached! Talk of disaster-mitigation and settlement the Nigerian way!

    Talk of a vast crime scene of a country; how many buildings have collapsed in the last decade? I came across a study by Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, a scholar based in South Africa that in Lagos alone, some 152 buildings collapsed between 2005 and 2020.  Of the lot, 76.6% were residential buildings, while commercial buildings accounted for 13.0%, the remaining 9.4% being institutional buildings. Nigerians would recall the most ‘notable one of September 12, 2014, in which a guesthouse located within the Synagogue Church of All Nations premises came down during which 115 people, mostly foreigners died.

    Again, talk of a country where risk-management systems are virtually non-existent; one whose 22 listed insurance companies have 16 still struggling to meet the required capital threshold as it pertains to their line of business.  The last time I checked, the industry had been locked in protracted recapitalization that has taken the most of the past three years with no stability yet in sight. And that was before Covid-19 happened. And that was after the earlier capitalisation round of 2007.

    Talk of a confederacy in infamy – the unholy triad starring an anaemic insurance sector, a predatory investor class and negligent state institutions; what you have is a perfect tag-team in the making of Nigeria’s legendary man-made disasters with innocent citizens more often than not their collateral victims.

    While we focus attention on how the disaster in that high-rise building in the highbrow Ikoyi managed to be, pressing for appropriate restitution for the luckless victims – which ironically include the investor himself, seems the next logical step. In other words, time for our public interest lawyers and activists to commence a class action suit that seeks exemplary damages on behalf of the victims.

     

     

  • Between Adesina and Anambra

    Between Adesina and Anambra

    Femi Adesina and Anambra are metaphors here for APC: the schizophrenic ruling party pulling in different directions, unsure of its growth and winning joker.

    In Anambra, the partisan snatch-show-and-grow vision of Mai Mala Buni, Yobe governor and APC national caretaker chairman, just collapsed!

    In spite of rushing to President Muhammadu Buhari with APC’s latest captures, from PDP and allied victims; and grabbing presidential photo-ops, the APC spectacularly crashed in the November 6 gubernatorial election.

    The Buni pantomime in the run-up to that poll was the defection of Nkem Okeke, APGA’s Anambra deputy governor — and he got rewarded with a presidential pose.  Okeke too, “hot, fresh and smoking” from Aso Villa (to borrow that immortal phrase from old-English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer), spewed local Anambra bragging rights: some bits about the state playing at the centre, to rally the herd.

    But despite all of that braggadocio, Mr. Okeke failed to “deliver” to his new party, his Umueze Awozu, Enugwu-Ukwu Ward 3, Polling Unit 005.  APGA’s Chukwuma Soludo (82 votes) prevailed there, over APC’s Andy Uba (61 votes).

    The Okeke cross-over was followed by a rash of APGA state legislative defectors, no less estranged from Governor Willy Obiano; and a couple of other federal legislators.

    Yet with all of that, the Buni growth strategy of grab-and-howl crashed!  Poor Andy Uba, APC Anambra candidate was right — and prescient.  After casting his vote, he declared he’d win otherwise the defectors would be disgraced!  Yeah right, they were!

    But even more “disgraced” was the Buni strategy of raiding rival parties for growth, when he could better have leveraged the APC government’s hard-earned achievements, in the worst of socio-economic seasons.

    That’s where Femi Adesina, chief presidential spokesperson, comes in as counter-metaphor.

    For starters, Adesina with his “From the Inside: … Fridays with Femi Adesina” weekly, is fast becoming nemesis to his former media colleagues, who feel they can peddle personal bile as legit government criticism, because they have access to people’s mind, through their sacred mediums.

    Without prejudice to the Fourth Estate’s function to call the first three estates to account, Femi Adesina is matching these media commentators in own games; and pushing the government’s democratic right to have its own say.

    But Adesina has been more than devastating.  He not only pushes that right with absolutely no apologies, he does so amassing facts and figures, served in simple and fetching prose.

    That only makes his opponents — and those of the government he serves — that wax poetic on empty emotions, to squirm and fidget.

    While previous holders of that office got defensive and submitted to avoidable peer blackmail, under ferocious media slaughter, Adesina chose instead to go on the offensive, pushing the achievements of his government in very hard times.

    But perhaps that is the telling difference between Adesina and his predecessors: his government has a lot to flaunt, in a season of scarcity; the previous ones rippled with pathetic excuses, in a season of plenty.

    Yet, that same government is putatively the most demonized, though it has the potential to be the most impactful since 1999 — if not in Nigeria’s democracy since the 1st Republic (1960-1966).

    Read Also: This Kumuyi is simply different, by Femi Adesina

    Kudos to Femi Adesina for speaking up with facts and figures.  Yes, you can’t always agree with his glad-handing and glad tidings.  You might even decry his breezy, cheer-leader style.  But you sure cannot fault or question his brutal facts and figures.

    That should have served Chairman Buni well in growing his party to the best of its strength.  Yet, the Yobe governor would rather play in the defection jungle of dubious value, than zoom on the smooth freeway of hard-won achievements!

    As the Anambra electoral debacle was unfolding, Adesina was in Paris, France, with his principal.  He penned his normal weekly stuff from there, and it ended with a devastating clincher:

    “Those who have consigned themselves perpetually to the complaint counters,” — and those are quite a number! — “should wake up.  The market is over.  It is time to go home, and do something better”!  Some euphonic though brutal poetry, there!

    He called the piece: “They said nothing was happening — how about these?”

    And he proceeded, as he is wont, to marshal the government’s achievements, the very same President Buhari was reeling out to his stellar audience in Paris: the 2nd Niger Bridge (which finally is coming to life), Bodo-Bonny road (35.7 km, first to connect oil-drenched Bonny Island to mainland Rivers), the Lagos-Ibadan expressway (West Africa’s busiest freeway), Abuja-Kano-Kaduna expressway and the Loko-Oweto Bridge, which links the Middle Belt, via Benue State, to the South East, North East and the Niger Delta.

    He listed other potentially game-changing infrastructure and life-changing public assets as the Lagos-Ibadan rail (the first rail project to be started and completed by any government in Nigerian history), “brand new” airports in Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt, and new runway and terminal building at the Enugu Airport.

    Aside from infrastructure, Adesina listed the Buhari great strides in agriculture, with its tremendous results via the Nigerian rice and putative food security, despite the grave insecurity challenge which, he added, the government was tackling head on.

    He toasted the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), which aside from giving all grades of farmers a healthy jab in the arm, has resulted in rice mills quadrupling from 10 in 2014 to 40 today; and fertilizer blending plants: from five in 2014 to 46 today — and all of these in the face of two economic recessions and a crippling COVID-19 pandemic that brought the globe to a virtual standstill!

    Adesina, never one to take prisoners, then — for the road? — strafed his media sparing partners and beyond: “The apostles of ‘nothing is happening, except insecurity’ should look for other music to sing, and for other dance steps,” he declared. “Honest Nigerians can see and feel the good things happening” — and so they can!

    Imagine Chairman Buni clinically staying glued to this clinical theme of hard-won achievements in a season of far-less resources — feats locals can easily see and verify — while pitching new members to join the ruling party!

    But alas!  It’s a path not taken.  After the Anambra debacle, however, Governor Buni should change tack.

    PDP, after a 16-year rule, has pretty little to point to as lasting legacy.  That’s why its members bluff and wax lyrical on empty emotions: abusing, traducing and maligning; sure they could scam the naive, the simplistic, the unwary.

    But the ruling party can, with ease, puncture the PDP bubble with verifiable facts. That’s what Adesina offers — and luckily, the ruling party can pick and choose.

    Adesina’s is the narrow path to salvation against the Buni wild and merry defection way  to perdition — and the Anambra debacle is living proof!

  • Soludo solution

    Soludo solution

    An election billed to last for a day, lasted for three days. And the result expected to be birthed within 48 hours of the first ballot, had a longer birth pang that lasted for over 96 hours. Logistical challenges, trepidation ruled Anambra State, in the last election. Even some of the midwives surrendered to fear, and bolted from the labour room, compounding INEC’s wahala. Weak-kneed men and women stayed in their cocoon, while some ran out of the state for fear of attack, by the ubiquitous unknown gunmen.

    But a modern day heroine was born. She is Mrs Eunice Onuegbusi, the voter who reportedly rejected an offer of N5,000 from a political party’s agent and opted to vote her conscience. Her candour has made her a millionaire – courtesy of a gift from Anambra State governor, Willy Obiano. Another interesting angle is that the election was adjudged to be transparent, courtesy of the new BVAS, whose malfunction in some areas was a nightmare for INEC and the voters.

    Interestingly, the major political parties have accepted the result and congratulated the winner, Professor Chukwuma Soludo. Of note, while APC in the state has congratulated the winner, the party’s flag bearer, Senator Andy Uba has reportedly rejected the result. The insinuation is that he may head to the court, potentially to achieve the feat of the governor of Imo State, Chief Hope Uzodinma, who was declared winner by the Supreme Court, in controversial circumstance.

    On the side-lines, strange elements with strange names, masquerading as freedom fighters, are springing-up, at least in the social media, claiming to be the protectors of the same people Soludo and his brother governors have been elected to govern, and threatening to deal with the region’s political leaders. The stragglers, dressed in funny military camouflage are also threatening the rave of the social media, Obi Cubana, for his relationship with the disgraced police chief Abba Kyari.

    So, Professor Chukwuma Soludo will be expected to tame the insecurity in his state and galvanise her to economic renaissance. Can Soludo deliver on the great expectation? For this writer, yes he can. As far back as 2008, this writer and Emeka Agbayi, in their book, Service Above Self, coined what became the campaign slogan in the recent election: Soludo Solution. It was the sub-title of the part of the book we wrote, which explained Professor Soludo’ exploits as governor of Central Bank of Nigeria and presidential adviser on economic matters to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    At his televised acceptance speech after the results were announced, Professor Soludo, wore a fez cap, with that bold inscription: Soludo Solution, and I was proud that we had coined that word. No doubt, Soludo is amongst the best his state, the southeast, and indeed our country Nigeria can put forward for the position of governor of a state. So, I urge him to gird his loins and provide untrammelled excellent political leadership to his state, the southeast and Nigeria.

    He must offer the best that is possible in public service to his people. He must never engage in the common shenanigans, like the predators in power, who see politics as prebendalism. As his state acronym says, he must become the light of the nation, in exemplary political governance. Perhaps, the greatest challenge facing him is the insecurity in the southeast region. As a professor of developmental economics, he must use economic development to help solve the insecurity ravaging the region, whether caused by external or internal forces.

    Read Also: ‘Soludo on divine mission to emancipate Ndigbo’

    Professor Soludo must also find solution to the unemployment challenges that feed the security challenges, and the dysfunctional economic structure of love for wealth without work, that many cuddle in his state. Luckily he is an epitome of the goodness of education, so he must help to reverse the paradigm that education does not pay, which is popular amongst the younger generation in his state. While not relegating the industry and doggedness of his people even when they possess minimal education, he should celebrate the extra shine that radiates when such self-attributes are attenuated by education.

    As governor of the central bank, he engineered the consolidation exercise, which was initially vilified by the ignorant, but became the saving grace when economic shocks stratified many financial institutions across the world, some years later. So, while it will be a difficult call, this writer urges Professor Soludo, to engineer economic policies that will bind the southeast together economically. This writer had proposed on this page, years ago that the region should develop an agro-allied economic belt running from Anambra through Enugu to Ebonyi State, and another from Imo to Abia State

    Borrowing from the era of the great Dr. Michael Okpara’s administrative wizardry, Professor Soludo should use his intellectual wealth, to galvanise his brother-southeast governors to revitalise the great agro-industrial estates of the former Eastern Region. If the federal government would give the southeast and south-south their due in the railway revitalisation projects, the industrial revolution Professor Soludo promised his state will tie back to the agro-allied industrial revolution of the agricultural belt, to gift Nigeria great potential as exporters of agro-industrial products.

    With his pedigree, Professor Soludo can deliver the industrial revolution he promised ndi-anambra. Luckily for him, the present governor, Willy Obiano, has laid some infrastructural foundation, with the completion of the cargo airport in the state, and President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government has almost completed the much needed second Niger Bridge. There is also the mini-port at Onitsha, which is increasingly becoming more active, and if the water channel is properly dredged, can receive from and feed the Onne Port in Rivers State.

    So, if security challenges are resolved in the state and southeast, with the help of the federal government, and electricity deficiencies in the region are reversed, even if they have to rely on Independent Power Projects, the budding international industrial and commercial centres in Nnewi and Onitsha axis, could catapult the state into the modern Dubai of Nigeria. Indeed, the state has all it takes to become an industrial hub for the southeast and the hinterland of Nigeria.

    What is required of Professor Chukwuma Soludo is purposeful leadership, and he has the training and capacity to yield same to ndi-anambra, ndigbo and Nigeria. During his tenure as governor of central bank, he showed the will. He gave the Soludo solution to the ailing industry, and I dare say that if late President Umaru Yar’Adua had not yielded to political expediency, and allowed Professor Soludo a second term as governor of CBN, Nigeria’s economy would have been the greatest beneficiary. I urge Professor Soludo to serve above self, and gift Anambra State, the Southeast and our country Nigeria, the Soludo Solution.

  • The Minister and the Media

    The Minister and the Media

    The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, surveyed his domain the other day and issued a report card that is not flattering.  To come right out with it, his verdict on some crucial issues of media performance is damning.  As a student of government-media relations, I can recall no recent instance of a minister or principal officer of state engaging in such unsparing criticism of his portfolio.

    “Whereas in many countries the press is worried about being bullied by the government,” he said at a session of the recent Nigerian Economic Summit, “in Nigeria, it is the government that has to contend with endless bullying by the press.”

    This curious reversal of roles deserves a closer examination than I can render here. As was to be expected, the speech was strewn with charges of publication of “fake news” and “bias” and other failings that are to be found in the standard repertory of public officials and spokespersons for corporate interests criticizing the news media.  He could have gone beyond the usual shibboleths to make his point.

    That some sections of the media reported that his recent visit to the United States was to engage with Twitter may be untrue, but it does not rise to the level of a predilection for publishing fake news.

    That an anchor on a private television station spends much of his air time finding fault with the government may be true, and the anchor may well be “biased.”  But what of the anchors and presenters on the government-controlled network that are forever endorsing and even justifying public policies and actions, even those that hurt the public, unmindful that they are funded by the public and, in the final analysis, answerable the public?

    But Lai Mohammed was right on the money when he moved away from such nebulous issues as “fake news” and “bias” and “objectivity” to pivot on a substantive and very troubling matter:  The preoccupation of the media with making bogus awards to – and thereby conferring false status on – persons in positions of power and influence, as well as arrant stragglers.

    By so doing, Mohammed said in perhaps the sharpest and most relatable aspect of his critique: the media undermine their watchdog role, their capacity to hold power to account.

    It is distressingly familiar, this phenomenon self-sabotage that I dwelt on at considerable length in my July 14, 2009 Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism piece to mark the 75th birthday of the Nobelist.  The situation has grown much worse, I regret to report.

    In any given month, one news organization or another can be found staging lavish, glittering ceremonies at which they confer meretricious prizes and souvenirs of an array of individuals or organizations for even more meretricious achievement.

    The ceremonies are advertised to the smallest detail, with pictures of the prospective recipients in living colour.  The venue is carefully chosen to reflect the tinselled glamour of the occasion. Professional event planners and caterers pore over every detail to ensure that if the event does not quite match a Hollywood production, it comes close.

    Family, friends, associates, schoolmates, neighbours and acquaintances are importuned to buy space in the newspaper making the award to congratulate the honoured recipient. This spin-off from his alone, to say nothing about the sum the recipient is obliged to plonk down upfront for the honour, generates enough revenue to keep the starved or starving newspaper running for another week or two, while it develops strategies for the next round of awards.

    In some notorious cases of insider-dealing, some newspapers have even been known to confer spurious awards of their proprietors, one of them a political predator who erected billboards all over his domain attesting to the construction of projects that only he could see.

    Read Also: Lai Mohammed’s blind defence

    Then there was the newspaper that conferred some high-falutin’ award on David Mark when he was Senate president, at a time a debate was raging in the National Assembly and nationwide on the Media Rights Bill.  It did so without the slightest regard to Mark’s position on the matter, namely, that he would let it pass if the media would accept his proposal to make defamation a   penal crime.

    Truth or falsity would not be an issue. Only the fact of publication would count.  The case begins and ends with the fact of publication.

    Apart from a few honourable exceptions, these pesky awards go for the most part only to those who can purchase them.  And they do not come cheap. As many a recipient will testify, they are not for the anaemic of pocket.  That is when there is no Scholar of the Year Award

    Banker of the Year.  Governor’s Wife of the Year.  Newsmaker of the Year. Most Friendly Governor of the Year.  Infrastructure Governor of the Year.  Most gender-sensitive Governor of the Year. Most child-friendly Governor of the Year. Stock Offer of the Year. Politician of the Year.  Minister of the Year.  Local Government Chair of the Year.

    These, with sundry variations, are the kinds of awards the media routinely confer on witting and unwitting persons.

    How one individual, organization or product came to be judged worthier of the award than others is rarely spelled out.  The public is told rather tartly that the honourees were selected – and presumably vetted – by the newspaper’s apparently all-knowing “Board of Editors.”

    It used to be that having more than one Governor of the Year in a newspaper’s roster of awards was considered tawdry.  Not anymore.  One newspaper in a recent featured each of three chief executives Governor of the Year.  This immensely rewarding innovation is likely to catch on, and I will not be surprised if as many as six – or even more – incumbents get voted Governor of the Year by a rival newspaper.  The more the merrier.

    Not a few scholars hold that, of the powers they wield in the media, the conferral of status ranks among the most important.  If the media pronounce you wealthy, they you are perceived to be wealthy.  If they say you have arrived, then you are perceived to have arrived, and if they judge that you have performed or are performing well in an office or position, then you are perceived to have done so or to be doing so.

    It is this manner that the media have often thrown up persons who are famous for being famous – famous because the media have often presented them as such, not because they have achieved any of the traditional signifiers of fame.

    From this phenomenon stems the constant striving for media approval, by hook or crook, by those who seek to be in the public limelight.  It is largely a matter of perception, to be sure.  But in life, perception is almost everything.  For if a situation is perceived to be real, sociologists tell us, it is real in its consequences.

    Every occasion a mainstream newspaper confers unmerited status on persons, organizations and product represents a squandering of that power.  It is more.  As Lai Mohammed has pointed out, it amounts to self-sabotage, and it should be added, a subversion of the system of values that undergird a social system.

    When journalists confer spurious prizes and distinctions on the very officials and institutions they are mandated to hold in check, they become cheerleaders and boosters and enablers.

    They put their credibility, their most important asset, on the line.

     

  • Anambra: limits of threat and bluff

    Anambra: limits of threat and bluff

    No matter who wins the Anambra governorship, the real winner is the system — and just as well.

    At a crucial time, the Nigerian state came through against reckless non-state lobbies pushing fashionable anarchy, under the guise of perceived ethnic hurt.

    Still, the threat of “no election in Anambra” turned out not only an empty threat but also soapy bluff and bluster.  But that triumph was no accident.  It was rather the steely resolve of the Nigerian state to call a dangerous bluff.

    Anambra should, therefore, send a stiff message to Sunday Igboho’s “Yoruba Nation” data warriors who, aside from routine abuse and traducing of elected leaders, use their e-bazookas to boom threats there won’t be elections in Yorubaland in 2023.  Bluff!

    IPOB, in a childish prank, “ordered” a week’s sit-at-home strike from the election’s eve.  Its demand was even more juvenile: if you don’t free Nnamdi Kanu, legitimately docked, you won’t hold an election, legitimately due.  Some skewed thinking, that!

    Again, the Anambra poll has cured this class of their grand delusion — or has it?  This query is imperative to interrogate the orchestrated “injustices”, which the South East political elite has pushed with paranoia and xenophobia, hoping the rest of Nigeria would melt under that explosive cocktail.

    To be sure: no part of Nigeria is without a grudge — not even the Fulani, who the southern media love to hate and malign, many times though due to insensitive and provocative yaks from some Fulani rogue elements.

    That’s why Nigeria must have a better and more equitable federal system.  That has powered the much impassioned “restructuring” campaign.

    Even then, that must be negotiated without rash threats to the evolving democratic order — this more so for a country with tragic memory of reckless jackboot rule.  Democracy is all about civil contestation.  Enough of growling threats, reckless gambits and juvenile posturing!

    But back to the orchestrated “injustices”, which the Igbo mainstream political elite have seized to endorse Nnamdi Kanu’s execrable conduct, simply because their appointment stock has fallen under a Buhari Presidency.

    Let’s be clear, 51 years ago in January 1970, the Igbo lost the Civil War and the Biafra attempt collapsed.  Now, no one can — or should — downplay that huge psychological trauma.  It should draw due solemnity, sensitivity and empathy from all.

    Besides, since war is always lose-lose, for winners or losers, all sides should push a scrupulous agenda to avert a recurrence of such avoidable catastrophe.

    That would appear the crux of Godwin Alabi-Isama’s war-time account, The Tragedy of Victory.  Brig-Gen. Alabi-Isama (rtd) was on the “winning” side.  Yet, all he gleaned from that combat was glorious tragedy!

    But beyond the Civil War from which the old East came short, the pitch which claims the Igbo are products of injustice (“marginalization” is the glorious cliche), much more than any other ethnics, is hard to prove — beyond the free flow of explosive emotions.

    Read Also: Independent observer, Yiaga Africa, validates Anambra Gov poll results

    Solid, verifiable facts of contemporary history suggest otherwise, particularly in the areas of plum — or in that picturesque Nigerian lingo, “juicy” — appointments; bitterness from which appears to drive the current Igbo distemper.

    The 1st Republic (1960-1966) was basically a North/East juicy — that word again! —bash, with the West left in the lurch.

    The 2nd Republic (1979-1983) was no less a sweet romp, between the North and the Igbo political mainstream.  Nine years after the Biafra debacle, an Igbo man, Dr. Alex Ekwueme (God bless his soul!), was Vice President of the Federal Republic.

    In the present 4th Republic, from Olusegun Obasanjo, to Umaru Yar’Adua, to Goodluck Jonathan, the Igbo had more than their fair share, at the high noon of PDP power.

    Under President Obasanjo, the Chukwuma Soludo baritone boomed from the regime’s policy chambers: first, as National Economic Adviser; later as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor.

    Meanwhile, Obiageli Ezekwesili, aka Madam Due Process, strutted her stuff with the dazzle of an immaculate dame come to conk the sick system into order.

    Overall, Obasanjo’s federal exchequer sprawled under the suzerainty of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Finance minister. She was once challenged how her ministry and parastatals had become virtual Igbo colony.

    Her response?  The Igbo could compete — and so they could!  But imagine how the “marginalization” orchestra would have reacted to a similar cue from other ethnic quarters!  Thunderous roar of “nepotism!”, “Fulanization!” won’t even cut it!

    Under President Jonathan was Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s second coming as Finance minister,  doubling as coordinating minister for the economy.  Anyim Pius Anyim too, was secretary to the government of the federation (SGF).  No prize for guessing right: you knew what the political geography of the SGF chambers looked like!

    By the way, pre-SGF, Senator Anyim was the last of the “banana-peel” rash of senate presidents (2000-2003), during Obasanjo’s first term.  Obasanjo’s two terms were eight straight years when the Igbo monopolized the Senate presidency, despite crass in-fighting.

    Why this tie-back to 4th Republic appointive history, though?  To, with verifiable facts, make the point: the South East elite should cease getting hysteric in six short years, what other ethnics had borne with stoic grace for 16 long years!

    On appointive Siberia, therefore, the Yoruba political mainstream, aside from northern minorities somewhat crushed into the core-North’s political system, probably have a more credible case.

    Yet, neither has developed a Samson’s syndrome to crash everything, even if they risk being the first set of wilful victims. That was the rash bluff and bluster that threatened the Anambra poll; and the IPOB derring-do that imposed a so-called sit-at-home order.

    Even more puerile is the campaign, by South East leading lights, political, spiritual and temporal, to go see President Buhari to willy-nilly free Nnamdi Kanu!

    Is Nigeria then some pristine Greek state where the president was some lawgiver — a virtual Leviathan who could do and undo, untrammelled by institutional checks and balances?  Or should we just shunt all that aside because Nnamdi Kanu is their “son”?

    Let’s be clear: in the open Kanu called this place a “zoo”.  In that same “zoo” he is being docked.  Let his lawyers vigorously prove his innocence.  That due process is what Nigeria owes its citizens.

    Why, let Sunday Igboho come from his sabbatical penitentiary in Benin.  If the state decides he has a case to answer, it would be his lawyers’ business to defend him, not some Yoruba “elders” hustling and bustling the president to spring him.

    That’s rule of law.  That’s due process.  That’s democracy.  Take it or leave it, it is what it is!

    So, let the South East political mainstream seize the civic breakthrough in Anambra, to embrace civil methods to engage others.  This juvenile Kanu-IPOB blackmail is wrong-headed.  It won’t wash.

  • Election without electorate

    Election without electorate

    There was palpable fear that the Anambra State gubernatorial election could turn out an election without electorate. A day to the election, residents of the state were deserting the state in droves for fear of violence. While a large proportion fled to neighbouring states, some fled as far away as Lagos. The fleeing electorate were afraid of violence from those who have allegedly hijacked the IPOB agenda for a new Biafra, and the military that have overwhelmed the state in the past few days.

    As video clips about the operations of the military in neighbouring Agwu/Ngbowo area of Enugu State and parts of Orlu in Imo State making the round shows, some rogue military personnel sent to stop the violence in the southeast may have become reckless predators on the human rights of the people of the region. In the videos, ‘Nigerian soldiers’ were shown shooting indiscriminately at homes and mocking the people with reckless abandon. In one video, a vagrant soldier was celebrating his callous indignity before a camera just as terrorists film their madness and share in the social media.

    If the videos are real, then the Nigerian nation is in a deeper mess than we imagine. For if truly those miscreants who openly mocked the people they have been trained to protect, not minding that some of their superiors are from that part of the country, are Nigerian soldiers, then our national unity is threadbare. It is in the interest of our national unity that those soldiers who engaged in conducts unbecoming of the military and callously recorded same are made to publicly account for their foolish indiscretion.

    And if the reports are untrue, Nigerians also deserve to know, otherwise the military activities in the southeast may provide more fuel to the separatist agenda. But no doubt, it was the level of violence in Anambra State and the potentials for more violence that led to the massive desertion of the state on the eve of the election. Of course, as this piece is read, a new governor of Anambra state would have been elected.

    But can we truly say that the new governor of Anamabra State has been elected by a popular vote, when substantial electorate ran away from the state for fear of violence by state and non-state actors?  Perhaps, the statistics will tell the full story of participation. While we should commend the federal government for providing the security for the election to hold, this column joins in asking that a political solution be found to the crisis bedevilling the southeast region.

    Even though President Muhammadu Buhari’s apologists would snigger at such suggestion, they must not fail to remember that the president added so much fire to the separatist movement with his discriminatory policies, and that more than any other thing gave the impetus for the resurgence of the separatist movement in the southeast. Perhaps, it should be noted that the demand for separation from Nigeria is not intrinsically a criminal offence. What will constitute an offence is a resort to violence in pursuit of such quest.

    Indeed, a political party can legitimately campaign across the country on the promise to ensure a peaceful dismemberment of the country. So, without violence or breaking the law, the demand for an independent state of Biafra is not a criminal offence, and if a political solution can be found to end that resurgent quest, the violence associated with it will likely end also. Therefore, the call for political solution is not misplaced.

    Read Also: INEC adjusts voting time for Anambra supplementary poll

    The fact that IPOB members and their apologists were persuaded to withdraw their threat to enforce a no-movement in the state, for the election to hold, shows that the members are not headless-hardliners who are not amenable to reasoning. With what happened in Anambra State, it should be clear to the political leaders at the federal and state levels that the 2023 general elections cannot be conducted with the same level of militarisation of the political space, as we witnessed last week.

    Even if the federal government wishes to do so, it will not have enough personnel to deploy. Again, if there is possibility of violence across the states at the same time, and there is nowhere for the electorate who are apprehensive to run to, they would stay put and escalate the challenges, which could overwhelm the security agencies of the country. Significantly, even without the fear of violence in the gubernatorial election, there are many who are disenchanted with the way the country is run, and they protested by ignoring the elections.

    Again, there are those who have not forgotten that President Buhari derided the people of the southeast as a dot in a circle, and even though he has walked back the reckless statement, they can’t trust the process while he is the president. But as this column has always maintained, the famed hatred of the Igbos by President Buhari may be exaggerated. What no doubt the president is guilty of, is his unconstitutional preference for persons from his part of the country in making key appointments. Unfortunately, many have interpreted that as a precursor to a devious agenda.

    So, even with the court case against the IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, President Buhari can initiate a political solution to the crisis that may define his presidency. Of course, such effort must be complemented by the IPOB leader renouncing violence in all its ramifications. As this column has always argued, the Igbos were made the scapegoat, following the failure of political leadership at the centre after independence, which resulted in a coup d’état, and the failed attempt by hot-blooded young Nigerian soldiers to force progress on the country.

    The IPOB leadership should therefore not fall into the same temptation of sacrificing the people of the region again, to force progress on the country. If majority of Nigerians prefer prebendalism and the snail speed socio-economic progress; the lives, limbs and economy of the southeast should not be offered as a burnt sacrifice again. As Ndigbo would say, the ukwa fruit does not fall far from the ukwa tree. The Boko Haram insurgency and the ungovernable swaths of the northwest is direct fallout of that preference.

    The incoming governor of Anambra State must therefore use his mandate, even if scarred by the fear that ruled the election, to join forces to save the southeast. He must work hard to gain the confidence of the electorate, who did not participate in the election out of trepidation. As Alex Hiam, the author of Making Horses Drink, wrote: “vision, mission, purpose, direction, plan of action … call it what you will, it’s still an important part of leadership.”

    Ndi-Anambra awaits the vision of their new governor.