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Category: Tuesday

  • Still limping from their ‘June 12’ injuries

    Still limping from their ‘June 12’ injuries

    Olatunji Dare

     

     

    EACH year, as the approaching anniversary of “June 12” gathers momentum on the way to becoming an iconic event in Nigeria’s political history, I often contemplated the state of mind  for those who would have been canonised by it but chose to enter into desperate conspiracies with others to emasculate it.

    Military President Ibrahim Babangida is languishing in his malignant lair in Minna, grateful for the occasional visitor.  He needs the visitor more than the visitor needs him anyway.  Arthur Nzeribe is sharing the same fate on the Oguta Lakeside, in Imo State.

    The last time we heard from David Mark, three-term senate president and owner of two golf courses in Europe, was trying to corral the National Assembly into building, equipping and naming a medical university of medical sciences for himself in his hometown Otukpo, in Benue State.  “From those to whom much has been given, nothing is expected” may well be his personal philosophy.

    Professor Ben Nwabueze, our own Lord Dicey, who staked his matchless reputation on defending, if not justifying a brazen assault on democracy and the rule of law with few parallels, and has denounced attempts to right that historic perversion just as zestfully, seems to have been holding his fire lately.  He knows a lost cause when he sees one.

    Humphrey Nwosu is still trying to perfect the supreme illogic of holding himself up as the epitome  of rectitude in conducting the election and at the same time holding up the military ruler who annulled it as a courageous and committed patriot.

    On this anniversary, I have been reflecting on the roles of two of them, Nwosu and Shonekan, in the drama, beginning with Shonekan.

    In December 1992, it was being bruited that military President Ibrahim Babangida was about to set up a Transitional Council, mandated to complete what remained of a transition programme that has been twisted out of shape by a canny military ruler bent on holding on to power.   The major items on its remit were the presidential election, and arrangements for a smooth transfer of power.

    Four eminent figures were said to be under consideration to head the Council:  business mogul MKO Abiola, the renowned economist and public intellectual, Dr Pius Okigbo, Second-Republic Senator, Cornelius Adebayo, a person of impeccable progressive credentials, and Ernest Shonekan, recently retired chairman of the Unilever affiliate, the United Africa Company of Nigeria (UACN) plc.

    What I knew about Okigbo and Adebayo told me that they would reject the offer on the threshold.  Of Abiola and Shonekan, I was not sure.  But something had told me long before Babangida made a virtue and an art on inconstancy that the programme would come to grief, and with it all those who embraced it.

    So I asked retired General Olusegun Obasanjo to intervene and save Abiola and Shonekan from themselves.  Abiola, it turned out, had needed no dissuading.  But Shonekan said Unilever had advised him to accept, and that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office would deploy its influence to ensure his success.

    If Shonekan found that what he was getting was not what he had bargained for, what would he do?  Did Obasanjo put that question to Shonekan?

    Shonekan had replied, Obasanjo told me, that he had made it clear to Babangida that he would not stay in office beyond the advertised term of the Council, and that if Babangida chose to stay in office beyond then, Bagbangida would then know the stuff Shonekan was made of.

    Did Obasanjo believe him?

    “Let us just say that Ernest is naïve or ambitious or both,” he said.

    Shortly after Shonekan took office, I called his chief of staff, Isaac Aluko-Olokun, a holdover from his UACN Days.  I told him I was persuaded that Shonekan would find out that he had painted himself into a corner.  But Shonekan need no suffer in silence.  If he was concerned to signal to the public that his name was being taken in vain, he could detail Aluko-Olokun to brief me in confidence from time to time, and I would use my column in The Guardian and other assets to do the job.

    Aluko-Olokun was ecstatic.  He said he would be flying in at the weekned to meet with me to discuss a discreet contact mechanism   Two weeks passed, and he had not called.  I reminded him that the offer remained open.   Another two weeks, and still, he had not called. He never did.  Shonekan soldiered on grimly as head of the doomed Interim National Government, until Sani Abacha ended his pretence and his misery.

    Months later, when I ran into Aluko-Olokun at a diplomatic event, he tried to turn the tables on me.  Each time my column appeared, he said, Shonekan literally pulled him up and queried:  “But you told me this man is our friend?”

    Humphrey Nwosu had a reputation for brilliance and volubility and the dramatic flourish.  Reporters soon learned on account of the latter to keep measured distances from him whenever he was giving a news conference.  He spoke with his arms and his feet, and as he lurched from one side to the other and leaned to and fro in the manner of Ray Charles at the keyboard, they feared that he might inadvertently kick someone in the groin or give someone a black eye, administer a head butt.

    For 20 years, Nwosu had harboured, at great cost to his body and mind the dark secrets of the election saga.  Then in early June, 2013, he announced sensationally that he would launch a no-holds-barred book on the 20th anniversary of the historic poll.

    Anticipating the event, I had speculated that Nwosu must have decided to unburden himself of those dark secrets for one of three reasons, or a combination thereof:

    One:  Those who had sworn him to secrecy on pain of the direst consequences might have freed him from the pact.  If there was no such pact, why would the usually voluble, combative and self-righteous professor clam up for 20 years, on a matter that raised fundamental questions about his probity and integrity?

    Two:  Those who had sworn Nwosu to secrecy had vetted the book thoroughly.

    Three:  Nwosu had decided to renounce the pact and damn the consequences.

    It was puzzling that Nwosu had chosen to launch his book not in Lagos, the bastion of the progressive democratic alliance that had kept the resistance alive, but in Abuja, the base of the annulment’s enablers. Even more puzzling was his giving places of honour to Ibrahim Babangida, and to Shonekan, the naïve and conniving beneficiary of the annulment

    Still, I allowed that Nwosu’s book was likely to constitute “more than a footnote” to the June 12 saga, the 20th anniversary of which was being celebrated that day.

    In the book, with the ponderous title, Laying the Foundation for Nigeria’s Democracy:  My Account of June 12 Presidential Election and its Annulment, Nwosu delivered far less than he had promised.

    The suspicion endures to this day that he had entered into a pact with Babangida and his wrecking           crew to tell only so much of the story and tell it in a way that glories the process the led to the election, without fixing any blame for its perfidious culmination.  And, as a bonus, Nwosu was free to praise himself to his heart’s content.

    During the two weeks between which Babangida stopped further announcement of results, and then    voided them, and thereafter scrapped the election laws and their machinery, Nwosu had gone missing.  Whereabouts unknown.

    When the security people finally produced him, a mystery lady by his side told the media that they had  been away at a secret rendezvous enjoying a second honeymoon.    Amid the wreckage and ruins of her husband’s professional career and reputation?

    Nwosu has never addressed this yawning gap in his biography.

    Nwosu revealed little that the public did not know.  He provided no critical insight.  For such, he drew on a memoir by another principal actor in the drama, Omo Omoruyi, director-general of the defunct Centre for Democratic Studies, and rather too liberally on a 1998 Tell magazine interview with Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, the dissident officer who stood militantly against the annulment.

    Based on his account, Nwosu might as well have been an indifferent spectator in the rafters, not a ring-side observer, much less a major participant-observer.

     

     

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  • The lowlifes

    The lowlifes

    Gabriel Amalu

     

    The Premier League is back with a bang: black lives matter. Sorry, I am not referring to last week’s drubbing of Arsenal, by Manchester City, and the lowly performance by Arsenal defender, David Lewis.

    Many Arsenal fans, will angrily refer to David, as a football-low-life, in the manner of the inscrutable President of United States of America, Donald Trump, who relishes that usage, in reference to those looting and burning properties, as Americans continue to protest the murder of George Floyd, and systemic racism and prejudices, ruining the world.

    The bold inscription on the back of the jerseys of the players, and the kneeling on one knee before the kick-off, is a bold initiative to put racism in the front burner, despite the effort of Trump and white supremacists around the world, to tone down the world’s outrage.

    Without realising it, the violent white supremacist, whether in the police or government are ultra-low-lives. Theirs is of a worse kind, because not only that they are doing evil, they glory in their perfidious acts.

    In Nigeria, the murderous herdsmen are lowlifes. Their patrons, including those in the corridors of power are equally, lowlifes.

    They are lowlifes because they glory in getting people killed, for little or no reason at all, while they think nobody is watching.

    Regrettably, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has been indicted for condoning these lowlifes, in a report issued by All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom or Belief (APPG).

    While the presidency has vigorously denied the findings, it should go forward, to manifestly repudiate these lowlifes and their patrons.

    Last week, APPG released its report in Westminster, entitled, Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide? The report noted thus: “APPG members have been alarmed by the dramatic and escalating violence in Nigeria characterised as the farmer-herder conflict.

    This violence has manifested along ideological lines, as the herders are predominantly ethnic Fulani Muslims and the farmers are predominantly Christians.” It went further: “Attacks by armed groups of Islamist herdsmen have resulted in the killing, maiming, dispossession and eviction of thousands of Christians.”

    It continued: “These factors are compounded by the Nigerian government’s failure to respond adequately to the violence, to protect communities or to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.”

    Of note, a reporter at the APPG, presentation, noted that both Christian and Muslim populations need protection, from the murderous attacks of the Boko Haram, who are the major drivers of the genocidal pulses across the country.

    But, while the government of President Buhari, is assiduously fighting the Boko Haram, it is seen to be lenient to the murderous instinct of the Islamist herdsmen, who hide under the guise of being ordinary pastoralists.

    Because they are treated with kid gloves, they are bold enough to have spokespersons who make incendiary statements against the existence of the country.

    While there are incendiary Islamist herdsmen, invading the country, from neighbouring countries, in the name of seeking greener pastures, there are those who claim to be Nigerians, but are no less a threat to the country.

    Recently, an amorphous group, claiming to represent Fulani people in Nigeria, laid claim to the Nigerian territory from Sokoto to the Niger Delta.

    Of course, these lowlifes grant interviews, and parade themselves around the country, without the federal government bringing them to account.

    According to the APPG report, the result of the activities of these murderous entities have been devastating, to our country. It noted: “The exact death toll is unknown.

    However, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust quote reliable reports that over 1,000 Christians were killed between January-November 2019, in addition to the estimated 6,000+ deaths since 2015.”

    It continued: “International Crisis Group estimate that over 300,000 people have been displaced and that the violence has claimed the lives of six times more people than the conflict with Boko Haram.

    Violence by herders, and periodic retaliatory violence, is costing the Nigerian economy £10.5 billion per year.”

    That is a huge price to pay for the activities of a group of misguided people. And while the government is giving Boko Haram a bloody nose, its body language, gives the impression that it is soft on the Islamist herdsmen.

    In an effort to distinguish between the local herders, and foreign invaders, the governor of Kano State, recently called on the federal government to stop foreign pastoralists from entering into Nigeria, because of the mayhem they cause.

    If this dichotomy exists, who are those that have taken over the lands of the indigenes, displaced in Plateau and Benue?

    So, while there are definitely the foreign components of these lowlifes, they are rogue organs operating in the country, and the government should at least bring them to account.

    At the inter-faith dialogue and reconciliation parley in Plateau State earlier in the year, the revered Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mohammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III acknowledged the challenge faced by the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, commonly associated with the Fulani ascendency in Nigeria.

    Talking about the trouble makers, the Sultan said: “They don’t belong to Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association; they are criminals.

    I don’t know why security agencies allow them to be who they are. It is the responsibility of the security agencies, not mine.”

    He went on: “There are Fulani criminals just as there are criminal elements among the Berom, Yoruba, Igbo and other tribes in the country. Let us stop name-calling.”

    Agreeably, there are criminals everywhere, but the challenge is that the awesome powers of the federal government has not been trained against the lowlifes, giving the Fulani a bad name, in Nigeria.

    No doubt, it is the responsibility of the federal government, which controls the security apparatchik of the country, to bring peace to Nigerians, if need be, by force of arms.

    While it is the responsibility of the presidential spokesmen to marshal arguments to deny the finding of the APPG, the undeniable facts are that Nigerians are disproportionately being killed because of their faith, and perhaps for their proprietary interests.

    While defending itself, the major task is to summon the will, to send a strong message that: lives matter.

    Maybe, it is a clash of interests as Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, espoused on the elusive peace in the Middle East, in his book: My Vision.

    He said: “We now hear some people who have regressed to the mentality of the nineteenth century, referring to a struggle between civilizations and religions, while I believe they ought to talk about a struggle over interests.”

    If the struggle in Nigeria is over interests, it is important that the federal government, manifestly show itself as standing on fairness, regardless of faith or ethnic nationality. That is the challenge facing Buhari’s government.

     

  • Just before June 12, 1993

    Just before June 12, 1993

    By Olatunji Dare

    Even after the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC) had chosen Bashorun MKO Abiola and Alhaji Bashir Tofa, respectively, as their presidential candidates, few among Nigerians who had followed the labyrinthine path of General Ibrahim Babangida’s transition programme could state with any confidence that the election scheduled for June 12, 1993, would indeed take place.

    The Association For a Better Nigeria (ABN), a rootles organisation led by the maverick politician and former arms dealer, Arthur Nzeribe, and an assortment of shadowy characters that went by such names as “Dr Keith Atkins” and “Dr Ahmed Farouk” were campaigning enthusiastically for Babangida to remain in power for at least four more years, in clear breach of a decree prohibiting such advocacy.

    The regime’s Information Secretary, Comrade Uche Chukwumerije, told me in a private conversation that when he sought to turn the artillery of the federal propaganda machine against Nzeribe and company, he was told to hold his fire.  Those organisations, he said he was told from on high, were merely exercising the fundamental human rights that the regime itself had vowed to uphold.

    On the eve of the election, S.G. Ikoku, the First Republic left-wing politician and socialist theoretician who had swung to the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, submitted to Babangida, on behalf of the no  less spectral “Council of Elder Statesmen” a “Report” — not to be confused with a mere proposal — on a presidential government modelled on France’s  Fifth Republic, long after the constitution that was supposed to govern Nigeria’s projected Third Republic which, had been signed into law.

    Babangida received the “Report,” which dripped with contempt for the two official political parties with the solemnity befitting a commissioned job.

    Babangida himself was setting up and equipping a special strike force, the Republican Guards, on the model of Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s outfit of the same name.  If he was truly set to go, many were asking, why would he be embarking on such a project?  Why not leave it to the in-coming president to decide whether such a unit was warranted, and then to fashion it in his own image?

    The newspapers were awash with unsigned advertisements excoriating the two presidential candidates for all manner of misconduct, ranging from alleged purloining of the opponent’s private documents to religious fanaticism.  Dire warnings and rumours of dark plots perfused the country.

    From his home in the UK, Second Republic fugitive minister Umaru Dikko, apparently no longer fearful of being shipped home in a crate, was said to have written a letter to the Kaduna Mafia, an inchoate assemblage of Northerners credited with enormous influence and power, warning that under no circumstances should a Southerner be allowed to win power.

    As if to add poignancy to Dikko’s rumoured epistle, allegations were swirling that Abiola and a conclave of Yoruba elders had completed plans to move the federal capital back to Lagos from Abuja if Abiola won.  And if Abiola lost, Igbo property in the Yoruba country was marked for destruction.

    Panicked motorists formed long and disorderly queues everywhere in the wake of a petroleum and gas workers’ strike.  A breakdown in electricity and water supplies added to the general confusion and reinforced doubts about whether the election would hold

    Given these and other signals, to say nothing of Babangida’s own record of inconstancy, it required a  huge leap of faith to believe that the presidential election would hold.  Not only those the regime had denounced time and again as “sceptics and cynics” entertained strong doubts about the election; senior diplomats in the embassies of the United States, Canada and major European nations with whom I compared intelligence from time to time had all but concluded that the election would not take place.

    To resolve my own doubts, I asked my friend and veteran journalist, Dr Dokun Bojuwade, to tell his principal,  Uche Chukwumerije, that I would like to meet with him at his earliest convenience.  Based on previous interactions, I felt I could claim a kindred spirit, with the Secretary, if not a thriving friendship.   We met at his residence in Ikoyi, Lagos, on Friday, June 4.

    Dispensing with the usual preliminaries, I asked him pointedly whether the presidential election would hold.

    He said he could not answer categorically, but the indications were that it would not hold.  He said he would be flying to Abuja the next day, to return to Lagos the following Tuesday and would be in a position to tell me categorically whether the election would hold if I looked him up

    Chukwumerije did not return to Lagos that Tuesday.  Major developments were unfolding. That very day, the Abuja High Court, Justice Bassey Ikpeme presiding, ordered National Electoral Commission (NEC) chairman Humphrey Nwosu, Federal Attorney-General Clement Akpamgbo and military president Ibrahim Babangida to appear before her on Wed, June 8, to show cause why the presidential election scheduled for June 12, should not be stopped.

    Ikpeme, it would turn out, and had only recently been appointed a judge, and was in fact handling her first case on the Bench.  Previously, she had practised in Akpamgbo’s law offices, and was widely reported to be romantically linked with him.

    Ikpeme’s order stemmed from a petition by Nzeribe’s ABN.  The suit had been filed on May 18, but as Nwosu would reveal some 16 years later, it was not served on NEC until four days to the election. Two days later, on June 9, in the dead of night, Justice Ikpeme issued an injunction restraining NEC from conducting the election.

    But, this was no blanket injunction, for Justice Ikpeme noted that as the law stood, the court lacked jurisdiction in the matter.

    The law was indeed clear.  It had been invoked in 1992 by the Court of Appeal, a superior tribunal, to deny a petition, Komolafe v Omole (1 NWLR 213 1993), through which a candidate sought to restrain NEC from conducting an election into the Senate.

    For the next 16 hours or so, there was no clear indication that the election would hold.  It was well past lunchtime on Friday, June 11, that NEC finally announced, with the eleventh-hour approval of the Armed Forces Ruling Council, that the election would hold, Justice Ikpeme and the ABN notwithstanding.

    Earlier that day, the United States Government had issued, a statement, per Michael O’Brien, director of the United States Information Service at the Embassy of the United States, that it would consider any postponement of the election unacceptable.  The tone was watered down later, but the import was clear:  Postponement of the election would not bode well for relations with Nigeria.

    Two days to the election, no polling booths had been erected in Lagos or the nation’s major cities; no voters’ lists were on display.  It required a degree of credulity bordering on extreme gullibility to wager that the election would hold as schedule.

    The regime’s plan was to seize on Justice Ikpeme’s ruling and the contrived, lavishly-rewarded “solidarity” visits that were sure to follow, as pretexts for holding on to power.  With that option now foreclosed, a new plan had to be devised.

    Stage the election, confident that in the prevailing climate of uncertainty, it would end in massive confusion or fail to win general acceptance.

    Or hold the election and cancel the results.  The professional agitators and rabble-rousers would stir things up, to be sure.  But,  it would all fizzle out within two weeks.  Two weeks at most, Babangida reckoned.  He knew  his Nigerians, he had boasted.

    This choice would sweep him out of power, consign him to one of the most ignoble places in the nation’s history, plunge the country into an abyss from which it has not wholly emerged, and secure Abiola’s place as a martyr for the democratic struggle in Nigeria.

     

     

  • Wake up governors

    Wake up governors

    By Gabriel Amalu

    The state governors, trying to torpedo the implementation of the autonomy granted the state legislature and judiciary by section 121(3), of the 1999 constitution (as amended), has a poor understanding of history. With due respect, they are swimming against the national tide, and this column urges them to wake-up to the reality that Nigerians are disgusted with the state of affairs and want a change. But, let the governors who prefer to unlawfully control the legislature and judiciary own up, instead of attacking the legitimacy of Executive Order 10, issued by President Muhammadu Buhari, to implement section 121(3).

    Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, with an eye on history, has expressed support to the order issued by the president. In his words, “this is a welcome development with serious implication in terms of transparency and good governance. We are not afraid of doing things properly. The legislature is the most important organ of government, but during military era, it was suspended.” This is a clear reading of the historical development that gave undue advantage to the executive, which the governors are presently exploiting.

    So, those who oppose the executive are merely afraid of transparency and good governance, as canvased by Governor Mohammed. They prefer the opaque accounting process, where the entire resources of the state are locked up in their private vaults, from whence they dispense state resources at their whims and caprices. The governors siting on the provision of Section 121(3) of the constitution, are those who want a pliable legislative assembly, so that state budgets are passed without any interrogation.

    The governors who don’t want the implementation of section 121(3), are those who want a financially weakened judiciary, so that the Chief Judge, would knock on their doors, to buy the diesel, to keep the courts open. They are those who corruptly misappropriate the physical and fiscal resources of the state, and because the state judiciary is tied to their apron strings, no person would dare approach the courts for redress. The misguided governors are those who would treat other members of the executive, including the deputy governor, as office assistants, knowing that no kobo would be paid to anybody, they consider an enemy.

    While this column has severally canvassed for the entrenchment of the principles of federalism in our famished country, it agrees with the president on his effort to enforce the implementation of section 121(3) of the constitution; since the governors had decided to play the ostrich over the provision. After all, the president swore to uphold the 1999 constitution, and if he puts any measure in place to ensure its implementation, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

    Without doubt, since the amendment was signed into law, most of the governors have continued to pretend the constitutional amendment is of no consequence. Yet, section 1(1) of the constitution provides: “This constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the federal republic of Nigeria.” The sub-section 2, further provides that: “The federal republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provision of this constitution.”

    So, on what basis, if not self-serving interests, are the governors dillydallying on the implementation of section 121(3) forming part of the constitution, which they swore to implement? It is unfortunate that the chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), Dr Kayode Fayemi, and his colleagues, who have been sitting on that provision of the constitution, have quickly consulted the lawyers amongst themselves, to tout the illegality of Executive Order 10; when these same ‘egg heads’ were dormant since the amendment was signed into law, and ignored by their members.

    According, to Dr Fayemi, the president has agreed to delay the gazetting of the provision. He said: “After listening to the concerns of the governors about the constitutionality of the Executive Order, President Buhari agreed to delay the gazetting.” He sounded excited about the delay, as he further said: “We have a delegation of the governors’ forum here to discuss some matter of fundamental importance to the nation and the president has asked that we meet with the AGF, the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Finance, National Planning and Budget on the issue.”

    So, in Fayemi’s priority list, Executive Order 10 deserves immediate attention, unlike the clear provision of section 121(3), which has been lying dormant, because the governors were lethargic to agree the terms of implementation with the federal executive.  The governors who want to behave like the lords of the manor, prefer to continue to treat the other arms of government, created by the same constitution that empowered them, as departments under their care.

    For Fayemi, who is reputed to have a doctorate degree in strategic studies, his stance on the implementation of the provision of section 121(3), is an abnegation of strategic thinking. If he has an eye on history, he would encourage his colleagues to obey the constitution of our country, on this sticky issue. After all, in a few years, all of them would serve their terms, and become ordinary citizens, who need transparency and accountability in governance for the society to function.

    They should therefore listen to the wise counsel of Governor Bala Mohammed, that: “We are exercising separation of powers among the three arms of government, knowing fully well that whatever comes into the coffers of government comes to the executive. But we need to deepen democracy by giving autonomy to other arms.” Of course, deepening democracy, is in the best interest of the country, after all, those who are governors now, would soon leave the posts and join the rest of us as ordinary citizens.

    The governors who are presently in power now, should know that we are all losers when democracy is not deepened. When Sani Abacha, truncated the mandate of the President-Elect, M.K.O. Abiola, in 1993, did he know that he would end up ignominiously? Today, June 12, the day, Chief Abiola, was elected a president, has become the national democracy day, while Abacha, has become synonymous with infamy and disrepute. That is the march of history, and in a short while, Fayemi, and his co-travellers, would become history, willy-nilly.

    Now, it is their choice, either to be remembered positively or derisively. What they do, while in office, would determine how they will be remembered. But of course, while they can tarry the match of history, inevitably the pendulum will swing off their hands.  As COVID19, has shown, nature has a malicious way of intervening, without recompense.

  • More than novel job creation

    More than novel job creation

    Olakunle Abimbola

    Book: Not An Afterthought: Private Sector Pragmatism to Government Idealism & the N-Power Success Story — A Memoir

    Author: Afolabi Sokpehi Imoukhuede

    Pages: 370

    Reviewer:
    Olakunle Abimbola

    Afolabi Sokpehi Imoukhuede, the author of this work, dubs it a memoir: a detailed report card on his four-year stint, as President Muhammadu Buhari’s senior special assistant on job creation, and chief driver of N-Power, from 2015 to 2019.

    That programme, between 2015 and 2019, created more than 500, 000 jobs, in graduate and non-graduate volunteers.  That is five times the size of the federal bureaucracy — all in less than four years!

    N-Power is the job-creation arm of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which itself falls under the strategic ambit of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

    By 31 December 2019, wrote the author, “the stipend-only investment for N-Power alone” had gulped N346 billion — a massive amount no federal government before had spent on direct citizen investment.

    Yet each volunteer, trainable youths Nigeria-wide that the author dubbed “(s)heroes of N-Power”, earned stipends between N10, 000 (for non-graduates) and N30, 000 (graduate volunteers).

    Though many Nigerians would sneer at this stipend, the volunteers, as the book revealed with proof, made hay: improved their personal lots, while training as possible future entrepreneurs.

    Meanwhile, they were drafted, as crucial manpower, to critical areas of national need: teachers, primary healthcare workers, skilled artisans for construction work and agricultural extension workers.

    N-Power has a life-span of two years, after which the volunteers either secure permanent jobs or branch out on their own, as employers of labour — and there were even reported cases of volunteers leaving early, many to set up own shops.

    But beside the N-Power main story, the author throws in, as exciting bonuses, a legacy of stimulating family history; laced with personal odyssey, at three critical junctures of his life, when all could have gone wrong.

    Daddy died at 68 in 1989, when Afolabi was only in JS 3, leaving him to the care of his mum, everyone called Sisi: Mrs Olubunmi Olayinka Imoukhuede (née Olusoga), who also passed away on May 1, this year.

    For alleged sharp examination practices, WAEC withheld almost the entire result of Afolabi’s 1992 SS 3 school certificate set, at the Federal Government College, Warri; thus forcing him to re-write his papers, though he was no party to any foul play.

    He scaled that re-sit with enough quality grades to earn admission into the University of Lagos to read Medicine — a burning wish of his late father, which the dutiful son obeyed to honour his fond memory, though he had doubts whether he really wanted to be a medical doctor.

    Still, he wasn’t sure Joseph Enaifoghe Imoukhuede, OBE, his father, would have particularly applauded his SS-3 terminal results, given the elder Imoukhuede’s 1937 brilliant exploits at King’s College, Lagos (founded in 1909), the most prestigious public secondary school of his era.

    Yet in 1997, he abandoned it all (no thanks to endless ASUU strikes), for an uncharted future in America.  There, he earned a degree in Accounting from Rutgers University, secured work at KPMG, trained and honed his skill as Human Capital Strategist (HCS) — a badge of honour he clearly proudly treasures, much more than an MBBS.

    That HCS certification, and his burning entrepreneurial passion, have clearly propelled him, in his N-Power assignment, which the likes of Dr. Waheed Olagunju, then acting MD of the Bank of Industry, a key collaborator in the programme, declared the biggest and most audacious job-creating programme anywhere in Africa.

    So, when in 2005 he returned, after eight years in America, it was return of the native (to borrow the title of Thomas Hardy’s famous novel).  Still, as FGC Warri and MediLag experiences show, the system had badly bruised this particular native, as his father before him, with the old Imoukhuede tricked  into prisons in Biafra, during the Civil War (1967-1970) — a nasty experience Afolabi believed shortened his father’s life.

    Yet like the troubadour totally devoted to the wish of his lady, he returned to help Mother Nigeria drive one of her most ambitious, perhaps Nigeria’s very first national equal-opportunity programme, to “SkillUp” her youths — SkillUp being Imoukhuede’s private-sector, industry-pushed skill development Academy, before public service duty called.

    He gushed: “I finally decided in late 2005, that I would go along with my instincts and leave a developed country for my developing country.”

    Nigeria would appear the clear winner here, even if the author, had he stayed back at KPMG, could now have been earning six to seven figures in US dollars.

    Indeed SkillUp, and its TVET — Technical and Vocational Education Training — philosophy, which was Imoukhuede’s MCS Consultancy’s answer to the dry-up of training jobs, in the post-bank consolidation years from 2004, has aided to conceive N-Power, as presently structured.

    That would explain the book’s subtitle: Private Sector Pragmatism to Government Idealism.  It’s a collaborative pubic-private sector philosophy that should be embraced in other spheres of national life.

    Still, beyond Afolabi Imoukhuede and exacting but exciting odyssey, the book comes with rich historical parallels; and stimulating vignettes that underscore networking.

    In 1956, Joseph Imoukhuede, the first non-Yoruba permanent secretary in the old Western Region Civil Service, was named Agent-General of that region in London, UK.  He had the mandate to administer huge sums of money in scholarships, awarded to students of that region overseas.

    In 2015, Afolabi Imoukhuede got the N-Power job to administer an equally humongous budget to train and re-tool Nigerian youths for the modern economy, in the worst of economic times.

    The author — and admirably so — has not shied from enthusing: across two generations, spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the Imoukhuedes, father and son, have discharged their duty to their country, with honesty and integrity, not smudging the spotless family banner.  Not that can be said of many, in contemporary Nigeria.

    Yet all through this book, the recurring theme has been team-work, processed along the P-I-E-R philosophy:  Passion, Integrity, Empathy and Reliability/Resilience.

    N-Power was no one-man show: from the superintendending Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, to Imoukhuede’s then immediate boss, Mrs Mariam Uwais (who the author always hailed: “Her Excellency”, but who almost always retorted: “Which Excellency?”), to the lowest of the team members; and even the 40-odd agencies, local and international, that worked together to make N-Power a reality.

    What’s the weakness of this book?  Maybe it’s an unending story masterfully told, by a basic man of numbers with nevertheless the lexis and style to say what he wants to say, in uncluttered prose!  And maybe the audacious declaration of N-Power an unqualified success, when the jury is still out.

    Aside from a few mix-up in historical dates, and even fewer typos, the book will add value to any library, anywhere in the world, as an authority on Nigeria’s quest to turn her huge youth population, to tremendous human capital.

     

  • 365 days of BOS

    365 days of BOS

    Sanya Oni

    Reading through the anniversary speech of Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu, the first thing that struck me was his devotion of 892 out of the 3,163-word speech to the broad theme of transportation, particularly his efforts in the last 12 months to give Lagosians a comprehensive model that they deserve. Yes, the sector, perhaps followed by the environment, has remained one that most Lagosians consider not only sticky but also the most measurable index of governance at any point.

    Could it be the governor’s definitive answer to his hordes of critics who had accused his administration of a slow start – a charge understandably fuelled by the frustration with the inexplicable and simply mind-boggling meltdown in the closing last laps of the Akinwunmi Ambode administration?

    I do not think the governor spoke too soon given the heightened anxieties that ushered him into office – the daily agonies faced by motorists as a result of the near-total collapse of infrastructure, the return of the mountain of refuse in street corners and neighbourhood fostered by the ill-thought out outsourcing of the waste management system and the resurgence of outlawry on the motorways notably by Okada riders; today, while as it might seem early to award the trophy for sterling performance considering that the administration still has 36 months to go for its first term, the past year, for the hard-tasking Lagosians must have offered them a glimpse into the promises of the coming years. Today, Lagos, that proud city of Excellence is finally returning to its own as a well-ordered, livable megacity.

    In this, there can be no denying the governor as indeed the team that he leads, that their different approach – the fresh vision, methodical, or of you like disciplined and focused approach to governance in the last 12 months – has made all the difference. Put in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic which is currently ravaging the world, the attendant lockdown which has impacted negatively on the state’s ability to drive its Internally Generated Revenue coupled with the global slump in oil prices resulting from the scourge, not even the typically the hard-tasking Lagosians could have taken the steadying arms of the BOS team for granted.  Yes, some of the development may have been unpredictable; but then, they also represent the litmus test for which the leadership deserves the credit for standing tall. As for the other general developments just as the governor noted in the speech, nothing of the achievements reeled out are anything outside of the scope of what the administration sought to do from inception as aptly captured in its THEMES agenda; the difference being that these are finally translating to those deliverables that Nigerians love to see.

    Now to some specifics. This time last year, Lagosians will recall what the states of the road infrastructure was. Yes, Lagosians are aware that the state is usually in a mess during rainy seasons as many parts are usually submerged in flood, making movements difficult for motorists and residents. What they could not have bargained for was the pathetic absence of mitigating hands of the government. Recall that in July last year, the state House of Assembly gave the Public Works Corporation (LSPWC) a thumb down for its poor record of maintenance of the roads and other ancillary infrastructures in the state. For an agency that had hitherto enjoyed a long tradition of stellar performance – and which once relished announcing to the Lagos taxpayer that their tax money was being put to good use, that censure must have come as one of its lowest moments. Remember, this was barely two months into the inception of the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration. Trust Lagosians to be unsparing when it comes to taking their governments to task: for them, it was no time for niceties, after all governance is supposed to be a continuum; the new administration’s plea that bitumen – a major raw material for road construction/rehabilitation – and the deluge then ravaging, do not mix – may well be story for the  fantasia -land; no one appeared impressed! None of the excuses, the chorus went, was good enough!

    That was then. Ever since, the administration has plodded on, convinced that results, rather than fancy arguments, will in the end assuage the people’s expectations. In the meantime, it did the much it could within the limits that the inclement weather would allow at the time. I recall one particular incident, when the government, under immense pressure moved in to fix some failed portions along the Ikorodu Road particularly the crater-infested Independent Underpass at Maryland. No sooner had the work gang moved in to fill up the craters than the rainwaters stepped to undo the works! The rest, as they say is history. Which is why the testimony of May 29 is important, not just as a reminder of the journey thus far but something of a benchmark to assess the records of the administration.

    Thanks to the administration’s interventionist measure, sanity has since returned to the roads.  The Pen Cinema Bridge, the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, the Agric-Ishawo Road and the four junctions’ improvement projects at Allen Avenue, Maryland, Ikotun and Lekki among others are currently undergoing Sanwo-Olu’s Midas touch. We see concrete efforts in the 31 networks of roads in the Ojokoro axis – a feat that has now brought succour to residents from the agony brought about by perennial traffic gridlock in the area. Presently, the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) for Bus Reform Scheme at Ikeja and Oshodi Bus Terminals are wearing a new look in preparation for commissioning. So also, is the Oshodi Abule-Egba BRT Corridor; the Oyingbo Bus Terminal as indeed many other projects now ready to b put to use for the benefit of Lagosians. Yet, as important as these initiatives are to ridding Lagos of the traffic gridlock, it seems to me that the administration’s joker might be the administration’s focus on water transportation.  One notable step in this regard is the February 4 commissioning eight new state-of-the-art ferries. And of course, LAGFERRY, the holding company, has commenced full-sale commercial operations.

    In the health sector, we can talk of two Mother and Child Centres, MCCs at Eti-Osa and Igando already commissioned for use while those of Badagry and Epe are nearing completion. And not least the BOSKOH Health Mission International and the Benjamin Olowojebutu Foundation, under which some 250,000 Lagosians were given free medical interventions across several locations in the state. The same with education where massive investments are being made to expand the infrastructure across the board while taking care to upscale the skills of teachers with a view to fitting them into a future driven by Information Technology.

    These are just a few of the areas in which Lagosians readily testify that the Sanwo-Olu administration has acquitted itself rather creditably in the last 365 days.

    The administration, no doubt, has a long way to go. Thanks to the yeoman’s job of Tunji Bello and team in the Water Resources and Environment ministry, a lot of waterways and canals are being restored.  Much in this respect, depends on whether the citizens play their part by not impeding those natural pathways through which the floodwaters are expected to flow. Hopefully, the results of their efforts will begin to show as the rainy seasons peaks.

    Still want to know whether the BOS-KOH team has one well? My answer: proof of the pudding is in the eating.

  • Coronavirus 419

    Coronavirus 419

    By Olatunji Dare

    Rest easy, friend.

    Coronavirus 419 is not a new, deadlier and more insidious strain of the coronavirus Covid-19, the ravenous predator that has carved a trail of blight and despair and desolation and misery on a Biblical scale, claiming as of last week some 400, 000 lives worldwide, among them 342 Nigerians, the latter probably a gross undercount, given the nation’s notoriously shabby recordkeeping.

    Coronavirus 419 is not even a virus in the epidemiological sense. Drawing on the familiar meaning of the suffix in our statute books and in our common usage, I coined the term to subsume the scams, the swindles, the knavery and the buffoonery that have coalesced into a growth industry around COVID-19.

    Hereafter, we shall call that industry COVID-419, to distinguish it from the epidemiological manifestation.

    No prizes for figuring out the undisputable runaway winner of COVID-419 sweepstakes in the global category:  Donald Trump, the man-child who wears the garb of president of the United States, a disgrace to that office and withal a person who defiles everything he touches and brings into disrepute every cause he embraces.

    He denies its existence, plays down its menace, blames everyone except himself for the heavy toll it has taken on American lives – 110, 000 at the last count; peddles sham cures, prescribes junk but life-threatening medication, raises false hopes that a sure-fire vaccine is on the threshold, bullies medical experts into silence or hounds them into retirement.

    Having run out of stunts that it would be courteous to call infantile even as the coronavirus tightened its malignant grip on America and widened its destructive path, Trump declared victory and turned his ever- fleeting attention to reopening the greatest economy in the world that it had taken him just three years in office to build, only for it to be pulverized by the Coronavirus.

    Last week, he was declaring victory on that front as well, based on a phenomenal job growth that defied rhyme and reason.  The aftermath of the gruesome murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota was still roiling more than 175 cities in the United States and dozens more across the world but Trump thought nothing of invoking Floyd’s memory to celebrate a phantom uptick as a happy development for everyone, Floyd especially.

    Nobody has ever accused Trump of decency.

    The first-place prize for COVID -419 in the African category will have to be awarded to President Andry Raejolina of the Indian Ocean nation of Madagascar.

    No sooner had the coronavirus attained pandemic status than Madagascar announced sensationally that it had developed a herbal medicine cure for coronavirus.  He had challenged experts in his country to produce a local remedy and they had delivered in record time.

    At the colorful product launch, Raejolina had gulped down a judicious amount of the bottled drink, COVID-Organics, and authoritatively pronounced it safe for all, including children.  He said it had been tested certified by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research.

    Two individuals had participated in the test, and the concoction had flushed out their bodies whatever was ailing them in three short weeks.  And the tests had produced clear and unassailable evidence of the efficacy and safety of the medicine in just seven days.  Nor was that all. It has the unique merit of doubling as prophylactic and curative for coronavirus disease.

    The packaging, from the elegant bottle to the arresting label, was slick.  I have no doubt that when the medicine becomes available shortly as an injection, the presentation will be no less captivating.  Full marks to the product managers on those scores which have been the bane of Africa’s export trade.

    Rajoelina had a word, a preemptive blow of sorts, for the doubters and denialists whom we shall always have amongst us:  Do not denigrate this pharmaceutical breakthrough just because it is from Africa.  Had it been produced in France or Germany or even Korea, would they turn their noses at it?

    In the spirit of African brotherhood, Rajoelina ferried shipments of COVID Organics to some key African countries.  Nigeria’s allotment was presented to President Muhammadu Buhari at a solemn ceremony in Abuja by the visiting President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaru Sissoco Embalo.

    Even in Africa, there is no free lunch these days.  And so, the bill arrived shortly thereafter:  $170, 000,  or about N68 million, for a product that Nigeria had not asked for, and the efficacy and safety of which                  are yet to win iron-clad international certification.  That amount, by the way, is enough, to build and equip a primary healthcare facility in a rural area, even allowing for the usual shenanigans, I gather.

    And, mind you, not a whiff of the concoction had yet titillated the nostrils of the principal officers of state;  not a drop had landed in the test tubes of the certifying authorities before the bill collector came calling.  That is un-African, sir.

    This marketing by ambush, not COVID Organics and the properties claimed for it, is what has earned Madagascar’s President Rajoelina the first-place prize for Coronavirus 419 (or COVID 419) in the African category.

    The first-place winner in the Nigerian category, I can now report, is by the grace of Attorney-General Abubakar Malami (SAN) and our wayward courts, the Executive Governor of Kogi, the Confluence State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello.  Why, by the way, does he have that startled look of a deer caught in the headlights  of a vehicle at night in the stock picture that runs with stories about him in the media?

    Bello, it is hardly necessary to recall, had without fear and without research, declared his domain impregnable to the coronavirus and off-limits to the disease it spawns, though it has a common border  with 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states and is the gateway to the nation’s capital Abuja and the North.

    Other than a special app he implausibly claimed to have developed and distributed throughout Kogi, he has been unable to furnish any reason for Kogi’s special dispensation in the matter. It is as though he regards it as an abomination for any state to harbor a single case of the affliction that kills far fewer people than malaria fever does.

    To mention Coronavirus disease and Kogi in the same breath almost renders him apoplectic. To Bello, that is the epidemiological equivalent of treason.

    Then, last week, the bubble burst.

    A case of the affliction was reported in my hometown Kabba.  Bello went ballistic, placing the entire area in a “total lockdown,” effective immediately, for the next two weeks.

    While it lasted, no movement would be permitted even from one house to the next, for any purpose whatsoever.  No movement of vehicles would be countenanced. Medical personnel would go from house to house to administer tests for Coronavirus.  Relief materials, alias palliatives, would be distributed in like manner.  The police would flood the area to enforce strict compliance, and the media would furnish in-depth reports.

    In a moment of sobriety, Bello announced that the total lockdown would now start the day after, to allow residents to stock up on food and supplies and withdraw money from the banks, and conclude transactions  in progress.

    In the event, the lockdown ended the day it began.  The alleged index case has tested negative, and so had members of his family.  No other persons were tested.  The state had neither the personnel nor the equipment.  It had no palliatives to distribute.  The whole thing was bluff and bluster.

    Nevertheless, case proven beyond a reasonable doubt:  No coronavirus in Kogi, officials exulted.

    Bello must be running out of stunts. But his first-place prize in the race so far for Coronavirus 419 (or COVID-419) in the national category was well and truly earned.

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  • Rape pandemic

    Rape pandemic

    By Gabriel Amalu

    Like corona virus, the incidents of rape in our country, Nigeria, is turning a pandemic, and it is high time the local, state and federal authorities rise up to the challenge.

    Hardly any week passes, without a report of a rape incident. Sadly, in recent times, the rapists are no more contented with having unlawful carnal knowledge of their victims; they now go ahead to snuff life out of them.

    The recent stealthy murder of Uwaila Omozuwa, an undergraduate of the University of Benin, has left the country numb. Omozuwa was raped and murdered in a church.

    As if to rouse the country from the stupor of the bizarre murder of Omozuwa, a teenager, Barakat Bello, a student of Federal College of Animal Health and Production, Ibadan, was cruelly raped and murdered.

    There are several other similar cases across the country, and unless the authorities, rise up to the challenge, our misguided youths may begin to treat rape as a fad.

    Few days earlier, the commissioner for water resources in Kogi State, Abdumumini Danga, was accused of raping a woman, who sought succour from him, during the lockdown.

    The lady, who apparently was running from the scourge of the coronavirus pandemic, may have run into a worse pandemic, allegedly hibernating in the groins of the commissioner.

    While the commissioner has denied the allegation, he has not denied having sex with the woman. Perhaps, he will thrust forward later, the usual alibi, of engaging in a consensual sex, should the push come to a shove.

    The worst of the worst, in the fast spreading cases of rape, is the rape of minors, by persons who are old enough to be their grandfathers.

    In some disgusting instances, it is the biological fathers that rape their children. The madness, for that is what rape can be equated to, has also overtaken the sensibilities of misguided young men, who rape persons old enough to be either their mothers or their grandmothers.

    Belabouring in misbegotten cultural and spiritual beliefs, some rapists ascribe the evil, to the quest for psychic powers.

    Debating the rape and murder of Omozuwa, in the National Assembly, the members appeared enraged enough, at least on camera.

    While some called for an amendment of the laws to gift the evil doers, death sentence as punishment, some others proposed that castration be entrenchment in our laws, as the punishment for rape.

    Of note, the state assemblies whose members must buy into any proposed amendment of the punishment for rape, have not been reported to be as aggrieved as their counterparts in the National Assembly.

    Perhaps they are, only they do not have the benefit of the klieg-light, like their counterparts in the National Assembly? If they are enraged, as they should, then they must rise up and amend the laws, to ensure that rapists receive the due comeuppance for their sins.

    As I am wont to ask, why is it, that while rape cases are on the increase, the numbers of convicted rapists are not rising commensurately.

    Of course, the challenge lies with the technical difficulty of proving rape, under the criminal laws, as well as the social stigma associated with being a victim.

    So, the enraged lawmakers must portray their angst, by amending the criminal laws, to gift the country and the states, modern laws to protect the dignity of the womanhood.

    While rape could be the summit of assault and abuse of the self-worth of a woman, there are lesser degrading, but equally unlawful misconducts against the sanctity of the person of a woman.

    There are lesser offences, bothering on sexual harassment, like indecently touching a woman, or saying things that impugn her dignity.

    While the debate ranges about what is considered appropriate punishment for the despicable act of rape, the procedural requirement of proof, continues to remain a nightmare for the victims and the prosecutor.

    Two of such requirements is to “prove penetration” and the “requirement of corroboration.” One such provision, is section 218 of the criminal code, applicable to many states in the southern Nigeria.

    It provides: “any person who has unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of thirteen years is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for life, with or without whipping.”

    It further provides: “any person who attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of girl under the age of thirteen years is guilty of a felony, and is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years, with or without whipping.”

    Regrettably, the section went ahead to make a proviso, that makes a conviction, a tough nut to crack. It provides: “a person cannot be convicted of either of the offences defined in this section upon the uncorroborated testimony of one witness.”

    For the offence of rape, regardless of age, the courts have held the requirement of corroboration as sacrosanct. The challenge is that most rape cases don’t have standby corroborators.

    So, would a court convict, where there are compelling evidence, even though there may be no corroborator to collaborate? In Iko vs State, (2001) F.W.L.R. part 68, the Supreme Court held: “the purpose of corroboration is not to give validity or credence to evidence which is deficient or suspect or incredible but only to confirm and support that which as evidence is sufficient and satisfactory and credible, and corroborative evidence will only fill its role if itself is completely credible evidence.”

    The apex court went ahead to deliver the procedural wedge, in the difficult task of gaining a conviction, for rape. It further held: “in all cases where the law provides that corroboration is necessary, a conviction of an accused can only be valid when there is such corroboration.”

    With the recent amendment to the evidence act, allowing for electronic evidence, would the courts accept, a record of the incident of rape, as such corroboration?

    Again, would the court accept a scientific proof, as sufficient corroboration, where for instance, remnants of semen are recovered and confirmed as belonging to the accused person? Where there are torn cloths, especially underwear, acts of physical violence, and other circumstantial evidence, should that not enable a conviction, without seeking the corroboration, as determined by the Supreme Court in Iko vs State, supra? With rape assuming a pandemic proportion, is it not time for a national movement, to gift the country and states, a more modern criminal laws on the arching acts of rape?

    The charged atmosphere arising from the despicable rape and murder of Uwaila Omozuwa, should be a stepping stone to change the legal paradigm.

    But, what do we do with the laggard states that cannot even enact the Child Rights law to protect children who are victims of rape?

     

  • Trials of Adesina

    Trials of Adesina

    Sanya Oni

     

    Disbelief – was my gut reaction to what some newspapers made of the communiqué released by the Bureau of the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) of their June 4 meeting in Abidjan, the Ivorian capital.

    To describe some of the reports on the outcome as misleading is to be charitable; such was the blatant misrepresentation of the five-paragraph communique rendered in plain and unambiguous language that one could one could not but wonder if those who authored the news actually saw a copy of the source document before setting out.

    A case of poor comprehension or the more tragic failure to appreciate the nuances of the raw powerplay starring the American Goliath and the African David?

    Imagine the screaming headlines– ‘African Development Bank bows to U.S., authorises independent probe of Akinwumi Adesina’; ‘AfDB Board of Governors authorizes review of ethics committee report on Adesina’; AfDB Board bows to US pressure, approves fresh probe of Adesina’.

    Really?

    Give it to the bureaucrats at the premier continental financial powerhouse – they certainly did a good job of not leaving room for ambiguities in their text.

    To be sure, nowhere in the communique did the AfDB board come anywhere close to bowing to any United States pressure let alone authorizing a fresh probe of Adesina! Recall that US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin had in his tightly scripted letter issued last month demanded of the board…”to initiate an in-depth investigation of the allegations using the services of an independent outside investigator of high professional standing”. And the response: “… the Bureau agrees to authorize an Independent Review of the Report of the Ethics Committee of the Boards of Directors relative to the allegations considered by the ethics committee and the submissions made by the President of the Bank Group thereto in the interest of due process. (My emphasis)

    The board said more – of course. It further noted: “The Independent Review shall be conducted by a neutral high calibre individual with unquestionable experience, high international reputation and integrity within a short time period of not more than two to four weeks maximum, taking the Bank Group’s electoral calendar into account”.

    Finally, it voted for “an independent comprehensive review of the implementation of the Bank Group’s Whistle-Blowing and Complaints Handling Policy” to be conducted “with a view to ensuring that the policy is properly implemented, and revising it where necessary, to avoid situations of this nature in the future”.

    How “an Independent Review of the Report of the Ethics Committee of the Boards of Directors relative to the allegations considered by the ethics committee and the submissions made by the President of the Bank Group thereto in the interest of due process” became a fresh round of enquiry as gleefully reported in some media beats me.

    Most certainly, the suggestion of a fresh, trial and with it a new round of investigations, could only have been part of the elaborate spin by those bent on pulling the Nigeria-born Adesina down! And to think that some sections of the media not only went to town with the conclusion that the board succumbed to the American pressure and that Adesina would again be docked to answer to the same charges which the ethics committee had in fact found to be unfounded and baseless!

    I do understand that the last is yet to be heard particularly on a matter in which the global bully has vested interest. Thanks to the amorphous Trump Doctrine, which seeks as its core, to Make America Great Again (MAGA), the house that Uncle Sam cannot control, must be pulled down.

    We saw it with UNESCO (October 2017), then Global Compact for Migration (December 2017), followed by United Nations Human Rights Council (June 2018); and then World Trade Organisation, and now the World Health Organization (WHO) and this right in the middle of a global pandemic! How about the Paris Climate accord; the Iran Nuclear Deal, NATO etc.

    Here’s one chief steward of the continental lender that cannot be bullied; one who, unlike those before him, believes that the continent can no longer afford the luxury of conventions and practices that delivers very little for the people; one unafraid to go for the bold measures needed to turn things around, and would not suffer any dictation from the all-knowing experts from co-equal multilateral institutions.

    Recall that the World Bank President David Malpass once pronounced, rather magisterially, that the bank under Adesina was lending “too quickly and to add to the debt problem of the countries”; recall one particular report issued in July 2016 by the French Treasury lamenting that “the AfDB…president very seldom speaks in French, and uses the language rarely, if at all, when talking about strategic or financial matters”! And then the carefully orchestrated media campaign from the so-called regionals in the aftermath of the so-called whistle-blower complaints alleging sundry infractions on the part of Adesina.

    One particularly confounding charge was that Adesina employed hordes of his countrymen into the bank – never mind that the individuals so named – in a more just, fairer world – would have been worthy candidates for the number one position at the World Bank itself.

    The world of course awaits the next phase of the American wonder. Whereas to the Americans and their regional cohorts, it is Adesina’s cup that is not only deemed full but running over; to Africans and the rest of the world, it is the bank’s ethics committee which returned a finding of exculpation and with the board of governors who, applying the relevant rules, adopted their findings wholesale that the Americans have resolved to put in the dock! In other words, it is the AfDB and the lofty dreams of its founding fathers that are being put to the fire by some misguided outliers!

    Which explains my surprise that the media, which ought to have been more engaged if not outraged, somehow got sucked into playing the spoiler in the dubious orchestration! Remember, this is a wholly African development finance institution founded in Khartoum, Sudan, in August 1964, by 23 African governments to address the problem of poverty and underdevelopment.

    I close with an extract from a letter penned by Kenya’s Raila Odinga expressing support for AfDB and by extension, Adesina’s leadership: “We have faith in him as a proven and experienced leader who is prioritizing Africa’s development and who has proved his ability to guide the bank effectively and honourably during this critical time for Africa.

    Mr Adesina has proved his deep belief in lifting Africans out of poverty through a deep understanding of development issues and economic and political reform.

    We urge him to relentlessly pursue the goals set out in his vision and which are in line with our aspirations as a people and continent. We further urge those who have misguided agendas to cease and desist. This is the time to stabilize AfDB, not destabilise it”.

    Like I noted earlier, the last has not been heard on the matter.

  • Yoruba and allied nativists

    Yoruba and allied nativists

    Olakunle Abimbola

     

    “…Long after the Coker Commission Report shall have been forgotten in the archives, as a spiteful document, the work of Chief Awolowo in Western Nigeria will remain a monument to brilliant planning and administrative genius” —  Prof. Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, Daily Express, 28/29 January 1963, as quoted in Obafemi Awolowo, The Travails of Democracy and the rule of Law, Adventures in Power, Book Two.

     

    Between the immortal Chief Obafemi Awolowo and President Muhammadu Buhari, there are stark differences, differences that suggest the geometrical two parallel lines that can never meet.

    The one was an unapologetic federalist whose view, first articulated in his 1947 book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, has birthed for Nigeria never-ending “restructuring”.

    The other is a taciturn but near-implacable centralist, from a peculiar Nigerian political geography — and temper.

    In the “North” of his era, Awo was the face of unrepentant southern conceit, nay arrogance.  Even sans a political “South”, the Eastern partisan elite, of that time, avidly bought into this slur to cage Awo, for short-term gain; which has turned long-term ruin.

    In the “South” of today, Muhammadu Buhari is the emotive face of the North’s hated “feudal” conceit: the Fulani “born-to-rule” crowing, and the iron will to impose that subversive wish on the rest of the country.

    Even without a political “South”, a South West-South East lobby, powered by hot intrigue, is collapsing everything to make this desperate construct stick, in a grand historical parallel, replicating a 1st Republic folly.

    Will this putative West-East anti-Buhari gang-up end up any less ruinous than the 1st Republic North-East anti-Awo conspiracy?   Time will tell.

    Still, not even these huge differences could cloak Awo-Buhari similarities; and how the polity of their respective eras react to them.

    For starters, both Awo and PMB scaled respective elite envy and conspiracies of their day, to bond with their respective masses, on a scale most politicians can’t boast.

    Awo was the unrepentant Yoruba man, who dared — and failed — to attain federal power.  Not for him the hypocrisy of good Nigerian, without first being a stellar Yoruba man, just to gross the vacuous tag of “de-tribalized” — whatever that means!

    In a grand triumph of optics over content, “de-tribalization” became the frothy rock that smashed Awo’s ultimate ambitions.  It’s no secret Nigeria is today worse for it.

    PMB is the Awo ethnic flip side: the northern “unelectable” that, nevertheless, has twice romped into elected power, after all previous “electable”, North or South, had left the country in ruins.

    Despite this “great escape”, PMB’s Fulani essence, no thanks to rabid demonization, is sure-fire tool to clobber his tenure and scupper his legacy, much the same way as Awo’s vicious ethnic tag shut him from power — to Nigeria’s eternal loss.

    Yet, in real terms, PMB is fairer to every part of Nigeria than many would credit him.

    Yes, there is a lot of howling about “nepotism”, skewed appointments and all that; for which the growling elite mob, and their suckered masses, would readily lynch him.

    However, “nepotism” here, most times, means unfair discrimination against otherwise qualified citizens, simply because they are real or perceived kith-and-kin of those in power.  The sheer sweetness — and romanticized harm — of emotive injustice!

    As for skewed appointments, it could be suicidal confronting, even with sober facts, a raging, slanderous, close-minded mob, and its card-stacking media confederates. Still, that a counter-northern lobby has dubbed PMB a sell-out to the northern cause is quite instructive.

    To be sure, that might be just another counter-acampaign to break the monopoly of the other agitation.  But it could also mean the man is fair to all, thus earning the ire of the greedy closet tribalists from both camps, moonlighting as people’s champs!

    But in terms of project spread, there is absolutely no doubt about it: in critical game-changing infrastructure, PMB is fair to all, for there is no part of Nigeria not host to critical infrastructure folks could see, despite the lean financial times.

    That can’t be said of previous regimes, that had a relative surfeit of cash yet blew everything on piffle, thus forcing the 2015 near-collapse.

    But why this rather long Awo-PMB comparison and contrasts?  It’s for Yoruba nativists, being goaded into insane fury by anti-PMB propaganda, by so-called elders.  But these elements act not unlike the subversive Tribunes in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, that nevertheless baled when the trouble, forced by their mischief, dawned.

    For the record, the East’s narrative, from Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, to Chinua Achebe’s swan song, There Was A Country, down to Nnamdi Kanu’s lunatic posturing, has been an explosive combo of powerful Titans that can do no wrongs, and luckless victims crushed without mercy.

    The North, under the commanding heights of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the northern Premier and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister but the Sardauna’s Lagos viceroy, little bothered about any narrative, since it could project power.  Even if it did, it stood little chance, for the bully South dominated the media.

    Even today, PMB remains a victim of both: the near-reckless northern power projection, and devil-may-care, unscrupulous southern media domination.

    It was only the Awo odyssey that truly captured the Yoruba political angst.  When the 1st Republic North and East, out of sheer envy, conspired to finish off Awo in 1962, the Yoruba masses bore the suffering with him.

    When the irredentist Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), second Premier of the West, elbowed the NCNC from the central power gravy, to corral a coalition with Balewa’s ruling party, pocketing the Remi Fani-Kayode-led NCNC western wing en route, the Yoruba were content to say good riddance to winning and losing hustlers, but stayed glued to their undiminished hero.

    Nepotism!  Corruption!  Those were the same words used to slander Awo, by the likes of Chief Ayo Rosiji (Egba East), Chief E. O. Okunowo (Ijebu Central) and Chief A. Akerele (Oyo East), friends-turned-fiends and ex-Action Group MPs in the House of Representatives, while cooking the phoney Western emergency rule, that Rosiji declared was the political funeral of Awo, on 29 May 1962.

    Ironically, nepotism and corruption echo today: the one to cudgel PMB and his presidential court; the other, PMB’s own zipping whip, against a thieving elite!

    Still, a resurgent Awo would shrug it all off, in a compound Yoruba word: “Eebudola” — Yoruba for abuse-turned-praise, after the plot had thoroughly consumed the plotters, and sunk them all without trace.

    Would that be the lot of PMB and his ethnic traducers, after the present excitement is history?  Time will tell.

    For the Yoruba mind that bore Awo’s pains with him, however, it’s enough warning not to join the free-wheeling demonization of anyone, just because some hustler-elite have an axe to grind.

    But even at the depth of that 1st Republic crisis, Awo never abandoned his federalist principle to fix Nigeria.  So, how come these latter-day Awoist agitators are slipping into escapist nativism, goading the naive to some Oodua Republic, their hoped-for post-Nigeria Utopia where, open sesame, everything would work like magic?

    The hard limit of sweet fantasy!

    At Nigeria’s greatest hour of need, a segment of the elite has not only declared selves AWOL, they are sworn, fair or foul, to rubbishing all the salvaging efforts.

    But perhaps long after all these spiteful yammering and jabbering, history would laud PMB’s yeoman’s efforts to fix his country, in the worst of times, after the ruinous rule of the jackals.