The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sanya Oni

  • A plea for the military

    A plea for the military

    It is understandable that the military authorities would strive to pass off last week’s embarrassing skirmish by soldiers in Maiduguri’s Maimalari Cantonment as a mere storm in a tea cup. For a military whose activities have come under global scrutiny in the last one month, it is natural that it would seek to downplay any untoward developments that can only further dent its image. However, after the reassignment of the General Officer Commanding the Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed barely 24 hours after the Maimalari Cantonment incident, followed by the convening of the Military Board of Inquiry to probe the incident, I don’t think anyone, least the military authorities would dare to suggest that the events are anymore, routine.

    There is simply no denying that the military is on the spot. That, in fact, is an understatement. As far as the current state of insurgency goes, the institution would appear to be on trial. Indeed, the Maimalari Cantonment blow-out has merely brought to the fore, a dangerous dimension to the current unease across the land, a plausible explanation for what is increasingly the military’s inability to contain the Boko Haram menace.

    While the outburst of anger by some disgruntled soldiers as widely reported may not have come as a surprise given the not too infrequent reports of grumblings among the ranks of the fighting men in recent time, the development would appear to mirror a deeper problem in the rank which the military institution, nay the nation as a whole, can only ignore at its peril.

    The problem here isn’t just that the soldiers were said to be disenchanted with their top brass; there are in fact, insinuations that their bosses, by acts of omission or commission, are increasingly complicit in bringing their men in the harms way. That obviously is a new dimension, a dangerous one with grave potentials for the management of the insurgency. It is one fire that the military authorities will have to douse, and very quickly too.

    However, as yours truly has always argued on this page, the problem with the Nigerian military is not in any significant sense different from the problem of the larger society. While the idea of an army riven by the Nigerian cleavages of ethnicity and religion is hardly anything new, and, in any case, it isn’t as if the military institution as an organic part of the society can be insulated from the general societal debility, the extent to which the current orgy of bashing is justifiable is what I consider open to debate. Now, I would go as far as to argue that the virulent testimonials in the wake of the Chibok abductions are unhelpful. By this I do not mean the outrage against the abduction – which is justifiable; I do not think that anyone denies that the military’s response is anything but lethargic particularly given the blanket state of emergency imposed in the North-east states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. I refer to the picture of an ill-equipped, undisciplined and terribly ill-motivated Nigerian army being served the world in the last one month. It is quite frankly, exaggerated. In the same vein, the brutal denunciation of the military which has lately become fashionable is, most certainly, unwarranted.

    I have said it before, if there is anything that the raging insurgency in the North-east in particular has revealed, it is the comprehensive failure of our institutions across the board. Indeed, if the Nigerian military stands accused as a failure, it is only because other institutions of the Nigerian state which ought to give the military the wing to fly have also failed. They failed them as much as they failed us. From the confederates of Abuja who ought to have provided the institution with the necessary logistics and equipment but neglected to do; the military top brass alleged to have sat on personnel rations while fighting men go hungry; authorities at the state and local levels who yielded the ground to the anti-social elements thus allowing their reign of impunity to fester; to these we may add the hordes of local leaders – better described as dealers – whose indifference helped create the environment for the monster to thrive. See how everyone is now chanting #BringBackOurGirls!

    We need our girls back alright – all in one piece. The job is for none else than the military. We might as well admit it: the military needs help – not vilification. No doubt, there is a lot that our emergency friends can do to help us; pulling our chestnuts out of the raging fire for us is not one of them. When the chips are down, it is our fighting men that would still be required to clear the mess called Boko Haram. Admittedly, the Nigerian military may not have done nearly enough to court a working symbiosis with the civilian population; the truth also is that the citizens haven’t always done nearly enough either to provide useful intelligence to our armed forces. I guess– it works both ways!

    By the way, I have heard quite a few citizens celebrate the heroism of the Kala-Balge who not only stood up to the terrorists but inflicted massive casualties on them. For me, aside shattering the myth of invisibility, if not invincibility of the loonies, what it does is reinforce the immense possibilities in the partnership between the locals and the military. Much as the single act of communal bravery is welcomed, it comes to the question of whether such limited self-help is what is needed at this time. It might even turn out to be counter-productive in the long run.

    As for the current global spotlight on the military, my view is that it may yet do some good to the institution itself. More than anything, it offers the institution the rare chance to redeem itself, to purge its ranks currently believed to be infested with fifth columnists. Time to begin the long walk back to the disciplined path which once commended it to the world as effective fighting force – one able to hold its own against the best in the world. If only for the sake of itself and the nation, it simply has no choice but to return to that path.

  • Absentee Commander-in-Chief

    Absentee Commander-in-Chief

    If you watched Labaran Maku’s encounter with the ace CNN journalist, Isha Sesay, last week, you will understand why the Information Minister, and even more, the Jonathan administration on whose behalf he purports to speak, deserve neither our empathy nor understanding on the handling of the insurgency. Not that anyone ever doubted the handling of the insurgency as anything but flawed. Certainly not with the serial misjudgements and endless dithering that has defined its approach to the crisis.

    But rarely does one find an official spokesman of a government so pathetic and flatfooted before a global audience as we saw of Labaran Maku on CNN last week.

    Asked to respond to the finding by Amnesty International that the federal government actually had prior warnings before the abduction of the Chibok 276, the minister described the charge as “incredible”. When confronted with the statements from eyewitnesses which suggest something to the contrary, he could only stutter and waffle; at some point, he would attempt to blame the “regional government” for the initial “misinformation”. And when prodded further, he could only mumble something to the effect that the crisis area was far-flung from the seat of the administration something that made it nigh impossible for it to get first-hand reports. In a fit of exasperation, he even dared to ask the CNN correspondent whether the administration was on trial!

    For all its unfortunate twists and turns, there is at least some good that this latest tragedy has taught us all.

    First is that the administration is incapable of guaranteeing the safety and security of lives and property of citizens. From the midnight hacking to death of 59 hapless pupils of Federal Government College Buni Yadi in Yobe State on February 25, the spectacular attack in the Abuja suburb of Nyanya on Monday, April 14, followed by the daring come-back barely two weeks after on May 1, all of which left their trails of broken dreams and shattered lives; and now the abduction of 276 girls from the dormitories on April 14 in spite of a blanket of emergency rule; it seems only a matter of time before the entire nation unravels under the watch of its absentee commander-in-chief. The administration would appear to have resolved that the problem was best kicked down the road having long persuaded itself that the insurgency has come to stay.

    Second, aside the episodic mouthing of the we-are-top-of-the-situation refrain, the administration does not even pretend to any understanding of the complexity, let alone the enormity of the problems on the basis of which it could proceed to solve them. Nigerians are simply asked to accept the fact of the existence of safe havens for the Boko Haram– in the vast and un-governed mass on the Nigerian territory – inaccessible to the security forces – as the reality we must live with perhaps till kingdom come.

    Now, this is an insurgency that is known to have gulped something in excess of three trillion naira from the exchequer in the last three years.

    That is why I believe the global spotlight has done a lot of good. First, no longer is the traditional indifference to the farcical motions described as governance in Abuja. A commander-in-chief who opted to play the victim while his homestead was literally on fire obviously deserves more scorn than the outraged world can ever pour. Nigeria may not have qualified for the pariah status as yet, or its current leaders among the unwanted guests in global capitals, they are unlikely to remain on the A-list of leaders that really matter after this episode. Imagine US Senator John McCain telling his countrymen and women:  “we shouldn’t have waited for a practically non existing government to give us the go ahead before mounting a humanitarian effort to rescue those girls”.

    That is what President Jonathan’s absentee government has cost us; loss of respect and pride as a nation. Next time around, expect the US Marines to come with their raiding party and stunts before the fiddling somnambulist manages to make up his mind.

    We are a long way from when the official tale was that the insurgency was a scheme to hobble the Jonathan administration; and while there is no shortage of the cynical exploitation of the tragedy by different actors in the political spectrum, the truth is that the terror machine actually festered because one man the country elected to get the job done couldn’t figure things out.

    Now, the story is out: a government so quick to accuse local authorities of not cooperating in volunteering vital intelligence to security agencies could not maintain a vestige of security anywhere near the vast theatre of insurgency. Before, it was the governors of the three states under the state of emergency shouting themselves hoarse over the near absence of ground troops; today, it is the villagers making their voices heard over the international networks that the government, sworn to protect them, has never been there for them. Between the absentee field commanders and the revellers of Abuja on one hand, and the hapless villagers on the other, the world now knows whose tale to believe.

    Today, Sambisa Forest, the 60,000 square kilometres swathe south of Maiduguri is supposed to be no man’s land, well beyond the reach of the security forces. Not even the 200 aerial sorties mounted by the Nigerian Air Force, according to Doyin Okupe, the President’s spokesman could find the trace of Boko Haram in the thick Sahelian jungle! The villagers couldn’t find any aircraft hovering over them not to talk of the show of air power that a sortie is supposed to be.  And not even the two battalions said to have been put together by the Nigerian Army appears to be in hurry to get the job done.

    No doubt, everything about this war, stinks. We are not even talking about the money poured into the insurgency and the fledging industry that it has spawned; we are talking about government’s pathetic indifference to the sufferings of its own people – the human dimensions to the terrible tragedy.

    The current global attention has hopefully changed that.

    By the way, my sympathy goes to the amorphous group – the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria. The Abuja machine may have transformed their pockets; from the look of things, their man may have become a damaged good. As for the prospects of their man carrying the PDP flag in 2015, I wager to say that it is no longer done deal. That should be pricey enough for the absentee C-I-C.

     

     

  • Meddler-in-chief?

    Meddler-in-chief?

    Whoever advised Dame Patience Jonathan, wife of President Goodluck Jonathan to stage last week’s mock trial of the Borno State government couldn’t have meant well for her person and least for her husband’s presidency. For while Nigerians are by now familiar with the trade-mark impetuosity of the self-styled Mama Peace, not even her affective pretences on the fate of the missing 276 schoolgirls could mitigate the public relations disaster of last Friday’s sham parley. And that was merely setting the stage for the mother of all fiasco – Sunday’s botched meeting which ended on a tearful note for the convener.

    And what was the parley said to have drawn unnamed governors’ wives, women opinion leaders, and key women organisations to the seat of government coming 17 days after the unfortunate abduction of the girls meant to achieve?

    To rally Nigerian women to take on the Boko Haram? To buy time for the fumbling administration?

    I have in the last few days struggled to find the rationale for the Abuja parley and even more for the botched expanded parley which the governor’s wife was supposed to have featured but which eventually failed to hold on Sunday.

    Was it about joining forces with well-meaning organisations to find a way out of the national shame and embarrassment? Was it part of the making of a budding pressure group to prod the President to summon the will to do the needful to bring the girls safely to the comfort of their homes? Was it about bandying together to provide psychological support to the families visited by the unprecedented tragedy of the abduction?

    Nothing of the proceedings would however suggest anything along that line. Quite to the contrary, what came off was a mission steeped in hubris and mischief of a heinous kind, an image laundering mission – a strategic, well-timed motion to take the winds off the sail of the agitation demanding action from the federal government – the ultimate mark of Nigeria’s outsourced presidency.

    Indeed, media account of the meeting revealed a bare-faced chicanery packaged as part of efforts to find the missing girls. The session was vintage Mama Peace – blunt but unfair; present in good dose was the vintage obtrusiveness – a defining style but which is increasingly hard to associate with the good offices of a presidential spouse.

    Although the high point was the presentation by the Head of the National Office of WAEC, Charles Eguridu, it was clear that all was about Goodluck and Jonathan. That presentation, I must say, left little to imagination about what the Dame set out to accomplish – to hold the Borno State government as the chief culprit in the abduction saga. And here, it turns out that the evidence was no more than the serious concerns raised by the examination body in addition to the advisory on the state government to take the examination centre out of the crisis-prone area. Aside that, the testimonial from the WAEC boss added pretty little to what is already in the public domain about the missing girls.

    This leads to the pertinent question of what the game plan was. It seems to me that the strategy is take the wind out of the rage spreading across the land over the pathetic handling of the rescue efforts by the federal government while taking due care to deflect attention from the failure of the federal government to contain the insurgency. Heaping the blame on the Borno State government would in the circumstance be fair game.

    As for the parents of the 276 girls and the entire citizens looking up to the exalted institution of the Presidency to bring the girls home, they are to look elsewhere since according to the Dame, the Borno State government knows more than it has admitted on the story of the missing girls. Her charge: “By Sunday, we must have our children. If not, we will march to Borno and ask the governor to give us our children. We will march to the National Assembly to see the Senate President and will also march to see the president”. How about from Mama Peace – Mother of the Nation!

    She would however not end without a curious offer to lead Nigerian women on a march provided of course that the object of their march is on the office of the state governor! Again her resolve is unmistakeable: “Within three days, something will happen. We will get to the root of the matter. I don’t come out and go back empty. I have come out and something must happen. We will not fold our arms and see our children kidnapped, our husbands, sons, daughters also being killed. We should be more concerned. We will form a committee to call on the appropriate persons to come and answer questions…” Does anyone still wonder as to who is in charge?

    Now, let’s even accept that the state government is guilty as charged.  The overwhelming evidence however, is that the federal government under whose watch the girls were ferried away despite the blanket of emergency is by far more complicit. Today, there are even suggestions that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the individual on whose desk lands, the daily security briefings knows only a little more than the rest of us know. Or how else does one explain the establishment of a Presidential committee on the abducted girls in the midst of the crisis and coming after Nigerians opted to take to the streets?

    See where we have landed ourselves?

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Lessons from South Korea

    Lessons from South Korea

    In the aftermath of last week’s resignation of South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won following the unfortunate Sewol ferry tragedy, I found myself compelled to join the debate earlier stoked by my colleague Segun Ayobolu on the cultural/ethical dimensions of the Nigerian dilemma. Of particular interest to me in the context of the current frenetic pace to rework the country’s political architecture, is what I consider as the exaggerated expectations from the possible restructuring of the polity in the absence of fundamental attitudinal re-orientation by the leaders and the led.
    The story of how the South Korean ferry with 476 people aboard – most of them students and teachers – sank on 16 April is by now familiar. Despite the scores of questions still unanswered as to how and why the ferry could have gone down, the gaps in the management of the rescue operations which hint at systemic failures, many of them as outrageous as they are inexcusable perhaps made the resignation inevitable. Not when the slip-shod manner with which officials handled the operations had warranted a stinging rebuke from the opposition which described government as “thoroughly irresponsible” and a “cowardly evasion” of responsibility.
    The big news is that the Prime Minister Chung Hong-won had by the weekend thrown in of the towel. Not for him the resort to the blame-game. Hardly time to go fishing for a fall-guy either. As leader of government, the minister obviously knew that the buck stopped on his desk for which no thousand rationalisations, no matter how plausible, could ever assuage. He simply did what had to be done, first by apologising to the people, before quitting his post.
    His brief televised statement said it all: “The right thing for me to do is to take responsibility and resign as a person who is in charge of the cabinet.  On behalf of the government, I apologise for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster”.
    He would equally note that – “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”
    But then, top of it was his unmistakeable sense of personal responsibility when he averred that the “cries of the families of those missing still keep me up at night”.
    By the way, he will remain on the post to clear the mess with the rescue job still largely undone.
    It is just as well that we celebrate the exemplary act by the leader of government business admitting the culpability of the government which he led in the making of tragedy.  Not only would such acts seem utterly inconceivable here, to contemplate what the South Korean leader did in these parts would be akin to a grave act of folly. Not when there are ethnic and religious factors to be thrown into the mix; countless enemies that could be held for blame; innumerable reasons why the lone official couldn’t be expected to carry the burden of a sick nation; or even when other officials, known to be guilty of more atrocious dereliction of duties, are still in holding on in public office!
    I have argued elsewhere that there can be no understating the need to restructure the current dysfunctional political structure as basis for the elixir of a stable, prosperous future that we badly crave, and also as a necessary step to guarantee its very survival. Today, I would add that without a complete reordering of our values as a nation, that future which we badly crave stands imperilled. The point has been well made by my colleague Segun Ayobolu in his back page column of penultimate Saturday, where he posits that “When the prevalent values in a society promote impunity, corruption, inefficiency, lawlessness and nepotism, these vices will be subversive of any structure no matter how expertly constructed”.
    Clearly, while the quest to farm out a new political architecture would be desirable, the part that has not received equal and commensurate attention is how to  erect our notion of ideal society on the wobbly substructure of poor citizenship culture.
    Part of the tragedies of modern times is that nothing is held as sacrosanct – good and bad have since become relative. From the school pupils who cheat in public examinations to the public official caught stealing public funds, there are no longer abiding standards in public morality. A public official abuses his office but rather than hide his head in shame, he or she goes to make a plea of self-justification.
    Once upon a time, public service used to be exactly that – public office; today, it is neither defined as public in the real sense of it, or service in any shape or form. It is today a veritable mission in self-help, an institution where occupants not only live large but would also insist on blurring the dividing line between what is private and what is public. The situation explains why a serving minister would cause the parastatals under her to buy armoured cars for her exclusive use; another would allegedly gobble N10 billion of taxpayers money to hire private jets; it is at the heart of the immigration tragedy in which 19 Nigerians would perish simply because one minister could not organise a recruitment test after collecting money from the applicants to defray the cost of recruitment.
    I ask, what difference would a restructured polity make to all of these? I stand to be educated.

  • Nyako’s play of the giants

    Nyako’s play of the giants

    Not even in the wildest stretch of democratic licence could one have fathomed the on-going macabre dance between the Jonathan presidency and Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa coming days after the carnage at Nyanya. Indeed, only in the engulfing climate of ethical regression – or better still – environment of leadership vacuity could one begin to make sense of the brickbats between two foremost institutions of the Nigerian state at a time of grave national calamity.

    To begin with, there is a lot to say of an 71-year old ex-governor, ex-three star general, one-time chief of the country’s Navy, recipient of two of the nation’s topmost honours – GCON, CFR, who currently occupies a gubernatorial office waking up to do a letter to his 18 northern counterparts alleging grievous crime of genocide against the central government on the basis of claims without a shred of evidence. We are talking here of an individual, who by all qualifications, should ordinarily qualify for the elite club of statesmen, making dangerous, unsubstantiated claims against the state.

    Agreed, some would argue that there is probably more to say about a pathetic, blundering presidency that has failed to rally Nigerians behind it in the war on terror. A presidency that has far too meagre results to show for the humongous resources deployed to the war; one that couldn’t find the words top connect with our hearts in the aftermath of the most gruesome calamities that has befallen us, and one under which an emergency national security meeting to review the security situation would overnight transform to a conclave of PDP governors on security! Add that to the pathetic PDP stridently seeking to pin the tag of terror on the opposition and the picture of an engulfing anomie emerges.

    However, I believe that the situation is bad enough without another rabid, partisan “elder” coming in to further muddle things up for us. For not even in the hate-filled politics of the current time would the attempt by Nyako to stand facts – and logic – on their heads wash! Merely by his letter, any hopes by the younger generation that the Nyako generation – in whom the nation had invested heavily – would somehow rise to the challenge of the times would have by now dissolved into a mirage. They are evidently a major part of the problems for which the nation is currently in quest of solutions.

    But then, the trouble with the Nyako’s of this world is that they are living in the past. When he talks about the Jonathan federal government as being the chief sponsor of the Boko Haram, or fingers the administration in the daily mass murder of innocent Nigerians, including the rampant kidnapping of young boys and girls; or the attempts on the lives of prominent northerners like Senate President David Mark in Imo State, Governor of Benue State Gabriel Suswan and himself or even prominent northern traditional leaders like the Shehu of Borno and the Emir of Kano, of course, they are not only meant to sound good to the ears of his “fellow northerners”, they are designed to deflect from the well-known culpability of the region’s leadership in the festering of the monstrous terror machine. Guess it is part of that living in denial that the pervasive insecurity– whether it is the Boko Haram carnage in the north-east, or the frequent the clashes between the nomadic Fulani and farmers across the middle-belt and north central – are alien imports aided and abetted by the federal militias!

    The fact of the matter is that Boko Haram is real. The bases are in the North. Perhaps the only area of dispute is the extent to which the menace has mutated. Not even Governor Nyako’s version of reality can change the fact that the Boko Haram has since transformed into a global terrorist network with ties with the Al-Quaeda in the Mahgreb.

    Terrorism, on the other hand, is a relatively new challenge to the military, the same way that intelligence has remained substantially an alien culture among Nigeria’s population. The talk of winning the terror war without active citizen engagement is sheer bunkum. But then, how could one imagine possible collaboration when leaders appear to denigrate the efforts of the fighting men?

    What was Nyako’s cry of genocide meant to achieve? Hardly about getting the best of the fighting men; at least not with the military – a branch of which Nyako once had the privilege of leading – increasingly presented as an occupation force to the people. Surely, it’s not about tasking the field commanders about the need to observe scrupulously, the rules of engagement, or calling those known to have breached the rules to account. I prefer not to deal with the grave charge of genocide alleged by Nyako which I consider at best opportunistic and cheap.

    It is not even about the ordinary people – the hapless victims of Boko Haram’s butchery – who genuinely desire an end to their agonies.

    No, it is a re-enactment of the long-running play of giants!

    In the circumstance, his reference to an exit strategy for the current state of emergency would appear an after-thought!

    I guess it is fine to consider “Northern Nigerian Amnesty to the culprits and consequently squarely address all other matters connected with the Amnesty and Boko-Haram syndrome”.

    So also is his proposal “to support maximally all those who have been adversely affected by ‘Boko-Haram’ to sue the federal administration to court for full compensation for any loss of life and property as per existing Laws of Nigeria including those enacted from 1915″ fine. Indeed, the idea of a Trust Fund to address the matter would be most welcome.

    The question is – would the proposed restitution also apply to other victims of state-sponsored injustices in other parts of the country particularly those predating the Boko Haram? Or is this an extension of the specious definition of ‘justice’ that has brought the nation to this sorry pass?

  • Magicians of Abuja

    After the pictorial testimonial of March 15 showing hundreds of thousands of our youths swarming on stadia across the country for the Nigeria Immigrations Service jobs, I could not imagine any official treating Nigerians so soon to meaningless statistical platitudes on the economy let alone one seeking to paint a picture as distinct from reality as the latest one on the rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Not even the characterisation of Nigeria as a nation of anything goes would explain the wild exultations going on in Abuja over the routine statistical exercise which aside from changing nothing, actually adds pretty little to the knowledge on the Nigerian economy than is not already familiar.

    Courtesy of the rebasing exercise, it is like Abuja has suddenly struck diamonds. The economy of the giant in the African sun is not just pronounced as standing pretty tall at $432 billion, it is now deemed to have finally outperformed that of its nemesis -South Africa’s with the GDP of $370 billion. For this, we are supposed to owe a debt of thanks to the sleep-walkers at the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), for rousing from their Rip van Winkle sleep to give Nigerians an updated GDP which matches their political masters’ version of the Nigerian Reality!

    No one should miss what is clearly at the heart of the current obsession with phantom growth by the African giant. It is called hubris. The pattern is by now familiar: the claim about an economy which has maintained a steady growth path averaging seven percent per annum for over a decade. To the Abuja magic has now been added the rebasing arithmetic of throwing the hordes of ‘under-accounted’ sectors like telecommunications, the entertainment and the broadcasting into the mix to give a more realistic sector of the whole package! Talk of wuruwuru to the answer!

    The charade must be seen for what it is – a fraud. First, if it is any revealing, it is quantum of catch-up that the managers have to do in terms of their ability to grapple with the dynamics of the Nigerian economy over which they claim to superintend; second is the ignoble agenda of turning what appears to be an institutional lacuna into some advantage.

    I could cite nearly half a dozen reasons why the hype and the needless ball in Abuja ought to have been more restrained – or better still – tempered. To start with, the investing world knows the Nigerian economy far more than the managers would care to admit. They appreciate the huge population size – the dormant potentials waiting to be tapped. They know the strengths and the weakness of the economy and the relative opportunities these present – the moribund state of the infrastructure; the harsh reality of doing business, the dearth of critical skills in the economy, the corruption, the red tape and the countless policies which impede business. They are familiar with the state of our agriculture and the difficulties facing the sector.

    Indeed, if the latest unflattering scorecard from the World Bank which ranks Nigeria among the countries harbouring the highest number of the poor on the universe is any instructive, it is to the effect that the world knows us more than we seem to know ourselves – far more than a dozen rebasing exercise could ever wash!

    I couldn’t therefore agree more with Bismarck Rewane – the chief executive officer of Financial Derivatives when he described the rebasing exercise as moving from reality to vanity. To that I may well add – delusion. Of all the reasons cited for the hoopla about the imperative of the rebasing exercise, the only one that appears to make some sense is that of the Debt to GDP ratio which is now evidently in favour of more ratcheting more debts as elections approach!

    All of this no doubt goes to show how far Abuja remains detached from the reality on the Main Street. Delusion is when a country like Nigeria with a population more three times that of South Africa but whose per capita income is barely a third of the latter claims to have its economy bigger in size. Ever heard of market without effective demand – or disposable incomes?

    Clearly, if the issue were simply about statistics, Nigeria ought to have arrived at the Eldorado by now. In the last decade, Nigeria has probably pumped more oil and sold at higher price than the two decades before it. Of course, the result in terms of how many has been lifted from poverty has been most disappointing.

    While our policy wonks in Abuja have been content to chase inflation, stable exchange rates – the real enablers of the economy, the critical pillars on which a modern economy can be erected have been left unattended to. Whether the issue is transportation infrastructure, power and aviation, the story of slow but steady regression is almost the same. Nigerians have no need for the dubious statistics of a rebasing than they are ready to make sense of the decade of growth without the human component of development.

    By the way, who wants the number one position in Africa anyway? A number one that imports anything from textiles to automobiles to basic consumer goods? A country where 80 percent struggle to make ends meet? A country whose educational sector lies in ruins? And where the young, in search of elusive jobs routinely end up in the morgue? Is that what Abuja magic all about?

     

     

  • Policemen occupy Ibadan ‘forest of horror’

    Policemen occupy Ibadan ‘forest of horror’

    •Oyo to shelter mentally-ill

    Policemen from the Oyo State Police Command and the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Abuja, have taken over the Soka “forest of horror” in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

    The FCID team, which includes forensic experts, arrived in the state last Friday.

    Residents are prevented from going near the crime scene to enable the police carry out their investigation undisturbed.

    When our reporter visited the scene yesterday, he was politely advised to keep a distance and was not allowed to speak with any personnel.

    Mechanics whose workshops are close to the scene were sacked by the policemen and the street was deserted, but for the security agents.

    The State Security Council met yesterday to discuss the discovery of the kidnappers’ den and how to curb crime.

    The meeting was presided over by Governor Abiola Ajimobi.

    The council assured residents that the operators of the “forest of horror” would be apprehended.

    Commissioner of Police Muhammed Ndabawa told reporters after the meeting that the kidnapper’s den had been in operation for over 10 years.

    Ndabawa said: “From the information available so far, that place has been there for a very long time, perhaps about 10 years. It was initially used by a construction company during the channelisation of the Ogunpa River. After then, the site was abandoned. The kidnappers’ den had been on for a long time but the government (past and present) was not aware of it.”

    He said the forest was discovered following the prompt response of the state anti-crime unit, Operation Burst, to a distress call.

    Besides revoking the Certificate of Occupancy of the land on which the kidnapper’s operated, Ndabawa said the council has told security agencies to identify uncompleted/abandoned buildings in the town to enable them respond promptly to distress calls in the future.

    He said the police had evacuated 42 mentally-ill persons from the streets after angry residents killed two of them, who were suspected to be ritualists.

    The police commissioner said: “After the discovery of the Soka forest, the police rescued 42 or presumed lunatics from the streets. So far, two have been killed. Investigations are ongoing and two of the so-called lunatics have confessed that they were looking for human body parts, but are not related to the Soka incident.”

    Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Affairs Toye Arulogun said the state government would create a temporary shelter with medical personnel and other facilities for the mentally-ill before they are re-united with their families.

    He said: “The Oyo State government has decided to establish a temporary site to accommodate the destitute that were rescued from the streets by the police. That will also go for others as time goes on. This is an invitation to Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and religious groups who have some expertise in this area to support the government.”

  • One nation, multiple destinies

    One nation, multiple destinies

    If anyone ever needed evidence of how complex and multi-layered the dimensions of the Nigerian pathology have become, the ruckus over the rules of proceedings at the on-going National Conference ought to provide some guide. The profession of multiple destinies apart, the zero-sum attitudes among the cream of the nation’s leadership would seem to have added a new impetus to the raging national question.

    Given the bitter recriminations and mutual suspicions that have characterised proceedings so far, even the most incurable of believers in the conference idea should be wondering whether the goals of the conference are any achievable. Even at that, it would seem that the battle over the rules of proceedings has only temporarily upstaged the earlier battle over representation over which the Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar 111 had led a delegation of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs to President Goodluck Jonathan penultimate week. The same issue of unfair representation – or marginalisation – would equally prompt Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) to protest – with statistics for good measure- what the body called under-representation of Nigerian Muslims.

    Quite understandably, attention has shifted to the shocking outbursts from the Lamido of Adamawa, Mohammadu Barkindo Mustafa. And what did he say? Contrary to what many have reported him as saying, he didn’t quite say that the conference will flop but rather to warn of that possibility “if we are not careful” and the dire consequences should it ever happen.

    Of course, he also said that “if something happens and the country disintegrates – God forbid – many of those who are shouting their heads off will have nowhere to go” – unlike his kingdom of Adamawa which transcends Nigeria and Cameroon.

    The latter statement is certainly regrettable. The truth however is that we have heard worse from elders from other parts of the country without the heaven caving in on our heads.

    Howbeit, the issue for me isn’t really about what he said about his dual allegiances to Nigeria and the Cameroon which he is entitled to; or even his choice of a walkout weapon to deal with his hecklers which comes with the territory of such conferences; it is whether the Lamido as indeed the throng at the conference, truly appreciate how deeply troubled the nation is, and what leadership at such a critical time as the nation is passing through demands. And to imagine that this is coming from the rank of those called up to pull the nation’s chestnuts out of the raging fire!

    The Nation’s ace columnist Idowu Akinlotan in his ever perspicuous Palladium column on Sunday certainly did well to highlight what he calls the disturbing signals emanating from different sections of the polity in the wake of the conference, notably the deep-seated cleavages of religion and ethnicity and what these portend for the survival of the country. The good thing is that these feelings, long buried are at last coming into the open. And now, if it seems a feature of the interesting times we live in, it appears that not even the high-minded liberal ethos of the South-west is a match for the forces of religion and religiosity in what Akinlotan would describe as the complicating role of religion in the nation’s politics. Now at last, the Yoruba Muslim Ummah have not only jettisoned the seductions of the Yoruba culture as an integrating force that bound them with their kiths, they have signalled their preference a new identity defined strictly along the lines of their faith.

    That to me is one important revelation that those in the forefront of the agitation for the dismemberment of the federation should take into account in their clamour for their utopian republic. The lesson of course is that there can be no end to differences among nations.

    Having said that, it seems to me that there can be no understating the challenge posed by the intrusion of religion into our politics. Nigerians appears to have found a resolve to live and have their beings defined in it. Where that leads is a matter of conjecture. However, if current indications are anything to go by, it is a path that leads to a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

    And the way out? Not until majority accepts the principle that the cleavages have been exacerbated by the hard reality of the dual economy that consigns more and more to the fringes, and the comprehensive meltdown of governance across the board that has become our lot, can we begin to talk of progress.

    Here, if I may borrow the analysis of Mustafa Chike-Obi, the Asset Management Corporation’s Managing Director as reported in Sunday Punch of March 30, to put a perspective to the challenge that the nation currently faces. Now, we know how bad the unemployment situation is. Indeed, it has since grown to the point of becoming an industry, so much so that one out of every two is out of our youth population is unemployed. Much as the situation is troubling enough, another dimension to the population is the population growth currently at 3.5 percent per year – translating to some roughly six million addition to the population per year – for an economy that has done far better to deliver paper rather than tangible economic growth.

    But by far the greatest tragedy is that majority of our idle youths are simply unemployable – lacking requisite skills needed in a modern economy.

    To these class of youths, the current squabble for the spoils of battle by the elite matters very little – at least not yet. Not until the current seductions to false religiosity begins to wane and the anatomy of the manipulators of the nation’s collective destinies stand revealed would the lasting change begin to come. When that time comes, there would be no stopping the mighty army.

    In the meantime, the conferees can continue to have their fun!

  • New wine, old wineskins

    New wine, old wineskins

    Last week, something I consider as remarkable took place in Abuja. The National Economic Summit Group (NESG) held their 20th summit with the theme “Transforming Education through Partnerships for Global Competitiveness”. The focus was on galvanising a “national consensus on what is required to rebuild, revamp and reinforce the education sector to secure the nation’s future”.

    A conclave of different actors in the educational value chain, call it, an assembly of providers and consumers of products of the educational system as well as other important stakeholders, the common thread in the deliberations was the insistence by participants that challenges faced by the sector were such that demanded more than the ritual of endless dissections and bewailing of the sorry state of the sector.

    For me, the idea of bringing the demanders and suppliers of educational products to same table to forge a consensus on the way forward was remarkable. However, what I consider even more remarkable – beyond the customary resolve to chart a different paradigm to reclaim what is left of a sector in tatters – was the opportunity provided for the interment of the oversold lie that the government possesses all the answers to the problems of the sector.

    For sure, if the lessons of the critical interconnectedness between industry and business – as demanders of educational products which thrusts on them the responsibility of influencers of educational curriculum – and the educational system have been learnt at all, it would appear as coming late in the day.

    Beyond the singular revelation of the paradox of an educational system, steeped in old analogue ways but would rather pretend to be in steady course to the fast-paced digital future where competition and competitiveness rule, the shattering of the long-held illusion which insisted that a country of the future can be constructed on the old, ancient educational paradigm would be for me the defining moment.

    As was made clear from the deliberations, the choice facing Nigeria is either to accept the reality of that imperative to align with the requirement for competitiveness through multi-level investment in the infrastructure for nurturing tomorrow’s skills or in the alternative watch the rest of humanity leave her behind.

    Coincidentally, much as the Abuja conclave proved to be something of a landmark, another event of revolutionary import would be aborted in Edo State. I refer here to the competency test instituted for teachers by the Oshiomhole-led administration in the state. For months, Edo teachers, through the state chapter of their union, the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools had been locked in battle with the state government over the latter’s insistence on determining the continuing fitness of the teachers in its employ for their job. As it turned out, the test, slated for last Saturday was an anti-climax of sorts. Of the 13,000 strong teachers, only 200 – a figure representing less than two percent of those expected –showed up for the test – no thanks to a court order allegedly obtained by the teachers body stopping the exercise. In this, Edo teachers would appear to have borrowed a leaf from their counterparts in Ekiti State where a similar programme tagged Teachers Development Needs Assessment, TDNA ran into a stormy weather in 2012. If my memory serves me right, that exercise had to be aborted by the state government.

    For me, the two events merely underscore the difficult challenges ahead. For starters, I do not think that anyone denies that the debate on how we got to this point is legitimate. After all, the bureaucracy is supposed to have in-built fail-safe systems to sift qualified candidates from the unqualified and to ensure that the former not only makes it to the teachers’ nominal roll. The same goes for rewards which are supposed to be guided strictly by performance/competence. But then we are talking here of our bureaucratic institution – one so steeped in the culture of impunity, of bastardisation of process, in which subversion of rules of hiring are on such scale that would make Max Weber turn in his grave. While the remedial measures ordinarily appear drastic, they are best appreciated in the context of the highlighted problems.

    The issue, understandably, isn’t whether or not the labourer is worthy of his hire. The teachers, particularly in our public schools, obviously deserve far more than what is currently on offer. I say this borne of my profound understanding of their importance in the educational system, in the larger society and also in the shaping of the destinies of our young ones.

    The real problem is that the teachers are not even persuaded that the exercise which holds so much promise for upgrading their status as professionals amounts to anything. Instead, what they see are grand schemes to deny them of the comfort of permanent employment not minding whether the classrooms are empty or full. Not even government assurances that the test merely seeks to identify relevant skill-gaps to enable them take remedial measures. With just enough paranoia to go round about the real intentions of government, the needless scaremongering would seem inevitable. Lost on the teachers is the hefty price on both sides of the divide: the true professional forced to trade off the prospects of enhanced motivation for the morsel – if you like, the drudgery – of lifetime employment, and the society robbed of standards leading to empty schoolrooms.

    The truth of course is that the failure is as much of government and those of the Teachers Registration Council; the former for abdication, the latter for scorning the challenge of self-regulation. To the extent that no one argues these days for the retention of the stenographers of yore in the age of personal computers and tablets, by the same token, the requirements for progress in our world are such that demands modern, cutting-edge skills from those charged with imparting knowledge to our children. Once upon a time, it was possible to suggest that a half-baked teacher is better than nothing; today, most people would wager than an ill-equipped teacher is worse than sweet poison; worse than useless.

    Let me end on this note: the general debate on how to bring the fundamental changes in the educational sector is certainly not about to end. Surely, the debate on the vast range of issues of structure, funding, issue of access would remain open for a long time to come. Much as our teachers are entitled to our understanding, what is not right is their attempt to compel a foreclosure of the debate on quality assurance which the loathed test seeks to bring about. How about teaching us to make a meal of omelette without breaking an egg?

  • Whence cometh the angry generation?

    Whence cometh the angry generation?

    I first got the hint of weekend’s ill-fated immigration test when a cousin of mine called from Lokoja, the Kogi State capital to inquire if I had any information on the impending recruitment test. After telling him that I had no such information, he would call moments later not only to confirm that the test was indeed taking place but also to notify me of his receipt of the test eligibility slip. You guessed right; that was his way of duly serving the notice on the need to start tapping on my contacts in earnest – the only way round the impossible statistical odd of less than a chance in a hundred!

    You can bet that by Saturday when the news of the multiple harvests of deaths and broken limbs across the test centres hit the wires, the impossible statistics was far from my mind. Rather, the only thing on my mind was whether the young man made it out of the crowded venue in one piece. The extent of the national tragedy would hit home much later when the body count hit a score. The soulless, inhuman, and utterly incompetent Nigerian Immigration Service bureaucratic machine had delivered!

    Clearly, the story of unimaginable orgy of brutalisation and dehumanisation of the battalions of youths desperately in need of a job has only begun to unfold. Merely from the bits and parts – from Benin to Lagos, Minna to Kano, Port Harcourt to Makurdi, Enugu to Gombe – the revelation is about of a group of antediluvian officials being saddled with an assignment beyond their ken, individuals so terribly out of depth with elementary dictates of modern governance that leaves hanging the question of their qualifications for their high offices.

    If anyone ever doubted the extent to which the NIS’ has perfected its strange methodology of substitution by elimination, one only needs to recall that the service also despatched 17 promising Nigerians to the great beyond in similar circumstances in 2008. That year, the route was via strenuous physical exercise – without the due care to inquire into the applicants’ state of the fitness.

    This time around, the service simply herded thousands into closets designed to ensure that only the fittest make it alive. The result across the board was predictable: One score dead; more than three scores seriously injured.

    In Minna, Niger State, for instance, 11,000 were reported to have showed up at the Women Day Secondary School venue of the exercise. The crowd of applicants were said to have lined up stretching up to some two kilometres from the test venue leaving security agents to what they do best in the circumstance: brutalise the hapless applicants. At the end of the stampede which they helped to create, three lay dead. Next door Abuja was no better: the stampede inside the 60, 000 capacity stadium where the exercise took place ensured the loss of seven precious lives.

    Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital would share the same fate. An estimated 35,000 applicants had descended on the stadium as early 7 a.m. To quell the crowd that had become restive in the scorching heat, tear gas were freely used and in the ensuing stampede, five lay dead – among whom was a pregnant woman.

    Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital was a tad better; there security officials freely deployed horsewhips keep the thousands of youths gathered at the Mudashiru Lawal Stadium, Asero, Abeokuta, venue of the exercise in line. Never mind that the exercise slated for 9 a.m did not commence till around 3:30 p.m, by which time a large number of the applicants, frustrated, had already left for home.

    Let us look at the statistics behind the doomed venture to appreciate why the dunderheads in the NIS should be herded to the gulag. At the conservative figure of 520,000 said to have applied for vacant slots said to be anything between 3,500 to 5,000, they ought to have appreciated why an exercise which guaranteed a less than one percent success outcome would create the kind of ugly scenario such as we saw. As it now turns out, our grave mistake was to assume that the fat, analogue heads at the NIS – although clever enough to appreciate the need to extort N1,000 from each of the applicants – ought to know a thing or two about basic management, or the notion of problem-solving – the ability to anticipate problems before they occur?

    Perhaps, having gotten away with murder the last time, the hierarchs of the NIS have come to believe that they could do it as often as it pleased them without being called to account. That was why a so-called minister of the republic – Abba Moro or what’s his name would dare to pronounce a verdict of guilt on the victims for – wait for it – impatience!

    I do not believe that the citizens have fully grasped the import of the criminal negligence that the NIS and its principal, the federal government, perpetrated at the weekend. Imagine a different scenario – involving say an Asian company, in which the dead was numbered in 10s. Imagine further, the company chief executive showing up on prime time television to put the blame on the victims even when the facts are only still trickling in.

    And – imagine the federal government, carrying on as if nothing happened.

    No doubt, the tragic events of the weekend say a lot about who we are. Taken together with other developments in the polity, it says a lot about our regression into the jungle where life is not just brutish but short.

    Let me say that the outpouring of outrage is understandable. Perhaps, it is the kind of therapy citizens need to assuage their collective guilt in the face of their failure to galvanise collective action to demand the kind of change that they want. Good as outrage is, the point is that they are never nearly sufficient. I have seen too many Nigerian youths put up with just about anything in the misguided believe that they would chance upon some future fortune. I have seen innumerable others take solace in false dogma which demand unreason while outsourcing personal responsibility .

    I don’t think Nigerian youths, mighty as the army has become, are nearly as angry as they should be.