The Nation Newspaper

Category: Vincent Akanmode

  • A clue to Buhari’s public rating at one

    Penultimate Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari assured Nigerians, particularly those who voted for him in the last general election, that his is not a ‘one-chance’ government. Speaking at the 2015 edition of the annual Vanguard Awards where he was declared the Personality of the Year, the President said he was quite aware of the strangulating inflation, frustrating blackout, protracted fuel scarcity and other socio-economic problems Nigerians are grappling with and commended the people for their perseverance.

    ‘One Chance’ allegation is one that any sane leader would dissociate itself from, particularly one in the mould of Buhari whose avowed mission is to correct the wrongs of successive administrations before him had institutionalised and make life better for the ordinary man. The phrase (One Chance) was originally used for a category of armed robbers who lure impatient commuters into a bus only to rob them of money and other valuable items.

    They give the innocent commuter the impression that they need only one more passenger, an indication that his time would not be wasted. The commuter ignorantly rushes into the bus to realise too late that he had just hopped himself into the den of robbers. They dispossess him of anything of value they find on him and then push him off the moving bus. He dies or gets treated for serious injuries If he is lucky not to. ‘One Chance’ is thus a crime that combines fraud and murder.

    The President’s words at the Vanguard Awards were both timely and reassuring at a time despondency has virtually supplanted hope. The wind of despair is so violent that it has started weakening the resolve of diehard Buhari supporters. That explains why millions of other Nigerians consider the President’s apology as one too many. The issues at hand, they argue, are such that a genuinely concerned government would find ways around without being weighed down by legislative approval or other bureaucratic bottlenecks. To this category Nigerians, the President’s words would only be as soothing as a father telling his famished son to stop crying because a cow had been tied to the stake. The question is what happens before he slaughters the cow, roasts it, separates the parts and turns them into edible lots?

    Prolonged hope, the scriptures say, causes the mind to grow weary. That much was evident in the reactions to a piece I wrote in this column about one month ago asking Nigerians to be patient with the Buhari administration. Titled Buhari and the Cynics’ Catechism, I had warned well-meaning Nigerians to be wary of the antics of anti-Buhari elements who after trying in vain to scuttle his presidential ambition would stop at nothing to discredit his government now that he is in power.

    As it became clear from the scores of reactions to my piece, my plea for patience with the President fell on angry ears. From the tones of their reactions, it would seem that many of our countrymen, including those who rooted for President Buhari in the build-up to the last presidential election, have become disillusioned. A lot of them feel disappointed more for what President Buhari has failed to do than what he has done. One complained, for instance, that the President does not need any piece of legislation to remove many of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s appointees who are still occupying strategic positions in his government, particularly when he has had occasions to complain of sabotage. “As I write, an indicted former police henchman remains a member of the Police Service Commission (PSC), and Buhari does not deem it necessary to remove him,” he said.

    Another wondered why the President could not source for funds from banks and other financial institutions while awaiting the passage of the budget, to start fixing the death traps that criss-cross the country as roads when the law permits him to spend as much as 50 per cent of previous year’s budget while he awaits the passage of the new budget. Yet another is angry that “he played to the gallery to please the PDP by saying that he belongs to no one. How can a president voted to redirect governance make such a non-committal statement when the good people who want progress for their country had succeeded in overcoming the evil men at the poll and hand power over to him?”

    Another wrote: “You may disagree but mark my word. The Buhari regime won’t achieve much in four years. What are their strategic initiatives? Basically none. The fundamentals killing Nigeria are heavy salaries for both politicians and civil servants; a top-heavy federal government (now with 36 ministers, 10 presidential jets, 900 MDAs, heavy security votes and severance allowances for politicians), lack of local capacity in electricity generation. It is either Buhari works or he quits.”

    The President, it seems, would have to do a lot in the remaining three years of his tenure to retain the goodwill on which he rode to power.

  • Thoughts on our growing population of gay men

    I was jolted from my mental slumber on Monday by a message Kenny Brandmuse posted on his Instagram page. The brand expert had fled Nigeria for the US last year after publicly admitting his status as an HIV-positive homosexual. His action came as a rude shock to his friends and colleagues at Orange Academy, a Lagos-based school that trains brand managers.

    Lamenting how much he had missed home after fleeing the country for fear of molestation, he wrote: “I’ve been very homesick lately. My desire to kneel beside my mom’s grave and lay her some wreath of beautiful flowers; to see my twin sister and pinch her fat cheeks while she criticises everything I would easily think is good enough. I miss being at Orange (Academy), assisting brilliant minds in bringing their ideas to life, advising tons of amazing people about their personal branding and stories.” Brandmuse also lamented how deeply he missed booli (roast plantain), his favourite delicacy, fortified with organically grown peanuts. He also said he missed his nephew, who made it a duty to get him the delicacy, and other friends and acquaintances.

    Since Nigeria passed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act into law on January 7, 2014, prohibiting homosexuals from meeting in groups of two or more, banning marriage or civil union between people of the same sex and criminalising gay clubs and events, it would seem that more and more Nigerians are openly confessing their gay status. Apart from Brandmuse, other Nigerians who have confessed to being gay include Bisi Alimi. He was, indeed, the first Nigerian to declare his sexuality on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) as a guest of the station’s talk show queen, Funmi Iyanda, in 2004.

    Rev. Jide Macaulay, the founder of House of Rainbow Fellowship, a secret gay church based in Lagos, is reputed as Nigeria’s first gay preacher. He was said to have relocated to the UK after a national newspaper did a story on his homosexual church and he began to receive threats to his life. John Amaechi, who has a Nigerian father and English mother, is reputed as the first Nigerian Basketball Association (NBA) player to speak openly about being gay.

    Other Nigerians who have openly admitted their gay status include Dr. Otibho Obianwu who spoke for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual Nigerians in Diaspora at a rally in Abuja when the bill prohibiting same-sex marriage was passed by the National Assembly; John Adeniyi who opined that passing the anti-gay bill would only encourage heterosexual marriage as well as prevent homosexuals from getting quality medical care; John Adewoye who is on self exile and Chika Nwafor who got married to his German gay lover and has been living with him in Germany.

    Upon his visit to the US as president-elect last year, many Nigerians were worried that President Muhammadu Buhari could bow to the pressure that had been mounted on Nigeria, particularly from the UK, to subscribe to a practice that constitutes a veritable threat to procreation and expose more people to sexually transmitted diseases. But the President minced no words in rejecting the practice he preferred to call sodomy; a subtle reminder on the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, the corrupt cities upon which God rained fire and brimstones for practising homosexuality.

    But victory over homosexuality and same-sex marriage appears not yet in sight as European and American nations are taking turns to pass legislations that seek to legalise the practice. Only recently, hundreds of same-sex couples in Chile headed to registry offices to celebrate civil unions, which became legal for the first time in the country.

    Although the Catholic Church is a powerful influence in the region, Latin America has been relatively quick to embrace the recognition of same-sex unions. Like the US and the UK, same-sex marriage has been legalised in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and some parts of Mexico. Technology has turned the world into a global village and the penchant of our youths for seeking greener pastures in societies that have already adopted the practice is on the increase.

    Like it happened with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, Nigerians who travel abroad could fall prey to the idea and return home to sell it to their peers. There are fears already that the practice is already gaining ground not only on university campuses but also in the dormitories of secondary schools. The threat, therefore, could be as serious within as it is without.

    Contrary to what the US, the UK and other gay-compliant countries would want the world to believe, the few gay practitioners among us are the ones exposing the lives of the majority to danger. They constitute a threat not only to procreation but also to our collective health as a nation.

    I fear that in the near future, Nigerian parents may start suspecting that their children are flirting with their friends even when they are of same sex. The day may soon arrive when your male son would come home with his friend and you start peeping through the window just to be sure that they are not sex pals. Did you just say God forbid?

  • Wanted: Responsive women as Buhari’s ministers

    If ever there was a contest like ‘picture of the week’, the prize for the last week in January would be won by the Minister of Environment, Hajia Amina Mohammed. The picture in which she operated a bulldozer was spectacular not only because she ventured into a vocation preserved for men but also because her status as a minister towers over and above the lowly venture. It was the last Saturday in January and the minister felt the best way to highlight the importance of the monthly environmental sanitation ritual at a time the nation was under the triple threat of Lassa fever, Ebola and Zika Virus was to lead by example. So, there she was, looking dead serious as she mounted the bulldozer in her lemon yellow jacket and customary head gear.

    She had toed the path of the Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung, who a few days earlier was pictured in a 100-metre race; a move that seemed to drive home the saying that if you are made the king of hawks, you must show yourself capable of preying on chickens. As a perceptive Nigerian joked on a social media platform after the Minister of Environment’s act, Nigerians are waiting to see the Minister of Power mount a high-tension pole to fix some naughty electrical problems and for the Minister of Aviation to pilot an aeroplane from Abuja to Lagos.

    Of course, Mohammed and Dalung’s actions are in perfect sync with the change mantra on which the present government rode into office. The only worry is that a similar act by the immediate past minister of petroleum resources, Mrs Diezani Allison-Madueke, in 2008 turned out an anti-climax. Upon her appointment as minister of transportation in 2008, she undertook a facility tour of Benin-Ore Expressway and arrested national attention as she wept profusely in front of cameras in open lamentation of the bad condition of the road.

    Explaining why she betrayed emotions at the spot, Diezani had said: “I weep at the sight of everything that shows failure of government in Nigeria. Lagos-Shagamu-Ore-Benin Road is a clear picture of Nigerian state abandonment of its responsibility to its citizens.” She then vowed that she would fix the road, saying: “The challenge for us is to act wisely in dealing with this matter. The error has been made, but I think we can still correct the problem by looking for what will ensure a renewed government relevance not for self-serving or the good of a few, but the good of all.” As it turned out, nothing happened beyond theatrical shedding of tears until she was deployed to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

    At the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, the former minister fared even worse, going by the revelations of the shady deals that rocked the oil industry while she held sway as minister. So shocking were the revelations that Nigerians, ordinarily the most sympathetic people on earth, were not moved by reports of her battles with cancer. Rather, they are clamouring that she be repatriated from the United Kingdom to Nigeria to answer to charges of money laundering and other allegations of corrupt practices already leveled at her. In October last year, she was arrested along with four other suspects by the National Crime Agency in the UK for money laundering. The former minister was later arraigned before a Magistrate Court and charged with international bribery and money laundering. Her international passport was also seized.

    But she is not alone in the big let-down that most of our women appointed to leadership positions have been. In spite of her Brentwood upbringing and her exotic profile as a former Managing Director of the World Bank, the tenure of Dr. Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala has been trailed by dirty controversy. Since she left office in May last year, the former minister of finance has been in the eye of the storm over the mega looting of the nation’s treasury under her watch. Former Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Ndidi Okereke-Onyiuke, left office in hazy circumstances following her involvement in the controversial Obama fund raiser. Her successor, Aruma Otte, did not fare better as the staff of NSE were practically at war with her for most part of her tenure for alleged highhandedness and reckless spending.

    As minister of aviation, Senator Stella Oduah made the headlines for months after her alleged approval of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authorities’ acquisition of two bulletproof cars for a whopping N255 million. A presidential panel constituted by the then President Goodluck Jonathan later indicted her for wrongdoing. As the spokesperson of the State Security Service (SSS), Maryln Ogar was a study in professional misconduct as she practically turned herself to the publicity manager of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    The clamour for greater involvement of women in governance is based not just on their high population but also on the thinking that the woman folk is endowed with more milk of human kindness and would consequently be more responsive to the needs of ordinary people. But the experience we have had with most of the women so far appointed as ministers and heads of government agencies has been anything but gladdening. The spectacle that has confronted us time and again is that of awfully insensitive women who think nothing of appropriating public funds to themselves, their cronies and members of their families.

    Will Amina Mohammed and other women in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet change this ugly trend and live up to the expectations of right-thinking Nigerians? Only time will tell.

  • Buhari and the cynics’ catechism

    The ease with which human memory fades cannot but amaze any right-thinking individual. Less than 10 months into the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a good number of Nigerians, seemingly bitten by the bug of amnesia, seems to have forgotten the clear and present danger the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan constituted to our collective future.

    They are therefore pandering to the propaganda machinery of a section of the political class which since the build-up to the last general election has sworn never to see anything good in the former head of state.

    The reason, of course, is understandable. His ways are not their ways. He would not condone the rot that gave some mindless Nigerians the courage to pocket billions of dollars meant to purchase arms for the fight against Boko Haram, the soulless gang responsible for the senseless murder of no fewer than 15,000 innocent Nigerians in the North East, Abuja and elsewhere in the country, and the maiming of thousands of other hapless souls.

    To be sure, President Buhari has had his imperfections—a fact of life that is true of every mortal. For instance, it is hard to justify the fact that it took him seven odd months to constitute his cabinet after he was sworn in as president on May 29 last year, particularly because the names he came up with in the end did not emanate from Mars. Not a few people think, and rightly so, that Chris Ngige, Rotimi Amaechi, Audu Ogbe, Babatunde Fashola, Abubakar Malami and Udo Udoma are not names that should have taken the President  eternity to compile. Their screening by the Directorate of State Service (DSS) should also not have taken more than a week or two, such that in a space of two or three months, a government would be in place.

    It is also indefensible that 10 months into Buhari’s tenure the contractors in charge of the death traps we call roads across the country are yet to return to site for the construction works they have long abandoned because the previous administration would not fulfill its contractual obligations to them. It should not have been difficult for the government to call a meeting with the contractors to strike a deal with them to return to site with the assurance that the sums due to them would be paid once the National Assembly passed the 2016 budget. Instead, the government waited and waited till the rains are back.

    But these few lapses cannot deny the Buhari administration credit for the good works it has done towards righting the wrongs that drew us from the zenith of prosperity to the nadir of misery. Its massive achievements in such areas as security, anti-corruption war, the restructuring of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), improved power generation, reduction in the cost of governance and enhanced image of Nigeria in the international community would only go unnoticed by negative-minded individuals who would rather see the cup as half-empty than see it as half-full.

    Only diehard cynics would deny the fact that the strength of Boko Haram, the killer sect that once constituted veritable danger to our collective existence, has been decimated since Buhari became president. Not only has most of the territories occupied by the sect in the North East been reclaimed by our resurgent  troops the frequency of explosions masterminded by the sect in different parts of the country has drastically reduced. Gone now are the days when residents of Abuja, the nation’s capital city, slept with an eye open.

    The President has not only arrested the rot in the all-important NNPC, it has also restructured the organisation for better efficiency and transparency. He has resuscitated some refineries with a view to reducing the nation’s dependence on imported fuel. The knotty issue of subsidy removal has also been addressed without the anticipated fuss.

    For obvious reasons, however, diehard critics of Buhari would rather harp on the few things he has failed to do than highlight his numerous achievements. Having failed to stop his emergence as president with such issues as his age, religious disposition and certificates, they believe that the next thing they should do is rubbish his achievements and dramatise his failures in order to discredit him and his party. Hence, rather than commend the President for the trips on account of which Nigeria is being restored to its pride of place in the comity of nations, the trips that resulted in the formation of the multi-national force that has been dealing deadly blows on Boko Haram, attracting foreign investors and facilitating financial aid from wealthier nations, they say he is globe-trotting and wasting the nation’s resources on foreign trips.

    The cynics would blame the President for fuel scarcity and blackout rather than question the activities of pipeline vandals and Niger Delta militants who think the best way to express their grievances with government is to blow up oil and gas installations. Rather than question the exotic taste of Nigerians who would not touch a toothpick except it is imported, they blame the high exchange rate of the naira on President Buhari’s government. Rather than credit the administration for detecting an ungodly practice the nation has been living with for ages, the cynics are holding up Buhari and his party for the padding of the 2016 budget masterminded by some civil servants.

    Unfortunately, many unsuspecting members of the public cannot see through the masochist plans of anti-Buhari elements. Rather than look into the future with hope, they have joined the murmuring crowd that says Buhari must turn the economic fortune of the nation around in less than 10 months in spite of the pillaging it has undergone for decades. God help Nigeria.

  • A nation under spell of spirituality

    Nigeria may not be Rome, but whosoever underestimates the influence of religion on its political direction does so at his or her own peril. In a country dominated by adherents of Christianity and Islam, it is an unwritten law that whenever a Christian emerges as a party’s candidate in a governorship or presidential election, the running mate must necessarily be a Muslim and vice versa. And when a cabinet is being constituted at state or federal level, the balance must be carefully weighed to ensure that the two religions are equally represented. Even organisers of public functions ensure that everything waits until prayers are said. And they must make sure that if the prayer session is being led by a Christian, a Muslim is also on standby to take his turn.

    Defined as an art of communion and communication with God, prayer is that moment when an individual or group seeks an audience with their Maker to express appreciation for what He has done for them or make supplications as to what they desire from Him in the form of guidance, protection or provision for their needs. This is done in the belief that there is a supreme being who orders the operations of the universe.

    Prayer is one of the most critical elements of religion, the very pivot on which it revolves, and it is as old as human history. But from the simple art of communion and communication with God, prayer is increasingly becoming a scientific endeavour; so sophisticated now that some smart Nigerians who boast of their ability to intercede with God on behalf of others are making a career of it, parading themselves with such designations as pastor, prophet or alfa.

    Regarded in general terms as spiritual consultants, they have succeeded in building a multi-billion naira industry that now constitutes a huge drain on the nation’s finances. From one administration to another, there have been tales of a section of the Presidential Villa being carved out for marabouts and other hawkers of prayers whose job is to constantly draw the President’s attention to the threats of invisible enemies plotting to destabilise his government or eliminate him completely. In return for these unverifiable alerts, the President sets aside a huge slice of the national cake for their personal enjoyment.

    One of the major tasks that confronted the administration of the late former Nigerian president, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua barely one year after he assumed office was the effort to get to the roots of the allegation that a former chairman of the Niger Delta Development Corporation (NDDC) spent a mind-boggling sum from the corporation’s money on spiritual consultations. The then President had directed former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to find out how the then NDDC chairman spent N1 billion to secure the services of a sorcerer whose task was to employ spiritual means to enable chairman secure contracts from the Akwa Ibom State Government. The then NDDC chair was also alleged to have burnt the sum of N270 million at a cemetery in Port Harcourt, which he later bathed with in order to realise his wishes from the functionaries of Akwa Ibom State Government.

    A statement the sorcerer himself made at the Zone 5 Police Headquarters in Benin, Edo State, quoted him as admitting that the former NDDC chair paid the sum of N15 million into his executive savings account in Ughelli, Delta State branch of a new generation bank to make some sacrifice in order to retain his position as NNDC chairman when the board was dissolved. He also said that he received three different requests from his client, namely to work on the mind of the then Akwa Ibom State governor in order to secure contracts from him; to kill the then Managing Director of NDDC to enable him have his way in decision making processes and to also work on the then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to secure his backing if any move was made to remove him as NDDC chair. For the above tasks, the sorcerer admitted charging N570 million which the then NDDC chair paid in installments of N220 million, N50 million and N40 million, with N260 million as the balance outstanding.

    The relationship between the sorcerer and the former NDDC chair was said to have turned sour when the period set for the former NDDC managing director expired without any news of his death. The former NDDC chair demanded a refund of the sum he had committed to the project while the witch doctor said the job could not be done without payment of the outstanding N260 million. The ensuing face-off prompted the former NDDC chair to report the matter to the police, alleging that he was defrauded by the sorcerer, adding that he was under a spell when he made the payments. “The amount of money the fraudster collected from me through the hypnotic spell is about N800 million. The extortion spread over months and were always with death threats to my person and family members, friends and staff,” he said.

    One of the high points of the last general election was the allegation that a Presidency official masterminded the distribution of a sum ranging between six and seven billion naira among clerics to secure their support for the then President Goodluck Jonathan as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in last year’s presidential election. And one of the most shocking revelations of the sum of $2.1 billion arms money allegedly mismanaged by the Office of the National Security Adviser under Col. Sambo Dasuki is the alleged admission by a former governor that the sum of N4.6 billion he got was meant for spiritual assignments!

    Nigeria is a nation that thrives on spirituality. Superstition clings to us like a cloak. Our undue commitment to non-empirical ways of doing things is the reason why we are where we are in spite of our heavy endowments. We are faced with the choice of recognising this primitive oddity and dealing constructively with it, or ignoring it and leaving in bondage to it.

  • A guide for our statesmen on trial

     

    Sitting on a couch in front of my house on Thursday night, I burst into unprovoked laughter as my mind wandered back to a scene that occurred in my neighbour’s church on the eve of New Year. His two-year-old baby moved to the front of the congregation during a session of praise worship and launched furiously into the dance steps of Shakiti Bobo, a song made popular by Nigerian hip-hop artiste, Olumide, which ironically had been banned by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) for its vulgar contents.

    The pristine innocence that guided the toddler’s action reminded me of some funny things my siblings and I did as kids to settle scores with our fastidious father. If there was ever a man too difficult to please, it would be my late father. Although he was a traditional ruler, he found fulfillment in farming and never joked with the vocation. In those days when it was fashionable for primary school leavers to go to secondary school outside the community, my father ensured that we attended secondary school within the community just so that we could spend our Saturdays on the farm. To worsen matters, he was not one that would praise you no matter how hard you worked. He was as quick to condemn you for failing to meet his expectations but very slow to commend you for surpassing them.

    Till this day, we still wonder what could have happened the day he came late to the farm and found that we had done a lot of work. When he said e ku ise o (well done), none of us thought we heard him right, so we all stood in utter bewilderment as we looked into one another’s eyes. Apparently aware of the looks of surprise that hung on our faces, he repeated those words of commendation and we responded with excitement. That remains the only moment of commendation I can recall.

    The long vacation was the period we hated most because it was certain that we would spend the entire period working on the farm while our peers travelled Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna and other distant cities for holiday. Knowing that he would never miss any opportunity he had to make us work on the farm, we devised our own ways of avoiding farm work. One of the things we did was to decide to fall sick from time to time so that we would be asked to stay at home with mum while the feigned sickness lasted.

    That, interestingly, seems the scenario that has been playing out among former public office holders accused of looting the treasury since the Buhari administration commenced its anti-corruption war. Accused persons who previously were bubbling with life have suddenly become victims of cancer, heart disease and other deadly illnesses. They post on the social media pathetic pictures in which they are sitting on wheelchair or walking with the aid of crutches. From former petroleum minister Diezani Allison-Madueke and former presidential adviser on Niger Delta Kingsley Kuku to former PDP chair Alhaji Haliru Bello and former Board of Trustees chairman of the PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, the fad has caught on so fast that smart Nigerian businessmen are already investing in wheelchair business.

    It is either these accused persons are guilty of deceit, pretending to be sick while they are not, or we are collectively guilty of being so uncaring that we don’t even know that our compatriots are heading for the grave until they are dragged out by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). If the latter were the case, it would constitute a bad commentary on our attitude as a people, but I don’t believe it is. As one of the most religious countries in the world, the easiest biblical or koranic injunction observable is to be our brothers’ keepers. It seems most probable therefore that many of the accused persons are merely playing the game some of us played as children to draw public sympathy. Unfortunately, Nigerians are now so disappointed with the deeds of many of their past public office holders to regal them with such sympathy.

    Our compatriots accused of embezzling, mismanaging or misappropriating public funds have no reason to panic. After all, as accused persons, they are assumed innocent until they are proved guilty in competent courts of law. And if they are found not to be innocent at the end of the day, the experiences of individuals like the late former Bayelsa State governor, Chief Diepriye Alamieyeseigha and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olabode George, are evidence that going to jail is not the end of the world. They could get presidential pardon and once more become statesmen after their prison experiences.

    It may be true that we no longer have as President a man that would indulge them like former President Goodluck Jonathan, but it is still not the end of the world. The prison, we are told by those who should know, is not the Golgotha that many of us think it is, but an institution of learning which does not only teach but also reform. They are certain to come out as better men and women. All they need to do while their jail terms last is to avoid the clock, the wristwatch and the calendar so they would have no knowledge of date or time. That way, their jail terms will run out before they know it and they will reunite with their families, friends and the rest of us in the outside world.

    In the mean time, I strongly recommend that the authorities start considering complementing our courts with well-equipped hospitals and competent medical personnel to attend to the medical needs of suspected treasury looters on trial. It would make it easier to move them to court on wheelchairs like Augusto Pinochet and Hosni Mubarak. They have learnt to shoot without missing; we also should learn to fly without perching.

  • Help! These billions are driving me crazy!

    The subject I dreaded most as a student was Mathematics. The sight of numbers easily unsettled me. Not a few of my concerned teachers had to call me to their offices to ask what my problem was with a subject many of my classmates gleefully announced as their best. Their concern was accentuated by the fact that my performance in the subject was always drawing my position back. They reckoned that but for my poor performance in Mathematics, I would consistently be one of the best three in my class, but they were worried by a situation where I would perform excellently in other subjects only for Mathematics to mess up the overall result.

    At the initial stage, I made deliberate efforts to overcome the phobia I had for the subject, but the harder I tried, the more monstrous it became until the sight of numbers sent panic waves through my spinal cord. So, from my early years in secondary school, I knew that I was not going to have anything to do with any course with a bent of Mathematics. Mercifully, there were many courses I could do in the university without been capable of adding two and two together. I made up my mind as far back as that time that I would study Law or Mass Communication. It goes without saying, therefore, that one of my biggest reliefs as I left secondary school was that I would no longer endure the sessions of abracadabra my classmates called Mathematics period.

    Since I left secondary school, I have avoided figures like leprosy except where they had to do with money. I have done so successfully until President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office on May 29 and the ugly monster started baring its fangs again in the form of the billions of dollars reporters are quoting on a daily basis as sums embezzled by some actors in the immediate past administration of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. To be sure, many concerned Nigerians had expressed their fears long before Buhari assumed office that many officials of the administration had preoccupied themselves with the looting of public treasury. Only that no one seemed to suspect that the sums involved could be anything near the mind-boggling ones that are being rolled out on a daily basis.

    The alarm bell was first sounded by former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now the Emir of Kano, when at the twilight of the Jonathan administration he accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of failing to pay about $20 billion in oil revenue to the government between 2012 and 2013. The government denied that any money was missing even before an investigation was conducted, and removed Sanusi as CBN governor.

    But that turned out to be the beginning of the revelations in the graft that enveloped the Jonathan administration. PriceWaterHouseCoopers, an audit firm the Jonathan government hurriedly commissioned to audit the books of the NNPC, said the corporation only had to account for $1.48 billion. But a former CBN governor, Chukwuma Soludo, wrote a long, acerbic article accusing the managers of the nation’s economy of misappropriating over N30 trillion of public funds, including several billions in oil money.

    In an opinion article published by the Financial Times of London, Sanusi also faulted the report of PriceWaterHouseCoopers, saying the argument that the outstanding amount was used by the NNPC for apparently unlawful purposes such as kerosene subsidy, did not diminish the notion that the NNPC illegally withheld billions of dollars from the government. “Contrary to the claims of petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the audit report does not exonerate the NNPC. It establishes that the gap between the company’s oil revenues between January 2012 and July 2013 and cash remitted to the government for the same period was $18.5bn,” Sanusi said.

    But those were just signs of the things to come as has been evident in the mind-boggling revelations of the sleaze that had had been the lot of the nation’s finances under Jonathan. Edo State governor and member of the National Economic Council (NEC), Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was the first to raise the alarm shortly after the NEC was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari on June 29, saying that the sum of $2 billion the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF) said was left in the excess crude account (ECA) was $2.1 billion short of the $4.1 billion the former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had earlier declared.

    Oshiomhole said: The last time the former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, reported to the council, and it is in the minutes, she reported by November 2014 that we had $4.1 bn. Today, the Accountant-General Office reported we have $2.0bn. Which means the honourable minister spent $2.1bn without authority of the NEC and that money was not distributed to states, it was not paid to the three tiers of government.”

    Okonjo-Iweala promptly responded to the allegation in a statement issued by her spokesperson, Paul Nwabuikwu, describing the allegation that she made the withdrawals without authorization as false and malicious, insisting that the withdrawals had the blessings of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) whose meetings are attended by finance commissioners of the 36 states of the federation. But FAAC promptly took exception to Okonjo-Iweala’s claim that it (FAAC) was privy to the withdrawal of the said sum, saying that Okonjo-Iweala’s explanation was “far from the fact and misleading,” adding that the law that set it up did not give it the power to approve withdrawals from the ECA.

    Apparently rattled by the FAAC’s reaction, Okonjo-Iweala shifted the blame on former President Goodluck Jonathan on whose directives she said the withdrawals were predicated.

    Yet more shocking are the sordid tales emerging from the sum of $2.1 billion the immediate past National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki allegedly withdrew from the Central Bank of Nigeria for arms that were never acquired. Already named among the beneficiaries of the scandalous deal are the chairman emeritus of DAAR Communications Limited, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi; former Director of Finance in the Office of the National Security Adviser, Mr. Shuaibu Salisu and former Sokoto State governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, among others.

    Only yesterday, the news media were awash with the story of another sum of N8.4 billion the Jonathan government paid Dokpesi’s DAAR Communications Limited for a contract awarded to it by Federation of International Football (FIFA). That was a day after Salisu relived how he moved 11 suitcases loaded with $47 million from the Central Bank to Dasuki’s house in Abuja. The figures are already making me dizzy but the President says the facts are only beginning to emerge. I need help before the billions drive me nuts.

  • Time to call these Igala irredentists to order

    An aberration that started like a joke is being pushed to ridiculous limits by some Igala irredentists in Kogi State. I am talking about the definition of the state’s brand of democracy as government of the Igala by the Igala and for the Igala. It was a definition jokingly cast to capture the extent to which the Igala tribe has marginalised other tribes in the state in the sharing of its public offices and distribution of resources, carrying on as if the other tribes in the multi-ethnic state are non-existent. Thus, in spite of the significant population of the Yoruba and the Igbira, the Igala have produced all the governors in the state since the nation returned to democratic rule in 1999.

    Indeed, the first governorship election conducted in the state in the short-lived Third Republic ushered in by the Babangida administration in 1992 was won by Prince Abubakar Audu, an Igala man who died on Sunday as the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) after leading in the said election. About two years into his four-year tenure (January 1992 to November 1993), however, a military coup that ushered in the late Gen. Sani Abacaha-led military administration in 1994 truncated Audu’s reign like those of other elected governors around the country, But with the lifting of the ban on party politics by the Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar-led military government, Audu returned in 1999 and won the governorship election once again.

    Audu’s bid for a second term in 2003 ran into a brick wall as he suffered a defeat in the hands of his Igala kinsman, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, who contested the election on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Coming in as a carpenter from his base in Sokoto to rule the highly enlightened state, Idris ended up spending nine years in the saddle, including the one year he had spent before a rerun was ordered for his disputed second term electoral victory. Those who had expected that he would support his deputy, Mr. Philip Salawu (an Igbira), to become his successor soon realised how mistaken they were when Idris began to search desperately for an Igala successor as his tenure wound to a close.

    And while word went round that Idris had endorsed a former executive director of the defunct Afribank, Jibrin Isa Echocho, he drafted his brother-in-law and incumbent governor, Captain Idris Wada, into the race and rallied support to ensure that Wada did not only pick the governorship ticket of the PDP but also won the governorship election. The initial thinking was that Idris dumped Echocho for Wada at the last minute because he felt that the latter, being his in-law, would be more favourably disposed to covering his tracks. It later emerged that the real reason the former governor dumped Echocho was that the former banker was working too closely with Senator Smart Adeyemi, an Okun (Yoruba) man then representing Kogi West Senatorial District, raising fears among some Igala people that Echocho would likely yield the governorship of the state to the Okun (Yoruba) tribe if he was allowed to succeed Idris.

    The foregoing is the context within which the call by some APC members in Kogi East that an Igala man should assume the mandate jointly won by deceased Audu and his running mate, Hon. James Faleke, can be best understood. The insistence by these Igala irredentists that the ticket must be inherited only by an Igala man is both insensitive and irresponsible. It confirms the fear that non-Igala people in the state has always nurtured: that the Igala tribe, which has occupied the governorship seat since 1990, is not willing to yield the seat to any other tribe, no matter the circumstance. Unknown to them, they have given Audu’s critics who waved his touted commitment to power rotation in the state as a smokescreen the chance to throw their arms up in a gesture of vindication. Some of them had vowed that the deceased APC candidate would be pressurised by these Igala irredentists to return to his tribal cocoon once he had accomplished the mission to govern the state for the third time.

    The ethnic jingoists took their sense of Igala supremacy to ridiculous heights by insinuating that the governorship seat of Kogi State is now a traditional stool to be passed from father to son or inherited by son from father, hence they demanded that a governorship mandate jointly won by Audu and his running mate be handed over to Audu’s son on a platter, even if the latter does not know as much of politics as to be capable of identifying a ballot paper. Surprisingly, lawmakers in the state House of Assembly joined the strange call on Friday, threatening to impeach anyone who becomes the governor other than Audu’s son.

    It would probably be easy to stomach this offensive stance if there are concrete achievements to show for the 16 years that the Igala have led the state. But the 16 years, particularly the 13 under Idris’ and Wada’s belts, are most appropriately called Kogi’s years of the locust.

    It is bad enough that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) decided to stir up a crisis where there was none by declaring an election that had been won by the APC as inconclusive. The common sense analysis of the situation is that the APC candidate ought to have been declared the winner of the election, having led his closest rival and sitting governor by 41,000 votes while there are only 25,000 eligible voters in the polling units where the election was cancelled. We should not now compound the situation by asking that the highly revered governorship seat of Kogi State be turned into a traditional stool. It is not only a dent on the reputation of Kogi but also a disservice to the late politician’s avowed commitment to power rotation among the major ethnic groups in the state.

  • Diezani: No longer a country of merciful people

    An indisputable attribute of Nigeria as a nation is its highly religious nature. The country ranks easily as one of the most religious nations in the world, if not outright the most religious. Every community from Lagos to Maiduguri and Sokoto to Port Harcourt boasts religious centres that brim with enthusiastic worshippers, particularly on Fridays and Sundays, the two days of the week set aside by the Muslim and Christian faithful for spiritual edification.

    In a survey tagged ‘What the World Thinks of God’, conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2004, Nigeria stood out as the only country where 100 per cent of the participants said they believe in God. The result of the survey held in 10 countries (US, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico and Lebanon) also showed a country like South Korea with just about 7 per cent of its population declaring that they believe in God. Nigeria, according to the said survey which involved about 1,000 participants in each country, also stood out as the only country where more than 90 per cent of her populations are willing to die for their religious convictions. More than 91 per cent of the people interviewed said they regularly attend religious services while 95 per cent of them said they pray regularly.

    It therefore came as no surprise thatNigeria was rated in a 2010 Gallup global poll as having the “happiest people on earth”. The poll of 64,000 people from 53 countries around the world found Nigerians to be the most optimistic in the world in their outlook for 2011. Earlier in 2003, a study of more than 65 countries published in the UK’s New Scientist magazine had also suggested that the happiest people in the world live in Nigeria. Of course, there is no denying the fact that an organic relationship exists between faith and happiness. Both Islam and Christianity, Nigeria’s two most popular religions, preach love, tolerance, forgiveness and the will to accept fortune and misfortune with equanimity. The people stick stoically to the scriptural injunction that they should rejoice in all things, even when it is obvious that their rapacious leaders are ripping them off.

    But all that seems to be changing if the result of a recent survey conducted by Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), an initiative under the United Nations is anything to go by. According to the report, from its first position about a decade ago, Nigeria now ranks a distant 78th on the list of world’s happiest nations. The new list was topped by Switzerland, closely followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada. Even in Africa, Nigeria ranks second behind Algeria, which ranks 68th in the world. The import of this is that in the last decade or so, Nigerians have transformed significantly from happy people to a sad and cynical ones.

    There is no better way to appreciate the foregoing than the way Nigerians have reacted to the reported sickness of the immediate past Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke. Since the news of her battle with breast cancer in a London hospital broke sometime in June, majority of the comments posted on the social media indicate the departure of Nigerians from the ways of a people that turn the other cheek in the face of fragrant assault. It is no longer a nation of people who are so quick to hand matters over to God in obvious or perceived cases of rip-off. Before now, the reaction of the average Nigerian to the pictures of grossly emaciated Diezani posted on the social media was that of empathy. Seeing the horrible pictures, they would erase her real or perceived misdeeds from their memories and launch into prayers for her quick recovery. That, surprisingly, has not been the case.

    As one of the closest ministers to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Alison-Madueke was at the centre of a controversy over more than $20 billion oil revenues the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) allegedly failed to deposit at the Central Bank of Nigeria. Although the ex-minister has refuted the allegation, not many Nigerians appear convinced that she is as clean as a hound’s tooth like she would want the world to believe in an interview she recently granted The Boss magazine in the UK. Rather than draw their sympathy, many Nigerian commentators on the social media claimed that the frail and near-bald pictures that accompanied the interview were forged or doctored to engender public sympathy for the once powerful minister.

    Most of the comments on Diezani’s purported sickness reveal how much our sense of sympathy as a people has waned on account of the suspicious acts of many of our leaders. So much so that we would now not spare a thought for them if they find themselves in the same condition as the former Minister of Petroleum. “When the going was good, she was proud, arrogant and unaccountable to anyone except Jonathan,” said one commentator.”She thought too much of herself and accorded royal treatment to her flesh. Even first class flying was beneath her so she had to fly in chartered aircraft. Now that she is down, she has all the time to reflect on her misdeeds, make peace with God and prepare for eternity. Dizzy babe, you had it all at the expense of your health and soul. Please stop telling lies and return our money.”

    Another commentator said: “If she likes, let her lose all her teeth and toe nails. She should come and account for our money. Chikena! After all, given her age, she may well look like she does in the picture without makeup and Brazilian hair.”

    Another wrote: “For a patient undergoing breast cancer treatment, Diezani was looking quite good. I have seen such patients before. After chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the hair falls off. So do finger nails and toe nails. But within a year, they all grow back and the patient makes a marvelous recovery.”

    Yet another said: “Please tell that to the marines… We all pray that Diezani gets well very soon so that she can return all the looted funds. Cancer or no cancer, Nigerians want their money back. Only God knows how many Nigerians die from preventable illnesses due to leeches that siphoned our billions overseas.”

    Is mercy dead?

  • Eaglets’ victory more than World Cup triumph

    It must be more than sheer coincidence that President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated his cabinet the same day the victorious national Under-17 football team, the Golden Eaglets, returned home with the World Cup trophy for a record fifth time since the country won the maiden edition of the tournament in 1985. By some divine arrangement, the cup returned to Nigeria and into the warm embrace of President Buhari, who was the nation’s head of state when the country first won it 30 years ago. An elated Buhari had promised some juicy rewards for members of the team and its technical crew in 1985, which included landed property and the directive that each member of the team captained by Nduka Ugbade should have a street named after them in the capital of their respective states.

    It turned out, however, that 11 days after Buhari made the promises to the players and technical crew, his regime was ousted in a coup that brought in Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) as military president. Gone with the Buhari regime were the lofty promises as both the Babangida regime and the successive governments since then closed their eyes to them. But as fate would have it, Buhari was elected as president on March 28 after three previous shots at the coveted seat. It then fell to him on Wednesday to receive the team that won the Under-17 World Cup in grand style in far away Chile. The team achieved the feat by beating Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Mali and the host Chile in the tournament that also featured acclaimed football world powers like Germany, Argentina, England, Belgium and France.

    Nigeria did not only come out from the log as cup winners, two members of the team, Victor Osimhen and Kelechi Nwakali, won four of the seven individual accolades on parade. In addition to winning the golden boot as tournament highest goals scorer and the silver ball as second most valuable player, Osimhen set a new world record by poaching 10 goals against the nine-goal record previously held by Florent Simama Pongolle of France and Souleymane Coulibally of Ivory Coast. Nwakali, the team’s skipper also emerged the most valuable player of the competition and the third most prolific goal scorer with three goals and three assists. Recall that Nigeria had previously won the tournament four times since 1985 and even went to the just concluded edition as defending champions only to win it the fifth time.

    The foregoing are pointers to the talent that abound in Nigeria, not only in football but other spheres of human endeavour. Professor Wole Soyinka is a holder of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nigeria’s Phili Emeagwali is respected worldwide as father of the computer. The USA-based winner of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which many prefer to call ‘Supercomputing Nobel Prize’, is credited with the invention of a formula that allows computers to perform their fastest computations. Of course, there are others too numerous to mention. The sad story, however, is that we are yet to achieve the same feat in the most critical area of our lives, namely political leadership. Save perhaps for the First Republic, corrupt and rapacious power brokers have since independence conspired to ensure that individuals who would not do their bidding are prevented from gaining access to political leadership or cut short their stay short if they do.

    Two examples will suffice. The first was the ascension of the late General Murtala Mohammed as the nation’s head of state after the Yakubu Gowon administration was ousted in a coup de tat in 1975. The former Nigerian leader immediately set about the task of ridding Nigeria of corrupt leaders by purging the civil service of scores of permanent secretaries and directors believed to have soiled their hands. He even took his winnowing fork to the local government level by introducing series of reforms aimed at bringing that level of government considered as closest to the people into the mainstream of governance. But before he could go far with his reform agenda, he was brutally murdered in a coup led by Lt. Col. Buka Dimka less than eight months after he assumed power. The Buhari-led military administration, whose policies had restored hope that Nigeria was once again on the path of redemption after the deeds of the corrupt and inept Shehu Shagari-led administration in the Second Republic, was kicked out in the same fashion only to be replaced by a junta that adopted corruption as the directive principle of governance.

    The events of Wednesday cannot but raise the hope of well-meaning Nigerians that the country is back on the path of restoration under Buhari’s leadership after 30 years in the wilderness. That feeling was accentuated by the President’s promise on Wednesday that the government would yet fulfill all the promises it made to the squad of Golden Eaglets that won the maiden edition of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 1985. “It is a pity that those promises were never fulfilled. It is unfortunate that our players who did us proud on the world stage went unrewarded for their efforts despite a presidential directive to the state administrators that they be honoured in their home states,” the President said in a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu. “I apologise for whatever embarrassment and disillusionment these raised and the dashed hopes they may have caused. My government will do all within its power to remedy the situation,” the President added.

    One can only hope that the team of ministers the President has just assembled will key into the winning mentality of the Golden Eaglets by restoring the nation to its rightful place in the comity of nations through patriotic discharge of their responsibilities. Anything short of this would be unacceptable to the millions of Nigerians that trooped out to vote for change in the last general election.