Category: Vincent Akanmode

I am not a movie freak, but there is a film I have watched over and over and would not be tired of watching. It is America’s romantic comedy movie, Coming to America. I am deeply in love with it not only because of its hilarious nature and its African flair, but also because, unlike most American films, it is almost totally devoid of a violent scene.

But if I am confronted with a choice between Coming to America and the high drama that played out in the Senate over the confirmation of former Rivers State governor, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi, on Thursday, I would readily opt for the latter. I am convinced that if Thursday’s Senate session were adapted into a movie, it would clinch The Oscars prize for Best Picture and former Akwa Ibom State governor, Senator Godswill Akpabio, would face no challenge in picking the prize reserved for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

The stage had been set with the mild drama that attended Amaechi’s screening on the floor of the upper chamber penultimate Thursday. Every discerning mind knew after that day’s session that the confirmation of Amaechi’s ministerial appointment on Thursday would be anything but smooth.  Akpabio, a Peoples Democratic Party senator and Minority Leader in the APC-controlled chamber, had told the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, that PDP senators would not participate in Amaechi’s screening on October 22. The party’s position, he said, was based on the fact that the report of the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions on the allegation by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry constituted by Rivers State Government that Amaechi embezzled billions of naira belonging to the state while he held sway as governor had not been debated.

But if Akpabio and his fellow PDP members’ motive was to stall Amaechi’s screening and hold the Senate to ransom, the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Alli Ndume, had other ideas. He literally pulled the rug off Akpabio’s feet when he got up and told the Senate President with measured calmness that since the PDP senators were not prepared to ask questions, Amaechi, an emeritus member of the legislative arm of government, having functioned as the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly for eight years, should be asked to take a bow and leave. Of course, northern senator’s suggestion did not go down well with the PDP caucus whose members collectively voiced their opposition to it. In the end, Amaechi left the chamber grinning from ear to ear after fielding questions from APC senators, but keen political observers knew that the battle had only begun.

It resurfaced with high drama that played out in the charged atmosphere at the Senate on Thursday. The 49 PDP senators had their say as they took turns to advance reasons why Amaechi should not be confirmed a minister. Amaechi only needed a simple majority to be confirmed as minister. Hence it was the 59 APC senators in the house that had their way. Frustrated at Amaechi’s triumph, the PDP senators stormed out of the chamber, pitting the agony of their defeat against the joy of the victory of their APC counterparts. The APC senators hailed the outcome of Amaechi’s screening as the triumph of democracy and evidence of party cohesion. Their PDP counterparts said it was a rape on democracy and an eloquent testimony to the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari’s touted war against corruption is nothing but a fluke.

In essence, however, it was nemesis that was at play. Apostles of cyclical history (those who believe that history revolves in a cycle and thus repeats itself) heaved a sigh of vindication as PDP senators walked out the same way APC senators did over the confirmation of Senator Musiliu Obanikoro as minister in spite of vehement objection from APC senators after losing his bid for the governorship ticket of the PDP in Lagos State in the build-up to the last general election. After two failed attempts to confirm the former Nigerian Ambassador to Ghana on account of the resistance put up by the APC senators, the then Senate President, Senator David Mark, stoutly resisted all wiles and arguments put up by the then opposition lawmakers against Obanikoro’s confirmation. Senator Gbenga Ashafa representing Lagos had called the attention of the Senate President to the report on a suit filed by one Kemi Lawal against the confirmation of Obanikoro as a minister in a Lagos High Court. But the Senate President said he had not been served and would not act on a newspaper report. In the end, Obanikoro was asked to take a bow and go.

The PDP senators on their part wanted Amaechi to be denied a ministerial slot over the report of a panel of enquiry constituted by Amaechi’s bitter political rival, Governor Nyesom Wike, claiming that the immediate past Amaechi administration in the state misappropriated the sum of N97 billion accruing from the sale of some government assets, including four gas turbines. Amaechi had armed himself with a copy of the report of the panel of enquiry when he reported at the Senate for screening on October 22, insisting that there was no place where he was indicted in the entire report and the government white paper that followed it. The Senate Committee on Ethics, Priviledges and Public Petitions, chaired by PDP Senator Senator Samuel Anyanwu (PDP Imo East), also said the panel had recommended that Amaechi’s confirmation be put on hold because he was in court challenging the allegation against him.

But the question was being asked as to what moral right Akpabio had to lead a protest against Amaechi’s confirmation on the basis of a mere allegation when Akpabio himself has also been the guest of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission a number of times in recent weeks over an allegation that he embezzled the sum of N108.1 billion belonging to Akwa Ibom State while he was governor. If Akpabio would not resign his seat as senator over the weighty allegation, why would the Senate put Amaechi’s ministerial appointment on hold when he has not been convicted? Didn’t the law say that an accused person is innocent until he is proven guilty by a competent court of law? If every political office holder is removed from office on the basis of allegation, the nation will be left with very few of the current PDP and APC senators in the Senate chamber.

Fundamentally, the PDP saw the Amaechi’s screening as a battle for its own survival, particularly in its only remaining stronghold—the South-South region. After the massive defeat the APC inflicted on the party in the last general election, the only way it can hope to lauch a comeback or remain relevant is to maintain its hold on the states it currently controls, particularly in the oil rich Niger Delta region. As the reality of the annulment and likely rerun of the governorship election that brought Wike in looms large, the worst that could happen to the PDP is an Amaechi armed with a ministerial portfolio, particularly if it is one as powerful as police affairs.

The way events turned out at the Senate during Amaechi’s confirmation could see the PDP camp suffering further depletion in the near future. The fact that the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, firmly aligned with the APC on the issue has sparked speculations that the PDP bigwig may be weighing defection to the governing party, if only to secure his coveted seat.

In a couple of weeks from now, Kogi indigenes will troop to the polling booths to elect a new governor who would lead the state for four years. As an indigene of the state and by implication a stakeholder in the Kogi project, I have watched the build-up to the governorship election scheduled for November 21 with utmost discomfiture. Given the outcomes of the governorship primaries of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, it is now certain that nothing is about to change in respect of its political complexion.

The emergence of the incumbent governor, Captain Idris Wada, and former governor of the state, Alhaji Abubakar Audu, as the flag bearers of the PDP and APC respectively means that the Igala tribe will maintain its monopoly of the state’s number one seat at least for four more years, lending credence to some commentators’ hilarious definition of democracy in the state as government of the Igala by the Igala and for the Igala. That of course, would not be an issue if the performances of the Igala men who have been in the saddle since the state was created in 1992 had met the minimum expectations of well-meaning indigenes. Except perhaps for the current APC candidate, who had taken charge twice with his abbreviated tenure from January 1992 to November 1993 and his second tenure from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2003, their stints as governors have verged largely on failure.

Conscious of the cry of marginalization from other ethnic groups in the state, particularly the Ebira and the Okun (Yoruba) people, Audu unfolded his three-point agenda while receiving some PDP defectors in Alu, Yagba East Local Government Area of the state last Saturday, with power rotation between the three major tribes in the state his topmost priority. He also said he would declare a state of emergency in the critical sectors of the state’s economy and, like the rambunctious governor of Ekiti State, “concentrate on stomach infrastructure.

He said: “Let me make my three-point agenda known to the people, because I want to be held responsible for my words when I assume power. First, I will ensure that power shift becomes sacrosanct. I will be the first governor to change power. I must honour my agreement that after my tenure, I will ensure that power moves either to Kogi West (Okunland) or to Kogi Central (Ebiraland).

Good talk, if you ask me. Except that there may be nothing more to it than the typical promise of a politician, often only as valid as a dud cheque. Politicians are reputed for making such promises only to consign them to the dustbin as soon as they realise their objectives. The rational question that would be asked is why the governor would seek to be sworn in as governor the third time before he throws his weight behind an Okun or Ebira aspirant, if he is so passionate about power rotation between the three major ethnic groups? Why didn’t he identify a competent aspirant from the two ethnic groups and support him or her straightaway?

Concerned indigenes of the state would also be worried that the former governor has so far refused to comment on an aspect of him that is being advertised by his traducers, namely the way he relates with people, particularly those who work with him, which they see as bordering on too much of self-importance. His critics insist that probably because of his royal background, he conducted himself more as an emperor while he held sway as governor. The more petty ones would even complain that his over-starched and over-embroidered babanriga did little to help matters. While his admirers would wave off the foregoing observations as figments of the imaginations of some petty minds, it is hard to dismiss the allegation that Audu’s commissioners and special advisers must squat or kneel down to address him. His penchant for riding the high horse has not been without a cost to the public perception of his person. If nothing else, it fuelled the widely circulated story that his former Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Patrick Adaba, resigned from his cabinet after he was engaged by Audu in physical combat. While the foregoing may be seen as a personal problem between Audu and whoever elects to work with him, the danger in it is that it is capable of discouraging sound minds who might want to serve the state but fear that their self esteem could be rubbished.

As Audu’s campaign train moves from one local government to another, he must address the foregoing issues and answer the question whether Kogi under him would once again become his fiefdom. Will he again exhibit his penchant for naming state-owned institutions after himself if he is voted in as governor? Ironically, they are easier questions than the seemingly simple one any rational observer would ask Wada: what has the incumbent governor done since he assumed office about four years ago? I was alarmed when the seemingly inocuous question was asked some Wada’s aides on Channels Television recently but all they could do was equivocate.

The tragedy of Kogi State consists in the fact that any landmark that is worth noticing must have been built by the Audu administration during his brief spell between 1992 and 1993 and his second coming between 1999 and 2003. From the Lokoja township roads and roundabouts to the facelift of the Government House and the establishment of the state-owned polytechnic and university, the only signature you seem to see is Audu’s. The Wada government, on the other hand, has not been able to do even as much as pay the state’s civil servants and pensioners their dues; a development that would be considered preposterous in Audu’s time.

The roads built by the Audu administration are now nothing but death traps as neither the Idris administration nor that of Wada has been able to maintain them. The incompetence of the former has reinforced by the latter’s lack of imagination to foist on the nation one of the most backward states. As the campaigns for the November 21 governorship election assume fever pitch, the Kogi electorate is faced with a choice between egotistic Audu and slumbering Wada. The better candidate should not be difficult to decipher if voters make the state’s development their guiding principle.

I need no one to tell me about the consequences that could come with stone throwing. An experience I had as a 10-year-old boy was enough indication that you must be wary of stones even if you don’t leave in a glass house. It was a Sunday morning and I was on my way to church when I saw another boy in the neighbouhood throwing stones at a nest some wasps had made in an orange tree. I was fascinated by the venture and joined in the effort to bring the nest down.

Lost on both of us was the presence of some young girls who were fetching water from a well across the road. I had barely thrown three stones when we were jolted by the shrilling cry of one of the girls. She held her head in her hands as she wailed and walked towards us. Terrified at the sight of the blood that streamed down her innocent face and the angry reaction of the other girls who were also advancing towards us, we were left with no choice but to take to our heels.

Although it was difficult to tell whose stone did the damage between the two of us, word went to my disciplinarian father that I had broken the head of an innocent girl in the neighbourhood with a stone. I needed no witch doctor to know that I was in big trouble. The sacrilege of not being in church on a Sunday morning had been compounded with villainy.

My father had a peculiar way of punishing his children on a few occasions he decided not to use the cane. He would ask you to sit in a corner of his private sitting room, and make sure you remain there for as long as 12 hours. They were long hours of solitary confinement when you spoke to no one and interacted with no one. He was gracious enough to grant us access to food, but we would be served breakfast, lunch and supper on the same spot. Because of the boredom that came with the seemingly harmless punishment, we rather wished that he flogged us, even if we had to be treated for minor injuries afterwards.

When I got to him and he told me to sit in the corner, I braced up to the reality that I would be there the whole day. But I was wrong. Unknown to me, my father, who incidentally was the traditional ruler of the town, had sent for the police immediately he was told about my escapade. I had barely sat for 20 minutes when two policemen walked in and he told them to take me away.

The cops took me to their station, gave me a few strokes of the cane and kept me behind the counter. After a few hours, they asked me to go home with a stern warning that I would be punished more severely if my father reported me again. That became till date my roughest encounter with the police; the first and only time I have been detained at the police station and the last time I threw a stone in the public.

You can then imagine how well the Emir of Kano and Amiru Hajj to the just concluded pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, Alhaji Muhammad Sanusi II spoke my mind when he said that Nigerian pilgrims to Mecca would no longer participate in the stoning of the devil. His declaration followed the death of close to 100 Nigerians in the stampede that occurred during the stoning rite on September 26.

Quoting verses of the Quran and the sayings of Prophet Muhammed, the Emir argued that failure to stone the devil does not in any way invalidate one’s hajj and so not worth even the blood of a single pilgrim. He said: “During the era of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), he permitted pilgrims who came on camels to stay in Makkah after Arafat, instead of staying in Mina and sleeping at Muzdalifa. So, if the Prophet could give such grace to some people, just to protect their animals, why didn’t our scholars educate our people properly to avoid this untoward hardship and death?

“Therefore, it will be part of my recommendations to the Federal Government that if we cannot get accommodation close to Jamrat where the Arabs reside in Mina, then this year may be the last time we will sleep in Mina and Muzdalifa because we want to stone the devil. Besides that, if one deliberately refuses to even perform the stoning of the devil rituals, all he needs to do is to slaughter a ram. So, if this is the situation, why do we go and suffer and die instead of sacrificing a ram?

“As is it presently, sleeping in Mina and Muzdalifa is not backed by any Hadith or verse of the Qur’an. So, why do we continue to do it?”

Emir Sanusi deserves full marks for his perspicacious views. Nigerians who feel obliged to stone the devil can do so without flying to Israel or Saudi Arabia. They have more than enough options in the numerous offspring of Lucifer parading themselves as leaders—the bunch of megalomaniac politicians who under the pretext of leadership have depleted our commonwealth, looted the treasury dry and turned a once prosperous country into a pauper nation.

Ironically, many of the greedy lot have no fear travelling to those holy lands in spite of their abominable acts. They compound the sacrilege with the temerity of hauling missiles at the devil; the very creature that rules their hearts. They draw the devil’s ire in the process and the consequences of their actions rub off on other innocent pilgrims.

I have no iota of doubt that by the time the dust of Buhari’s war against corruption settles, there will be so many former public office holders to stone that no Nigerian would need a flight ticket to Mecca or Jerusalem if the purpose is to stone the devil.

Events are once again on the fast lane. So many issues are competing for the attention of public affairs commentators. Trucks, tankers and trailers are still tumbling in Lagos and other Nigerian cities, abbreviating the lives of hapless citizens. The leadership crisis at the Senate is still raging. The build-up to the governorship election in Bayelsa State got a tragic twist to it with the mysterious death of Chief Sam Inokoba, the immediate past chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state who recently led scores of other party heavyweights to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Planes are crashing with astonishing rapidity, with oil magnate Femi Otedola suggesting that the air accidents could be due to unconscionable businessmen’s sale of kerosene to airlines as aviation fuel.

In the midst of the catalogue of unwholesome events and incidents is the series of comic relief from Ekiti State, with Governor Ayodele Fayose as the main actor. I had vowed before now not to meddle in the affairs of the state that prides itself as the fountain of knowledge, but I cannot keep my vow now because of traditional and social media commentators who would not leave the governor alone to fulfill his calling.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been more controversial issues involving the governor than one can count on one’s finger tips. First, it was the picture of him stopping over at Elegberun Market in Ikere-Ekiti to buy ponmo, a delicacy generally preserved for the poor. Some mischievous persons had posted on the social media the picture of the governor buying the delicacy side by side with that of Governor Nasir el-Rufai doing an architectural masterpiece on his vision for Kaduna State. Others wondered what fate awaits Ekiti State if the most its governor can do is comb the markets for condiments.

The ponmo episode was followed a few days later by another picture of Fayose riding in a rickety truck which in more civilized climes would be considered an environmental threat. He was said to be inspecting a channelization project at Arowa-Darlimore area of Ado Ekiti, the state capital. Fayose, who had ridden the crest of populist acts like publicly consuming roast corn and joining ordinary men to drink at local beer parlours to win the governorship race against the former governor, Kayode Fayemi, had earlier been spotted either eating amala at a local restaurant or dancing with ordinary people in the public.

Only on Monday, the controversial governor set the social media abuzz with the picture of him posing like some god over prostrating civil servants he had arrested for coming late to work after an unscheduled visit he paid to the state secretariat. The scene generated unparalleled controversy, polarising the landscape into two camps of those who commended the incident and those who condemned it. Fayose, who was said to have arrived the secretariat as early as 7.45 am, arrested about 31 workers who were said to have arrived later than the official resumption time of 8 am.

Supporters of the action said it was the appropriate thing to do in order to arrest the lackadaisical attitude of the average civil servant to duty. Those who opposed it said if indeed the governor has the faintest idea of governance, he should be relating with the state’s head of service on such matters instead of turning himself into a policeman. I personally would not support those who have dismissed Fayose’s action barbaric, archaic or feudalistic. He could not have been the one that asked the late comers to kneel down or prostrate. They must have done so on their own because they knew that they were not dealing with an Ajimobi or an Ambode but an ex-bus conductor who would be best appeased by massaging his ego.

It was no surprise therefore that rather than ask the errant civil servants to get up, Fayose made the most of the moment. He donned the toga of biblical Herod, posing like some god over them. Rather than being embarrassed by the sight of old men and women prostrating before him, he chose the moment to remind them that he had their fate in his pocket. He bragged and boasted and played God while the hapless civil servants rolled on bare ground. Still, that should be nobody’s business. Ekiti people knew that they were voting for an emperor when they trooped to the polling booths on March 28. And they have told whoever cares to listen that they have no regrets voting for a retired danfo driver.

It is for the same reason I find the noise that has greeted Fayose’s appointment of a 72-year-old illiterate carpenter as chairman of the caretaker committee of Moba Local Government Area in the state unnecessary. After all, he has explained the reason for his action: illiterates are also important members of the society. “Some of us use them to get to positions and forget these people. In my government, whether you are educated or not, you will get something. The vote of a professor and an illiterate is the same. So, under my administration, those who are not educated can rise to any level they want,” he said.

Even though the controversial governor is yet to say so, I know that if anyone challenges him on the appointment of Pa Olatunde Afolayan as the chair of a local government caretaker committee, he would ask why a 72-year-old man cannot govern a local government when another 72-year-old man is in charge of the entire nation. For Fayose, it would not matter that Pa Afolayan cannot write letter ‘O’ with the bottom of a bottle while President Muhammadu Buhari is a retired army general who has travelled round the world attending the best of military institutions in addition to his primary and secondary school certificates. And if all that the young bloods in the public service of Ekiti State can do is get late to work, no rational person would blame Governor Fayose for shifting attention to illiterate octogenarians and nonagenarians. In fact, it will be wrong to blame him if he decides to groom one of them as his successor. After all, age is nothing but number.

As a passionate lover of reggae music, the late Jamaican reggae sensation, Peter Tosh, will forever remain one of my favourite artistes. My admiration of his music is more for the lyrics than the rhythm. His songs are replete with deep and timeless messages any rational mind would find difficult to ignore. One of them is the one contained in the album he titled Equal Rights wherein he wonders why everyone is crying out for peace and none is crying out for justice. The underlying message in the song is that peace will remain perpetually elusive in any society or organisation that has no respect for justice.

This all important message appears lost on the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) where the wrong done by a few desperate members in pursuit of their selfish and inordinate ambition on June 9 has set the party on the edge of precipice. It will be recalled that at the inauguration of the Senate and the House of Representatives on June 9, Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon. Yakubu Dogara defied APC’s choice of Senator  Ahmed Lawan and Hon. Femi  Gbajabiamila as the party’s candidates for the seats of the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives respectively and snatched the two positions after striking an unholy alliance with members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the two chambers.

Saraki would later compound treachery with contumacy, shunning another list of some members of the Lawan group the party sent to him for appointment into certain positions in the upper chamber. Rather, the Senate President, whose election was done while virtually the entire members of his party were waiting to attend a scheduled meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari elsewhere, decided to appoint his own men into those positions after previously masterminding the election of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, a member of the PDP, as his deputy! The Lawan group, as would be expected, insists that the appointments be reversed to accommodate its members while Saraki’s supporters say the party should take the slap on its face with equanimity, pretend that Saraki and his supporters had done no wrong and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Since the coup against the APC was hatched on June 9, I have been trying hard to understand what the fears of the party’s leaders are about reining in the recalcitrant lawmakers. Some commentators have said that the matter is as delicate as a mosquito that perches on the scrotum. If not carefully handled, they say, the scrotum could get damaged while the mosquito escapes unhurt. This school believes that a careless handling of the matter could see Saraki and his allies within the party doing what they know best: defect from the APC to the PDP the same way they did from the PDP to the APC in the build up to the last presidential election. Yet some others say Saraki and his followers must not only be indulged but pampered in spite of their open defiance of party directives because they are capable of frustrating the policies of the Buhari administration.

I dare say that while the fears are not completely unfounded, they are incapable, within the current political setting, of dealing on the APC the fate that befell the PDP in the last general election. To start with, there is no way to rationalise the bad precedent their action constitutes and the bad influence they will be on disciplined members of the party if their actions are allowed to go without consequences. The fear that they could leave the party if sanctions are imposed on them is without merit because their action is in itself a veritable threat to the party’s survival. The Yoruba say the eye that would last all day does not begin to emit tears in the early morning. I personally believe that it is good for the party that elements that are capable of destroying it are showing up in the early days of the Buhari administration. The earlier the party separates the wheat from the chaff, the better. The APC will be better off expelling its treacherous members than allow them to remain within to destroy it when the elections are near.

If indeed the party’s fear is about defections, there is no guarantee that these elements would remain in the party after destroying it. The APC has to choose between enforcing discipline ridding the party of bad influence or indulging treachery and risk getting the party destroyed by the enemies within. A man already identified as an enemy, says Peter Tosh, is less dangerous than an enemy acting like a friend.

I dare say that the electoral value of all the members of the Saraki group put together is not one that can threaten the chances of the APC in the event of another presidential election. The truth is that most of them need Buhari more than Buhari needs them for electoral victory. Even in Kwara State where Saraki is regarded as the all in all, the APC only managed to beat the PDP during the last presidential election. In Kogi, Saraki’s hatchet man, Senator Dino Melaye, had to ride on Buhari’s popularity in the Lokoja/Kotonkarfe axis of Kogi West to win his senatorial seat. If the trend that prevailed at his base in Okunland had continued in Lokoja and Kotonkarfe, he would have lost the election to the PDP candidate, Senator Smart Adeyemi. Not many would have forgotten the reports from parts of the North in the build-up to the last general elections, where aspirants on the platform of the PDP had to display Buhari’s picture on their campaign posters just to win voters’ sympathy.

If anyone has something to lose in the event that sanctions are imposed on recalcitrant members of the APC in the Senate, it is the senators who decided to bite the finger that fed them by working against Buhari’s preferred candidate for the Senate after riding to office on the President’s back. And with the strides Buhari has recorded after about one month in office, there is the likelihood that the stock of his popularity and that of the party would soar greatly before the 2019 elections. If he continues at this space, I have no doubt that he will win the hearts of the electorate even in PDP-dominated zones.

And if the fear is that a Saraki-led Senate would frustrate the Buhari administration, that also would become an issue between the clique and the highly expectant Nigerians who trooped out to vote for change on March 28.

It is just as well that the Central Bank of Nigeria decided to extend the deadline for the Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrolment from June 30 to October 31. The sea of heads observable on the premises of banks around Lagos two or three days to the deadline was a clear indication that there was no miracle by which every customer would be enrolled before June 30. It is an age-long tradition that in such matters, most Nigerians would wait till the last minute before they begin to rush. It was the same experience with the collection of the permanent voter cards in the build-up to the recent general election. Millions of voter cards lay unclaimed at the collection centres until the authorities were forced to shift the deadline for their collection.

But while it is easy to blame the people for this unseemly attitude, it is also possible that they are fatigued or bored by the sheer number of times they have to engage in such exercise. Data collection in this part of the world has simply become an obsession. In civilised societies, citizens’ data is centralised. In Nigeria, it is so duplicated that citizens are made to waste precious time supplying data to collect their driving licences, international passports and national identity cards or register their phone numbers and BVN. It is either a mark of how unserious we are as a nation or how grossly incompetent our institutions are.

It is hard to fathom why it is impossible to have a central database where information about any Nigerian citizen or resident can be obtained without the individual jumping from the Vehicle Inspection Office (VIO) and the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) to banks and passport offices just to supply the same information. The most frustrating aspect of it all is the fact that in each of the institutions where the information is required, you have to shuttle between your home and their offices for months or even years just to get your data captured. And there is no guarantee that the data that is captured after numerous attempts can be called up when the organisation requires it again.

Such, for instance, are the personal experiences I have had with the FRSC and one of the major GSM service providers with whom I had to register a telephone line. After the rigours I had gone through in 2010 to obtain a new driving licence from the Ojodu office of the FRSC, I had thought that revalidating the licence at the same office when it expired three years later would be a stroll in the park. I thought that since I had undergone the various tests conducted by the VIO and got my data captured at the FRSC office after strenuously parading their office for months, all that would be done was to check through their database, update the information they have on me and issue a new driving licence.

Alas, I was wrong. As I walked into the FRSC office and told the lady I met on the front desk that I was there to renew my driving licence, the question she asked was, ‘Have you done the VIO tests?’ I confidently told her that I had done all the tests before obtaining the licence I was there to renew, but she insisted that I had to do them all over again. It took me one week to repeat all the tests at the VIO, after which I returned to the FRSC office in the hope that I would expressly be issued another licence because they already had my data. Unknown to me, I had just embarked on a very long journey.

First, I was asked to join a class of other licence seekers where for two days we were lectured on traffic rules and regulations. Thereafter, we were directed to the office where our data would be captured and a new licence would be issued to us. To cut the story short, it took almost two years and more than 20 visits to get my data captured again. At the end of the day, all I got was a temporary driving licence which they said I should use for one month and come for the permanent one. That was in April, but what I still have at the time of writing is a temporary driving licence. I have visted the office twice in search of the permanent driving licence, but all the officials do is to stamp the temporary licence and extend its validation by one month.

The situation I have found myself now is that the driving licence I started processing about three years ago has almost expired, while I am yet to get it. Yet an FRSC official had the effrontery to ask why I had not gone to revalidate my temporary driving licence the third time. Of course, I told him that the failure was not mine, but that of his organisation. I had done more than I should to obtain a permanent driving licence, but I could not because the FRSC would just not live up to its own part of the bargain. Or how many times must one visit their office to obtain a licence?

Our inability to keep data was also underscored by the experience I had with a GSM service provider recently. Immediately the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) issued a directive that all mobile phone users should register their lines, I visited one of the outlets of the telecommunication company in Lagos and registered mine. After using the line for about two years, I needed to configure Internet on it. I visited another outlet of the service provider in Ota, Ogun State, for the configuration only for the lady I met at the counter to tell me that the configuration could not be done because the line was not registered. I told her it was duly registered and I had used it unhindered for two years, but she insisted that I must register it again. I agreed and submitted myself for another registration.

Two days later, the internet that was configured on the phone began to malfunction. I returned to the outlet to ask what was amiss. On getting there, I met a different lady at the counter. She checked through their system and told me again that the line had not been registered. In protest, I told her that the line had been registered twice and that the second registration was actually done on her desk two days earlier. Eventually, she registered the line a third time and reconfigured the internet. But I had only used it for a few weeks when I started receiving messages, asking me to register the line. I abandoned the SIM card out of frustration.

It is in the same light of needless duplication that I see the current BVN enrolment exercise, particularly because the information demanded in the enrolment form is hardly different from the ones the customer had supplied in the account opening forms. More importantly, they are information that a serious nation would store in a central database the banks themselves can easily access and save hapless customers the pains of forming endless queues in the rain or under the scorching sun for a rigour that is totally avoidable.

With Dr. Bukola Saraki in the fold, the rebellion that occurred at the upper chamber of the National Assembly on June 9 was always going to happen. Surprisingly, very few Nigerians saw it coming either because we are not perceptive as a people or because our memory is so short that we forgot how a couple of years ago, the new Senate President engaged his biological father, Olusola Saraki, in a political battle that demystified and humiliated the widely acclaimed strong man of Kwara politics.

It is even more amazing that the chieftains of the APC did not sense the challenge they were up against the moment the former governor of Kwara State indicated interest in the seat of the senate president. If Dr. Bukola Saraki would not respect his father’s wish and openly worked to install his stooge against his father and benefactor’s candidate, there was absolutely no basis to expect that checkmating his ambition would be a tea party. His penchant for toeing the unpopular path is a habit that dates back to infancy. His minders suborned him to adopt Bukola, a name usually reserved for female persons. Amazingly, he has kept and nurtured the habit of flowing against the tide until it culminated in the civilian coup of June 9.

The new senate president first came into my consciousness in the late 1980s when he functioned as the executive director of his father’s defunct Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria (SGBN). I had thought that my uncle, an employee of the bank then, was talking about a woman each time he mentioned Bukola Saraki. I was shocked the day I had to accompany my uncle to the bank’s head office on Broad Street, Lagos and he showed me the man called Bukola. It was the first time I would see a man so named, but I managed to conceal my shock. It is not impossible that other male Bukolas (Bukky for short) exist, but they must be few and far between.

The Senate President has since taken his knack for doing the unusual to the realm of politics. Not many would forget in a hurry how, as Kwara State governor, he engaged his father in a succession battle that forced the latter to leave the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) through which had helped his son to become governor.

As the story goes, the elder Saraki, repeatedly betrayed by the different godsons he had installed as Kwara State governor, decided to take his destiny in his own hands. He hit on the idea of sponsoring his biological son for the governorship seat in the 2011 general election. This, he thought, would be an effective antidote to the cycle of betrayal. He settled for Bukola in the hope that after serving two terms, he would make way for his younger sister, Gbemisola, who the elder Saraki had already promised to make a governor. To his father’s dismay, Bukola said he would not support Gbemisola’s candidacy, citing ethical reasons. It only took a while before the elder Saraki realised that, like the biblical Absalom, his son had decided to strip him of his role as kingmaker.

With the party’s structures firmly in Bukola’s grip, his father was left with no choice but to quit the PDP and form a new political party through which he hoped that her daughter would realise her ambition. As it turned out, Gbemisola, the elder Saraki’s candidate, suffered a monumental defeat at the hands of Bukola’s candidate, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed. The rebellion was complete and, with it, the elder Saraki’s retirement from active politics until he died barely a year after.

If indeed there is truth in the saying that the child is the father of the man, then it is irrational and illogical to expect that Saraki the senator would act differently from Saraki the governor. If as a governor he discounted the wish of his father and benefactor and hounded him out of party and politics in his crave for power and influence, it is also unlikely that he would respect the wish of the party whose crest he rode to win his seat in the Senate. A crocodile that ate its own eggs cannot be said to have acted out of order if it consumes the eggs laid by other creatures.

The scene that is playing out at the Senate is one that must emerge when a desperately ambitious man is surrounded by desperate power mongers. A situation where thunder acts as counsellor to bomb is a perfect setting for catastrophe. It is even more complicated the cast of hawks that perch dangerously under the tattered umbrella of the PDP are involved.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Saraki has been drafted by the PDP, the party he jettisoned about two years ago, to lead an anti-people force whose sole mission is to frustrate the choice Nigerians made in the 2015 elections. Even the least perceptive political observer knows that the ultimate motive of the crises that are being fuelled by Saraki and his men at the upper legislative chamber is to frustrate the Buhari-led APC administration, so that it might look as incompetent as the ousted PDP. It will not be a surprise if in the days ahead the Saraki group in the Senate tries to frustrate President Buhari’s requests, beginning with the approval of his ministerial list. But it will serve Senator Saraki well to realise that he and other members of his group will be up not only against Buhari and the APC , ____but against the mass of the people who voted for change on March 28.

The collective shame that had haunted the country since the military launched its war gainst terror in the North East was assuaged remarkably on Tuesday with the news that no fewer than 200 girls and 93 women had been rescued from the notorious Sambisa Forest. Sambisa is the forest where Boko Haram, the deadly terrorist group to which the nation had virtually conceded the North East region, had camped. It is also the forest where the more than 200 school girls the Islamist group abducted from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State on April 14 last year were believed to have been kept.

Since the nocturnal abduction of the hapless girls, Nigeria has attracted global attention as concerned groups and individuals across the world demand their rescue. Our military, once reputed as one of the best in the world, became the butt of cruel jokes over its inability to rescue the poor girls and put an end to the activities of the insurgents who on a daily basis kill and maim defenceless Nigerians in tens and twenties. Lacking equipment and motivation, our soldiers found themselves at the mercy of the deadly sect and in many instances had to flee from the sect’s advancing army.

It was therefore a huge relief to the nation when the news filtered in that for once, our soldiers had proven not to be the paper tigers or toothless bulldogs their traducers were wont to call them. With three camps of the sect destroyed, the nation was not only proud that the image of its military had been redeemed significantly, it was also happy that hundreds of innocent women and girls held in the terrible conditions of the forest were liberated.

To millions of Nigerians, however, particularly the parents and relations of the abducted school girls, Tuesday’s rescue operation, though highly commendable, was nothing more than an anti-climax. I, like millions of other Nigerians, reached for the refrigerator and fetched a bottle of cold wine when the news of the rescue operation broke. With a friend who had come on a visit, we toasted to lasting freedom for rescued Chibok school girls and eternal joy of their parents. But my friend and I were shocked to learn a few hours later that the Chibok girls were not among the 200 rescued. The joy that seized the land soon metamorphosed into mixed feelings of hope and despair.

Three weeks after the girls were abducted on April 14 last year, the sect’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, had appeared in a video wherein he threatened to sell them or marry them off to unknown suitors. In the hour-long video, Shekau said: “I abducted your girls. By Allah, I will sell them in the marketplace. They are slaves and I will sell them because there is a market for them.” Seven months later, Shekau was again his boisterous self in another video, boasting that the abducted girls had been converted to Islam and married off. “If you knew the state your daughters are in today, it might lead some of you to die from grief,” Shekau added in a speech directed at the parents of the hapless girls.

The foregoing has caused many to ask if Tuesday’s operation was a harbinger of hope that the Chibok girls would be found and rescued or a sign that they may never be found because Shekau might have made good his threats to sell or marry them off. The situation is particularly intriguing because everyone had thought that only an invasion of Sambisa Forest offered any hope of securing the girls.

As would be expected, the most disappointed people are the parents and relations of the girls. So disappointed were they with the news that their wards were not among the rescued ones that they began to speak in manners now taken by some people to mean that they were not happy that the 293 captives were rescued.

Reacting to the information by the army spokesman, Gen. Chris Olukolade, that none of the Chibok schoolgirls was among those rescued last Tuesday, Mr Enoch Mark, whose daughter and niece are among the more than 200 teenagers still being held by the insurgents said: “It is disheartening for our hopes to be dashed. When we heard of the rescue, we thought it was our girls. Parents kept contacting one another, hoping to get confirmation that their daughters were the ones rescued. “However, it is not surprising to me that our hopes have been dashed. This has happened several times. The government has lied a few times. To us, the government no longer has credibility.”

Pogo Bitrus, another Borno resident whose four nieces among the hostages, said: “We have never lost hope as a people, but the issue is if the military has the capacity now, why didn’t they do it before? We are an unfortunate bunch caught up in a political game. It is unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation. They have played with people’s lives and messed people up.”

The foregoing and other similar comments from the Chibok girls’ parents and guardians have drawn the ire of some Nigerians who consider them cynical. But anyone who understands the trauma the poor parents are going through would most easily tolerate their emotion. The real shock should not be the comments of the aggrieved parents but the fact that the atrocities committed by the sect against Nigerians in the North East have been far worse than reported.