The Nation Newspaper

Category: Vincent Akanmode

  • Shocking fallout from Alamieyeseigha’s pardon

    Shocking fallout from Alamieyeseigha’s pardon

    I did not realise how immensely Nigerians had profited from the public lecture theSpecial Adviser to the President on Media, Dr. Reuben Abati, delivered on clemency and pardon last week until an experience I had with my wife and her housemaid last Saturday.

    Abati had described the widespread criticism that trailed the pardon President Goodluck Jonathan granted former Bayelsa State Governor, Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, as “sophisticated ignorance” and took time to educate those who described the pardon granted the likes of the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Gen. Oladipo Diya and Gen. Tajudeen Olanrewaju as superfluous. He insisted that what the former military henchmen got from the Abdulsalami administration was mere clemency and not pardon which was why many of them had not received their entitlements.

    Seeing that our six-year-old son failed to do his homework on the excuse that there was no public power and our generator failed to work, my wife decided to suspend the daily menu of sausage roll and juice the lad used to take to school. I pleaded with her not to make good her threat, particularly because it was the first time he would do such a thing in a long while. But I was surprised that the following morning, he cried to my room and complained that mum had withheld his fruit juice and gave him only a sausage roll.

    I called my wife and asked why she still had not forgiven the poor boy in spite of my earlier intervention. “Of course, I have forgiven him,” she said. “I would not have given him the sausage roll if I hadn’t forgiven him. But his forgiveness was only a clemency. Tomorrow, I will turn his clemency into pardon and then he will have both the sausage roll and juice!”

    But the worse fallout came from a fraudster who sent a text message to my phone after reading my piece on the pardon saga last Saturday and introduced himself as Dr. Reuben Abati, Senior Special Assistant to President Jonathan on Media. Buoyed apparently by state pardon the Jonathan administration granted a fugitive and convicted pilferer of the public purse, the fellow has been carrying on with the boldness of a lion, bombarding me with calls and text messages from his telephone number 08027456324. He said my name was being considered for a board appointment, and that to ensure that this came into fruition, I should send the sum of N250,000 into the UBA account of his CSO whose name he gave as Mumuni Kadiri with telephone number 07058881113.

    Sensing that the impostor was doing a great disservice to the name and reputation of Dr. Reuben Abati, I sent the President’s spokesman a mail, drawing his attention to the development I saw as a clear and present danger. But Abati’s response was anything but urgent. It took almost 24 hours before his terse reply hit my phone, with nothing in it to show that he was angry or worried. “That is not my number. Someone has been using my name. Beware of 419,” he wrote.

    Now certain that Abati had nothing to do with the fellow, I sent him a text message and tried to drive fear into him. I told him that he would rot in jail because I had alerted Abati about his antics and SSS officials were already on his trail. But I was disarmed by the temerity contained in his response. “Hahahaha, I return that to you,” he wrote back, boasting that his CSO would buy “two cartons of moet rose drink and clear drinks with SSS into the Villa (sic).” At this point, it struck me that the apparent impunity with which the Boko Haram sect has operated for two years might have rubbed off on fraudsters and could soon extend to other anti-social elements around the country. Clearly, there is anarchy on the horizon.

    Such grim prospects were responsible for the public outrage that greeted the Alamieyeseigha pardon, including the following responses to my piece on the subject last week, in spite of Abati’s tirade:

    •Your article every Saturday is like the fresh palm wine we used to enjoy in the village many years ago. Please tell me, when will Nigeria return to democracy and do away with this criminal arrangement that has made life worse than hell for the masses? For how long must we allow these outdated political godfathers to continue to toy with our collective survival in the name of politics?

    Today, Nigerians are calling fraud democracy and paying duly for it. Alamieyeseigha was not alone when he stole Bayelsa blind. Somebody deputised him, and that person cannot claim ignorance of what was going on then. Today, if that person decides to help his partner who is down, why should anybody tongue-lash him. Don’t birds of a feather flock together anymore?

    A young man got married. He did not wait for a child to arrive in the family before he hurriedly bought a dog and named it Paul. After 15 years of barrenness, he took his wife to a native doctor for spiritual solution. To his shock, the traditional doctor told him that his trouble started when he a domestic animal the name of a human being, and that unless he killed the dog, he would not hear the cry of a human being in his house.

    Ifeanyi O. Ifeanyichukwu.

    Can someone tell the President that he forgot to include on his posthumous pardon list the likes of Oyenusi, Anini and the extra-judicially killed Boko Haram leader. What about Cecilia Ibru. In fact, he forgot all the convicted corrupt felons. Long live corruption in the land of the giant of Africa.

    And who says we don’t deserve this? Of course, we deserve the nonsense we voted for on sentiment grounds and for exhibiting total lack of wisdom despite the handwriting on the wall to the effect that we were voting for a candidate from a party that had heaped misery on us for 12 years. Have we learnt anything yet?

    080642867..

    •Whether or not President Jonathan changes guards by recruiting OBJ’s sworn enemies into his government his winning another term in 2015 is not yet guaranteed. He will definitely need OBJ. The sympathy votes of 2011 are gone. Many things have changed in all the six geo-political regions, particularly in the South West.

    Granting Alamieyeseigha state pardon was and remains an economic and transparency error. The nation’s image has been brought down!

    Lanre Oseni.

    •The presidential pardon granted Alamieyeseigha is an embarrassment to Nigerians and an avenue to encourage corruption in governance. While it is in our constitution to grant pardons, it is not in cases of corruption. Other countries are busy fighting against corruption in governance.

    Gordon Chika Nnorom.

  • 2015 and the making of Jonathan’s army

    President Goodluck Jonathan took his defence of corruption a step further on Tuesday with the pardon he granted former Bayelsa State Governor, Diepriye Alamieyeseigha. To be sure, Alamieyeseigha was not the only Nigerian on the list of ex-convicts that got presidential pardon. There were others like former Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, the late Maj-Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and some military officers implicated in the 1995 and 1997 coups against the late military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha. They included former Chief of General Staff, Lt-Gen Oladipo Diya; a former Minister of Communications, Maj-Gen Tajudeen Olanrewaju; and a former Minister of Works, the late Gen. Abdulkareem Adisa. There were also others like a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank of the North, Alhaji Shettima Bulama, and Dr. Chiichii Ashwe.

    For obvious reasons, however, there has been public uproar against the gesture dispensed to Alamieyeseigha and perceived by many as shocking and scandalous. While Yar’Adua, Diya, Olanrewaju and others were jailed for political reasons, Alamieyeseigha was convicted for using his office as the Bayelsa State Governor to pilfer the exchequer. This was after he had brought the nation to international disrepute by jumping bail in London where he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for money laundering.

    Upon his nocturnal return to Nigeria, the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, prodded by the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, initiated impeachment moves that culminated in his removal and replacement with his then deputy, Dr. Jonathan. But like a dog that would never forget his benefactor, Jonathan’s loyalty to Alamieyeseigha remained steadfast. He was a direct beneficiary of Alamieyeseigha’s gesture and misadventure, without which he would probably be ebbing away as an obscure teacher in an obscure school in the backwaters of Bayelsa. While Obasanjo would be credited with making Jonathan the governor of Bayelsa State and later the nation’s vice president , it was Alamieyeseigha’s intervention that actually rescued him from the misery of growing up without shoes.. It is unlikely that Obasanjo would notice Jonathan if Alamieyeseigha had not made him his running mate in the first place.

    Jonathan believed the least he could do for Alamieyeseigha as the nation’s president was to grant him state pardon and remove from him the shame and stigma of an ex-convict. Happily, his prayers were granted at the National Council of State meeting held in Abuja on Tuesday. We all have to pretend now that Alamieyeseigha never stole, even though he admitted doing so in court. We must pretend that he never went to jail and that he has become as free as a bird to aspire to any office in the land, including that of the President. It would amount to an offence now to call him an ex-convict. Those who must view his person from the prism of prison will more appropriately address him now as a former ex-convict.

    For heavens’ sake, I would not be drawn into explaining the difference between an ex-convict and a former ex-convict. What is important now is that our President has emerged a happier man. He has succeeded in using deserving Nigerians as a smokescreen to remove the garb of shame that clung to his political mentor like a cloak. How desperately he needed to do it is explained by the fact that he had to grant the late Gen Musa Yar’Adua another pardon after the one granted by his predecessor, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, on the strength of which Obasanjo contested the presidential election in 1999.

    Behind all this, however, is the bigger picture that no one needs a crystal ball to see. The battle for 2015 has become so fierce now that the President needs as many Obasanjo’s foes as he can muster to join his camp. About 72 hours before Tuesday’s announcement, I had told a neighbour that I suspected plans by the Jonathan government to grant presidential pardon to Chief Olabode Gerorge, a former National Vice President of the PDP and former Chairman of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), who was jailed for two years in 2009 for contract splitting and inflation. That much was clear from the body language of the President and the utterances of many of his foot soldiers lately. The campaign against George’s ex-convict status had begun with numerous interviews he himself granted the media complaining that he should not have been tried by a Lagos High Court when the money he stole belonged to the Federal Government.

    Jonathan himself had subtly begun his rehabilitation in January with his appointment into a panel to re-organise the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a move seriously criticised by legal practitioners and civil rights groups. Then there were media reports quoting the Acting Director of Public Prosecution of the Federal Government, Mr. O.T Olatigbe, as claiming that the fiat upon which George’s trial was based did not emanate from his office. This, as reported, was in response to a memo from the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke, requesting for the fiat.

    With Obasanjo out of the fold of Jonathan’s supporters, the President and his loyalists in the party are in desperate need of a figure that could act as a rallying point in the South West for his second term ambition. No party member seems to fit the bill better than George who, unfortunately, is smeared with the tag of ex-convict.

    Like Alamieyeseigha, a presidential pardon for George would be in perfect sync with the drafting of Obasanjo’s real and perceived enemies into Jonathan’s army for the 2015 battle. All a politician needs to do now to be counted among Jonathan’s loyalists is to openly antagonise Obasanjo or advertise himself as a sworn enemy of the ex-President. The trend proceeds upon the logic that an Obasanjo’s enemy is necessarily a friend of Jonathan. As would be expected in a land that brims with favour seekers, smart politicians are exploiting the trend for their own share of the national cake.

    That was the case with Dr. Doyin Okupe, a former Obasanjo spokesman who now champions virulent verbal attacks on the ex-President. The schism between Okupe and his erstwhile boss had grown into a chasm in the heat of the crisis that rocked the Ogun State chapter of the PDP in February last year. Addressing journalists at the venue of a meeting held by the Kashamu Buruji faction of the PDP in Ijebu-Ode, Okupe turned his fangs against his erstwhile boss, declaring him a liability on the PDP. For his temerity, Jonathan rewarded him with an appointment as the Senior Special Assistant to Jonthan on Public Affairs five months later.

    It is no accident that the closest politicians to Jonathan today were trusted associates of Obasanjo who became his sworn enemies. The list grows longer by the day, featuring names like Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Chief Tony Anenih, Dr. Bukola Saraki and Chief Jim Nwobodo, to mention but few.

  • Naked lies won’t help, Okupe

    Naked lies won’t help, Okupe

    Although he trained as a medical doctor, presidential spokesman, Doyin Okupe, would probably not recognise a syringe now if he sees one. He has found fulfilment in working as the mouthpiece of the nation’s presidents, and many think it is just as well that he decided to shun his professional calling. Given his penchant for concealing the truth, Okupe could constitute a liability to his patients. What if he sees cancer patients and tells them they have jaundice? Or he sees a victim of malaria and tells him he has a cold?

    Such fears were legitimised by his conscious efforts in the last few days to subject the entire populace into collective idiocy in his bid to deny the 10 opposition governors that visited Maiduguri last week the credit for treading the killing field of the Boko Haram sect which President Goodluck Jonathan had avoided for 21 months! While well-meaning Nigerians, including sincere chieftains of the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) like Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State took turns to salute the courage and thoughtfulness of the opposition governors for making the move within weeks of coming together under the umbrella of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Okupe chose to accuse them of stealing the idea from the President.

    At a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday, Okupe said Jonathan had long been scheduled to visit Borno State, but the opposition governors got wind of the plan and hurriedly packaged the widely acclaimed visit just to preempt the President’s plan. He said: “The APC governors’ visit was hurriedly packaged to preempt the visit of Mr. President which had been planned and scheduled several weeks ago. This is surely an act of crass opportunism and political desperation on the part of these governors and the party they represent.

    “We regard that visit as a media circus, stunt and photo-ops by these governors who were apparently in Maiduguri to feather their political nests. If I may ask, where were these governors in the last 18 months that they had been in office? It is obvious that it is part of their mobilization drive that took them to Borno State rather than any patriotic call to duty. These are desperate power mongers who flock together in spite of their obvious conflicting political philosophies and inordinate ambitions”.

    His utterances reminded me of an old classmate. Each time our teacher of English asked to contribute to a debate, he would tell the teacher that someone else had just made the point he wanted to make. His folly was exposed when the teacher hit on the idea of asking him to make his contribution before anyone else. Those who are conversant with Okupe’s ways and the circumstances in which he became the Senior Special Assistant to President Jonathan on Public Affairs would not be disappointed at his condemnation of the governors’ visit. The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to Obasanjo between 1999 and 2003 was hired in July last year to act as Jonathan’s attack dog when it became obvious that Dr. Reuben Abati, the President’s spokesman, was too refined for the assignment.

    With his background as one of the finest flowers of journalism in Nigeria before he abandoned his office at the Rutam House and headed for the Aso Rock for his own share of the Holy Grail, Abati became a stammerer on each occasion he had to defend the indefensible. That was the point at which it occurred to Jonathan and his men that they needed a man in the mould of Okupe who would point at charcoal and argue that it is as white as a hound’s tooth.

    Yet there are occasions like the one in question when Okupe would be better off to keep quiet than soil his reputation with tendentious arguments meant to serve no other purpose than massage his principal’s devastated ego. Considering the hell the nation has become on account of the destructive activities of the Boko Haram sect in the last two years, one cannot but wonder what other matters would occupy the mind of the President so much that he had to shelve his planned visit to Maiduguri, the hotbed of the crisis, for close to two years.

    Jonathan was simply too scared to visit the vortex of Boko Haram bombings. After all, he had told whoever cared to listen after the sect struck in Abuja in August 2011 that it would eliminate him if it had its way. Hence, the President would not venture into Borno and Yobe, even after his predecessor, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, had visited the area and even held talks with some people he felt could facilitate negotiation with the sect to surrender their guns and bombs. Those were the days before Obasanjo openly criticized Jonathan’s timid handling of the crisis and the friendly relationship between them collapsed like a pack of cards.

    While courage is a basic attribute of a good leader, Jonathan lacked enough of it to visit Borno before the opposition governors seized the initiative. Rather than beat about the bush in a bid to cover up the failure of the President and his security advisers in this regard, Okupe should have called a spade by its name, particularly because the truth is obvious even to a toddler. One needs no further evidence of the fear that had kept him away from Borno and Yobe states than the fact that the Inspector General of Police had to lead as many as 3,000 policemen for the President’s belated visit to the trouble states.

  • Jonathan’s tactical error on Amaechi

    Jonathan’s tactical error on Amaechi

    There is hardly a better way to justify the saying that no condition is permanent. Six years ago, he gnashed his teeth in the cold after he was shut out by the powers that be in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Today, Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, is not just the beautiful bride, he holds the ace as far as the party’s survival is concerned.

    After his tenure as the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, he threw his hat in the ring for the governorship primaries of the party in the state in the build-up to the 2007 general elections. He won the primaries, but with the culture of impunity that prevailed in the party while Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo held sway as President, he was shoved aside by the party’s hierarchy and his cousin, Celestine Omehia, was handed the party’s flag.

    Amaechi remained stoically calm as Omehia and other PDP stalwarts embarked on vigorous campaign for the governorship seat. But no sooner was Omehia declared the governor-elect than Amaechi headed for the courts to file a case against the PDP for wrongly substituting his candidacy with Omehia, and to ask that he be declared the elected governor of Rivers State. After a protracted legal battle, judgment was declared in Amaechi’s favour and Omehia had to vacate the seat for him.

    But he had hardly settled down in office when his first adversary emerged in the person of former Minister of Information and prominent Niger Delta leader, Chief Edwin Clarke. The two had got along well until 2008 when Clarke’s clamour for amnesty for Niger Delta militants became their point of disagreement. Amaechi, known for being principled, vehemently opposed the clamour for amnesty. He believed the only motivation behind Clarke’s push for amnesty was the fact that most of the militant youths were Ijaw like him. The smouldering feud would later extend to Clarke’s political son, President Goodluck Jonathan. But it was not fanned into a flame until sometime in October last year when the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission (RMFC) ceded some of Rivers’ oil wells to Bayelsa, Jonathan’s home state.

    The development resulted in widespread protests in more than 30 communities in Rivers State and even in Abuja where some indigenes of the state also protested. Before long, verbal assaults began to fly between Amaechi and the governor of Bayelsa State who claimed that the 11th edition of the administrative map of Nigeria had given the oil wells to Bayelsa. Insinuations that President Jonathan had used his office to influence the ceding of Rivers’ oil wells to Bayelsa left him offended and highly embarrassed. A few weeks later, there were reports of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFCC) investigating the Amaechi administration over corrupt practices. There were also reports of attempts by the Presidency to instigate the Rivers State House of Assembly against the governor.

    Jonathan’s loyalist and Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Elder Godsday Orubebe reached into his verbal armoury and launched a missile against Amaechi, accusing him of disrespecting the President. “He (Amaechi) sees himself as the governor of governors, and he begins to feel that he is even bigger than the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I want to make him know that God is still God. He must have respect for the Presidency. He must have respect for the President of this country. In America, even within the same political parties, they struggle and they fight over positions. But once a President emerges, everybody will hold his tongue and support the President to succeed so that Americans can get the best. But is that what our President is getting? It is sad, it is unfortunate that people from the South-South, even governors, particularly Governor Rotimi Amaechi, has no respect for the president of this country. I think this is the right time we should let him know,” he said.

    Determined to reduce Amaechi’s influence as the chairman of the highly influential Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Jonathan and his loyalists last week formed a parallel PDP Governors’ Forum with the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godswill Akpabio, as the chairman. With his utterances since he was named the helmsman of the new forum, Akpabio, who only last year predicted that the PDP would remain in power for 50 years, has not hidden his desperation to crush any perceived threat to Jonathan’s second term ambition and PDP’s continued hold on power. “What the PDP is trying to do now is to cleanse its house; to try to identify the ones they call Judases and say to them ‘go out, the train is moving’. We will ask them not to remain standing otherwise we will crush them,” Akpabio told members of the National Working Committee of the party, including the party’s National Chairman, Bamanga Tukur in Abuja on Tuesday.

    Yet many would see the confrontational stance of the President and his loyalists against Amaechi as a tactical blunder. Whether they know it or not, there are more loyal governors to Amaechi than there are to Jonathan at the moment. The reason is simple. Majority of the governors believe their ego was badly bruised with the Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur’s decision to dissolve the executive committee of the PDP in Adamawa State against their protestations. Now they are waiting for an opportunity to take their pound of flesh from Jonathan for failing to call Tukur to order. By implication, therefore, every move against Amaechi is a move against the governors, whose grip on their constituencies can only be underestimated at the President’s peril.

    If Amaechi was a mortar, he has become a pot since the face-off between Tukur and the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. He is now far more delicate to roll. Like a mosquito that perches on the scrotum, his case requires much more diplomacy than the aggression being adopted by Jonathan and his men. Even if, like a leper, he is not endowed with enough fingers to milk a cow, he definitely has all it takes to spill the milk. Jonathan and his loyalists ought to have acted on the saying that if you cannot get a man to become your friend, you should make it impossible for him to become your enemy. But all that appear to be too late in the day as the feuding parties have crossed the Rubicon. Happily, however, the ordinary Nigerian could be the ultimate beneficiary. You know what I mean?

     

  • As executive robbers go on the rampage

    As executive robbers go on the rampage

    The joke is told of three presidents who went for a meeting of heads of state in Geneva, Switzerland. At the end of the meeting, the three statesmen decided to return to their respective countries in the same plane. As they were about to take off, the pilot announced that each of them should watch out to know when the plane was in his country, so that he could alight.

    The president of France was the first to get to his country. He knew because as he looked out of the window, he saw the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Versailles Palace, the fascinating lightings and other landmarks that stand Paris out as world’s most beautiful city. He shouted, “Drop me here! Drop me here! I’m in France! Pronto, the plane landed and the French president alighted.

    As the journey continued, the president of America looked through the window and saw the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Hollywood Sign, the Golden Gate Bridge and other landmarks that set America apart as the world’s most developed nation, and he yelled, “This is America. Drop me here! Again, the plane descended, the American president alighted and went his way, leaving the Nigerian president behind.

    The Nigerian president knew that unlike his counterparts in France and America, there were no landmarks of consequence through which he would know when the plane had reached his country’s airspace. As he continued to wonder what to do, it occurred to him that he was leading a country where there were more rogues than honest men. From the plane, he stretched out the hand on which he wore a gold wristwatch and told the pilot to fly at a lower altitude. He had barely done so for 30 minutes when someone snatched his wrist watch with the swiftness of the eagle. “Drop me! We are in Nigeria,”he shouted.

    I wasted no time in dismissing the joke as impracticable, mischievous and patently unpatriotic the first time I heard it. But following recent developments, I have had cause to ponder over it and realised that impracticable and mischievous as it may sound, it no doubt underscores our penchant for stealing, particularly where public funds are involved. How else could one explain the daily emergence of various categories of thieves on the national scene in recent times? While we only had to contend with pickpockets, highway robbers and muffled cases of malfeasance in the past, the nation now groans under the weight of subsidy thieves, pension thieves, pipeline thieves and the latest in the range—bonus thieves.

    Most at the receiving end are pensioners who had spent their useful years serving their fatherland, but now die on queues as they wait endlessly for pensions that never come. Almost on a daily basis, the news media are awash with stories of aged men and women who live purely on charity because the money set apart for their pension and gratuity in the nation’s budget ends up in the private pockets of government officials whose duty it is to disburse it. Thus, in a show of sheer madness, it is now a habit among pension officials to appropriate the sums to themselves in billions their children and children’s children cannot exhaust in their lifetime, even if all they do is spend money.

    Under the nose of Dr. Sani Teidi Shuaibu as the Director of Pension Administration in the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, the sum of N4.56 billion meant for pensioners vanished into thin air. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) later declared in April last year that N1.5 billion of the sum had been traced into Shuaibu’s private account. This was after the commission had confiscated houses and filling stations whose value ran into billions of naira from the Kogi State-born civil servant. The list included a house at No 24, Ahmadu Musa Crescent, Jabi, Abuja; Brefina Hotel at Plot 1106 (Beside MTN) warehouse, adjacent to Vines Hotel, Durumi, Abuja; a house at No 1, Shuaibu Close, opposite Governor’s House, Idah, Kogi State; Riba-Ile Petroleum Ltd; an MRS filling station at Ajaka, Kogi State (registered as Riba-Ile Oil Ltd; another MRS filling station at Idah, registered as Hammo Oil, Nigeria; an NNPC mega station, Idah Junction, Ayingba, registered as Hammo Oil, Nig. Ltd; an MRS filling station at Ganaja, Lokoja, Kogi State, registered as A.Y Ted Oil Ltd; a mansion at Idah, opposite Federal Polytechnic; SunTrust Properties Company Ltd; a house at Plot B59, Dawaki Extension Layout, Bwari Area Council, Abuja; an estate of about 10 bungalows on Dantata Street, Nyanyan, FCT, Abuja.

    Of course, many other suspected thieves have since been arrested, including John Yusuf, a former assistant director in the Police Pension Office whose case has generated protests from the Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigeria Labour Congress, opposition political parties and other civil society groups after the courts gave him a slap on the wrist, asking him to pay a fine of N750,000 for embezzling N23 billion police pension funds. There is also the current case of the runaway boss of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT) boss, Abdulrasheed Maina, who the Senate had asked to account for mismanaged pension funds amounting to about N469 billion

    Last year, the entire landscape was shaken by revelations of trillions of naira paid out by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to various businessmen as subsidy for fuel they never imported into the country. No fewer than 25 chief executives of companies are currently facing prosecution over alleged theft of subsidy money. A fallout of the development was the sum of $620,000 Hon. Farouk Lawan, the chair of the House Ad-Hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy Probe, allegedly demanded from the Chairman of Zenon Oil, Mr. Femi Otedola, with a promise to expunge the name of the latter’s company from the list of companies involved in the subsidy racket. Lawan has since been prosecuted by the Federal Government.

    During the week, Nigerians woke up to the shocking news that the N1.3 billion bonus money approved by President Goodluck Jonathan for the Super Eagles campaign at the just-concluded African Cup of Nations was shared by top officials of the National Sports Commission and the sports committees of the two chambers of the National Assembly. The development, according to the National Pilot, was the key reason the Nigeria Football Federation had not been able to pay members of the Super Eagles the $30,000 promised each of them as bonus for winning the final match against the Stallions of Burkina Faso to win the Nations Cup trophy for the third time.

    The foregoing are evidence of how desperately important it has become for the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan to step up the war against corruption before we wake up one morning and discover that the strong room of the Central Bank is missing. The laws against theft of public funds must be strengthened as well as the agencies responsible for fighting corruption in the land.

  • A lunch date Jonathan should have granted with caution

    A lunch date Jonathan should have granted with caution

    Health experts believe that people eat for two reasons: for pleasure and to assuage hunger. In African setting, eating together is a symbol of truce where warring parties are involved. That is why supporters and admirers of President Goodluck Jonathan and former President Olusegun Obasanjo must have rejoiced when the two statesmen had lunch together at the presidential villa penultimate Friday, after bouts of verbal exchange.

    Jonathan would most probably not be anywhere near his present position without Obasanjo’s influence. His fortuitous emergence as the Bayelsa State governor, vice president and president were all made possible by Obasanjo’s political influence. He was minding his business as the deputy governor of Bayelsa State before the former governor of the state, Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, jumped bail in the UK after he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for money laundering. The then President Obasanjo, who was in the heat of his anti-corruption campaign, piled pressure on the Bayelsa State House of Assembly to impeach Alamieyeseigha, paving way for Jonathan to step in as governor.

    It was also Obasanjo who nominated Jonathan as the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s running mate. As fate would have it, Yar’Adua died midway into his first term, and Jonathan fortuitously became the president. And while Jonathan dilly-dallied on declaring his interest in vying for the presidency after serving out Yar’Adua’s tenure, Obasanjo came out and publicly urged him to throw his hat in the ring, in spite of the zoning arrangement in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In the ensuing battle for the presidential ticket of the party, Jonathan defeated the consensus candidate of the North, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, before going on to win the election.

    In a clear instance of the instability of human relationships, Obasanjo and Jonathan fell apart after the former publicly criticised Jonathan’s handling of the destructive activities of the Boko Haram sect in the northern part of the country. At the 40th anniversary of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s call to ministry at the Word of Life Bible Church, Warri, Delta State in November last year, Obasanjo had carpeted Jonathan for not deploying soldiers to invade the towns that harboured members of the sect and crush them like he (Obasanjo) did in Odi and Zaki Biam in Bayelsa and Benue states respectively after some militant youths in the communities allegedly killed policemen and soldiers deployed there to keep the peace.

    A few days later, Jonathan seized the opportunity of an interview he had on national television to dismiss Obasanjo’s invasion of Odi as nothing, but a monumental failure because the soldiers who invaded Odi only succeeded in killing and maiming innocent souls, while the real culprits escaped. From then on, both parties seized every available opportunity to throw words at each other before the surprise lunch they had together at the Presidential Villa.

    As would be expected, many supporters of Obasanjo and Jonathan hailed the development as an end to the feud between them. But the more discerning of Jonathan’s supporters, who are familiar with the antecedents of Obasanjo in such matters, have reasons to panic. A reputation for which the former president would never be found wanting is his ability to turn a lunch date with his political foe into regrettable moment. So recurrent is this aspect of his political life that observers now say he who Obasanjo wants to punish he first gives dinner.

    And instances of this abound. In January 2005, a lunch date supposedly designed to reconcile Obasanjo and the then PDP Chairman, Audu Ogbeh, became the latter’s albatross. Obasanjo had fallen out with Ogbeh over a letter Ogbeh wrote, accusing the presidency of worsening the political crisis in Anambra State. After several meetings were convened by party chieftains to reconcile the two, Obasanjo rode in the same vehicle with Ogbeh to the latter’s house where they feasted on pounded yam and egusi soup. Thereafter, Ogbeh went on national television and announced that whatever misunderstanding he had with Obasanjo had been settled. Less than a week later, Obasanjo struck. He went to Ogbeh’s house and told him to resign as party Chairman.

    Before then, there had been the celebrated quarrel between Obasanjo and the late former Senate president, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo. A politician of immense political clout, Okadigbo had carried on his leadership of the Senate with little or no deference to Obasanjo, a situation that provoked a kind of personality clash between the two statesmen. After a series of quiet but bruising confrontations, a truce was brokered between them, following which Obasanjo was on hand to commission a new residence that was built for Okadigbo. At the commissioning ceremony, they had dinner together and Obasanjo even danced with Okadigbo’s wife. A few days later, Obasanjo brought his training as an engineer to bear by engineering Okadigbo’s impeachment and the then Senate president was removed.

    Other politicians who have suffered the similar fate in Obasanjo’s hand include the immediate past governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, and former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. After a serious disagreement between Obasanjo and Daniel over the latter’s successor, some Yoruba elders decided to intervene as Jonathan prepared to take his campaign train to the South West in the build-up to the 2011 presidential election. Consequently, the Yoruba elders, including Chief Afe Babalola; Chief Kessington Adebutu; Chief Kenny Martins; the Olubara of Ibara, Oba Jacob Omolade; and former governorship aspirant of the party, Dr. Femi Majekodunmi, stormed Obasanjo’s residence with Daniel and supposedly worked out a truce. Daniel was said to have prostrated for Obasanjo who, in response, declared that his sins were forgiven. And to demonstrate the fact that he had truly forgiven Daniel, Obasanjo reached for his pocket and brought out a kolanut which they shared and ate. Today, Daniel is like a fly caught in the spider’s web as he fights the battle of his life with forces that owe their existence to the former head of state.

    The emergence of the presidential campaign posters of the Jigawa State governor, Sule Lamido, and his Rivers State counterpart, Rotimi Amaechi, days after Jonathan and Obasanjo had lunch in Aso Rock, is seen by many as a concomitant of the incident. Any need for more proofs?

  • IBB: 20 years at war with history

    IBB: 20 years at war with history

    It amazes me that Nigerians, particularly the media, still take former head of state, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), with all seriousness each time he speaks. Of course, as a man who led the country for eight years, the nation’s history cannot be complete without a mention of the self-styled evil genius. I also appreciate the fact that personalities make the news and the concept of personality could lose its meaning, if a man that ruled the most populous black nation in the world for eight years is not seen as one.

    My grouse is that we still take his utterances so seriously, knowing full well that he is a general whose words are not his bonds. For eight odd years, he led a government whose directive principles were deceit, chicanery and graft. Shortly after he seized power from Gen. Muhammadu Buhari in a palace coup in 1985, he initiated a political transition programme with a promise to hand power over to an elected president in 1990. Nigerians believed he meant well for the country and gave him all the support he needed. But as the promised handover date approached, Babangida began to dissemble. He changed the handover date from 1990 to 1992 and later to 1993. Nigerians kept faith with his promise only for him to annul the freest and fairest election in the nation’s history through which Babangida’s close friend, the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, emerged as the president.

    Yet the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election was only the climax of the numerous acts of deception perpetrated by IBB while he held sway as military president. For instance, he had hardly settled down in office when he turned the nation into one huge debating club, asking Nigerians to express their opinions over a plan by his government to take a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nigerians were almost unanimous in their resolve that the nation needed not patronise the Shylock organisation so as not to become a puppet on its string. Unknown to the debating public, the IBB government had already taken the loan they were passionately kicking against.

    Of course, Nigeria had to abide by the conditions the IMF had given for granting it the loan, among which was that the nation’s currency whose value at that time was almost twice that of the dollar, had to be devalued. That became the genesis of trouble for the naira. The Babangida government introduced the second-tier foreign exchange market, and, within a few months, the value of the naira against the dollar crashed from about 65 kobo to about N60. Today, a Nigerian in need of one dollar must be willing to sacrifice about N160!

    It will also be recalled that the Babangida government almost stirred a serious religious crisis when it secretly dragged the nation, recognised by the constitution as a secular state, into the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). It needs not be said that whatever mutual suspicion existed between the practitioners of Christianity and Islam was greatly accentuated by that act. It is, therefore, no surprise that some parts of the country are boiling in the cauldron of religious intolerance today.

    Afraid of his place in history after he had to vacate Aso Rock with his tail between his legs in the height of the religious crisis provoked by the flagrant annulment of the 1993 presidential election, Babangida has persistently been searching for relevance in the nation’s socio-political space. It began with his pronouncement when he was forced to vacate the presidential villa in 1993 that he was only stepping aside. His proteges and bootlickers took that to mean that he would still return to power at one time or the other, and, therefore, sustained their loyalty to him. He became a regular face at public functions, particularly funerals, and made sure he added his voice to every public discourse in order to keep himself in the consciousness of the public. In fact, many believe that he knew he had no chance each time he threw his hat in the ring for presidential contest, but had to keep doing so in order to remain in the consciousness of the Nigerian public.

    During a face-off he had with IBB last year, former President Olusegun Obasanjo had counselled that silence should be the best answer for the gap-toothed general. But no one seems to have profited from Obasanjo’s counsel. Hence we shouted it on the roof top when the man who, on account of his selfish ambition nearly plunged the nation into war in 1993, turned himself into peace counsellor at the launch of two books written in honour of former external affairs minister, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, in Lagos penultimate Friday. “Nigeria is precious enough to be saved and it deserves an investment of our time and resources to make Project Nigeria a success,” said IBB who, as the sitting head of state, had wondered the magic by which the nation had not collapsed. One cannot but wonder which Nigeria he would be talking about today, if pro-democracy activists had not rescued the country from him in 1993.

    Haunted by his misdeeds, it is understandable that IBB is perpetually searching for relevance among a people that could consign him to the anthill of inglorious history. What cannot be understood is the obligation the media owe him to go to town with a story if he is pressed and needs to visit the gents. Considering that IBB plotted his way to power with aggrandisement as sole motivation, what message are we passing across when we pay such undue attention to a soldier who subverted the constitution to style himself president? That whatever means a man adopts to plot himself to the top is worthwhile?

    It would have been better if he had seized power in order to better the lots of Nigerians, but many of us are living witnesses to the circumstances in which he overthrew the Buhari/Idiagbon regime that had rescued the nation from the thieving NPN government and was steadily returning it to the path of sanity. IBB is at war with history. Unfortunately, he cannot outlive it.

  • Re: Doctoral degree holders as truck drivers

    •All these occurrences are a mockery of education as a sector and as a profession. Lack of job/employment is just a function of corruption among leaders in most sectors, the university inclusive.

    In the current 2012/2013 admission exercise, the University of Ilorin denied my son admission in ICT even when he was number one on the admission list before its release in September. The cut off mark was 50 per cent and he scored 74 per cent. He had six Bs and two Cs in his O’level result. But on both the merit and supplementary lists, his name was missing.

    Petition letters went to the President, the Vice President, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, (NUC), the Minister of Education, the outgone Vice Chancellor Oloyede, the incoming Vice Chancellor Ambali Abdulganiyu and the Registrar, Oyeyemi. Only the Senate responded a little but to no avail.

    All the letters went by express mail service (EMS) since October 8, 2012. The university was not bothered. The minister and the NUC did not show any sign of being bothered. Is that a country to die for? What kind of products would be produced where mediocres are offered admission to displace the best? Insulting enough, my son and his parents are Kwarans from Ojoku, a rural community in Kwara State. That is why many of our graduates are unemployed and unemployable.

    Unemployment will not abate until corruption is killed and the Buhari/Idiagbon and OBJ?Ribadu styles oif administration are entrenched, because the wrong people gain admissions, get the jobs, assume positions of prominence and take wrong decisions on the mass of the people. The three sectors to cleanse for us to move forward are the universities, power (PHCN) and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince illiterate parents to send their children to school nowadays.

    Lanre Oseni.

    •I would rather tell you to stop wasting your time writing to advise the government. But then, you need to do your job. They simply cannot comprehend. Instead, maybe you should try to write about the consequences of their misdeeds when the country unravels. These people will not learn until then and it will be too late.

    The only thing they might stand to gain is refugee status in another country if they manage to survive the uprising, for it will surely come to pass. When? Your guess is as good as mine. Will it happen? I bet it will.

    081596970..

    •I agree that there is massive unemployment in the country. The neo-colonial socio-economic system we operate is to blame. Private property is its basis. It energises underdevelopment and enfeebles progressivism. Its education is not, as Cesaire said, “to invent souls”. It does not teach the masses that everything depends on them.

    Amos Ejimonye, Kaduna.

    •N300,000 per month, excluding allowances, will be paid to Dangote’s graduate drivers.

    Yusf Leo Gwamna, Kaduna

    •What is wrong with doctorate holders becoming truck drivers to fend for themselves and their families? If you are not satisfied with the situation, relinquish your office for them. Is farming not a way of life? We are talking about bringing the good life to many people as quickly as possible. Truck drivers are not criminals; they earn their income legitimately.

    Izuata, Benin City.

    •Any degree holder in Nigeria, and master’s, MBA or PhD for that matter, who applies for job as truck driver must have a questionable certificate. Unfortunately, you people in the media keep on highlighting the issue. What is education after all? Application of knowledge.

    Every unemployed graduate in Nigeria must get a copy of The Mafia Manager rather than looking for jobs that are not there.

    Rodsimeon Idaewor.

  • Will Jonathan float where Atiku sank?

    Theirs is a study in the instability of human relationship. Two years ago, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was at the vanguard of the campaign for President Goodluck Jonathan to run for election after completing the tenure of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua who passed on half way into his four-year tenure after a protracted illness. Today, a storm is brewing between Jonathan and Obasanjo after the latter began a quiet but bruising campaign against Jonathan’s ambition for re-election in 2015.

    Many would recall how Obasanjo had visited Jonathan in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa at a time a debate raged on whether he should throw his hat in the ring for the 2011 presidential race and urged him to run for the coveted seat. This was in spite of the obvious danger Jonathan’s candidacy posed to the zoning arrangement in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) whose Board of Trustees Obasanjo chaired at the time.

    Jonathan, whose body language was still being read by perceptible members of the public, was said to have been totally embarrassed when in his usual comical way, Obasanjo stormed the Villa on May 29, 2010, pointed at him and said repeatedly: “You will run! You will run! Don’t tell me you are thinking about it! We just have to move forward!” And when a former Special Assistant to Obasanjo tried to persuade the ex-President to keep the plan close to his chest, he exploded: “I won’t keep quiet on this matter! You know that I will always say my mind!”

    From then until Jonathan won the presidential race in April 2011, Obasanjo neither wavered nor despaired in his resolute campaign for Jonathan. For instance, he reportedly told the Abia State Governor, Theodore Orji, who visited his Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, Ogun State home on August 21, 2010 to mobilise every machinery in Abia State to ensure Jonathan’s victory in the 2011 election in a move he declared as “Operation Totality”. He would later follow that up August 28, 2010 with a meeting he held in Ibadan with the PDP governors in the South West and other party bigwigs in the zone, urging them to unanimously adopt Jonathan as the party’s presidential flag bearer.

    Obasanjo’s ruthless support for Jonathan was widely believed to have remarkably influenced his emergence as the presidential candidate of the PDP and his eventual victory at the presidential poll. And that was not unexpected, considering that Jonathan’s rise into national consciousness had been the handiwork of Obasanjo himself. He was minding his business as Deputy Governor in Bayelsa State until December 2005 when his boss, Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, was impeached and arrested after he had jumped bail in London where he was facing trial for money laundering and ran back to Nigeria. Obasanjo, then the President, was believed to have mounted sufficient pressure on the Bayelsa State House of Assembly to impeach Alamieyeseigha, paving the way for Jonathan’s emergence as the Bayelsa State governor.

    And Obasanjo was not done yet. After influencing the emergence of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s emergence as the presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2007 general election, the outgoing president needed a level-headed man to be his running mate, and his mind went straight to Jonathan. Two years into Yar’Adua’s tenure, however, he lost his battle with an ailment that had tormented him since his days as the governor of Katsina State. Jonathan then stepped in in an acting capacity and later as the substantive president.

    But if Jonathan had been perceptive, he would realise that Obasanjo is pencil and eraser rolled into one. He is endowed with the ability to make in the same measure as his ability to unmake. That much has been demonstrated in his relationships with his erstwhile deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Jonathan’s immediate predecessor, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua.

    After clinching the presidential ticket of the PDP with the aid of the political platform of the PDM, the political platform of the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua in the build-up to the 1999 presidential election, Obasanjo felt an urge to compensate the platform by appointing its heir, Atiku, as his running mate, even though the latter had coasted to victory as the governor-elect of Adamawa State. Obasanjo won the presidential election and Atiku became the Vice President. But their relationship, which began on a rosy note later turned sour. Obasanjo did not only make life unbearable for Atiku for most of their second term, he also made sure he frustrated Atiku’s ambition to succeed him as president.

    In place of Atiku, Obasanjo rooted for the younger Yar’Adua as his successor, sticking out his neck for the erstwhile Katsina State governor even in the face of public outrage over Umaru Yar’Adua’s ill health. But the eraser in Obasanjo showed up when the health condition of Yar’Adua graduated from a matter of serious national concern to that of national embarrassment. In the midst of the political brouhaha generated by the situation, Obasanjo, who had vehemently defended Yar’Adua’s ability to continue in office, made a volte face, famously declaring that no individual, group or section had the right to hold the country to ransom.

    His declaration turned events unto the fast lane. Individuals and groups keyed into the call that Jonathan be named the Acting President. The National Assembly pandered to public pulse and Jonathan became the Acting President until Yar’Adua passed on and he became the substantive President.

    It would seem, however, that the time has come for Jonathan to have a taste of the whip with which Obasanjo had flogged Atiku and Yar’Adua. After rooting for Jonathan for years, two incidents appear to have set the former President thinking in the direction of the Atiku and Yar’Adua treatments. The first was Jonathan’s defiance of Obasanjo’s advice late last year against Federal Government’s threat to remove the subsidy on fuel. Contrary to Obasanjo’s counsel, the nation woke up on January 1 to the shocking news that the government had removed fuel subsidy.

    The second incident is the Jonathan administration’s handling of the menace of the Boko Haram sect in the northern part of the country. Irked by the administration’s tepid handling of the crisis, Obasanjo had recommended his aggressive response to the killing of soldiers and policemen in Odi and Zaki Biam, two communities in Bayelsa and Benue states respectively when he held sway as the President. But in one of his monthly media chats, Jonathan dismissed the Obasanjo approach as ineffectual and rash. It was a sword driven into Obasanjo’s heart, and it is believed to have provoked the ex-President to resolve that Jonathan must not spend a day longer than the expiration of his current tenure in Aso Rock.

    Already, the ex-President is believed to be hobnobbing with northern leaders with a view to picking a candidate of northern extraction to fly the flag of the PDP in 2015. In particular, he is believed to favour the candidacy of the Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido. The first test of their strength will occur on January 8 when the party is scheduled to elect a new chairman for its Board of Trustees. President Jonathan is believed to have supported the candidacy of Chief Tony Anenih,while Obasanjo is rooting for Senator Ahmadu Ali.

    For the two political titans, therefore, the January 8 event is not just an election, but a battle for ego and political relevance.

  • Private jets as vehicles for the gospel

    I grew up in the Anglican Church with owo ni keke ihinrere (money is the bicycle that conveys the gospel) as the pastor’s refrain. Today, the gospel has become so sophisticated that it can no longer thrive on bicycle. Even the power bike has no more place in the onerous task of spreading the good news; a task Christ Himself executed by shunning horses and donkeys which were popular means of transport in his time, and trekking from one community to another.

    To be sure, cars and SUVs are still relevant to the gospel. But by the standard of the modern day preacher, they are far from being sufficient. Only an aeroplane would do. And not just an aeroplane but a jet, and it has to be privately owned. Hence, the current craze for private jets among our church leaders.

    Penultimate Saturday, the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and founder of the Word of Life Bible Church, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, joined the league of Nigerian clergymen who own private jets after members of the church in Ajamimogha, Warri, Delta State gave the pastor a private jet as present for his birthday and 40th anniversary on the pulpit. He thus joined others like the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye; founder of The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM), Bishop Mike Okonkwo; Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of Christ Embassy Church and the founder of Living Faith Ministries a.k.a. Winners’ Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo.

    The church founded by Christ was one that sought to discourage mindless urge for material acquisition. That explains why He resisted the temptation to bow to Satan in order to take possession of all the riches the latter had shown Him after taking Him to the mountain. For 21 of the 33 years He spent on earth, Christ went about preaching the gospel on his legs. It was not until the very last leg of his assignment that he rode on a donkey into Jerusalem because His mission on earth was so designed. At the Synagogue in Jerusalem, he turned the tables of money changers upside down and lambasted them for turning His father’s house into a business centre.

    That, however, is not the portion of modern day preachers, many of whom people in the secular world now watch to know the car and private jet in vogue. From Nearer My Lord to Thee, the craze for materialism in church circles has virtually corrupted one of the popular hymns that endeared us to the church as youngsters to Naira My Lord to Thee

    Unfortunately, the hunger for material acquisition in the church is catching on in the secular world, such that in spite of the grinding poverty that pervades the country, Nigeria today holds the abominable record of the African nation with the highest number of private jet owners. Joining wealthy individuals like Aliko Dangote, Ifeanyi Uba and Mike Adenuga in the quest for private jets are managing directors of banks and state governors, some whom are yet to implement the N18,000 minimum wage for workers. Going by statistics, the number of private jets in Nigeria is believed to have risen from 50 in 2008 to 200 in 2012. With the cost of a jet ranging between N2.4 billion and N9 billion, more than N1.3 trillion is believed to have been spent on the acquisition of private jets in the last seven years.

    It is no surprise, therefore, that concerned patriots leaders are crying blue murder over the prevailing situation. At the annual Founder’s Day Anniversary lecture of Providence Baptist Church in Lagos last Saturday, Matthew Kukah, the fiery bishop of the Catholic Church known to always proceed upon the principle that two plus two is four, described the complacent exhibition of opulence by church leaders as embarrassing. The acquisition of private jets by Christian leaders, the erudite bishop noted, diminishes the moral voice of the church in the fight against corruption.

    The cleric, who as the guest speaker spoke on Church and the State in the Pursuit of the Common Good a few days after Oritsejafor got his gift of private jet in the presence of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, said: “The stories of corrupt men and women being given recognition by their churches or mosques as gallant sons and daughters and the embarrassing stories of pastors displaying conspicuous wealth as we hear from the purchases of private jets and so on, clearly diminish our moral voice… CAN has become more visible in relation to national prayer sessions, pilgrimages, alliances with state power and so on. Unless we distance ourselves, we cannot speak the truth to power. We cannot hear the wails of the poor and the weak. We should not be seen as playing the praying wing of the party in power.”

    But beyond the moral issue of anti-corruption campaign, I think it is selfish of church leaders to think that the solution to the death traps that criss-cross the country as roads is to acquire private jets, soar above the abyss and abandon the rest of the populace to their fate. What, for instance, is the moral, social, religious or economic justification for a church leader to own three private jets when at least a quarter of his congregation does not know where their next meals would come from? Is it to prove, like modern day preachers are wont to say, that the God he serves is not poor or to simply show that the church is the veritable ground for opulent lifestyle? If his church has branches all over the world and he must visit them in a private jet, would he also fly in two jets at a time? On what moral pedestal would such a church leader admonish the congregation against ostentatious lifestyle which is at the roots of the social problems that leave the country prostrate?

    Elsewhere, the church is at the vanguard of the fight against government’s ineptitude. But rather than tackle the government on the poor state of our roads, our church leaders have chosen to acquire jets and mind their business. It is a case of every man for himself and God for us all.