Category: Vincent Akanmode

By Vincent Akanmode

It would seem that after years of our steady decline into animal kingdom, the country’s leadership is beginning to appreciate the clear danger that widespread insecurity poses to our survival as a nation.

In a rare admission of the ugly security situation in the country as he received a delegation of eminent Niger State indigenes led by Governor Abubakar Sani Bello in Abuja on Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari expressed surprise at the current surge in the country’s security challenges.

”I was taken aback by what is happening in the North West and other parts of the country,” he said. “During our campaigns, we knew about Boko Haram. What is coming now is surprising. It is not ethnicity or religion. Rather, it is one evil plan against the country. We have to be harder on them.”

Happily, the President admitted that “one of the responsibilities of government is to provide security. If we don’t secure the country, we will not be able to manage the economy properly.” He also vowed that there would be harder times for bandits whose disruptive activities have brought sorrow to Nigerians, kept many law abiding citizens away from their means of livelihood and heightened insecurity in different parts of the country.

With the nation virtually crippled by Boko Haram insurgency, herders/farmers clashes, banditry, kidnapping, communal clashes, hired assassination and other anti-social activities, the two chambers of the National Assembly, traditional rulers, religious leaders, civil society organisations and even the international community are all of the view that the country’s security architecture needs a review. While this cannot be disputed, there are more fundamental issues that must be addressed failing which whatever security architecture is instituted would be overwhelmed.

Decadent family system, disregard for human dignity and lack of the will on the part of law enforcement agents to ensure strict application of the rule of law are some of the issues at the bottom of the country’s continued transformation into an animal kingdom where survival is reserved only for the fittest. With the way things are going, even if the state of nature espoused by Thomas Hobbes was an imaginary one, the 16th Century philosopher would be grateful in his grave that Nigeria’s condition is turning his imagination into a fulfilled prophecy.

Since the profligate regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida during which corruption virtually became the directive principle of state policy, the nation has turned out successive armies of thieving public office holders who think their duty to the nation is to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth and over-indulge their children with luxury. Funds from the public purse which ought to be channeled into building infrastructure and creating jobs are diverted into their private pockets. With their loot, they build mansions on hilltops and pretend to live millions of miles away from the army of frustrated youths and pauperized adults in their surroundings, who also feel an obligation to become rich by fair or foul means.

Wittingly or unwittingly, we are breeding generations of unconscionable predators who think nothing of shedding human blood in their blind pursuit of inanities…The picture becomes more frightening when it is considered that these disoriented, directionless youths will themselves become parents!

That, in the main, is the genesis of the megalomania instinct under whose spell the nation is now groaning via banditry, kidnapping and other social ills. In the end, it is the case of a hen that perches on the rope. Neither the hen nor the rope will know peace.

Unfortunately, the family system has virtually collapsed. Parents who are supposed to monitor their children and rein them in when they derail are too busy fighting for survival. Thus, wittingly or unwittingly, we are breeding generations of unconscionable predators who think nothing of shedding human blood in their blind pursuit of inanities. The situation is such that parents now live in fear of their children while brothers and sisters can no longer sleep under the same roof for fear that one could hide under the cover of the night to kill the other for money rituals. The picture becomes more frightening when it is considered that these disoriented, directionless youths will themselves become parents!

A colleague told me the other day that handshake had become an abominable practice in the part of Lagos where he lives. Why? So called ‘Yahoo Plus’ boys in the area have perfected the art of turning innocent people into victims of ritual killing by merely shaking hands with them.

Two bizarre incidents of ritual killing in a space of one week last month underscore how debased we have become as a people. In the first incident, a 30-year-old housewife identified as Mrs. Abosede Adeyemi Iyanda was killed by her ex-lover and 12 other accomplices for money rituals. The suspects did not only callously kill the woman, who was said to be in search of a charm that would boost her business, by smashing her head with a mortar, they proceeded to cook and eat some of her organs, washing down their weird menu with gin!

In the second incident, a final year Sociology student of Lagos State University (LASU), Favour Daley-Oladele, was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend in connivance with a 42-year-old self-acclaimed pastor of a white garment church. With Favour’s heart, her boyfriend prepared a meal eaten by him and his mother, because the mother was broke and must eat a concoction made with human heart to become rich again.

Sadly, only a few of the perpetrators of these heinous acts are arrested while others plot their ways out of the supposedly long arm of the law. Getting hold of criminals and ensuring that they pay for their sins is crucial to getting rid of the criminal activities that hold the country by the jugular. Nigeria is reputed for having one of the best sets of laws in the world, but unless they are applied without fear or favour, the country will remain at the mercy of criminal elements.

Vincent Akanmode

ONE of our major defects as mortars is the tendency to view time only from the prism of eternity. That essentially is a feature that distinguishes from the Creator in whose eyes the bible says a thousand years is like one day. “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night,” said biblical David in one of his Psalms. Man, on his part, tends to think that a year is as enduring as a thousand years. That is why we set a time frame within which we would accomplish a task or fulfill a promise, only for the time we promised to sneak in like a thief in the night.

As it is with individuals, so also it is with nations. For example, in the heady days of the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida-led military administration between 1985 and 1994, the government picked 2000 as the year every good thing of life Nigerians desired would become available. Thus the government vowed that by Year 2000, there would be food for all, good health for all, sound education for all, good house for all, uninterrupted electricity supply for all, good roads for all and even good wives and good husbands for everyone.

Lost on the administration was the fact that Year 2000 was barely a decade away at the time they were making the vows. Twenty years into the millennium, the country is still wallowing in Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature where life, according to the 16th Century British philosopher, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Two decades after the proposed El Dorado year, there are far more unhealthy Nigerians than there are healthy ones. Today, only a few of the citizens who can afford to jet out to the UK, Germany, America or other advanced countries mainly with funds looted from our common patrimony can boast of access to good health care because our so-called hospitals are still nothing but mere consulting clinics.

The housing sector has not fared better either. In Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Kano, Port Harcourt and other major cities, the underneath of flyover bridges are still homes to millions. A World Bank report in 2015 indicated that Nigeria with a population of about 174 million people was facing a national housing deficit of about 17 million units. The report put the country’s housing deficit in 1991 at seven million units, rising to 12 million in 2007 and 14 million in 2010 before it hit the 17 million mark. Four years after, the figures can only be more discomforting.

Power supply remains yet epileptic as the agency saddled with the task of providing electricity has been busy dispensing darkness. Even the change of nomenclature from National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has done little to alter the ugly situation. A few years ago, the Federal Government, in its bid to fully privatise the agency, unbundled it into the power generation companies (GENCOs) and the power distribution companies (DISCOs). The initiative is yet to translate into regular supply of electricity even though some people would argue that there has been a marked improvement since the new arrangement.

The network of roads from Lagos to Maiduguri and from Port Harcourt to Kano remains yet a death trap. If anything, they have only helped in facilitating the operations of robbers, kidnappers, terrorists and other criminal elements who are taking advantage of the dilapidated conditions of the roads to attack, molest and torment innocent commuters. It is the 21st Century but pipe borne water remains a pipe dream in most communities in a country touted as the giant of Africa.

As it turned out, the touted good life for all was a mere political rhetoric employed by the dissembling Babangida administration to raise the hope of Nigerians while he quietly plotted the bid to perpetuate himself in office. Unfortunately, he boxed himself into a corner and had to leave office with his tail between his legs after the wild protests that greeted his annulment of the 1993 presidential election won by the late business mogul and candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Bashorun MKO Abiola.

Motivated perhaps by the widespread disappointment that greeted the failed promise of good life for all, the civilian administration of the late former President Umaru Yar’Adua initiated the Vision 20-2020 agenda. The summary of the said vision was that by 2020, Nigeria would be one of the 20 largest economies in the world, able to consolidate its leadership role in Africa and establish itself as a significant player in the global economic and political arena.

The idea was meant to leverage on the immense natural and human resources the country is endowed with as well as its coastal location for it to realize its huge economic potential. Buoyed by the seeming growth in the nation’s economy with its ranking among the N11—countries identified by Goldman Sachs Group, a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm, to have the potential for attaining global competitiveness on the basis of their economic and demographic settings and the foundation they have already laid for reforms.

To this end, an institutional framework was established to help transform into reality the nation’s lofty dream of being numbered among the 20 largest economies in the world by the current year. Not only was a secretariat dedicated to the course, the then government of the late former President Yar’Adua also constituted such bodies  as the National Council on Vision 2020, National Steering Committee, Project Steering Committee, National Technical Working Groups, Business Support Groups, Programme Coordination Office, Vision 2020 Stakeholder Development Committee, state governments, MDAs and Special Interest Groups, among others.

Sadly, Yar’Adua died in office after a protracted illness, almost a decade before 2020 arrived. His deputy and successor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, was simply not interested in the vision, hence it died naturally. But if the dubious politicking of the Babangida junta aborted the vision of good life for all by Year 2000 and the death of Yar’Adua robbed the nation the chance to be counted among the world’s 20 largest economies in 2020, they are no licence for successive administrations to run the country without a vision. The question must then be asked: what is President Buhari and his APC government’s vision for Nigeria?

Vincent Akanmode

UPON its creation by the Gen. Sani Abacha-led military administration, not a few people thought that Zamfara would become at best one of the obscure states remembered only by school pupils for examination purposes. But since it was carved out of the old Sokoto State on October 1, 1996, Zamfara has stoically maintained a place in national spotlight, complacently flaunting itself in our faces for the right or the wrong reasons.

First was the state’s introduction of the Sharia as a main body of civil and criminal law under the administration of the first civilian governor of the state, Alhaji Ahmad Sani Yarima, in 1999. As it would be expected in a supposed secular state, the move sparked an outrage, particularly in the predominantly Christian southern states. But within a few months, many states in the north had caught the fever of Sharia as the novel legal system spread like wild fire. Numbered among them were Kano, Sokoto, Katsina, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kebbi, Yobe, Niger, Kaduna and Gombe states. This was in spite of the outrage that greeted the plight of the first victim of the new system of legal administration, Mallam Bello Jangedi, whose arm was amputated after a Sharia court in Gusau found him guilty of cow rustling.

Zamfara again came under the spotlight in May 2010 with Yarima also the protagonist, as the news broke that the then 50-year-old former governor had taken a 13-year-old Egyptian girl as wife. Then in the general elections held between February and March this year, the state entrenched itself in the annals of jurisprudence history with a landmark Supreme Court judgment that nullified the electoral victory of all the candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state and awarded same to their Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates. So, all the seats won by the APC from the Zamfara State House of Assembly to the governorship and National Assembly were handed over to the PDP candidates, with the implication that the PDP, which was previously the opposition party in the state, is now firmly in control of the state’s political machinery.

The state is once again in the news over a protest letter allegedly written by the immediate past governor, Abdulaziz Yari, to the new governor, Bello Matawalle, protesting non-payment of his N10 million monthly allowance by the new administration. In the letter dated October 17, 2019 and addressed to Matawalle, Yari allegedly claimed that he was entitled to N10 million monthly as “upkeep allowance,” but had only been paid twice since he left office. According to the former governor, the law, which provides for the entitlement of former governors, deputies, speakers and deputy speakers, was amended in March and should not be truncated.

The said letter, according to media reports, reads in part: “I wish to humbly draw your attention to the provision of the law on the above subject matter, which was amended and assented to on March 23, 2019. The law provides, among other entitlements of the former governor, a monthly upkeep allowance of N10 million only and a pension equivalent to the salary he was receiving while in office. Accordingly, you may wish to be informed that since the expiration of my tenure on May 29, 2019, I was only paid the upkeep allowance twice — i.e. for the month of June and July, while my pension for the month of June has not been paid.”

Apparently in a bid to drive home the seriousness Yari attached to the matter, he was said to have written it on his official letter-headed paper which bears the bold inscription, ‘Office of the Former Governor of Zamfara State.’ It is the closest proof of the veracity of an incredible story a friend once told me about a professional hanger on whose complimentary card bore the inscription, ‘Friend of the Governor,’ just to flaunt his closeness to the governor of a state and give favour seekers the impression that he had unhindered access to the state’s chief executive. If anyone would be moved by such antics, it certainly will not be Governor Matawalle, given that he was neither impressed nor cajoled by Yari’s letter-head or its content.

If there was any response to Yari’s letter, it came from the state’s House of Assembly whose lawmakers on Tuesday passed a law abolishing the payment of pension and other allowances to the state’s former governors and their deputies. Addressing journalists in Gusau, the spokesperson of the state’s assembly, Mustapha Jafaru, said the ‘abolished’ law also affects ex-speakers of the house of assembly and their deputies.

The assembly thus settled a matter that had been of grave concern to progressive minds not only in Zamfara State but other parts of the country where political leaders have perfected a strategy for constituting themselves into life time parasites on states after plotting or forcing their ways into positions. The odious practice abolished by Zamfara lawmakers extends to most if not all the states of the federation, whereby former chief state executives, their deputies and other political office holders aforementioned draw billions of naira from their respective states as allowances while workers and pensioners in the same state are not paid their entitlements for as many as 18 months.

One can only hope that the Zamfara example will catch on, so that in a few months from now, most states would have done away with the obnoxious practice. It is also hoped that the new state of affairs in Zamfara will survive the Matawalle administration so that it will not be the case that the current public office holders will find a way to bring back the practice when they find themselves at the receiving end.

Vincent Akanmode

Few people would dispute the fact that the lion is one of the most dreaded creatures on earth. No one prays to come in contact with it beyond a visit to the zoo. That explains the bated anxiety that gripped the residents of Kano between October 19 and 20 last month when a lion escaped from a zoo in the historical city and no one was sure of the direction it headed.

The dreaded animal was said to have escaped on October 19 while the rangers who took it for an agricultural show in Nasarawa State were trying to return it into its cage. Husbands called out to their wives and parents called out to their children as everyone in the city took cover in the confines of their homes in a feat of self-imposed curfew. The usually busy road that leads to the zoo was completely abandoned by motorists for the long hours the search for the fearsome animal lasted. The spell was finally over with the announcement the following day that the lion had been found in a cage that housed goats within the zoo premises. But that was not until the deadly animal had devoured all the goats it met in the cage.

Early in the week, the social and traditional media were awash with the news of a house occupied by an Indian on Muri Okunola Street in highbrow Victoria Island part of Lagos, where a lion, not a dog, was the animal on guard. The Head of Lagos Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences Unit, Mr. Yinka Egbeyemi, was quoted as saying that the discovery was made by some residents in the neighbourhood, who then wrote a petition to the state government. Mercifully, officials of the task force were able to tranquilise the animal after keeping watch on the house for three days, and took it to a zoo.

The dust was yet to settle on the Lagos incident when a Lyon roared, this time in the Niger Delta, with a sitting governor as his prey. I am talking about the governorship election that took place in Bayelsa State last Saturday and the upset caused by the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), David Lyon, who defeated Duoye Diri, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ably backed by the sitting governor, Seriake Dickson.

Considering the grassroots credentials of Governor Dickson, an appeal that earned him the sobriquet of Countryman, and the fact that the Niger Delta region is a stronghold of the PDP, very few people had given Lyon (pronounced as lion) the chance of a victory over Diri. But at the end of counting, it was a landslide victory for the APC candidate who swept six of the eight local government areas in the state, polling 352,552 votes against Diri’s 143,172.

In spite of his philanthropic disposition and his profile as a former Commissioner for Sports and CEO of Darlon Security and Guard, a private security firm based in Bayelsa State, Lyon remained largely an obscure individual until he was propped up by the current Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Silva, to take part in the governorship primary of APC. Silva apparently realised that with Dickson-backed Diri as PDP candidate, the APC had a mountain to climb to win the governorship election.  He decided that a super monster, if only in name, was needed to overcome the monstrous support for Diri. And who else would that be if not a Lyon?

Guided by the saying that a lion leading an army of sheep can defeat an army of lions led by a sheep, APC settled for Lyon as their candidate. The ruthless manner he won the election is an indication that a lion, whether spelt as L-I-O-N or as L-Y-O-N, is a lion. And it matters nothing if it comes in the form of an animal like the one in Kano or in the form of a man like the one in Bayelsa.

Since the shocking defeat of the PDP in the Bayelsa governorship election, I have heard commentator after commentator say that the PDP has lost the state for good, given the coalition of forces that worked against Dickson and in favour of Lyon. But there is no problem without a solution. I am told that as ruthless and domineering as it is, there is yet an animal the lion itself dread like salt does water. The lion, according to a popular fable, would run the distance from Lagos to Ibadan in utter fear at the shout of a donkey. It is one of the biggest mysteries of life and one that PDP can deploy to a great effect in the next governorship election in the oil rich state.

The party must immediately commence the search for a candidate with Donkey as his name and field same for the governorship election in 2023. I wager that the election will be a no-contest as candidate Lyon will be forced to flee at the shout of candidate Donkey.

Vincent Akanmode

VOTING, ordinarily, should be a very simple exercise. It should be as simple as choosing the best candidate on the basis of pedigree, achievements or positive personal attributes. But it will not be that simple for the electorate in Kogi State as they troop out to elect their governor today. They are faced with the unenviable task of choosing between the rock and the hard place.

There is no disputing the fact that the election is a two horse race between the sitting governor and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Yahaya Bello, and the flag bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Engr. Musa Wada. Bello, being the incumbent governor and vying for a second term, it should be easier for the people of the state to decide who to vote for, if only he can point to his achievements in the more than three years he has remained in the saddle. But if there is anything he would point to as an achievement, it is the misery he has foisted on the populace, particularly workers and pensioners, some of whose pays are in arrears of 12 months or longer before it was reported recently that the government had cleared some of the backlog.

For more than three years, the governor has acted in a manner that now makes it seem a grave error that a 40-year-old was given the chance to become governor. An incident that illustrates the despondency and disillusion that have become the lot of the people under Bello is the widely reported case of Edward Soje, a director in the state’s civil service, who committed suicide in October 2017 by hanging himself on a tree because he could not pay the hospital bills of his wife who had just been delivered of a baby.

The circumstances in which Bello became governor should have told him that good fortune is an ingredient of human existence that no right-thinking individual should take for granted. But it would seem that Governor Bello learnt nothing from the anti-climax that became the lot of former Governor Abubakar Audu’s bid to return as the governor of the state for a record third time. His (Bello’s) electoral victory coming at a time the clamour for greater involvement of the youth in leadership had assumed a deafening dimension, well-meaning Nigerians expected that the governor would pursue an agenda of high performance, if only to prove that the youth indeed deserved a chance. They were wrong.

In climes where there is a place for conscience in politics, Governor Bello would not bother contesting today’s election, knowing full well that it will amount to insulting the collective intelligence of the electorate. But the big question is: what is the alternative to Bello? It is certainly not the rapacious PDP that had governed the state for 13 odd years with nothing to point to as an achievement.

Bello’s failure at the poll today will not necessarily translate to a better future for the state, given the options that are available to the electorate. As things stand, the voters in the state only have a choice to make between two evils. It is the tragedy of a state that was carved out of Kwara and Benue states by the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida-led military administration in 1992 in the hope that it would checkmate the neglect suffered by the population of Okun (Yoruba) and Igbira people in Kwara State and the marginalization experienced by the Igala and Bassa population in Benue.

The idea was that the people from both states would come together to form a state where they would experience the development that had eluded them in their former domains. Sadly, close to three decades after it was created, development in the state remains yet an illusion.  From Abubakar Audu and Ibrahim Idris to Idris Wada and Yahaya Bello, the state has been a victim of mediocre leadership. If Audu is ranked the best among its past leaders as people are wont to say, it is because in the city of blind men a one-eyed man is automatically the king.

As Bayo Osiyemi opens another chapter

I had never met or spoken with him until a day in July 2017. The editor of this paper had proceeded on annual leave and it fell to me to hold the fort as the deputy editor. The Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, Mr Victor Ifijeh, called me to his office and asked if I knew Hon. Bayo Osiyemi, a former Chairman of Mushin Local Government Area.

I told the MD I had never met the former local government chairman one on one, but I was quite familiar with the name, not only because of his erstwhile portfolio but also on account of his closeness to the elder statesman and Second Republic governor of Lagos State, Alhaji Lateef Jakande. “Please call him now; he wants to start writing a column in the Saturday paper,” the MD said in a voice that barely concealed his excitement.

Of course, I knew nothing about Hon. Osiyemi’s writing prowess, but I know that Mr. Ifijeh as a stickler for excellence, and the enthusiasm in his voice as he broke to me the news of a new columnist, I knew we had caught a big fish.

His first few installments confirmed my suspicion. He wrote with dignified wit on national issues and unassailable authority on issues that bordered on Lagos State. His beautiful and jocular pieces were spiced with rich Yoruba adages that vastly edified the mind.

It was therefore a mixed grill of joy and disappointment when he signed out his column penultimate Saturday. While it is gratifying that he signed out his column because he needs to fully concentration on his new assignment as the Special Adviser to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Chieftaincy Affairs, it is somehow disappointing that I must now learn to get used to not reading his This Life column on Saturdays.

But like they say, 20 children cannot play together for 20 years. It is only natural that a talent like him did not escape the prying eyes of a talent hunter like Governor Sanwo-Olu for too long in his bid to take Lagos to the next level. One can only wish him the best that luck and hard work can bring in his new endeavour.

By Vincent Akanmode

Given the way they were going about healing business, I knew it was only a matter of time that church leaders would turn it into an art. Hence it did not come as a surprise when the news filtered out last week that three different pastors had healed a woman of a particular physical deformity on her right arm on three different occasions.

One of the miracle-working pastors is identified as Pastor Chris Okafor, the founder of Mountain of Liberation and Miracle Ministry a.k.a. Liberation City. While Mrs Bose Ola, the woman at the centre of the controversy, was quoted as saying in an interview she had with a blogger that she developed the bulgy upper right arm purportedly healed by the pastors when she suddenly collapsed in her house about two years ago and broke her arm, a trending video shows Pastor Okafor telling his congregation that the woman, Mrs Ola, developed the problem after she was pushed by three people in her dream.

He then added that some witches, who apparently preferred her humerus (the long bone of the upper arm) to her flesh, had stolen the bone, causing that part of her body to swell like popcorn. The flamboyant pastor then launched into an incendiary prayer session, commanding the errant witches to return the bone which, fortunately, was still intact two years after they stole it. The congregation then watched in awe as the bulgy upper arm began to recede with the speed of a deflated tyre until it blended perfectly with the rest of the arm.

In another video, a pastor whose identity remains yet a mystery is seen praying for the same woman and achieving the same result as Pastor Okafor, even though he did not pray with the same energy as the latter. In the case of the second pastor, he simply placed the woman in an open place and got the crowd cheering as he poured water from a bottle unto the swollen spot which began to melt like ice until it became straight and as normal as the second arm.

As it will be expected, the development has sparked outrage from the huge population of doubters around the country who believe that there is something about the issue that does not add up. This is in spite of the pain a man who reportedly identified himself as Pastor Okafor’s publicist has taken to explain why it is possible for a pastor to repeat a healing previously done by another. The self-acclaimed publicist was quoted as saying: “The woman was in our church really. But you know in this issue of deliverance, some people could be delivered here and then (they) go back to where they stayed before and the attack would return. That was what happened to the woman.”

Mrs Ola herself said she had to visit different pastors because her arm’s condition relapsed two days after each healing session. “It is about two years now. I was in my house and all of a sudden, I fell down and broke my hand. I have gone to many churches for healing, but two days after healing me, my hand will return back,” she said.

Unfortunately, neither her explanation nor that of Okafor’s publicist could convince doubting Thomases who insist that unsuspecting members of the public were being manipulated to believe that a miracle had been done simply because the woman in question is blessed with the ability to make her arm swell or relaxed at will. In fact, a scoundrel in my neighbourhood was so sure about this that he asked if I could get him Mrs Ola’s telephone number. Asked why he wanted her number, she said he wanted to be her manager.

“Managing what?” I asked

“Ah, you don’t know something,” he said. “She is a big asset for any pastor desirous of a reputation for healing powers. She will do it for a fee; I will get my own cut; miracle seeking worshippers will flood the church and the pastor too will be happy.”

His, no doubt, is a condemnable perception of church business. Yet it is a reflection of the thinking of many people in today’s world who see it as one of the smartest ways to gain money, fame and influence in a society where salvation of the soul is no longer the motivating factor for congregants. The millions of churches that pimple the landscape are filled to the brim on Sundays and even on week days by people in search of employment, visa and healing from sicknesses that can be cured with right access to medical care — issues that would not be considered as problems in societies endowed with responsible leaders.

Rapacious church leaders are taking advantage of the people’s desperation to parade themselves as messiahs with the Midas touch. In return, the people pay heavily in tithes, offerings and other kinds of sacrifice without which they are told that they will never get a breakthrough. Priests are not to blame but the foolish congregants who think they cannot have answered prayers without him as the middleman. It is borne out by the adage that says you should consider yourself a loser once you miss out on a foolish man’s leg because the wise man will never surrender his.

Vincent Akanmode

BASED on his reputation for taking slow, predictable and generally innocuous decisions in his first four years in office, not a few Nigerians sneered at President Muhammadu Buhari when he threatened shortly after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared him the winner of the February 23 presidential election, that he would take very tough decisions in his second term. Four months into his second term, there seems to be reasons to believe that the pledge he made when some members of his cabinet paid him a congratulatory visit was more than mere act of grandstanding typical of the average political office holder in Nigeria.

Only recently, the President announced the adoption of cost-cutting measures he said were aimed at reducing the high cost of governance in order to save money for social investments and infrastructural development. Consequently, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, said restrictions had been placed on foreign trips and estacode allowances for ministers and heads of parastatals. A statement issued by the SGF also directed the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to review the allowances of public office holders, including governors and lawmakers. The statement said the government had reduced foreign travels for heads of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to two per quarter while first-class air tickets for some categories of officials were cancelled in order to “curb leakages and ensure efficiency in the management of the resources of government.”

But by far more daring was the President’s earlier decision to shut the country’s land borders with neighbouring countries like Ghana, Niger and Benin Republic. It is one policy that has sparked outrage not just from the neighbouring countries but also from Nigerians whose businesses and lifestyles are disrupted by it. For instance, reports from Kebbi State said that not a few marriages have been aborted by the closure of the land border between Nigeria and Niger Republic. In Lolo, a Nigerian community on the border between the two countries, many of the residents are said to have resorted to boat rides across the River Niger to see their spouses and in-laws on the other side of the divide.

Rice, millet and maize belonging to Nigerian cross-border farmers whose farmlands are located in the territories of Niger, Ghana or Benin Republic are said to be rotting away because the owners have no access to them. In a tone of deafening lamentation, a woman who sells a juice made from tiger nuts said her business was on hold because date, a vital ingredient of the drink, could no longer be imported from Niger. At home, I have grown weary of my wife’s persistent complaint about rising cost of ponmo, crayfish and melon because the importation of the addictive triplet is heavily restricted.

Yet the lamentations within are nothing compared to the wailings in the camps of traders in the neighbouring countries whose businesses depend almost entirely on the Nigerian market. Last week, Ghanaian traders threatened to boycott made-in-Nigeria products as a way of registering their displeasure with Nigeria’s closure of her land border with their country. A friend who visited Benin Republic recently recalled how traders in the country, particularly those who deal in ‘tokunbo’ (fairly used) cars, rice, apple and vegetable oil are now in the habit of creating special sessions dedicated to raining curses on President Buhari for revisiting a policy previously adopted by the Obasanjo administration to force the neighbouring country to hand over Ahmed Tidjani, the notorious leader of a trans-border syndicate responsible for snatching cars from Nigeria.

The then President Olusegun Obasanjo had taken the decision to shut the land border between Nigeria and Benin after Beninois President Mathieu Kerekou reneged on his pledge on the sidelines of a summit of the African Union to address the problems of car-snatching, arms and fuel smuggling, human trafficking and other crimes perpetrated by anti-social elements from the neighbouring country; the same reasons that informed the current action from the Buhari administration. The truth, however, is that no amount of curses can bring more affliction than has been handed to us through smuggling.

To be sure, Nigeria is not the only country to have resorted to shutting the borders with her neighbours. For more than 220 years beginning from 1639, Japan closed her borders to the rest of the world until 1853 when the American Black Ships commanded by Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan to American and, by extension, Western trade. Only China and the Netherlands had been allowed limited interaction with Japan during the period because China would not corrupt Japan’s culture and the Netherlands, being a protestant country, had no agenda to spread Christianity like other European countries. During the period, an American president was said to have mocked Japan’s isolationist policy, saying that by the time the Far East country would renounce the policy, the world would have overtaken them. How wrong! Japan emerged a stronger nation untainted by the corruptive influence of the West and economically stronger than the western countries that sought to lord it over them.

Like the Japan of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Buhari government is proceeding upon the principle that open borders amount to closed opportunities for national prosperity and inviting in the world means inviting in the world’s problems. I cannot agree more, given the myriad of evils our open borders have foisted on us as a country. The current border closure is a unique opportunity for our national rebirth economically and socially. As hinted at by the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) during his recent interaction with the Senate, the least that law-abiding citizens should do is support the government to see the potential gains come into fruition.

By Vincent Akanmode

As an undergraduate at the University of Lagos about three decades ago, I was walking from the library to my room in Mariere Hall when I saw a small crowd consoling a young girl. Her friend and fellow student in the school had just drowned in the swimming pool at the staff club of the university and she had become inconsolable. The question that agitated my mind was the impudence that could have pushed a young female student not only to go to a relaxation spot reserved for her lecturers but also dive into the swimming pool.

I finally found a clue to the puzzle after watching a sex-for-grade documentary video authored by an undercover BBC reporter, with Dr. Boniface Igbeneghu, a French lecturer in the Department of Modern European Languages, as the main character. In the 30-minute video that has gone viral on the social media since the beginning of the week, fifty-something-year-old Igbeneghu,  an associate professor who also doubled as the pastor of the UNILAG chapter of the reputable Four Square Gospel Church, was seen making reckless sexual advances to a 17-year-old female admission seeker.

He began by gleefully announcing to the undercover reporter posing as an admission seeker that he was a pastor. Then in a feat reminiscent of altar call, he asked her to recite words that are meant for a sinner about to be led to Christ. Then in clear mockery of the Christian faith and all that the church stands for, he began to tell his guest how beautiful she was and how well he could make her feel like a real woman in spite of their age difference. I wager that even Lucifer would not contemplate such a high level of contempt for Christ and Christianity.

Given the way he licked his lips and his Adam’s apple rolled up and down the moment he was in the room with the teenager, it was apparent that Igbeneghu had always been held captive by his libido. Little wonder he practically lost control of his sexual urge at some point in the video, grabbing the hapless lady and demanding a kiss.

Before then, he had told the undercover reporter about a room in the university’s staff club used as a slaughter slab by a horde of sexual predators masquerading as lecturers in the school. According to Igbeneghu, the abode of sin, where the shameless sexual predators prey on hapless innocent girls who are sometimes younger than their granddaughters, is called the Cold Room. Of course the choice of name would not come as a surprise to any discerning mind, considering that it is the room where the chastity of many innocent young girls is murdered in cold blood. It is also the room that determines principled female students whose life ambition would be frustrated for declining a randy lecturer’s invitation.

Reports say that Kiki Mordi, the mastermind of the explosive video, is herself a victim. She could not graduate from the university simply because she refused to pander to the promptings of a he-goat lecturer who swore that she would not pass his course unless she yielded to his amorous desire.

Like other affectionate parents, my mind was fixed on my 15-year-old daughter as I watched Igbeneghu’s abominable act, because his is not the only case in the university. Barely 24 hours after the authorities of the university announced his suspension, another lecturer in the school’s Department of Economics, Dr. Samuel Oladipo, was also suspended for the same reason. Only on Thursday, a Lagos High Court adjourned till November 21 the adoption of final written addresses in the trial of a former UNILAG Accounting lecturer, Afeez Baruwa, accused of raping an 18-year-old admission seeker in his former office in the university in 2015. In April last year, the authorities of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) announced the indefinite suspension of Prof Richard Akindele whose telephone conversation in which he demanded for sex from a postgraduate student of Business Administration was recorded and released on the social media.

If prominent universities like UNILAG and OAU can turn this sacrilegious act into a past time with all the attention on them, only God knows the fate that must have befallen the female students in remote universities, polytechnics and other institutions of higher learning across the country. For instance, former female student of Delta State University told one of this newspaper’s correspondents during the week that she had to yield to the sexual demands of her course supervisor and became pregnant in the process because he made it the only condition upon which she would graduate from the university.

Unfortunately, the actions of these randy lecturers have beclouded the good works of the highly responsible ones who are working diligently to mould these young, impressionable minds as well as their male counterparts into responsible members of the society. That is why one cannot but empathise with the Chairman of the UNILAG branch of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr. Dele Ashiru, who said the university has been waging a difficult war against the bad eggs in the system.  “As a union, we are against all unethical practices among colleagues, including sexual harassment and even abuse. The development is very disturbing and unfortunate. We have appealed to colleagues to understand that as lecturers, we stand in ‘locus parentis’ (in the place of parents) to these students and must not be seen in any way as not being protective.”

Well said, of course. But sexual harassment and rape may not abate in schools until there are harsher punishments than the current slap on the wrist stipulated by law. I personally recommend that serious consideration be given to public castration of errant lecturers if only to act as a deterrent to others in their ilk.