The Nation Newspaper

Category: Vincent Akanmode

  • The Presidency as one divisible entity

    FIRST, my profuse apologies for any disruption the above headline might cause in the thought process of the reader. That is necessary because we seem to have all grown used to an entity being one and indivisible. But that is far from being the case with the Presidency at the moment if the discordant tunes and contradictory remarks from its dramatis personae are anything to go by. Power play and the high wired politics are threatening to tear it apart in the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is on his second medical trip to the UK. When the cat is away, says the age-long adage, the mice will play. It is another moment of triumph for the protagonists of cyclical history.

    The events of the days of former President Umaru Yar’Adua are repeating themselves in a cycle that has only taken seven years to complete. In those heady days of the former president’s sickness before he gave up the ghost in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, the institution was polarised into two camps of the former president’s loyalists and the loyalists of the then Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Those were the days the news media were awash with reports of open display of disloyalty to Jonathan by some officials of government, who also treated him with disdain because of their closeness to Yar’Adua. In the end, it was Jonathan and his loyalists that triumphed as Yar’Adua eventually passed on, leaving Jonathan in the saddle as the nation’s substantive president. But that was not until some Nigerians had marched on Abuja to press for National Assembly’s declaration of Jonathan as the Acting President.

    The difference in the current power play in Aso Rock lies in the fact that unlike Yar’Adua, Buhari duly handed over power to Osinbajo before his medical trip to London. But even at that, the centre is far from holding in the nation’s premier institution of government. That much was observable from a comment made by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, on the face-off between the Presidency and the Senate over the stalemated confirmation of the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, as the substantive boss of the anti-graft agency. For obvious reasons, the Senate has vehemently resisted Magu’s confirmation while President Buhari insists he is the man for the job.

    But all hell was let loose at the Senate last week as Vice President Osinbajo declared that Magu would remain the EFCC boss in spite of his rejection twice by the Red Chamber. Accosted by reporters for comments on Osinbajo’s assertion on Magu after a Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja penultimate Wednesday, Malami wasted no time in describing the Vice President’s pronouncement as his personal opinion. His reason? The Federal Executive Council had never discussed the continued stay and possible re-nomination of Magu as chairman of the antigraft agency.

    “The fundamental consideration about the alleged statement is the fact that at no point ever did the Federal Executive Council sit down to arrive at the decision in one way or the other as far as the issue of nomination or otherwise is concerned. So, I do not think it constitutes an issue for the Federal Executive Council to make any clarification about because it has never been considered by the FEC,” he said. While the debate on Malami’s bombshell lasted, the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, dropped a bigger hint of the unease in the Presidency via a conversation she had on Facebook with Shehu Sani, the senator representing Kaduna Central. In the said conversation, she was in perfect sync with Senator Sani that the setting at the Presidency is a perfect expression of George Owen’s Animal Farm as the gulf between the camps battling for supremacy grows from schism to chasm.

    Responding to a post made by Sani on the alleged power play in the top echelon of government, wherein he said the “weaker animals” were praying for the return of “the Lion King” while “the jackals” and “the hyenas” were scheming for power on the assumption that “the Lion King” would never return, Buhari’s wife promptly responded that “the jackals and “the hyenas” would soon be evicted from “the Kingdom”. Sani, who started the conversation, had posted: “Prayer for the absent Lion King (a veiled reference to President Buhari’s prolonged medical trip to London) has waned until he is back, then they will fall over each other to be on the front row of the palace temple.

    Now the hyenas and the jackals are scheming and talking to each other in whispers, still doubting whether the Lion King will be back or not. Now the Lion King is asleep and no other dares to confirm if he will wake up or not. It is the prayer of weaker animals that the Lion King comes back to save the kingdom from the hyenas, the wolves and other predators.” The President’s wife responded: “God has answered the prayers of the weaker animals. The hyenas and the jackals will soon be sent out of the Kingdom. We strongly believe in the prayers and support of the weaker animals. Long live the weaker animals. Long live Nigeria.”

    An old adage says when an epileptic speaks, it is only wise to take his words as the voice of God, because he goes to heaven on a daily basis. Aisha’s conversation with Sani has removed whatever veil there was on the crisis of confidence that is rocking the seat of power. It underlines the need for well-meaning Nigerians to pray fervently for the recovery of Buhari whose seat is at the heart of the power struggle. The thinking among some Presidency officials is that Buhari’s ill-health may have ruled him out of a chance for another shot at the presidency in 2019, in which case another northerner will have to be elected into the position. Some Presidency staff are, therefore, allying themselves to the Senate in its face-off with the Presidency. They reason that as a northerner and the nation’s number three man, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, stands a good chance to become the President even though he is yet to declare his ambition in that regard. God help Nigeria.

  • Blessed is the country without lawyers

    THE joke is told about a young couple who were head over heels in love. On the night before they were to get married, they died in an auto crash. They suddenly found themselves at the pearly gates of heaven, escorted in by St. Peter. After a couple of weeks in heaven, the prospective groom took St. Peter aside and said: “My fiancée and I are very happy to be in heaven. But we missed the opportunity to get married before we departed the world. Is it possible for people to get married in heaven?” St. Peter looked at him and said: “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of anyone getting married here.

    I’m afraid you will have to talk to God about it. I’ll get you an appointment in two weeks.” On the appointed day, the guardian angels led the couple into the presence of God. After they had made their request, God looked at them solemnly and said: “I tell you what; wait for a year. If you are still willing to get married after one year, come back and we will talk about it.” A year went by and the couple were still very much interested in marriage. So they went back into the presence of God and God again told them: “I’m sorry to disappoint you.

    You must wait another year, then I will consider your request.” This happened year after year for 10 years. Each time they reasserted their wish to get married, God put it off for another year. In the 10th year, they came before God again to repeat their request. This time, God answered: “Yes, you may get married at 2 pm this Saturday. There will be a beautiful ceremony in the main chapel.” The wedding went without a hitch. The bride looked beautiful.

    The Buddha did the flower arrangements for which Moses wove simple but elegant baskets. Jesus Himself prepared the fish course and all of heaven’s denizens had a pretty good time. It turned out, however, that after a few weeks, the newlyweds got tired of the marriage and could simply not continue in it, so they made another appointment to see God. Groveling and frightened, they asked if they could get a divorce. But God looked at them and asked: “If it took 10 years to find a priest in heaven to conduct your wedding, you can imagine how long it would take to find a lawyer for your divorce!” The notion that not many lawyers can make heaven is as old as history because their ways are widely believed to be at variance with heavenly expectations. Lawyers are perceived by many as a people who delight in waking trouble up when it is asleep, turning non-issues to big issues and standing the truth on its head for attention and pecuniary gains.

    To many people, the word ‘lawyer’ is the synonym for ‘liar’. And while such opinions of legal practitioners are sometimes exaggerated, the conduct of majority of them leaves much to be desired. Barely six months into his administration, President Muhammadu Buhari had to cry out that his anti-corruption campaign was being sabotaged by lawyers. Right now, not a few of them are on trial either because they bribed judges to secure favourable judgments or because of their roles in the mindless looting of the nation’s treasury. Motivated by their arrogant claim to being learned while the rest of us are only educated, they deploy endless equivocation and needless filibuster to drag for years matters that could be settled within a few weeks. And where there is no trouble, they find a way of inventing one.

    That much was at play in the recent attempt by some lawyers to lionize Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, the billionaire kidnap kingpin, popularly called Evans. The police arrested Evans on June 6 after a manhunt that lasted close to a decade. But a particular lawyer who felt an obligation to cry more than the bereaved, headed to court to file two different suits purportedly aimed at enforcing Evans’ fundamental human rights. In the first suit filed on behalf of Evans at a Federal High Court in Lagos, the said lawyer, who joined the Nigeria Police Force, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and the Lagos State Police Command as respondents, said continued detention of the suspected kidnapper without trial was illegal. He later filed another suit against the Inspector General of Police and three other parties, claiming N300 million as general and exemplary damages against the police for “illegal detention and unconstitutional media trial” of the spare parts dealer turned armed robber and kidnapper.

    The two suits were filed after Evans, a 36-year-old adult in firm control of his senses, had confessed to tormenting the nation for 10 years with sophisticated robbery operations and abduction of high profile Nigerians, some of whom had to cough out more than a million dollars as ransom before they were let off by his deadly gang. It did not matter that Evans’ release could compound the fear already voiced out his victims that their lives could be in danger because some members of Evans’ gang were yet to be arrested. The lawyer’s action leaves one to wonder which is more important between the safety of members of the public and the socalled fundamental rights of a man that tormented the nation for a decade.

    Of course, the letters of the law says an accused person is presumed innocent until he or she is proven guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction. But shouldn’t the spirit of the law prevail over its letters in a situation where an individual’s right constitutes a threat to public peace? Evans has every right to swing his arms. But the police too have the responsibility to put his arms in chains because they have injured far too many noses. It is not in the place of any lawyer whose certificate is worth the cardboard on which it is printed to seek to extricate him from the long arm of the law. If a lawyer’s hard, tortuous journey from primary school to the law school is all for the purpose of setting selfconfessed criminals free, then the effort is not the while. Mercifully, Evans has publicly disowned the suits filed for his release, saying that he never hired any lawyer to sue the police on his behalf. It is just as well that the courts threw out the frivolous applications. Full marks also for the police who in anticipation of the frivolous suit went to court to obtain a warrant with which they could detain Evans for 90 days.

  • A case for collegiate presidency

    UNTIL recently, I numbered myself among those who dismiss as sublime fallacy the saying that there is good in evil and evil in good. But the turn of events since June 6 when a coalition of northern youths issued a 90-day ultimatum to the Igbo in their midst to quit the region has changed my opinion considerably. The age-old aphorism is making more and more sense with the angry reactions that trailed the ultimatum and the concomitant calls for the nation’s restructuring. Tagged the Kaduna Declaration, the quit notice had sparked public outrage across the country. Individuals and groups described it variously as reckless, irresponsible and an open invitation to anarchy. But the barrage of condemnations is giving way to a silver lining. The declaration appears to have jolted everyone to the realisation that Nigeria, as presently constituted, is nothing but a union of virtually incompatible principalities.

    The best that can be done in the circumstance is to yield to them reasonable amounts of self-control, hence the calls for the nation’s restructuring, even from quarters once considered improbable. Not a few Nigerians were shocked during the week at the news that former military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, whose stranglehold on power robbed the country the chance to swear in Bashorun MKO Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the presidential election of June 12, 1993. Like a bolt from the blue, the self-proclaimed evil genius, reputed for foisting on Nigeria one of her biggest political crises, is canvassing the devolution of power to states as well as the adoption of state police. Babangida, whose military cohort, including former Senate President David Mark, were said to have vowed that Abiola would only be sworn in over their dead bodies, has now reasoned from his hilltop mansion in Minna, Niger State that the drumbeats of war championed by Arewa youths, pro-Biafra groups, Niger Delta militants and other militant groups across the country are consequences of a political structure that concentrates power at the centre.

    The former head of state’s call for restructuring came a few days after a similar call was made by governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). In an eightpage document containing the governors’ position on the challenges to Nigeria’s unity, they reasoned that recent agitations by some ethnic groups around the country were a reflection of weak governance, economy and law enforcement. They therefore demanded that the federal system be adjusted in order to meet the demands for political restructuring and true federalism. The fact that Nigeria is overdue for restructuring can hardly be contested. But also incontestable is the fact that mutual suspicion among the numerous tribal and ethnic groups that make up the country is at the heart of the political crises that have dogged its history, including the civil war that rocked the nation for three years between 1967 and 1970. What Nigeria requires in the circumstance is not just a system that devolves power to states, but one that also gives each of the more than 250 ethnic groups in the country a sense of belonging with regard to governance at the centre.

    While it is good to have a governing structure that devolves power to the nation’s federating units, it is more pertinent to have one that will make it possible for all the federating units to be in control of state apparatus at every point in time. Assuming that the existing six geo-political regions constitute the federating units in a restructured Nigeria, rather than ask each of the six geopolitical zones to take turns to produce the president, the nation can adopt a six-man Council of Presidents where each of the federating units (geo-political zones) will have an elected representative.

    Since the Council is made up of six members, its tenure will also be six years during which members will rotate its chairmanship for one year each. The arrangement would sound strange, but it is one that could go a long way in solving our peculiar political problems as a highly heterogeneous society in which the different tribes have lost trust in one another after the civil war. The arrangement also has the ability to reduce the fear of marginalisation and the mutual suspicions that have been the bane of our political development since independence. With this arrangement, the nation can avoid such bitterness as was generated by the decision of former President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the 2011 presidential election, against the widespread belief that the North was yet to serve out its term since former President Umaru Yar’Adua died midway into his first four-year tenure.

    Even now, there are fears in some quarters that the nation is inching towards another political crisis because President Muhammadu Buhari may not be able to serve two terms and the North could feel short-changed the second time if the seat is occupied by someone from another zone in 2019. Of course, there will be rough patches to be smoothened out, like the need to re-adjust the number of geo-political zones from six to an odd number so that it will be easy to break deadlocks in situations where Council members have to resolve issues by voting.

    It may also be difficult to smoothen out such rough patches because of the resistance that could be mounted by vested interests. For instance, with the Council in place, there may be need to abolish the burdensome duplication called the Senate; a move that is bound to be resisted by many senators who believe that their survival depends on their stay in the upper chamber.

    I make no claim to any expert knowledge in political engineering because I am not a political scientist. Yet something tells me that collegiate presidency is an option that can be explored to solve our myriad of political problems. It is a novel political arrangement, but one that would make it possible for all the regions that make up Nigeria to be in power at the same time. It is not the first time I would canvass the idea either, having done so in a piece I wrote in the now rested National Concord in 1998. There are no words to express the sense of vindication I felt when former Rivers State governor, Chief Melford Okilo, expressed similar sentiments about two years later.

  • Melaye on the threshold of negative history

    THE first election that took him to the National Assembly was violent, hence his time in the hallowed chambers has been rancorous. But all that appears set to come to an inglorious end if current signals from his Kogi West constituency are anything to go by. Adamu Yusuf, the returning officer in the votes that have just been cast for the recall of Senator Dino Melaye, announced at the state secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lokoja during the week that a total of 188,588 signatures, representing 52.3 per cent of the 360,098 eligible voters in the senatorial district, had been secured for the senator to step down. If the dream of his aggrieved constituents becomes a reality, Melaye’s recall from the National Assembly would be the consequence of the frustrations of a people that place premium on decorum.

    Senator Melaye came into national consciousness in 2011 as a member of the House of Representatives after an election that was essentially a civil war. In a magical transition, an exercise that began on a peaceful note was hijacked by gun-trotting thugs who shot sporadically and left voters scampering into the inner recesses of their homes.

    They peeped through their window curtains as the dare-devil hoodlums made a show of scaring electoral officials away and snatching ballot boxes. Based, perhaps, on the manner he won the election that took him to the National Assembly for the first time, he turned the hallowed chambers into a boxing ring. To the embarrassment of his peace-loving constituents, he threw blows at other members of the House at the slightest provocation. Sick of his aggressive instincts, his party at the time, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), decided to deny him the ticket for another shot at the seat. Fate, however, offered him a lifeline with the formation of the All Progressives Congress (APC), whose senatorial ticket was lying in the gutter in spite of the new party’s popularity.

    Melaye shed the toga of the PDP and donned the garb of the APC, becoming the senatorial candidate of the wave-making party. With only a feeble resistance from the candidates of other political parties in his Kogi West Senatorial District, Melaye coasted home to victory and graduated from the Green Chamber to the Red Chamber. At the Senate, his aggressive disposition took a turn for the worse as he promptly turned himself into the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki’s attack dog. He had joined others in helping Saraki to plot his way to the Senate President’s seat against the wish of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC. Thereafter, he became the face of Saraki’s confrontation with the Presidency such that when Saraki became a regular visitor to the courts on account of the corruption charges preferred against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau, Melaye abandoned his responsibilities to the people of Kogi West to begin a career as Saraki’s unofficial bodyguard.

    He capped all that with his attack on Senator Oluremi Tinubu, wife of frontline APC chieftain, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, against who he deployed unprintable words widely condemned as unbecoming of a senator. If all good things must end, all bad things must, hence the resolve of Melaye’s constituents to recall him from the Upper Chamber.s In his characteristic manner, Melaye has laughed off the effort of his constituents as a comedy of error. His confidence is probably based on the tortuous steps they must endure to bring their dream of recalling him to reality.

    The collection of the signatures of more than 50 per cent of the eligible voters in the constituency is only one in the long list of conditions the law says they must fulfil before they can recall Melaye. Apart from more than half of the registered voters in the senatorial district writing, signing and sending a petition to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), indicating their loss of confidence in Melaye, the petition must be signed and arranged, according to the polling units, wards, local government areas and constituencies in the senatorial district. INEC must also notify the senator of its receipt of a petition for his recall. Besides, there would be a public notice issued by INEC, stating the date, time and location for verification of the signatures to the petition to ensure that they belong to individuals whose names are on the senatorial district’s voter register.

    INEC will then conduct a referendum in which more than half of verified voters in the constituency must vote ‘yes’ for the Melaye’s recall, otherwise, the petition will be thrown away like the army did June 12. If the majority of the registered voters vote ‘yes’, the Chairman of INEC will send a certificate of recall to the Senate President for him to effect the recall of the senator. Still, the electorate in Kogi West are not about to give up in their aspiration to make history as the first set of Nigerians to exploit the latent provision of the constitution that makes it possible for a people to recall their representative from the National Assembly whom they deem not to have lived up to their expectations. In a press statement released on Thursday, INEC acknowledged receipt of the recall petition against Melaye.

    It also announced that it would begin the process of recalling him after verifying that the petitioners were registered to vote in Kogi West Senatorial District. The electoral body also set July 3, 2017 as the date for the verification exercise. The sun seems to be going down for Senator Melaye, but the question remains whether Saraki, the man for whom he has spent his time in the Senate fetching and carrying, would be eager to endorse a resolution asking Melaye to quit the upper chamber. The just and worthwhile effort to recall Senator Melaye could end up an anti-climax. It could set another stage for a remix of Ajekun Iya, his single that has ruled the airwaves after his confrontation with Sahara Reporters. Still, his constituents will be proud to make history as the first set of electorate in the nation’s political history to invoke the latent recall clause in the nation’s electoral laws.

  • Why we must brace up for more Evans

    APOSTLES of cyclical history (the school of thought whose position is that history repeats itself because events revolve in a cycle) were vindicated last Saturday with the arrest of notorious kidnapper, Chukumdubem Onwuamadike, a.k.a. Evans, in the Magodo area of Lagos after years of fruitless manhunt by law enforcement agents. The police had declared him wanted since 2013 with N30 million as ransom for anyone who could give a clue that would lead to his arrest. He himself confessed to journalists after he was arrested that he knew about the activities of the State Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos State Police Command, but it never crossed his mind that he could be captured.

    By his own confessions, his exploits included attacks on bullion vans from which his gang carted away hundreds of millions of naira and receipt of ransoms as much as $1 million from his victims. His confessions and tales that have been told of his exploits as an armed robber and kidnapper remind one of Lawrence Anini, the notorious armed robber whose gang terrorised the then Bendel State (now Edo and Delta states) in the 1980s. He held the nation hostage for four months between August and December 1986 as he and his deadly gang embarked on robbery operations in banks, snatching cars and killing law enforcement agents with reckless abandon.

    His dare-devil exploits and the inability of the police and other law enforcement agents to rein him in soon earned him the image of an invincible bandit and many Nigerians began to see him more as a spirit. So frightening was the terror that Anini unleashed on the nation that the then head of state, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, turned to the Inspector-General of Police after a security council meeting in 1986 and asked: “My friend, where is Anini?” In an operation that went awry, Anini, nicknamed The Law, escaped from the police by driving in reverse from Agbor in Delta State to Benin City in Edo State. He snatched a car belonging to the Deputy Inspector-General of Police and chose the Independence Day to attack the then Commissioner of Police in Bendel State.

    One of the things I find most intriguing is the magic by which dare-devil criminals like Anini and Evans turn into jelly fish and weep like babies when they are apprehended. Captured and dispossessed of his charms by a crack 10-man team of policemen in Benin City in December 1986, Anini, who many had expected to be defiant and fearless, became sober and pensive. He made all manner of confessions as he pleaded for forgiveness. The case of his second-in-command, Monday Osunbor, who Anini said was responsible for most of the killings done by the gang, was even more dramatic. At the sight of guns on the day they were to be executed, he looked helplessly at the soldiers that had taken positions and muttered: “He be like say I want mental (it looks like I’m going crazy).”

    Evans’ case has not been different since he was arrested in the Magodo part of Lagos last Saturday. Reports say he has broken into tears repeatedly, expressing regrets for his actions and pleading for forgiveness from the families he has wronged. He even asked for another chance to make it up to the society whose peace he has breached for years. Poor guy. If only he knew that the billions of naira, the exotic cars and the edifices for which he launched into crime were more for the purpose of meeting the expectations of the society than his own needs. His endless tears since Saturday were impelled by his realisation that the society whose expectations he sought to meet by becoming a kidnapper, an armed robber and a drug baron is the same that resorted to booing and jeering him now that the game is up. The poor guy must now be feeling that he was set up for eternal damnation.

    He must have realised by now how foolish he had been pursuing not necessarily what he needed, but what he felt that the society expected of him. And that is the fate that confronts us all—we spend our lives striving for things the society expects of us, which may not necessarily be things that we need. And when we appear to be failing in meeting up with the expectations of the society, we resort to extra measures that often land us in trouble or disgrace. At the end of the day, the difference between the Evans that manifests and the one that does not is the ability to exercise self-restraint in the face of societal expectations and provocations.

    That is the sense in I am that I am, the timeless song of Jamaican reggae artiste, Peter Tosh, which says “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations, neither are you here to live up to mine. I owe no one an obligation and no one owes me any.” Our society is set up in a manner that only the rich is respected. Even in churches and mosques, distinction is made between financial and non-financial members, whereby only the former are appointed into leadership positions. In traditional settings, chieftaincy titles are reserved for people who have money to throw around, while national honours are the exclusive preserve of the wealthy.

    In their desperation for access to the exchequer, our politicians kill and maim rival political office seekers as well as hapless voters. Even in day-to-day relationships, standards are set with the lifestyles of criminals. For instance, I grew weary of telling the authorities of the primary school my children attended that as a salary earner, I could not pay the school fees for the three of them at once. Their response always was to draw my attention to other parents who had paid their children’s fees in advance for one year. Not for them the saying that fingers are not equal. Surely, there will be more and more Evans in the years ahead, except our value system changes.

  • BBN as proof of our moral decadence

    READING his piece on the just concluded Big Brother Naija reality television programme, I needed no seer to know that The Guardian columnist, Dr. Reuben Abati, had become a marked man among our army of delinquent youths and their adult collaborators whose regard for morals is, at best, scant. I would have been shocked if he was spared the coarse invectives that were hauled at him in the social media and elsewhere on account of the imaginative piece.

    I was not disappointed that rather than ponder the public affairs commentator’s message, he became the butt of cruel insults from his traducers, who in their jaundiced reading of his counsel, elected to ignore its substance and dwell on the mundane. Conscious of hopelessly the society is in the grip of moral decadence, neither the show nor the massive patronage it enjoyed came as a surprise. In one of his evergreen songs several decades ago, juju music maestro turned evangelist, Chief Ebenezer Obey, had lamented that seas of heads were often found at social gatherings while scanty crowds were seen crusade venues. Considering that we are now in a generation where women are not ashamed to introduce themselves as sex workers and professional strippers, Obey, who celebrated his 75th birthday last week, must have realised that the generation he addressed when he released the album in the 1970s were angels. On the streets, in schools and even in churches, you are confronted with the sight of parading themselves almost naked in the name of fashion.

    Tboss a.k.a. Tokunbo Idowu, who emerged the second runner-up in the just concluded show, was quoted as saying that she thinks nothing of walking naked in front of global cameras because she was used to doing so even before her entry into the Big Brother House. It only follows that her flirtations with a couple of the housemates during the show must have meant nothing to her. Ditto for others like Bisola whose daughter must have been watching. She denied sucking on another housemate, Thin Tall Tony’s willy-willy as widely alleged. But she admitted all the same that she and the father of two children only hid themselves under the sheets to “kiss and touch”. Her lewd and licentious ways were rewarded with being named the first runner-up. And there lies the real gobbe.

    The top five were housemates who broke the moral code of a sane society in diverse ways. In fact, it would seem that the votes secured by each housemate was proportionate to the amount of moral bankruptcy they exhibited during the show. It explains why calm and seemingly reserved housemates like Bally and Bassey (the latter had to push Debie-Rise away on more than one occasion as she repeatedly made advances to him) were voted out in favour of others like Tboss, Bisola, Debie-Rise and the winner of the show, Efe, who gorged alcohol like it were water and collaborated with Marvis (the fourth runner-up) to turn erotic kissing into an art. The natural question to ask in the circumstance is what message the organisers of the show seek to pass to its millions of viewers.

    That, basically, was the question for which Abati drew the ire of some of the show’s angry fans who called him unprintable names in the social media and elsewhere. Some of them even wondered why the popular columnist would watch the show only to turn round to criticise it. But what is the business of a public affairs commentator if he would not watch a show that arrested the attention of millions of Nigerians for three months? Personally, I feel a sense of loss on the moral front. Debie- Rise, who emerged the third runner-up, is my niece and calls me daddy on account of our closeness. Before her foray into the house, she was an epitaph of chastity and modesty.

    These were virtues she imbibed from her deeply religious and disciplinarian parents who, as I write, still consider her participation in the show a serious embarrassment. Knowing full well the kind of response she would get from her parents, she could not muster the courage to tell them about her nomination for the show before she made the trip to South Africa. Although she travelled all the way from Lagos to Kogi during the Yuletide to inform her parents about the trip, she returned to Lagos without doing so because her courage failed her. She could not tell me about it either even though we rode back to Lagos together in my car.

    You could then imagine our shock when the news broke that she was one of the housemates. My consolatory words to her mother (my immediate elder sister) had been that as a musician, she needed such a platform to enhance her career. Besides, I argued a reserved lady like her could constitute a positive influence on other housemates. As a proof of her modesty, one of the organisers of the show had to put a call through to her parents from South Africa, complaining that she would not stop crying because of the guilt she felt for not telling her parents before she departed Nigeria. The caller, who expressed surprise that a lady of Debie-Rise’s age could be so bothered by what her parents thought about the matter, then assured them that she would leave the house unblemished. However, her escapades with Bassey, the skimpy dresses she wore and the suggestive dance sessions she had with other inmates have not given me the courage to beat my chest that the Debie-Rise that entered the Big Brother House was the Debie-Rise that came out of it.

  • Nnamani: Time for a system that rewards excellence

    THE defection of former Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani, from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) late last year could not have come as a surprise to many. This is on account of the widely held belief that his conduct, deportment and principled disposition are totally at variance with the questionable image of the PDP. His progressive bent, on the other hand, endeared him to many leaders of the APC who with eager and cheerful readiness accepted him into their fold as soon as he made known his intention to defect.

    Many Nigerians live in nostalgia of the mature manner he handled the bid by desperate moneybags to secure for the then President Olusegun Obasanjo a preposterous third term. This they had hoped to achieve by manipulating the upper chamber to endorse Obasanjo’s candidacy for another election. Presiding with the calmness of a dove over the session in which the sensitive and volatile issue was debated, Nnamani sanctioned live television coverage of the debate as senators took turns to state their positions on the matter. In the end, the third term agenda was shot down, ending a development that would have turned the country into a banana republic. While many expected Nnamani to make a political capital of his soaring popularity after frustrating the hugely unpopular third term bid, he took a break from partisan politics and recoiled into his shell.

    He followed that up by severing ties with the PDP about a year ago, saying, “I am quitting the party because I do not believe that I should continue to be a member of the PDP as it is defined today. This is certainly not the party I joined years ago to help change my country.” While previous occupants of the coveted seat of the Senate President from Chuba Okadigbo to Evans Enwerem and Adolphus Wabara were enmeshed in various scandals, Nnamani left the hallowed seat as clean as a hound’s tooth after occupying it for two years between 2005 and 2007.

    Little wonder President Muhammadu Buhari wasted no time in appointing him the head of the recently constituted Electoral Reform Committee. The factors that motivated his choice by Buhari most probably impelled Governor Rochas Okorocha to also pronounce him the leader of the APC in the South East during a zonal stakeholders’ meeting of the party at the Imo International Convention Centre (IICC) in Owerri recently. Addressing the gathering on the occasion, which included Nnamani and other political heavyweights like Emeka Offor, Ifeanyi Ararume, Tony Eze, Ebuka Onunkwo, Jombo Offor and the Deputy Governor of Imo State, Eze Madumere, among others, Governor Okorocha, who said he had resisted the pressure mounted on him to lead the party in the zone, said: “Now that Igbo leaders are together in the APC, Nigerians will hear us. There is a vacuum of leadership in the South East APC. I am a governor. My brothers, Chris Ngige and Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, are ministers.

    Hence the importance of Senator Ken Nnamani coming at this time. I decline the leadership of Ndigbo in APC.” He added: “With Senator Ken Nnamani now with us in the party, the question of who is the leader of the APC in the South East has been answered. Ken Nnamani is the leader of the APC in the South East. Senator Nnamani should then work with other leaders like Emmanuel Iwuanyawu, Jim Nwobodo and a host of others to give Ndigbo political direction.”

    Okorocha’s pronouncement was apparently based on his belief that Nnamani had proven himself as a competent leader, particularly in the period he held sway as Senate President, after serving as the Chairman of the Committee on Federal Character and Governmental Affairs and member of committees on Privatization, Federal Capital Territory and Appropriation and Finance. Besides, unlike other South East leaders who are holding ministerial and other cabinet appointments, he is not saddled with an office that would deprive him maximum concentration on his job as South East leader of APC. Surprisingly, Okorocha’s noble pronouncement has sparked outrage in the circle of aggrieved politicians in the region who saw it as a bid by the governor to score a cheap political point.

    The opposition to Nnamani’s leadership of the APC in the South East would come as a shock to many who had watched his near-impeccable conduct as senator and Senate president. That much was echoed by a chieftain and founding Vice Chairman of the APC in Enugu State, Chief Anike Nwoga, who in throwing his weight behind Okorocha’s choice of Nnamani, said Okorocha’s move was perfectly in the interest of Ndigbo. Said he: “Some people have been saying why Ken Nnamani? But my response to that is that he is 100 per cent qualified to be the leader of the APC in the South East. Okorocha saw leadership qualities in Ken Nnamani, and that is why he conceded the South-East zonal leadership to him. You should not forget that he was the number three man in Nigeria, having served as the Senate President. “Considering that position, there is nobody in the APC today who is more qualified than Nnamani as the South East leader of the party. Governor Okorocha is a wise person.

    He did the most intelligent thing. He has done a great thing for the growth of the APC in the South-East because Nnamani is a great son of Igbo land; a decent man for that matter. “Let us not also forget that since the news of his defection to the APC spread in Nigeria, many people have also been joining the party, not just in the South East but across the country. This is because of Ken Nnamani’s name.

    That is why we see other senators, other top politicians also trooping into the party.” Okorocha, a statesman many years ahead his time, believes that a responsibility as huge as the leadership of the APC in the South East requires a man with remarkable antecedents like Nnamani’s, particularly in a regime that has made the anti-corruption war a cardinal mission. But he has to contend with the grim reality that only the back bench is reserved for such credible leadership materials in this clime. Elsewhere, his nomination would draw rapturous applause. It would be seen as a show of appreciation for the clean and meritorious way he conducted the affairs of the Senate after the scandals that rocked the tenures of his predecessors. But ours is a nation that would not acknowledge excellence, much less reward it.

  • Needless fuss about Buhari’s ill health

    WHAT does a country stand to gain from the death of its president? In more specific terms, what would Nigeria profit from the demise of President Muhammadu Buhari? It seems more probable that such an ugly development would disrupt national peace and hinder the nation’s development. Yet some Nigerians have turned the compassing of the President’s death into a past time. Since Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose placed the infamous advert on the front page of a national newspaper in the build-up to the presidential election in 2015, wherein he insinuated the likelihood of Buhari’s death like some former Nigerian leaders of northern extraction if elected president, the rank of Nigerians desirous of Buhari’s death appears to have swollen to a worrisome proportion. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the citizens of a country expressing concern about the health of their president, particularly in a country that had witnessed the messy drama surrounding the death of former President Umaru Yar’Adua after a medical trip he took to Saudi Arabia in 2010.

    Once beaten, after all, is twice shy. The hasty manner President Buhari left the country two days before the official date he was scheduled to travel to the UK purportedly for a rest did little to help matters. It has since turned out that the President was actually on a medical trip to the UK; a move that fell short of the expectations of forthright Nigerians that Buhari would not hide from the millions of people who elected his as president the real motive for his trip abroad, even if he was not under obligation to divulge the details.

    It would have been in perfect sync with his reputation as a forthright and incorruptible leader to let the nation know that he, like any other mortal, had fallen under the weather and was in need of some medical attention. After all, there had been precedents from other world leaders, including the late former South African President Nelson Mandela, whose critical illness in 2013 was announced by the South African Presidency to the international media. For more than three months between June and September, 2013, the former South African president was on admission at Mediclinic heart hospital in Pretoria, undergoing treatment for recurring lung infection.

    There was no secrecy or pretence whatsoever as the international media beamed their searchlight on Mandela. Buhari’s failure to follow the Mandela example culminated in the ugly insinuations from his army of ill-wishers, including the victims of his anti-corruption war, his political opponents, the Niger Delta militants, the advocates of Biafra Republic and others affected in one way or the other by his administration’s policies, to make a show of his ill health to the point of insinuating his death. These are groups of aggrieved Nigerians who would latch on any opportunity to ridicule President Buhari and blame anything on him, including the misfortune of married Nigerians who cannot impregnate their wives.

    Unfortunately, a lot of our unsuspecting countrymen are falling for the antics of the foregoing groups of Nigerians. Mercifully, the visits some APC leaders recently paid to Buhari in London and the conversations he had with both the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives appear to have cleared the air about his true condition. If only they are endowed with good memories or sense of history, the promoters of Buhari’s death rumour would realise the enormous political crisis his death at this time could foist on the nation.

    To have the current economic predicament of the country compounded with a political imbroglio of the nature that erupted from the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election is to set the nation inexorably on the path of perdition. By some divine arrangement, the nation appears to have managed to avoid a repeat of the acrimony that accompanied the succession of former President Yar’Adua by his then deputy, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, following the former’s incapacitation by illness. Buhari’s decision to communicate to the National Assembly the decision to have Osinbajo firmly in charge for the period he would be away effectively took care of any vacuum Buhari’s absence could have created. The move also rendered all the noise about Buhari leaving the country for longer period than he had signified uncalled for.

    Praying now for a repeat of the Yar’Adua experience is tantamount to pushing our luck too far, considering that it had been insinuated in some quarters that the South West deliberately rooted for Buhari in the build-up to the 2015 presidential election because the people of the region knew that he might not last the distance on account of ill health or old age, paving way for Osinbajo, their son and Vice President, to become the President.

    The delight some Nigerians have taken in spreading the rumour of Buhari’s death cannot but be of great concern to any rational Nigerian. While it is in perfect order that the citizens of a country would express concern about the health of their president, such expression of concern becomes a cause for worries when it sheds the toga of empathy to don the cloak of gossip. If the raisers of the false alarm concerning the President’s purported death are not the “screaming creatures” and “nattering nitwits” our ebullient Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka castigated amid the furore generated by his decision to dump his American green card, there is certainly something nattering about these faceless harbingers of death.

  • A cry for Kogi workers

    FATE can be very cruel. At the near conclusion of the Kogi State governorship election on November 21, 2015, there was jubilation everywhere in the state as news filtered out that the then candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Prince Abubakar Audu, was clearly ahead of the candidates of other parties. At the end of voting, even the sitting governor and candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Captain Idris Wada, fell behind Audu by more than 41,000 votes. The resultant jubilation was hinged on the people’s belief that with Audu in the saddle, the state would return to its glorious days.

    They had every reason to think so. Audu’s stints as governor, first from January 1992 to November 1993 and then from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2003, are regarded as the golden age of the state whose development has been stalled under successive administrations from Alhaji Ibrahim Idris to Wada. Under Audu’s leadership, the state had witnessed remarkable physical development, particularly the construction of township roads, roundabouts, housing units and other landmarks that transformed Lokoja from a glorified village to an ideal capital city. As fate would have it, however, the wild jubilation would soon turn into ashes in the people’s mouths. From the blue came the news that Audu, the supposed winner of the election, had died.

    The ensuing confusion was compounded by a declaration from the Independent National Electoral Commission that the election was inconclusive. The decision of the All Progressives Congress to pick the incumbent governor Yahaya Bello as its candidate in the governorship rerun has since turned into a nightmare for the people of the state, particularly workers and pensioners. If the people of Kogi State had thought that they had their worst experience with the Wada administration, they must have realised by now that they were actually in paradise when they thought they were in hell. With Bello in the saddle, the people are now many miles behind the spot Wada left them.

    Not only is the state not witnessing development under the Bello administration in the state, the basic entitlements of workers and pensioners have become a mirage. Governor Bello had hardly settled down in office when he hit on the idea of carrying out an audit of the state’s workforce with a view to fishing out ghost workers.

    To the dismay of well-meaning people in the state, however, there are now more ghost workers in its civil service than there are legitimate ones. By some strange alchemy, thousands of workers who had served diligently in the state’s civil service for decades have been declared ghost workers. So much so that at the end of the exercise, the audit panel declared about 18,211 workers nonexistent. The public outrage provoked by the exercise forced the state government to constitute another panel to review it. But rather than reduce the number, the review panel added more than 300 names to the list of ghost workers.

    Ensconced in the inner recesses of Government House, the review panel, unfortunately, is a no-go area for many of the workers who, armed with their employment and confirmation letters, would like to prove their status as bona fide civil servants. Many of them are turned back at the gates by stern-looking soldiers and policemen, leaving the poor workers with no choice but to return home and quietly bemoan their fate.

    The story is told of some workers who travelled all the way from Ankpa to Lokoja in a chartered bus to visit the panel in the hope that their ghost status would be reversed. However, only a few of them who had links with some powerful figures in government were granted audience. Unfortunately, the bus in which they were travelling back to Ankpa was involved in an accident and 14 of them died.

    About three weeks ago, a female civil servant of my acquaintance, who had been working as a secretary at the state’s Ministry of Justice as far back as 1992, called me on the phone and was close to tears as she narrated how she got to the office on a Tuesday morning only to be told that her salary had not been paid because she had become a ghost worker after 25 years in service! I am told that the first prayer point of any civil servant preparing to go to work in the state these days is that he or she would not become a ghost before the close of work.

    But even those that are not yet declared ghosts are hardly better off. Many of them have not been paid salaries for as many as seven months while the ones purportedly paid are only paid miserable percentages of their salaries. The yardstick by which the government determines the percentage paid to each worker as salary remains a mystery. In a particular month, a worker would be paid only 50 per cent of his salary while his colleagues in the same ministry are paid 30, 40 or 60 per cent. Then in an instance of unconscionable propaganda, the government will go on air and declare that it has settled all outstanding salaries.

    The plight of pensioners in the state is a different kettle of fish. It was gathered that last December made it one year since most of the pensioners received their last payments. While it is public knowledge that states are in dire straits financially, the economic situation can never be a justification for the fate that has befallen Kogi workers under Bello.

    A situation in which genuine workers are wilfully declared ghosts just so that the government can shirk its financial responsibility to them smacks of insensitivity, particularly when the grapevine is buzzing with the rumour that the state government committed a whopping N1 billion to the recently concluded governorship election in Ondo State. Perhaps unknown to Governor Bello, the implications of his actions or inactions are more far reaching than the discomfort it is causing workers and other individuals in the state.

    They constitute a damaging indictment on the advocates of power rotation who have been whining about Igala’s domination of governance in the state.

    The manner he has conducted the affairs of the state since he assumed office last year as the first non-Igala governor leaves one with the impression that he plotted his way to the Government House just to discredit the agitations of the other ethnic groups for their rights to the state’s leadership.

    In a state whose workforce is dominated by civil servants, any financial misfortune such as the workers are going through is bound to ricochet on traders, artisans and other service providers whose survival depends largely on the civil servants. That in part explains why crimes like armed robbery and kidnapping are prevalent in the state. If the governor does not find this a cause for concern, it should bother him that Kogi ranks among the states with the highest number of fighters in the Boko Haram army. Talk of an idle hand being the devil’s workshop. While the civil servants may be civil enough to avoid the deadly sect like a leper, artisans whose livelihoods are threatened may not think twice before joining the sect if that is their only guaranteed source of survival.

  • As anti-corruption campaign enters roforofo phase

    POOR Ibrahim Magu. The moment the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launched himself into the task of bringing influential Nigerians accused of corrupt practices to book, I knew he was a marked man. It did not come as a surprise, therefore, that the Senate declined his confirmation as the executive chair of the antigraft body. At various fora in the build-up to his inauguration as President on May 29 last year, General Muhammadu Buhari had told whoever cared to listen that whoever would fight corruption must be ready for a fight-back from the monster.

    If Magu had thought the President’s words were a mere slogan, he must have known better from events in the past week. Like a bolt from the blue, he and others like the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Major-General Tukur Buratai, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. David Babachir Lawal, are enmeshed in the quicksand of corruption allegations, many of which are now proven to be unfounded. Reading a prepared speech to reporters after a closed door session of the upper legislative chamber penultimate Thursday, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, said the lawmakers had declined the confirmation of Magu as the executive chairman of the EFCC based on a damning security report from the Department of State Services (DSS). Among the ‘sins’ of the acting EFCC boss was the allegation that he was in possession of EFCC documents in his private residence while Farida Waziri held sway as the chair of the anti-graft body.

    The secret service also alleged that Magu’s friend and presidential appointee, who was under investigation, paid the sum of N40 million as two-year rent for Magu’s current residence in a highbrow part of Abuja. The report also alleged that after securing the apartment for Magu, the said friend, a retired Air Commodore who runs a questionable business and was once arrested by DSS, awarded a N43 million contract for the furnishing of the accommodation. It also accused Magu of flying a private jet owned by the retired Air Commodore.

    The report accused the EFCC boss of flying from Abuja to Maiduguri with a former Managing Director of a new generation bank who was under investigation and had been linked with the alleged shady deals by a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke. Magu’s camp has since dismissed the allegations as nothing more than a figment of the imagination of the lawmakers. The apartment allegedly secured for him by his friend, Magu’s camp insists, was secured for him by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) on the instruction of the Presidency because the latter wanted a more secure environment for the EFCC boss.

    The former bank MD he was said to have boarded a flight with was also said to have dismissed the allegation as unfounded because he (former bank MD) had never been to Maiduguri all his life. Curiously, the lawmakers did not deem it necessary to give Magu the chance to defend the allegations against him before they declared him guilty.

    The DSS is also yet to indicate that the said report indeed emanated from it. Before Magu, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Major-General Tukur Burantai, had had a dose of the bitter pill from the anti- Buhari forces, who having failed in their efforts to rubbish Buhari’s reputation since the electioneering period, has now resolved to drag the names of the President’s friends, associates and confidants in the mud in the hope that this will not only distract the government’s attention but also soil the President’s image.

    Then, like the biblical Pharisees, they will announce gleefully to the world that Buhari, having dined and wined with sinners, is anything but the saint the world thinks he is. Seeing that the Buhari administration was riding the crest of popularity from its exploits against the deadly Boko Haram sect, the President’s traducers had hit on the idea of subjecting Burantai to serious public scrutiny by concocting the story of his joint ownership of a property in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with his two wives with funds obtained fraudulently.

    The money for the purchase of the property, the petition said, might have come from a vehicle contract scam while Buratai was the Director of Procurement at the Army Headquarters. It has since turned out the said petition was nothing but a piece of sublime mischief.

    The Nigerian Army said in a statement that the COAS’ family indeed had two properties in Dubai, which they acquired by instalments and were part of the assets Buratai declared upon his appointment as COAS. “It is a fact that the Buratai family have two properties in Dubai that were paid for instalmentally through personal savings three years ago,” the army said in the statement issued by Acting Director Army Public Relations, Sani Usman.

    “This, along with other personal assets, have consistently been declared by General Buratai in his Assets Declaration Form as Commander Multinational Joint Task Force Commander and as Chief of Army Staff,” the statement added. And contrary to the claim that Buratai was lodging hefty sums on a regular basis in an account he maintained with Skye Bank, the statement said the COAS never owned any bank account with Skye Bank and was never involved in any contract scam.

    The dust raised by the allegations against Magu and Buratai had not settled when penultimate Tuesday, the Senate demanded the resignation of the SGF, Mr. David Babachir Lawal, on the allegation that he abused his oath of office by awarding contracts worth millions of naira to a company in which he has interest. Rholavision Nigeria Limited, a company owned by Babachir Lawal, allegedly received N200 million kickback from a contract he awarded for the clearing of “invasive plant species” in Yobe State. But the SGF said he had resigned from his company since August 15, 2015 and as a result was not a party to whatever business it contracted.

    The last certainly has not been heard as anti-Buhari forces perfect their plans to rubbish the anti-corruption campaign of the current administration if only to convey the message that we are all corrupt, hence Buhari is no saint. They know quite well that this game plan will not strip them of the corruption tag that clings to them like a cloak, but because we live in a country where perception is same as reality, it will leave the impression on the minds of Nigerians that the ongoing war against corruption is at best a game of persecution.

    The forces that Magu, Buratai and Babachir are up against are not different from those that tried to get Buhari entangled in webs of corruption allegations, including the now rubbished claim that he forged his secondary school certificate. The earlier stiff sanctions are imposed for such such mischievous petitions, the better for the peace and progress of the nation.