The Nation Newspaper

Category: Vincent Akanmode

  • Fayose’s monuments of misery

    As I compose this, I am praying silently that some residents of Ado-Ekiti whose houses were demolished with bulldozers rolled out by the Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, on Monday would have found places to lay their heads in this season of ceaseless rains. Reports from the scene of demolition indicated that the exercise was personally supervised by Governor Fayose, who batted no eyelid as aged occupants of the buildings wept uncontrollably. Only two supernatural incidents—rain and nightfall—could temporarily halt the destructive rage of the roaring machines to give the affected residents of Okesa and Fajuyi areas of the town a few hours to move their belongings before the monster machines resumed their inglorious mission.

    Governor Fayose would not be deterred by the wailings of aged men and women who pleaded for more time to secure alternative accommodation before their homes were turned into rubble for the sake of a one-kilometre flyover the governor was hell bent on building in the area. Scores of distraught owners and occupants of the buildings marked for demolition had a few days earlier staged a public demonstration against the plan by the Fayose administration to pull down their structures in furtherance of the flyover project. Acting under the aegis of Okesa Landlords Association, the protesters marched from their neighbourhoods through Secretariat Road to the Ekiti State House of Assembly.

    Spokesman of the house owners, Dada Adesanya, had told the lawmakers that the three-day notice the state government issued to them was too short, adding that the owners and occupants of the houses were gripped with fear of where to relocate after their buildings were demolished.

    He said: “Most of the owners of the buildings are old people who have no money to build new houses. A notice of three days is too short for them to relocate. Apart from this, the agreement we had with the government was 15 metres to the road before they now came up with 30 metres, which we find too shocking and sudden. Most of the occupants of the affected structures are aged people who have lived in the ancient buildings for more than eight years and cannot afford to build another house owing to financial constraints.”

    For reasons impelled more by politics than necessity, the construction of flyovers is seen in this part of the world as a critical element of governance whether it is necessary or not. Because of its physical and easily observable nature, governors are all too eager to go into its construction so they can advertise it as a major achievement and not necessarily because of heavy vehicular traffic. The construction of flyovers in cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, Kano and Port Harcourt is understood because of the heavy vehicular traffic such cities. In the aforementioned cities, construction of flyovers are not mere political gimmicks. They are mostly done to get rid of traffic snarls that leave people stranded and paralyse business activities.

    But there are no such threats in Ado-Ekiti, at least for now, to warrant the construction of a flyover, particularly when the move is certain to compound the woes of a people to whom the state government has not been able to fulfill a responsibility as basic as the monthly wages of workers. Any honest analyst will admit that there are more vehicles in Lagos, for instance, than there are people in Ado-Ekiti.

    It is amazing how grossly the governor is at loss with realities in his choice of priority projects for a state with a predominant population of civil servants whose salaries and emoluments have not been paid for months. The flyover brouhaha is coming months after similar protests by farmers whose lands were forcibly acquired by the state government for an airport project. Why, for crying out loud, would Ekiti make an airport a priority project with existing airports in Ibadan and Lagos? Of what commercial value will an airport in Ado-Ekiti be to airlines, considering that very few passengers are likely to be secured on that route?

    A major problem with governance in Nigeria is that our rapacious leaders commit the little resources they spare for the public to physical structures even when there are more compelling needs for non-physical ones, just because they think it is the easiest way to give the public the impression that they are working. Thus they will rather commit resources to roads and bridges because they are very easily seen than commit same to drugs for hospitals or laboratory equipment for schools because such expenditures would not easily advertise their governments as performing ones.

    I found an example of this in Katsina State in 2007 when the media house I once worked with deployed me to the state to monitor the governorship election that ushered in the immediate past governor, Ibrahim Shema. A visitor to Katsina, the state capital, could not have been more impressed with the pristine conditions of the township roads. The nylon-tarred roads that crisscrossed the city made driving a delight. But I later noticed the desperation with which people were raking water from gutters around the city and I became curious. Upon enquiry, I discovered that the gutters were the people’s main source of the water they needed for domestic use. While water was the most critical need of the majority of the city’s inhabitants, the government chose to spend all the money on roads because it was sure that roads would make better advertisement than boreholes.

    In Ekiti where hunger is on the loose because the government cannot pay its civil servants or honour its obligations to contractors, the situation is no less appalling. The story is told of how famished indigenes of the state are stealing pots of amala their neighbours keep on fire, but the governor thinks the critical needs of the people are airport and flyovers. Pity.

     

  • Our fat years will return

    I am always fascinated by the biblical story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his elder brothers. Their action was impelled by fear that they would one day bow to him, given some dreams the innocent lad had and told his parents about. That which they feared became their lot when they had to journey to Egypt many years later only to find that the poor boy they sold into slavery had become the prime minister of Egypt.

    But where Joseph is of real relevance to this piece was a dream he helped the king of Egypt to interpret after he was introduced to the king by an inmate he had met during his sojourn in prison, following the false allegation of attempted rape his master’s wife levelled against him because he refused to be seduced by her. As things would later turn out, Joseph was joined in prison by the chief baker and the chief butler of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, over unspecified offences they committed against the king.

    In the course of their interaction in the prison yard, they discovered how proficient Joseph was at interpreting dreams. And one of them regained his freedom and returned to his job in Pharaoh’s court, he recommended Joseph to the king when the latter was desperately in need of someone that could interpret a dream that got him worried. King Pharaoh had dreamt that he was standing by a river from which emerged seven fat cows. But just as the seven fat cows were grazing at the bank of the river, seven lean others emerged from the same river and swallowed the seven fat ones.

    Fools tried and wise men failed in the search for correct interpretation of the strange dream until the king’s chief butler recommended Joseph for the task and he was brought from the prison to Pharaoh’s court where he gave correct interpretation of the dream. He told Pharaoh that the seven fat cows represented seven years of plenty while the seven lean ones represented seven years of famine that would follow the years of plenty. He then advised Pharaoh to appoint a wise and discreet individual to manage the resources of Egypt such that the excesses in the years of plenty would be preserved for the years of famine.

    Joseph’s intelligent piece of advice immediately earned him appointment as the prime minister. And he managed the kingdom’s resources so skillfully that the savings made in the years of plenty came handy in the years of famine. So much so that famished people from other lands trooped to Egypt in search of food. His brothers who had sold him into slavery also went down in Egypt in search of food only to find that the innocent boy they sold into slavery many years before was the prime minister.

    President Muhammadu Buhari being a Muslim, I would not know how familiar he is with the biblical story of Joseph. I am, however, aware that Yusuf is Islam’s equivalent of Joseph and there is the likelihood that the Quran contains a similar account. Be it as it may, the former head of state has shown in every way possible that he is conscious of the waste in the administrations before his, when the nation had money in profuse abundance but failed to save or invest it in ventures that could guarantee a stable economy. Thus in the oil boom years of the 70s, a head of state declared that Nigeria’s problem was not how to make money but how to spend it. But after him came a democratic government that spent and spent until the nation was plunged into economic crisis and all manner of austere measures had to be adopted to cope with the demands of governance.

    In a more recent example the price of oil, the main source of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings, went as high as $100 per barrel in the international market during the immediate past administration of Goodluck Jonathan. But rather than save or invest in capital projects that would help boost the economy, officials of government embarked on a looting spree while recurrent expenditure consumed almost three quarters of the annual budget. Now Buhari’s critics say he must take the blame for the years of locust. His offence is that unlike other leaders before him, he would rather let Nigerians know the true situation of the economy than paper it over like others to give the impression that all is well.

    Where other leaders were afraid to call a spade a spade for fear that it could make their governments unpopular or make their parties to lose elections, Buhari is seeing the bigger picture, taking the bull by the horns and damning the political consequences. A firm believer in the timeless saying that there can be no gain without pain, he has resolved to take the country through the path of economic restructuring with an eye on future sustainable prosperity.

    Buhari’s political opponents are harping on here and now without conceding that he is getting the wars against insecurity and corruption right, so that he would not be given the benefit of the doubt that he can also get the economy right. Unfortunately, a lot of innocent Nigerians deluded by current economic realities are falling for this campaign of calumny. I personally believe that the efforts that are being dissipated on blaming him for the downturn in the economy ought to be channeled towards appealing to the Niger Delta Avengers and other reactionary forces who are bent on bringing the economy to its knees for selfish and other obviously irrational motives.

    It is common knowledge that the main source of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings is oil. But we are faced with double tragedy in this regard in the sense that the price of oil has collapsed in the international market while production has gone down by more than half as a result of the activities of the Avengers and other militant groups in the Niger Delta region. The implication is the inability of the Federal Government to generate the foreign exchange needed to stabilise the value of the naira against other major currencies.

    It must also be admitted the National Orientation Agency (NOA) and other agencies of government saddled with the responsibility of educating the public about government’s efforts are yet to join the change train. In the days of yore, the radio and television stations would by now be buzzing with jingo on the good times that will follow the pains of the current restructuring efforts. They must wake up to their responsibility of drumming it into the ears of Nigerians that our miserable life as a nation will linger until we learn to change our exotic lifestyles. Prosperity will remain forever an illusion for a country that imports everything from cars to toothpicks.

    Our leaders must also retrace their steps to the good old days when public office holders ruled with the fear of God and respect for the citizenry. These done, we will find our ways back to the glorious old times when General Yakubu Gowon boasted publicly that the nation’s problem was not how to make money but how to spend it.

  • Our lawmakers have gone mad again

    To admit it right away, I deserve no credit for the above headline. It is simply an adaptation of the title of Ola Rotimi’s hilarious play wherein a soldier named Lejoka-Brown took three wives. The first he married while fighting in the Congo, the second he inherited from his late elder brother in a strange but enduring African tradition while the third was an America returnee and daughter of an influential market woman he married because he was contesting for an elective office. The play centres on the series of crises that Lejoka-Brown has to contend with as his American wife forged allegiances with the other wives, teaching them to become independent in their thoughts and actions and literally prompting them to forsake the culture of absolute submission to their husband. The prevailing situation got Lejoka-Brown repeatedly worked up and prompted him to do crazy things.

    Of course, the National Assembly is not a matrimonial setting. It is supposed to be a gathering of sane and mature minds; an assembly of reserved and right-thinking individuals representing the interests of their constituents. The least expected of them are rational and decorous acts that would hold them up as refreshing examples of statesmen and role models. Having elected them to represent their interests as senators and members of the House of Representatives, their constituents are supposed to go to sleep in the belief that their interests will be well protected by the individuals they have elected.

    That, however, is far from being the case. The bulk of our national lawmakers appear to have been bitten by the bug of kleptomania. They have become so rapacious and jaded about their individual interests that they now think that their primary mandate is to loot the nation’s treasury.

    After the piece I wrote on the Senate in this column a fortnight ago over the outrage that greeted the coarse invectives and obscene threats Kogi West senator, Dino Melaye, issued against his female counterpart from Lagos Central, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, during an executive session in the upper legislative chamber on July 12, I did not expect to revisit the goings on in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly so soon. But events have dictated otherwise with the emerging roforofo between the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara and three other principal officials of the House on one hand, and the immediate past Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Alhaji Abdulmumin Jibrin, on the other.

    The sore point this time is the allegation and counter-allegation being traded between the two parties over alleged ‘padding’ of the 2016 Budget. The matter came to the open after a minor reshuffle carried out by the Speaker in the leadership of the House committees, which saw Jibrin losing his seat as the chair of the House Committee on Appropriation. Jibrin’s offence, according to the leadership of the House, was that he turned the appropriation business of the House in respect of the last budget into his private affair, sidelining other members of the House and allocating to his constituency 20 projects worth a whopping N4.3 billion.

    But observers who thought there was nothing more to the move than public interest were soon jolted by Jibrin’s declaration that he was victimised by the leadership because he refused to pander to their demands for more money after the sum of N40 billion had been allocated to the leadership of the Appropriation Committees of the Senate and the House. Curiously, there is no dispute as to whether the nation was defrauded by members of the National Assembly in the 2016 Budget. What is in dispute is the mastermind of the heinous act between Dogara and Jibrin.

    The ensuing face-off has culminated in more scandalous revelations by Jibrin who has also sworn to open more cans of worms, among which is his claim that 10 committee chairmen injected 2,000 fictitious projects worth N248 billion into the budget and the allegation that the Speaker diverted to his private farm in Nasarawa State a multi-billion naira project meant to serve the public elsewhere. Of course, Dogara has threatened to drag Jibrin to court for defaming his character if he fails to renounce the allegations and tender a public apology within seven days while the public waits with bated breath to see who blinks first between the two gladiators.

    But the court option may not be the best for the image of the Speaker. In the circumstance, he has more at stake than Jibrin not only because he is Speaker but also because he has before now been touted as one of the most upright men in the National Assembly. The story is told of the wild jubilation embarked upon by one of the prominent Nigerian church leaders upon learning that Dogara had emerged the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The said church leader was said to have vouched for Dogara’s integrity, which he said would rub off on other members of the lower legislative chamber.

    Depending on the slow and tedious judicial process of the nation to clear his name of the mess would certainly not be in Dogara’s best interest as there are insinuations in some quarters already that he has chosen the court option because he knows it is the best way to kill the matter. The wiser option would be that the Speaker steps aside for an independent investigation of the matter if only to disabuse the minds of people who believe that the desperation with which he plotted his way to become speaker against his party’s preferred candidate for some selfish agenda. The current state of affairs appears to have further vindicated President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the All Progressive Congress’ choice of different candidates from the ones that plotted their ways to the leadership of the National Assembly.

    We are now witnesses to open confession of sordid acts of corruption in the supposedly hallowed chambers of the National Assembly. Obviously, such huge sums have been cornered from the nation’s budget for decades, leaving one to wonder what the lawmakers involved have been doing with them.

  • Blessed is the country without a senate like ours

    Will it be of any consequence if Nigeria runs a government devoid of her upper legislative chamber? The question would sound preposterous to some, while many others would find it pertinent in view of the huge burden the Senate has become on the nation and the nuisance that many of its members have constituted themselves into.

    In its present form, the Senate is nothing but unnecessary duplication of the House of Representatives, choked full of selfish individuals who spare no thought for the public good but their personal interests. Its lack of useful purpose is compounded by the drain pipe it constitutes on the national treasury via the crippling emoluments of its actors and the scandalous constituency allowances under whose weight the exchequer is groaning.

    The political thinkers who conceived the idea of a senate were inspired by the thought that the upper chamber would be made up of rational, intelligent and highly enlightened individuals whose maturity would be brought to bear on issues already discussed at the lower legislative chamber. But in a twist of irony, the House of Representatives has repeatedly demonstrated better grasp of the essence of legislation than their so-called senior counterparts.

    That much was observable during the immediate past administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan when Senator David Mark held sway as the Senate President. For those donkey’s years, the upper chamber was nothing but a rubber stamp of the presidency, ever willing to pitch its tent with the executive, even where the latter’s motives were clearly at variance with public good. For instance, in the heady days of public protests against arbitrary hike in fuel price under the Jonathan administration, the House of Representatives consistently pitched its tent with the people while the Senate under Mark engaged in endless equivocation.

    Now, we are saddled with a Senate President who spends more time in court than he does in the chambers because he is facing multiple trials over corruption and forgery allegations. But rather than tell Saraki that a public figure of his standing should be doing everything he can not to tread close to the sharp edge of the law, they are busy regaling him with hypocritical pledges of loyalty. Now, a good number of them, led by the querulous Senator Dino Melaye, have abandoned the primary purpose for which they were elected and made a duty of trooping to the courts with their principal in orchestrated shows of blind loyalty.

    At the bottom of their so-called loyalty is their belief that Saraki could survive the harmer, after which they would be counted as his true loyalists. The benefits in that instance are inestimable. They will constitute themselves into a caucus with the appellation of True Friends of Saraki (TFS) or Saraki’s True Friends (SATF) for a more pronounceable acronym. The headship of juicy committees will become the exclusive preserve of the group.

    In civilised climes, they will be instant victims of the provision of the constitution that allows their constituents to recall them via a referendum for jettisoning their primary duties to act as Saraki’s bodyguards. But in a country where morality has lost meaning and wealth, genuine or ill gotten, is the sole yardstick for measuring success, these errant senators will return home to heroic welcome once they are able to throw naira notes in the air for their hunger-stricken constituents to scramble for.

    Of the myriad of problems that confront the nation, from insecurity to the collapse of the naira, the one that has arrested their attention is the search for immunity to shield Saraki and other leaders of the National Assembly from prosecution for as long as they remain in office. And when serious-minded ones like Senator Oluremi Tinubu ask them to watch their utterances or conduct themselves with a modicum of dignity, they throw caution to the wind and descend on them like the lion does its prey.

    Melaye, the cantankerous senator I have the misfortune of coming from the same community with, is currently caught in the vortex of public condemnation over the coarse invectives and unprintable insults he hauled at Mrs Tinubu during a closed-door meeting held by senators on Tuesday.

    Trouble reportedly began when Melaye, a die-hard supporter of the embattled Senate President, alleged that some senators were being used by the Presidency to destabilise the Senate, warning such senators to be ready to face the consequences of their action. “You should go and tell those who sent you that nobody, I said nobody, no matter who he is, can ever control this Senate,” he was quoted as saying. And when Mrs Tinubu was recognised to speak, she rose and said: “I’m just wondering why whenever Senator Dino speaks in this chamber, he is always threatening people and behaving childishly, at times like a thug. I think he should know that every senator here represents their constituencies and that there is no need to threaten anyone.”

    All hell was let loose as Mrs Tinubu’s words of caution reportedly jolted Senator Melaye to jump up from his seat and haul insults and abuses at the hapless woman. He has had to call a press conference where he claimed that most of the reports regarding what transpired at the session were exaggerated. The truth, however, is that his defence also could have been an orchestrated afterthought since the entire incident occurred behind closed doors. And given Senator Melaye’s penchant for acting rashly like he has done both as a senator and a member of the House of Representatives, and like he did when he led thugs to attack my father’s palace (he was then the traditional ruler of the town) and rain abuses on him because my brother was contesting the House of Representatives election with him in the build-up to the 2007 elections, only for him to plead desperately for the microphone to do his penance at the old man’s burial about three years later, details of his vituperation against Mrs. Tinubu could be truer than his own denial.

    Be it as it may, the last thing Nigeria needs at this critical moment of its political and economic life is a bogus senate that adds nothing but needless distraction.

  • Tell them, Mr President

    It was their first formal meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, but one that will continue to ring in their memories for the fatherly advice they got from the President. At the forecourt of the Presidential Villa on Wednesday, President Buhari told hundreds of Aso Rock workers the vanity in amassing wealth they cannot honestly justify and likelihood of humiliating not only themselves but their families.

    “If you don’t have houses in Abuja and the whole of Europe, you will sleep soundly. You and your family will earn respect. But if you shortchange the treasury, you will be caught, and I pity your family because people will be abusing them. People will be calling you big thieves, that how did you raise money to build all the houses in Abuja and Europe with your meagre salary. I think personal integrity is something to be encouraged,” the President said in a homily that drew rapturous applause from the deleterious gathering.

    I have said repeatedly in this column that corruption is the biggest monster that this country has to contend with. Remove the evil and other aspects of our political and economic lives will fall in place. The story is told of a community that once conquered a smaller one in its neighbourhood a long time ago. The community imposed its authority on the conquered one and appropriated the latter’s resources to itself as was the practice in the olden days.

    After years of negotiation, the community in question granted autonomy to the smaller one. To the surprise of the traditional ruler of the bigger community, the smaller community was growing at a pace that left him and his chiefs bewildered, He decided to send a delegation of seven of his chiefs to the ruler of the smaller community to find out the secrets of its rapid development.

    The traditional ruler of the smaller community received the delegation warmly and ordered that they should be taken to the guest house prepared for them. As the visitors entered the guest house, they saw seven drums lined up in the corridor. They opened the drums and found that they were loaded with gold.

    Shortly after they entered their rooms, the traditional ruler invited them for lunch in his palace, where the two parties also agreed to hold a meeting the following day. Unknown to the visitors, the seven drums of gold had been replaced with seven drums of palm oil while they went for lunch. As they returned to the guest house in the evening, they consulted among themselves and decided that they would get up when everyone else must have slept and pack as much gold as they could from the drums.

    It turned out, however, that they dipped their hands into the drums only to find them soiled in palm oil. Before they knew it, their dresses were badly stained with the substance. When they arrived in the palace in the morning for the meeting with the traditional ruler, he told them that there was no longer any need for a meeting. The oil stains on their dresses, he said, were the reason their community would not develop.

    For years before the advent of the Buhari administration and its anti-corruption campaign, well-meaning Nigerians were left stupefied by the triumph of the Boko Haram sect over the Nigerian troops. They seized community after community and it became increasingly apparent that the federal government had conceded the entire Nort East to the deadly terrorist group. They forced the troops to flee to flee as far as Cameroun and had almost realised their ambition turn the zone into an Islamic state when President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power. A probe into how the sums budgeted for acquisition of weapons with which our soldiers were to confront the Islamist sect revealed that about $2.5 billion had gone into private pockets while the hapless soldiers were pushed to the war front to confront the heavily armed Boko Haram army.

    In the Niger Delta region, militants insist that the federal government must suffer dysentery for the excess sugar consumed by rapacious leaders of the region. Alleging neglect, marginalization and degredation of their environments, some youths in the region are up in arms against the federal government even though the latter has done a lot to appease the inhabitants of the region. Besides establishing the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and dedicating a ministry to it, states in the region are getting from the federal purse monthly revenues about three or four times the sums allocated to others. But rather than use the funds for the development of the Niger Delta, governors, ministers, lawmakers, local government chairmen and other leaders of the region divert them into their private pockets.

    Strangely, the signs are still not clear to the protesting youths even when some of their leaders are in jail or are in the process of being jailed in foreign lands for jetting out with funds meant for the development of the Niger Delta. Rather than blame their plight on the greed of their leaders, they are busy destroying oil installations, unwittingly compounding the plights of the innocent inhabitants of the Niger Delta.

    Fighting corruption is so fundamental to a nation’s progress that no amount of effort channeled into it can be considered a waste. And there lies my grouse with those who complain that the Buhari administration is devoting too much time to fighting the evil. Whether we know it or not, fighting corruption in a country like Nigeria is a tougher task than Boko Haram and Niger Delta Avengers combined. We are talking here about thousands or millions of individuals each of whom can boast of sums that run into billions of naira. That is why I consider those who say that Buhari achieved nothing in his first year blind, deaf and dumb. That, certainly, cannot be the thinking of Sambo Dasuki, Olisah Metuh, Alex Badeh, Ayodele Fayose and Femi Fani-Kayode, to mention a few.

    It smacks of mischief or ignorance to say that Buhari is devoting too much time to fighting corruption; he is simply putting the horse before the cart. Considering that corruption is a disease that has seeped through the pores of our country’s once healthy body and ravaged it almost beyond repairs, embarking on any developmental agenda without first confronting the monster will be tantamount to planting corns in the midst of guinea fowls.

  • Keshi: Another chance to forget a departed hero

    SPEAK no ill of the dead. That is an unwritten creed that governs life in this part of the world. Hence at the death of an individual, his sworn enemies launch into eulogy, telling of the goodness and perfect ways of the departed soul in a manner that the holiness of saints pale into insignificance. So it was with the death of former Super Eagles skipper and coach, Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, in the early hours of Wednesday. The news of his death had barely filtered out when some individuals, with whom Keshi had a no love lost relationship, began to sing about his wondrous deeds and perfect nature. Eniyan kii suwon laaye, ojo a ba ku la n d’ere (the heroics of a living man is never appreciated, but in death, he is treated like a deity), says the age-long Yoruba aphorism. Nigerians got a perfect example of this when upon the death of the late leader of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, in 1987, former Biafran leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, who had worked tirelessly against Awolowo’s presidential aspiration, went on national television and declared him “the best president Nigeria never had!” Of course, Keshi fully deserves all the encomiums that have been poured on him since he passed on. Not just because he was the nation’s inimitable football ambassador, but also because he was the only Nigerian to have won the prestigious African Cup of Nations as a player and later as a coach. His move to Cote d’Ivoire and later to Belgium to play professional football in the early 1980s became the sluice gate through which Nigerian football players trooped to Europe for professional careers. In no time, Keshi became the poster boy of Nigerian football and was reputed for deploying his personal resources to ensure that many Nigerian players secured mouthwatering contracts with various European clubs. But one can easily tell from experience that the eulogies that are being showered on the departed former Super Eagles coach are at best perfunctory. My advice to his admirers is that they should enjoy this moment the best way they can because it may well be all that Keshi will get for all his years of sacrifice. There will be no major street or playground named after him, not to talk of a governmentowned stadium. I wager that on June 8 next year, only some members of Keshi’s family and a few of his intimate friends will remember the first anniversary of his death. That may be worse news than Keshi’s death, but it is the truth. My optimism is based on the treatments that were meted out to other departed footballers before him, some of whom exhibited far more zeal and patriotism in service to their fatherland. Of particular interest here is the late Super Eagles (then Green Eagles) midfield impresario, Sam Okwaraji, the 25-yr-old indigene of Umudoka village, Orlu, Imo State and holder of University of Rome’s masters degree in International Law, who collapsed and died of congestive heart failure while playing in a World Cup qualifier against Angola at the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos on august 12, 1989. Okwaraji had broken into the senior national team in 1988 and in less than one year established himself as one of the nation’s most skillful midfielders. The football world remembers him for scoring one of the fastest goals in the history of African Cup of Nations competition against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroun in Morocco in 1988, where he played every match involving Nigeria at the competition until the Eagles lost to Cameroun (their perennial rivals) by a lone goal in the final. Barely one year after his sterling display at the tournament, tragedy struck and his sun set at midday. Everyone thought it was a minor incident when he fell and lay still on the pitch. But the reality soon dawned on everyone that Okwaraji, who at that time was already writing his PhD thesis in Law, had become the first Nigerian footballer to die playing for his country. More remarkable than his benumbing skill was the zeal with which he honoured national call-ups from his base in Germany. He never shunned a single call-up and was reputed for paying his own fares to play in matches involving Nigeria. A former chairman of the Nigerian Football Association (now the Nigerian Football Federation), John Obakpolor, once recalled how Okwaraji charged at his manager on one occasion for asking Nigeria to pay $45,000 to his club before he could be released for a world cup qualification match. Okwaraji reportedly stood up to his manager and said: “I am a lawyer, you know, and I signed to play football on certain conditions. But I don’t think it included reselling my services to my country. You or the club cannot stop me from playing for my country. Let me tell you, I am going to represent my country at the world cup in Italy, whether you like it or not, and I would very much like you to be there.” A worried Obakpolor was said to have reminded Okwaraji of the implications of charging at his manager, but the young man had no apologies as he turned to Obakpolor and said: “My chairman, I realise that. But this man (Okwaraji’s coach) has no right to talk to you the way he did. I am a Nigerian and I will die fighting for the dignity of my country.” Elsewhere, the anniversary of the death of such a patriot would become an annual national event, but I doubt if 10 per cent of Nigerians who were adults at the time Okwaraji died can correctly recall the anniversary of his death, not to talk of celebrating him. Keshi’s death on June 8 was in every sense the end of an era in Nigerian football. But I am certain that the whip of contempt used on Okwaraji, Rashidi Yekini and other deceased footballers who had fetched and carried for Nigeria is reserved for him. Mercifully, he may have done enough to etch his name in the minds of the young Nigerians whose professional careers he facilitated.

  • Niger Delta, the avengers and the enemies within

    Nigerians rarely agree on any issue. But one of the few exceptions to this is the widely held belief that the Niger Delta region is backward; a far cry from what it should be as the goose that lays the golden egg. The region, it is believed, ought to be many decades ahead of where it is now in terms of development as the custodian of the oil wealth the nation mostly depends on for its revenue.

    Sometime last week, a montage of pictures trended on the social media depicting the allure of Lagos and Abuja side by side with the misery of the Niger Delta. From Lagos and Abuja were glittering images of exotic high rise buildings and picturesque network of interwoven roads and attractive flyovers that hold an observer spellbound. The Niger Delta on the other hand was a spectacle of rusty and dilapidated bungalows, which in more civilised societies would be preserved as evidence of the miserable life of the early man our Social Studies teacher spoke so piteously about in primary school.

    Of course, the author of the said montage is guilty of mischief because he or she wanted the world to believe that the cluster of dejected buildings in the purported picture on Niger Delta was representative of cities like Port Harcourt, Calabar, Uyo, Warri, Sapele and Yenagoa. Still, it deducts nothing from the fact that the region deserves much more attention than it has got in view of the magnitude of its contribution to the nation’s treasury. In fact, the wild clamour for Jonathan’s appointment as substantive President in 2010, when it became obvious that former President Umaru Yar’Adua had become incapacitated with sickness, and the massive votes Nigerians cast for him to run another term in 2011 were premised on the widely held belief that the Niger Delta should for once be allowed to produce the country’s leader.

    The problem, however, is that the inhabitants of the region are always too eager to blame their plights on everyone except their many rapacious leaders who have combined greed with ineptitude to rob the region of resources that should be deployed for its development. If the people are sincere in their evaluation of the forces behind their backwardness, the first monsters they must confront are the Jonathans, the Iboris, the Alamieyeseighas and other indigenes of the region who have served as governors, ministers, senators, reps, local government chairmen and even traditional rulers.

    The Federal Government may be guilty of not giving the region enough attention, but the pertinent question is what became of the resources that have accrued to the state through such measures as the 13 per cent revenue derivation formula on account of which most states in the Niger Delta earn more than double of the monthly revenue accruing to states in other parts of the country. The establishment of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the dedication of a ministry to Niger Delta affairs have failed to redound to the region’s development because most Niger Delta indigenes who preside over them see them as an opportunity to enhance their private pockets.

    The trial and conviction of former Bayelsa State governor, the late Chief Diepriye Alamieyeseigha, and his Delta State counterpart, Chief James Ibori, for diverting resources meant for states they were supposed to guide are two examples of how the region is pauperised by the greed of its leaders. But rather than condemn the misdeeds of such leaders, the people line behind them in solidarity and hail them as heroes, only to turn round to blame the government at the centre for their plight.

    Ordinarily, it should worry the inhabitants of Niger Delta that former President Goodluck Jonathan cannot point to any meaningful project his administration executed in the Niger Delta for the six years he presided over the nation’s affairs. It is now taking the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari to address projects like the East-West Road, second Niger Bridge and the clean-up of Ogoniland. With Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s flagging off of the administration’s multi-billion naira Ogoni clean-up project on Thursday and with the other projects in the region already highlighted in the 2016 budget, the signs are clear that Buhari will do more for the Niger Delta in his first two years than Jonathan did in six years.

    Rather than appreciate this gesture, the Niger Delta Avengers, a group of puppets on the chessboard of unconscionable politicians who are bent on distracting the Buhari administration like the Boko Haram terrorists did Jonathan’s, have resorted to blowing up oil installations in the region. Their agitation is baseless and the method they have chosen to express it falls short of the expectations of reasonable minds. What is the sense in bringing down the roof of your own house to protest the wrong done by an outsider?

    By destroying oil installations and other facilities the Federal Government has built in the region, the so called avengers are merely destroying the available platforms upon which the region’s development can be built. They are simply compromising the future of the region; an ugly prospect that could be compounded by the killings and further destruction that would occur if the military is pushed to re-enact the Odi and Gbaramatu adventures. Not only will lives be lost, thousands of inhabitants will be displaced. The earlier the region’s leaders call their sons to order, the better. Otherwise, they may live to regret their actions for life.

  • A failed strike and its lessons

    Poor Comrade Ayuba Waba. Last week, the factional President of the Nigeria Labour Congress sought to keep a tradition that had endured for decades. He called on workers to embark on an indefinite national strike to protest the hike in the pump price of fuel from N86.50 to N145. The move, however, fell on its face. The call was ignored by the majority of workers, leaving Waba with the unenviable record of the first NLC president whose call for nationwide strike against fuel price increase ended a monumental failure.

    With the sudden initiation of the new price regime on May 11, Waba’s NLC had given the Federal Government a seven-day ultimatum to revert to N86.50 or face a nationwide industrial action. But convinced that it was the best decision it had to take in the nation’s current economic circumstances, the Federal Government stood its ground, prompting Waba to announce the commencement of strike at the expiration of the deadline.

    But the announcement had barely gone on air when different unions within the NLC began to distance themselves from it. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG, the two major unions in the oil and gas sector, minced no words in their objection to the strike. So were other unions like the National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE), the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and the National Union of Air Transport Workers (NUATE).

    While the foregoing unions had given previous similar industrial actions in the past the needed bite and left the nation’s socio-economic activities paralysed, there was nothing this time to show that a national strike was in progress. Banks were in full operation, tanker drivers were lifting the available fuel at various depots, commercial buses were in full operation in most cities and those who needed to travel by air had no problem boarding their flights.

    To compound matters, the Joe Ajaero faction of the NLC endorsed the new price while labour leaders in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt openly declared their objection to the strike. In the end, Waba and other executive members of his faction of the NLC were left with no choice but to call a face-saving meeting where it was decided that the largely unheeded strike action be called off.

    Of course, the incident has come and gone but its lessons would not be lost on concerned citizens. First, it is an indication that Nigerians are not the gullible lot that many of our leaders think they are. After the ugly experiences they have had with successive governments since independence, the people now know exactly what they want from their leaders and would not be pushed into confronting the government by sheer appeal to sentiments. Their perception of governance has changed dramatically as they have demonstrated the will to give the Buhari government the benefit of the doubt, based on the pedigree and personal virtues of the President.

    Signs that the strike called by the Waba faction of the NLC was destined for failure emerged less than 12 hours after it was pronounced by the NLC leaders. In a popular phone-in programme monitored by the writer on Bond FM, a popular Lagos-based radio station, early Wednesday morning, none of the close to 50 respondents to the question as to whether the strike should hold supported it. Rather, they took turns to reject it, describing it as ill-timed and subversive of the efforts the Buhari administration is making to restructure the economy.

    At the bottom of the people’s resolve to give the Buhari administration a chance is the critical element of governance called trust. Buhari’s body language, his war against corruption and the successes that have been recorded against the deadly Boko Haram sect in their North East enclave since he assumed office have all endeared him to the people as a leader with a genuine mission to right the wrongs perpetuated by his predecessors. And since he was sworn in as President on May 29 last year, President Buhari has continually demonstrated his concern for the ordinary Nigerian as was evident in the reduction of the pump price of fuel from N87 per litre to N86.50 shortly after he assumed office.

    It will also be recalled that when the states were finding it difficult to pay workers’ salaries, Buhari released more than N600 billion to the affected states as bailout. With that, many states were able to pay the backlog of salaries they owed workers. He followed up the gesture by directing that the deduction of debts owed by states from their monthly allocations be suspended for the month of March. And unlike the Jonathan administration before him, President Buhari did not base the bailout funds released to states on party affiliation. States under the control of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) got as much as those controlled by the governing All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Ironically, it was trust, the factor that seems to be working in Buhari’s favour, that has worked against the NLC. Many people appear to have lost faith in the NLC after labour leaders allegedly bungled the agitation against fuel price during the Jonathan administration. Rightly or wrongly, the people felt betrayed by the actions of labour leaders in those turbulent days, as some of them were thought to have cashed in on the agitation for selfish ends.

    Buhari is therefore the biggest beneficiary of this state of affairs. My fear, however, is that he could end up the biggest loser if he bungles the massive goodwill from the people like his predecessor did in 2011. That in itself will be a tragedy of monumental dimension.

  • Buhari’s prolonged silence on rampaging Fulani herdsmen

    I grew up in my native Ayetoro-Gbede community in Kogi State with a Fulani boy as one of my best friends. My friendship with Sule had evolved in natural circumstances as both of us were born the same day in the community’s only maternity home. Our mothers became friends from the maternity and later began to exchange visits. Sule’s mother would come with him to our house and my mother would go with me to theirs. Sule and I thus became friends, running around their bush-surrounded camp in fruitless efforts to catch grasshoppers.

    It later turned out that the primary school I attended was located very close to the camp. I benefited hugely from this because at break time, I would stroll to the camp to meet Sule who was not going to school. His mother would welcome me with open arms and give me free of charge a huge portion of cheese which my mates had to buy with their lunch money. I got the shock of my life the day I went to the camp and it was desolate. The entire Fulani family had left with their cattle and that was the last I saw of Sule and his loving mother.

    Other Fulani camps sprang up around the community thereafter. Although I was never close to anyone of them like I was to Sule’s family, their inhabitants were generally friendly. I recall a day in Class 3 when we had a lesson on the Uthman Dan Fodio-led jihad of 1804. As our teacher told the story, she looked out the window and saw a Fulani man grazing his cows. She beckoned to him and he gladly entered the class to shed more light on the subject. It was a session we thoroughly enjoyed as the Fulani man spiced the story with songs, leading us to clap and dance merrily.

    Of course, there were a few instances where some farmers came to my father’s palace to complain that some herdsmen had led their cattle to destroy their farms, such cases were amicably settled. The errant Fulani man would apologise profusely and even pay compensation in some cases. Many members of the community depended on the Fulani herdsmen for their supply of bush meat because in the course of grazing their cattle, they came across animals like rabbit and squirrel.

    The biggest weapon we found on them was the locally made rifle, which was barely able to kill an antelope. But the times have changed. Fulani herdsmen are now a species to be dreaded and avoided like a leper. They go about with machine guns, killing and maiming hapless farmers and other innocent people, so much so that they are now rated as one of the deadliest terror groups in the world.

    The rampaging cattle grazers are reckoned to have killed no fewer than 3,000 people since 2010 with states like Benue, Taraba, Kaduna, Plateau and Nasarawa the worst hit. They are also believed to be involved in criminal activities like kidnapping and cattle rustling. A report published by SMB Intelligence claimed that in 2015 alone, more than 2,000 people were killed in conflicts between the herdsmen and different host communities.

    The nation is now in clear and present danger in the sense that some ethnic nationalities are already threatening to resort to self-defence, if the federal government hesitates further to do something about the negative trend. This, to me, is a subtle threat of warfare for which you can hardly blame the groups at the receiving end. The right of an ethnic group to swing its arm must necessarily end where the right of another ethnic group to defend its nose begins. The big question would be whether the Fulani have got the capacity to cope with all the ethnic groups they have wronged in the event of simultaneous reprisals.

    Only recently, there were reports of a mass grave of murdered Fulani people discovered in a community in Abia State. Whether we know it or not, a tribal war is imminent except urgent steps are taken to arrest the trend. Unfortunately, President Muhammadu Buhari has not done as much as condemn the activities of the herdsmen in unequivocal terms; a situation that has led many to conclude that he is acquiescing the actions of the cattle grazers either because he is a Fulani or because he is a strong member of the umbrella association of Nigerian herdsmen. His recent call on the military and the IG to rein in the culprits is considered too tepid as to be an afterthought. It is not too much if he summons their leaders to the Presidential Villa and warns them in front of the cameras.

    On assuming office, President Buhari declared that he belonged to nobody and to everybody. That assertion is now under serious test. He must soar above it to sustain his reputation as an unbiased leader.

  • Fayose: How not to be an opposition leader

    IN composing this piece, I am guided by the Yoruba saying that the best way you can gat a sadist to become a part of his community’s development efforts is to beg him. Considering the devious nature of his politics in recent times, there is hardly a better way to get the eccentric governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, to sheath his sword against the rest of the populace and join in the efforts to re-launch Nigeria on the path of progress.

    The call on him to see reason became even more imperative after a letter he wrote to the Chinese government on the back of President Muhammadu’s recent visit to China, asking the Asian country to rescind the far reaching agreements the two countries had towards the rehabilitation and development of Nigeria’s social infrastructure. Apart from granting Nigeria financial aids that run into billions of dollars, China also agreed on a deal to make the West African country the hub for the internationalization of Yuan, the Chinese official currency.

    Economic experts have taken turns to hail President Buhari’s visit to China as the most beneficial of all his foreign trips since he assumed the leadership of the country in May last year, saying that the deals he struck with China are capable of turning our fortune around in such sectors as power, solid minerals, agriculture, housing and rail transportation, giving tooth to our tag as the giant of Africa and returning our country to a place of pride in the comity of nations. Not so for Governor Fayose.

    As soon as the news of the milestone agreements broke, the Ekiti State governor reached for his pen and wrote a letter to China through its embassy in Nigeria, asking it not to grant Nigeria any financial aid because, according to him, “Nigerians, irrespective of their political and religious affiliations, are totally opposed to increment of the country’s debt burden, which is already being serviced with 25 per cent of the Federal Government’s annual budget.”.He alleged that Nigeria was seeking a loan to finance the deficit of its 2016 budget while some of the projects for which a loan was being sought were not captured in the said budget.

    What Fayose did not add in the letter was that he has been a major player in the events that culminated in the sea of debt Nigeria now finds itself in. The PDP government in which he was hyperactive was responsible for the squandering of trillions of naira from the nation’s exchequer. A former secretary of the PDP in Ekiti State, Dr. Temitope Aluko, recently released sordid details of how Fayose received a whopping sum of $37 million from former President Goodluck Jonathan to rig the election that ushered him in as governor. This is besides the billions of naira Fayose and other pro-Jonathan elements allegedly got from various government agencies with a view to railroading Jonathan into office for another term.

    Curiously, Fayose asked the Chinese government to single out his own state for investments and financial aid which he felt the country did not deserve. Of course, the responses from well-meaning Nigerians have been legion, quick and scathing. Some say he is patently subversive. Others with a bent of comics say it is comedy taken too far.

    Since the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was swept away from power by the wind of change that blew across the country last year, Fayose has saddled himself with the task of acting as the voice of opposition to Buhari’s government. Regrettably, his has been a classical example of how not to be an opposition leader. While propaganda is a critical element of opposition in politics, it is an exercise requiring a lot of rational thinking. To be taken seriously by the observing public, an opposition leader must know when to condemn and when to commend. An opposition leader becomes a cynic when he condemns an obviously beneficial move like Buhari’s recent visit to China. It is either Fayose’s teacher in the concept of opposition is doing a poor job or Fayose himself is such a poor student of the subject that he can only comprehend the cynical aspect of it. In the end, he is nothing more than a querulous and fastidious masochist, ever eager to condemn and never willing to commend.

    Were Fayose not a politician ahead of his time, he would have long got the message from Buhari’s stoic disregard for his tantrums and adopt the option of keeping quiet. The President is shielded from the machinations of sworn detractors like Fayose by the massive goodwill he enjoys from the larger Nigerian public; the goodwill that Fayose and his co-travellers tried in vain to destroy in the build-up to the election that ushered Buhari in about a year ago by labelling him a religious fanatic, an impostor and a certificate forger.

    If their campaigns of calumny could do nothing to decimate Buhari’s reputation in those sensitive times, it is very unlikely to succeed now that he is firmly in charge as the nation’s number one citizen.