The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Our Girls; Fulani-Farmers War; Abacha; Armsgate: Isolate Party from Budget. MEXAHNYIA  

    Our Girls; Fulani-Farmers War; Abacha; Armsgate: Isolate Party from Budget. MEXAHNYIA  

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. They will not know it is Christmas.

    The Fulani-Farmer War goes on with 22 newly dead in Plateau State. President Buhari should end this war by December also. Now that the gravy train is over purely due to political greed, politicians are no longer wallowing in our unearned wealth and are inundated with hundreds of ‘SOS’ requests they cannot meet, perhaps their ‘eyes will come down’ and witness our poverty –caused by them and their thoughtless oil policies. But it is not yet Uhuru. I saw a video of a wedding at which the ‘dollar hurricane spray’ was so huge it required the bridesmaids to sweep up the currency from around the bride’s feet with industrial blooms into dustbin bags!

    An anti-corruption question: Why are officials worldwide, when accused of corruption, ‘too sick’ for court? If you are well enough to be in a position, you should be well enough to give account, face interrogation, pay back with interest, and face punishment. The medical profession must stop ‘writing sick leave’. And someone actually complained about his bail accommodation in prison. Plea bargains should include long jail time. Nigeria is wounded and demands 100% recovery, interest and jail time! These who died from the corruption cannot celebrate Christmas.

    Why is Abacha’s name on roads, a housing estate in Lagos and a stadium in Kano – glorifying corruption? Buhari, his senior in the army, must change these names! The actual disbursement of the Abacha loot shows a lack of ‘passion for the Nigerian Dream’. International governments had feared ‘re-looting’, pegging the money to development of health, education, sanitation and power. Politicians shouted foreigners had no right to dictate. Now we know why. A really ‘Presidential’ Jonathan would have allocated Abacha loot to the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Second Niger Bridge and projects countrywide. But Abacha loot was ‘re-looted’ by politicians.

    Nigeria’s Number one socio-economic problem is ‘the idea that all government funds and budget belong to the political party at LGA, state and federal level’. This needs a NATIONAL DEBATE for solution. Is the political party entitled to 0, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0 or up to 10% of funds or the budget? Democracy and separate successful party funding are not unheard of. Abroad ‘political parties’ and ‘budgets’ are separate animals and one does not ‘eat’ the other. Anything would be better than the wholesale slaughter of the ‘Nigerian budget cow’ with only the ‘head or tail’ given to the people while the legs and ‘betta body’ are consumed by politicians and party faithful. Party funding is the most contentious, serious ethical, financial and developmental problem facing Nigeria. The question about the single largest corruption/ ‘public funds’ interface encompassing contract hyper-inflation and super-funding of bloated election ‘war chests’ and campaigns beyond comprehension, has crippled the country. Since 1979 it has rubbished our polity, crippled our citizenry, emasculated our economy, devastated our growth potential, devalued our currency, frozen our future and killed countless citizens. Politics is not a game or a joke. It is the perfection of theft and murder! There is blood on the ground! For example as businesses are plunged into cutbacks and pensions become unpaid, hundreds of thousands of students will have to lower their educational expectations, truncating growth potential and damaging Nigeria’s quality of future human capital. Meanwhile the political thieves gloat at the naira devaluation, making their dollars ‘rise’ in false value.

    This ‘Who Owns and Disburses Nigeria’s Funds?’ debate/discussion must occur now. We should search the NTA archives and rerun the tapes of the vitriolic National Assembly (NASS) debates and ‘oversight’ interrogations by NASS who actively fought against Okonjo-Iweala and her $75 oil benchmark and Sovereign Wealth Fund initiative. They should apologize now the oil price is an unprecedented $31.5 and our SWF is a pittance compared to countries who invested 1-10% wisely in SWFs.

    If a man is accused of mismanaging funds, with others, totalling $2,100,000,000 [=1/15 of our foreign reserves], how can a court’s bail be $1,000,000 -1/2000 the amount? At least 1-10% bail would be just! The bail sums are not in consonance with the alleged crime. Justices must use guidelines proportional to cases. This is also a case of ‘remote control’, indirect murder of federal soldiers. Remember the consequent malicious court martial of surviving soldiers, heroes, for negligence of duty, could have resulted in mass execution. The negligence charge and the court martial should target a different set of past Commanding Officers!

    Bail gives opportunity for ‘damage control’, to pervert justice, to intimidate and even to harm witnesses, divert or move and ‘disappear’ funds.

    ‘Murder’ is usually the only unbailable offence. However this current Armsgate is a huge alleged crime and has cost many soldiers’ lives, lost fighting using inferior weaponry against Boko Haram, turning many into widows and orphans and causing a mutiny and the anguish of death sentences commuted to 10 years. It has cost about 700,000-1,000,000 unsung lives and untold misery for of millions Internally Displaced Persons.

    The whole two-year plus Boko Haram nightmare was preventable with High Command strategic planning and adequate weaponry. President and Alhaja Buhari will probably spend Christmas with these war widows and orphans, victims and the Internally Displaced Persons, needy of Love and Peace from a Nigeria that failed them preferring to maliciously misappropriate $2,100,000,000. Christmas is in heart, mind and pocket. MEXAHNYIA.-MErry Xmas And Happy New Year In Advance.  To be continued

  • Our Girls; 10-yr Driver’s Licence pls; Corruption kills: Jail killers; Education deaths!

    Our Girls; 10-yr Driver’s Licence pls; Corruption kills: Jail killers; Education deaths!

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We pray for them and their families.

    National Assembly (NASS) should immediately introduce legislation for a 10 or 20-year driving licence even if it costs N1-2,000/year in order to prevent revenue loss. This will cut ‘License Administration Time’ of the licence and the time citizens lose. If NASS fails then President Buhari and Transport Minister Rotimi Amaechi should get this done, now!

    Everyone, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), United Nations, Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, the economic students and social science graduates, Church or Mosque, must calculate the true ‘unit cost of our massive corruption’ of money, mind and body to ‘the human unit’ – child, adolescent, young adult, married couple, worker, elderly, pensioner, bereaved parent, patient, jobseeker, doomed traveller on lethally potholed roads? Is it a loss of N1,000,000/Nigerian? It is easy to mention the missing ÂŁ12.5 billion First Gulf War Windfall under the indescribable Babangida [with the coming draconian [anti-] Social Media Bill, who wants a N4million fine for someone else’s criminality],  $2,1b Arms scandal, N26 billion pension and other scams. But what is the ‘development cost and loss’ to citizen and country from corruption?

    Corruption probably cost 150,000Mw of power, 100m litres of water, 10m text books, 50,000 kilometres of expressway, high speed rail network –North-South and East-West, 100 major bridges, 200 teaching hospitals, 1,000,000 classrooms, 10,000,000 scholarships, 100,000 school sports equipment kits, 20,000 youth centres – which together equal the First World Country Nigeria should have been.

    What is this mind-boggling corruption? Corruption kills with blood on the ground from preventable pothole crashes and blood on the hospital floor from poor medical facilities. Corruption is the inadequate power, water, road and knowledge supply. Corruption truncates personal, collective and country achievement – limiting financial, academic and professional achievement. Corruption is a Churchillian ‘iron ceiling’ limiting the growth of a country struggling to become a nation. Corruption causes unseen but direct injuries and blood to flow, death and disability, mass misery and high mortality – all traced to the high corruption index.

    We have prayed against corruption. God delivered Buhari ‘Mr Clean and lean’ to ‘save’ us. Now we, not God, must deliver an anti-corruption country to the next election and subsequently to the next generation. We must ‘work and pray’. Buhari cannot do it alone while government agencies and uniformed bodies run wild. Uniformed officials remain notorious for laying traffic and other traps to extort. They have no fear of Buhari. How do they catch ‘the Fear of Buhari’?

    President Buhari must threaten the police for example and then execute a change in leadership repeated every three months for failure until the police cleans itself up. Buhari must force all service government organisations and ministries to join the ‘Anti-Corruption Train’ at individual, family, community, company, civil service, corporate and country level.

    Make an ‘Anti-Corruption Declaration’ in your home and office today. ‘I am not corrupt. Are you?’ Let’s watch for the new CBN list!    The death of six young girls in a boarding school tragedy and the fire in a boys’ school are terrifyingly real experiences. Health and Safety cannot be left to education authorities alone. Every serious effort in ‘Health and Safety’ must be executed wherever there are human beings but especially by Parent Teachers Associations (PTAs) and boards of schools and individual parents and teachers associations in schools. Our children are vulnerable in schools to preventable road crashes, typhoid, malaria, cultism, fires, okada accidents et cetera. At state and federal level, do the ministries of education and health have annual reports on students bullied and broken, injured, diseased and even dead in schools plagued by authoritarian indifference, planlessness, lack of prevention skills and incompetence? In my medical practice, I see many children with horrendous permanent eye injuries inflicted by parents, teachers and ‘fellow students’. Cultism is a cancer invading education even at primary school.

    Boko Haram is not the only enemy to education. Bullying, poor education are also enemies of education. There is an enemy within including those making policies that take it take up to 10 years for simple curriculum changes to reach the classroom. Where is the 2014, 2015, 2016 ‘Annual Curriculum Update’? Is there a ‘Health and Safety Guideline’ Book.

    Corruption is worldwide but that is no excuse for our corruption! FIFA, the largest NGO, bloated with advertising funds, stinks as it sinks further into quagmire of football foul play following arrests at FIFA headquarters. Millions of dollars reached Africa as ‘FIFA development funds’ which were never announced or distributed fairly or reached any football field near you. Schools still lack standard kit, footballs, standard pitches, goalposts and nets? And yet Coach Siasia’s team still managed to win the Under 23 Cup. Hurray! It is time for EFCC, ICPC and CID to link with INTERPOL and EUROPOL to ‘follow the money of FIFA HQ to ‘FIFA Africa and Nigeria Unlimited’ even as FIFA HQ, used to ranking others, plunges down the anti-corruption Ranking of Transparency International. Too many Nigerians have lost a career in ‘non-football sports’ because we ‘overplay’ ‘the mini-god football’ abandoning 100 other sports. Nigerian authorities failed to deliver sports equipment in schools and recreational parks. There can only be one football team but there could be 15 sports teams if sport is diversified.  Our preoccupation with football may be due to our criminal refusal to provide facilities largely missing now with corruption, congestion, compression and cancellation of PE- Physical Education from the curriculum. [To be continued].

  • Our Girls; $2billion; Funding politics, Draconian democracy: The tax man cometh

    Our Girls; $2billion; Funding politics, Draconian democracy: The tax man cometh

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. We pray!

    The mind-boggling $2,000,000,000 or N300,000,000,000+, i.e. N2,000-3,000/Nigerian misapplied arms deal must be juxtaposed with what $2,000,000,000 or N300,000,000,000 could and should have done in suffering sections of Nigeria’s social fabric. The lack of this money has caused perpetual misery and ‘I de manage’ and lack of normal achievement denied millions of Nigerians. Politicians must snigger when Nigerians shout for pothole-free roads, better electric power supply, better schools and hospitals.

    The money, $2,000,000,000 or N300,000,000,000 is gone! It was to arm a military whose hierarchy thought there could be no war and therefore apparently managed to ‘misplace’ its budget on ‘welfare’ if not ‘misappropriate’ it making it unable to fight Boko Haram. We witnessed the consequent court martial in the Nigerian Armed Forces for not holding positions ‘in the face of superior fire power’ or for protesting non-availability of equipment. If ‘military funds’ could disappear, imagine what was done in ministries. Let us remember military pensioners who were forced to Abuja to secure a pension rightfully earned, but wrongfully withheld by a malicious government system that approves for itself ‘multi-millions’ in ‘severance pay’ after a mere four years of failed governance! What country dares deny its soldiers pensions but pays undisclosed millions to the NCC Board?

    Let us remember and protest the excessive taxation of citizens, homes and businesses of Lagos State –some funds of which are said to have ‘assisted’ other states in election politics. Lagos citizens may be appreciative of the result but many feel used and let down by the government supposed to serve them. Well, there are no elections in Lagos State for the next 3+ years and so taxes should go down and service should go up. No need to send money to other states, abi?

    A simple example of the situation now is that nationwide the last one month+ has been hard and fuel-less with particularly private income losses from expenditure reductions of up to 40-60% as business turnover falls from the fall in economic traffic, clientele, customers, patients, passengers and cash at hand in many homes. Will the famous tax man take note that the cost of living exemplified by transport fares that have gone up 2-3 times has swallowed what little profit has been made in the rest of the year? For many November salaries are still awaited and December salaries are suddenly a mirage. But the tax man cometh! The tax man should give Nigerians rebates for losses from the fuel failure and high cost of fuel.

    In this era of change, alternative and legal ways of FUNDING NIGERIA’S POLITICS must be explored. Taxes are important but maximum, terrifying taxes are bad and wrong. We must reject the coming suggestion that a DRACONIAN DEMOCRACY TAX SYSTEM should see citizens as the new ‘Extractive Industry’ like oil was before. They tell us to pay more and more tax. For what? More ministerial and government theft? Stop the leaks, reduce the tax, drag more people into the tax net and there will be good tax policy compliance by the majority. Is the tax office there to serve, service and advise or to TERRIFY citizens with unrealistic tax and consent demands which require negotiation and exchange of favours? We sympathise with Tunde Fowler, Acting Managing Director, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) ‘Mr Tax’ on the death of Papa who I knew as a friend of my late father Dr Abayomi Marinho. We pray he will be careful who he accepts financial presents and logistic support from in relation to the burdens and compromises of his office. Corporates and business people are experts at ‘causing compromising circumstances’ with a sympathy envelope, bag, gift, cows and lorries full of drinks or prepaid caterers. The Fowler family will, as a result of the society’s traditional generosity at funerals and wedding especially involving serving ministerial and other high public servants, probably end up with an enviable and countable herd of cows, an un-disclosable quantum of currency and a moderate warehouse full of sundry beautiful bottles of beta beverages. This is not, or is it, the time to introduce a ‘Festivity Gift Tax’ to capture in the tax net the huge Nigerian/ African enterprise around Betrothals, Burials and Birthdays- the Three Terrible Bs of Nigerian society. Indeed we should Nigerianise the Tax Law to give ‘Social Tax Relief’ to anyone having to fund, support or produce an envelope at such events because they are our culture. A wedding or death can wipe a person out financially. Should contributions attract tax relief under ‘Family Relief’! Is there tax relief for looking after sick relations?

    Indeed tax relief should apply to those who care for old relations and send young relations and even strangers to school. The foreign tax idea of ‘one wife and four children’ is alien to the generous African spirit of the extended family and has helped destroy our social fabric by reducing the family funds available to look after less fortunate family members. The governments of Africa should appreciate, publicly and tax policy-wise, ‘The African Extended Family’ – the largest Bank in the world, non-profit, and substitute for first world social welfare plans and self-centred society which often ignores the non-nuclear family. Taxation is good and important, draconian democracy over-taxation is bad politics and worse economics-it frightens and kills people! The Nigerian Tax man cometh in war or peace?

     

  • Our Girls; HID; ‘Death of MPR’, Birth of single digit Interest Rates? Yes, Ministers: Wanted!

    Our Girls; HID; ‘Death of MPR’, Birth of single digit Interest Rates? Yes, Ministers: Wanted!

    Our Girls are still missing since 15th April 2014. By December, pray that Boko Haram will be destroyed, defeated and dead.

    Nigerians, homes and businesses are groaning under this harsh evil fuel crisis. Who is guilty of sabotage? Is there an end in sight?

    Mama HID Awolowo, the Great Grand Mama of Nigerian politics has been laid to rest on her 100th birthday after an illustrious career as wife, mother, grandmother, businesswoman, political strategist and listening ear. She has seen Nigeria at its best and worst, the sweetness and the suffering of politics, the trauma of loss and the luxury of victory, a vilifying politics and an adoring public. She is what ‘First Ladyship’ is really about and was a major leader in her own right. May her exemplary soul Rest in Perfect Peace.

    Hurray! CBN policies have changed. Henry Boyo’s economics is heard by ‘Buhari change’. ‘The greatest good to the greatest number of citizens’ is a motto of good democracy financial policy, ignored till now. Malignantly high interest rates and devilish devaluation have ruined business and pleasure and the mantras of ‘belt tightening’ and ‘naira devaluation’ have rubbished our proud naira.

    The ‘First Buhari Economic Policy Change’ was the still highly contentious refusal to devalue the currency and as a result devalue the citizen. This government is Defender of the ‘Proud’ naira’. The battle is real and the naira is still threatened, due to scarcity, real and artificial, and trading near N240+:$1 on the black market. Of course, business needs dollars for material imports. Investigate if the government dollars available are distributed equitable. Who will win the devaluation war? Hopefully the battered and bullied naira will begin the ‘long road to freedom’ and recovery to the 1980s N1 to $1. Do the CBN and Buhari government have a strategy for this? Will it be N1 gain in value per week or month or every 2 or 3 months? This is a better way of improving earning power than devaluing and increasing salaries.

    The ‘Second Buhari Economic Policy Change’ is the return of stolen wealth and property. But Nigerians need to see this ‘Monthly Funds Recovery List’ as a deterrent to Buhari appointees and contractors.

    The ‘Third Buhari Economic Policy Change’ is the BVN, Bank Verification Number, begun by Jonathan, to monitor and eliminate dubious accounts and cash-flows as anti-corruption and anti-terrorist strategies. Already money is ‘frozen’ in banks because the ‘owners’ are afraid to be BVN identified. Will banks silently swallow this money, like foreign banks did on the death of a secret bank account holder? Can Buhari get banks to ‘cough it up’ for development?

    The ‘Fourth Buhari Economic Policy Change’ is that it is the first government to sympathetically confront the high Monetary Policy Rate which is simply the CBN’s ‘EXECUTIVE ECONOMIC FISCAL RASCALITY’, outrageously scandalous at 13%. This is a major legalised financial ‘fraudulent battering ram’ damaging the citizen and draining the economy. It provided a major CBN legal ‘slush fund’ for CBN Boards of Governors and government for out-of-hand payments, graft and gifts, sometimes labelled CSR as for example under Governor of CBN Sanusi whose N10b ‘donation’ to Bayero University, Kano, versus N400m to a few other universities, may have had no bearing on his becoming Emir of Kano.

    Government has reduced MPR to 11%. It should slash it to zero MPR, as elsewhere. This is the only way Nigerian banks will be ‘forced to’ offer all citizens and businesses single digit interest rates of 5-9%. Hurray! The MPR cut produced none of the dire consequences predictions. The ‘High Yield’ Toxic Treasury Bonds/Bills must be phased out forcing banks to lend more and easier to business and citizens. Can Nigeria now ‘PREDICT THE DEATH OF MPR’? Will the MPR be phased out ‘With ‘Immediate Effect’ overnight or over 6-12 months, maximum? Will it be a reduction of MPR at 1-2% a month for 6-11 months or 2-4% every 2 months for 6-11 months or 3-6% every three months for 6-12 months? So Nigeria may become normal with ‘THE BIRTH OF SINGLE DIGIT INTEREST RATES FOR ALL’ Wow! These are Buhari gifts to Nigeria, rich and poor, business and pleasure. Amen!

    Continued for last week. Yes Minister, some more ‘Wanted’:

    Wanted: ‘Pot-Hole Freedom’ A ‘Nigeria-wide Pothole Filling Campaign’. Minister Amaechi can do it with a 1970s worker-gang PWD approach.

    Wanted: Every commercial advert should also carry a secondary Life Skill Message as a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’.

    Wanted: Links with other ministries. Potholes, bad water, canoe accidents, the murderous Okada epidemic cause preventable disease and disaster. Inter-ministerial discussions should have foreseen hospitals filled with spinal cord, head or amputation injuries and graveyards with the unnecessarily dead.

    Wanted: Initiate annual ‘Medical Life Skill Media Outreach Conference and Awards’ and partner with electronic media and the National Orientation Agency, Nollywood and ‘Musicwood’ to fill the unused airspace with the ‘Top 100 Life Skill Messages’ for survival.

    Wanted: A ministerial/Stock Exchange CSR STRATEGIC PLAN to spend CSR better in serial developmental steps to uplift health and education and decentralise it from state capital to village values.

    Wanted: ‘Catch Them Young’ youth centres in each ward empowering youth as partners in the ‘Ignorance Elimination’ plan. An ignorant, ignored child will become a nightmare adult in 2030. A child enlightened by Life –Skill Message will enlighten parents, community and country. Youth need Affirmative Action, Promotion and Protection.

  • Our Girls; Yes, Minister; A 21st C Life Skill/Health Programme; ‘Ministerial Most Wanted List’

    Our Girls; Yes, Minister; A 21st C Life Skill/Health Programme; ‘Ministerial Most Wanted List’

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We continue to pray for them and their families.

    Dear ministers, congratulations. Wanted: A 21st Century Life Skill/Health Programme

    WANTED

    Wanted: A classroom poster strategy for Nigerian schools. Government must learn lessons from the exemplary Exxon’s Community Social Responsibility (CSR) Poster Project which in cooperation with Nigerian universities released seven Geological Maps of Nigeria covering minerals and geological valuable variables. ‘Pictures Are Worth a 1000 Words Except In Nigeria’ where there are few posters in classrooms. Politicians know the value of political but not educational posters. Last election, the country was sickened and saturated with 500m-1billion posters, including giant outdoor ones unleashed on the citizenry in a ‘Know My Face Campaign’. Yet these same politicians funding the ‘Political Poster Mayhem’ designed to eliminate ignorance about their faces and names, are reluctant to implement international education policies to ‘ELIMINATE SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE IGNORANCE’ and place 10 SUBJECT POSTERS/CLASSROOM for our 1.5milliion classrooms. Yet we have billions wasting in Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).  A ‘Nationwide Classroom Posters Strategy’ will make the worst classroom ‘YOUTH AND TEACHER FRIENDLY’. Politicians should authorize as many posters for school-children as they selfishly did for themselves. Those political posters are rubbish with billions of naira wasted.

    Wanted: My people die from lack of knowledge. The Nigerian media must take full responsibility for this ‘NATIONAL FAILURE TO EDUCATE’ which is harming and killing ordinary citizens. The media could be marshalled to contribute to the well-being of citizens. The ministers may partner with the National Assembly to pass a ‘medical and social message media law’ stating that ‘as a [social] responsibility contribution of each media house to citizen happiness and longevity, life-skill social and health messages, at least 15 minutes of airtime daily, in divided 30 seconds or 60 seconds slots, must be devoted as csr to inform and educate the citizenry on life-skills’. Such a law will daily enlighten listeners about self-awareness and self-improvement.

    Wanted: Establish a ‘Prevention Is Better Than Cure’ Health/Education/Youth And Sports/Communication etc Inter-Ministerial Committee on the ‘Life skills Education. Topics’ component of the curriculum to include normal ‘Life-Skill’ issues like typhoid, malaria, Red Alerts, meningitis, Lassa, AIDS, bird flu, traffic, bullying etcetera taught in five or 10 minute talks at school assembly.

    Wanted: Hotline/Website Maternal and Infant Mortality Registers’ for instant statistics to empower patient choice.

    Wanted: Compulsory Discharge Summaries for all patients to empower patients and reduce medical fraud.

    Wanted: Close unhealthy substandard ‘mission’ maternities. Missions are for deliverance of the soul, hospitals for delivery of the baby!

    Wanted: Upgrade ‘One Primary Health Centre per ward’ to ‘optimum’ including ‘sonicaid’.

    Wanted: Suggest a ‘One Youth Centre per Ward’ as a joint health/education/youth and sport/ inter-ministerial tool to reach the youth nationwide with information and material and skill development programmes.

    Negotiate a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) with Corporate Nigeria for space on product packaging, billboards, posters and newspaper adverts for Life-Skill Positive Health, Moral and Motivational Messaging.

    Wanted: Cigarette packet and alcohol adverts have a successful NEGATIVE message programme. Imagine if Nigeria adopted a ‘POSITIVE LIFE-SKILL MESSAGES CAMPAIGN’ on all Nigerian packaging ‘cards to cartons’ like ‘wear a seat belt’, ‘attend antenatal care’, ‘don’t beat women’, ‘rape is an attack on your mother’, ‘get educated’ etc.

    Wanted: Urgent Massive increase in MEDICAL MEDIA OUTREACH BUDGETS to fight the disease ‘HEALTH IGNORANCE’. Establish a Health Media Outreach Commission to recruit radio stations and TV stations to DAILY disseminate the top 100 Health Ministry Messages. The AIDS, NAFDAC, FRSC and Ebola saturation Media Outreaches are valuable successful evidence of the method required.

    Wanted: Identify the top 100 Preventive Health Messages. Package them in a 100 page booklet, like the ‘Educare Trust Her/His Book’ as a Federal Ministry of Health Preventive Health Teaching Aid Booklet- the little ‘Green and White Life-Skill book’.

    Wanted: Arrange a PPP with Corporate Nigeria’s CSR budgets to produce 50 million copies of such a Preventive Life-Skill Teaching Aid Booklet –with distribution under Corporate Nigeria’s CSR Strategy etc.

    Wanted: Distribute book to one million teachers teaching an ‘Army Of Health Educated–Health Aware’ Nigerians.

    Wanted: Encourage governments to ensure that state hospitals are better than Federal Medical Centres and Teaching Hospitals. Offer Annual Prizes to the best zonal LGA health service coverage, best state hospital and best Primary Health Centre run by state and LGAs.

    Wanted: Encourage a ‘WOMEN’S HEALTH SUMMIT’ for women in politics, business, women CEOs and all companies profiting from children and women to chart ways to reduce mortality and morbidity rates. Their companies could pay for health posters to keep their clients alive longer to buy their products. For example companies into sanitary towel, phone cards, soap, drinks should support campaigns on breast examinations, anti-wife beating and antenatal care with posters/pamphlets/inserts in products.

    Wanted: Noting that ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’ except in Nigeria, start a Ministry of Health Annual National Preventive Health Poster Exhibition and Campaign with distribution of winning posters on the Top 100 messages sent to the 1.500,000 classrooms, markets and kiosks. A PPP with the Stock Exchange, Institute of Directors, will fund such a CSR campaign using the Coca Cola ‘Media Saturation Method’. If it works for Coca Cola it should work for rape or breast examination!

    Wanted: Every hospital must install Insecticide Treated Nets on every bed.

    Wanted: Budgets for regular cleaning painting to keep health environs clean

    Wanted: Schools without sanitation/toilets/hand washing facilities should be CLOSED on Medical Grounds.

  • Re: Shekarau at 60

    Re: Shekarau at 60

    It’s rare for readers of this column to completely agree or disagree with me. Usually it’s a mixed affair. Last week’s piece, however, was among those rare occasions when my readers not only almost completely disagreed with me. Most of them did so strongly. Here are some of the reactions.

    Sir,

    I cannot remember ever reading you, my favourite columnist and getting disappointed afterwards until now. Indeed, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau possessed ‘eloquence, humility and simplicity’ to qualify him for the number one seat in Kano as you rightly mentioned. And I think at the beginning he also meant well.  But to deliberately omit the most important and strongest factor, General Buhari’s emotional and passionate appeal to Kano people to vote ANPP SAK! when presenting Shekarau in 2003, was, surprisingly, very much unlike you, the constant writer and defender of  truth! And you very well knew that PDP people did not fear Shekarau, they feared Buhari. Even Al-Amin Little, Shekarau’s less experienced, closest rival during the ANPP primaries, would still have won the governorship election anyway.

    I dislike to even entertain the thought, but it seemed even Shekarau’s unmatched ingratitude to Buhari and, by extension, Kano people, had escaped your magnetic memory.

    And now, sadly, your precious column was chosen to drop the hint to Nigerians about Shekarau’s ambition for 2019. Good luck to him. After all, he has the right to contest, and you to be the first to let us know. But if not for the man of integrity that you are, I wonder what would be assumed to be your inspiration or motivation to, at a day Nigerians woke up full of hope and anticipation for their new ministers, give a certain Shekarau an undeserved publicity.

    But while nothing is impossible in politics, as your conclusion suggested, do not forget that part of your strength as a unique journalist is your loathness for lazy forgetfulness, hence your use of past documents to refresh your readers’ memory on the topic under discussion. In this case, should the time come, our collective memory would still be fresh. We may not need Dauda Kahutu Rarara, the reigning prince of political songs in the North, to remind us of the man for whose welcoming to PDP the party organised a notorious jamboree, with the former president personally attending, while the nation was mourning the Nyanya bomb blasts. Nigerians very well know those who, by all means, never wished them to be rescued when the devil held them by the throat. And while the world celebrated with us for coming out of cluelessness, we knew those that fumed, burned inside and had sleepless nights.

    And even with your belief in the non-existence of impossibility in politics, in the build-up to the 2007 elections you wrote of  Professor Jerry Gana in 2006, in a piece you titled Why Jerry Gana Will not be President that he  “
may be passionate and brilliant orator but it takes more than brilliance and passion to become a president. Among other things it takes credibility and it also takes conviction.” (Emphasis mine).

    At that time, the professor believed he could win the presidency riding the horses of religious sentiments; and you unequivocally told him that he was in for the shock of his life. I wonder how the three qualities of Shekarau you mentioned, mixed with strong doses of ingratitude, deceit and ill-wish for one’s people; and lacking credibility, would make his presidential chances any brighter.

    Mustafa Adamu

    mmustafaadamu@yahoo.com

    Sir,

    Is the man your friend or was the piece just a piece of bad research? Find out, the “Buhari factor” took Shekarau to “Africa House” and not any eloquence. Eloquence my foot! The man hasn’t half the eloquence of the late Rimi or Kwankwaso.

    +2348054300625.

    Sir,

    Bahaushe na cewa da muguwar rawa kwamma kin tashi. Shekarau can contest again, but be rest assured Buhari will beat him again even at the ward level, let alone the whole of Kano State.

    Garba Usman

    Kano

    +2348033065912.

    Sir,

    I am afraid you forgot to mention how that ingrate retired teacher who joined the governorship race, rode on wave of the BUHARI gale only to rout the man out of the party. May his type never again be trusted with elective political power.

    Charles Kuhe +2348055250990.

    Sir,

    Though  I am not a card-carrying member of any party, it is my candid opinion that whenever the political history of Malam Shekarau or his secret weapon as an opposition candidate in 2003, not to mention the Magic the BUHARI aura played is uncharitable. Buhari raised his hand and asked people to vote for ANPP -SAK and that was the magic during his first tenure. As for the second tenure I can’t tell what magic played any role.

    Moh’d Kano.

    +2348036283412.

    Sir,

    Your article on Shekarau at 60 actually made my day. Your comments on Shekarau as a man from humble background was not misplaced. Shekarau, the political generalissimo of Kano politics, is a household name in Nigerian politics. But his greatest undoing is his political misadventure to PDP, a party he held in disdain while in the office as governor for two terms. His reason for joining PDP did not persuade his admirers including me. He has a wrong perception of the political dynamics playing out in Nigeria.

    Kolade Ilesanmi, Esq.

    +2348030640311.

    Sir,

    You erred in your column today by totally neglecting the support of Buhari in the emergence and subsequent electoral victory of Shekarau as Kano State governor during the 2003 elections. How could you forget the ‘SAK’ admonition of Buhari to Kano electorate on that day at Racecourse, which surely proved to be the clincher when so many were contemplating re-electing Kwankwaso as governor, while voting for Buhari as president as in ‘wake da shinkafa.’

    +2348035007010.

    Sir,

    Your Shekarau at 60 was a good image refurbishing stunt for a man whose political fortunes seem to be nose-diving at all fronts. But even so Shekarau and PDP are not to rise from their downfall by shifting power back to the North in 2019. From Yar’adua (a northerner) to Jonathan (a southerner) to Buhari (a northerner) and back to the North again with the multi-dimensional ethnic nationalities in the country? Haba!

    What is expected of PDP is to learn its lessons, revive itself and come up with effective leadership and management strategy that would put the APC government on its toes for good governance. But to want to achieve that by sprouting a reprehensible political arrangement for the country couched in such a PDP zoning formula, which neither agrees with the aspirations of the majority of the people , nor is in line with the federal character principle of equitable power sharing, isn’t just acceptable to Nigerians.

    Emmanuel Egwu,

    +2347087231156.

    Re: Alhaji Haliru Dantoro Kitoro III, a man of peace and courage

    Sir,

    I have just read your article on the late emir of Borgu. Thanks for your historical work. Please come up with more of such that will unite the Yoruba race and its pre-colonial allies in the North, such as the Gobirs, Tapas, Argungus, etc.

    1. B. Lalemi

    +2348169596508

    Sir,

    There was never a Kwara Province. From inception, it has been Kwara State. Even with many parts of its territories chopped off, it’s still Kwara State.

    +2348037211366.

    Sir,

    It was Ilorin, NOT Kwara Province!!!

    Shehu Kaikai,

    +2348035892134

    Sir,

    In your article on Dantoro you tried to briefly write on Borgu history. You got it wrong when you said that Dantoro was fourth  Emir of Borgu. Borgu had recorded 11 chiefs before the arrival of the British. After that Jibrin was the first emir, locally called Kwandara. He was also the first Muslim ruler, appointed in 1916 and deposed in 1924. On his appointment, he destroyed all traditional belief and removed all idols and threw them in the River Niger. Starting from Jibrin, Dantoro was third Emir of Borgu  as the Supreme Court ruled that Isyaku Jikantoro was never an emir and remains a prince. You tried to give him what he was never.

    1. U. Wara,

    +2347031147461

    Sir,

    This is to confirm that Kainji Dam is located in Auna District of Kontagora Emirate, not in Borgu

    Major Buhari A. Aliyu (rtd)

    +2348034704024.

  • Our Girls; Most Wanted List: Synergy:10-yr Driving License, Youth Centres, House Jobs; Media Agenda   

    Our Girls; Most Wanted List: Synergy:10-yr Driving License, Youth Centres, House Jobs; Media Agenda   

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. May God bring them back safely.

    Ministers should initiate the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigerians in the shortest possible time – with every stroke of their pens, every thought, word and deed. ‘Yes, Minister’!

    Wanted: ‘INTER-MINISTERIAL MINISTERIAL SYNERGY’ for Development, not Rivalry for state destruction. All federal and even state ministers need Monthly Inter-Ministerial Communication And Cooperation, IMCC meetings. The power turbine too big to cross a bridge to its destination for 2+ years after being delivered to Nigeria’s port is disgraceful. Customs delaying power equipment containers for bribes is sabotage. An IMCC meeting must monitor progress of key state/federal projects from start to finish. Electric Power is key to citizens’ business success and welfare. There should also be ministerial/state monthly IMCC/states meeting on monitoring, problems, timelines and bottlenecks. Nigeria must have this ‘change’. States suffered from a ‘legal’ lawless bullying PDP federal power selectively stunting development. Minister of PHW, Babatunde Fashola is an expert in good and bad state/federal relations with success with late President Yar’Adua on the iconic Lekki Bridge and also frustration by interfering federal agents and evil ministers of works even using the military. The federal mission statement ‘Federal Might is Always Right’ is evil, wrong and anti-development. Minister of PWH Fashola and Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi are deliberately placed by President Buhari to execute solutions to dismantle this demonic dichotomy between federal and state. Every Nigerian is from a state.

    WANTED: NIGERIA URGENTLY NEEDS 14-17 million homes, 1.000 LEKKI-LIKE BRIDGES, 10,000 pedestrian walkways, the filling of 2100 million lethal potholes to be filled by road gangs, like PWD of old, under supervision of local communities. Where are the Second and Third Niger Bridges? Our traditional roads followed colonial trade routes. We need new railways and roads in new directions, decongesting roads and railways like the Lagos-Ibadan DEAD Expressway which itself was 1970s bold new road going ‘where no one had been before’. The East-West Road is not complete. Apart from easing movement, tourism dollars also require these inputs.

    WANTED: A 10 YEAR DRIVING LICENCE: The new ministers must ‘CHANGE’ the three-year Driver’s Licence life span to 10 years with additional fees, eg N1-2,000/year, to ensure no loss of revenue. Renewing every three years overworks FRSC staff and the unfortunate citizens. Civil Society, National Assembly (NASS) and Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) should jointly eliminate this major bottleneck in the life of Nigerians.

    WANTED: A BAN ON TYRE BURNING: The Minister of the Environment, a veteran general of MDGs should see the value in a ban nationwide on burning of tyres with huge numbers of toxins released into the atmosphere and especially when used for burning the hair off the skin of cow-hide, later eaten, along with the toxins, by poor Nigerians. A radio and TV and poster nationwide campaign should help.

    WANTED: SINGLE DIGIT INTEREST RATES for every Nigerian. Drastically cut the 12+% base lending rate, claimed by CBN on each loan transaction which has made Nigeria’s the laughing stock and necessitating the past government offering single digit rates for sundry businesses.

    WANTED: EMERGENCY POWER NOW: The power problem is immediate, medium and long term. Minister of PHW, Fashola can use as a ‘Change’ template, the recovery from the Fukishima nuclear plant shutdown in Japan in 2011. Immediately, within three months, Japan replaced all the 10,000Mw lost by ‘Emergency Power Companies’. Nigeria must get the needed 10,000Mw out of 100,000Mw minimum the same way. ‘Emergency Power Companies’ are on the web. They can deliver local power on contract for 3-12+ months, terminated as medium term local power and particularly Solar Energy gradually replace it with IPPs and the long term plants.

    WANTED: A NATIONWIDE MASSIVE MEDIA INFORMATION Agenda as a Weapon of Mass Development, not just during Ebola epidemics! We need realignment of federal/state information ministries, and massive inter ministerial activity to use the media and National Orientation Agency (NOA) for the complete ‘Ignorance Elimination’ and education of citizens, on not just government policies, but all things–health/social/life-skill/moral/civics messages. The media must be two-way, people to government. No hour without serious educational/motivation messages, not propaganda.

    WANTED: A NATIONWIDE NETWORK OF YOUTH CENTRES- one per ward, local cheap, Do it Yourself (DIY), locally named for youth education/empowerment and two-way messages between ministries and youth.

    WANTED: ENCOURAGE PRIMARY SCHOOL OLD STUDENTS ASSOCIATIONS to duplicate what secondary schools have been able to do to uplift education at that level.

    WANTED : IMMEDIATE HOUSE OFFICER JOBS FOR ALL QUALIFIED  DOCTORS. No new recruitment until all seniors have been employed.  This is a quick crisis for Minister of Health Prof Isaac Adewole to solve.

    WANTED: NATIONAL HONOURS LIST with Dr Bennet Omalu, President Carter, Rotary International, Bill Gates. Dr Bennet Omalu the 1990 University of Nigeria, Nsukka, medical graduate who discovered that American football players developed a chronic brain disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE. President Carter/Carter Foundation for eliminating River Blindness, Onchocerciasis, Rotary International for Polio elimination and to Bill and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Malaria and Ebola Vaccine funding.

    Nigeria should, among others, recognize International Guidelines based on Omalu’s work, restricting the age and number of times children and youth footballers can ‘head footballs’ abroad.

    WANTED: A NATIONWIDE SCHOOL SPORTS PROGRAMME and ‘CAUTION’ ABOUT ‘HEADING FOOTBALLS’. Synergy among Ministries of Youth and Sport, Information, Education and Health are relevant in this to inform the 50m youth about this life-threatening manoeuvre in football.  To be continued
.

     

  • Shekarau at 60

    Shekarau at 60

    Last Thursday, November 5, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, two-term governor of Kano State, the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate in the 2011 elections, and until May 29, the country’s Minister of Education, turned sexagenarian. His political career, which made debut in 2003, is arguably the most inspiring in recent Nigeria’s history – that of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan included.

    The long journey to his fortuitous political debut 12 years ago started, of course, 48 years earlier when he was born to Malam Shekarau and Malama Maryam in Kano. The mother, who died in 1999, was from Gundumawa village in Gezawa Local Government Area of the state. The father, who died in 1979, was, however, originally from Biu, Borno State, but settled in Kano where he joined the then Native Authority Police and rose to the rank of a chief inspector before retiring.

    That successful career brought Malam Shekarau close to the emirate’s Wakilin Doka (Chief of Police) at the time, Alhaji Ado Bayero, who, decades later as Emir, was to take the son under his wings as governor of the state and eventually turbaned him the Sardaunan Kano, the first in the emirate’s long history.

    After his formal education, which ended with a degree in Mathematics/Education from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1977, he joined the Kano State bureaucracy in 1978 as a secondary school teacher. Thus began a successful civil service career in which he was principal at various secondary schools in the state, an education administrator, and from which he eventually retired as a permanent secretary in 2001.

    Former President Jonathan’s spin doctors like to tell the story of his amazing political career as one similar to that of America’s Abraham Lincoln, who, we are told, went from a wood cabin to the White House; Jonathan, we are often told, went, in eight short years, from being a shoeless village boy – one from a minority of a minority ethnic group at that – to the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation.

    As with Jonathan’s, Shekarau’s debut in the political firmament too had an element of luck. The difference, however, was that with Jonathan it was more luck than any political acuity on his part or on the part of his handlers.  With Shekarau’s election as the governor of the most populous state in the country and its biggest commercial centre after Lagos, it was the opposite. In his case he needed the capacity to cultivate Kano’s highly conscious electorate. It addition he needed tons and tons of money, which he did not have, as a lately retired poor educationist.

    You can hardly put his predicament in 2003 better than the man himself did in an interview in the Daily Trust of March 18, 2011. “In fact in 2003,” he said, “someone looked at my face and said if I don’t have anything (because that was his own assessment) near N100 million, I would be crazy to think of contesting the governorship position. At that time I could not boast of N100,000 not to talk of N100 million, but I contested and won the election. I beat the sitting governor with a gap of over 600,000 votes and don’t tell me I rigged the election because I didn’t have the apparatus to do so.”

    His secret weapon as the governorship candidate of the opposition ANPP then seemed to have been his quiet eloquence, humility and simplicity as a retired teacher. His handlers used the latter two virtues to cast him in the image of an underdog in his contest with Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the sitting governor. And the good people of Kano, from their political history, seem to always love the underdog.

    Four years later as governor, it was debatable that his record had met the expectations of Kanawa. As an educationist he had given their formal education his priority attention. He had also established a Directorate of Societal Orientation (A Daidaita Sahu) which, under the Weekly Trust back page columnist, Bala Mohammed, had done a great job of inculcating the much needed civility in the often unruly people of Kano. The governor had again, in more concrete terms, established arguably the best and the most well-funded pension scheme for public servants in the state, well ahead of the pension reform at the national level.

    In spite of these achievements and others more, few people bet on his re-election as governor in 2007, not least because no governor in the state’s history had ever succeeded in securing a second term.

    On one occasion, the late Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed Rimi, its first elected governor, who at that time had become the state’s leading political godfather as a stalwart of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, boasted that Shekarau’s end as governor was nigh. “Ba Shekarau ba ko Dundundun ne sai mun tsige shi,” he said, roughly meaning even if his surname is Dundundun, i.e. “Forever” not just Shekarau, we will remove him as governor. Linguistically, Shekarau is a Hausa metaphour for a baby that overstays in his mother’s womb for more than the normal nine-month period.

    Rimi’s bombast proved empty; for the first time in the politics of Kano State a sitting governor won his re-election. This time Shekarau beat the PDP candidate, Alhaji Ahmed Garba Bichi, a protĂ©gĂ© of Kwankwaso, his old rival. At that time ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo had appointed Kwankwaso his Minister of Defence in apparent compensation for his 2003 loss.

    After his second term as governor, Shekarau, unlike many of his colleagues who considered the Senate their retirement sanctuary, trained his eyes on the nation’s top job. He eventually emerged as ANPP’s presidential candidate for the 2011 elections after the party’s candidate for the 2003 and 2007 presidential elections, General Muhammadu Buhari, left the party as a result of a crisis, to form his own Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).

    And so that year’s presidential election was fought mainly between the ruling party, PDP, and ANPP, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and CPC, as the three leading opposition parties. As in the past, the media tried to organise debates among the presidential candidates. In the one NN24, the now defunct Lagos-based affiliate of CNN, organised on March 18 and in which Jonathan declined to participate, Shekarau emerged, by most accounts, the clear winner against CPC’s Buhari and ACN’s Nuhu Ribadu.

    The BBC News, for example, said it in its review of the debate on April 5 that “if Nigeria’s polls were carried out on Facebook and Blackberry messenger, it seems the outsider – Ibrahim Shekarau, the current governor of Kano State – might just win. His composure during the recent presidential debate impressed Nigerians – he was widely seen in the media as “the winner”.

    Polls, of course, are won and lost through ballot boxes, not on the Internet. Out in the field, Shekarau emerged a distant fourth, after Jonathan the victor, Buhari and Ribadu. Worse still, the tables turned against him in the governorship election when his anointed candidate, Alhaji Salihu Sagir Takai, was beaten, albeit by a narrow margin, by Kwankwaso, this time himself the candidate of PDP.

    Since last year, Shekarau’s political fortune seems to have dwindled even further. He had played a key role in the merger of ANPP, ACN and CPC which formed the All Progressives Congress (APC), the better to take on PDP. He had therefore expected to be acknowledged by the new party’s leadership as its leader in Kano. Instead the party gave the leadership to Kwankwaso shortly after he and several other PDP governors decamped to join APC.

    In anger, Shekarau announced his departure from APC to PDP in January last year. An apparently grateful Jonathan subsequently appointed him minister of Education the following July.

    Jonathan’s hope obviously was that Shekarau would help him get at least a quarter of the state’s massive votes in this year’s presidential election. That hope proved forlorn, as his party was completely routed in all elections in the state this year.

    In spite of the seeming downturn in former governor’s political fortunes, it would be mistaken to write him off just yet as finished politically. As a result of its defeat in the presidential election for the first time since 1999, several PDP officials have since said its presidential candidate for the 2019 elections will come from the North. As a two-term governor, ANPP’s presidential candidate in 2011, former minister and a prominent member of a 15-man reform committee the PDP recently set up, Shekarau is in good stead to revive his political fortunes and vie for its presidential ticket.

    Twelve years ago almost no one gave him any chance of beating a sitting governor. Of course 2019 is not 2003 and, of course, Nigeria is much bigger than Kano. But then in politics the one word one should never say about anyone or anything is “impossible.”

  • Our Girls; Selfless ministers: RETREAT over, let the ADVANCE begin

    Our Girls; Selfless ministers: RETREAT over, let the ADVANCE begin

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. May God comfort their families.

    Nigeria’s inability to pay ministers and ‘jobs for the gang’ Personal Assistants (Pas) and Special Assistants (SAs), is a signal for President Buhari to restore ‘The Honour Of Selfless Ministerial Service’. But Ministerial corruption is chronic, endemic – since 1960, when it was 10%; the most telling corruption skit was the 1960s minister’s office with a contractor offering a wallet ‘Minister, I found your wallet on the floor with ÂŁ5,000’. The offended minister responded ‘No, my wallet has ÂŁ10,000 in it’. The contractor bent down, stuffed in more notes and sat up. ‘My mistake! It has ÂŁ10,000.’ The minister replied. ‘Aha, Good arithmetic, that is MY wallet, thanks’. Unfounded ‘malicious’ rumour is that the family 50 years later is still fighting over the late minister’s estate. Then ministers read West Africa and Time magazine adverts tempting them to open ‘Secret Bank Accounts’ in Switzerland and elsewhere which I remember from my General Paper ‘A’ Level days in St Gregory’s College. The invitation led them to put ‘our stolen money’ in those banks and ‘that our money’ is today lost and it has enriched foreign bankers who received the Daily Times obituary pages to identify any newly dead Nigerian clients to reduce or cancel secret accounts before family, fronts, friends or contacts came for the funds. We are told to be grateful to thieving ministers who ‘kindly’ kept and spent our stolen money in Nigeria. They are more patriotic. No! Are we mad? A thief is a thief regardless of ‘local content’ or international deposits.

    Then minister and contractor corruption was 10% and excuse for an epidemic of coups by successively worse corrupt military regimes. That new corruption driven by ministers, contractors and ruling political parties has been estimated at 40-70% per contract, reaching 100% with zero contract executed i.e. no bridge built, no road refurbished, no drugs, no potholes filled or anti-crime equipment not bought for the empty forensic laboratory. ‘Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence, Selfishness’, (CINS), are the leading cause of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) development delays leading, for example, to the growth of millions of potholes, easily filled by government, as witnessed by the Ogun State pothole-filling intervention on jinxed Lagos-Ibadan road.

    Nigerians seeking ‘CHANGE’ must ask why states, not federal, do not pay for their political proxies like ministers, senators and representatives to go and stay in Abuja. The Federal Government may offer a small additional stipend. That would change the criminally abused ‘State-Federal Equation’. Yes, government has cheated, robbed, misled, and been abusive with criminal behaviour towards governance and citizens. Paradoxically we and the media flock to take and report advice from the ‘dark reputation’ actors from those disgraced governments.

    To recover, we require President Buhari to ‘liberate states from issues from the ‘unitary military regimes’ like Federal Revenue Allocation Formula and the Federal vs. State/LGA inter-party war. This war includes conflicting policies, laws and taxes crippling state development of roads, waterways and railways. Nigeria don suffer O’ from malevolent rulers, military and political! ‘Federal’ might was deployed by ‘federal’ ministers (sent from states) to frustrate and destroy development projects in non-ruling party states. That is a heinous crime of a minister against his own state. How else do we explain the mental and physical poverty from 50 years of minister-led misapplied policies resulted in a shame-faced Nigeria with 3-4,000 not 100,000Mw electricity, 14-17million housing deficit, 70milion without water, 90+m without toilets or sanitation, hardly 50million with usable education and many millions of easily-filled potholes and an Okada epidemic, unrecognized by most governments which is still bringing daily danger and distress, death and emotional and financial disaster to 100+ millions under the disguise of ‘poverty alleviation’.

    The Okada epidemic is an unacceptable Nigerian and inter-ministerial disaster. Look at the statistics. It is a major criminal act of governance. The deaths would have been averted if government had a Public Enquiry, Stakeholders’ Forum and ‘Impact Assessment’ and FRSC and Health Ministry input before the motorcycle murder and mayhem. Every Nigerian has witnessed one Okada crash; half of the population knows an Okada victim story. Every clinic has received at least one Okada crash victim. Every cemetery has Okada victims. We justifiably fear Ebola but worse is facilitated by government daily with no sanitation- typhoid. The OKADA IS ALSO A VIRUS, a pollution menace to the environment, to the economy as a ridiculous mono-transport system when mass-transit is the economical norm worldwide and to the emotional and financial fabric of families torn by medical care costs and loss of millions of breadwinners. Over 80% of long term beds and entire wards are overflowing with spinal, head/brain and limb injuries and amputations of Okada victims and still no ‘cure’ apart from a few bans, crash helmet checks and tri-wheel-motorcycle.

     ‘My people die for lack of Life skill/Health knowledge’.  Nigeria ignores the expensive Epidemic ‘Life skill/ Health Ignorance’ and the cheap answer ‘Media Life skill/Health Education’. President Buhari’s ‘CHANGE’ must demand synergy from ministers and not conflict and rivalry. For example the ministers of health, education and information should link with state ministries to saturate the media with 21st century advertising LIFE SKILL/HEALTH MESSAGES as a strategy to improve lives.

    Congratulations, ministers. ‘The RETREAT is over. Let the ADVANCE begin. Pray and work that you will still be worthy of our congratulations when you leave office! Listen to and learn from everyone.

  • Haliru Dantoro, a man of peace, courage

    Haliru Dantoro, a man of peace, courage

    Over 13 years ago, on March 20, 2002 to be precise, I had cause to comment on the tussle for the emirship of Borgu on these pages. The background was the death on February 3, 2000 of its second emir, Alhaji Musa Mohammed Kigera III. For over two years after his death, his succession had become mired in needless controversy. Needless, because the reasons the Niger State Government, under  Abdulkadir Kure, gave for rejecting the choice by the emirate’s kingmakers of Alhaji Haliru Dantoro, younger brother to Kigera III, as the new emir, were dubious, to say the least.

    First, they said, the choice was made by less than the full complement of five members of kingmakers’ council since two of them were deceased. What the government conveniently forgot was that the rules provided for a quorum of three and the head of the council who was alive, the Baakarabonde, held a veto.

    Second, they said the kingmakers tied the governor’s hands by presenting him with only one name. Again, the rules never obligated the kingmakers to give the state authorities more than one name. Here the problem, it soon emerged, was really that the kingmakers did not even consider government’s closet candidate, never mind shortlist him.

    This much became evident when the governor expanded the kingmakers’ council to five by executive fiat and ordered a fresh selection. The council did as it was told and sent in two names – Alhaji Haliru and Alhaji Isiaku Musa Jikantoro, Haliru’s nephew and son of the late emir, then a commissioner in Kure’s cabinet. The council’s first choice was still Alhaji Haliru. Kure chose the second.

    Surprisingly hell did not break loose – thanks essentially to Alhaji Haliru’s faith in pursuing his objective through only peaceful and lawful means.

    Thus instead of encouraging his myriads of supporters to take to the streets, he went to court to challenge his rejection. Actually he had done so even before the reconstitution of the kingmakers’ council and the courts had answered his prayers that the expanded council be stopped from a reconsideration of his selection. The authorities went ahead regardless.

    And so it was that the case dragged on for over three years going all the way to the Supreme Court.  On May 5, 2003, a panel of five justices of the court, with Justice Alfa Belgore presiding, struck out the government’s application with cost against the government when, apparently, it finally saw the light and allowed its lawyers to withdraw its application.

    In between Alhaji Haliru’s first petition and the Supreme Court, the case became a cause celebre in Niger State, with several of the state’s High Court judges declining to hear it, apparently for fear of incurring the anger of the state’s authorities; Justice Ahmed Bima of the Suleja High Court who eventually heard it and decided in favour of Alhaji Dantoro was soon accused of corruption.

    It bears repeating to point out that in all the over three years of Alhaji Haliru’s long struggle to ascend the throne of his forbears as his people’s choice, he restrained his people from resorting to violence. During all that period, the state government had sustained Alhaji Isiaku as the third Emir of Borgu.

    In a private encounter with your columnist in his office following my comment in reference on the emirship tussle, the governor gave me his word that he would replace Alhaji Isiaku with his uncle as the emir, the day his government loses its case. He kept his word. And so it was that not long after the Supreme Court ruling on May 5, 2003, Alhaji Haliru became the fourth emir of one the most important emirates in the country with a history that dates well back before 1954 when it was first established by our British colonial masters from a merger of Bussa and Kaiama, which was its offshoot. As Emir of Borgu, Alhaji Haliru Dantoro Kitoro III became the third most important emir among the state’s eight emirates, after the Etsu Nupe and the Emir of Kontagora.

    The historical Borgu Kingdom had comprised Illo in present day Kebbi State, Nikki, Bussa’s rival of old which is in today’s Benin Republic and Bussa itself. The kingdom that in pre-colonial times had endured raids from the Yoruba to the South, the Hausa to the North and the Nupe across the River Niger to the East, fell to rival claims of the colonising British and the French and was eventually partitioned between the two in 1898.

    At independence much of Borgu was situated in the old Kwara Province and remained so until 1991 when military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, moved it out of Kwara State to Niger State in his last act of state creation.

    By the time Alhaji Haliru became Borgu’s emir, he had served his original state and the country in various capacities including as chairman of Kwara State’s Nigerian Herald at the time it was among the most popular newspapers in the country, as minister of the Federal Capital Territory and as a short-lived senator during the tail end of Babangida’s eight-year transition programme which came to grief in November 1993, following the sacking that month of the Interim Government of Ernest Shonekan, which Babangida had installed after he “stepped aside” in August of the same year.

    Alhaji Haliru’s travails before he finally succeeded in ascending the Borgu throne did not end with his ascension, thanks largely to his prior political engagements. Several times he was queried by the authorities for sundry political and other offences, some of them seemingly petty. He survived his queries as emir even though he was not entirely blameless of some of his alleged trespasses.

    The most controversial of these was the allegation that he had pledged to deliver his emirate in the 2007 general election to a nascent opposition to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was being forged between Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, at that time estranged from his boss, Olusegun Obasanjo, and the emir’s friend, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, then governor of Lagos State. This was in 2005, the year he finally received his staff of office after several inexplicable postponements.

    Speculations then was that his coronation, after which he was to turban Asiwaju as Jagaban Borgu – the title itself standing alone is “Jagaba”, not “Jagaban” as it is widely but wrongly used, especially by southern-based media, “Jagaban” being a possessive adjective in Hausa – was to provide a convenient cover for a meeting of the vice-president, Asiwaju, Delta State’s James Ibori and Adamawa State’s Boni Haruna, a known protĂ©gĂ© of the vice-president, to consolidate their plans for the formation of a new opposition party.

    These speculations were first published by Sunday Tribune of February 15, 2005 but they were swiftly denied as “simply childish” by Dele Alake, Asiwaju’s commissioner for Information and Strategy. However, true or false, the speculations seemed to have defined the relationship between the emir and the Niger State authorities, a relationship that remained far from cordial throughout the remainder of Kure’s governorship and even that of Kure’s successor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu.

    Quick as the opposition was to dismiss the story of its meeting under the cover of the emir’s coronation as childish, it was apparent that his sympathy lay with the country’s opposition elements, if only from his intimate friendship with General Muhammadu Buhari who had become the country’s leading opposition figure from his first presidential bid in 2003.

    The emir, sources close to him say, strongly believed in a prophesy by one of his malams that the general, who was once military head of state, would one day return as civilian president. The emir’s belief, the same sources say, remained unshaken even after the general failed thrice in his bid. This made him one of the most prominent and faithful members of the general’s kitchen cabinet when he succeeded the fourth time around last March.

    Alhaji Haliru will be remembered not only as someone who believed in fighting for his cause only through lawful and peaceful means and for sticking with his friends through thick and thin, even at the risk of his turban. He will also be remembered as an emir who devoted much of his emirate’s resources and his own time to transforming it, through the staging of an annual Borgu International Gani Durbar Festival in celebration of the old kingdom’s history and glory, into one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country, based on the fact that his emirate hosts the country’s premier National Park and Kainji Dam, the country’s first hydroelectric power station.

    His death at 77 on Friday, October 30, in far away Germany after a brief illness has deprived our country of one of its most courageous traditional rulers. It has also deprived our President of one of his closest confidants. Hopefully that death would serve as a warning to the emirate’s kingmakers and the Niger State authorities to avoid a reprise of the unnecessary controversy that presaged his ascension to the throne of his forbears about a dozen years ago.

    May Allah grant the departed emir aljanna firdaus and give his immediate family and his people at large the fortitude to bear the great loss.