The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Our Girls; Stop ‘Politics as Machiavellian Evil’: No Rerun! Empower Election Tribunals to Ban, Fine Politicians and Party

    Our Girls; Stop ‘Politics as Machiavellian Evil’: No Rerun! Empower Election Tribunals to Ban, Fine Politicians and Party

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We pray for their safe return.

    It is obvious that the electoral tribunal system has no power to punish guilty parties. It is cruel irony on the victims, the citizens. Nigeria needs one more summit to be convened by civil society and held under the banner ‘Summit To Prescribe ‘Penalty’ Amendments to the Election Tribunal Act: This would empower the tribunal with powers of punishment: To set fines, bans and prison terms for fraud against each citizen deprived and all other election crimes against democracy and the will of the people’.

    The River State election saga raises many questions needing new answers.

    The first questions are for the revered Professor Attahiru Jega, who I recommended for GCON or even GCFR and still do as 80-90% is worthy of a medal of honour or GCFR any day. Remember that all the past heads of state, responsible for our current travails in world development indices are GCFR. Jega should however explain the Rivers State results. Was INEC overrun, like during the regimes of former heads of state? In those frustrating days too, the tribunals ‘liberated’ several states from the clutches of federally-directed evil election fraud. After the tribunal results, there were no apologies from the ‘stealing party’ then, and remarkably no punishment for the perpetrators –individuals or party. Were Jega’s hands tied by the federal government, the police and security authorities or by a desire to prevent further murderous violence, or a ‘win some – lose some’ sense of ‘overall good elections’? Whatever, too many Nigerians in high places keep too quiet for too long and wittingly or unwillingly assist in perpetrating the ‘Politics as Machiavellian Evil’ in Nigeria.

    Yes, politics is important but so is sweeping the street, clearing rubbish, investigating crime, releasing budget funds to services, salaries for civil servants and pensions. These must not stop for even one month let alone the reported 6-12 months because of politics. No! Where do politicians get their money? How do they have such easy illegal non-accountable access to the funds of the LGA, state and NNPC, NPA, and CBN?

    What is the funding mechanism of the political party system? It cannot continue as theft from government funds. Is it ‘donations’ from those who have stolen from the government coffers? Is it from ‘deliberately inflated’ contracts for the purpose of illegally funding the political party at subsequent legal ‘fundraisers’?

    Nigerians demand ‘New 2015 Guidelines of Individual and Political Party Fundraising’ from members and supporters following transparent international standards during the next three years in time for a better election in 2019 or we will destroy the ‘Change Gains of Buhari’.

    Beware of complacency to the ongoing democracy struggle which is not over! Even with the ‘Change Gains of Buhari’, Nigeria is not of age as a democracy and will not survive unless crimes committed under the dark cloak of politics are identified in law, as ‘common crimes’ requiring the full force of punishment so freely inflicted on other erring Nigerians. The politician must in no way be ‘discriminated against’ by being given lesser punishments but face accusation, interrogation, defence, judgement, freedom, apology, or guilt followed by an appropriately heavy fine and commitment to prison and a ban for from 10 years to life ban from further participation in politics.

    An election rerun is a crime against Nigeria. This ban threat is perhaps the most important requirement of the Electoral Tribunal as it is an obvious unwanted consequence of an unlawful action. If the rerun occurs, the guilty individual and party must be banned from the rerun. It is better that the second place winner take over immediately. That loss will ensure that fewer politicians will embark on fraud. It is only when Nigeria’s politicians and ‘party faithful’ face exposure, disgrace, incarceration, restrictions and other serious consequences tht they will stop unleashing mayhem and heinous machinations from the ‘Machiavellian Text Book Guideline Of How To Destroy Democracy and Still Look Innocent’.

    The law must not distinguish between political crime and common crimes –politician and criminal. In fact politicians should be held to the highest moral and financial standard as custodians of the people’s democracy. Politicians and criminals kill, maim and injure equally. Politics is ‘a paid profession’ and like professionals who contravene the law, they must pay the price. Politicians must receive full punishments not a ‘slap on the wrist’ for crimes. ‘Murder is murder’, not ‘political murder’. ‘Presenting falsified vote numbers is fraud’ not ‘electoral fraud’. ‘Impersonating a doctor for eight years’ and ‘Impersonating a governor for four years’ are similar offences of impersonation and ‘Obtaining funds for salaries by impersonation and false pretences’. Both must make full refund and receive fines and jail time. The punishment set by politicians for Nigeria’s youth committing ‘Exam Fraud’ must be meted out to politicians committing ‘electoral fraud’. Nigerian students are banned from resit exams and face jail for 2 -21 years when ‘Found Guilty’ by WAEC of ‘Exam Fraud’. So it should be for Nigerian politicians AND THEIR POLITICAL PARTY when ‘Found Guilty’ of ‘Electoral Fraud’. Fines should be punitive, N2-10million for politicians and N10-30million for the party- just what they collectively pay lawyers. This fine money would go to cover the administrative costs of the tribunal sittings and truncate the 50 year ‘Epidemic of Election Fraud and Frivolous Prosecution’.

  • ‘Born to rule’ syndrome and Nigerian elite

    ‘Born to rule’ syndrome and Nigerian elite

    Last week in this column, entitled: “Jonathan’s fair-weather friends,” I said Dr. Reuben Abati, former spokesman for ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, was wrong to subscribe to the popular belief that a section of this country, specifically the North – for which read the so-called Hausa/Fulani – believed it is, to use the hackneyed expression, “born to rule.” Abati did not use exactly those words in his well-publicised sharp reprimand of Chief Edwin Clark over the godfather’s recent denunciation of his erstwhile godson, Jonathan. But the difference between the words he used and the hackneyed phrase was more or less like that between half a dozen of one and six of the other. The only difference this time was that Abati stretched the presumed northern superiority complex to include others outside the region.

    The betrayal of Jonathan’s confidence by the likes of Clark, Abati said in his putdown of the old man, was one reason “why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power.”

    Abati’s reference to “those whose ancestors never ran empires” obviously would include at least the Jukun, who once ran the mighty Kwararafa Empire, the Yoruba who ran the Oyo Empire and the Edo, who ran the Benin Empire. Abati, I am sure, knows very well that none of these three nationalities, or for that matter any other nationality, would agree that it suffers from any superiority complex, along with the Hausa/Fulani. But then even the Hausa/Fulani themselves would deny they suffer from this complex and even go further to accuse others of the same complex.

    The fact is that every nationality in the world, no matter how small, thinks it is superior to others – hence its faith in preserving its language and culture – but paradoxically also accuses others of the same complex. This clearly makes the notion of ethnic superiority, and by the same token, ethnic inferiority complex, more subjective than objective.

    Take, for example, Nigeria’s political-economy, which has rested on a tripod of its three biggest ethnic groups, the Hausa/Fulani in the North, the Yoruba in the West and the Igbo in the East. In his 1987 autobiography, the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, post independent Nigeria’s greatest newspaperman, provided what I believe is probably the greatest insight into the country’s tripod-based politics.

    This was in Chapter 7 where he shed some light in what led to the infamous Kano Riots of May 18, 1953, which started from Sabon Gari, the mainly Igbo settlement on the city’s outskirts. Jose was at that time on tour of the North as a senior reporter of Daily Times. He had, he said, arrived Zaria from Kano by train when he heard that a riot had broken out in Kano following a campaign rally addressed by Chief Ladoke Akintola, then Deputy Leader of Action Group, in which he disparaged the Northern leadership “in fluent Hausa” for opposing the independence motion that had been moved in parliament in Lagos by his party.

    As a resourceful reporter, Jose persuaded a senior railway officer to allow him to double-back to Kano on a goods train that night. He then filed an eyewitness account of the riot in which he reported that it was one between the Hausa and the Yoruba. “Somehow,” Jose said, “it appeared in the Daily Times as a riot between the Hausa and the Igbo, a very different matter, and potentially a very dangerous error.” So dangerous that Percy Roberts, the expatriate boss of the newspaper, was summoned by the Chief Secretary of the Government (today’s equivalent of Secretary of the Government of the Federation) and persuaded to withdraw the entire edition and reprint it with the correct story.

    “We,” Jose said, “never found out how the mistake occurred. Was it an accident or was it a deliberate attempt to foment trouble?”

    Whatever it was, the incident provided an insight into how politics in this country has revolved around the three biggest ethnic groups in the country. As Jose pointed out in that chapter: “The Yoruba had literally ruled Nigeria since the British came, to the exclusion of the Hausa and the Igbo. While the Yoruba had produced the second generation of graduates in law, medicine and engineering, the Igbo were just starting with the first generation. But the Hausa had not started at all… Lagos was Nigeria and there was resistance to the backward provincials coming to share power in Lagos.”

    So Nigeria’s predicament has been one in which democracy, as essentially a game of numbers, has pitched the elite of one big ethnic group who think they have the numbers to dictate the shots against the elite of the other two big groups who believe they have the Western education to be the rightful heirs to the departing colonialists. And until Jonathan, an Ijaw, came along in 2011, the other smaller ethnic groups were supposed to be little more than bit players in the country’s political drama.

    Numbers may have trumped Western education in the politics of this country since independence, but neither the West (Yoruba) nor the East (Igbo) have the moral right to accuse the North (Hausa/Fulani) of thinking it is “born to rule.” If nothing else, the victory of Chief M. K. O. Abiola, a Yoruba, against Alhaji Bashir Tofa, a “Hausa” in the now famous June 12 1993 presidential election even in the North, and the support his victory got from leading Northern elite like the late Major-General Hassan Usman Katsina, Malam Adamu Ciroma and Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has since debunked the notion that northerners alone believe they are born to rule.

    Of course, a northerner, military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the election and another northerner, General Sani Abacha, buried the struggle for its realisation as military head of state. But none of them had any one’s mandate to do so. And they only succeeded with the active support of elite from all over the country.

    The fact is that few of our elite, whatever their ethnicity, believe in democracy as a means to power through the popular will. Fewer still are prepared to work long and hard to cultivate any reasonable level of popular support across ethnic, regional and religious lines. Instead, they’ll sooner use all three, and others more, to divide us in order to rule us.

    Anyone inclined to accuse only the North of a “born to rule complex” should remember how, in an interview in Sunday Vanguard of July 21, 2002, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, then a spokesman for ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, declared that whether anyone liked it or not, the South would rule Nigeria for “close to 50 years.” He even argued that the North would “actually be better-off being ruled by people from the South” because the benefits of good governance, which, presumably, was a southern preserve, would “flow down.”

    It should also be remembered that three years after Fani-Kayode’s declaration, the Southern Leaders Forum met in Enugu and demanded that power should remain in the South beyond the 2007 elections and threatened otherwise to boycott the elections.

    So if the so-called Hausa/Fulani, and by extension, the North, appear more guilty of a “born to rule” syndrome than the other big ethnic groups – and remember as we have seen in several multi-ethnic states, such as Benue, Kogi, Delta and Bayelsa, one man’s minority group is another’s majority – it is not because it is the veritable truth. It is simply because as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. the American historian once said: “Karl Marx held that history is shaped by those who control the means of production. In our times history is shaped by those who control the means of communication.”

    In Nigeria’s information and communication order, the North has clearly been grossly disadvantaged historically and has remained so even today. For this, however, the region can have only itself to blame because it has had more than 50 years to catch up or at least narrow the gap significantly, but has failed to do so.

  • Our Girls; ‘Wike leaks’; A Ban/Fine to Fit the political fraud crime?; New Lagos Photo Exhibition

    Our Girls; ‘Wike leaks’; A Ban/Fine to Fit the political fraud crime?; New Lagos Photo Exhibition

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We pray for their urgent safe return.

    So Nyesom Wike has lost out at the tribunal as governor. ‘Wike leaks’ legally! Should there be an election rerun? Such a rerun is an exercise of institutionalised fraud and a perpetuation of fraud. A person or party found guilty of fraud should do the honourable ‘WAEC thing and go to jail for 21 years’ and certainly be banned, barred or otherwise restrained from any purported rerun of same, said election. In fact without a rerun, the election victory should automatically be handed to the candidate with the next highest votes. If that candidate and party are found fraudulent, then the next candidate and party should take over. Only this will sanitise the system.

    To effect political electoral change, the guilty party in court, must be identified as such in the political domain. He or she must be disqualified as unfit for public office in any rerun. The law is indeed an ass if it continues to allow the guilty person to participate in the rerun election, as in the past, anyone or any political party found guilty of election fraud. Such action is ‘defrauding the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its constituent states of democratic representation’.

    What the politicians in the National Assembly (NASS) have approved as good punishment for the cheating youth of Nigeria must also be good for the cheating politician. Political corruption is worse than financial corruption. This is because it allows the corruptly ‘elected’ politician to have illegal access to the budget, illegal salary and perks for self and appointees who are illegally appointed. Indeed any project executed is illegal and contaminated by the corruption of the fraudulent person, or was he not aware of the illegalities and is he not criminally liable?

    Any thief who enters a home and masquerades as the rightful owner is guilty of impersonation and defrauding the rightful owner of anything stolen or diverted for personal use of the thief. ‘Financial Restitution’ must be made of all money falsely utilised and imprisonment is in order for any fraudulent individual, political or career thief. High or low, such a person is a thief and an impostor obtaining things under false pretences. We as a nation have trivialised election fraud punishments as ‘wrist slapping’. When not caught the political perpetrator continues in office for four years, defrauding citizens and state throughout the rest of illegal term.

    However, all of us must rise up and demand that an election founded on fraud in any part of the country and at any level will not stand, and equally importantly, will result in cancellation of the election, cancellation of the right of the guilty party to hold that or other political offices, and, cancellation of the right of the disqualified candidates party to field a candidate in the forthcoming rerun and any such election for 4-8 years. Indeed, I recommend that the NASS add two additional sanctions. One is that the guilty candidate must pay the cost of the tribunal case or at least pay a commensurate heavy personal and party fine. Secondly the political party must be fined sufficiently to finance the rerun election. Money will ‘pain the party’ and discourage others from such nefarious activities. Politics is the only activity for which contravention of rules is taken as a joke when someone gets caught. Our prisons are full of simple citizens who have run foul of the law but empty of politicians who have masterminded ‘perdition on earth’ for the citizens. Can anyone explain why we have schools without chairs and desks and libraries and toilets and running water? I cannot. Can anyone explain why we have clinics and hospitals without water and sanitation and clean walls?

    In a matter affecting most people, can anyone explain why we have a national ‘Nigerian Epidemic of Potholes’ in their millions, killing and maiming citizens nationwide, slowing down traffic, and making life a misery? Can Nigeria not overcome its potholes? Can anyone explain why we have not got 100,000Mw of electricity nationwide but still take development advice from past leaders who presided over Nigeria’s Dark Ages? Who actually owns Nigeria? Who do the people work for, buy from, pay to? Dangote, we identify for naming everything after himself. MTN we can trace to Nigerians and South Africa, but who else owns Nigeria? Who owns our electric soul- the DISCOs and GENCOS as fronts and backbenchers and which ‘god’ do they serve? Apparently we Nigerians are on a chess or draughts board, pushed around, won or lost, bought or sold, by the same chess masters who played with our lives 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. They must be having fun. Nigerians are like slaves in an arena to be set loose temporarily to run free across the arena to some ‘freedom’ somewhere, only to be captured and returned and sold to another player for another few years. Does Buhari know that power is king?

    Beyond politics, visit the delightfully visually stimulating and artistically inspiring ‘Harmony in Diversity’ photography exhibition at Foreshore Harbour Boat Club, Osborne 2 Estate Dolphin Area, Lagos featuring Dipo Adebo, Yinka Akinkugbe, Ivana Osagie and Seni Williams’  featuring photographs of models, skylines, oilrigs and birds-actual not the other kind, water townships and stunning landscapes. Don’t be told. Open Oct 25-Nov 7th, Go, bo!

     

  • Jonathan’s fair-weather friends (I)

    Jonathan’s fair-weather friends (I)

    DR Reuben Abati, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to former president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has been expressing great anger at Chief Edwin Clark, his principal’s self-appointed godfather, over the godfather’s apparent denunciation of his godson recently. In a well publicised article last week, Abati said he couldn’t believe it when he first read remarks by Clark that Jonathan was a good man except that he seemed incapable of fighting corruption.

    “I have,” he said in the opening sentence of his article, “tried delaying the writing of this piece in the honest expectation that someone probably misquoted Chief E.K. Clark, when he reportedly publicly disowned former President Goodluck Jonathan. I had hoped that our dear father, E.K. Clark, would issue a counter statement and say the usual things politicians say: “they quoted me out of context!” “Jonathan is my son”.

    Instead of a disclaimer by Clark, Abati said, “the old man” has been joined by “some Ijaw voices” in denouncing a president they had “defended to the hilt” for all these years. “If,” he said, “President Jonathan had returned to power on May 29, 2015, these same persons would have remained in the corridors of power, displaying all forms of ethnic triumphalism.”

    Abati is absolutely right to denounce Clark and Company as ingrates – as friends who deserted a man when he needed them most. But Abati is equally wrong to blame only Clark and Company for their show of ingratitude. Truth be told, his principal must accept a greater share of the blame.

    Abati was also wrong to say their ingratitude is “why the existent power blocs that consider themselves most fit to rule, continue to believe that those whose ancestors never ran empires can never be trusted with power.” This patently snide remark, obviously targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari’s triumphant coalition with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in March’s presidential election, exposes Abati as harbouring a bitter grudge over his boss’ loss. More importantly, it also suggests that for all his education, Abati is among many otherwise highly educated people who subscribe to the nonsensical but successful propaganda that only those from certain sections of this country believe they are born to rule. I’ll return to this subject next week, God willing.

    Meantime consider an adage in Hausa which says “Ba’a mugun sarki sai mugun bafade,” which translates literally as “there is no bad king, only a bad courtier.” This is one adage I have always considered essentially, if not absolutely, untenable. For me it is no more than an attempt by the society to shield its leaders from the bad consequences of their bad leadership. After all, as another, and for me a much more tenable, adage goes, “show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are.”

    Abati may be right to denounce Clark for denouncing his godson in his hour of need. However, as Abati knows all too well, Jonathan chose Clark, not the other way round. In other words, when Clark unilaterally claimed the godfatherhood of Jonathan, the man had a choice not to acquiesce. Ditto with all those who claimed they were his friends and arch defenders.

    Power, Jonathan should have learnt from the lesson of History, is the absolute aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger, the world’s greatest modern-day diplomat, once said. As president of the biggest country in Africa and one of the world’s most naturally endowed, Jonathan ought to have known that few of those who flocked around him and swore by his name, day in day out, did so out of conviction. On the contrary, most of them did so for what they thought they would get out of him.

    You can blame the Clarks of this world for using half-truths and barefaced lies to get the man’s ears. But you cannot blame them for his inability to distinguish between truths and their pretences. The man can have only himself to blame for believing their half-truths and barefaced lies that the vast majority of Nigerians were happy and satisfied with his handling of their country’s political economy all these years, and that any claim that there was widespread disaffection with his rule was the creation of a few disgruntled elements.

    However, even as Abati is right to condemn the Clarks of this world for being fair-weather friends, he ought to know that there are others even more deserving of his anger than Clark and Company. Worse than the Clarks of this world who make no pretence at being apolitical are those who claim they are technocrats whose only concern is to get things done, regardless of the politics of those they work for.

    The fact is that their pretences at being apolitical notwithstanding, these so-called technocrats, especially those we employ from abroad, are past masters at camouflaging their personal interests with the public interest.

    The most obvious case here is Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who former President Olusegun Obasanjo first employed as Finance minister from the World Bank during his second term, until they fell apart towards the end of his tenure and she had to return to her old employers. Then after his 2011 victory at the polls, Jonathan re-engaged her and this time gave her at least nominal control over the economy as Co-ordinating minister, in clear breach of the Constitution, which vested the supervision of the economy in the vice-presidency.

    Under both Obasanjo and Jonathan, the lady from the World Bank carried on as if she did Nigeria a favour by leaving her job to come home and serve her country. “I don’t think,” she once angrily retorted to a BBC interviewer who had asked her if the cases of widespread corruption in Nigeria were not damaging to her reputation, “my reputation is under threat and to imply otherwise is distinctly wrong. I know what I’m doing. I know why I’m here. It would be very easy for me to sit at the World Bank and earn a nice salary and criticise. I gave up a comfortable career to come here and do my bit because I recognise that nobody but us Nigerians can clean it up.”

    Her most singular achievement under Obasanjo was to have helped secure the so-called debt relief of $18 billion – so-called if only because the whole debt of $30billion was questionable to begin with, as several leading economists, including the late Prof. Sam Aluko, had pointed out, and because the onerous terms of paying $12 billion at a go for a country with an annual budget a quarter that amount, was unprecedented. In any case the debt relief made little or no difference to the dismal life of the ordinary citizens of the country. If anything, their lot got even worse.

    However, that achievement did raise Okonjo-Iweala’s profile abroad because it served the interest of International Capital, her real masters.

    Under Jonathan her most singular achievement was to rebase our economy, making it the No. 1 in Africa, ahead of South Africa’s the hitherto No. 1. As with the debt relief, the rebasing made little or no meaning to the lives of ordinary citizens. Even then Jonathan celebrated it as one of his greatest achievements for which he deserved re-election.

    In spite of the fact that the lives of Nigerians have only worsened under Okonjo-Iweala’s supervision of the economy and in spite of the fact that Nigeria has never witnessed the degree of corruption it did under Jonathan, with little or no protest from the lady, all she has received from abroad are accolades in the form of honorary degrees from Ivy League universities, and more recently, appointments from blue-chip companies abroad. It’s not hard to imagine how the opposite would have been her fate if she were the minister of finance of some Western country whose economy had done as badly as Nigeria’s in recent times.

    It is interesting that even the man she has so ill-served by not having the courage to tell him how bad things were, has since joined in her praise-singing, even congratulating her for apparently serving the interest of her masters abroad and friends at home – think of all the generous billions of dollars of waivers to importers for all sorts of junks which she gave out as finance minister – better than those of her country.

    “I have no doubt in my mind,” the former president said the other day, “that you would excel in the two assignments, given your past excellent service both in Nigeria and internationally.” Jonathan was, of course referring to her recent appointment as a senior adviser in Lazard, an American investment bank, and as chair of Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI).

    The contrast between Jonathan’s (indirect?) condemnation of his erstwhile godfather through his spokesman and his praise for his former finance minister couldn’t have been sharper. Yet, the minister served him not anymore truthfully and faithfully than the godfather.

    Hopefully, the lesson of all this would not be lost on President Muhammadu Buhari as he prepares to form his cabinet.

  • Our Girls;  Minister means Servant, not God!; curb Ministerial Arrogance;  Gamaliel Onosode

    Our Girls;  Minister means Servant, not God!; curb Ministerial Arrogance;  Gamaliel Onosode

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. There is talk of paying for their freedom. Will that work? The messenger usually inflates the price and takes half – more corruption.

    Nigerians have laughed, said ‘wow’ at the Senate bow and asked ‘Is that true?’ and will continue to do so over the next few days as the second batch of ministerial nominees go to pass the senate sitting examinations. Certainly the expected stalemate and savagery of inter-party attacks did not materialise. But all attention has now concentrated on ‘The Amaechi question –To Be or Not To Be A Minister?’ By today the Amaechi question would probably have been settled. Many in the PDP blame him and Tinubu and their machinery and money for the PDP’s fall. The PDP forgets that it was the architect of its own downfall first because of a systemic failure to deliver democracy and good governance that alienated most of the honest voting public. So having shot itself in the foot and chest, only then was the PDP given the push over the precipice by APC. Angered by their loss and armed with accusations of financial mismanagement, true or false, the PDP seek to ensure he, Amaechi, pays the price by being barred from every office Senate has a veto over. Of course there will be horse-trading going on.

    What will a stand-down on Amaechi by PDP and ‘PDP in APC garments’ cost the Buhari government in actual negotiation ‘giving in’, prestige, purpose and public trust? Will the cost to Buhari be an agreement to temper down the anti-corruption war with the offer of a much-abused ‘soft landing’ for governors now in Senate? Perhaps it will be the creation of a new secret list of ‘sacred cows’ on both sides, PDP and APC, sent to EFCC and ICPC who will not be investigated during the current anti-corruption tsunami? Will this reduce our hoped-for anti-corruption tsunami to a trickle? If the PDP ‘spoilers’ seeking to truncate the ‘Buhari Change’ actually succeed with the connivance of the usual suspects- the former PDP but now and I quote a recent enlightened comment ‘APC in name but still PDP at heart and mind’ and pocket of course, Nigeria would yet again have been sacrificed on the altar of political and personal expediency. Compromise will kill the ‘Buhari Change Anti-corruption War’. If Amaechi cannot be minister AND IS FOUND CLEAN BY EFCC, and Buhari feels so strongly that he needs Amaechi’s brainpower or clout on his team, the President has the power to make him something else. So let him be made something else. He does not need the money, only the position. Find a position beyond the power of the Senate to stop him working for the Buhari government.

    The word ‘MINISTER’ means SERVANT – not God; Get used to it. Say it, repeat it. A ‘minister’ is not entitled to any percentage of any contract be it the ministry calendars to building the fourth Lagos Bridge or the Second Niger.  Nigeria needs serious servants now. We have had a generation of ministers who pointed the nation in one direction while their deeds led us to perdition. There were of course several exceptions.  Such exceptions have been used by bad Presidents as camouflage to distract the people from seeing the looting. One accepted example is the quality and quantity of the work done by Mrs Mobola Johnson in steering the IT Revolution in Nigeria. With one or two others, she stands out also as she accompanied her flair with an uncommon humanity, natural grace, easy approachability, lack of customary pomposity and over-security, and total lack of the disease I call ‘Ministerial Arrogance and Delusions of Grandiosity’. And now she is back at her old job, hopefully with a promotion.

    New ministers should give her a ring to take short notes on proper minister-ing as a servant of the people. Buhari has suggested that ministers are mostly noise-makers and this should be taken on board by the successful nominees. Less noise, more humility and more work and no stealing by them or their civil servants and army of criminal conduits – contractors. Ministers would do well to keep their arrogant fingers on the pulse of the nation by also keeping in telephone and meeting touch with their old trusted friends as sounding boards and for advice.

    The EFCC/ Akpabio saga and the investigation into expenditures is just one out of many strings of investigation being pursued under President Buhari and probably energised by reports and whistleblowing. It, along with the Saraki saga and several others, should remind incumbents in governance to walk the narrow path. Such invitations recover  funds from the invited party or some criminal contractor or contact. For too long we have heard of family or friends as ‘fronts’ for greedy governors, ministers and presidents.

    Nigeria is rich in underutilised good people of brilliance and honesty. I met and we lament late Excellent Gamaliel Onosode, Mr Integrity Role Model who was never a minister. May he Rest In Perfect Peace. Architect Mrs PNF Fola Olumide, first Nigerian woman architect, golden voiced, Mrs ‘Straight and Narrow’ in the murky world of government civil servant driven corrupt construction contracts, was never a minister. Abandoning architecture, she took to the care of the needy in the charity Pro Labore Dei. There are others like them in Nigeria.

  • Erdogan and Turkey’s future

    Erdogan and Turkey’s future

    Turkey, as Daily Trust observed in its editorial of last Thursday, has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons – well, almost all. And the principal culprit apparently is no other than its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    The man is probably the country’s most successful modern-day politician – bar Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the acclaimed founding father of secular Turkey, and Suleyman Demirel, who died at 90 last June, having served his country as prime minister seven times and capping it all as its seventh president for seven years from 1993.

    Over eight years ago Turkey hosted the International Press Institute, the global association of journalists which champions free speech. This was for the third time in the association’s history, the first and second time being 1964 and 1988. The keynote address during the opening ceremony of the 2007 congress was delivered by Demirel. Erdogan, then the prime minister, gave the closing speech.

    At the time of the IPI congress there was much talk about what many regarded as “Two Turkeys,” one, pious and Muslim, the other, urban and secular. The dichotomy was exemplified by two political rallies that took place in different parts of the country on May 12, the very day the congress opened in Istanbul. One was by Islamists and the other by secularists.

    In his speech, Erdogan adverted to this talk of “Two Turkeys” in a most dismissive manner. “When a peaceful rally is held in Turkey,” he said, “they immediately start saying, ‘There are two Turkey’s.’ We cannot accept this. The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular, social state, with a rule of law, and this is how it is going to remain.”

    Eight years on, it seems, the man has been doing everything he can to undermine his promise of keeping his country for ever democratic and governed by the rule of law, if not secular. The irony of it all is that he has done more than most Turkish politicians to enthrone democracy and the rule of law in his country in a career that took off when he was Mayor of Istanbul, the country’s cultural and commercial capital, between 1994 and 1998.

    Following his mayorship, he founded and led the so-called “mildly Islamist” Justice and Development Party (AKP, in its Turkish acronym) in 2001. With more than a little help from a number of opposition elements, notably the Hismet Movement led by Fethullah Gulen, the American based Turkish intellectual and preacher, the AKP won the subsequent general elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

    AKP won the first of these general elections against the wishes of secularists, most especially the powerful military which considered itself the custodian of the country’s secular Constitution. However, Erdogan’s three terms as prime minister saw the country’s transformation into a great economic success and a model of plural democracy.

    He was voted as the country’s ceremonial president last year after he stepped down as party leader in what many must have presumed was a voluntary retirement and glorious exit from a successful career in partisan politics. Events since then have proved such presumptions completely wrong.

    For, far from being satisfied with playing the ceremonial role of a father-figure constitutionally assigned to the president, Erdogan seemed to have become obsessed with transforming himself into the first executive civilian president of his country. Predictably this has led to his falling out with the opposition elements whose alliance made his successes possible.

    One of the first signs of trouble for the man was a massive demonstration in Gezi Park, in Istanbul, two years ago against his decision to build a grandiose presidential palace which many of his countrymen saw as an ego trip and the despoliation of the park’s beauty. More serious, however, was the eruption of a 100 billion US dollar corruption scandal, also in 2013, in which he, some of his ministers and three of his sons were implicated.

    His reaction to the scandal has been to clamp on the media for exposing the allegations. Journalists have been detained, tried and locked up on trumped up charged and a law is being contemplated to give government powers to block “undesirable” blogs. There has also been a ban on Twitter and threats to ban Facebook and YouTube.

    For at least the last two years there has been no love lost between the man and the Turkish media, including many like Hurriet, the country’s leading newspaper, that have had little or no truck with opposition elements, especially those considered Islamist. But it is not only the country’s media that has had to contend with the man’s anger. Both the judiciary and the military have also suffered from his meddling.

    As if to make the man even angrier, the AKP, for the first time since 2003, lost its majority in the parliament in last June’s general election, in spite of – some would say, indeed because of – his determined efforts to secure the two-third majority his party needed to amend the constitution to give the president executive powers.

    So angry was the man with the result of the June elections that he refused, as president, to invite the party with the highest number of legislators to form a coalition government which the party could have done fairly easily. Instead, he chose the option of waiting without a substantive government for five months to have another general election, in the hope that this time his party will get the numbers it requires to amend the constitution.

    Daily Trust’s editorial in question entitled “As Erdogan clamps down on Turkey media” was concerned essentially with media freedom in the country. “Journalism,” it said, “is increasingly becoming dangerous in Turkey as the government clamps down on the media covering stories it wants ignored through threats, raids, arrests and deportation.”

    What is at stake here is much more than media freedom. Beyond media freedom, what is also at stake is the future prospect of a country which, until last year, stood out as proof positive that Islam, on the one hand, and democracy and the rule of law, on the other, are not necessarily mutually incompatible, as many in the West and Islamist extremists want the world to believe.

    It is, as I’ve said earlier in this piece, ironical that the man who now stands between Turkey and its consolidation as a model of a successful Islamic political-economy is the very person who arguably has done more than most of his compatriots to make his country the success story it has been in the last 15 years.

    Much of Turkey’s prospects now depend on how its citizens vote on November 1. Chances are it will be a reprise of the June 7 election which denied Erdogan his personal ambition to become their country’s imperial president. His reaction may be to play the dog in a manger, as many a petulant political loser has done. Hopefully, however, he will see reason and swallow his ambition.

    But in case he doesn’t, one can only hope and pray that his country has come too far down the path of progress to allow one man’s over-ambition to destroy it, or even to reverse its democratic and economic dividends of recent years.

  • Our Girls; Apete; Nominees- breath of stale air; ‘CHANGE’ ‘Trek’ to ‘Trailer’; Mooo not Murder; Alams!

    Our Girls; Apete; Nominees- breath of stale air; ‘CHANGE’ ‘Trek’ to ‘Trailer’; Mooo not Murder; Alams!

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. They will not be forgotten, but found. Amen.

    The Oyo State House of Assembly’s list of the worst roads for government attention should add the treacherous ‘Road of 10,000 Craters’ Apete Road as ‘first’ among equals.

    The Ministerial List is a breath of stale air. Buhari’s hands were more ‘tied’ than we thought. Must he reward party and friends who have an average age 60-ish, which is well beyond Nigeria’s life expectancy of 54 years? Nigeria hoped for 35-40-ish, new blood on the block. Age is not all ‘honesty or wisdom’ and youth is not all ‘stupidity or greed’. Yes, too few women who are 50% of vote and 50%+ of population. Politics is a ‘Man’s World’ and the bad Women-In-Power in petroleum, aviation and banking do not help their cause. Women like ABCD- ‘A Bag of Cut Diamonds’. For CHANGE credibility, Buhari should bring on board new blood. ‘The right women’, like ‘the right men’ are everywhere, but party machinery is against them. Now Senate complicates matters, demanding two state senators to recommend ministerial nominees- new jobs for the old boys. Saraki is going for the President’s jugular. If the senate has not purified itself of old tricks, what might that cost in Ghana Must Go money bags, promises, leverage or a pound of flesh especially with disparity in party affiliations? This is a recipe for ‘unsavoury political pepper soup’,’ deliberate delays and cunning corruption disguised as ‘high moral ground’. God forbid demands for ‘payback jobs’. Remember ‘send me your wife or daughter’ treachery? Nigeria just got worse, politically and morally.

    And now senate elements demand immunity. WE THE PEOPLE SAY ‘NO,’ TO IMMUNITY. Phone, text, e-mail, tweet, instagram senators. Embarrass them into stopping this. Strategise for signatures to RECALL YOUR SENATORS. What have they done wrong that they are afraid will be exposed? Only senators with proof of ‘Declaration of Assets’ should sit over the nominees who should declare their assets. Then imagine having to bow. Many serious Nigerians will never take up ministerial appointment for this reason alone. Or else they will first visit the doctor for ‘EXCUSED FROM SENATE BOWING SICK CERTIFICATE’ because of a ‘stiff neck’, or Babangida’s radiculopathy.

    Falae could have been killed. Many kidnap victims have died, unsung, un-avenged and un-investigated. Are the kidnappers arrested by Sunday on the North-South Cattle Trek a criminal gang roaming with reluctant intimidated cattle herdsmen bands? The gang reinvaded his farm, so ‘no’ to that. Any farmer with more than a dane gun is ‘arrest-able’ while some herdsmen and most attackers have AK47s as garments and are un-arrestable. Of course these attackers are not ‘terrorists’, but ‘errorists’ who ‘mistakenly’ kill people, abi? How are they different from anyone who kills at will and terrorises states? ‘WHEN IS A TERRORIST NOT A TERRORIST? WHEN HE IS DESCRIBING HIMSELF OR IS DESCRIBED BY HIS PEOPLE.’ When is a person a terrorist? WHEN HE IS CALLED A ‘TERRORIST’ BY HIS VICTIMS. The ferocity, quantum and deadliness of the arms used in Plateau, Nassarawa and Benue states and 10 other states do not suggest spontaneous actions. I did my NYSC in 1975/6 in Joyful Jos, Beautiful Bukuru and Laughing Lafia and travelled around Barkin Ladi, Shendam, Akwanga to Makurdi, places of tranquillity now ‘Terrorist’ bloodbath scenes. Where is ‘One Nigeria’ or even ‘One North’?

    The cattle war bloodshed with 20,000 victims losing 100,000 litres of blood, three tanker-loads at 33,000 litres/tanker demands an International UN and NHRC Enquiry and solutions. Without such an enquiry, we cannot read ‘righteous indignation against cattle rustling’ or ‘altruistic protection of free movement’ in the war. ‘WE ARE FIGHTING AGAINST RUSTLERS AND FOR OUR 1999 CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS TO COW TREK’ is not a 2015 answer. A cow is not worth a Nigerian life. In less developed African countries this would encourage accusations of a plan with an agenda to attempt economic and territorial subjugation, if not ethnic cleansing. That should not happen here. It is therefore up to the arrested ‘suspects, who should be shown publicly for victims to come forward to prove their innocence of kidnappings.

    ‘Mr President: Curb this cattle crisis before the War consumes Nigeria. Nigeria- Simply ‘CHANGE’ Cattle ‘Trek’ to a 1-3 day ‘Trailer’/‘Train’ Ride after ‘growing’ the cows from ‘birth to execution week’ on irrigated, year round Northern Reservations/Ranches. If the killings are cattle-related, they will stop. If the killings continue they must be a political or ethnic agenda requiring a response and Federal Government war reparations for victims.

    A cattle crisis question: Do herdsmen pay for grass or grain or the destruction of farms and crops on the Cattle Trek? Do the cattle owners equip their employees with funds for the trek? The herdsmen live off the land- grass and other people’s hard earned grain. Rural Nigerians live in fear of a cow’s moooo! In Nigeria Mooo must no longer signify Murder.

    Alams RIP? ‘Is this report a ‘death or disguise’ for Alams who was also maliciously rumoured to have died during the Hajj stampede when the UK for wanted him extradited? What will happen to that reported stolen money?’ – ask doubtful Nigerians. The UK must witness the Post Mortem to confirm DNA specimens come from the body. Middlemen will ‘disappear’ any stolen money in Nigeria. If true, let Alams’ death caution others who are laws unto themselves. God de O!

  • Time to regulate shipping sector

    Time to regulate shipping sector

    Last Monday, the International Sea Trade and Investment Convention 2015, with the theme: “Exploring New Trade Frontiers” and expected to last three days, commenced in Lagos. One of its key participants is the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), the interim regulator of the country’s shipping activities.

    The outcome of this convention should attract the close attention of the authorities in Abuja in so far as they want their oft-stated commitment to the diversification of our economy from its overdependence on oil to be taken seriously. However, the status of the NSC as merely an interim regulator of the country’s shipping activities deserves even greater attention.

    The reason is pretty obvious; shipping, as a live-wire of the country’s economy, is probably the least regulated sector in Nigeria. Other “lucrative” sectors, such as telecommunications, broadcast, banking, insurance, pension and even the most corruption-riddled of them all, the oil sector, all of them have fairly strong regulators.

    True, service delivery to consumers in most of these sectors has been far from satisfactory. But invariably the problem has been that the leaderships of these regulators hardly gave a damn about their private interests conflicting with those of the public they are paid to defend.

    Such conflicts of interests, however, do not, and cannot, invalidate the need for strong economic regulators. For, as even the most ardent proponents of free market economies would admit in their moments of self-candour, it is dangerous to allow the market’s so-called invisible hands to operate without restrain, as we have since seen in, for example, the collapse of the free-wheeling global banking sector in 2008.

    According to experts, over 80 per cent of Nigeria’s trade in goods is by sea. The key components of this trade are the ports and their infrastructure, the ships and shipping companies, and the goods and cargoes. The auxiliary components include freight forwarding, trucking, insurance, cargo surveying, banking and information and communication technology (ICT).

    The activities of the actors in all these areas had remained unregulated since independence until last year when the NSC, which had existed since 1978, was granted the status of “Interim Regulator.” The predictable consequence of the free-for-all in this critical sector is that the cost of the shipping business in Nigeria has been among the highest in the world.

    Take demurrage for example, as a component of this cost. Whereas in Nigeria the free period for demurrage is three days, in the nearby Benin Republic it is 10, in Ivory Coast, nine, and in Ghana, 7. Take again the terminal operators’ charges between Nigeria and Benin Republic. Whereas the “acconage,” i.e.  Terminal Handling, Customs Examination and Delivery Charges, for a 20-foot container in Nigeria is about N63,000, in Benin Republic it is 24,000. The same charge for a 40-feet container is nearly N88,000 in Nigeria and 48,000 in Benin Republic.

    Little wonder then that many importers into and exporters from the country prefer the ports of our neighbours for their businesses.

    The absence of proper regulation in this sector has also contributed in large measure to the gridlock along the Lagos Logistic Ring (LLR) on Apapa-Ijora-Orile-Mile 2-Tin Can-Apapa corridor becoming worse than a nightmare. A study of this corridor has shown that between 5,000 and 7,000 trucks ply it daily. This is more than three times the actual number of between 1,500 and 2,050 that the ports and tanks in Lagos can handle.

    A strong regulator of shipping activities in the country would, of course, not be enough on its own to solve these problems of, among others, excessive shipping costs and nightmarish ports and roads congestion. For that the regulator will also have to be competent and efficient and, even more importantly,  it has to possess integrity.

    However, although a strong regulator is never enough in and of itself to make service provision in its sector efficient and cheap, it is an imperative for such service provision. As a regulator of shipping in the country with less than two years experience, the NSC probably possesses insufficient skills and equipment to do its job well. With time and enough resources this can be easily overcome.

    More importantly, however, its status as an “Interim Regulator”, i.e. a temporary regulator, gives it insufficient clout to command the respect and cooperation of the actors in the sector it needs to carry out its functions properly. The law making it a regulator may have given it precise functions but in a world where image seems to have become more important than substance, names do matter.

    Now that we will soon get a Minister of Transport, the NSC will, hopefully, get the status it needs to properly regulate shipping to and from Nigeria so that the sector can become a net revenue earner for the country rather than the big drain which it has been virtually since independence 55 years ago.

     

    Re: Hajiya Bilkisu: she was too good AND true

    Sir,

    Thank you for your thoughtful and excellent memorial on the late Hajiya Bilkisu. I am sure there is no other person to extol Bilkisu’s personality than yourself given the little, yet much, that I know about the profile of both of you. I have had the self indulgence of keeping watch over the many highly successful friends – distinguished  former students – in whom I am very well pleased and lucky and privileged to have been associated with in my early career as a university lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The late Bilkisu had been one of these blessed persons.

    Occasionally, I had run into Bilkisu at the Lagos and Abuja airports and we would not only exchange pleasantries, but also would get engaged in intellectual discourses. Bilkisu had sent to me two sets of publications of research projects in which she was involved and which I read usually with learning and fulfilment. The last of such publications was on the electoral, party and governance systems preparatory to the Fourth Republic, which was supported by a Swedish or Nordic NGO.

    These intellectual products arguably assisted the INEC in dealing with the complex and difficult Nigerian political process in the last 15 years. Objectively, not spiritually, Bilkisu’s death in the most holy pilgrimage site, location or venue of prayers is a most painful loss to the intellectual and dedicated activist community in Nigeria. She was an embodiment of goodness with a true personality. I express my heartfelt condolence to her children and close family network. May the Good Lord receive Bilkisu’s departed soul in adoration.

    Prof Sam Oyovbaire

    prof.oyovbaire@yahoo.com

     

    Sir,

    I appreciate your article on our late fellow undergraduate in the then Department of Government (now Political Science and International Studies), ABU, Zaria, 72/75. Given your close association with her as a professional colleague, I am of the considered opinion that you are in the best position to comment on her remarkable life.

    I was always excited anytime I met her in her numerous engagements, which was only (for me) as a resource person in training workshops for government functionaries and sometimes as a paper presenter in academic conferences. Hajiya usually came across as intelligent and pungent. She never criticised without offering options.

    Although a devout Muslim, she separated her religion from political discourse. As  old classmates, we were always exchanging banters. Bilkisu was reserved without being aloof. She always carried herself in words and deed with remarkable decorum. She had influence, but never threw her weight around. As Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed commented, Hajiya could not have wished for a better place to meet her Maker than in a place of supreme worship to Allah (SWT).

  • Our Girls; Stop the Fulani/Farmers War; ‘Nigeria has Buhari’: Join; Watch ‘THE SUPREME PRICE’

    Our Girls; Stop the Fulani/Farmers War; ‘Nigeria has Buhari’: Join; Watch ‘THE SUPREME PRICE’

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15,, 2014. In our 55th Independence week, as we pray and the military works, and bombs explode in Abuja, please end another war – The Fulani herdsmen/ farmers war, causing massacres and murders in all states where cows trek- denying Nigerian ‘rights to life under the 1909 constitution’. The Chief Falae kidnap has forced this ‘ignored’ war to centre stage though it has ‘silently’ claimed over 20,000 lives, and terrorised homes, farms and villages on the North-South Cattle Trek, (NSCT). The Nigerian Human Rights Commission should protect this war’s victims and not the cows.

    Proper police and military intelligence debriefing will reveal the Falae kidnappers’ description, identifying marks, walk, talk, dress, weapons, food, mannerisms, names or pseudonyms, relations, contacts, conversations, hometown and laugh/psychological characteristics. The criminality inflicted on Falae is similar to that inflicted on other victims who deserve as much protection and investigation as Falae got. We are all equal before God.

    President Buhari, Grand Patron of the Fulani Herdsmen Association can stop this ‘dirty’ war. In 1900s Nigerians and cows walked from Kano to Lagos, then ‘someone’ invented roads, buses and cars. We no longer walk, nor should cows. Are we facing another ‘Northern anti- polio’ argument? It is 2015 and destroying farmers’ fields is not ‘a right under the 1999 constitution’ or acceptable.

    The 2015 solution to this ‘mass murder’ is to fatten cows on year-round irrigated Northern reserves. On a daily basis, fattened cattle would be carried on trailers or trains with grass and water for the three day journey countywide with no economic loss or life lost by herdsmen or farmers. As road and power improve, the cattle should be slaughtered in the North -extra jobs. Refrigerated trailers and train wagons would then deliver meat in daily convoys. No long trek, conflict, confrontation or criminality. Aiki, Kudi, Lafia for all. Shikena!

    Otherwise only a ‘Cow Meat Boycott’ will stop the war. IS A COW MORE VALUABLE THAN A NIGERIAN HUMAN? Will you eat ‘blood cow’ knowing it was provided by the massacre of farmers in ‘peaceful’ Plateau, Benue, Nassarawa– ‘Blood cow’ like ‘blood diamonds’? If no one eats cow, the uneaten cattle will force a peace by politicians, chiefs and emirs. Enough of cow murders!

    Here is part of my poem to mark October 1 read at Trenchard Hall, UI, Independence Concert:

    Congrats Nigeria @55

    Anticorruption Paparazzi ready steady goooooo / In the Nigerian nightmare many have cried/ and many have died/ Even children’s Polio plus / Has its murdered martyrs – polio minus./ Evil citizens stole the children’s inheritance – wealth/ In power, education and health/ Children without power and books to build the brain/ Because of that pension fraud or corruption pain / They offered us leaders to set us free/ Of them we chose Buhari / Buhari has at once three Wars/ Anti-corruption War/ Boko Haram War/ Fulani herdsmen-farmers War/ The lifestyle and fear of Buhari has saved billions/ Now he needs an Anti-Corruption Army of millions/ To clean up the septic tank/ And the cesspool from NPA to Central Bank/  Boko Haram may be in disarray/ But 3million IDPs and 30,000 dead, a heavy price to pay / We pray the Chibok Girls are found /And returned safe and sound/  Fulani Herdsmen need defeat / Before farmers cause a famine by retreat/ Nigeria may have to boycott cow meat/ To bring the herdsmen to the Peace seat / We must become Buhari’s Anti-Corruption Force/ To keep the war on course/Announce and Start ‘Corruption Watch’ /In your Ministry, Office, Hospital and Hostel/ Put your phone on in zones of corruption/ Upload to public media for Buhari’s attention/ Buhari-led, together let us vanquish corruption/ Or we face ridicule and destruction/ Become a soldier in the Buhari Anticorruption War/ Buhari and Nigeria need you.

    President Buhari’s October 1 speech calls you to the trenches to stand with him and fight, using forces of change, against real forces of dark corruption. Buhari has called the passive to join the active, and calls ‘you’ and ‘me‘. He calls the army of talkers, watchers, complainers and siddon lookers to ‘come to our aid’.

    Never before in the history of Nigeria have all Nigerians, rich and poor, known and unknown, criminal and crime-buster, had the tremendous opportunity to be heard and collectively stand shoulder to shoulder ABC –‘Against Bribery Corruption’ at the ANTICORRUPTION BARRICADES with their President, Buhari, a Distinguished Officer and Fine Gentleman, to join him in creating an formidable 100 million Anti-Corruption Army.

    Already we are saner, led by a frugal president, cutting waste and theft and recovering stolen funds. Nigerians are reducing demands on politicians. Politicians and civil servants are in the eye of the storm. YOU AND I MUST SUPERVISE, watch and report them when they fall, demand bribes and corrupt gains. Buhari is great but leading an Army of Buhari-ites, we are greater. England has Churchill, America has Lincoln, South Africa has Mandela and now we boast ‘Nigeria has Buhari’. Embrace Buhari, follow where Buhari leads. You should join up!

    But if you are unsure of the ‘Buhari Cure’ for ‘Nigeria’s Corruption Disease’, should watch ‘THE SUPREME PRICE’ a 2013 film by Joanna Lipper, narrated by Hafsat Abiola-Costello of KIND, a history of ‘why we are here’ and Nigeria’s bloodstained journey emphasising MKO’s and Kudirat’s sacrifice. Cry for Nigeria, past and present!  What is your sacrifice?

     

  • Hajiya Bilkisu: She was too good and true

    Hajiya Bilkisu: She was too good and true

    Fifteen years ago, Karl Maier, one time correspondent of the London Independent in Nigeria, wrote a rather despondent sounding book about Nigeria’s political-economy he titled “This house has fallen: Nigeria in Crisis.” For pessimists about the country’s prospects, the book was grist to the mill; its title alone, they said, was proof positive that Nigeria had no future. But, these pessimists said further, the proof against Nigeria’s viability was not just the title. The picture of doom and gloom the author painted of the country through much of the book’s 11 chapters (if you counted the Epilogue) was, they said, too accurate to refute.
    What such pessimists conveniently ignored, however, was that behind the author’s picture of doom and gloom, he was an optimist about Nigeria. “By early 2000,” Maier said in the book’s Epilogue, “there appeared to be scant reason for optimism. There were simply too many problems, too much anger, and too little time. Nigeria seemed to be approaching tropical firestorm, and there was nothing the new civilian government, however honorable its intention, could do to stop it.”
    However, barely one paragraph after these despondent words, the author changed gear and expressed optimism about Nigeria. “But,” he said, “just when despair about the future becomes overwhelming, one meets or recalls someone who restores one’s faith that Nigeria just might turn itself around after all. One such person is Bilikisu (sic) Yusuf, the tall, elegant, sometimes fiery, and highly articulate Muslim woman who is one of the prime movers in Nigeria of Transparency International, the anticorruption organization.”
    The clock of this rare and remarkable woman stopped ticking last Thursday, just two months and six days to what would have been her 63th birthday on December 2. She died along with over 700 other pilgrims to this year’s Hajj in what the Saudi authorities claim was an avoidable stampede among the pilgrims heading back to Makkah after completing the final rite of stoning of the devil. Virtually all other accounts of the tragic incident, however, suggest that the Saudis’ claim was an ill-considered attempt at blaming the victims, considering the fact that the incident resulted from a very badly timed, and therefore thoughtless, barricading of the pilgrims’ exit route just to secure the passage of a Saudi prince.
    Whatever the truth about the cause of the tragic incident, Nigeria has suffered probably its single biggest elite casualties during Hajj operation in recent times. Among them are the subject of this tribute, two justices of the Court of Appeal, one of whom, Justice Abdulkadir Jega, is a friend, a first class emir from Taraba State along with nearly half his immediate family, another friend, Professor Tijjani el-Miskeen who is a leading scholar in Islam and Arabic, a senior lawyer and a lady Associate Professor of Pharmacy, both from my home town, Bida, Niger State, and the state’s Accountant-General.
    Of all these tragic losses, however, the most personal to me was, of course, Hajiya Bilkisu’s. But more than a personal loss, she was an even greater loss to the country. This much is obvious not only from the faith Maier expressed in her as a great motivator in turning her country around. It is also obvious from her inclusion among 42 Nigerian media leaders interviewed for a two-volume book of reference on Nigerian Journalism jointly funded by the Nigerian Guild of Editors and Pan Atlantic University, Lagos, and edited by Richard O. Ikiebe of the university’s School of Media and Communication.
    In Volume Two of the book, Bilkisu gave her reason for choosing Journalism as her career. “I have,” she said, “a voracious appetite for knowledge, but knowledge is not useful if you do not share. Journalism provides me with the perfect opportunity to educate myself and share that knowledge.”
    Her voracious appetite for knowledge took her from Ansar Primary School, Kano in 1964, to the famous Government Girls College, Dala, Kano; to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, for her first degree; to University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, for her Masters; to Moscow Institute of Journalism for a post-graduate diploma; and peaked with her attendance of the prestigious National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPPS), Kuru, Jos, for her mni (Member of the Institute) in 1994.
    Bilki, as friends call her, said she chose Journalism as a career to learn and share her knowledge. But she did more than learn and share; she practiced what she learnt because she grew up to believe one must practice what one preached if one truly wished to make a difference.
    Here again let us return to Maier’s book. In concluding the book, the author gave its very final words to Bilki. “It’s not enough,” she said, “for us to say, ‘Ah, the leadership is corrupt, government is corrupt.’ We have not internalized the message of probity, accountability and transparency. If we are going to hold people to account and really make positive change in Nigeria, we must first begin with ourselves.”
    In the 43 years I have known Bilki as a fellow undergraduate in the same department in ABU, Zaria, as editor of New Nigerian when I was its managing director, as co-founder of the rested Citizen and up until she died last week, she begun whatever she preached with herself; she lived a very modest and virtuous live and gave her all to every assignment she gave herself or was given.
    Self-imposed or given, the assignments were so numerous her friends always wondered how she found the time and energy to cope as well as she always did. Notable among these assignments were her role as two-time Amira of the FOMWAN, the Federation of Muslim Women Associations of Nigeria, arguably the most organised and effective Muslim organization in the country, her role as a pioneer road marshal along with the Nobel Literature Laureate, Wole Soyinka, her role as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations headed by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, and her role as a member of the fact-finding committee, headed by retired General Ibrahim Sabo, on the abduction of Chibok Girls by Boko Haram which provoked so much global outrage. This is not to mention her co-founding of, and active participation in, many human rights and civil society organisations and associations like Nigeria’s chapter of Transparency International under the incorruptible retired General Ishola Williams, Accountability for Maternal Newborn and Child Health in Nigeria (AMHiN), Vision Trust Foundation (VTF), and CISLAC.
    In all these, Bilki gave more than she got – unlike many a public figure who took more than they gave but were adept at polishing their public images. Consequently in death, her net worth is hardly likely to amount to much, especially for someone once married to the highest aristocracy in Kano Emirate and then remarried to a top flight banker.
    The fruits of her first marriage in 1975 to the late Muhammad Sanusi Yusuf who eventually became the Chief Judge of Kano State and died as the Madaki of Kano, the chair of the emirate’s council of kingmakers, were Nana Fatima (37), a graduate teacher at Rumfa College, Kano, and Mashood (36), a lawyer of over 10 years experience and lately a senior staff of the Jos Electricity Distribution Company.
    In marriage and in divorce Bilki and the late Madaki apparently raised the most respectful, honest and religious children any parent could wish for. Between the two of them, Nana and Mashood have given Bilki and the late Madaki four grandchildren, two boys and two girls.
    As a divorcee Bilki could hardly have found a better match than Mustapha Bintube as her second husband. Mustapha left Fidelity Bank as a well-regarded General Manager for his insistence on ethical banking and was pioneer managing director of Ja’iz Islamic Bank. While Bilki considered her duty as wife above her commitments to Journalism and civil society and human rights activities, Mustapha gave her ample time to attend to those commitments. The result was one great and happy family.
    Bilki believed in the power of prayers as a Muslim of deep faith. Not surprisingly she never tired of reminding me and my wife, whom she took under her wing from day one of our marriage in 1982, to, among other admonishings, organize regular reading of the Holy Qur’an in our house for protection. As a good Muslim, however, she also believed that the prayer that moved mountain carried a pick axe.
    So, even as she prayed constantly, she made sure she did her own bit for herself and for society at large so that God will answer her prayers. In death it is apparent that God had answered her prayers to live an exemplary life here on earth. And given the circumstance of her death in the Holy Land, chances are the Beneficent and Merciful Allah has also answered her prayers for her exertions, selfless and sincere as they were, to be rewarded in the hereafter with aljanna firdaus.
    They say when something or someone is too good it, or he, is unlikely to be true. Bilki was an exception to that rule. She was too good as a human being. But at the same time she was true.