The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Yorubaland as battleground

    Last week I promised I will play truant for three weeks and only reproduce my choice of the best three articles in Nigerian newspapers from the last fifteen years for their currency, beginning with last week. This week, however, I decided against absenting myself without leave as I reproduce the second article on these pages, this time by Professor Femi Osofisan in his column, Sunday Note. The article, which was entitled “Yorubaland as a riddle,” first appeared in the rested Comet-on-Sunday of December 17, 2000.

    My apologies then for trying to eat my cake and still have it, that is, write today and still keep my promise of reproducing my choice pieces. This, however, has been made possible only by the grace of the editors at Daily Trust and The Nation who obliged my request for more space in their print editions.

    The background to my promise last week was my tribute to Malam Abubakar Gimba, a former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors, who died on February 25. His article which I published last week was, as I said, one of the best I have read in at least the last fifteen years. It was a passionate plea to President Olusegun Obasanjo in his second full year in office to imbibe the spirit of forgiveness so that he could begin to heal the deep wounds of divisions in the nation.

    Obasanjo did not heed Gimba’s plea and Nigeria became even more divided, especially along religious lines, than it was before 1999 when he returned to power as elected president. President Goodluck Jonathan, his since estranged protégé who he almost singlehandedly railroaded into power at the centre from an obscure position as deputy governor of Bayelsa, the country’s smallest state, has only made the wounds wider and deeper.

    Certainly no leader has tried to use religion – and ethnicity – to hold on to power as President Jonathan. In the eyes of most Nigerians and, I am sure, to the discomfiture of most ordinary Christians and many Christian leaders, he, in cahoots with Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor as its national president, has reduced the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), once the scourge of those in authority, into the religious wing of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Again, alone among all our leaders, he has transformed the Church as a platform for policy pronouncements.

    As for the use of ethnicity to hang onto power, it’s impossible, for its absurdity and inaccuracy, to beat the statement only last week by the First Lady, Patience, that whether Nigerians like it or not her husband will serve a second term because every leader before her husband had done so! Those saying her husband does not deserve a second term, she seems to say, are saying so because he is a minority Ijaw. Obviously the First Lady is completely blinded to the fact that apart from Obasanjo no elected Nigerian leader – neither Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa nor President Shehu Shagari nor President Umaru Yar’adua – had ever served two terms.

    For a cynical manipulation of ethnicity to hang on to power, however, last week’s promise by the president to implement the report of the somewhat inconclusive National Conference which he convened late last year, deserves a gold medal – along with his award of multi-billion Naira contracts to Otunba Gani Adams and Dr Frederick Fasehun, the leaders of the Yoruba militia group, the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC), for securing oil and gas pipelines in their region. Ditto the renewal at the same time of similar contracts to several Niger Delta ex-militants.

    To begin with, the President convened the national conference in bad faith as was apparent, first, from its timing so close to this year’s general elections especially considering his long-running rejection of calls for it and, second, from its composition deliberately to put the North and the Muslim population of the country at great disadvantage. And when the crudely skewed composition failed to secure the desired agenda, a strange 102-page document authored by Raymond Dokpesi, the Chairman of Africa Independent Television (AIT), and apparently the presidency’s cat’s-paw at the conference, surfaced purporting to be the “Terms of Agreement of Six Geopolitical Zones in Nigeria.” By the way, AIT seems to have since transformed itself into the propaganda arm of the PDP, along with the NTA, which however, is not altogether surprising, the station being Federal Government owned.

    Among the provisions in Dokpesi’s dubious document was the five-year, single term, presidency so dear to the president. It also contained the so-called fiscal federalism so dear to delegates from the South-West, a provision sound in principle but difficult, if not impossible, to practice in a federation like Nigeria where it is the centre that has created its constituents, at least since 1967, not the other way round as it should be.

    As we all know, the attempt to sneak this dubious document into the conference nearly marred it and led to lack of conclusion on several key issues including revenue allocation, which is fiscal federalism in another guise.

    It is this inconclusive report that the president has now promised to implement because he obviously thinks it is sweet music to the ears of the leadership of Afenifere, the umbrella Yoruba cultural organisation, even when he knows he lacks the capacity – on the strength of his past record of failing to honour many of his words – and the authority to do so, were he to win this month’s election.

    There is, of course, some logic to the president’s promise. Of the country’s six geo-political zones, only the South-West seems open for real contest between himself and his main rival, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The North-West and North-East seem safe for Buhari just like the South-East and South-South look safe for the president, leaving North-Central a likely 50/50 between the two; Plateau, Benue and Kogi for Jonathan, and Niger, Kwara and Nasarawa for Buhari. As Professor Femi Osofisan says in his article which follows this piece and the second of the three I’ve promised the reader, Yorubaland is truly a riddle.

    However, if it makes sense that the president should make his pitch for a zone, many of whose leading lights are in his support, it is the height of cynicism to promise what you know you cannot deliver. It is even more cynical to use public revenue to secure such support, as is the case with the no-bid award to OPC. This is especially so because all previous beneficiaries of such a contract had woefully failed to deliver on their side of the bargain, as is clear from the industrial scale thefts of oil and the sabotage of gas pipelines that have gone on in this country in recent years.

     

     

     

    Yorubaland as a riddle

     

    The Yoruba, affirm some people authoritative, are cowards. They cannot be counted upon to stand and fight.

    If, at first, they seem aggressive and tough, it is only because you have not found their price. But offer them the right amount of inducement, and you take the sting out of their bite.

    Cash-laden, they will be willing at once to sell their most intimate friends, agree to the readiest compromise, however humiliating, and retire to a life of miliki. Hence there is no principle, and no ideal, they can ever offer to die for.

    Those who hold this opinion assure us that one does not need to try very hard to find the proof. The events of our history, they say, offer abundant evidence.

    Almost at every point when their support has been crucial, they have chosen instead to recant their words, and betray their allies. The Biafran war, during which the Yoruba chose to side with the Federalists, is a case much cited by the Igbo.

    But this penchant for betrayal is not limited to their conflicts with outsiders. Even among themselves, cowardice and duplicity are so entrenched, that the people are incapable of forging a united front even for some mutually beneficial cause.

    The loss of Ilorin to the Hausa-Fulani by the Yoruba, as well as their repeated defeat each time they have attempted to recover the town, is a showcase both of this flaw for self-destructive intrigue, and of their readiness to scatter and run at the slightest shout of danger.

     

  • Our Girls; ban tyre burning; Solar Africa?; Our soldiers; Single digit interest rates; cut political pay

    Our Girls; ban tyre burning; Solar Africa?; Our soldiers; Single digit interest rates; cut political pay

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. Happily our soldiers are moving forward, perhaps ‘with a little help from our ‘mercenary’ friends’? The greatest murderers in Africa are Ebola 10,000 and Boko Haram 15,000 dead and 1.5 to 3million injured mentally, medically, financially or family wise. And add POLITICS, political incompetence refusing to solve poverty alleviation problems and election violence. Political Murderers kill through bad policies or refusing to implement good ones. It is still blood on their hands even if it is only files they see and votes they sell in parliament.

    For example, the NASS as a Matter of Urgent National Importance, MOUNI, should introduce a Law ‘BAN ON TYRE BURNING’ by NAFDAC, SON, etc  when destroying seized goods as tyre rubber is the worst form of ‘man made’ pollution.  Each tyre is an environmental time bomb releasing 4,000+ chemicals in a black toxic cloud destroying the air breathed for days. We do not need to smoke, just stay near a burning tyre to die. Protesting citizens and vulcalisers clearing old stock should also be banned from tyre burning. ‘Ban tyre burning’.

    As we witness the solar powered plane flying around the world, belatedly the sun is actually taking its place in powering Africa. However we see business ignoring the sun for out-door advertising using electronic billboards currently powered by large street corner generators when solar energy would work better for them and the millions of streetlights. The cost of solar equipment has gone down by 80% and the efficiency has gone up by 80% in the last two years rendering equipment older than 2 years obsolete. The use of the sun goes against the selfish grain of most African Governments which seek to control and exploit the people’s rights through reckless billing for poorly provided utilities and other services never rendered for citizens rightfully demanding a modest modern human existence. No serious energy-conscious right-thinking, science and tech, savvy modernist African government ignores the sun and the power for independent social and business wealth and growth it offers. Africa should stop wasting the God given, clean air and sun. Botswana Innovation Inc built a largely solar-powered multi-story complex green multi-business Science and Technology Park. The Pan Atlantic University in Lekki, Lagos has built an Entrepreneurial  Development Centre powered by solar energy. Lagos State is powering 173 schools with solar power as part of a plan to ‘solarise all schools’.  Many states are playing lip service to ‘the solarisation of Africa’ by lighting streets. Good but ‘Solar Business Is Serious billion dollar Business’ needing a serious leadership to lead the continent of Africa out of the Dark Continent centuries. The sun has always been in Africa but Africans ignored and ran from it apart for sun-drying gari et cetera. If the UK, with its anaemic sun shining 10-20% of the year, can use solar for electricity, then we in Africa are stupid to miss something so huge developmentally. Dangote, rich from selling rice, cement and pasta and Co and CBN should contribute to a $2B-5 BILLION SOLAR ENERGY REVOLVING LOAN SCHEME at ZERO to 9% interest. African Scientists do little cutting edge solar research and hardly get the newest technology. Why are we in Africa not solarising all our new buildings as recommended by the new housing policy?

    However, there is a solar light at the end of our tunnel of electricity darkness and there are some inspirational examples. The IFC plans to fund alternative power sources under a ‘Lighting Africa Initiative’.  There is an EU plan to put Solar Panel Farms across the Sahara for EU power perhaps with an Africa spinoff.  Solar services are being offered by Total and Shell and many oil companies. Africa is dying for solar energy.

    As we hail the successes of our valiant troops against Boko Haram, we must remember that no victory without the supreme sacrifice. Add to that the deaths of over 15,000 and the maiming, orphaning, widowing by Boko Haram to sense the horror and urgency. All Nigerians should note the dignity accorded the heroic 38 Cameroonian soldiers killed fighting Boko haram. How many uniformed personnel have we in Nigeria lost? How were they buried? Perhaps we are too busy court-marshaling our formerly under-equipped troops. Should one-discountenance press suggestions that the real military problems were ICC, inefficiency, incompetence, corruption and greed further up the military chain of command?

    Nigeria is no stranger to our soldiers making the supreme sacrifice in foreign lands on behalf of ECOWAS, the UN in the Congo, and elsewhere. Certainly for soldiers who died in ECOMOG, perhaps around 8,000 courageous men, they were buried quietly. I saw a wife arriving by danfo, at her husband’s military grave during the funeral, crying out that the army could not even inform her that her husband was dead.

    Austerity everywhere. Russia has cut its salaries and reduced its interest rates to 14%. Unfortunately Nigeria’s CBN does not recommend slash in salary or our immorally high interest rates, now near 25-30%. The rich bankers are shamelessly protected at the expense of the suffering poor in Nigeria. We demand single digit interest rates for very small street business and citizens and citizens and salary cuts  for political office holders. Unfortunately Senate has increased the proposed NASS budget from N120b to 125b.

    And the Lagos Ibadan expressway has no ‘Emergency Expert Supervisors’ to get traffic going when it stops.

  • Fayose and the elderly vote

    Fayose and the elderly vote

    Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, increasingly sounds like a man who has started something and is clueless how to finish it. He has blundered badly but is too ashamed to admit it. There’s no dignified way for him to pull back, so he keeps pushing out silly attack adverts against Buhari and signs them off with a line claiming he has ‘No Apology.’

    Fayose has this false notion that at 70 people become physically and mentally incapacitated. Some of Nigeria’s most celebrated leaders are in that age bracket. Pastor E. A. Adeboye, General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) – one of the world’s fastest growing Pentecostal congregations just celebrated 73. His schedule which includes grueling travels around the world is more than some presidents undertake.

    Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) – an energetic man of God is over 70. Fayose’s colleague, and chairman of a faction of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Plateau’s Jonah Jang, just turned 71. He has not quit office yet. If anything he’s running for Senate on March 28!

    Fayose’s feverish verbal assaults against the APC presidential candidate for committing the offence of aspiring for office at 73, suggests that he may not be too keen to live to that age of ‘incapacitation.’

    The governor drove the drama to a new low in Lagos last week when at the parley between PDP governors, the media and civil society, he announced to all gathered that his mother aged 72 uses Pampers. What sort of character will subject his mother and family to such indignity and public humiliation? This was too much information for those gathered as the embarrassed giggling that followed his disclosure showed. Clearly, high office doesn’t automatically make a man classy!

    In his depiction of septuagenarians as useless Fayose risks turning a huge segment of the voting population against his chosen candidate. In most countries the elderly represent a powerful demographic that politicians court assiduously at election time.

    His disrespectful denigration of those 70 and above has not made Buhari less popular. Instead it will drive the offended in this age bracket to embrace one of their own. And PDP has ‘Mr. No Apology’ to thank for that.

  • PDP: Six weeks is not enough

    PDP: Six weeks is not enough

    In less than two weeks Nigerians would be voting in elections that may turn out to be a watershed in the country’s democratic development. Despite all the advantages of incumbency, a very strong possibility exists that an invigorated opposition could topple the ruling party for the first time ever.

    President Goodluck Jonathan says his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is too big and established to fail. The owners and operators of the tragic ocean-going vessel ‘The Titanic’ had similar notions of its invincibility before it sank like a stone in the Atlantic. The president might be privy to intelligence we don’t have, or perhaps this is just bluster to project a positive front even when things aren’t going the way you would like.

    The two main political parties have commissioned their own private polls and have a fair idea which way the wind is blowing. That notwithstanding, both sides would tell you in public that they would win handsomely.

    To further muddy the waters you have clerics who also say they know who will emerge winner. To give their claims credibility they boast that God let them in on the secret. There’s a little problem though: some say General Muhammadu Buhari would win, others insist Jonathan would prevail. One thing that’s not in dispute is that God is not the author of confusion. In another fortnight those who truly heard the Almighty and those who were just hearing things would be separated.

    For those who make no claims to prophetic or clairvoyant capabilities, there’s a common sense way to project what is about to happen to the nation’s power configuration. These informed observers understand our political behavior and can sense which of the leading contestants has a credible route to power judging by the way the electoral map is shaping.

    Of course, their projections cannot be foolproof being the works of men. There are also imponderables that may yet come into the mix over the next 12 days to throw all assumptions out of the window. However, for the sake of today’s column we must stick with what is known at this point.

    So what is not in dispute? This is the most bitterly contested election in a generation. The exchanges have quickly headed for the gutter. The feeble attempts at discussing policy have been drowned out by a slew of invective.

    Jonathan’s campaign has informed us that leading opposition figures have body odour and should be in jail for their supposed crimes. Cash-strapped television stations have lost their heads and broadcast potentially libelous smear documentaries just because they have to pay bills.

    First Lady Patience Jonathan – not one to sidestep a fight – declared her husband’s rival ‘brain-dead’ and suggested that Northerners breed like rabbits without caring how present and future almajiris would be fed. She added helpfully that her own people were not that way.

    We’ve heard – albeit without a shred of proof – that the All Progressives Congress (APC) splashed out all of N5 billion so that Buhari could stand in the spotlight at London’s Chatham House.

    Of course, the APC campaign are no innocents and have given as good as they have received. They have questioned the psychiatric health of the Jonathan campaign spokesman as well as his choice of leisurely diversions in the past. Among other choice insults their characterization of the president as ‘clueless’ might just be the mildest.

    This recourse to coarse abuse simply says one thing: people are not looking to be persuaded about whom to vote for anymore. Minds have been made up and there’s not much that either side can do now to convert voters in a significant manner as to swing the direction of the election from what it would have been had it held as scheduled on February 14.

    Nothing has happened in the last five weeks since the polls were shifted that can be classified as game-changing. Rather all that has unfolded has hardened positions and attitudes. Take the smear documentaries against Buhari and former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Tinubu.

    The airing of the videos didn’t reveal allegations or accusations that were not already in the public domain. Before they were broadcast there was advance warning that the ruling party was considering the nuclear option. That fact conditioned how many received it.

    For PDP supporters who watched gleefully and shared same online, the recordings merely preached to the converted. On the other hand they only served to incense APC supporters who felt that rules for political broadcasts were being blatantly violated while so-called regulators of the industry kept disgracefully mute.

    The purpose of the documentaries was to destroy the image of the APC leaders and turn voters against the party. The hope was that after viewing them, Jonathan and his PDP would smell like roses compared to the opposition. That hasn’t happened.

    Where the president and his supporters miscalculate is that they don’t understand the depth of feeling of those who have turned against the ruling party. Demonising Tinubu isn’t going to make the typical APC supporter love Buhari less. Calling the general names hasn’t turned his admirers to deserters because they are in love with him – and love is blind.

    I am equally mystified as to why Jonathan and the PDP think that the gains of the military campaign in the North-East will shift the electoral equation in any significant way before March 28. The perception of the president as not being up to the job transcends his handling of the insurgency – although that has been a major contributor.

    The dampener for Jonathan is that many can see the desperate attempt to manipulate the military success for short term political gain, and they are unmoved. What has been achieved over the last four weeks doesn’t obliterate the memory of five years of unrelenting bloodshed and traumatisation of the North-East. The contributions of our neighbours are no big secret and that vitiates the degree to which the president can claim credit.

    I am amused when PDP and the military get worked up at the lack of outpouring of love and affection from the public for their efforts. You don’t have to browbeat people to make them express what they don’t feel. When the Cameroonians called a demonstration in support of their troops, the response was massive. When Nigerian government officials and their spouses tried the same thing in Abuja, the response was underwhelming.

    In anger sponsored agents embarked on picketing selected offices of newspapers in Abuja. But they just don’t get it: you can’t decree affection. The moment the government chose to politicise the military’s actions they took it out of the realm of the patriotic and made it partisan.

    Again, by jumping legs first into the polarised political atmosphere and forcing through the polls postponement, the military turned many Nigerians against the institution as they were perceived as being too willing to do the partisan bidding of the ruling party.

    That perception that the armed forces had been sucked to deep into terrain they shouldn’t be found in was what Lt. General Martin Agwai (retd) erstwhile boss of SURE-P harped on at former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 78th birthday celebration. For his troubles he was kicked out of his job.

    Clearly, the military’s victory over Boko Haram in the North-East is not what is resonating with voters in the South-South, South-West, South-East, North-Central and North-West. If it was so important to them there would have been enthusiastic and spontaneous celebrations of the successes. Insurgents being chased out of Bama or Baga won’t be the reason many would vote for Buhari or Jonathan. The insurgency would count in the North-East but not in the way the PDP campaign is hoping.

    Perhaps the clearest indicator of how the presidential contest of 2015 is tilting lies in the body language of the two main candidates and their campaigns. The PDP campaign projects a defensive air. The president looks stressed and disturbed. Each new day there’s a new embarrassing story like the Nigeria-Morocco diplomatic fiasco or the First Lady putting her foot in her mouth.

    Each time the PDP presidential campaign makes some new outlandish claim like blaming the opposition for the recent fuel scarcity they come across having lost the plot.

    For Buhari, it has been a remarkable turnaround from the candidate who ran on the platform of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) four years. He may not be the perfect candidate but he has handled himself with calm assurance this time around, and he has also learnt to play politics better. That is evident in the remarkable cohesion that his patchwork coalition of opposition parties has shown going into the elections.

    In the weeks leading to his 1992 loss to the then Democratic Party challenger Bill Clinton, the air around former United States President George Bush Snr. and his Republican Party was decidedly gloomy. It is akin to what surrounds the PDP.

    When the party’s governors insist Jonathan would win – and tell voters to ignore the ‘APC propaganda’, they are simply reinforcing the notion that the other side is now dominant. Clearly, six weeks isn’t enough to undo the damage of six years.

  • Mbu: The Burden of Denial

    Mbu: The Burden of Denial

    Mbu Joseph Mbu, the Assistant Inspector General of Police, AIG, in charge of Zone 2 comprising Lagos and Ogun police commands, is no stranger to controversy. In fact, he is very much qualified to be referred to as Mr. Controversy because it is as if everything about him revolves around controversy. Although it is this controversial nature that seems to stand him out among his professional colleagues, it also comes with a lot of temperature which at times, may be quite excruciating.

    Mbu is currently enmeshed in a tempestuous storm caused, perhaps, by his reckless use of the tongue. He had been rightly or wrongly quoted in the media to have told his men at the Ogun State Police Command Headquarters, Eleweran, Abeokuta, during his maiden visit to the command that: “If one of my men is killed, I shall kill 20 of them, but don’t shoot first. If they shoot you, shoot back in self-defence. Anybody who fires you, fire him back in self-defence.” Mbu was also quoted as having said that there is no big deal in the number of people policemen under his command can kill in self-defence. According to Mbu, “Since policemen are also human beings, they should be ready to take revenge on any violent group(s) that might attack them or other innocent citizens.”

    As the controversy raged, some journalists again approached Mbu, who led policemen to provide security for President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent visit to Lagos, to clarify the controversial statement credited to him. Mbu said the media account was mischievous and contrary to what he actually said in Abeokuta. Curiously, however, he restated the media account he had tried to debunk. He said, “I still stand by what I said. And what I said is very clear: that if any violent group attacks my policemen, my policemen should attack them violently. If any violent group attacks a law-abiding citizen in a bid to cause injury or cause harm, the police should repel and save that law-abiding citizen because we have the powers to do so… The number I kill is immaterial because a policeman is also a human being.”

    When asked if his strategy of fire-for-fire is the best way to handle the situation, Mbu answered: “Which other way do you think you can handle it? You will shoot at the police. Is it not when the person is alive that he is coming to give evidence? How will somebody who is violently attacking others be stopped? Are you going to use your hands? You must repel him using a stronger force.”

    As usual, these statements went viral in the media. Many notable Nigerians also kicked against the statements. Others went to the extent of calling for Mbu’s head. Right now, there is a subsisting court case in which the plaintiff is asking the court to declare Mbu unfit to be a police officer. Last week, Gbenga Adeoye, a Chief Superintendent of Police and Zonal Public Relations Officer for Zone 2, Lagos, tried to bail out Mbu from this mess. In a series of advertorials in some newspapers titled: “What Mbu said in Ogun State,” Adeoye tried hard to extricate his boss from the web of controversy by reproducing what transpired between Mbu and the newsmen and placing them before the court of public opinion saying “let Nigerians judge.”

    However, one curious aspect of the question-and-answer session was where Mbu was quoted as saying… “Anybody found with arms will be arrested by the police. Who we cannot arrest, we will recover arms by force. And during this election, no politician and their followers should shoot at any policeman. If you shoot at any policeman, my policemen will shoot back in self defence.” Mbu’s defence, coming rather late in the day, shows that, except for the non-mention of the number of people any policeman that is attacked could mow down, there is no significant difference with what he was initially quoted as saying in Abeokuta and which he somehow upheld at another forum when he could have easily corrected the earlier misconception. It makes the whole thing look more like an afterthought.

    Mbu’s travail reminded me of an interview I conducted with the late legal icon, Chief Gani Fawehinmi in the company of two other senior editors – Adegbenro Adebanjo and Bola Adewole- for TELL Magazine many years ago. Fawehinmi had spoken on tape during the interview conducted in his chambers at Anthony Village in Lagos. By the time it was published the following Monday, a furious Fawehinmi put a call through to the office, threatening fire and brimstone. He also announced the severance of any relationship that had existed between him and the magazine. But because the management of the magazine had tremendous respect for him, we were simply asked to proceed to his office to conduct another interview using the same questions in order to afford him the opportunity to put the record straight. He grudgingly accepted.

    We went back to the chambers for the interview. By the time the thing was transcribed once more, even with some slight modifications in his choice of words, it was discovered that he had actually said the same things all over again. The following week, we published the new version and people could not see the difference between the two interviews. At any rate, that rested the case.

    Though he brooks no nonsense, those who knew Mbu when he was the CP in charge of the Mobile Police Unit at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, can attest to his dedication to duty. While his headship of MOPOL lasted, there were no complaints about his work ethics nor did anyone accuse him of professional misconduct. Perhaps, his no-nonsense posture started unfolding when he was posted to Oyo State as CP. There, he found out that the state’s security outfit had 90 percent police components and a sprinkle of military personnel. But the command and administrative structures were manned solely by the military. He protested but the governor was adamant. He simply withdrew his men and that grounded the outfit until the anomaly was redressed.

    As CP Rivers, Mbu and Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of the state, operated a cat and mouse relationship, simply because he did not like the way the governor was channeling official communications to him through his ADC, a Deputy Superintendent of Police.  At a point, the two men resorted to throwing verbal punches at each other until Mbu was redeployed to Abuja, first as CP, FCT, and later promoted AIG and stationed at Zone 7, Abuja. It was when he was CP, FCT that he attempted to dislodge the BringBackOurGirls campaigners before higher authorities and subsequently, the court, overruled him.

    In January this year, Mbu was redeployed to Lagos as AIG Zone 2. On his arrival, he was accosted by hordes of reporters and paparazzi who wanted a word or two from him as he took over his new command. Not a man to shy away from talking to newsmen, Mbu said he was in Lagos for purely police duties and promised a hard time for troublemakers during his tenure. His speech elicited a lot of reactions due to the fact that people already had pre-conceptions about him.

    For too long, Mbu has allowed himself to be tied to the apron string of controversy which may not augur well for his career at the end of the day. In his more than 30 years in the police, he has served meritoriously wherever he has worked. He is a policeman to the core. He should talk less and concentrate more on discharging his duty without fear or favour as required by the law. Remember the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the late 32nd President of the United States of America who, in his speech at Washington DC, on January 8, 1936, said, inter alia: “A government, any institution personified by any executive, can be no better than the public opinion that sustains him.” And like I have always advised my friends: “Don’t be carried away by what people say in your presence, but be wary about what they will discuss in your absence.”

  • Our Girls; BH-IS; IDPs: single digit loans, billionaires, Banks; Okoya Thomas, Gimba; Putin salary cut

    Our Girls; BH-IS; IDPs: single digit loans, billionaires, Banks; Okoya Thomas, Gimba; Putin salary cut

    Our Girls, still missing since April 15, 2014, bring us to despair every day. Since then the Boko Haram death toll is approaching 15,000 and the displaced are estimated at 1.6-3million, voluntary and violence affected IDPs. And predictably Boko Haram has joined Islamic State with murderous consequences for ‘soft target’ West Africa which is now an agenda item of ‘Things To Do’ for well-funded and manned ISIS as it flees Iraq. Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon must stop squabbling militarily over who takes which towns and eliminate all pockets of Boko Haram before any link-up of forces and ideology of evil!

    Congrats to Dangote, Odedola, Alakija etc, among Africa’s and the world’s richest people, climbing in the Forbes List. Good feeling eh, for them and their drops of ‘charity’? We also have silent billionaires, some with good money but most with ‘bad’ money, disqualified by Forbes regulations. With riches, good or bad, come huge responsibilities to help others, ask Bill Gates and ‘TED’ for ideas. Most poor persons are not lazy, lacking in drive and dishonest. They just lack billion naira ‘connections’. Being  ‘chosen’ to be a billionaire by home delivery of  ‘awoof’ oil blocks, cheap rice and cement ‘Import Duty’ concessions or fronting for wealthy military geniuses are ‘connections’, not hard work. There are exclusive clubs admitting only rich kids and the politically wealthy in Nigeria where a ‘Champagne Coffin’ is 12-48 bottles of Champagne-on-ice@N120,000 each bottle, chicken feed to a rice, cement, oil or cellphone billionaire. Meanwhile we have up to 1.5 million IDPs desperate for rightful assistance for N120,000 start-ups to kick-start their Boko Haram bomb destroyed lives. Is the N56b Victims Support Fund donated partly by Dangote etc getting to victims speedily, with no red tape,  efficiently to ensure the right people get the FFF –Funds, Food and Furniture- needed today, not in 3 months when they will be demoralised, depressed, and even dead. And government and banks should realise that the IDPs are already motivated, experienced entrepreneurs with destroyed livelihoods urgently needing ‘Single Digit Start-Up-Life-Again Loans’ with Federal Government, or the VSF, offering collateral. Are First, Second, GTB, Stanbic, FMCB, or Zenith Bank giving ‘single digit loans’ to IDPs as a war effort support? No! There are many ways of combatting Boko Haram and ISIS. Make Nigeria more financially friendly for individual citizens- young and old entrepreneurs, seeking tiny loans.

    We mourn the passing of a serious good-hearted philanthropist and distinguished gentleman and exemplary Lagosian Chief A. Molade Okoya-Thomas We also mourn the passing of economist, public servant, Past ANA President and social engineer Alhaji Abubakar Gimba. I am honoured to have known them and many other true Nigerians.

    Nigerians are constantly forced to the wall of national shame and despair because of the distasteful evil that is said or read or another evil deed displayed in ‘exclusive interviews’ with malevolent political attack dogs from different political parties. Too often our youth see truth becoming a casualty of lies, morals abandoned, with the rise of brigandage and the failure of right. Wrong overcomes right. Strangely past Heads of State are forgetful of the truth behind their murky ‘service’, and take centre stage to postulate about a good governance they ruined. And people stupidly listen. With these moral and financial burdens Nigeria may remain in a squalid state at the bottom of world rankings in everything good and far below the basic human right on even toilets per capita. We are not in slavery or under colonialists but under worse- a destructive greedy political class!

    Yet we are the ‘largest economy in Africa’ and Nigerian banks declare 50% increase in profits while the people lack housing and single digit interest loans to survive. But we must remind ourselves that there are many good Nigerians, on our street, in our neighbourhood, in our state, in Abuja and in the Nigerian diaspora who are already exhibiting traits of Chief Okoya Thomas and Alhaji Abubakar Gimba. A country in search of genuine role models need seek no further than their own neighbourhood and the newspapers where daily ‘Nigerians struggle across the pages’ to be heard for justice and good. Every LGA should have ‘A Book of Role Models’, taught in neighbourhood schools. It is the dedication, calling and contributions by Chief Okoya Thomas and Alhaji Abubakar Gimba that helped to plug holes of corruption and incompetence in many areas while politicians steal, waste and misdirect our time and money. Without the hundreds of Okoya-Thomas and Gimbas of Nigeria, thousands of schools, hospitals and young citizens would have remained rubbish. Such Nigerians have filled the hole abandoned by government, and its thieving political agents. May they RIP.

    Even the reactionary Russian ‘Tzar’ Putin has reacted to the economic collapse of oil and sanctions by cutting salaries including his own. Why not cut political salaries in Nigeria by 75%? Much of governance has stopped for most of the last six months confirming we should run apart time political system. The media is ecstatic with the billions, it and the shareholders are making from politics. Are FIRS, LIRS etc which tax citizens almost for the air we breathe, are taxing the individual politicians, parties and political support groups for their adverts?

    Political Fact: The price of 2015 politics is in excess of N1trillion. Will this and more be stolen from the budget by any political party in power? Think and act ‘Anti-corruption!’

  • Letter to the President

    Letter to the President

    In the tribute I paid to the late Malam Abubakar Gimba last week, I said his open letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo on August 27, 2001 was one of the three best articles I have read in the last 15 years for their precision, eloquence and profoundness of insight. Several of the texts I have received from readers have requested me to send them the articles. I have decided to oblige by reproducing the articles because of the lessons they hold for our politics today. So I will like to crave the indulgence of readers to be absent without leave from these pages for the next three weeks and publish those three articles, beginning with that of the late Gimba today. I have the permission of Professor Femi Osofisan and Eniola Bello to reproduce their articles. I guarantee readers that the journey backwards to the beginning of the current Republic would be worthwhile.

    Dear Mr. President

    I am aware you run a very tight schedule. And you may not have read the front page comment (editorial) of the Daily Trust newspaper of Monday, August 6, 2001. The newspaper’s comment was on the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC) headed by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa. The current goings-on at the commission’s sittings apparently caused the paper to express its fears and misgivings about the goals the Oputa-led body was set up to achieve.

    Most of us (have been made to) believe the HRVIC is for truth and reconciliation a la South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) under the chairmanship of the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bishop Desmond Tutu. Daily Trust believes our HRVIC may at the end of the day neither arrive at the truth nor achieve any reconciliation. Indeed, the commission could be swarmed by distortions of truth, falsehoods, and produce new landmines of acrimony, hate and irreconcilable discord. I share the opinion of the paper, and strongly too. The Oputa panel, or its abbreviation, the HRVIC is becoming as frightening as the dreaded virus whose abbreviation it almost resemble, BIV/AIDS. And unless urgent measures are taken to redirect the modus operandi of the commission, the HRVIC will carry the same stigma and life-threatening consequences for our national body politic as HIV/AIDS. Given the orchestrated threatricals at the HRVIC public hearings, often staged with venomous deliberateness to the applause of a cultivated (and rented) jeering crowd reminiscent of the inquisitorial Roman Coliseum of yore, I don’t see how the commission can achieve anything but a modicum of short-lived reconciliation.

    Perhaps the commission was never intended to achieve any reconciliation. Nowhere in the panel’s terms of reference is there any mention of a deliberate effort at reconciliation as a main goal. The official name of the commission adequately sums up the commission’s terms o f reference: human rights investigation, at the end of which it is to “recommend measures which may be taken whether judicial, administrative, legislative or institutional to redress the injustices of the past…” Translate: who’s done it? Punish (from an agitated spirit full of vengeance)! And the fact that ab initio, the time period initially meant to be covered by the commission was 1993 to 1999, provided grounds for suspicion and concern that the HRVIC was a camouflaged battle-tank to get the Abacha men (principally), and Abdulsalami’s men. These are certainly no green lights for a reconciliation train.

    Truth and reconciliation that bind are not made in the disorderly noise of the marketplace, nor forged out of a playwright’s scripts for a grand theatre performance to an audience that knows little difference between reality and the make-belief world of virtual reality. Any meaningful reconciliation requires a proper understanding of the concept (or word) itself: the dictionary (Collins) defines reconciliation as “to cause to acquiesce in something unpleasant; to become friendly with someone after estrangement; to settle (a quarrel)…” And since you are not so secularly inclined (despite the insistent voices that have made you to hold our nation’s flag high as a foremost secular entity), the Holy Bible fully endorses reconciliation, when it says (2 Corinthians 5:19) “that God (the Most High) was in Christ (may Allah’s peace be on him) reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word reconciliation “ (italics mine).

    And between men, how do we achieve the true reconciliation outlined above? Again the Holy Bible offers some invaluable help: It says (Matthew 18:15.). “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him hit fault between you and him alone… “ (italics mine). The Alaba market atmosphere and the Hollywood syndrome of the dramatis personae hitherto at its sittings, have pushed our Oputa-led HRVIC far away from the ideal of a sanctified reconciliation. Sadly, you have not injected the most important energising tonic into the whole process. The tonic of forgiveness: only you can start the process of injecting this antidote into the rancour that has poisoned our body politic these past years. By word and action.

    If the South African TRC achieved any success at all, it must be because of the forgiveness factor. Dr. Nelson Mandela was very magnanimous in his forgiveness. He did not make frequent references to his torturers for 27 years when he was in jail. You, unfortunately, have not been able to kick the habit. I don’t blame you. You are just being human. But by proclamation and actions, I know you are a Born-Again Christian. And this has heightened one’s expectations of a high moral standard based on Christ-like principles and ethics. Yes, principles, ethics, and Christian morality. I believe these are what prompted you in the first place to set up the Oputa panel. Not the bug of an imitation syndrome to be like Mandela of South Africa. But even in the South African TRC’s case, morality and Christian values played no small role. For how else do you explain Bishop Desmond Tutu’s Chairmanship of the TRC?

    If you can forgive Abacha (I do not mean you should stop your efforts to recover anything he undeservedly took from our national wealth), forgive his family, forgive all those who tried you at the tribunal and got you incarcerated (escaping death by whiskers), forgive all, you would have laid a sound foundation for a proper reconciliation in the country. Again, remember the parable of a king and his servant in the Bible (Matthew 18:23-35). Those who benefit from divine grace must never refuse same to others. From the fertile grounds of your example, I believe, would sprout healthy olive plants of predisposition for forgiveness. The Abiola family, the Rewane family, the Dele Giwa family, the Ibru family, the Kaltho family, the Umaru Dikko family, and many, many more such families would want to follow the President’s noble footsteps. This would stem the rising wave of the rancorous showmanship at the Oputa sittings, the antithesis o f the reconciliation Nigeria needs. This would block the agenda of all those with sinister and personal agenda for vendetta, blackmail, humiliation and even scavengery.

    These do not enhance the course of reconciliation: they only deepen and aggravate acrimony.

    Over and above individual forgiveness and reconciliatory moves however, there is a great need for the reconciliation of institutions, groups and communities. Let’s remember that even the South African TRC was essentially an attempt to reconcile groups after the apartheid era, reconciling the blacks with the whites. It was not an attempt to settle personal scores per se; it was to assuage the psyche o f a people. We should borrow’ a leaf from the South Africans and keep that at the back o f our mind.

    No doubt individuals are important, but the interest of the society should be paramount. First and foremost, the military as an institution has wronged the rest of the population ever since the 1966 coup. Who needs any eyidence(s) of their culpability?

    The present military High Command should apologize to the nation (publicly). The National Assembly should accept or reject the apology, with or without sanctions (if accepted) .We, as a people then should stop blaming the military in our daily litany of songs of our sorrows, and get on with the business of nation building.

    Then, the reconciliation efforts should shift focus to the suspicions between the North and East, the North and the West, the East and the West, the minority tribes and the so-called major tribes, then communities and tribes, Muslims and Christians, et cetera, et cetera: And by this, I do not mean the highly tendentious Sovereign National Conference (SNC), which is a conference in the mould of the Berlin Conference of the 19th Century where the then European colonial powers balkanized the African continent into its present fractious units: Reconciliation holds our oneness sacred. SNC does not: for the most vociferous of the conference advocates, nothing is sacred.

    The problem, when all is said and done, is not with the Oputa panel. The problem is with the thinking and motive behind the setting up of the commission. Both are defective. And this is why HRVIC will not live up to our expectations. Hope is far from lost though. The situation can be retrieved. But only you, Mr. President, can make the difference. You can do it. I trust you can do it. And if you want this country to survive in greater peace and harmony than you found it in your second coming, you must do it. Re-evaluate the Oputa panel. Redefine and refocus its objective and procedures, if after the exercise we want to emerge as a stronger nation. Build our nation.

    You are destined to by God. Think about it: in particular Psalm 118:22, The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief  cornerstone.

    Your Excellency, Mr. President, you were once rejected.

    Then the Lord restored you to His grace. Now you are our chief cornerstone. You must do the Lord’s will. God bless. And long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

     

    Gimba is the president of Association of Nigeria Authors (ANA)

  • Patience Jonathan and the flamethrowers

    Patience Jonathan and the flamethrowers

    Patience Jonathan and the PDP’s army of flamethrowers are a gift to APC. By reducing the 2015 presidential campaign to a contest of who can hurl the coarsest insults they do more damage to their principal than to their intended targets.

    A few days ago caught up in the euphoria of campaigning, the First Lady declared General Buhari ‘brain-dead’. In another outing earlier she directed party’s supporters to stone anyone crying ‘change’ – the opposition slogan. She then spiced things up by declaring that in her part of the world men don’t produce more children than they can cater for – a jibe at the army of almajiris who have become her husband’s pet project.

    Before she got the rush of blood to the head, the PDP presidential campaign dove into the gutter by calling opposition leading lights unprintable names. One such raging press statements described their body odour and bad breath. These clearly are the issues that PDP believes  would make voter prefer Jonathan  to Buhari: that the opposition candidate’s associates smell badly!

    I used to think there’s method to madness but not any longer. The more I observe the ongoing meltdown in the PDP presidential campaign, the more I am mystified at what has become of the party’s famed election-winning machinery. How is it possible that a party which triumphed at four general elections since 1999 could be putting such a chaotic show?

    How do these insults win votes for Jonathan and the PDP? When Mrs. Jonathan denigrates northerners for producing children they cannot cater for, is she suggesting that the problem doesn’t exist down south? When she calls a very popular northern political leader ‘brain-dead’, how does that help her husband across the region?

    With their gross name-calling, Mrs. Jonathan and the others have inserted themselves front and centre of the campaign. They have become the focus of attention. It’s just three weeks to the elections and precious time that should be spent selling her husband is being used to advertise  unpleasant  individuals the public would contend with if Jonathan returns for four more years.

    How can people who claim to be religious be spewing such hatred ? What sections of the Bible or Quran encourage such vile abuse and lying in the name of politics?

    Those who are so proud of their ability to abuse others should know that what they consider an endowment isn’t so ennobling. It defines them more as base persons than those they seek to tear down. It reflects badly on the president when his spouse is indecorously abusing the much older Buhari who also happens to be a former Head of State. People only need to compare her conduct to Aisha Buhari’s and draw their conclusions.

  • Jonathan, the photo op ‘General’

    Jonathan, the photo op ‘General’

    Four weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), using the service chiefs forced Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, into acquiescing to a six-week postponement of elections that the entire country had been primed for.

    The military ostensibly needed the time to finish off Boko Haram – or at the very least degrade its fighting capabilities. So they fired off a missive to Jega informing him they would be unavailable for middling assignments like general elections. Boxed into a corner, the commission did the pragmatic thing rather than expose its ad-hoc staff and potential voters to unknown hazards.

    But it was also a badly kept secret that the ruling party desperately needed breathing space to stave off what would have been a St. Valentine’s Day electoral massacre had the polls gone ahead on February 14 as scheduled.

    So, while the army would be busy bruising the head of the insurgents in the North East, the PDP would take the six-week breather to equally degrade the surging momentum of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.

    In that time, the ruling party hoped its monetary advantage would come to tell as the opposition depleted its resources. It would have more time to destroy the credibility of INEC and its leadership as well as besmirch the reputation of APC’s leading lights through negative advertising. But more importantly, it hoped that positive spin-off from a successful military campaign against the insurgents would work to the advantage of the incumbent.

    Everything that has happened since the fateful night of February 7 when a doleful Jega announced the movement of the polls, confirms that the postponement was forced through to buy time for Jonathan and PDP. So have their chances been dramatically improved over the last four weeks?

    It’s been a long time since the nation enjoyed any measure of sustained success against the insurgents. The gains achieved in the military campaign in the North-East, in conjunction with multinational support from Chad and Cameroon, are heartening. Boko Haram have been forced out of places like Baga, Mubi and Monguno, and for the first time in a long while they are the ones turning tail and running.

    That marks out the liberation of territories as the signal achievement of the last month. It lines up with the expectations of the administration.

    But any expectations that Jonathan and his party would not seek to make political capital out of the military gains were swiftly dispelled when barely days after the battles the president showed up in fatigues on the frontline for photo opportunities. The victories quickly became PDP’s property and not a national achievement to be owned by the whole country and its people.

    Given that these gains happened on his watch, no one can restrain him from dashing to claim credit. But he should also be ready to take responsibility for allowing the mess to fester to the point that a huge chunk of sovereign Nigerian territory was seized by the insurgents. If he wants to take credit for cleaning up a mess that developed under him, he’s welcome.

    However, he must understand that it is the electorate who would determine whether he deserves any credit for what the military has accomplished so far. As for me, I am sufficiently impressed with the speed with which Jonathan sewed his Nollywood General’s uniform.

    If only he had acted with such alacrity in confronting the insurgency as it evolved over the last five years, we may not be where we are today. Did 15,000 have to die, did millions have to become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), or tens of thousands become refugees in Cameroun? Did the rural economy and local governance structures of the North-East need to be devastated before the Nigerian state could be roused from its slumber? And for this the president is proudly strutting around with a walking stick!

    All the election-focused frontline photo shoots cannot obliterate the fact that the president had all of five years to do the needful, but he dithered at critical points.

    How can we forget that years ago when many were canvassing the very tough action that is now being taken, Jonathan was against dealing with Boko Haram harshly because he didn’t believe we should unleash the military against ‘our own people’? What is he doing now?

    How can we forget that when in 2012 the United States wanted to declare the sect a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in order to target and cut off its financial supply, this administration sent very senior officials to the State Department to lobby strenuously against the move? They found listening ears in the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

    At that point, a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) led by its president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, fed up with its members being murdered by Boko Haram arrived Washington to push for FTO designation and tougher measures against the insurgents. Imagine their shock when they found officials of their own government lobbying furiously for the very opposite.

    Today, Jonathan and his party put the gains of the military down to the arrival of recently purchased armaments. The president has been accusing all his predecessors of not equipping the armed forces. At a campaign stop in Lagos not too long ago he alleged that Buhari didn’t buy a single rifle for the military when he was Head of State.

    What he was inferring was that the military were not properly equipped. Now it is fashionable to admit the truth in order to project the image of ‘the great armourer’ of the Nigerian military. But anyone who has not been afflicted by political amnesia would recall that Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, said the same thing eons ago. For having the temerity to suggest that the insurgents were better armed than our soldiers, the Presidency unleashed a barrage of verbal attacks against him.

    How many recall that at some point the wives of a group of soldiers posted to the frontline staged an embarrassing public protest insisting that their spouses wouldn’t move an inch unless they were properly equipped?

    How many lives were lost before the president finally accepted that truly our soldiers were outgunned? Today, the president sends delegations to go and appease the parents of the Chibok girls. This is the same man who with his wife made public statements claiming that the abductions never happened! In one of the lowest points of the Jonathan tenure, the First Lady wept theatrically and claimed that the whole episode was the work of her husband’s political foes.

    The truth is that the Jonathans don’t do empathy very well. Today, the president is posturing as the champion of communities like Baga. But many will recall that when news first broke that Boko Haram had massacred an unprecedented 2000 persons in the community, not a peep was heard from the Presidency. Instead, Jonathan was busy sending condolence messages to the people of France over the killing of 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine!

    If he truly loved the military he would not have waited until the election week to do what he claims his predecessors left undone. People are not fooled. They can tell that this love-in with the armed forces is election-flavoured. It is just too late in the day to start to show leadership in this critical area.

    A tired old cliché says that the hood does not make the monk. It is action, not a well-cut uniform, that makes a credible Commander-in-Chief. When President Barack Obama signed off on the execution of Osama bin Ladin he didn’t need to dress up like General Norman Shwarzkopf of the Iraqi Desert Storm war fame.

    It is going to take more than the two-week military offensive in the North-East to alter perceptions about Jonathan’s performance as it concerns insecurity. Voters are going to be asking themselves: between General Buhari and ‘General’ Jonathan who will do a better job in guaranteeing national security? You are that voter: decide and vote wisely!

  • Gimba: Honesty and humility personified

    Gimba: Honesty and humility personified

    For a self-styled “humble Muslim fundamentalist”, his use of the occasion of presenting his then three newly published books two years or so ago to honour a long-serving elderly Catholic priest in Minna, the Niger State capital, couldn’t have seemed more incongruous. But then Malam Abubakar Gimba, OFR, technocrat, best-selling author (Sunset for a Mandarin, Witness to Tears), banker, newspaper pundit, and essayist, was not your stereo-typical Muslim fundamentalist.

    The word fundamentalism has since assumed pejorative connotation, Islamic fundamentalism even more so. The fundamentalist is generally viewed as an irrational animal who wishes to return to or replicate the past, whereas the Islamic fundamentalist is invariably equated with political activism, fanaticism, terrorism and anti-Westernism, etc.

    Gimba, who passed on last Wednesday at age 63, was none of these. On the contrary, he was liberal-minded in the best sense of the word, a pacifist and honesty and humility personified.

    It was a mark of his liberal-mindedness that he chose the presentation on May 24, 2012 of his three books to celebrate the immeasurable contribution the Very Reverend Father Jeremiah Derry O’Connell had made to education in the state. O’Connell was an Irish Catholic priest who has lived virtually all his adult life in Niger State.

    For nearly 50 years the reverend father helped to establish schools in the state, notably Saint Fatima Secondary School in Minna and Saint Maryamu Secondary School in Bida, taught in them and administered them. Today, at 79, he remains the humble principal of Government Secondary School, Minna, the name which Saint Fatima was changed into when governments took over denominational schools in Nigeria in the late sixties.

    In his characteristic humility, Gimba chose the relatively bare Assembly Hall of O’Connell’s school when there were pushier venues in the state to celebrate the man who had arguably contributed to Western education in Niger State more than any other individual. It was a mark of the high regard citizens of the state, at home and in diaspora, had for Gimba as the inviter and O’Connell as the celebrant, that the large hall was packed to the brim and virtually the state’s Who’s Who, including former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar and Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the state’s governor, were in attendance.

    In his tribute to O’Connell, Gimba likened the priest to Mary Slessor of Calabar and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, India. What he cherished most about him, he said, was “his quiet perseverance and wholehearted commitment to the education of our sons and daughters of every religious parentage and parental status, without any intrusion from the enthusiasm of his pastoral calling. This is the hallmark of an honest, great man. Father O’Connell is a symbol and an embodiment of the spirit of what should be.”

    What Gimba said of O’Connell was indeed true of the man himself; as a technocrat for 12 years at the end of which he retired in 1987 as permanent secretary in his state, as an executive director of Union Bank Plc for four years, as chairman of the alumni association of his alma mater, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, as member of its council, as president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), and in every assignment he was given, Gimba practiced what he preached with dedication and honesty.

    In one of the tributes that have since been paid to the humble but great man, he was credited with being the pioneer chairman of the council of the Niger State owned Ibrahim Babangida University (IBBU), Lapai, his hometown. Actually, he was much more than that; he built the university.

    When Engineer Abdulkadir Kure, then governor of the state decided to found it, he entrusted its building solely to Gimba – and gave him a blank cheque to boot. Kure could not have found a better person than Gimba who preached and practiced the principle of leadership as enunciated by Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), a principle he discussed in a chapter in A Matter of Faith, one of the three books he presented in honour of O’Connell, namely the principle that each and every one of us must exercise leadership responsibility whatever our station in life, whether as ruler, husband, wife, even slave.

    Few human beings would have carried out that assignment as Gimba did; not only did he carry out his brief diligently, he never enriched himself in doing so. Today, IBBU is one of the best state universities in the country, in spite of its relative neglect by the state’s current administration.

    In the last 15 years I have, as a reporter and columnist, read quite a lot of articles on innumerable subjects from our newspapers and magazines. Of the lot three have left the greatest impression on me for their precision, eloquence and the profoundness of their insight into Nigerian politics.

    These are “Yorubaland as a riddle” by Femi Osofisan, a professor of Drama and columnist at the defunct Comet (December 17, 2000), “Jonathan and the Corporate Area Boys” by Eniola Bello, aka Eni-B, the managing director of Thisday and a leading back-page columnist of the newspaper (Thisday, May 30 2011), and an open letter Gimba wrote to President Olusegun Obasanjo in the Daily Trust of August 27, 2001.

    How I wish I could reproduce each of them because of their relevance to our political-economy today. But since for want of space I can’t even summarise them without doing injustice to them, I can only plead with the reader to search for them and read them.

    Osofisan’s piece was an analysis of the abuse of ethnicity by our politicians in the struggle for power and how this has held us back as a nation. Eni-B’s was an account of the first dinner President Jonathan hosted in the State House, Marina, for the top echelon of Corporate Nigeria. The picture he painted of the obsequiousness of our business moguls in the presence of power would only make you feel sorry for Nigeria and it explains why our economy is in a terrible mess.

    If Osofisan’s and Eni-B’s articles provided us with insights on why our politics and economics are in such sorry state, Gimba’s open letter to Obasanjo possessed the greatest foresight to date of the huge mess we are in today.

    In that letter, written at the time the Oputa Panel Obasanjo had set up in 1999, ostensibly to heal the wounds of past wrongs in the country, started sitting in 2001, Gimba pleaded with Obasanjo as a self-proclaimed Born Again Christian, to forgive the wrongs that had been done him and focus instead on genuine reconciliation in the land.

    “The Holy Bible” Gimba said, “fully endorses reconciliation when it says (Corinthians 5:19) ‘God (the Most High) was in Christ…reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them and has committed to us the word reconciliation.’”

    He then concluded his open letter with the parable of the rejected cornerstone, again with a quotation from the Holy Bible. “Think about it,” he pleaded with Obasanjo. “In particular, (think about) Psalm 118:22 ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.’ Your Excellency, Mr. President, you were once rejected. Then the Lord restored you to His Grace. Now you are our chief cornerstone. You must do the Lord’s will.”

    No matter how hard he tries, Obasanjo cannot disclaim the main responsibility for the mess we are in today because, far from heeding Gimba’s call for him to do God’s will, he chose to do his own; throughout his eight years as president, settling scores for real and imagined wrongs was apparently his main guiding principle of state policy.

    Gimba must have died a sad man that his prophesy came to pass. May Allah grant him aljanna firdaus.