The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Good militant, bad militant

    Good militant, bad militant

    Sometimes you wonder what’s in a name or tag – especially when there is a convergence in their meaning. Given their topicality I decided to do a little research on two words – ‘militant’ and ‘insurgent’ – and discovered that not much separates the two.

    One definition says the militant is one who favours using confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause. The insurgent on the other hand is a person fighting against a government or invading force; a rebel or revolutionary. This is the classic case of trying to make six look different from half a dozen.

    These days the fashionable way to refer to bloodthirsty Boko Haram fighters is to call them ‘insurgents’. Their goal is to bring down the entity called Nigeria and supplant it with a caliphate governed by the tenets of their own strange strain of Islam.

    Before the sect seized the headlines with their uprising and brutality, there was the insurgency in the Niger Delta. Although the militants in the creeks never descended to the inhuman depths of Boko Haram, they also took up arms against the Nigerian state. They targeted and destroyed vital oil infrastructure and killed federal troops in the occasional firefights.

    To their credit they never targeted unarmed civilians for mindless slaughter. The parallels I draw here are only limited therefore to the fact that the two groups took military action in pursuit of their grievances against the state.

    It’s been almost seven years since the Niger Delta insurgency was brought to heel courtesy of the amnesty programme that has transformed erstwhile warlords into multimillionaires and seen foot soldiers receiving skills training and cash handouts.

    Since that landmark deal, the relationship between the Niger Delta insurgents and the center has been radically transformed. As an icing on the cake, President Goodluck Jonathan, an Ijaw politician, providentially found himself on the seat of power.

    In this new world, some of the one-time militants have prospered beyond their wildest dreams. Today, Chief Government ‘Tompolo’ Ekpemupolo is the proud owner of a cushy contract for policing Nigeria’s waterways – effectively making the Navy observers over what should naturally be their assignment.

    The new arrangement works perfectly for all sides. While the former agitators have become recipients of uncommon financial transformation, they have in turn provided political muscle for Jonathan in the never-ending power struggles of the Nigerian elite.

    Long before the 2015 campaign season, the likes of Asari Dokubo have been threatening trouble if the president wasn’t returned for a second term. Many who had in the past dismissed this as the rantings of a rabble-rouser may have had cause to rethink after a group of the ex-militants gathered for peculiar conclave at the Bayelsa State Government House in Yenagoa a little over a week ago.

    While the real reason the meeting was called remains subject of controversy, what is not in doubt is that sentiments were expressed which promised trouble if Jonathan was voted out of office on Febryary 14.

    The intervention of former Defence Minister, General Theophilus Danjuma asking that those threatening war be arrested, has only attracted insults and a reaffirmation from Tompolo and others that there would indeed be trouble if the president lost the election.

    Danuuma’s call was no doubt triggered by the threats made not too long ago by Minister of Police Affairs, Jelili Adesiyan, who said he had directed the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba and the Department of State Security to arrest and prosecute politicians who make provocative statements.

    The immediate trigger for that outburst of outrage from officialdom was the comment by Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Amaechi, to the effect that soldiers who had been tried for protesting being asked to fight Boko Haram without adequate arms were within their rights to complain.

    DSS spokesperson, Marilyn Ogar, left no one in doubt as to the target of their fury when she talked of a “serving governor”. My worry back then was that what would be defined as ‘provocative’ would be left to the subjective judgment of the minister and his friends.

    And that is exactly how it has turned out. It is a shame that while Minister of Interior, Abba Moro, has described the threats attributed to the ex-militants as reprehensible, the Police Minister and all those who had warned ‘Enough is Enough’ have gone ‘Missing in Action’.

    If the outcome of the first meeting was ever in dispute, the reiteration of positions of these Jonathan backers without any official action being taken, underlines the fact that in today’s Nigeria it is one rule for the president’s pals and another for his foes.

    Danjuma and others who have dared speak up are being called names and reminded of the comments form 2011 which they didn’t criticize. I can understand the partisan passion of the ex-militants. However, the question we should be asking is whether their comments in the context of the 2015 elections have crossed the line. I believe they did.

    For one thing, no democrat should blackmail anyone at gunpoint to vote for him. None should accept such tainted endorsement no matter how desperate he is.

    If anything the positions of Tompolo, Dokubo and others, instead of cowing the rest of Nigeria, is infuriating many and hardening positions against Jonathan’s reelection bid. The ex-militants forget that whatever their claims maybe, it wasn’t only Ijaw votes that got Jonathan elected in 2011. Those sections of the country they are now threatening contributed millions of votes to the incumbent’s cause four years ago.

    Even in the South-South zone these presumptuous threats are not popular because the region is peopled by diverse ethnic groups and not just the president’s Ijaw kinsmen. There are Edos, Ikwerres, Urhobos, Itsekiris, Ukwanis, Isokos, Efiks, Ibiobios, Esan – just to mention a few. The lands of most of these people are also oil-bearing. There’s no evidence that they are raring to rush off to war in the event of a Jonathan loss.

    What I find most amusing is the cavalier way these men throw around these threats. Those who experienced the Biafran War still retail gut-wrenching tales of human misery and suffering. War is not romantic: Tompolo and friends would discover that swiftly whenever they start theirs.

    In today’s Nigeria not much surprises one. But I am amazed that the president didn’t utter ever the mildest of rebukes to the utterances of the exuberant former agitators.

    Does he not feel embarrassed those supporters of his are people who are brazenly threatening the country from the comfort of the Government House in his home state?

    As head of the Nigerian state should he not keep some distance from these figures? Does he appreciate that his continued open embrace of them makes him look more like a clan chieftain than national leader?

    His silence is funny given the rage that greeted the endorsement by the Henry Okah-led Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) of the ambitions of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.

    Okah and his former co-travelers in the Niger Delta struggle parted ways long ago and there’s long been a dispute over the copyright to the MEND acronym. Between Okah and the president there’s no love lost. Little wonder that his backing of Buhari triggered the recollection by Jonathan of some failed assassination bids by group from way back.

    Okah, who’s cooling his heels in some South African prison, is no longer in the militancy business. He may be an ex-militant but by being on the opposite side, he’s a bad ex-militant who would probably be apprehended and prosecuted by our able security agents for his ‘careless and provocative endorsement’ were he to wander into these parts.

    Those who are threatening to divide Nigeria are bad when they belong to the opposition. They are good and untouchable for as long as they remain solidly behind the president’s second term ambition. Shades of Animal Farm!

  • Port Harcourt stadium as metaphor

    The PDP’s presidential campaign rally in Port Harcourt has come and gone. True to the boast of the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, the event held in the newly-built Adokiye Amiesemeka Stadium which Governor Rotimi Amaechi had refused to release.

    His excuse was that the facility was being repaired and offered the Liberation Stadium as an alternative. The response of the ruling party was to deploy soldiers to occupy the place.

    I believe Amaechi was wrong to have attempted to deny PDP use of the facility given that APC had used it twice for huge rallies. Not many were convinced that whatever repair work was being done was of such magnitude as to preclude its use for the one-day event. The governor’s action was clearly just another episode in his arm-wrestling match with the president.

    But even if he was wrong, the decision of the president to deploy the Nigerian Army and force his way into the stadium was even worse. The facility is state-owned and not the property of the Federal Government. The governor was within his rights to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – even if we judge his action to be faulty.

    By breaking and entering, the President and his party confirmed once again that under their watch impunity reigns. Their claims to be committed to the rule of law are only in words only. But even more ominous is the fact that Nigerian soldiers whose constitutional roles are clearly defined are increasingly being pressed into carrying out partisan political errands.

  • ‘Our Girls, Our People’; Maiduguri must not fall; Mumu media? 2015: Cut political salaries 75%.

    The Chibok Girls kidnap tragedy pales in relation to 10,000+ dead and millions injured, disorientated, destitute, displaced by a demonic Boko Haram and its recent murderous attack on Baga with between 150 and 2000 dead and now Monguno. We have serious issues in spite of our irresponsible unimaginably petty maxi-media mania and foolish frenzy for tiny political trivia. It is an insult of unimaginable proportions to question primary and secondary leaving qualifications, ‘certificates or equivalent’ for a presidential candidate from any party. Those entry qualifications were set up specifically to exclude the obviously uneducated and ensure that LGA councillors meet the minimum educational needs.

    The daily list of Boko Haram and Fulani and ‘so-called ‘political’ deaths are not just numbers but a tally of individual children, women, men with work, dreams, aspirations, possessions and responsibilities. Once again Maiduguri fails to fall due to efforts of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Is this renewed Boko Haram offensive against a State Capital not sufficient to concentrate our minds on serious issues and not political and media-hyped phantom matters? The media should also grow up, take a stand and choose issues and not be misled to champion carefully choreographed political intrigue. The media must not be ‘mumu’ and does not have to attend every single press conference or lick up every piece of political vomitus vomited by political pariah. Political pettiness alienates more voters than it wins.

    Let us take Maiduguri seriously and study it! Just last week soldiers were every 5 metres on roads in Maiduguri for the Presidential political visit.  That same strategy could defeat Boko Haram. The question therefore is ‘has the government deployed sufficient troops and equipment to contain Boko Haram?’ How can Boko Haram attack Maiduguri repeatedly with impunity? During the presidential visit Boko Haram seeking to get to Maiduguri had to settle for an attack on a village 5 kilometres from Maiduguri. This confirms that the Nigerian Armed Forces are up to the task. Why has the protection been reduced, just because the President, like Elvis, has ’left the building’?

    Nigerians do not need to be reminded that Maiduguri is an important place of history and a large multi-million citizen city. Nigeria cannot afford to lose Maiduguri. The loss of a city the size of Maiduguri in 2015 will be at the cost of a bloodbath that will turn the River Maiduguri red with the blood of many thousands who will also turn on each other, ethnically and religiously and gender-wise, during any mass frantic exodus. Then there will be another bloodbath for the recapture that has to follow for there will be a recapture to ‘save face’ of any incoming government. A bloodbath is not a word only. A bloodbath can best be visualised as trailer-loads of dead bodies and severed limbs heading from mass graves dug by contractor-rented earthmovers while tanker loads of blood, 33,000 litres or the blood of 6,600 people each, are washed from the sand toward the river to turn the river red. We prefer money over life so add the cost of rebuilding the bombed city. Maiduguri must not fall.

    With the elections two ’V’s appear – Violence and Voting. Violence is increasing in spite of the ‘Anti-Violence Accord’, AVA. Organisers of the Anti- Violence Accord expected all political parties to take AVA to their cohorts at states, LGAs and 16,400 wards. Presidential candidates will not directly perpetrate violence but leave that to henchmen in the side streets of state towns and capitals. We have failed to re-educate the urchin, area boy, okada driver, NURTW vehicle driver and conductor, so violence will be perpetrated unabated, no matter how many AVAs are signed in Abuja. Some taxis have easy identification but most danfos are unmarked and for rent for violence. We must all get our Permanent Voter’s Card, PVC and persuade friends, young and old, and young adults over 18 to ‘GET INVOLVED POLITICALLY’ and get their cards and ‘PLAN TO VOTE’.

    The Nigerian voter needs to evolve a VOTERS PROTECTION CODE OF CONDUCT to defeat anti-democracy forces seeking to undercount, over-count, cancel votes or unleashing violence.

    1. Nigerians of all ages have the right and responsibility to electronically record events at all voting booths and collating centres. To do this on voting day everyone should keep their fully charged phones on at least audio recording and video if possible and concealed for safety if necessary. This is to adequately record sudden anti-democracy events like violent attacks, cheating and other.

    2. Useful recorded audio and video material should be immediately uploaded to previously identified local and international monitoring and collating websites, blogs and media houses to quickly expose fraudulent and violent events.

    3.Voters must use their numbers to all remain to protect their vote through collation and announcement and have their own PARALLEL COLLATION TEAMS.

    When I started work the naira was better than N1:$1, today it falls pathologically through the psychological floor of N200:$1 to N208, toilet paper, perpetually pauperising salaried and struggling Nigerians, and plunging millions more below $1 a day. Nobody cares. Politicians of all parties at all levels must introduce 75% cuts in political Salaries and Perks, SAP, from January 2015. Ridiculously high political salaries and corruption, not falling oil prices, helped precipitate Nigeria’s financial crisis. Political salaries and transparent non-government party funding and the collapsing economy should be major election issues driven by an intelligent media.

  • Islamisation and other red herrings

    Islamisation and other red herrings

    Many years from now, students in Political Science departments in Nigerian universities would be studying the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) 2015 presidential campaign under the theme: ‘How not to run a campaign.’

    This is not to suggest that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has run a flawless campaign either. Fortunately for them, their rivals are gifting them with so many blunders and unforced errors it’s almost like Christmas all over.

    For all the ruling party would want to crow about as its achievements, its record regarding the economy, insecurity and corruption is the sort you run from – not run on.

    The statistics about fadama fields, almajiri schools, federal universities created and Nigeria being the largest economy in Africa are not resonating because the administration’s failing are even more graphic – dwarfing President Goodluck Jonathan’s modest achievements.

    I speak in terms of an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of Nigerians and, in the last two weeks, produced a gory first with claims that 2,000 people may have been killed in the assault on Baga. Over 200 schoolgirls snatched from their dormitory in Chibok remain in the hands of Boko Haram maniacs – symbols of the regime’s helplessness.

    The photograph of a stadium full of the desperate unemployed who gathered together last year for an ultimately fatal job interview with the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is reminiscent of the picture of a snaking line of the jobless used to devastating effect by the Tories against the British Labour government in 1979. The poster carried the simple legend: ‘Labour isn’t Working.’

    A string of financial scandals – beginning with claims by the former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that billions of dollars that ought to have been remitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the Federation Account were missing, to the Stella Oduah armoured cars saga, to the botched arms shopping run in Johannesburg, South Africa, left the government mired in a swamp of sleaze. Earnest explanations of its officials have done little to wash the administration clean.

    All of these play into the age-long narrative that our public officials are serial bunglers only looking out for their pockets. There’s nothing the government has done in its time to make many think of it differently.

    It is therefore not surprising that the PDP campaign seems to have lost its way. Put on the defensive from the outset, it has scrambled for a coherent argument for reelection. It was never going to convince anyone about its competence: the opposition had successfully defined it as incompetent long before the campaigns started.

    Today, the ruling party isn’t really making the case why it should be given another chance: it is desperately trying to stop the other side from winning. The strategy according to officials of the campaign team is to make APC presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, the issue.

    If he’s perceived as honest, make him look dishonest. If people think he’s strongwilled and firm, make him look weak and beholden to entrenched interests. But more than anything play up the religious card and tell anyone who cares to listen that he’s the ultimate Islamic fundamentalist.

    But rather than get traction, the strategy has backfired spectacularly because the PDP – overconfident and conceited – left it too late. Just as the image of Jonathan not being up to the job took years to create, Buhari’s reputation was built over decades.

    His actions over the years have only helped to concretise that perception. Little wonder they call him Mai Gaskiya – meaning the truthful one. It is wishful thinking to believe that his image for uprightness will be so damaged by a contrived certificate controversy that his legion of followers would suddenly convert to Jonathan’s cause two weeks to Election Day.

    The major plank of attack lined up against the APC and its candidate was that they were out to Islamise the country. The hope was that in the age of Boko Haram, Christian voters north and south of the Niger out of fear and sectarian hatred, will not touch the opposition party because of the religious smear.

    Unfortunately, the attacks soon collapsed under the weight of illogicality and scrutiny. First, pseudo-historians and rogue clerics banged on endlessly about how Turkey succumbed to Islam. What they don’t tell us is how location and the historical forces at work then made this possible. We are now to assume that because it happened where East meets West, it must of necessity happen here too.

    At this point Nigeria can only be Islamised in two ways. First one is legally through an amendment of the constitution. That is a non-starter because it would require the Houses of Assembly of 24 states to concur and then the National Assembly to pass it.

    The other way is by conquest – the route that Boko Haram is going by carving out its so-called caliphate in North Eastern Nigeria. Islamisation by conquest is easier as it doesn’t require national consensus or agreement.

    However, as a nation it is within our power to decide to roll over and be overrun or to stand up and fight for a way of life that allows our people to worship God whichever way they choose. Even without waiting for some central government in Abuja people will fight to remain free and maintain their cultur.

    Unfortunately, the ruling party’s strategists made a fatal mistake in trying to position Jonathan as a bulwark against Islamisation. His record doesn’t support the borrowed robes he’s been draped with.

    It was under the nose of this great scourge of the Muslim hordes that hundreds of mostly Christian schoolgirls were snatched in Chibok. They have since been forcibly converted to Islam by Boko Haram. While this was happening, the president didn’t even believe that the abductions happened. He preferred the fantasy that it was another gimmick by his enemies to make him look bad.

    Up till today, the poor girls remain trapped in the middle of nowhere. Still, the great defender of the Christian faith has not been able to secure their release.

    If we are to consider the fact that huge chunks of three North-Eastern states are in Boko Haram hands, then Islamisation may be happening faster under this administration given our inability to either keep the insurgents at bay, or defeat them militarily.

    Despite the fact that this line of attack has clearly passed its sell-by date, PDP strategists like Kamikaze pilots embarked on a suicidal mission, plunge ahead oblivious of all warning signals. They keep pushing the religion button hoping to win enough converts to prevail on February 14.

    Joining them in banging their heads against the wall are a coterie of Pentecostal pastors who have inserted themselves in the middle of the political free-for-all. They don’t care that by making religion an issue in this campaign they are encouraging hate and dividing our people even further along sectarian lines.

    This election will come and go and there will be a blowback for these clerics that will affect their standing in the larger society – and even worse – with their own flock.

    Luckily it is their standing that would be damaged and not the church because the God who has ordained that the gates of hell wouldn’t  prevail against His church is able to ensure it outlasts this season of political chicanery.

    The fate of the church in Nigeria cannot be tied to the political ambitions or fate of any individual – no matter how eminent. These persons on whom many are now hanging their Christian future will only hold office for four years at a time. When they vacate office, assuming they are elected, will Nigeria be governed forever by Christians – so as to stop the greatly feared Islamisation?

    Will Muslims never occupy the office of President after Jonathan? Just think about it.

     

    2015: More grandfathers needed

    Beyond his certificates and religious beliefs, the next big issue the PDP wants us to ponder before voting is the age of the candidates. One is 57 and the other 72.

    The excitable Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, and others have referred to him as a doddering grandfather who should probably retire to a rocking chair in the anonymous precincts of Daura. But this ancient grandfather may just be what Nigeria needs at this point in her history.

    If 54-year-old governors can be carrying on like adolescents, aren’t we better off with gentle, wise and deliberate septuagenarians running our affairs? Fayose in his infamous advertisement declaring that Buhari would die in office must have thought he was fighting Jonathan’s corner. But he was actually hurting him by denigrating a zone whose votes the president badly needs. It may just be that this 54-year-old is too young to understand the implications of his actions.

    Through the actions of intemperate politicians and other public figures, Nigeria finds herself more badly divided today than it has ever been in her history. Whoever wins the presidential elections would need to lead  national healing as an urgent task. And who better to tackle that assignment than a grandfather with a calm temperament?

     

    On Dasuki’s proposal

    Of all the excuses so far advanced by those who would like to see the February general elections postponed, the most ludicrous has to be that offered by the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki. Speaking at a lecture in London during the week he suggested that the polls be moved to allow all eligible voters collect their PVCs. How considerate!

    Let’s stop postponing the day of reckoning. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will never be 100% ready for elections. Even if the polls are moved six months or one year from now, the commission will still be battling with one thing or the other. If it isn’t PVCs, it would be card readers or ink pads.

    Even if all registered voters collect their cards as Dasuki would like, there’s no guarantee that there would be 100% turnout. So what is the point in postponing the polls just because some people haven’t collected their cards?

    There’s no excuse under the sun for postponing the polls. Every election cycle when it looks like something momentous is in the offing all sorts of people spring up trying to move the goal posts.

    It happened in the dying days of President Ibrahim Babangida’s regime when he began having second thoughts about ceding power. No one should be surprised that a figure so close to the sanctum of power in Abuja is making this curious proposal at an even more suspicious hour.

  • Stinking thinking

    Stinking thinking

    Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose ought to know that there are a thousand ways to die, speaking literally and figuratively. So, it doesn’t follow that 72-year-old Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is necessarily closer to death than 57-year-old President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Fayose’s chronological calculation, which highlighted Buhari’s age as an unquestionable evidence of closeness to the grave, is both simplistic and senseless. In reality, to stretch the argument, Fayose himself could land on the other side before the two older men, even though he is 54-year-old.

    Another counter-point to Fayose’s controversial political newspaper advertisement of January 19 is that, quite apart from exhibiting a lack of good   manners, he demonstrated crooked thinking. His argument: Murtala Mohammed from the Northwest died in office;  Sani Abacha from the Northwest died in office; Umaru  Yar’Adua from the Northwest died in office;  so, Muhammadu Buhari from the Northwest may likely die in office if elected president.

    The ad said: “Will you allow history to repeat itself? Enough of state burials.”  Fayose conveniently glossed over the circumstances in which the three former political helmsmen died, but this doesn’t make his reasoning any less silly. It is puzzling that Fayose presented his thought process as logical; the illogicality was way beyond logic.

    Ironically, although designed to promote the second-term ambition of President Goodluck Jonathan, Fayose’s advertisement could actually be interpreted as a message to the electorate to vote against him. The ad said: “NIGERIANS BE WARNED! Nigeria… ‘I have set before thee LIFE & DEATH. Therefore, choose LIFE that both thee and thy seed may LIVE.’ Deut 30 vs. 19”

    This sounds like exactly the kind of message that should galvanise the electorate into electorally unseating Jonathan. It is the undesirable continuation of Jonathan in office that represents death, and not the possible election of Buhari to replace him. Is it not the Jonathan administration that has terrorised the people by deepening the country’s abysmal socio-economic conditions?

    It is noteworthy that Fayose’s language of crude desperation fits into the PDP’s developing approach to next month’s general elections. Consider the ridiculous comment by the Director of Media and Publicity of the party’s Presidential Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, at a news conference in Abuja. He was quoted as saying about Buhari: “We are constrained to urge him to prove to the Nigerian people that he really is as fit as a fiddle, as the spokesman of his PCO  has said, by taking a brisk walk or even jogging around the perimeter of the stadium before any of his rallies.”

    Clearly, Fani-Kayode’s suggestion is a reflection of the PDP’s level of unseriousness, not to say ludicrousness. Since what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, wouldn’t it be a nice idea for Jonathan to do the same before his rallies? Or perhaps it would be more helpful if both presidential candidates had a pre-election contest involving brisk walking and jogging. Fayose and Fani-Kayode enjoy stinking thinking.

  • ‘Peter Pan’ at 80

    ‘Peter Pan’ at 80

    He was not the youngest editor in the history of Nigerian journalism. His more politically famous elder brother, the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, set that yet unbroken record when he became the editor of the Ibadan-based Southern Nigerian Defender, one of the newspapers in Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s nationwide stable, at age 21 in 1944.

    Peter Enahoro, aka Peter Pan, however, came a close second when he became the editor of the better printed, more influential and more enduring Sunday Times at age 23 in 1958.

    As if to make up for coming only second best to his elder brother as the country’s youngest editor ever, he stuck to journalism as a career and eventually established himself as probably Nigeria’s best columnist ever and one of its best editors and newsmagazine publishers.

    Peter Osajele Aizegbeobor Enahoro was born exactly 80 years ago today in Uromi, Edo State, then part of Western Nigeria. He received his secondary school education from Government College, Ughelli, between 1948 and 1953. Thus, with no more than a secondary school certificate he launched himself into one of the most successful careers in Nigerian and African journalism.

    The long rested West Africa, at one time one of the most influential African newsmagazines published out of London, once described him as the “enfant terrible of Nigerian journalism for more than three decades.” This was in the introduction to a two-page interview with him, which it published in its edition of June 10, 1996.

    My Oxford English Dictionary defines “enfant terrible” as “a person whose controversial attitude shocks others.” This characterisation of Peter Pan couldn’t have been more spot-on. For, he seemed to have been an iconoclast as a young man from day one, judging from the way his journalism career at Daily Times almost came to grief even before it truly got going. This was at least the testimony of no less a journalism icon than the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, easily the most successful journalist and newspaper publisher in post-independent Nigeria.

    The story of Jose’s rise from copy boy to the management of Daily Times of Nigeria Ltd and eventually his transformation of the company at one time into the biggest and possibly wealthiest in Africa – again, like Enahoro, with hardly more than secondary education to begin with – is the stuff of legends. It was from him than Enahoro took over as editor of Daily Times in 1962 after he (Enahoro) had successfully edited Sunday Times for four years from 1958.

    “Before I became the Editor (of Daily Times),” Jose said of his successorin his great 1987 autobiography, Walking a Tight Rope: Power Play in Daily Times, “Peter Enahoro and Nelson Ottah, both sub-editors, had been fired by Percy Roberts for being troublesome.” Roberts was then the British expatriate in charge of Daily Times before Jose.

    On taking over, he said, he pleaded with Roberts to reinstate the two and he acceded. “Both,” Jose said, “later proved excellent leader writers and columnists.” Enahoro, he said, went on to become not only an excellent columnist but “the best so far in the history of journalism in Nigeria.”

    To which one of Nigeria’s best columnists and humourists, the veteran Dan Agbese, concurred 25 years later. “Enahoro,” Agbese said in his excellent 2012 book, The Columnist’s Companion: The Art and Craft of Column Writing, “was a brilliant writer and columnist. His capacity for vivid verbal pictures remains unequalled by any writer or columnist in the country.”

    To back this appraisal, Agbese reproduced a column Enahoro wrote as Peter Pan, his pen name, in the Sunday Times of October 23, 1960. The title of the piece alone spoke volumes about Enahoro’s dexterity with the written word; “Take it Satch – That’s All There is in Armstrong.” Enahoro then went on to narrate the story of his close encounter in a Lagos hotel with Louis Satchmo Armstrong, the late legendary American jazz musician who was on a musical tour of Nigeria that year.

    “Even without his horn,” Peter Pan began in the opening sentences of the column, “he certainly was the loudest man for a quarter of a mile – at which distance one came to the Exhibition centre.” He then went on to describe in vivid but simple figures of speech what a charming and happy-go-lucky man Armstrong was.

    His concluding paragraphs couldn’t have been more rib-cracking in their humour. They could also not have been more graphic and creative in their description of the man. “I have,” he said, “been asked what my memory of Louis Armstrong is. First of course is his roaring thunder of a voice. Every time I drive on a gravel I will remember him.

    “Then is his jet-stream humour, much of which I will forget early. On account of I don’t dig that kinda hep talk ma sef. Cause ah never been down to New Orleans meebe.” This was obviously a humourous dig at the man’s Afro-American slang and a reference to his native city.

    Six years into his journalism career in Daily Times, Enahoro was forced to flee into exile. As Jose told it in his autobiography in question, it all started with the country’s first military coup on January 15, 1966. Enahoro, he said, appeared “very pleased” with the coup, as most of the new rulers were his friends and he reflected this pleasure in his column by often praising the coup makers.

    When the tables turned following the counter-coup of late July by Northern military officers, Enahoro, naturally, felt unsafe and after a while sought and was granted permission to move to London on a six-month leave without pay by the Times management. He never returned. Instead he resigned in August 1967 and eventually settled in Germany where he took up a job as an editor and producer at Deutsche Welle, the country’s equivalent of the BBC.

    It was from there that he moved in 1976 to Africa magazine published in London by the late Ralph Uwechue, as editor. From Africa he moved to New African, also published in London, as editor and director. Eventually he founded his own newsmagazine, Africa Now, in London.

    Of the three, only New African is still alive. But long before the death of his own magazine, he returned home from exile in the early 90s and at different times, chaired the National Broadcasting Commission and headed his alma mater, the Daily Times of Nigeria Ltd, as its sole administrator.

    With his active days as a journalist now completely behind him, it can still be safely said in agreement with both Jose and Agbese that Enahoro remains the greatest columnist in Nigerian journalism. And with only two slim books, You Gotta Cry to Laugh and How To Be A Nigerian, to his name, he can also be said to be one of Nigeria’s greatest writers.

    Both books are classic satires about Nigeria and its people and are as insightful about Nigeria’s sociology and politics even today as they were when he wrote them ages ago. They are also a study in simplicity and precision in language and style.

    Take, for example, his insight in the second book into the typical Nigerian’s penchant for noise making. “In the beginning,” he said in the opening paragraph of Chapter 6 on the subject which he entitled Noise from the Soul, “God created the universe; then He created the moon, the stars and the wild beasts of the forests. On the sixth day, he created the Nigerian and there was peace. But on the seventh day while God rested, the Nigerian invented noise.”

    Or take for another example, his guide to Nigerian oratory in Chapter 8. The Nigerian, he said, “begins his marathon address with a familiar apology: ‘…I do not intend to waste your time.’ Then he goes to do precisely what you expect him to do – waste your time.”

    Or take for a third example his own take on the subject of sex in Nigeria. “Marriage,” he said in the introductory paragraph of Chapter 16 on the subject, “they say is an institution, sex is incidental. In Nigeria, sex is an institution and marriage is an incidence.”

    You rarely get to read stuff like these anymore these days.

    Enahoro is, however, not only justly famous for his way with the written word – and with the spoken word as well, to which anyone who has met him will testify – he could also be too plain speaking as was the case in his interview with West Africa which I mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

    Asked, for example, what he thought of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) led by his elder brother, Tony, he said: “Believe me, NADECO is a paper tiger.” The coalition, which was a thorn in the side of General Sani Abacha’s regime, he said, had after all, given the general one month to hand over power to Chief MKO Abiola, whose putative victory at the June 12, 1993 presidential election had been annulled by Abacha’s predecessor, General Ibrahim Babangida, but Abacha had called their bluff. “Two years later,” Enahoro said, “he is still in power and it is NADECO’s relevance that is in doubt.”

    He was, in the interview, also very unflattering about several of the coalition’s other leaders. There were people in it like Beko Ransome-Kuti, he said, whose sincerity he acknowledged. However, others like Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi and Wole Soyinka, were, he said in effect, only dubious.

    “The trouble with Fawehinmi,” he said, “is that he is encouraged to take himself too seriously.” Akinyemi, he said, was only bitter with Abacha because the general had refused to accede to his request to be re-appointed foreign minister, whereas Soyinka was “given to staging melodramas.

    “Remember the toy pistol incident? The escalation from that prank is that, with the Nobel Prize in hand, he is playing out the fantasy of being a politician of weight in Nigeria. He is not.”

    It was, indeed, a “No holds barred” interview, as West Africa entitled it.

    Happy 80th birthday to the enfant terrible of Nigerian journalism and here’s many more returns.

  • ‘Our Girls, Our people’; Road Contractors/gov supervisors/ Ogere FRSC; N87/l; Prepare to Vote

    Our Girls and Our People are now being mentioned with hope of release even by government sources even though we are facing more and more incidents suggesting Boko Haram’s impunity and malicious vengefulness using 10-year old female suicide bombers perhaps even sold to Boko Haram by their parents according to one report and the raids in The Cameroons and Potiskum. The politics of the election or no election in the three north-eastern states appears to revolve around the fact that they are non-PDP states and it pays the PDP government if the election cannot hold ‘because of safety concerns for the local people’. These local people are from many ethnic groups and religions. Yes, many have relocated to Maiduguri as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), but many more fled South and hold jobs as security and other staff, unrecorded by the Refugee Register of either RED Cross/ UNHCR or Government’s Agency –NEMA.

    The disgraceful petty-trading of casualty numbers between the federal government and NGOs is a pitiful dance around the dead and an insult to those forced to give up their lives for Nigeria’s survival now numbering in the tens of thousands not to talk of the unregistered IDPs. Who ever knew that the Niga-Sat could also be used to count the dead in the streets and the destroyed homes in vandalised villages and towns?

    Seeing all the helicopters flying political VIP around the country, I have always personally wanted a helicopter, or even a Niga-Sat view of the misnamed Lagos-Ibadan Expressway during a six-lane wide 20-40km long traffic jams. These almost constant traffic jams are most recently caused by federal government employed construction wizards, RCC and Julius Berger, either not being available to widen the very narrow areas when a breakdown or accident occurs forcing immediate closure of one of only 1 ½ or two lanes. Since vehicles pass at the rate of 60-100/minute, the tail back can easily grow to 50 km within an hour. The reason why the tailback is not even longer is because Nigerian drivers always queue jump always overtaking on the shoulders and thus leaving behind and making fools of all those who stay in line. One must ask, having survived yet another massive traffic jam on Sat January 17, what exactly the government supervisors do to protect the interest of the millions of commuters on the road? The FRSC is preoccupied with ‘Stop and Particulars’ and has proven itself disinterested in maintaining traffic flow. Nowadays even stuck in a go-slow, one may be pulled off the road, and lose your place,  for ‘Stop and Particulars’ by FRSC even though other vehicles are overtaking on the sides. This FRSC technique has far outstripped the menace of Police checkpoints in the psyche of the travelling public. No doubt many dream of this new menace. Personally I have been stopped in and around Ogere six times to date and I have witnessed hundreds of vehicles stopped at Ogere in particular and several other places in general including Epe and near Redemption Camp. The FRSC would do well to adhere more to the guiding principles of the founding fathers. The FRSC should encourage and disperse its staff with briefing on and strategies and instructions or directives to spend, and be seen to spend, as much time keeping traffic moving as they do hindering the free movement of traffic and citizens. Constant ‘Stop and Particulars’ checking is sapping the enjoyment of the drive for many law abiding citizens driving safely between ‘A and B’.  FRSC gains nothing by joining those who target female drivers and expatriates driving without drivers on Sundays in for example Lekki or vehicles full of family members. Of course there are traffic offenders, most of whom can be corrected quickly, efficiently and cost effectively simply by a verbal warning or advice. In Nigeria, the abuse of the uniform and the ‘right to oppress’ are taken as rights by uniformed authorities. The new FRSC dispensation, in addition to deserved better emoluments, housing, promotion prospects and other perks for staff should also extract a ‘We Serve Contract’ and get a better educated workforce on the ‘Human Rights of Traffic Users’ ready to serve the nation and its citizens on the road. Having an FRSC post checking vehicles on exiting all motor parks may be a way forward if FRSC wants to quickly fulfil a daily quota of checks demanded by the authorities. The FRSC was not founded to replace the police but to make our journeys safer. The good work and dedication of many FRSC officers needs to be complemented by controlling and streamlining and refocusing the activities of those who fall short of the ‘keep traffic moving safely’ mantra.

    The cut in the price of fuel from N97 to N87 is welcome. The Public Complaints Bureau and the Consumer Associations need to investigate this ‘Government offer’ considering that the price of a barrel of oil has fallen by over 40% it requires us to question the mathematics to ensure we are getting the full benefit of this fall.

    We thought the big multi-billion ‘Victims Fund’ was going to do something. Shame! Nigeria is wealthy enough to overcome its problems if the money is not stolen. To kill corruption, get every eligible voter, especially young voter, 18+ a PVC and to the polling booth on election day. Prepare all eligible complacent youth to VOTE, VOTE!!!

  • Who’s with Jonathan?

    Who’s with Jonathan?

    When people question the electoral value of former President Olusegun Obasanjo my answer is simple: whenever he speaks it goes straight to every newspaper’s front page. If he was of no consequence this would not be so.

    If he were irrelevant the PDP and APC would not be trying to beat down his door in a bid to get his support. President Jonathan has done everything short of prostrating himself to get the old man’s endorsement. Obasanjo may still be pledging allegiance to the ruling party but his body language and utterances show he’s backing Buhari this time.

    Former Vice President Alex Ekwueme is not known to be controversial. But the timing of the interview in which he tore present day PDP to shreds cannot be described in any other way but as pre-meditated. He said all he’s ever received from the ruling party was humiliation and warned Jonathan not to expect a 2011-type bumper harvest of votes. Coming from one of the grandees of the party in what it considers its stronghold, this is ominous.

    Just like Obasanjo, former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, has just published in newspapers an open letter to Nigerians in which he paints a grim picture of the state of the nation and warns people to ‘vote wisely’.

    His close pal and neighbor, former President Ibrahim Babangida, whose regime has often been accused of institutionalizing corruption, gave an interview recently in which he declared that compared to what happened in his day, current levels of malfeasance made him and his associates look like angels.

    Former Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, on Thursday labeled the administration ‘clueless’, warning that the country needed an urgent rescue from the “imminent brink of irredeemable destruction.”

    From former Nigerian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, Christopher Kolade to popular Catholic Priest, Ejike Mbaka, a growing list of influential voices are rising against the status quo. Where are all those non-partisan big names whose endorsement the president needs to counter this trend?

    His supporters might be tempted to dismiss these individuals, but from a perception point of view this isn’t good news for Jonathan’s second term bid. Every campaign needs a boost from time to time – not an unending dripping of bad news.

  • 2015: Ethnicity meets frivolity

    2015: Ethnicity meets frivolity

    Politicians are already doing what they do best: making promises they never deliver on. From the word go most parties assured us they would run issue-based campaigns. Taken on face value it meant focusing on matters that have brought the country to its knees: insecurity, economy and corruption.

    Their way of addressing the issues is to make fresh promises to tackle existing problems without offering detailed plans for public discussions. Everyone is promising to create trillions of jobs, provide 24 hour electricity and crush the insurgency. The only this missing is a roadmap on how to get from A to B.

    The upshot is an unprecedented dumbing down of political campaigns the likes of which we’ve not seen in recent memory. It is so ludicrous, it is surreal. I don’t see any ‘transformation’ – that much abused word – happening in the 28 days before we start casting votes.

    That is another way of saying that what would inform our voting decisions this election cycle would be religion, ethnicity and frivolity. That said I now serve you a sampling of choice soundbites – beginning with some classics from the period preceding the campaigns and other winners now that the battle has been joined. Hopefully, you would decide who to vote for based on these inspired utterances.

    Not too long ago, Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to the President, Doyin Okupe, got us all in a flap when he likened his longsuffering boss to Jesus Christ. Now one of the president’s biggest boosters, Akwa Ibom Governor, Godswill Akpabio, has declared his own wife ‘Mother Theresa’. Thankfully, the late Theresa of Calcutta was only saintly, not deity, so we are spared the brouhaha that would have attended suspicions His Excellency had crossed the line into blasphemy.

    The occasion for lavishing such effusive praise on the gubernatorial spouse was Akpabio telling a political gathering that it was the state’s First Lady who actually ‘discovered’ the Akwa Ibom Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Udom Emmanuel. Now you can add headhunting to the list of madam’s multitasking skills!

    Just when we are struggling to restrain the religious from plunging Nigeria into sectarian strife, a fired-up President Goodluck Jonathan nearly sparks class warfare. The immediate trigger was former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s calling a summit with market women at which he briefed them on leakages in the Excess Crude Account (ECA).

    Jonathan who’s becoming adept at scoring own goals seemed to have decided he could do without the votes of agberos and the elderly because he lambasted unnamed senior citizens for carrying on like “ordinary motor park touts.”

    A few days later at the inaugural PDP presidential rally in Lagos, a Jonathan almost foaming at the gills with rage blasted All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, for not buying a single rifle for the armed forces when he was in power. And to think the general didn’t have to contend with passing appropriation bills though a hostile National Assembly!

    Presidential rage was unabated as the campaign swept into the relatively friendly precincts of Enugu. The ambience was enough to inspire the Commander-in-Chief to let fly with another salvo in the direction of enemy forces. Buhari, he charged, couldn’t remember his own phone number and shouldn’t be trusted with the presidency. Haba Mr. President! How many of us remember the registration numbers of our cars?

    Jonathan wasn’t trying to play a game of trivia but suggesting that his rival was already in his dotage. Thinking they are on to something, the PDP has seized on the age question with gusto. Former Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, warned that Nigeria didn’t need a 72-year old grandfather. Another person suggested that the general was actually 74 or was it 78?

    If he’s all of 78, he’s still a spring chicken compared to Tunisia’s newly-elected President, Beji Caid Essebsi, who is a mere 88 years. And what is it about all these countries that love electing grandfathers? Check this: Ronald Reagan elected United States President at 69 or Nelson Mandela assuming the South African presidency at 76?

    As I speak the age question has refused to go away because the very young Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has accused Obasanjo of trying to foist ‘an old horse’ who’s about to keel over on the nation. So far the ancient horse keeps trudging on oblivious to the fact that aside his age and health, issues surrounding his school certificates are still raising dust – at least in PDP quarters.

    Again, the ruling party believes it has found the chink in the general’s armour. I keep wondering why this fuss wasn’t kicked up in the last three election cycles. Is someone seeing something nightmarish on the horizon?

    Anyway, some Nigerians are not too concerned whether Buhari’s certificates are with Defence Headquarters, National Museum or the US Army. Former Super Eagles star, Victor Ikpeba posted this on Twitter in response to the controversy: “Even if Buhari present NEPA bill as him certificate I go vote for am! E don reach that level.”

    Whoever thought that women would be relegated to the backseat during this campaign is obviously clueless. Initially, it did look like there was a conspiracy to silence them. In fact, I was beginning to miss the inimitable contributions of our esteemed First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, on the hustings.

    That was until Buhari went and put his foot in it by declaring his intentions to proscribe the unconstitutional office of the First Lady. This provoked a mutiny not only in social media – but of all places – even within APC ranks. Post haste the would-be first and second ladies were wheeled out for public scrutiny in Abeokuta mid week. Suffice to say they passed muster.

    Not willing to have its thunder stolen given that the administration has excelled in First Ladyship, Jonathan jumped feet first into the discussion by declaring that spouses of presidents and governors don’t spend government money. How revealing! Clearly, they’ve been running their circus with British foreign aid or United Nations funding.

    Slowly but surely the president is coming to terms with fact that Nigerians want the issue of corruption discussed and he has decided to compare his methods with those of the one-time military ruler.

    Exasperated by Buhari’s tough posturing he wondered aloud how much former Anambra State Governor, Jim Nwobodo, stole that he was thrown into jail. ‘Money that is not enough to buy a Peugeot’, he snorted. That should be good news for those who pinch a Peugeot worth of public funds: amnesty is coming in a Jonathan second term.

    Such was the depth of feeling the president had over this issue that declared he would not put people in crates because of corruption. For those born after 1984, this refers to the then military regime’s innovative way of repatriating the late Second Republic Minister of Transport, Umaru Dikko, from London to face corruption charges.

    The president’s comment prompted one of those irreverent types who troll the Internet night and day to declare that in China corrupt officials are executed: loading them into crates is to give them underserved honour!

    I began by moaning that the candidates were talking in general terms. My apologies to the president who has made the intriguing declaration that he now intends to fight corruption using technology. Sounds interesting! He must have been using cowry shells; that explains why things have been going from bad to worse.

    When the next set of cabinet nominees go for screening they would probably be made to walk through a scanner that would determine their susceptibility to corruption.

    No discussion of Nigerian politics would be complete without a nod to ethnicity. Already, we’ve had useful contributions that could swing the polls in one direction or the other. Take, for instance, the warning by Lagos PDP gubernatorial candidate, Jimi Agbaje that the South-South could shut down the economy if Jonathan isn’t reelected.

    I wonder when Agbaje did his referendum because a couple of prominent South-southerners like former Bayelsa State Governor, Timipre Sylva and incumbent Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, have made it obvious that there had little or no brotherly feelings towards the president.

    Amaechi, in particular, has been keen to resolve the confusion over the president’s ethnicity. The Igbos have been made to believe that because Jonathan’s middle name was ‘Ebele’ he was their kith and kin. That is like saying because the Rivers State governor’s first name is ‘Rotimi’, he’s from Isale Ogbomosho!

    To address the matter once and for all he proposed a contest to the rally crowd in Aba: “My name is Amaechi, but President Jonathan who says his name is Azikiwe cannot speak the Igbo language. He says his name Ebele; let him speak Igbo and let us see.”

    Before Election Day we may be forced to watch another contest. Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko, says Buhari cannot be president because he’s not computer literate. I recall seeing the general holding an Ipad not too long ago. I’m not too sure whether he was using it or admiring it.

    I equally remember a photograph of Jonathan staring at a blank desktop computer screen. Was he trying to locate the power button? You make up your mind and ‘vote wisely’.

  • ‘Our Girls, Our People’;  ‘CINS’, Violence in election; Political Constipation; ‘Don’t Steal Nigeria’

    Our Girls, Our Boys, Our People’ are awaiting justice and release, many since Chibok, April 15. We must rise against Boko Haram. Nigeria needs skilled professionals and good people. Are there enough? These are members of the long awaited ‘Critical Mass’. In the alternative Nigeria waits to die from hooligans and ringleaders masquerading as professionals and experts when they are professional thieves with ‘self’ as their goal but with ‘service’ as a diversionary  slogan. This malaise is everywhere, even in hospitals.

    In politics, Nigeria has a surplus of bad politicians judging simply at national, state and LGA quantum of development and compared to funds and budgets available. This quantifies the systemic political Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness, CINS. Can Nigerians ‘bother’ to ‘exercise their franchise’ to choose good over bad or the reverse, now disgustingly disguised as the stomach bribe- stomach infrastructure- and thus buying four years of silence? Do we put too much hope in the electorate to choose between ‘good and evil’? Are we still slaves in our own country, living from day to day, with no future life expectancy?

    As we approach the elections, we must all pray to be ‘invisible to the enemy’ -an army of political thugs, or politicians actually planning to provide dirty money, weapons and drugs – all aimed at violent overthrow of democracy through election rigging, voter card and ballot fraud and fictional figures. They say politics is a dirty game. No, the game does not play itself!  Politicians are very dirty players. Politics is not a game but a form of treatment for the disease of ‘leaderlessness’.

    Politicians should ‘fight the good fight’ on the fair play political field of battle with wise and witty word and good and better deed. Why are Nigeria’s political violence and murder acceptable? Why would anyone die or murder for political success of another? They have achieved political non-violence even in neighbouring Ghana, hurray.

    Let all politicians know, as we in ‘giant’ Nigeria sink solely because of their disgraceful behaviour, democratically free countries rise. Hurray! A free and fair play non-violent political field is the sole creation of the political class architects who can create disaster and doom or peace and security –simple decisions. Unfortunately many in our political class choose violence. Nigerians must guard against trivialising serious Human Rights Abuses.

    There is no such thing as ‘political violence’ –all is violence. The victims of violence during politics are just as injured, maimed and dead as from war violence. Ask the thousands of silent souls, dead victims so far since even 1999 if not since the 1950s. The terms domestic violence, political violence, campus violence and cult violence are situational descriptions of the same heinous crime. The situational terms do not reduce the criminality, the blood spilt, the bones broken, the bodies shot. Death by domestic, political, campus or cult violence is all violent – Grievous Bodily Harm, GBH, and all equally legally punishable.  Once they have successfully ‘Stolen Nigeria’ through violence in politics, the vicious victors spit on justice by masquerading before the media as good family politicians by carrying their victims’ babies on New Year’s Day while blood still drips from their hands.

    Survival of the nation is an emergency depending on the morality and machinations and motivation- self or service- of current politicians and how they conduct themselves. No matter what they have done in the past, each politician will still have to choose in 2015 between good and evil, like any thief or priest has to at each confrontation between God and the devil. Will public opinion or the threat of public ridicule work? Will it be a personal encounter with their Maker or dinner with political devils?

    Everyday government has the new opportunity to impact on every individual, save lives, improve incomes and prevent deaths through its activity. Unfortunately most of governance is scarred by ‘inactivity’ with nothing getting done or if it is done, it is 2-3 years too slow –‘political constipation’. Look at the Lagos-Ibadan expressway potholes, the pedestrian walk way at Alausa, the numerous stalled Lagos State vs Federal government ‘loggerhead projects’ with federal opposing every project- all suffering ‘political constipation’. From the airports to the roads, there are unsolved problems. The abysmal treatment of airline passengers needing to enter vehicles is a preventable nightmare-a FAAN incompetence issue. In other countries everyone is a VIP.

    Nigeria is very like a would-be beautiful Christmas tree. We have the wherewithal to create a wonderful Christmas tree and we buy the decorations and stick some on! Unfortunately politicians and others come and remove most of the glittering lights and ornaments and presents. Eventually the beautiful Christmas tree, Nigeria, is left bare and unfulfilled, till the next election when it will again be dressed for more to come and ‘steal Nigeria’ again. Will this stop in 2015?

    Can we see violence as a foreign enemy or a virus, like Ebola, and unite? If not, we will fall under ‘bad politics’ for another four years which will kill the country dead- politically and physically! Remember Nigeria has thousands of Nigerian economic refugees abroad from Babangida’s regime and now from Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen’s violence. Let us not add refugees from 2015 election political violence or we may well be in the millions crossing West African borders.

    Nigerian politician, think, and pull back from the 2015 election violence brink! Don’t steal Nigeria!