The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

Transformers at work

Just as one would imagine, Nigerians have since taken to the overdrive in the wake of the crisis of falling oil prices. For a crisis that took nearly a decade to berth, it is a revelation of how pretty little has changed that the debate has dwelt largely on short-term, mitigating measures. We saw this in the knee-jerk response by the federal government when it announced a rash of barely well-thought out measures to usher in a season of austerity penultimate week. The Central Bank of Nigeria has since complemented these with equal but no less lethal dose of measures: devaluation and a hike in interest rates, both of which have the overriding effects of further shrinking an economy in dire need of muscle to lift it. Now, the expectation is that the measures would somehow help douse the fires stoked by falling crude oil prices. Such an illusion!

Of course, it’s merely a return to the ancien regime of unworkable therapies; solutions tailor-made to deliver to maximum pain all in the guise of treating an ancient ailment. It’s the old pathway – of adjustment, belt-tightening and austerity – which speaks to nothing else than the need to balance government’s consumptive books.

The question of whether any lessons have been learnt from previous experience would seem entirely superfluous, at least at this time. The nation, after all, is supposed to be in crisis of such a nature that could be rightly termed global, forces over which the managers of Nigeria’s economy have little or no control. However, for an economy that’s probably the most dissected in the entire universe, the missed opportunities of the past decade and the criminal mismanagement which attenuated it should ordinarily provide enough to chew upon at least to the extent these have berthed in the current so-called crisis.

As it is, there is really no use crying over split milk. One thing that is clear however that there can be no running away from the gross misunderstanding, if not the wrong assumptions that underlie the current therapies as proposed by the government and its banker.

In this regard, I found myself reflecting on a statement made by the Country Director of the World Bank in Nigeria, Omo Ruhl, some years ago. According to the World Bank chief, “Nigeria is not a mono-product economy, it is a mono-revenue economy and a mono-export economy because in the other sectors there are no exports, very low fiscal revenues, that is where your challenge is but oil is only 17 per cent of your GDP, 83 per cent is everything else taken together”.

To the above, he would add: “Oil is actually the fourth largest sector of the Nigerian economy, the largest sector is agriculture, the second largest sector is wholesale and retail and services is the third largest. So what Nigeria should do is focus on propelling these other sectors forward so that they can also export, so that you are less dependent on oil and finding ways of generating revenues for the government for legitimate investment in infrastructure, health and education”.

That statement would seem no less true in Nigeria’s post-rebased economy as it was three years ago when it was made. My quick check actually revealed that the share of the oil economy to the GDP shrank to 14.40 percent in 2013 although petroleum exports revenue still accounts for over 90 per cent of total exports revenue.

The implication of the above should not be lost. The contribution of the non-oil segment of the economy has been grossly understated. Here, we are talking of a sector that accounts for more than 85 percent of the GDP. Even at normal times, one would have expected that the segment would constitute the pivot around which the economy is expected to spin. Under an emergency, that segment naturally assumes the status of the proverbial golden hen deserving of extraordinary protection from the fiscal and monetary authorities.

But what do we get? Policies so surreal, so utterly skewed towards speculation that they may have been conceived in the virtual Island of Ashtabula!

Let me be clear here: some of the measures such as the cleaning up of government finances as proposed by Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala have some merit. The problem is that we have been on that road for more than 10 years with little to show for it in practical terms. Have we not lived with the pension scam, the subsidy-gate and all manners of industrial scale thefts that have reduced the science of public finance to a sham? What about the menace of ghost workers known to rob the treasury of billions annually? A case of one being less toxic than the other?

So much about the so-called luxury tax; what’s the big deal about the tax on goods consumed by Nigeria’s idle rich when a single waiver by a highly connected individual can actually fetch the equivalent of 10 years luxury tax bill? And how come nobody has ever thought about the line of revenue before now despite the deficit holes in successive cycle of budgets?

I must admit that the option of devaluation, the hike in Monetary Policy Rate and the raise in Cash Reserve Ratio for private sector funds is the textbook stuff. Devaluation isn’t only a way to conserve foreign exchange; it has the dual advantage of boosting exports. Classic textbook stuff! Yes, it all makes sense: oil has run into troubled times in the global marketplace hence the need to curb the pressure on the foreign reserve. Time to encourage local producers to take to export to earn more foreign exchange. A win-win? Bad news. Nothing aside crude oil and raw cassava, to export. Both share the same fate of declining global prices!

Left however to the CBN, the real source of headache is the activities of the band of speculators swarming on the foreign reserves. Now that is supposed to be news in an economy where just about any soldier of fortune who calls himself foreign investor can make a run on our reserves! Of course, the question of tracking the shadowy group whose activities constitute, in the reasoning of the apex bank, economic sabotage would seem academic in the circumstance.

So what to do? Let everyone bite the bullet. Devalue the currency; get everyone in a non-discriminatory way to pay more for their forex requirements. It does not matter whether you are bringing in industrial inputs, finished goods or doing capital flight. Second, raise the lending rates to deter borrowing and hence reduce so-called liquidity even at the risk of sounding the death knell for the real sector already starved of its vital juice. With more money available to the federal and state governments to spend, and with money to be made from arbitrage, everyone, except the odd segment producing the 85 percent of the GDP, should be happy.

How about that as transformation; their transformation.

December 2, 2014
Mainstreamers at work, again

These Mainstreamers – they never give up.

They have been at this game since the First Republic, canvassing that the way for the Yoruba nation to achieve self-actualization under the Nigerian sun is to eschew the diversity undergirded by the federal arrangement and insert itself in a political mainstream, the better to secure a bigger allocation of the country’s resources and political appointments.

In one breath, and with admirable high-mindedness, they proclaim that the Yoruba cannot all subscribe to the same political tendency. In the very next breath, they seek to corral the Yoruba into what they regard as Nigeria’s political mainstream

The group appears in many guises and disguises but the goal is always the same: to deliver their kinfolk from their addiction to opposition politics and thus rescue them from the marginalisation the group claims has been their unhappy lot of the Yoruba since independence.

They returned briefly to the spotlight last week, this time as Concerned Yoruba Leaders, under the aegis of the Yoruba Unity Summit, which is at bottom PDP in the Southwest, plus the usual professional mainstreamers and “monarchs” who command little allegiance and even less authority in their domains but nevertheless bask in the delusion that they represent and speak for their “subjects” – a delusion that those courting them are only too willing to cultivate and nurture with blandishments.

This latest outing was staged in Ile Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba, in the Oduduwa Hall of the Obafemi Awolowo University, an institution dedicated to learning and culture. There, gathered for common purpose under the beatific shadow of The Great Progenitor, were his legatees and his children, that purpose being to cajole President Goodluck Jonathan into granting the Yoruba a bigger slice of the spoils and preferment of national office in return for their block support for his re-election.

Or maybe it was the other way round: The Mainstreamers would deliver the block vote of the Yoruba Southwest to ensure Dr. Jonathan’s re-election, and he in turn will, as he phrased it, “take care of the Yoruba.” The one was offering what it does not possess to secure what the other cannot provide.

The rump of the participants comprised “monarchs” from Ekiti, formerly Fountain of Knowledge and Land of Honour, now Land of Stomach Infrastructure, bused to the venue by the great apostle and promoter of Yoruba unity, Governor Ayodele Fayose. And the conference was treated to a riveting disquisition on Mainstreaming by no less an authority than Ebenezer Babatope, who has been espousing the subject with the same zeal with which he used to espouse socialism and Awoism before he saw the light.

Dr. Jonathan, trust him, rose magnificently to the occasion. He told his hosts how, almost four years later, he was still in shock that his efforts to ensure that a member of the House of Representatives from the Southwest was anointed Speaker – fourth in the national hierarchy- — was sabotaged by politicians from the self-same Southwest who cared more about ideology than the progress of their own people.

I cannot vouch that this is the kind of progress the Mainstreamers had in mind.

After all, the previous Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, is better remembered for threatening to unleash the military— as distinct from ordinary riot police — on the people of Ekiti to mainstream them under the canopy of the PDP, and for accumulating great personal wealth under cloudy circumstance, than for anything he did for the Yoruba nation, for Ogun State, or for that matter his hometown, Abeokuta.

As Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro is remembered only for mobilising armed soldiers to terrorise contractors and crew working on projects being executed for the public by the APC-controlled Lagos State Government, claiming without fear and without research that the sites belonged to the Federal Government.

God help Lagos State and its residents if he succeeds in his gubernatorial bid.

It may well be that the fault was with Bankole and Obanikoro, not with Dr. Jonathan. In whatever case, the man does not to nuance.

To return to the Yoruba Unity Summit:

They could have staged the conference with overarching symbolism in the expansive quarters of the Ife monarch, guardian of the O’dua flame and a key participant at the Summit. They could have staged it with no great loss of symbolism in any of the event centres in the ancient city. Instead they chose the faded but still fetching campus of the Obafemi Awolowo University.

The university has never been a citadel of the cant and humbug that were being peddled at the Summit. The Mainstreamers could not have swooped on the campus or invited Dr. Jonathan along without the knowledge and consent of the university authorities, who should have known that the suffocating security presence that usually went with such conferences would create tension and disrupt campus life.

Apparently, the authorities did not care, and neither did the Mainstreamers.

Where students at the Obafemi Awolowo University saw wanton provocation, not a few of the summiteers saw an opportunity for reinforcing their stomach infrastructure, a goal rendered all the more urgent by the collapse of the Naira.

And many indeed were the summiteers who returned home with the tensile strength of that part of their anatomy greatly enhanced, I gather.

The horrific carnage at the Kano Central Mosque that claimed more than 100 lives and left more than twice as many injured occurred on the same day that Dr. Jonathan landed in Ile-Ife in a military helicopter to woo the Mainstreamers for his re-election bid, and barely a week after he declared in London that it was a sure sign Nigeria had Boko Haram on the ropes when that nihilist group had not overrun another town in one week.

Even so, he responded to the carnage with characteristic swiftness, ordering the security services “to launch a full-scale investigation and to leave no stone unturned until all agents of terror undermining the right of every citizen to life and dignity are tracked down and brought to justice.”

If the security services had the capacity to do that, would the carnage have occurred in the first instance?

But again, not even Dr. Jonathan’s most implacable critics have ever accused him of giving a damn about nuance.

Niyi Osundare, NNOM

The 2014 Nigeria National Order of Merit could not have gone to a worthier recipient than Niyi Osundare, globally acclaimed and much-garlanded poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, distinguished teacher and public intellectual of the first rank, a man of great moral stature who leads by personal example rather than by precept.

In Osundare, we find consummate literary craftsmanship, social vision, and a passion for justice and human freedom distilled into a voice of reasoned engagement that is all the more powerful for being modest. In a lofty cause, you could not wish for a more formidable ally. In an ignoble venture you could not have a more uncompromising adversary.

Amidst the gloom that has encircled and now threatens to choke Nigeria, this award has largely being spared the corruption that rules the land. It is a reassuring testament that Nigeria can still be true to its highest ideals.

Akoyejo (or “gatherer of prizes,” loosely translated from the Yoruba): The Nobel, next.

December 2, 2014
Presidency 2015: Neither religion nor ethnicity

Some February 2015, Nigerians would not be electing a bishop or an imam: we would be choosing a president. But you would not think so judging by the way religion is being manipulated to influence potential voting decisions.

As if that were not bad enough, the usual suspects are already at it pushing ethnicity for all it is worth to gain political advantage. None of this is strange because these issues have always been overt factors in Nigerian politics.

Indeed, it would be naïve and unrealistic to try to totally keep them out of politics. Even in the US which popularised the principle of separation of church and state, this is only observed in breach. They may not have a state religion but ‘In God We Trust’ is inscribed on their national currency.

Even in largely homogeneous societies like the US, religion in politics sometimes manifests in positions taken by candidates e.g. Do they want prayer in schools or are they pro or anti-abortion?

In multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies like ours you cannot run away from balancing. Giving people a sense of belonging is one thing, but when a person’s suitability for office becomes a function of what faith he follows, we need to ask hard questions.

What I find discomfiting is the virulence with which these factors are being deployed this election cycle – without a proper sense that we are playing with dynamite. From Lebanon to Iraq to Northern Ireland, the human suffering caused by the combustible mix of religion and politics isn’t something to recommend to an enemy.

In the past we somehow managed to step back from the brink. This time around, Boko Haram has poisoned the air with atrocities that have sharply polarised the ethnic and religious divides.

Things are not helped by the fact that the two major political parties are set to pick the candidates from the opposing geographical poles – reprising the age-long North-South contestation for power. It was only in 1999 that we were briefly spared the aggravation when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the then All Peoples Party (APP) chose candidates from the South West.

The PDP pulled out the religious card quite early as it sought to define the nascent All Progressives Congress (APC) as an ‘Islamic party.’ The ruling party’s spokesman, Olisah Metuh, enthusiastically accused the opposition of propagating Janjaweed ideology. The basis of this accusation was that the party that was then in formation had a preponderance of Muslims in leadership positions.

After the APC’s first convention, a new hierarchy reflecting a better religious and ethnic balance emerged. But then suspicions that had been sown in the minds of the impressionable were reinforced with talk that the party was seriously considering selecting a Muslim-Muslim slate to challenge President Goodluck Jonathan.

As the opposition intensified their attacks against the government for its impotence in the face of rampaging insurgents who had graduated from just lobbing bombs to actually holding territory, an administration on the defensive felt the best way to fight back was to accuse APC of sponsoring and funding the insurgency.

Having made this astonishing claim, the government didn’t move to prosecute those it accused of such treasonable offences. By not taking that step it destroyed the credibility of the allegations. That has not stopped the administration from repeating the same meaningless claims in the face of new criticisms – and it leaves you wondering why.

Matters of faith don’t lend themselves to reason since they flow from our hearts and emotions. Each time Boko Haram – in the name of Islam – invade a village in the North East, burn down churches and murder Christians, it plays strongly into the ‘them-against-us’ narrative.

Just this last week at the meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) – a forum formed to promote better understanding between Nigeria’s two leading faiths, what made headlines were the exchanges between Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor and the Sultan of Sokoto, Abubakar Saad.

Oritsejafor had complained bitterly about the slaughter of innocent Christians in the North. He spoke of unjust treatment exemplified by the fact that in many parts of the region Christians cannot get land to build churches, and where they manage to get land they are denied Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) for no just cause.

He then challenged the Sultan to direct the same letter he had written to ISIS to Boko Haram. The suggestion was that major Muslim leaders had not bent the ears of the insurgents sufficiently to turn them from their evil ways. Naturally, his views were not well received by the other side.

I sympathise with Oritsejafor because much of what he said is the true experience of many Christians in the far North. Even before the coming of Boko Haram, sectarian clashes in which scores lost their lives were common occurrences in the last few decades.

However, the CAN President’s comments don’t capture the total picture. If Christians have been victims of the insurgency, Muslims have also suffered terribly. Boko Haram has murdered thousands of nameless people who share the same faith they claim to be propagating across the Northern states.

On Friday, at least 120 worshipper were killed when suicide bombers attacked the Emir of Kano’s mosque. Last week 45 innocent souls were blown to bits in a Maiduguri market after two female suicide bombers detonated their deadly cargo. A few days after in Adamawa, a roadside IED believed to have been planted by the sect claimed another 35 lives. I doubt whether these explosives were primed with instructions to slay adherents of a particular religion.

There are serious unresolved issues in Nigeria revolving around ethnicity, indigene status and religion that we need to sit down and discuss frankly. A situation where the constitution talks of not adopting a state religion, while some Northern states openly do so undermines coherence and trust in the federation.

That said, we must accept that Boko Haram has gone beyond the ‘them-versus-us’ stage. Those being murdered in places like Gwoza, Damboa, Bama etc are not all Christians. This is something that requires everyone pulling together. It is something that has defeated everything the current administration has thrown at it. Even with outside help, we now have a pseudo-caliphate on our doorstep.

That is why I find it truly reprehensible that politicians are trying to fight the 2015 elections by manipulating religion and ethnicity – rather than focusing on their record and manifesto.

When you hang the tag of an ‘Islamic party’ on your opponents, are you not suggesting that yours is the ‘Christian party’? The president has not helped with his subliminal religious campaigning involving church-hopping. To decide whether he was going to run or not, we were subjected to a primetime ‘pilgrimage’ to Jerusalem flanked by two of the country’s most prominent pastors. Are their flock supposed to read between the lines and fall in line?

Christians who try to paint Jonathan as the candidate for their religion need to pause and reflect. Voting for the incumbent president won’t take anyone to heaven, just as voting for his likely Muslim opponent will not open the gates of Paradise to anyone.

How has Jonathan being a Christian furthered the Christian cause in Nigeria? Under his watch thousands of Christians are being slaughtered across the North and the butchering continues.

I recollect that over two years ago when the US first toyed with the idea of designating Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO), agents of the Jonathan government in collaboration with the American State Department then led by Hillary Clinton argued strenuously at the Congress against it.

They painted a picture of the sect as a minor irritant that could be controlled with home-grown solutions. At that same hearing was a CAN delegation led by Pastor Oritsejafor. He and his team were thoroughly astonished that agents of a government ostensibly led by a Christian would be making such arguments. All they were after was anything that would check the sect. They left America bitterly disappointed.

Instead of demonising individuals and any particular religion, let us wake up as Nigerians and confront our demons. Since we have not agreed to dissolve our union, we must tell ourselves the truth and not allow political scam artists to take us for another ride in the same tattered religious cum ethnicity jalopy.

As things stand in this country today, no Muslim can win an election without Christian votes and vice versa. Nobody can impose any religion on us without having to deal with the National Assembly and the 36 state houses of assembly.

Voters must ask themselves if they are going to elect a president based on his piety or their performance. We are suffocated with religiousity and church/mosque-going at election time. Once the elections are won and lost, these supposedly pious politicians return to business as usual. How is it that with all our holy and prayerful politicians Nigeria is so messed up?

We remember religion when it helps us carve up the nation’s wealth. Our faith takes a back seat as we despoil the land and desecrate the offices that God in his mercies has allowed us to occupy; we abuse the powers we should hold in trust for the people.

We hoodwink the ignorant with ethnicity whereas the fact is voting for someone with whom you share tribal identity doesn’t change much if you’re not in his close circle.

Northern leaders governed Nigeria for close to 40 years and yet their region remains the poorest and most backward in the country. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was in office for eight years as civilian president. By the time he left, most roads in Sango-Ota where he used to live were impassable. Jonathan has been in office for over five years and millions of people from the South-South zone are still living a hardscrabble life.

Instead of being scammed through sentiment Nigerians should realise that what we desperately need is a leader who will drag this blessed country out of backwardness.

When a Christian leader delivers 24-hour electricity it’s not only for Christians, when a Muslim provides tap water it will also run in the homes of members of the other faith.

Nigerian politicians playing the religion and ethnic card should remember the immortal words of our inimitable First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan: ‘There is God oooooo!!!! And He’s a consuming fire.

November 30, 2014
Still on INEC’s abandoned new polling units

After the announcement a fortnight ago by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), that it has suspended – abandoned, was more like it – its plan to create 30,000 additional polling units until after next year’s general election, it is obviously an academic exercise to still dwell on the subject. But then even academic exercises do have their uses; they do help at least to ensure the triumph of reason over sentiments, even if in the long run.

And on this subject of new polling units, I have no doubt that what we have seen is a classic case of the triumph of propaganda over fact. This much should be obvious to the reader after a careful consideration of the first reaction reproduced below to my piece on the subject last week. Hakeem Kazeem’s is one of the several I received.

Kazeem’s, to me, is symptomatic of how statistics can be so easily deployed to bamboozle the credulous. Like so many who have spoken and written about the now abandoned new polling units because of the propaganda that its distribution was meant to favour the North which Professor Attahiru Jega, its chairman, comes from, Kazeem clearly assumes the existing ratio is just, fair and equitable to all sections of the country.

Even the most casual consideration of the figures in contention shows nothing could be further from the truth. The North, including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, has slightly over 40.5 million voters. Its existing polling units (PUs) are 63,368 or roughly 52% of the existing 121,348. The South with 29,856,650 registered voters has 57,981 PUs, roughly 48% of the existing figure. This clearly does injustice to the ratio of the voting population of the North which is 57.5% against the South’s 42.5% of the total of 70,383,428 registered voters.

This difference between the two regions hides the even more important detail of the distribution of the PUs among the states. In the South only Lagos and Edo have over 600 voters per PU. Delta, Rivers, Ogun, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom, Abia, Oyo and Cross River less than 600 with Ebonyi, the highest, at 571. The rest have far less than proposed minimum of 450. Indeed, Ekiti (313), Bayelsa (327) and Anambra (387), have less than 400 each.

The North is a study in contrast. The lowest number per PU is 512 for Kogi, with Jigawa a close second (515) and Gombe a not-so-distant third (545). Kano and Katsina have between 550 and 600. The rest have well over 600, with Plateau clinching the top prize at 791 and Niger not too far behind with 762. However, the platinum medal goes to Abuja which has 1,588!

What all this meant was that the much ballyhooed increase of about 20,000 for the North as against 8,400 or so for the South would have only altered the current ratio of 52:48 in favour of the North to a new ratio of roughly 55.7:44.3. This would have been more in accord with the spread of the country’s registered voters even though it still not fair and equitable enough. In absolute figures these would have been 83,600 PUs in the North as against 66,440 in the South.

Clearly the focus on the ratio of 3 to 1 increase in favour of the North, rather on the whole picture, was a deliberate statistical sleight of hand by those afraid of a free and fair election to frighten the unwary into believing there is a plan afoot by INEC to rig the election in favour of any presidential candidate from the North.

Well, commission has made its decision but it was clearly a decision based on sentiments rather than the facts, as a close reading of some of the reactions to my piece last week reproduced below should convince the reader.

Sir,

Your piece dated 19th of November portraying (Professor Attahiru) Jega as a victim of blackmail is jaundiced and misplaced. Granted that the North has a higher population than the South by as much as 5% as claimed by you, does that justify the huge disparity in the additional polling units awarded by Jega to the North as much as ratio 1-3 (over 33%)! Haba Mallam! As a true Muslim where is your sense of justice, equity and fairness?

+2348023036314

Hakeem Kazeem,

Sir,

Jega may keep promising credible, free and fair elections based on his personal integrity and not that of the institution he is ‘driving’. The surest way to embarrass a professional driver is to hand over a malfunctioning car to him and block all possibilities of the car’s repairs. Let Jega prove otherwise come 2015 elections.

+2347034483605

Wankar Daniel.

Sir,

I honestly think Jega should resign. The job has done an irreparable damage to his reputation. I used to trust his person and principles. But after what happened in Kaduna, Katsina and Bauchi in the 2011 elections I don’t feel the same about him. The abusive song that appeared after the 2011 elections, though I don’t subscribe to its contents, I share the frustration and anger of the singers.

+2348033111000

Dr. M. L. Yahuza.

Sir,

You speak as though you do not know the sensitivity of this matter. How many times has the South been short-changed just for peace to reign? You probably got your university education because a higher scouring Southerner was dropped to accommodate your state quota. The list goes on. The North cannot continue to trample roughshod on the South and the Middle-Belt under any guise. Even in states and local government creation it’s either equal or no distribution of new polling units.

+2347032170069

Endee Anozie,

Sir,

I am a pioneer staff of INEC, now retired. Since the first voter registration was conducted in 1988 or thereabouts, all subsequent voter registration exercises have amounted to simply splitting and spreading the existing polling stations. I am surprised Jega has succumbed to the pranks of Southern ethnic irredentists and chickened out of conducting a routine electoral exercise.

+2348036177178

John Tyav,

Sir,

I think Jega should have been resolute in creating the additional polling units albeit for a different reason. While Nigerian population figures remain in valid dispute, the large mass of the North is indisputable. The idea of a half empty North suggests some sort of dispersal of the population. So even on the basis of convenient access, if we say we want a polling unit within a comfortable walking distance of every Nigerian, then the North may well have more than tenfold more polling units than the South.

What is key is finding a way (electronic voting) to ensure VALID voting.

+2348098050590

Dr. Ogbuagu,

Sir,

It was the late Dr. Abel Goubadia that conducted the 2003 (elections) not Prof. Maurice Iwu as you mentioned in your column.

+2348036466756

Muhammad Auta.

The error was corrected in the last copy I sent to the editors but it apparently failed to meet their deadline. The online editions contained the corrected paragraph which read:

Obasanjo’s lamentation then was in defence of the terrible record of Professor Maurice Iwu, Jega’s predecessor, in his conduct of the 2007 elections which was more or less universally condemned as hardly free, fair and credible. Obasanjo had replaced the late Mr Abel Goubadia, whose conduct of the 2003 election was adjudged even worse than that of 2007, with Iwu as INEC’s chairman in 2005.

MH

Sir,

Your column is always a delight to read. (However), I only want to correct a point in the 19th November edition. Chief Sunday Afolabi was never an Afenifere member talk less of being a chieftain.

+2348056119569

Olalere Isola.

Sir,

The late Chief Sunday Afolabi was not an Afenifere chieftain. He fell out with Awo’s political camp in the build up to 1983 general elections. He never returned.

+2348030490107

Adebayo Salako.

Re: As President Jonathan declares his 2015 bid…

Sir,

In fighting Boko Haram, you do not seem to have any role for Aliyu Gusau and Sambo Dasuki, the Defence Minister and NSA (National Security Adviser). Remember you pestered Owoeye Azazi until he died. So these two have no questions to answer in this war against insurgency?

+2348023243751

Alabi Williams.

Sir,

My question to you as a true and sincere Muslim if President Jonathan is to be a Muslim will you ask him to resign?

+23480328905863.

Yes, I would. Twice, first, on September 20,2008 and second, December 2, 2009 I said the late President Umaru Yar’adua should resign from his job when it became obvious that he could not cope with the rigours of his office due to his failing health.

MH

November 26, 2014
Gender-Based Violence: Global Call to Action
Each year, on November 25, we commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the ensuing 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence, culminating in Human Rights Day on December 10. Established in 1999 by the United Nations General Assembly, these events create a global platform for action by governments, organizations, and individuals to mobilize and call attention to the urgent need to end gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence cuts across ethnic, racial, socio-economic, and religious lines. It knows no borders. Globally, an estimated one in three women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. According to the World Health Organization, at least 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced such violence at the hands of an intimate partner. Moreover, women and girls with disabilities are two to three times more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse.

Gender-based violence occurs in Nigeria just as it does in the United States and every other nation. According to the Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme, approximately 80 million Nigerian women and girls are victims of this type of violence. Society as a whole pays a huge price for gender-based violence in the areas of health, justice, economic, and international security. According to a recent World Bank report, the estimated costs of such violence run from 1.2 percent to 3.7 percent of GDP—the equivalent to what many governments spend on primary education. In Nigeria, that would roughly equate to between 1.1 and 3.4 trillion naira. Gender-based violence also fosters the spread of HIV/AIDS by limiting one’s ability to negotiate safe sexual practices and by limiting disclosure of HIV status and access to services due to fear of reprisal.

Ending this global epidemic will require all of us to take action. We must recognize that gender-based violence is, at its root, a manifestation of the relatively low status of women and girls around the world.When women and girls can live free from violence and are afforded equal opportunities in education, healthcare, employment, and political participation, they lift up their families, their communities, and their nations and act as agents of change.

Prevention and elimination of gender-based violence require a multi-faceted approach. It will require increased advocacy and partnerships between the international community, governments, multilateral organizations, private sector companies, and grassroots advocates. It will require empowering women and girls to speak up for themselves and educating men and boys to speak up and speak out for their mothers, wives, partners, sisters, and daughters. It will also require adequate legal and judicial frameworks.

Many nations have passed legislation addressing gender-based violence. In March 2013, the Nigerian House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Persons Prohibition bill. The signing of this bill into law would empower all parties to work together on its implementation in order to increase accountability and address impunity.

The United States is proud to have made gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls a cornerstone of our foreign policy. This includes a strong focus on addressing all forms of gender-based violence. In 2012, the United States released its first-ever Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, the strategy sets out concrete objectives and actions to marshal the United States’ expertise and capacity to address gender-based violence. Since the launch of the strategy, the United States has made significant strides to increase coordination of violence prevention and response efforts internally, across U.S. government agencies, and with external stakeholders, including partner governments, civil society, and the private sector.

To commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to ending human rights abuses around the world, the U.S. Embassy in Abuja and U.S. Consulate General in Lagos this year are organizinga number of activities, including screening films on preventing gender violence, organizing workshops and panel discussions with civil society members and expert panelists, and promoting “Orange Your Neighborhood” activities that create safe spaces for women and girls.

Whether it occurs in our own homes and neighborhoods, or across the world, gender-based violence has no place in our society. As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said recently, “This is a fight that demands action from every single one of us. We have to communicate in a unified way with a single loud voice that there is no place in the civilized world for those who commit gender-based violence.”
- Brewer, is Charge d’Affaires, ad interim, U.S. Embassy to Nigeria
November 26, 2014
‘Our Girls’; ‘Scale the fence in defence of democracy’; Austerity, Fiscal Responsibility; ‘Ember’

Our girls are still missing since April 15 and no sign of a solution.

So, another austerity period looms. Have we learnt no lessons? Far more than the financial demands of civil servants, it is the greed of the political class which sucks the blood of the treasury like a giant leech. It is never satisfied and always takes more and more. All the political class is paid and given too much in ‘Salaries and Perks’, ‘SAPping’ the treasury dry. There are no concrete answers given to questions of how much they take home. Is it N10m and N30-40m monthly for National Assembly – NASS Reps and Senators respectively? No wonder the political struggle in NASS showed members prepared to ‘Scale the fence in defence of democracy’ – their own democracy! Politicians from across parties, every Special Adviser in every ministry, every political hanger-on from LGA to Aso Rock, and do not forget senior civil servant administrators, all have easy access to secret allocations of land which they sell for millions and have many perks as of right, merely for being in-post?

Yes, the price of oil has crashed reducing the revenue but that crash should also bring down the cost of the so-called fuel subsidy. Yet the pump price has not been affected. Why? The first round of belt-tightening should be within the billions/day blood sucking political class. We expect NASS to pay as much attention to political budgetary waste as to power tussles. NASS must immediately announce cuts in NASS operational costs including costs of public hearings and committee meetings. NASS must go part-time. Salaries must reduce by 75% to or better still replaced by sitting allowances. Constituency projects must be scrapped. There should be an announced and effective slash in numbers of active politicians paid by governments at all levels by at least 75%. The post of Special Adviser should be severely scrutinised as a cost-saving opportunity. Special Advisers should be reduced in number by 80%. Special Advisers should revert to being used part-time and on demand, as the need arises, not permanent. There is something called fiscal responsibility. As interest rates remain the highest in the world, except for some ‘Favoured Areas’ and the naira plunges lower and lower because of political profligacy, can we say we have a government demonstrating fiscal responsibility? Will this be a debate question during the elections?

In addition to the political questions around the budgetary waste, we must ask hard economic questions. Why is our oil not being bought by many countries? It is because of shale oil and oil at nearer points than Nigeria to the countries in need. For example, Angola and Ghana are nearer to the US and UK markets than Nigeria. So why would they buy from Nigeria? Is the Nigerian market as business friendly as the markets of Angola and Ghana for example. Has Nigeria started producing enough kerosene? Why have we not, as a gas-producing nation not moved from kerosene to gas for cooking? As a tropical nation, why have not moved more massively into renewable energy like solar energy? As the people brace up for the political and financial mayhem about to be unleashed in the name of democratic elections, is any politician offering hope in these areas? Manifestos are easier to write than practice.

The impossible and too often impassable Ibadan-Lagos road is under punishingly slow repair. We sympathise with the family of the contractor murdered on the expressway. Beyond that malicious tragedy, must we suffer a near-death experience in order to smile in Nigeria? So many missed meetings, so many millions of wasted hours and billions in lost opportunities on a road that should have been made six lanes over 30 years ago. When first approved, it was supposed to be a six lane road, three-a-side. Instead, the government upgraded airport road in Abuja into a misplaced 10-lane ‘masterpiece’ just to rub our noses in their disgraceful arrogance of power while showing us that they actually know the right thing to do even if they put it in the wrong place. Unfortunately, those long charged with the responsibility for good roads are loaded down with National Honours for their dishonour. With their ill-gotten proceeds of unexecuted or improperly ‘executed’ contracts, they then seek other political offices like governorship and NASS membership unmindful of the deaths and delays from contract failures!

We again ask what it costs the federal government supervising engineering team and indeed the minister[s] of works and transport, demanding better, one or two feet wider, usable lanes with smoother surfaces in the interest of the comfort of and human rights of millions of fellow Nigerian babies, children, women and children who are forced to use the roads daily?

It is very sad that government responds to the ‘ember months’ as special times to fix the roads. Roads and road users kill and maim all year round and not during ‘ember’ months only. So please fix the roads and potholes year round to save many lives and much property in ‘non-ember months’. Travellers in ‘non-ember months’ have as much right to smooth safe journeys as in ‘ember months’ of September, November and December.

PS Thanks to those who came to my performance of ‘You Do Not Know Me’ in Lagos.

November 26, 2014
Wingless Eagles!

Mad enough, a treacherous, lousy Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign ended with the Super Eagles of Nigeria, the current champions, spectacularly failing to get the required result right in front of their home fans at the last hurdle. With this, they crashed out of contention for the ultimate African football glory. And so, for the second time, the Cup of Nations will be played without a defending champion come January/February 2015.

Nigerians are still in shock, trying to rationalize just how a team that shone so brightly in South Africa, last year, could have had such a wretched outing in the just concluded qualifying series, culminating in a limp exit. Of course, this is setting the team’s pedigree against the background of the fact that they were involved in a group in which bookmakers would have ordinarily concluded that picking one of two spots was a-given. In Group A of the African Cup of Nations qualifying series, was Nigeria alongside South Africa – a team still feeling its way through football on the continent since its golden period of the mid-90s until the early 2000s. The South Africans have always struggled to survive under the shadow of their more illustrious Super Eagles opponents whom they had hardly ever even picked a point off in football. There was also a plucky Congo (Brazzaville) team that had failed to qualify for the tournament since the 2000 edition. And then, there was a Sudanese team who had been a lacklustre force in African football and had never, ever even scored a goal against Nigeria.

Now, given this statistical and historical edge Nigeria had against the other teams in the group, it was certainly too hard to believe that Nigeria could not pick one of the two automatic qualifying spots. However, with six unconvincing performances and a measly eight points, the African champions limped out of the qualification with their chance of defending their crown come January 2015, emphatically ended. In the final, decisive match against South Africa on Wednesday last week in Uyo, the Eagles only managed a 2-2 draw when an outright victory would have taken them to 10 points and given them second spot behind the already-qualified South Africans. It was perhaps instructive of the wretched journey through the series that the team’s ultimate implosion came in Uyo, a few kilometres from neighbouring Calabar, in Cross River State, where the path to perdition was laid by the home team on September 6, when they lost the first match of the series 3-2 to Congo, a loss they never recovered from. Now, a lot of people are busy with forensic examination of the tragedy that Nigeria’s qualifying campaign was.

But then forensic examinations have never come any easier to conduct if you eschew unnecessary sentiments and look at the picture matter-of-factly. The on-off relationship between Stephen Keshi, the Super Eagles’ coach and the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, certainly did not help matters. It would be recalled that on Thursday, October 16, the NFF had announced the sacking of Keshi as the Super Eagles coach. This followed several tension-filled months dating back to the Nations Cup in South Africa, during which time it seemed that even as the most successful indigenous coach to ever handle the Super Eagles, Keshi was perennially living on borrowed time. Such a poisoned atmosphere never augurs well for a team, no matter the difference in opinion.

And speaking of differences, it seems that Keshi has always been too ‘different’ even for his own good. This, no doubt, affected his team selection many times as he was always at loggerheads with this player or that player. For instance, he only recalled striker Ikechukwu Uche to the fold for the final two matches of the qualifying campaign after keeping the player in the cold since the Nations Cup in South Africa. This was despite repeated calls from many Nigerians and the good form the player exhibited for Almeria, his Spanish league club. Keshi also famously had fallouts that ended up robbing the team of the services of some of its best players at crucial times.

Looking back on the Uyo match, one may also have to ask why it seemed that the Super Eagles did not have a plan as to what to do with set pieces other than to simply lump the ball towards the penalty area and hope that there is a lucky connection in favour of the team. Tactically more astute teams always seem to be able to be inventive with set pieces and while they don’t always work to plan, at least, it keeps providing the opponent with surprises. At the last World Cup, Costa Rica, for instance, tried a particular routine on free-kicks three or so times in their group game against Uruguay and eventually got a goal from it in the second half. France scored their second goal against Nigeria from what was an intelligently executed corner kick routine. And there is where you put the blame on the doorstep of Keshi and the coaching crew.

But the team’s problems obviously run deeper than Keshi. For one, Nigeria currently lacks enough players playing regularly at the highest level of club football, so match sharpness seems to always be an issue. That fact was cruelly exposed at the last World Cup when Nigeria got as far as they could by qualifying for the round of 16. Anything else would have been a bonus, a huge one, given the overall playing quality of the team. Removed from the sterner test of the global stage and the likes of Argentina, Nigeria admittedly had enough to do better against the lesser might of the likes of South Africa, Congo and Sudan.

This means that the team has problems that are not related to skill only. Starting from the performances at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, it was clear that there are all sorts of problems with the Super Eagles. This is not to say that the issues were not there even when they won the CAN in South Africa anyway. The fact is that a coach may be able to coach many things into a footballer, but then there are occasions when you expect a team to put its life on the line for the cause. You will be hard pressed to find higher motivation than to play a must-win match in front of your own fans, against an opponent that had hardly ever picked points off you, and who in this case, does not have the added pressure of needing the points to advance. Yet, that was the scenario the Super Eagles handled with such lifeless, insipid and uninspired approach last Wednesday.

Obviously, the reasons for Nigeria’s ultimately doomed qualifying campaign are many, but the hope is that by the time the next competitive engagement comes around, the football authorities would have imbibed enough lessons from this latest failure of grand proportions. However, we must learn to keep aside our sense of entitlement as far as football is concerned and realize that we must grow football from its roots up if we are to find our true bearings, rather than our continued accidental or artificial success in the game. Going into the Nations Cup come January, 2015, Algeria will be one of the early favourites. The beauty of that is that starting from the 2010 Nations Cup in Angola and then the World Cup in South Africa later that year, one could see that the Maghreb nation was quietly building its national team. What they have done during the past four years is to accept their inadequacy and go into tournaments more focused on collective progress and the long term result than expecting to win. Today, they are Africa’s most organised, technically astute and formidable team. And if they end up winning the cup in February, it will not be a shock. We can toe a similar path. We simply must be more realistic in our expectation and become more committed to the positive growth of the sport by building better stadia, committing more resources, and the whole gamut.

November 26, 2014
The Banana Republic and its police

Originally, the term ‘Banana Republic’ referred to small countries which are politically unstable, dependent on a primary agricultural export and are ruled by a wealthy and corrupt clique. Their police forces are often brutal, corrupt and engage in human rights abuses. They are intolerant of political dissent.

Over time the term has evolved – moving away from the sense of some tiny country whose economy revolves around banana plantations or some other similar primary export. Today, countries struggling with rampant corruption and political instability, mass unemployment, wage inequalities, poor social services and where the security forces are used to oppress their own people define the concept of the ‘Banana Republic.’

As I tried to make sense of the actions of the Nigerian police, Department of State Security (DSS) agents and soldiers who laid siege to the National Assembly last Thursday, the phrase ‘Banana Republic’ leapt at me. It was not for nothing. A series of events – beyond that day’s madness – pointed to the fact that Nigeria ticks most of the boxes to be so classified.

Ever since the images and story of that morning’s assault on legislators went viral, a number of senior administration officials have been fingered as having ordered the siege in an attempt to block Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, who had defected from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) from presiding.

I am not bothered about the identity of the official that gave the orders. Knowing the way Nigeria operates, there’s no way security forces can storm the National Assembly and shut out lawmakers without getting their matching orders from the very top. To suggest that ‘Oga at the top’ was unaware is even more scary as it conjures images of a moving train with no one at the controls.

This latest incident is confirmation of the damage that has been done and is still being done to the Nigerian police. Over the years, a succession of pliant force leaders have acquiesced in turning an institution that is part of our commonwealth into the enforcement arm of whichever government controls the center. That can only spell trouble going into an election year.

In the dying days of the Second Republic, the then Inspector-General of Police, Sunday Adewusi, unashamedly made it clear the police would further the interests of the then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) over and above those of the other parties. His commissioner in the old Anambra State, Bishop Eyitene, humiliated the then Governor Jim Nwobodo, severally.

Even before last Thursday’s display at the National Assembly the police and some of their sister services showed that they had not changed from their servile ways. They don’t behave like a force operating in a democracy, but more like oppressors and conquerors.

Many still remember how the former Rivers State police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, turned him himself into the personal adversary of the Governor Rotimi Amaechi. At one point his men tear-gassed Government House, Port Harcourt. Following his transfer to Abuja, he bragged about being a lion who had caged the pesky governor.

In the run-up to the Ekiti governorship elections in June, Vice President Namadi Sambo showed up in Ado-Ekiti for a PDP rally – prompting the police to, again, show their true colours. That same day former Governor, Kayode Fayemi, who was traversing the town, had an altercation with a police officer who was particularly rude. I recollect his response when someone drew his attention to the fact that he was talking to the governor.

He said: “Which governor? Who is governor when Vice President is in town? I don’t know any governor!” He said that to Fayemi’s face and hearing.

In the same Ekiti, the week that seven legislators in a 26-person house sat to approve Governor Ayo Fayose’s nominees, the police provided the stiff arm to keep the governor’s opponents away until the illegality had been perfected.

When Tambuwal defected to APC, it was the police that pronounced he had lost his Speakership – not the courts! The scandalous nature of the force’s presumption in usurping judicial duties is till date still lost on its leadership, as they continue to defend their indefensible decision to withdraw his security details.

Since the Speaker’s defection, several members of the House and three erstwhile APC senators from Ogun State have crossed party lines. I don’t recollect the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, stripping them of their orderlies and ordering them not to enter the National Assembly precincts.

Examples of outrageous conduct by the police across the country make for embarrassing reading. But they carry on this way because our political leadership is so parochial. Small men in big offices don’t bother about elevating our democratic experience; they are more concerned with manipulating the coercive instruments of state to extend their grip on power and privilege.

One of the worst things about the Goodluck Jonathan administration is its lack of originality. For someone who promised to be a breath of fresh air, it’s a shame that he and his team always run back to the template of impunity designed by the first PDP president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

Long before the incumbent found himself unexpectedly president, his predecessor walked this lawless path. In the heat of his quarrels with his then deputy, Obasanjo sacked Atiku Abubakar’s aides and stripped him of every privilege of office he was entitled to as Vice President – including security details.

It was all because he defected to another party after the president had frustrated him out of PDP. Atiku went to court and won a famous victory that allowed him to continue as VP until the last day of his tenure.

It was under Obasanjo that former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye and one-time Oyo State Governor, Rasheed Ladoja, were ‘impeached’ by a minority of members of their respective houses of assembly. The then president sustained the illegality because he could order the police and soldiers around. Ultimately, the courts overturned the sham impeachments – much to the shame of the ruling party and its government.

Although the Nigerian constitution recognizes the executive, judiciary and legislature as independent but equal arms of government, Obasanjo pioneered a doctrine that sought to make legislators appendages of Aso Villa. He and the party worked actively to install their lackeys in legislative leadership. Where they failed they spent their days plotting to topple the incumbents until they had their way.

The latest political crisis can be remotely traced to the fact that Jonathan also attempted to foist his yes-men and women upon the House of Representatives only to be embarrassed by an assertive chamber that decided to chart an independent course under Tambuwal. Aso Villa had never been comfortable with a Speaker it didn’t make and things were bound to come to a head one day.

What happened on Thursday is a watershed in the development of Nigeria’s democracy. As the brave and heroic lawmakers risked injury scaling the locked gates, they were serving notice that Nigerians would no longer be cowed by a force that has turned into an oppressor of the very tax payers who pay its bills. They were saying that this country would not be ruled by some Inspector General of Police but by the will of the people reflected in their elected representatives.

I have been entertained by some ‘commentators’ who have tried to turn what played out on last Thursday into some so-called ‘show of shame’ on the part of the lawmakers just because they scaled the gates to access their chamber.

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a man screaming loudly because his balls are being squeezed in a vice. In walks this advocate of acceptable public conduct to berate the suffering fellow for disturbing the peace, were he to switch places with the noisemaker, he wouldn’t be so dignified. Clearly, some people never heard of cause and effect.

The heat triggered by the attempt to forcibly oust Tambuwal is so unnecessary. Jonathan and his people could have gone to court to challenge the defection. They didn’t because despite their preachments they don’t really believe in the rule of law. So they resort to self help. Like we saw a few days ago, it always ends badly.

November 23, 2014
South Africa’s dead and Nigeria’s forgotten hordes

On Saturday, October 15, 2014 South Africa executed a clinical military/civilian operation to repatriate 74 of her citizens who perished when a six-storey guesthouse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations on September 12. In all it is suspected that close to 80 persons from that country may have lost their lives in that disaster.

In the intervening two months while DNA tests were being carried out the South Africans piled unrelenting pressure in the media and through diplomatic channels seeking a proper accounting for, and the repatriation of their dead. President Jacob Zuma even appointed one of his ministers, Jeff Radebe, as Special Envoy to Nigeria for the sole purpose of bringing the Synagogue dead back home.

Mind you some of the remains had badly deteriorated because of the delay in allowing emergency services access to the site of the tragedy. In the end because of very high humidity in these parts, putrefaction set in quickly. Still, the South Africans desperately pushed to recover their dead – the good, bad and ugly. What a lesson in human dignity and concern for your people.

The number of her citizens that died at Synagogue is nowhere near the body count from some Boko Haram attacks. The Nyanya Motor Park, Abuja, attack alone produced a gory harvest of at least 88 bodies. After a quick photo-op at the hospital, President Goodluck Jonathan sped off to Kano to dance at a rally for a defecting politician.

The day after a suicide bomber eviscerated 47 school kids in Potiskum, and with images of their broken limbs making many sick online, our humble, caring president was dancing again at Eagle Square – listening to sycophants telling him all was well in the land.

Ever week hundreds are slaughtered in our killing fields. The response from those charged with protecting lives and property is to issue another canned press statement threatening to deal decisively with the perpetrators. We don’t treat our people – living or dead – with dignity. Is it any surprise that other countries find it convenient to trample all over us?

November 23, 2014
‘Our Girls’; Chibok retaken?; ‘You Do Not Know Me’: Promote your talents

Our Girls are still missing since April. And Chibok, the home of many of their anguished parents, is under attack, capture and recapture. The Boko Haram War is a war and not a skirmish and it must be won in Nigeria’s favour with humane handling of refugees and victims. The frequently used retreat to Sambisa and other forests must be cut off to prevent this back and forth battle. I am always amazed at how little I really know about those around me and how little they know about me. We all begin at the starting line of life as children offered opportunities to learn. There we imbibe and interact with the influences that will develop some talents and skills and drop others. We hone the chosen ones into professional skills. Imagine we all start with 10 equal skills. Over time some are suppressed and others are developed. An easy example is singing. Almost everyone except me can sing and sing well. I was excused from my St Gregory’s College entire school choir in 1964. Most of you readers have good voices but you only sing in the shower. That talent, the voice, is one of the most suppressed. These suppressed talents may manifest in hobbies. I am sure you can add your own particular expertise that we know little about.

Open the box and unleash those skills for pleasure and for lowering your blood pressure. Yes, you may make some money from talents. Talents may decay or remain in the drawer or cupboard only to be discovered and discarded when you are gone. Then they will just be thrown away along with other things you hold dear. Many products of such talents have been burnt in the garden fires to make space for tomorrow.

I will give you my own example, not as a boast, but as a template to use to do better. ‘You do not know me!’ You think you know me. You judge me based on this column and hearsay. I also judge you, with incomplete information. It is what humans do with their tiny brains. They see, hear judge and jump to damning conclusions. The tongue is the worst weapon on earth as it starts wars requiring more tongues to end the war. The human feels the urgent need to be an authority and to be judgemental without the responsibility of logic. The human jumps to conclusions based on the incomplete world of the ‘here and now and the yesterday’. For the human the ‘I’s have it every time. ‘I am, I was, I think, I know’.

My template: Over many years I have been favoured with a cherished medical practice which has offered me a wonderful and sometimes stressful opportunity to participate in the lives of many others. In between patients, I have put down ideas as stories in several books for all ages covering poetry, novels and short stories. It has been difficult getting published and once published getting sold has been a nightmare as most publishers seem to have an anti-social policy of non-promotion of writers and another criminal policy of not paying accurate royalties which stand at just 10% of the book cover price. The writer usually writes to be read. The unread writer is dead. To overcome a country lacking a powerful book reading culture, I have been forced under the name ‘You Do Not Know Me’ to put together programme to challenge us all to deliver our talents and hobbies to the wider world.

I have put together a Children’s Matinee at the Chamber of Commerce on Saturday November 22, at 12noon. This is followed the same day by a short film and sketches performed by professionals based on my writings for presentation at 6pm at the Chamber of Commerce, Victoria Island on Saturday November 22. You are invited.

In addition I always have a camera when I travel particularly on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and I keep it near me at work. I have taken over 10,000 photographs of situations, flora and fauna. I have shown some to friends to break the boredom of doing nothing mentally challenging or constructive for hours at parties. Rather than go quietly into the night, I decided to show them at a photo exhibition. I selected 70 photographs from my collection and ‘doctored’ them on the computer for a PhotoArt Exhibition at Didi Museum in Victoria Island, Lagos closing tomorrow Thursday November 19, at 6pm. You are invited.

The message above is not really about whether you come to my shows. It is to irritate you enough to outdo what I have done under the name ‘You Do Not Know Me’. Start your self-examination, re-examine, and reinvent yourself as someone arising from your hobbies. Do not allow your talents and hobbies to remain in a drawer of cupboard. Impress your children, your office colleagues with any of a hundred other talents. Others do it. When we attend international conferences, there is an evening for all the professionals to showcase talents. It is fun to see a distinguished professor of surgery or philosophy or economics sing, recite poetry, juggle plates or play the trumpet. Nigerians spend so much time at parties it makes sense for party organisers to include an open microphone segment for guests to show their talents. Having such outlets is of personal psychological value and promotes self-esteem and may be of financial value.

November 19, 2014