The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Nigeria: Beyond the Ceasefire

    Nigeria: Beyond the Ceasefire

    It was largely unexpected. But when it came, it came with a bang. Everybody was held spell-bound. Perhaps, this illustrates the news that filtered in last Friday to the effect that the Federal Government and the Boko Haram terrorists have agreed to cease hostility. Announcing the ceasefire in Abuja at the end of the conference on Nigeria-Cameroun Trans-Border Military Operations, Alex Badeh, an Air Chief Marshal and Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, told a bewildered nation that “the agreement to cease fire has being concluded and all involved are to comply”. This is ostensibly to give room for negotiations.

    Although, the terms of agreement are not yet clear, it was learnt that one of the major requests of the government is the release of the Chibok schoolgirls. Boko Haram terrorists had kidnapped more than 276 schoolgirls on the night of April 14, more than 190 days ago, from Chibok, a sleepy community in Borno State. Till date, the girls are being held captive at unknown location(s). The kidnap has attracted international condemnation, leading to the now famous #BringBackOurGirls# protests across the globe. On their part, the terrorists were said to have demanded for the unconditional release of some of their ‘fighters’ in the custody of the Nigerian military.

    It appears that Nigeria’s close collaboration with the governments of Chad and Niger Republic, led to the yet-to-be firmed up truce. Though the identity of those negotiating on behalf of the Federal Government is still shrouded in secrecy but the representatives of Boko Haram were said to have been led by one Danladi Ahmadu who is said to be the group’s Chief Security Officer. General Idriss Derby, the Chadian President, facilitated the entire ceasefire deal.

    The sudden news of the Federal Government striking a ceasefire deal with Boko Haram, the blood-thirsty and ruthless fundamentalist group, seems to be a breakthrough many people in Nigeria and the international community had long awaited. It is believed to be the first step in the journey to finding lasting peace after several years of death and destruction that has gripped Nigeria and threatened the country’s sovereignty. President Goodluck Jonathan had told the United Nations General Assembly last month that the extremists had killed at least 13,000 civilians. Hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes, many of them farmers, causing a food emergency in the north-east of the country where the terrorists’ campaign is domiciled with collateral effect on other parts of the country.

    The transition of the group to suicide bombings and open commando-style attacks across its areas of operation in the North-east and other parts of the country, including Abuja, the seat of government, over time, added new dimensions to the wave of terrorism in the country. The abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls on April 14, this year, remains a huge testament to how sophisticated the group had become. Some days after the abduction, Abubakar Shekau, the unabashed leader of the group of death merchants, threatened that he would sell the girls. Two months after, a man claiming to be the deputy leader of Boko Haram, gave a radio interview in which he claimed that the terrorist group had held preliminary peace talks with Namadi Sambo, Nigeria’s Vice-President, in Saudi Arabia. The group issued a statement two days later rejecting the claim and disowning the man as an impostor. Appeals by stakeholders, including the United States, United Kingdom and others could not make the terrorists shift ground. Instead, dozens more schoolgirls and boys, young women and men, have been kidnapped by the terrorists in a five-year-old reign of terror.

    Many attempts have been made in the past, by the Federal Government, to contain the activities of the group either on the battlefield or at the conference table but all to no avail. After five years of almost relentless death and destruction, this ceasefire offers a modicum of relief particularly to Nigeria’s northeast geo-political zone and the whole country in general. There is now hope for a period of calm as serious negotiations for a broader deal get going between the Federal Government and Boko Haram. But a number of thorny issues are yet to be tackled, including Boko Haram’s demilitarisation, as well as the mechanics for monitoring the ceasefire. Even more contentious is how the territories like Gwoza, Bama and the other communities now being occupied by Boko Haram, are going to be handed back to their legitimate Local Government  Authority. Without resolving all these issues and many more, the current ceasefire agreement is as opaque as anything.

    In my candid opinion, I do not think there is anything to jubilate over yet, at least, for now. My fear is that Boko Haram might have agreed to a ceasefire following recent renewed onslaughts on their positions by the Nigerian military. This offensive had recorded significant success including the death of Abubakar Shekau, the terrorists’ leader, either in his original form or in the form of an impostor masquerading as the original Shekau. This turn of event has delivered a devastating blow on the operational capabilities of the terrorists, hence, their resolve to call or accept a truce, possibly, to enable them to re-strategise and plan. This is why I believe the current ceasefire is unnecessary and ill-timed. Already, the killings in the affected areas by the terrorists have not abated even with the ceasefire in place. The military should have been allowed to completely decimate them by pursuing them to any level before such a ceasefire could be contemplated.

    If the military had been allowed to chase them to say, Cameroon, there is no way they could have survived. The Cameroonians would have mowed them down or apprehended them. As it is, this truce could potentially afford them the opportunity to plan and re-arm themselves for more destructive and destabilising exploits. Another thing is that, contrary to expectations and what we are being told, the terrorists, who are simply blood-thirsty, may not release the Chibok girls after all. They may have promised to release them as a ploy to buy time.  If we look at it critically, the terrorists are still holding on to Gwoza, Bama and other communities in the North-east which they have delineated as Islamic Caliphate. With Nigerian territories firmly in their hands, why should the Federal Government want to negotiate?

    The issue of the Chibok girls which Boko Haram is now using as bait, reminds me of

    the Beslan School hostage crisis, also referred to as the Beslan School siege or Beslan massacre, whichstarted on September 1, 2004, and lasted for three days. It involved the capture of about 1,100 people, including 777 children, as hostages. After three days of standoff, the whole saga ended on the third day, that is, September 3, 2004, when Russian security forces entered the building after several explosions, using heavy weapons. At least 334 people were killed as a result of the crisis, including 186 children, with a significant number of people either injured or reported missing.

    The lesson to be learnt here is that rather than negotiating with the terrorists or meeting any of their demands at all, as the Federal Government is now doing or is about to do with Boko Haram, the Russian government plunged itself headlong into the crisis and successfully got rid of the terrorists. Though at a high cost in terms of human casualties, that action drove fear into other would-be terrorists who have since kept their distance. That is exactly what we should have done long ago instead of allowing the terrorists to flex muscles and railroad the government into the negotiating table. It will only embolden the terrorists who have adopted brigandage as a way of life. As it is now, the ceasefire we now have doesn’t seem like a military affair. It is a political ceasefire. And I doubt if the military had any input in all these.

    Anyway, though the terms of the ceasefire agreement are yet to be made public, nevertheless, the hope is that both parties would respect the terms of the agreement and allow genuine peace to return to the country.

     

  • Inter-faith dialogue and national question

    Inter-faith dialogue and national question

    Karl Marx famously considered religion as the opium of the masses. By this, he meant that religion serves an ideological purpose which the elites, especially in modern industrial societies, deploy to further their dominance over the workers who are oppressed and suppressed for the sake of capital. As opium, religion serves two sinister purposes for the elites. In the first place, it deadens the senses of the people to their oppression. Religion therefore provides sites and insights that enjoin us all to obey authorities. More importantly, it becomes a tool which a self-serving segment of the elites that qualifies to be tagged the unscrupulous leadership core, employs to further their diabolical designs which, in most cases, are contrary to the noble objectives of building a nation into a space where citizens can collective work together under a national banner. In this context, it takes little reflection to see that religion would in that sense be antagonistic to the noble design of building a nation of individuals who belong to different faiths. On the contrary, the dream of nationhood is often stalled by the very elites who ought to be at the forefront of national sentiments and nation-affirming values. One of those values, of course, is inter-faith dialogue.

    Among other things, human beings are religious beings; we all have an inner spiritual core which longs for transcendence. This longing derives from the nature of the world and its mysteries. We have been blessed with the senses and with rationality that enables the glories of scientific observations and experimentations. With these instruments, we have been able to pluck the heavens and the firmaments; we split the atom and unravelled its significance; we have battled diseases and plagues in their various horrific manifestations; we have travelled to the outer spaces and revealed Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and even Pluto in its cold nethermost part. Yet, science has failed to exhaust the mysteries of the world; science has failed to dim man’s longing for transcendence. There is no surprise therefore that the great Albert Einstein proclaims loudly that ‘Science without religion is lame.’

    When we therefore enshrine the fundamental human right to religious expression in our constitutions, we recognise that every individual has the right to seek an understanding of these mysteries in whatsoever way s/he deems fit. Religion constitutes a framework for perceiving the beauty and the vicissitudes of a strange and dazzling universe; religion is a shock absorber for human beings who are only a grain of sand in the universal scheme of things. We have been told that when we die, the universe hardly notices. Yet, our faiths assure us that we matter in the cosmic order. We are not just infinitesimally inconsequential. Religion allows us to reach beyond ourselves. It allows us to reach into the dark void of the unknown, and the dim penumbra of our experiences. With faith, we face our fears and personal demons.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. places his hand on the essence of religion when he remarks that ‘A religion true to its natures must also be concerned about man’s social conditions. Religion deals with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.’ At the centre of any worthwhile religion therefore is a deep spiritual awareness of our lives as a conduit for the intervention of a transcendent force in the betterment of the world and the lives of fellow humans. When religion therefore pierces the mysteries of the universe and of life, the knowledge it bequeaths is supposed to radiate our lives in the glow of the supernatural characters and virtues—love, kindness, empathy, compassion, hospitality, understanding, prudence, courage, justice, hope, etc.

    Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state. And secularity decrees that church and state must be separated in such a manner that the state and its functionaries do not promote any specific religious affiliation. However, in practice, Nigerians are deeply religious people, and this is demonstrated by the proliferation of so many places of worship and religious festivals that the state recognises. This would seem to imply that the hope of definitely and constitutionally excising religion from the affairs of the state may be a pipe dream that does not coincide with reality. And the reality is simply that the state has to deal with religion both in its private and public manifestations. We employ religious rhetoric in our political speeches, the second stanza of our national anthem is a clear religious invocation to the Almighty, and beyond any doubt, religion affects our national affairs.

    If properly tempered, therefore, religion portends some unique possibilities for secularity. Yet, our collective experience seems to suggest that citizenship and spirituality don’t mix. Religion, contrary to the modernisation theorists, has been resurging back into human affairs for a while now. And its basic point of confrontation is the secular state. In its fundamentalist form, religious awakening challenges our initial hypothesis that a spiritual person will make a good citizen. In fact, for the fundamentalist, a good religious person is one that undermines a state as long as such a state is not running on the specific precepts of a specifically revealed Scripture. The fact of terrorism seems to underscore the sceptical statement of Karl Marx that religion is nothing more than an elaborate opiate that points people’s attention to the heavens and a God they cannot see, but unfortunately indoctrinate them into a somnambulist state that ensures that their backs are turned to their fellow humans and citizens they can see and relate with. Jonathan Swift, the Anglo-Irish writer, beautifully summed up the unfortunate situation: ‘We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.’

    In its atavistic form, the modernisation theorists would be right to argue that religion doesn’t deserve any worthwhile role in national and secular affairs. These theorists argue that religious atavism will wither away as we become more civilised and modern. They have been proven both wrong and right. Religion has refused to wither away; and it is still violently atavistic. It instinctively fuels hatred rather than love and compassion in us towards fellow citizens, and it challenges our secular foundation. The fundamental question therefore is: Why can’t we see eye to eye in the name of the same God? Why does spirituality excite violence rather than compassion? We will proceed at this point to attempt to answer this question.

    If, as Jonathan Swift prophetically remarked many decades ago, ‘We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another,’ then we can begin to imagine how religious hate can ignite a national combustion within Nigeria’s plural existence. If spirituality does not enhance citizenship, then the alternative could only be a volatile situation that pits Nigerians against one another in violent religious frenzies. Unfortunately, we have our present predicament as a very sad testament to the negative resurgence of religious fundamentalism. The Boko Haram insurgence, and the many other religious violence that had preceded it, only reveals that religion is not yet suitably fitted into our secular framework in Nigeria in spite of all our religious rhetoric and invocations to a Supreme God of Creation who is supposed to direct our noble cause.

    When a man slaughters another in the name of God, what is at stake? What could possibly make a man call on a God of peace and compassion and yet be so brutish and violent? Why is inter-faith relationship and dialogue seemingly impossible, especially in Nigeria where three religions must necessarily coexist? The three major religions that seem to have the reserve of volatility are Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The three are Abrahamic in the sense that they all have their root in the Scriptural sojourn of Abraham.

    The rhetoric of religious absolutism is: You’re either for us or you are against us. It is therefore not difficult to see how such an antagonistic religious prism would generate enough hatred that would inevitably draw Nigerians away from the hope of a shared national value. Religious absolutism breeds intolerance, spiritual ego, a closed and fanatic mind and a fundamentalist perspective that insist that if you don’t join this religion, you die! The Boko Haram insurgence is the latest manifestation of fundamentalist thinking that Nigeria has generated; it may not be the last. And so, we are forced back to the two cogent points we raised in the first part of this series. The first is that religion has more in stock for humans beyond its present negative use. The second point is that religion ought to make a person a good citizen of a country. These two points are cogent if we are to make any head way with the project of national integration and development in Nigeria.

    The best argument for inter-faith dialogue in Nigeria is actually a simple one: We are all Nigerians, and we all rise or fall together in spite of our different religions. The Boko Haram insurgence is actually not favourable to Muslims and Christians. We are all under fundamentalist fire. By this fact, it implies that as Nigerians we all have an overriding interest in speaking to one another in a bid to provide the framework for a viable coexistence. The alternative, as Boko Haram is teaching us presently, is nationally unpalatable. To be truly spiritual, we all have an obligation to reproduce heaven in Nigeria. Heaven is reciprocal affection for the other person as a human creation of a humane God.

    Inter-faith dialogue therefore begins from the necessity of spiritualising our existence as Nigerians. This essentially requires that we secularise the religious values central to each religion and transform them into civic virtues. Islam springs from a fundamental ‘Submission to the will of Allah,’ and Christianity implies the followership of the ‘Prince of peace.’ The traditional religion prides itself on its non-violent and humanist foundation. All three further pride themselves as the repository of cardinal virtues that make for spirituality—love, compassion, mercy, hospitality, temperance, justice, prudence, diligence, kindness, humility, etc. It is not difficult to see how these virtues can become civic. Civic virtues are those behaviour, temperaments, attitudes and habits that are critical for the survival of any community. They include: trustworthiness, reciprocity, friendliness, politeness, cooperation, political participation, honesty, brotherhood, and so on.

     

    • Dr. Olaopa is Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Communication Technology, Abuja.
  • Yet another open letter to Lt-General T. Y. Danjuma

    Yet another open letter to Lt-General T. Y. Danjuma

    For the third time in almost eleven years to this month, I wish to write an open letter to you to plead for your intervention on the side of principle on an issue which is a matter of national concern. This, of course, is the serious constitutional crisis in your home state, Taraba, a crisis which has arisen as a result of the serious injuries the state’s governor, Mr Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, suffered when his private aircraft he was flying crashed.

    That constitutional crisis has been hanging fire for over three years now and a solution to it does not seem to be in sight, thanks basically to the jostling for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s ticket for the state’s governorship election next year

    The first time I wrote you an open letter on these pages was on November 19 2003. On that occasion I borrowed the title of an open letter my good friend and cerebral columnist of The Nation, Professor Adebayo Williams, had written to you in Tell newsmagazine (June 1,1998) In that letter he expressed his deep dismay at your silence over moves by General Sani Abacha to shed his khaki for mufti as the country’s leader, a move he almost succeeded in making but for his sudden and mysterious death.

    Your silence, Williams said, was eloquent but was certainly not golden as it was likely to have been interpreted as support for Abacha’s sit tight agenda which Williams believed, not without good cause, could lead to the kind of mass killings that had occurred in Rwanda. Hence his title for his open letter to you which I stole, i.e., “The road to Kigali”, Kigali being the capital of Rwanda.

    In my own letter, I alluded to William’s and said your long defence of, indeed participation in, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration until the two of you fell apart, helped Obasanjo in no small measure to successfully carry out his strategy of using religion to further divide the North to rule Nigeria. I said then that by the time you came out late in 2003 and lambasted him for running a regime under what you described as the spell of a cult-like clique, it was too little, too late.

    My second open letter to you dated September 4, last year, was to urge you to learn the lesson of your initial support for Obasanjo and speak out and act on principle so that History will not judge you as looking the other way when a cabal was doing all it could to stop Suntai from being replaced by someone as acting governor essentially because of his religion.

    The Taraba crisis, I said, may not have been exactly like the crisis of President Goodluck Jonathan’s succession of a very sick President Umaru Yar’adua, but the two were similar; in both cases a clique tried its all to sustain the make-belief that a visibly very ill incumbent was well enough to govern.

    In Yar’adua’s case you stood up for principle and called on Yar’adua to resign or be declared unfit to govern. Nigerians applauded your stand even though at the time Yar’adua was in no state of mind to resign even if he was inclined to; such was the gravity of his illness. Some of us who had called on him to resign – I, for one, did so twice on these pages when the man was still in possession of his faculty, first on September 10, 2008 and second on December 2,2009 –joined in the public applause of your principled stand.

    “History,” I said in concluding the said open letter to you, “must not judge you to have maintained an eloquent but not golden silence when some power-hungry cabal seem determined to set the state ablaze against the spirit, if not the letter, of our Constitution.”

    It’s been over a year since that letter and matters in your home state seem to have only gotten worse not better, thanks to what many see, not merely as your silence but, indeed, as being in the forefront of those implacably opposed to Suntai being replaced by anyone other than a Christian.

    I, for one, do not want to believe you hate non-Christians that much because I know many of your closest friends, associates and admirers – the business mogul, Alhaji Ahmadu Chanchangi of Chanchangi Air fame, General Muhammadu Buhari, Malam Abba Kyari whom you put in charge of your billion-Naira donation to the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria foundation last year, and Malam Adamu Adamu, Trust’s ace columnist and our resident Ayatollah at the New Nigerian and the defunct Citizen newsmagazine, to name just a few – are Muslims. There are indeed many of your close Christian confidants who judge Buhari wrongly as a Muslim fundamentalist, in the worst sense of the word. Yet that has not stooped you from supporting his presidential ambition morally or otherwise.

    Initially you seemed to have supported Alhaji Garba Umar as Acting Governor. Sources close to you said you changed your mind when Suntai was flown back from his treatment abroad for the first time to resume office and Umar apparently not only refused to let go, but showed a desire for a complete term of his own from next year. From that point on you refused, like so many of those implacably opposed to him, notably Senator Emmanuel Bwacha, to even recognise him as acting governor and always referred to him as Deputy Governor.

    Your latter antipathy to Umar was said to have been based on his reneging on an understanding that he was merely to complete Suntai’s second term and give way to a governor from South Taraba which has never produced one and which is mainly Christian.

    Sir, I have always been against power rotation in principle but I completely agree with you that the word, even the mere understanding of a gentleman, should be his honour. If Umar gave his word or even merely understood that he was only to complete Suntai’s term, he is honour bound not to contest for the governorship next year.

    Problem, however, was that when President Jonathan gave his word in 2011 that he would serve only one term of his own but reneged on it, you did not, sir, speak out in moral outrage at the president’s change of mind. That would not justify Umar’s ambition. But it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for people not to accuse you of double standards.

    And now to complicate matters even more, you are said to have single-handedly anointed a successor to Suntai against the decision of the elders of Southern Taraba who in their own wisdom had picked one, Chief David Sabo Kente, out of a list of 13. Since then your alternative choice of Architect Darius Dickson Ishaku, the Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, has led to serious acrimony among your followers and admirers in the state.

    Worse still speculations are now rife that should the constitutional step the authorities in the state have taken in setting up a medical panel to confirm Suntai’s state of mind reach the almost certain conclusion that he is not in a fit mind to govern the state you are, to say the least, not averse to moves being made to impeach both Suntai and Umar to stop Umar from realizing his ambition.

    Such a move can only provide one more ammunition to those who think you are anti-Muslim, if not anti-Islam, to support their strongly held opinion of you.

    Sir, the central principle in all this is simple and clear. As I said in my last letter to you, even a one-eyed man can see that Suntai is not in a fit state of mind to govern his household, never mind a whole state, since his tragic plane crash. As a result many, including newspapers like The Nation (September 19) have called on him to “step aside.”

    Such calls are unfair to the man because it is as clear as daylight that he is not a man of his own mind. But then those who choose to pretend otherwise are equally not being fair to the man. Clearly they are merely manipulating his illness to pursue their political agenda to the detriment of his health and his family’s peace of mind.

    They say prophets are hardly honoured in their own land. You have been an exception to this axiom not only in Taraba but in the rest of the country. You must not, sir, in the twilight of your life allow the relatively petty politics of state soil your hard-earned reputation of someone who always spoke and stood up for principles no matter when or where.

    Yello! MTN

    One of the rudest corporate voice mails in this country must be that of the MTN which tells subscribers they have exhausted their vouchers. Given the vehemence and relish with which the harsh female voice announces that one’s call has been “terminated!” as a result, you’ll be forgiven the conclusion that the management of the company is only too glad to see the back of a subscriber foolish enough to have allowed his voucher to finish before reloading.

    I once drew the attention of their PR chap and a friend, Austin Iyashere, to this more than a year ago. He assured me he would get the management to act on it, and knowing him for the meticulous journalist he was before moving on to PR, I am certain he did. It’s past time MTN changed that grating and annoying voice.

     

  • Re-inventing human resources

    We are undoubtedly in the age of global capital with its arrogant self-claim (or is it self-delusion?) as the key and only key driver of growth. The triumph of capitalism (as it were!) has elevated money and finance as indispensable factors of growth. Yet beyond ideological dogma, serious statesmen and development scholars know that it is not yet an end of history for labour and human resource as critical factor of development. The motto of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) sums it up; Labour Creates Wealth.

    Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashidi Al Maktoum, the Vice President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and constitutional monarch of Dubai suffers no radicalism. He remains a hard-nosed conservative modernizer. In his latest book, MY VISION, Challenges in the Race for Excellence, he remarks (and I agree with him) that; ”Human beings are the most precious assets of all nations and the most important factors in the progress of countries. We consider the development of human resources as a gauge for the development of our country.”

    I searched in vain for some quotable quotes about human resources from Nigeria’s leaders currently jostling for political positions. In 2009 there was a dramatic 35% crash in stock prices. There was a mass frenzy to save the stock market. Trillions of naira was expended by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to rescue and recapitalize six banks in 2010! Open unemployment is as high as 50 per cent. Where are the trillions of naira to reinvent the labour market through re-industrialization, revival of industries and mass employment of the army of unemployed?

    In 2014, almost 69 per cent of all candidates who sat for West Africa Examination failed to have five credits including English and Mathematics! Indeed only 31.2 percent (i.e. 528,039 out of 1,692,435 candidates) had credit pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics in the 2014 as against a 36.57 percent in 2013, and 38.81 percent in 2012. This free fall in the value of present and future human resources has not shocked the nation beyond the ordinary lamentation and excuses. The concluded National Conference of which I was a delegate had 20 sub-committees. I bear witness that the relatively insignificant marginal report on Resource Control of the sub-Committee on Devolution of Powers generated more enthusiasm and controversies than the reports on human resources like Labour, Youth dealing with mass unemployment and mass poverty!

    Certainly there is more to resources than oil and gas and how to share it or control it through some self-serving group sharing formulae?  According to the Minister of Health Dr. Onyebuchi Chukwu, more than 5000 Nigerian-trained medical doctors are currently practising in the United States of America! Yet Nigeria has only 600 paediatricians to care for its over 40 million children compared with the United Kingdom’s over 5,000 for 20 million children. Why must we export doctors when we lack them at home? Why are we eager to “control” oil revenue and remain indifferent to the New York Times’ report according to which, “America Is Stealing the World’s Doctors” including many Nigerian doctors?

    The formation of Nigeria’s human capital is of great importance in the coming years if Nigeria wants to be part of the leading economies in 2020. A notable strength of Nigeria is its population. With 170 million people, we are the seventh most populous on earth. 2006 Census figures show that the least populated State is Bayelsa with 1.7 million, but more in terms of human resources than Guinea-Bissau with population of 1.7 million; also bigger than Gabon, 1.4 million; and Trinidad and Tobago, 1.3 million. Both Kano (9.4 million) and Lagos (9.5 million) are as big as United Arab Emirates of 9.4 million, which is the leisure destination of Nigerian bourgeoisie and labour aristocrats like me. Nigeria’s human resources are however in quantity not in quality needed for national development.

    According to Human Development Index, Nigeria is ranked 156 among 187 countries meaning that Nigeria is considered to have low level of human development. The National Mass Education Commission, NMEC, just revealed that as many as 64 million Nigerian adults are illiterates! This is a tragedy turned shame! Countries with less endowment like Zimbabwe and Cuba had archived literacy rates of 90.70 and 99. 9 percent respectively. How come the 13th oil producing nation has slid back into mass ignorance and underdevelopment?  Local government edicts and state laws must make primary education compulsory and criminalize and penalize parents that do not allow their wards to go schools in the 21st century. To appreciate human resource, we must motivate the labour which constitutes the greatest resource. We must ensure workers are paid well and on time. It should be noted that delay of salary is the same as wage theft. We must also institute a system of reward and discipline to motivate labour for development. I commend President Goodluck Jonathan for the recent national honour and recognition of the designer of Nigerian flag, Pa Taiwo Akinkunmi after years of neglect and his employment as a Special Assistant, with a salary for life! Indeed the President is further encouraged to pay his arrears since 1960 when he designed Nigerian flag. We must move from jobless to job-led growth. We must re-invent the real sector of the economy, revive labour intensive industries and get the army of unemployed working. We must improve on productivity. In 1958, late Ahmadu Bello, the premier of the then Northern Region declared that; “My motto for the new born North is “Work and worship”. We should not consume what we do not produce. We must stop exporting what we should add value to.  There are little critical success factors within our immediate reach. The most precious input factor in productivity is time and time management. We parade highest number of public holidays on earth. Some of these holidays legitimize idleness rather than promoting decent work with respect to rest. How on earth do you declare a work-free day to “mark” Democracy Day, a day arbitrarily chosen by one man in office that could even fall on a Monday?

    Why would children not be in schools on a Monday in the name of democracy? Religious holidays fall on a Saturday; Sunday is already a public holiday anyway. Why then declare Monday and Tuesday as holidays? This mutual preference to stay off duty by both “Christians” and “Muslims” definitely leads to underdevelopment. Nigeria works eight hours, five days a week. But on average, other 19 countries in our preferred club of 20 most developed countries, (come the magic 2020!) work longer hours, six days a week. Out of 365 days in a year, Nigeria is at rest for some 120 days. Out of the official eight hours, we resume unofficially at 10 am, set to do some unofficial school (children) runs by noon, only to unofficially close shops at 3 pm ostensibly to beat the traffic. When we are working, we are poor anyway. Indeed we are all working poor. Is it when we are idle that we will get out of poverty? It’s all about managing human resources for development.

     

    • Aremu mni is Secretary-General, Alumni Association of the National Institute, AANI
  • Still on Brazil 2014 (2)

    Still on Brazil 2014 (2)

    Still focusing on Nigeria, there can be very little doubt that the team’s final outcome in the group games was exactly what should have been realistically expected from the team by even the most ardent and optimistic of supporters. Qualifying from the group was a beautiful feeling even amidst the largely predictable loss to Argentina in the last group game when the Eagles lost 3-2 in a thrilling match. And with regard to the dearth of quality throughout the squad, this became clearer as the tournament progressed and the demand for a wider use of squad depth was required. It was not merely cluelessness on his part that Stephen Keshi could not make some changes when everyone expected him to do so. It was not as straightforward as everyone thought because, right there on the bench, the team did not seem to have the sort of players you could bring on to really change things radically. And so the coach was, in my opinion, severely hamstrung.

    Players like Shola Ameobi, with all due respect to his professional experience and commitment, went to the World Cup short of what the tournament requires. Others like Mikel Obi and Victor Moses, although went with a higher reputation but never lived up to expectations in many regards. Victor Moses seemed uninterested, and never bothered to put in any extra yards. And in truth, the Chelsea FC of England attacker has been like that – lazy, lifeless, uninspired and uninspiring – for some time now. It is the reason he was flogged out on loan to Liverpool FC last season and also why he barely played also for Liverpool during his loan spell with them. As for Mikel, he created more problem for his central midfield partner, Onazi Ogenyi, who, as a result had to run double shift of midfield duties in playing his own role as well as covering for the near-absence of Mikel who seemed more interested in losing the ball from opponents even when it seemed easier to give it to a team mate than trying to prove how physically strong he was. Although this weakness in Mikel’s game had been obvious even before the tournament started, and was all too glaring for all to see, the obvious lack of other players in the squad with the experience and mental know-how (relatively speaking) required to replace even a so-obviously ineffective Mikel meant that changes by the coaches were a premium choice to have.

    Of course, the culmination of that was that once Michael Babatunde got injured in the last group match against Argentina, the Eagles were faced with a big battle to plug a largely Mikel-induced Babatunde-sized hole. It therefore came as no surprise that the moment Onazi got injured during the last 16 match against France, things went horribly pear-shaped very quickly with the shape of the team, especially in the midfield engine room, falling apart beyond redemption. But why take players to the tournament at all if some of these players could not be counted on to come in to help change things a bit? And the answer takes us back to the fact that, at the moment, we simply do not have enough players playing at a high enough level of competitive club football to supply the national team with the required players for a level such as the World Cup.

    So, in a few, simple words, the failure of African teams – with the relative exception of Algeria – at the World Cup cannot be too far removed from individual and collective absence of tactical discipline as well as lack of quality at the highest level. Discipline here also applies to off-field issues that dogged a few of the teams at the competition.  Cameroon, Ghana and even Nigeria, to some extent, fall into this category. Cote D’ivoire also unsurprisingly got it wrong for the umpteenth time at a major tournament despite boasting arguably the finest collection of African players of the current generation plying their trade for some of the best football teams around. One does not require the services of a Sharman to know that the Elephants came short, once again, because they failed to harness their undoubted potential into an individually and collectively astute team, tactically and technically.

    As for Nigeria, Keshi did not seem to have been allowed to operate with exactly a free hand in spite of what many would think. There were some whispers that Joseph Yobo for instance, as well as one or two other players, were foisted on him. Also, he seemed to be working perpetually under the menacing gaze of the NFF, the sports ministry and others – who were merely praying for him to falter in order to crucify him. Obviously, Keshi himself cannot get away without sharing in some of the blames. As the coach of the team, if one may ask, why was it 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. 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. Germans provided a routine against Ghana which looks rather comical and even nonsensical simply because it didn’t go to plan. France scored their second goal against Nigeria from what was an intelligently executed corner kick routine. In a similar vein, defending corners and free kicks, the best teams often have a clear strategy – Germany triumphed due, in some ways, to doing this well. And there is where you put the blame on the doorstep of Keshi and the coaching crew.

    There is also some measure of indiscipline we took to the tournament which you cannot necessary coach or ‘un-coach’. For instance, on the field, Osaze Odemwingie, who came from the wilderness back into the team, was, without doubt, one of our better players at the tournament. But there was something wrong in his overall game altogether. The needless urge to hug the ball and showboat, especially in risky zones like in and around his team’s defensive third, was reminiscent of some of the reasons Keshi might have elected to keep him out of the team for a period in the first place. He did that a lot in the previous matches but it became more glaring in the crucial match against France, getting away with it a few times before eventually losing the ball that led to the corner kick leading to the fatal second goal. That answers why some of us felt the team was not primed to go further than they did get: if your most experienced players would act like Osaze did, then what hope do we have on the other less-experienced players?

    The hope is that by the time the next World Cup comes around, Africa and in particular, Nigeria, would have imbibed enough lessons from this latest failure at the grand global stage. More realistically though, I think we should be planning more for the World Cup after that (2022) or even the one after that (2026). It took Spain a planning process that began in approximately 1992 to get to win the World Cup in 2010. Similarly, Germany could be said to have arguably started on the road to winning the 2014 World Cup around a decade-and-a-half ago, following a very wretched campaign at the European Championship in 2000. And that is merely just a phase of more concentrated preparations as the Germans have always attended tournaments with teams good enough to jostle with the best. We simply must be more realistic in our expectations and more committed to the true growth of the sport by building better stadia, committing more resources, and the whole gamut, to the game.

    • Concluded)
  • ‘Our Girls’; Naira; 2015 manifestos: Kerosene Vs Gas stoves; Fulani War: Fast from blood cow meat!

    ‘Our Girls’; Naira; 2015 manifestos: Kerosene Vs Gas stoves; Fulani War: Fast from blood cow meat!

    Our girls are still missing since April 15even as we pray and write about them and call their names to keep them in the public eye and ensure they are a serious point of focus of government’s attention.

    The naira should not be devalued in the face of dwindling oil sales. Cut the excessive salaries and perks of political office holders for a start.

    It will be disgraceful if no 2015 political party plans and manifestos seriously address the need to replace slow, smoky kerosene nationwide with quick, clean domestic gas and upgrade solar power to a major source of power. The experts say government should provide 1-3million gas cylinders and cookers and give them away instead of all these political gifts. The idea is reduced kerosene imports, reduced cooking time by two hours a day for all mothers, cleaner kitchens and air, fewer lung illnesses and cancellation of kerosene subsidy.  Solar power must be taken seriously in sunny Africa where the government is still planning only 20,000Mw by 2020 when the population and demand would expect about 200,000Mw.

    The ravages of Boko Haram know no bounds but the Fulani herdsmen and terrorist associates are close behind.  Now they are killing soldiers, governments can no longer ignore them. When an NGO raised an alarm, the Kaduna State government did not decry the deaths. Instead it created fictitious ‘motives’ for the NGO’s alarm. Governments always react to the speaker rather than to the substance. The Fulani War has historic/military/economic components, unlike the Boko Haram War which has politico-religious-international terrorism dimensions.

    There is an urgent need for a solution to the Fulani War terrorising citizens in seven states in North and South, costing 3,000 lives, livelihood and ancestral homes creating victims and refugees. If you want to know what a refugee goes through, then wake up one day, move into your garden shed or into the open with nothing for a day – little or no food and water, poor shelter, no toilet, no news, no money, no toiletries or bedding and no family. In other countries the deaths of 30-50 people a day would be a Matter of Urgent National Importance, MUNI, at National Assembly and NEC meetings and effective military manoeuvres. Under pressure perhaps, the National Conference ignored the matter.

    The Fulani War requires an initiative, framework and a Truth and Resolution Commission. Farmers are traditionally peaceful but fiercely protective of lands, crops and families. There is no human being who will watch while an animal eats his crops and livelihood-unless he is dead. In the quest for peace in this Fulani War, there are questions. What is the Fulani relationship with other ethnic groups it did not militarily defeat in the past? There are over 100 other ethnic groups in the North. Is the Fulani hierarchy executing a military plot/plan to obtain by guerrilla warfare what it could not obtain by war in the historical past – the subjugation or pacification of the non- Fulani controlled areas? Is the federal government turning a blind eye to the Fulani War but always coming down on the recipient of such violence if any resistance or attempt to arm for defence occurs? Is the accusation by the Fulani of cattle theft genuine or the retaliatory seizing of cattle in compensation for the destruction?

    Why are cattle moved by foot when, like all other commodities from the North like onions or tomatoes or yams, they can be fully prepared or fattened in the North and then shipped by rail and the road as methods of choice and safety? A three day North-South trip by trailer reduces the ‘Need to Feed’ and amount of feed taken from the farmers on the foot route by millions of metric tonnes of grass by 99%. Dr Wale Okediran, former member House of Representatives, offered solutions in his book Tenants of the House which should be read by members of any Peace Commission on the Fulani War. Of course if the Fulani War is not just about cows and is more about power, the commission would have to expand its brief. This war has already caused losses of peace and tranquillity in the haven of peace, the Plateau. Additionally there will be consequences for feeding the nation, food prices, shortages and even famine. Why do we trivialise the terrorisation and deaths of babies, children, youth and adults, all ‘Fellow Nigerians’ deliberately targeted and without any protection?

    The Fulani War needs massive media attention and government must step in with troops before more soldiers and civilians are killed.  If it is only about cows, and not politics, then it is time for all Nigerians to fast and pray for an end to the Fulani War. Who wants to eat a cow that has fed in the farms of the murdered and dead? Is this not ‘Blood Cows’ like blood diamonds and blood oil? If we Nigerians stop eating cows in sympathy with the deceased as we pray for solutions, perhaps the herdsmen will stop this violence. How can anyone sit with family and eat cow meat knowing someone died to allow the cow to reach the table? Whatever the cause and conclusion, the Fulani War needs a truce. Unlike for the Boko Haram War, we cannot blame foreign backing for the Fulani War unless we agree that we are all foreigners to each other in Nigeria.

     

  • ‘Our Girls’; Hedima; All Hail Ghana; ‘Nigeria’s Fall from Beacon to Beggar’ –Leadership Question?

    ‘Our Girls’; Hedima; All Hail Ghana; ‘Nigeria’s Fall from Beacon to Beggar’ –Leadership Question?

    Our Girls’ are still missing. No mention in the 54th Oct 1, President’s speech. Imagine the meeting of the ‘Presidential Speech Think Tank for Oct 1 Speech’ at which the insertion of the Chibok Girls was discussed.  The arguments would include: If the Chibok Girls were mentioned, the opposition would have said the President was using them for cheap publicity. If the Chibok Girls were not mentioned they would have said the President was insensitive to their plight. It was a no-win situation but they should have been mentioned. They were more than mentioned in all our hearts.

    Let us remember Wing Commander Chimda Hedima, aged 39, executed so maliciously by Boko Haram and all others killed in the service of Nigeria. We sympathise with his family and pray that his compatriot is found alive. May he Rest In Peace and may his family not be abandoned by an incompetent and ungrateful nation and have to beg for school fees and food.

    The Ghanaians are coming ‘back’ with a bang. The older readers will remember how Nigeria was both first and second home to our brother and sister Ghanaians in the pre-colonial and post-independence era. Names like Kofi, Kwame, Kwaku, Kwesi, Adadevoh, Kotey, Kojo were not commonplace but always mystical. There was Kofi, a giant, in our class in St Gregory’s College Ikoyi in 1961. The Great Nkrumah was our idol as was Lumumba, and Nkrumah covered all Ghanaians with his glistening shadow of protection, authority and visionary Pan Africanism. The fabulous Kente cloth was admired, and  groundnut stew was a prized delicacy. History lessons made the Ashantehene, The Gold Coast and The White Castle known to every Nigerian school child. In the 1950 and 60s the view from the decks of The Elder Dempster Lines ships named Motor Vessel MV Accra, Aureol, Apapa of the Ghanaian cities of Takoradi and Accra were part of our regular exotic stops on the 13 day passenger Liverpool -West Africa Route. As active youth, we could not understand the necessity of the Ghanaian military to bring Osagefo Nkrumah down and were devastated. Later while reading Kwame Nkrumah’s speeches alongside our Nigerian equivalent, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who never got to the top job here, I used to say that we were 10 years behind Ghana in everything. Everything, especially in activities of a political nature. Many Nigerians feel we arguably committed the greatest mistake of our modern history by not following the Rawlings execution by our own execution of our own almost permanently wayward leadership, political and military. We must juxtapose this with the rivers of blood and tears likely to flow from the court martial of our 98+12 Fellow Nigerians in uniform for protesting incompetence and unpreparedness for battle and being used as cannon fodder. I still remember visiting the famous Ghanaian Pa Adadevoh on Ikorodu Road in the 1960s. His daughter married into our family. Later I was taught Chemical Pathology by Professor Adadevoh and staying in his house during the strike that killed Kunle Adepeju. Late Doctor Ameyo Adadevoh was a child in the house. May Her Gentle Soul Rest In Perfect Peace. During their own recession, Ghanaians took economic refuge in teaching and other jobs in Nigeria. When they went home on leave, Ghanaians took toothpaste and toilet rolls. Then came the reactionary ‘Ghana Must Go’ and most went home determined to build.

    Ghana made a full recovery. Ghana never had oil until recently but still recovered, though the cedi has fallen dramatically through Western banking policies. When the economic downturn hit Nigeria, in spite of our oil wealth and First Gulf Oil Windfall of Babangida’s time, due to our incompetent and thieving rulership, we Nigerians in turn fled as economic refugees to Ghana and beyond, even reaching Spain through the island of Lampedusa. Why? Firstly it is easier to do business in Ghana -cheaper costs and stable electricity needed by the growing Nigerian manufacturing and professional community in Ghana. Secondly, it is education. There is a tsunami of students ‘fleeing’ Nigeria and paying to study in Ghana. This is in addition to the ocean of students who, like our oil, are exported annually to the UK and Europe and USA as raw material and re-imported as professionals. The reasons are steady annual academic calendar, recognised qualifications and tranquillity on and off-campus although there are some deaths, not as many as in Nigeria from cultists. Thirdly, we are to import electricity from Ghana when we used to export to Ghana. Wonderful for Ghana but disgraceful for Nigeria. Ghana has become an oil state even as our oil exports are threatened. It is nearer by ship to the USA and EU. I only hope that Nigeria’s politicians and civil servants, all receiving national Honours like ‘CON-men’ etc., are ashamed enough to realise their responsibility in this catastrophic ‘Fall Of Nigeria From Beacon To Beggar’ due to their greed and failure.  As we watch Ghana grow we must not be jealous. We had the opportunity and squandered it. We must implement diversification reforms and undress the federal government. Nigeria which no longer teaches history, geography, civics or has PE, Physical Education lessons must reform. Nigeria is losing its soul, its youth, to other countries. Who will lead ‘Nigeria’s Educational and Electricity Revolutionary Recovery’ after 30 years of ‘The Leper, Locust, Rat and Thief’? ‘If Ghana Can Do It, So Can We’.

     

  • The many lies of Jonathanians

    The many lies of Jonathanians

    The Jonathan Actualization Movement (JAM), a rather obscure association of rooting for re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan purportedly held its town hall meeting on September 21 at Giginya Hotel Sokoto. Much as we were not bothered by their “Town Hall” meeting, the heap of lies about Sokoto State contained in their programme of events attracted our attention.

    It is very clear that JAM is just out to deceive the unsuspecting general public with their array of lies in their desperation to market an unmarketable commodity. Yes, they have the right to pursue their desperation but that does not allow them to play with the intelligence of the people through lies.

    The obvious fact is that, the North West town hall meeting was only a money-making venture for the organizers with a bunch of hired agents, as the average Sokoto resident was not aware of any such meeting which was not publicized.

    Part of the achievement touted by the group for the Jonathan administration in Sokoto State is the Lagos-Sokoto railway project ‘approved’ in March 2014. How could somebody in his right frame of mind bring into focus an ‘approved’ project that is yet to leave the drawing board as an executed project? The good people of Sokoto State do not know anything about this railway dream; besides, the Jonathan administration is notorious for jumping the gun in awarding over-ambitious contracts. To an ordinary Sokoto man, the Jonathan administration is zero in terms of capital projects.

    Another blunder is the over-exaggerated rehabilitation of Funtua-Gusau-Sokoto Road. Why would the Jonathan administration appropriate to itself what it did not do? The rehabilitation of this road started during the days of PTF under General Muhammadu Buhari right through to the Obasanjo era.  The fact of the matter is that none of the repaired roads are in Sokoto State. This gargantuan lie has further exposed the desperation of the group to obfuscate facts in order to delude their principal.

    Again, on dry season farming, JAM was just holding onto anything that came its way. Otherwise, what in concrete terms has Jonathan administration donein Sokoto State to promote dry season farming? We challenge JAM to come forward with a detailed summary of what the administration did to move the state forward in the area of dry season farming.

    Long before now Sokoto State has never lacked strategies to mainstream western and Quránic education. In fact, the present administration in Sokoto State has done and is still doing wonderfully well in the area of marrying Islamiyyah School with Western education. The Almajiri Schools project copied from Wamakko’s administration is seemingly a national programme not restricted to Sokoto State alone, so how could anyone single it out as a Sokoto affair?

    JAM lied about the provision of improved cotton seedlings free of charge to farmers. When was that done, how many farmers benefited, and where in Sokoto State is cotton being mass-produced? Sokoto, to be sure, is no more a cotton producing state.

    Another massive lie is about the desertification control project:  the so-called presidential initiative on afforestation, whatever that means. Perhaps one needs clearance on this particular initiative; we do not know anything in tangible terms that the Jonathan administration did to control desertification in the state.  It is on record that the current administration in the state has engaged itself in concrete desert control efforts through tree planting exercises in all the 23 local government areas and the establishment of a Ministry for Environment. Within the seven years of this administration in Sokoto, more than 357 kilometres of shelter belts have been established and this can be seen in every local government.

    The 2010 floods that ravaged parts of Sokoto State exposed the nonchalance of the Jonathan administration to the welfare of its people. When the floods occurred with over seven bridges destroyed and communities from over nine local government areas cut off, it took the federal government three months to respond with its so-called palliative.  Immediately after the floods, the administration in the state mobilized men and materials including heavy duty machineries and spent whooping sums to cushion the devastating effects of the disaster. The state government has since resettled many of the victims in the houses it built for them.

    JAM needs to be reminded that, it was an administration with the listening ears that is in place in Sokoto which mobilized tipper lorries from the 23 local government areas,  other heavy duty equipments and resources to move  to the site of the broken bridges and damaged roads at  Usmanu Danfodio University, Moore and Illela road.  These heavy machineries succeeded in moving into and a ‘bridge’ was organized which served as a link for more than two years. The roads and bridges in these places were federal government owned but Sokoto State government came to the rescue to restore communication and socio- economic activities among dislocated communities.

    The construction of the bridge by the federal government began three years after the floods, and it is still under construction. What manner of concern for the welfare of the people is this as being illustrated by the Jonathan administration?

    What has Jonathan administration done for Sokoto in the area of Primary Health Care through SURE-P?  It is more convincing now that JAM is harping on fairy tales to showcase their principal as a performer. What an average Sokoto man knows about projects on Primary Health Care are the health care centres built in each of the 10 wards of the 23 Local Government areas of the State, employment of over 1700 health workers to man them and the recent distribution by Muhammadu Buhari  of 230 ambulances to the health  centres purchased by the state government.

    Unity Schools are the property of the federal government, so even if a library was constructed in the only Unity School in the state, does the average Sokoto man know? How does that make life more bearable for him?

    In the brochure circulated by JAM to its hirelings in its desperate bid to propagate falsehood, it mentioned the e-wallet system in the distribution of inputs to farmers; it is myopic of JAM to count this as a blessing of the Jonathan administration. Even in states where phone system was deployed, it never worked. What does an average rural farmer know about e-wallet system? The only thing our farmers here know is the timeliness with which the present state administration supplies them with subsidized fertilizers and inputs. An example is the recent launching of 1000 units of mini hand tractors or tiller machines to farmers in addition to 1000 tractors earlier distributed.

    The Shagari irrigation project was constructed during the Obansanjo administration, so why should JAM now appropriate its provision to the Jonathan administration? This is another shameless claim by the organization to deceive the people.

    Is the Sokoto International Airport a state government’s property? If JAM wants to reach the ordinary Sokoto man, would they convince him that President Jonathan has rehabilitated the airport for him? What does an airport mean to a rural dweller who has never used an aircraft before?

    The silos, JAM is talking about, are not the creation of the Jonathan administration as they were constructed way back during the military era. The Goronyo Dam was last touched by the federal government during the Obasanjo administration, when the president visited the site. It is very uncharitable for anyone to have mentioned Sokoto water supply as part of the Goronyo Dam rehabilitation by Jonathan.

    In case JAM choses to forget, during Labaran Maku’s infamous media tour, Sokoto State was skipped because the Jonathan administration has virtually nothing to show. When the organizers failed to locate any project that could be ascribed to President Jonathan and were also not encouraged to make claims on those executed by administration preceding his, the media tour to Sokoto was shelved. If the JAM and President Jonathan honestly believe Sokoto people have benefited from the administration, 2015 would be payback time. The verdict of Sokoto people would vindicate the claims.

    • Garba writes from Sokoto
  • A tale of two ladies

    A tale of two ladies

    If there is one clergyman in this country who is not afraid to speak truth to power, he is Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, the long retired Catholic Archbishop of Lagos. In an interview in the September 27 edition of Saturday New Telegraph, the man lived up to his billing when he declared that President Goodluck Jonathan does not deserve a second term and that “CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) leadership today is zero.” The association, he also said, has been turned by its current leadership into an “appendage of the PDP (the ruling Peoples Democratic Party)”.

    One of the most interesting aspects of the interview was his narration of the encounter he had with the president in the Aso Rock Villa during the run-up to the 2011 presidential election. After his audience with the president in the company of two other gentlemen, he said, the president asked him to pray for his success at the polls. To the president’s shock, the cardinal said, he declined because he believed even though the president was as good as having won the election, he was not going to rule.

    “You have won, that is no problem”, the cardinal said, “but you will not rule.”

    President: What? What do you mean, I will not rule?

    Cardinal: Yes sir, others will rule. Those around you will rule. They are the ones that will rule in your place.

    Many a Nigerian today, I suspect, will agree with me that the cardinal’s over three-year-old prophesy has come to pass; today, not quite a few of the president’s men – and women, these in particular – have curved little  private empires for themselves in which they presume to exercise their principal’s remit without his permit.

    Of these private empires within the president’s Big Empire, three, headed by women, should remind you of Chinweizu’s famous Anatomy of Female Power (1990), whose thesis is that man, not woman, is the weaker sex. Using the words of probably an apocryphal American housewife, he argues that the notion that we live in a man’s world is so much bunkum because a man may be the head of his house, but the woman of the house is the neck that turns the head.

    The number one private empire in the president’s Big Empire is, of course, that of the First Lady, Patience, about which a lot has been written by pundits, including yours sincerely. Then there is that of the Minister of Finance, who also doubles as the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, making her, in effect, the country’s prime minister and the first to attain such a status since the return to civilian rule in 1999.

    The third is that of the Oil Minister, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, without doubt the most powerful oil minister to date. It’s a toss-up whose empire, between the two powerful female ministers’, is the more powerful.

    In all three private empires stuff have happened, some benign, some not-so-benign. From the look of things, the seed of a fourth private female empire is being planted at a very important economic institution in the land, namely the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), a parastatal of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment saddled with attracting foreign investment in the country. Chances are, this seed, unlike the other three, will grow into anything but a benign tree. It will certainly be one private empire too many.

    As I once said on these pages, in spite of NIPC, Nigeria, like most developing countries, is a net exporter of capital, given the colossal amount of stolen money stashed abroad from the country. However, without NIPC even the relatively modest amount that has come in would probably never have done so. It is therefore important that the fairly impressive record of performance left behind by its last Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer (ES/CEO), Engineer Mustapha Bello, be sustained at the least, if not improved upon.

    However, from the look of things it seems Bello’s successor is a square peg in a round hole. To begin with, Mrs Saratu A. Umar seems to have come to the job with a baggage; over a year ago, she left as the Head of the Credit Insurance and Guaranty Department of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank rather unceremoniously.

    Since her appointment as the NIPC boss several months ago, it seems Mrs Umar is more interested in rubbishing the record of the leadership she took over from than in establishing her own. This, at least, is the impression one gets from reading a petition against her by the majority of the commission’s directors to its parent ministry.

    The new ES/CEO has good reason to be suspicious of some of the directors; they too competed for the job. A good manager would, however, have given her presumed rivals the benefit of doubt until they proved themselves unworthy of her trust.

    Instead, Mrs Umar, according to the petition, has, among other things, encouraged staff to write secret memos against each other, encouraged insubordination by publicly humiliating directors and wilfully ignoring procedure in treating files, removing the Legal Adviser and Secretary of the commission’s board without the board’s approval, employing staff into senior positions without budgetary approval and in violation of the Federal Character principle, and engaging contractors and employing consultants without due process, etc, etc.

    Mrs Umar has reportedly dropped hints that in carrying on the way she allegedly has, it is with the support of her minister, Mr Olusegun Aganga, and even that of the president.

    The minister owes himself to clear his name – and by extension, the president’s – from seemingly credible suspicions that he has turned a blind eye to Mrs Umar’s apparent manifest wrongs. He can only clear his name by investigating the allegations to establish whether they are true or false. Whichever party is wrong should get the sack because it is obvious there is now too much bad faith within the leadership of the commission for it to carry out its mandate with any success.

    Certainly no one should be allowed to build a mini-empire out of an institution whose remit is to attract the foreign investment we say is necessary to grow and develop our economy.

     

    …Then a sad one from NAN

    Last Wednesday, October 1, Nigeria lost one of its most accomplished journalists, Mrs Felicia Oluwaremilekun Oyo, the first, and so far the only, female president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and one of the most effective and transparent managing directors of the country’s news wholesaler, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). Remi died barely 11 days shy of her 62nd birthday.

    Apart from being the first female president of the NGE and the first female boss of NAN she was also the first female spokesperson of a Nigerian president. In all three jobs she proved she was there not just as a token to the “weaker” sex in a world thoroughly dominated by men. She proved she earned them on her own merit.

    Take, for instance, her job as the spokesperson of President Olusegun Obasanjo. It spoke volumes about her ability to handle a man whose capacity for leaning on his own advice is legendary that of all the three spokespersons he had during his eight years as president,  she was the longest serving by a wide margin. Not only was she able to retain his confidence longer than her predecessors she did so at the same time by being civil in her words and actions towards her professional colleagues even when she was defending such indefensible decisions by her boss, like his infamous Third Term Agenda which he never formally declared.

    As a onetime board member of NAN, I can attest to her concern for professionalism and her personal integrity. At least twice, first in February 2008 and then in September, there were attempts to damage the credibility of NAN under her, presumably by elements probably linked to the agency who were apparently unhappy with her determination to sweep out the financial rot she had inherited when she became managing director in 2007.

    One of her first acts as managing director was to write to then Minister of Information and Communication, expressing her concern about the financial misdeeds in the agency and her worry that the ICPC which she had invited to deal with the misdeeds has been rather too tardy in its handling about the matter.

    The first attempt at undermining NAN’s professional integrity under her was a story purporting to emanate from the agency, which claimed that a Federal Court of Appeal had dismissed President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s election. Fortunately for Remi, someone from The Punch called to verify the story. NAN moved quickly to disown it.

    The second time she was not so lucky. This time, Channels, the well respected Lagos private television station, ran the story sent out from a bogus email address, newsagencynig@yahoo.com, which said President Yar’adua will resign after a cabinet reshuffle as a result of his well known ill health. Channels had attributed the story to AFP, the French news agency, which in turn had attributed it to NAN.

    That she survived the attempts to sabotage her was probably due to the confidence the authorities had in her professional and personal integrity.

    Her death is indeed a great loss to Nigerian journalism. May the Good Lord give her immediate family and members of her larger professional constituency the fortitude to bear her loss.

  • Still on Brazil 2014 (1)

    Still on Brazil 2014 (1)

    The 2014 edition of the greatest show on earth, as the FIFA World Cup is affectionately called, has come and gone. And in many ways, Brazil, ably supported by their guests of 31 football squads from 31 countries across six continents, certainly put up a great display of football at the highest level of the sport over a period of 31 days. Next time out, in four years’ time to be precise, the football world turns its attention to Russia, where the 2018 edition of the quadrennial tournament, is scheduled to take place. Until then, many of the serious-minded football nations of the world will spend the time in-between planning towards the next world cup, identifying players who will, all things being equal, play a major part for their countries come June/July 2018 in the cold wintry conditions of Russia.

    It is really funny how, here in Nigeria, we always put out jingles during World Cup tournaments that allude to our number in population as well as our spirit as a nation. In the run-up to and during the recent World Cup in Brazil, different groups and corporations painted billboards and our television screens green-and-white with enthusiastic messages. One common thread that ran through the messages was “we have all it takes” to beat the best at the World Cup, perhaps, simply because we are Nigerians or Africans with a special indomitable spirit and population strength. Patriotism is all fine and good, and I could never see a sin in being optimistic. But then again, I believe that optimism must always be tempered with a healthy dose of rationality. As they say, luck is usually basically a case of preparation meeting opportunity at some point. And that is where I have issues with our seemingly incurable optimism and unfathomable expectations on our sporting teams at each meet.

    Nigeria may have attended the World Cup as champions of the African continent, but that did not automatically make the Super Eagles a superior football outfit than any of the other teams which attended the tournament as non-champions of their continents. The fallacy and hollowness of believing in the hype of attending the World Cup as champions from an African perspective, has been brutally exposed several times in the past as no African champion at the tournament had ever made it beyond the round of 16 matches. In fact, only once previously – Nigeria in 1994 – had a team attending the tournament as champions from Africa progressed out of the group stage of the World Cup in contemporary history of the FIFA tournament. And if we needed any further reminders, only last year, at the FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil, Tahiti, which came into the tournament as Champions of Oceania, got heavily mauled by every team in their group, including Nigeria, scoring only a solitary goal (against Nigeria) in the process.

    At every sporting tournament, different teams or individuals, take part with varied levels of expectations. It is no less so at the World Cup where teams participate with their respective level of what to expect. Of course, the level of expectation is always tied to the level of preparation prior to the tournament. However, what the tournament proved to all was that the foundation of a successful outing is built around the core ingredient of genuine player quality in addition to the overall individual and collective discipline of the team members and, of course, the passion to win. But then, it is worthy of note that passion alone does not drive a team forward without a good dose of any of the other ingredients.

    Brazil, for instance, wobbled along until they eventually fell flat on their face. This is because though they had some players of genuine quality, notably Neymar Da Silva, the poster boy of the tournament, they nevertheless didn’t quite have enough quality and balance throughout their team to make them into a full force of genuine tournament heavyweights to inspire much confidence in supporters and fear in opponents. In the absence of that, the team merely sought to feed on the nation’s fervor and the hope that Brazil’s reputation as five-time winners of the trophy and arguably the number one football nation in the world, would see the team through. Ordinarily, this would have worked in a field where the quality of the other teams was not as good as what Holland, Argentina, Colombia and the eventual winners, Germany, presented. However, in this case, Brazil suffered horribly because they had failed to get the proper mixture of the interplaying ingredients right whereas Germany did and duly triumphed.

    While Brazil seemed like a really bad car with only good bodywork and one or two other parts to brag about, some of the other teams were a clear example of Keke NAPEPs, hoping to triumph over Mercedes, Renault, etc, in a Formula 1 race – an absolute impossibility. From an African standpoint, no country stood any realistic chance of getting beyond the quarter-finals even if any had somehow managed to get to that stage of the competition. On paper and purely based on the collection of players at their disposal and the clubs the players ply their trade with, Africa’s best hope at the tournament were perennial underachievers, the Cote d’Ivoire. But then the Elephants, as the Ivoirians are nicknamed, are considered underachievers because even on the continent, despite having had some of the continent’s finest football players for over a decade, in recent years, the team has always flattered to deceive as evident in the damning reality that the likes of Kolo Toure, Didier Drogba and Yaya Toure still do not have an African Cup of Nations’ medal to boast about.

    Invariably, assessment of Nigeria’s performance at the tournament ends up producing as many different takes as there are people willing to comment on it. On my own part, the truth is that we simply do not have the team and or players, and we have not had the type of players to really, based purely on quality, get beyond the round of 16 teams at the tournament. And I expressed same sentiments before and after the knock-out match against France on Monday, June, 30 – a match the Super Eagles lost 2 – 0, having acquitted themselves really well during the first half.

    One trend to support this is the argument that from the 16 teams that had qualified from the individual groups and were pitted against each other in a group-winner-versus-group-runner-up match-up, none of the group runners-up managed to knock out any group winner. This means that all the eight group winners progressed to the quarter-finals. Certainly, it is simplistic to merely look at it in such a black-and-white manner. A few of the runner-ups surely gave their group winner opponents a tough time before getting eliminated eventually. Costa Rica, for instance, eliminated Greece on penalties after 120 minutes, same way as Brazil eliminated Chile. Mexico came agonizingly close to upsetting Holland before losing 2 -1 to two goals from the Dutch in the closing minutes and into injury time. The USA were, perhaps, even more valiant, dragging Belgium through 120 minutes of football before succumbing to a 2-1 defeat also. The two finalists did not also have things all their own way as Argentina only knocked Switzerland out having been dragged through an extra 30 minutes of football following a stalemate over 90 minutes. Germany, on the other hand, had to stave off stubborn resistance from Algeria, arguably Africa’s best, most balanced and disciplined team at the tournament. The Algerians also dragged the eventual champions through extra time before their European opponents’ extra quality eventually told. In the end, it is worthy of note that only Colombia’s 2-0 victory against Uruguay, and Nigeria’s defeat to France by a similar score line were the only straightforward affairs for any of the winners. The reality, however, was that it was no mere coincidence that, in each case, the group winner had that extra quality in fortitude, stamina, star quality or tactical know-how to overcome the challenge of a group runner-up en route the quarter-final.

    • (To be continued)