The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Ayala: A painful exit

    Nigeria is certainly passing through a dark phase in its history. From the wheeler-dealers that are called businessmen milking the nation dry to the shenanigan of some of our greedy but visionless politicians and the satanic exploits of hoodlums, it is trouble all over the place. The situation confronting our nation today beats imagination.

    One thing that has remained constant in recent times is the rise and continued rise in criminal activities in every nook and cranny of the country. Perhaps, there is nowhere in the country, be it our cities, villages or any of the hamlets for that matter, that is safe. This reminds me of Bernard Odogwu’s book, No Place to Hide, or the late Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease. What all these boil down to is that we are a nation at war with ourselves.

    Many years ago, once you leave the city to any of the villages, you are overwhelmed with the hospitality, conviviality and spirit of camaraderie that embrace you as soon as you step your feet into your village. Above all, there was this real or imagined air of absolute security that pervaded the entire environment. But not anymore! Hoodlums are on the rampage everywhere. Some of their victims have been traced right from the cities to their villages and are either killed, robbed or kidnapped. Not long ago, a serving police commissioner who was close to his retirement travelled from his base in Ilorin, Kwara State, to his hometown in Enugu where he was gruesomely murdered in cold blood.

    In the early hours of Sunday, August 25, while Christian faithful were getting ready to go to church for the usual weekly worship, tragedy struck. This time, the victim was Reverend Father Peter Ayala, the Catholic priest in charge of St. Thomas Moore Catholic Church, Sobe, Owan West Local Government Area of Edo State. The lifeless body of the priest was discovered inside his apartment in the Cathedral. So far, information available said a locally made double-barrelled gun and two spanners were found with his lifeless body. The rumour making the rounds is that the priest mistakenly shot himself while cleaning his gun. But such outlandish claims have raised a lot of doubts in the sleeping town.

    Ayala’s neighbours were said to have rushed to his apartment when they heard the sound of a gunshot that early morning, and were shocked to see him in the pool of his own blood. The questions being asked by many are: Why would a reverend father be keeping a gun in the house? If it was true that Ayala actually owned a gun, why would he choose early Sunday morning, when he was supposed to be in the church, to clean his gun? If, indeed, his neighbours heard the sound of a gunshot and rushed to the scene, why would they meet the body stone dead? Was any attempt made to rush him to any hospital for medical attention?

    Again, some other people are saying that the reverend gentleman might have committed suicide. This assertion is arrant nonsense. Such a happy, quiet man had no worries for which he would even toy with the idea of taking his own life and he could not have died accidentally. Anyway, there is every possibility that he could have been murdered. This is more germane given the fact that if actually the gun belongs to Ayala, he would have known that it was loaded. In any case, why would he choose to service his gun on a Sunday morning instead of preparing for mass? And I don’t believe he could own a common locally made double-barrelled gun. What for?

    However, it is gratifying to note that, in the face of all these rumours and postulations, Rev Dr Gabriel Dunia, the Bishop of the Auchi Diocese of the Catholic Church, has called for caution and warned people not to engage in apocalyptic guesswork over the circumstances that led to the death of Ayala. According to him, though the church was traumatised by Ayala’s death, it was eagerly awaiting the result of police investigation. Dunia believes that “although the body of Rev. Fr. Peter Ayala was found lying lifelessly in his pool of blood with a locally manufactured gun and a big spanner on his body and floor respectively, they were only some of the clues on which experts’ examinations must be effected to ascertain more authentic proofs of what had led to the death.” The question is: What would a big spanner be doing on the body of somebody who supposedly died of gunshot either self-inflicted or fired by an assassin? I believe the talk of spanners, or what have you, is a mere decoy to mislead investigators into jumping to unfounded assumptions.

    However, Dunia spoke glowingly on the late Ayala. He said the late Father was a “calm, modest and well-behaved cleric who worked under me as a seminarian when I was the parish priest of St. Joseph Catholic Church, Emeora, 17 years ago and as a priest who collaborated with me, nonetheless similarly in the Diocese of Auchi until his passage from this sinful world.”

    I cannot agree less with Dr Dunia. Ayala, until his unfortunate death, was a good friend of mine and a true friend for that matter. I met him in 2001 while he was serving as a parish priest in Iviukwe village on the Auchi-Jatu-Agenebode Highway in Edo State. Surprisingly, Iviukwe village is the home town of irrepressible lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who was kidnapped by yet-to-be identified hoodlums at Ehor, a village on the Auchi-Benin Expressway on Friday, August 23. That incident happened two days before Ayala’s death. In that kidnap episode, four policemen were said to have lost their lives.

    As a priest who resided in the parish at Iviukwe, Ayala had a concurrent obligation to lead them in service in most of the adjourning villages in the area. That was how he came into contact with my aged mother in the late 1990s, when she relocated to Iviukhua, my village, also in Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo State, a distance of less than two kilometres from Iviukwe. Considering her active role in the church, it was not difficult for my mother to invite Ayala to come and perform the dedication of my country home in July 2001.

    That was when I met the late Ayala and our friendship blossomed ever since then. Shortly after the dedication, he was posted to Port Harcourt on pastoral duties. He was also in Rome for some time. All these times, we kept the contact alive. I remember in one of our discussions way back, he told me he had a cousin who was a journalist as well. He gave his name as one Brotu (Eric). That name stuck. I remember my days of freelancing with the defunct Daily Times. There was a guy who went by that name with Times International magazine, one of the titles on the Daily Times stable. It was edited at that time by Dr Dayo Alao, now a professor with the prestigious Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State.

    I received the news of Ayala’s death through a phone call by my mother from the village, in the early hours of Monday, August 26. The obviously devastated old woman spoke to me amidst sobs, as she said: “They have killed your friend, Fr Ayala.” I was particularly shattered and I tried to figure out whether such a quiet, jovial, nice, easy-going, young man deserves to die in such a violent manner.

    I will like to appeal to the police authorities to do everything possible to get to the root of this heinous crime and similar cases that have cast a dark spot on our national image. From all I know of Ayala, he could not have engaged in anything that could lead to his death in such a callous manner. He was a gentleman through and through. I will surely miss him; so also are the many people who traversed his path while he was alive. May his soul rest in perfect peace! Amen.

  • Karma and the PDP meltdown

    Karma and the PDP meltdown

    President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan promised Nigerians transformation: in ways he, his supporters and opponents may never have anticipated, he is delivering.

    The ongoing war of attrition within the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) rather than being a tragic event, could ultimately lead to radical transformation in the way the business of politics is conducted in Nigeria.

    It may also result in reining in the monstrous, rampaging presidency constructed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his eight years in office. This was a presidency more committed to enforcing its will than upholding the rule of law.

    It was a presidency unabashedly given to using state apparatus to undermine constitutional institutions, emasculate elected officials and subvert the commonweal.

    But for a brief window when the late Umaru Yar’Adua was still trying to find his way and Jonathan as Acting President was coming to grips with exercising ultimate power, we have reverted to the Obasanjo years when a president’s wish was law and dissent well-nigh treasonable.

    One can be forgiven for dubbing this administration OBJ-lite. It has copied all the former president methods – especially in dealing with perceived enemies. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is ever ready to be deployed for sudden investigation of all who fall foul of the powers-that-be. Elected officials can be blackmailed with the sudden withdrawal of their security detail. Election outcomes are recognised only when they are favourable. Even throwbacks to the OBJ era are wheeled out of retirement to reprise their erstwhile attack-dog roles. You cannot run down the list without experiencing that strange sense of déjà vu.

    Unfortunately, those we are dealing with are not the sort to split hairs over originality. They are too pre-occupied with the struggle for survival, and for desperate men anything goes – as long as it works.

    The real tragedy for a party that loved to describe itself as the ‘biggest in Africa’ is that it has been so preoccupied with staring at, and admiring its image as mirrored by the water, it didn’t realise the moment it fell into the river! Even in its death throes some who should know better are deluding themselves that the party will emerge from the current trauma stronger.

    The only way that can happen is if there is genuine reconciliation in which the grievances of ‘New PDP’ elements are addressed and the rebels receive amnesty. But that is an unlikely scenario because what is driving the split is a cocktail of burning ambition, betrayal, broken promises and deep-rooted bitterness.

    Jonathan is committed to running again. His embittered foes are bent on holding him to commitments he made when he first sought the presidency under equally contentious circumstances in 2011. The other eruptions like the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) debacle and Rivers PDP crisis are all symptoms traceable to the disagreements over 2015 which are destabilising the party.

    Anyone who has followed the exchanges across the PDP divide in the last one week will not have escaped the old pattern of denial and looking for scapegoats. Rather than embark on some desperately needed introspection, party hacks have descended on the usual suspects. Predictably, some of Jonathan’s supporters now see in Obasanjo the Macchiavelian directing the drama. Never mind that the possibility of the former president and his erstwhile deputy, Atiku Abubakar, sitting together to cook up a conspiracy – given all the issues between them – just beggars belief.

    In reality the spiritual principle that you reap what you sow holds true in the PDP mess. Everything the ruling party and its managers have done in the last 14 years created the impression that with sufficient might you can get away with impunity.

    I have been amused to no end at the recourse by PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur and elements in the presidency to legality as the means of fighting the rebellion. Tukur has been huffing and puffing about how he was properly elected by the special convention. He has even gone as far as threatening to declare the seats of rebels in the National Assembly vacant, and send security agents after them for daring to have a difference of opinion.

    Coming from party leaders who have encouraged this sort of unorthodox conduct in the past, the whole legal posturing is just risible. The PDP has 23 governors, but its national leadership was sacked by Atiku and a mere seven governors! What is wrong with that? Given what has been happening in the polity in the last few months the ruling party should not see this as a strange development.

    It is hypocritical for the president and his supporters to cry foul over ‘New PDP’. Without shame they recognised Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang, as NGF chairman after he received just 16 votes in an election in which 35 governors voted. Jonathan used the power of his office to encourage Jang’s dubious claims. So why is he discomfited that a mere seven governors will topple Tukur and replace him with one-time Acting Chairman, Abubakar Baraje?

    It is rib-tickling watching the outrage of the same people who have been addressing the impostor, Evans Bipi, as ‘Speaker’ of the Rivers State House Assembly. This was a fellow who along with five others purportedly toppled the real leader of the 24-member assembly in the now infamous fracas where legislators assaulted each other with dangerous weapons while the police looked on like spectators at a boxing tournament.

    If Bipi and his Gang of Five can seize power in a 24-man assembly, what is wrong in seven governors overthrowing the leadership of the ‘biggest party in Africa’? In the PDP’s universe this should not elicit surprise. Over the last 14 years this party has sown impunity and injustice, now it is reaping a whirlwind harvest.

    This isn’t a beauty contest between Jonathan and Atiku or the governors and the president. This is about the underlying things stoking the crisis. This is about a system that has received too many shocks and now the absorbers have given way. This is purely a case of what has been going round finally coming around. So PDP deal with it!

  • Daniel, the ‘Hollywood’ boy

    Daniel, the ‘Hollywood’ boy

    There are adventures and there are adventures. It all depends on the mindset and conception. Perhaps, for Daniel Ricky Ohikhena, who was recently arrested at the Lagos Airport after flying in the tyre hole of an Arik plane from Benin to Lagos, it was a risky, costly and suicidal adventure. The initial report of the incident said the boy told his interrogators that he was being maltreated and tried to escape from his parents. He thought the plane was on its way to the United States of America. He was wrong. Instead, the plane landed in Lagos and he was promptly handed over to security agents for investigation.

    Since then, the blame game had been on full throttle. Yakubu Dati, the General Manager, Corporate Communications, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, said the aviation security personnel of the agency had no option than to hand over the young voyager to the men of the State Security Service, SSS, for extensive investigation. Dati said the nature and circumstances surrounding the crime informed the agency’s decision, adding that the agency had, “in the meantime, adopted risk amelioration processes to safeguard flight operations and ensure that a similar incident does not occur.”

    However, FAAN has continued to trade blame with Arik Air over the incident. Dati said FAAN was “unfairly indicted” while the airline took no responsibility whatsoever for such a “serious security breach.” Giving the accounts of its preliminary findings, FAAN said, “Our investigations reveal that a passenger on board the flight called the attention of the cabin crew while the aircraft was waiting to take off at the threshold of the runway to the effect that they had seen a young boy walk under the aircraft and had not seen him re-appear on the other side. The cabin crew in turn informed the pilots in the cockpit about this. The pilots called the control tower and asked it to request FAAN to do a sweep of the area after their departure, opting to carry on with their flight despite the report. Upon the arrival of the aircraft in Lagos, we were informed that there had been a stowaway found alive alighting from the wheel well of the aircraft.

    In its own reaction, Arik blamed FAAN for the huge breach in security, noting that the incessant cases of security breaches at the nation’s airport had become a major source of concern to the airline. The airline wondered how the teenager beat the aviation security personnel at the Benin Airport to get to the runway. It said its pilot had reported to the control tower the presence of a strange boy in the bush about 200 – 300 metres at the end of the runway before leaving the airport. The captain was said to have been informed that the situation was under control and that he had been cleared for take-off.

    While the controversy raged, Evelyn, the mother of the boy, appeared on the scene. She said her son was a nice boy who never displayed any tendency for such a dangerous venture. The embattled mother said Daniel was a nice boy who did not mingle with bad friends. She said she was on a visit to her elder sister who had just put to bed when the incident happened. It was when she got home the following day that she could not find the boy. The only answer she got upon her enquiries on his whereabouts was that the daughter told her that they quarrelled in the night because Daniel woke up at midnight to watch movies. Daniel eventually slept in the sitting room. One of his younger brothers also said he saw Daniel remove all his school books from his bag. Her neighbours then told her that, at around 5 to 6 am of the fateful day, they heard sounds that somebody was opening the gate but never thought it was Daniel. The mother maintained that Daniel doesn’t go out. “What I know is that he is always watching films in the house but he doesn’t have friends. He is always at home; I have never seen anybody come to look for him and he doesn’t have friends.”

    Now let us look at the whole tragic-comedy this way. In these days of insurgency and bomb blasts all over the place, if that boy was carrying a bomb, it means he would have succeeded in blowing up the plane and all the passengers on board, including himself. Or if he had carefully dropped the lethal ware in the tyre hole and walked away, he would have caused an explosion of a catastrophic proportion. The question now is: how can somebody be in an aircraft without being detected? This shows that we have a serious security problem.

    For a teenager like Daniel, gaining access to the airport at all from a bush path was a fait accompli. Although he thought that the plane was headed for the US, he ‘boarded’ effortlessly and came out of it successfully, unscarred. Others before him were not so lucky. In 2010, Emeka Okechukwu Okeke, a desperate young Nigerian, who tried to smuggle himself to the United States, died in the tyre compartment of a Delta Airlines aircraft. His corpse was discovered on arrival in New York. Okeke sneaked into the place at Lagos airport. That was not all. In 2012, the dead body of a young, male Nigerian was also discovered in the wheel well, the undercarriage compartment of a domestic airline, after it returned from South Africa.

    It is needless for both Arik and FAAN to continue to trade blames over the incident. What about the plethora of other security agents at that airport? I mean the SSS, the Police, the Air Force and the rest of them. Where were their personnel during the boy’s daring stroll into a tyre hole?

    One disturbing thing is that, watching all manners of movies has become a major pastime of youths today. The other is playing games on television. The other day, I had a running battle with my son, a Senior Secondary School 3 student who was completely engrossed in playing some Nintendo games even at the heat of his final exams. Thank God that he came out well in the exams but it shows the depth of distraction that parents nowadays have to cope with in order to bring their children into line.

    Daniel may have been good at watching Hollywood movies. Hollywood is where you come across that type of derring-do. There is no doubt that Daniel is a talented young lad. But his adventure may be predicated on the discomfort which abject poverty has thrown the family into. It is doubtful if in that environment, he could realise his dreams. The young boy wants to go to America where he believes everything flows. Yes, there are opportunities in America. But as a black man, although Barack Obama rose to become the President of the most powerful nation in the world, how many black presidents will come after him? How and when? If you are hard-working, America provides you with all you need to reach the top. But many are there too who are barely existing on credit cards and other government largess. So, the likes of Daniel should not think that to make it in life, all you need is to package yourself in a tyre hole and dash to America. There is more to the Eldorado in America. You pay dearly for it.

    I will suggest that the relevant government agencies, and public-spirited organisations and individuals should see to the plight of Daniel and his family. He took the risk for a better tomorrow. That tomorrow should be made possible for him. The mother said she was so passionate about her children’s education. Now we have not heard any word from the father. I guess he is away in ‘Siberia’, ‘missing in action’, or marooned somewhere. The bottom line is that Daniel needs help. So also is the family, while the security agents on duty in Benin that day should face the music. It is one security breach too many!

  • Burning desire; Ajayi O; ‘Yililo’; Checkpoint; Railway; Petrol well; Galaxy S4 Ad; Dangote Refinery

    Why is Nigeria’s political leadership, so devilishly nasty when there are simple solutions to the suffering and ‘belt tightening’? These solutions are available and demonstrated by a few credit-worthy leaders. The Nigerian citizen has received since independence ‘dividends of a desperate democracy and malicious military intervention’ amounting to N1 in every N100 available. This is why most of Nigeria is still in the 19th century in water, health et cetera.

    Where is the burning desire to serve? We know about the burning desire to steal Nigeria blind. But if the politicians, officials and civil servants had a burning desire to serve for just one year 2013-2014 as an ‘Amalgamation Centenary Gift’ would Nigeria’s naira be toilet paper? There is a saying that your funeral will not be judged by how many family and associates who attend but by how many strangers attend because you improved their lives. Where is the burning desire to serve? The good are too few to make a difference to the wretched lives of the nation’s citizens whose lives are further endangered through murder by police, note late murdered Ajayi Oladokun of Ikorodu.

    Have you heard of Mr Gregory Muonyililo reportedly ‘arrested’ for filming checkpoint police? Greg has the right, like tourists, to film on the open streets. It is only when all, tourist and citizen, brandish cell phones and record corruption and intimidation that the ‘uniform’ will respect human rights. Such secret recording can be called ‘To Greg it’ or to ‘yililo’ it. Mr Muonyililo has a burning desire to serve and deserves MON. Where is the burning desire to serve in you?

    To great national applause, IGP Abubakar banned checkpoints but they are back. Sadly nothing good lasts in Nigeria. Checkpoints are back with a vengeance including a near permanent checkpoint in Ibadan at Bodija SS Peter and Paul even on Sundays. Is this one legal?

    We sympathise with the Police for the death of four police during the Ozehkome Affair and others on active duty. No amount of money will bring the murdered police men back alive to their bereaved wives and children. We are all equal before God, escort and escorted! The killing of security and escorts is callous when we are not at war with each other.

    The NSCDC’s arrest of people with a petrol-contaminated well in their compound is odd as it is clear that the matter had been reported to both the police and the NNPC before the NSCDC intervened.  The man in charge, interviewed on Channels TV, who alleged reporter ‘bias’ needs to be disciplined. His comments should go viral like ‘the oga at the top’. NSCDC must, if found wrong, pay compensation for defamation and wrongful arrest. There is no landlord or tenant with children who will dig a well to bring petrol or live near a well highly with petrol. I expected NSCDC to be more worried about prevention of catastrophe, like the Jesse explosion, than ‘playing to the gallery’ arrests. A uniform and a few laws do not make one God but make one seek to serve better. Or did the NSCDC suspect the DPO and NNPC of collusion with the landlord? How long ago was the well dug? When was petrol first smelt or drawn? Has anyone been identified drawing water from the well and distilling the petrol for profit or use? The answers to these simple questions will confirm or exclude criminal intent.

    Attention: Advertising Commission. The Samsung Galaxy S4 advert humiliating an individual who stammers must be shut down as an insult. Stammering is not joke, but a socio-medical issue and should not be trivialised for public ridicule.

    So at last the Northern elite have approved railways for Nigeria. As those same elite destroyed the railways 40 years ago, and kept the railway suppressed in favour of trailers, tankers. Ask Buhari and Babangida about Jakande Rail if you have forgotten. For the trailer business to thrive nationwide, the Northern elite instituted a national policy that the railways had to die. In fact rather than develop Apapa Port already fed by railway into a giant international port, government decided to move the new development to Tin Can Island which was only to be fed by road and trailers and not by railways thus guaranteeing trailer livelihood and Nigerian transport downfall for 50 years. Anyone used to Apapa Tin Can Island road will know the 4-10 hours delays and havoc caused by trailers for 40 years. This is the legacy of the anti-railway policy of federal governments for 40 years. It is such a pity that the same people who destroyed the railways are now using rejuvenated railways as dividends of democracy for electioneering. Nigerians should know that Nigeria’s Lagos port faced de-listing from international ports for not having ‘Railway Evacuation of Containers’.

    Who will accept responsibility for the 40 years of suffering? We need 100kph trains.

    Dangote is setting up a refinery in Nigeria and needs 400,000bpd. Remember that all the other private refinery attempts died because Nigeria refused to guarantee them the required 20-100,00bpd/ refinery. Obviously Dangote has got his guarantee. Will most of the 100 fractionated products be exported or made available locally? Dangote’s track record in flour, cement had sugar have led to outrageous price increases overburdening the masses, so what hope have we for costs of fuel and by-products of the Dangote Refinery?

     

  • Anti-solar conspiracy; ‘Solar Generation’ must replace ‘Generator Generation’

    As there a conspiracy against solar energy – another energy conspiracy like the generator conspiracy? How else do we explain that Nigeria with 85-100% sun days has no solar farms while the UK with 20% pathetic sun days per annum has 157 solar farms and 229 awaiting approval not including roof-top millions of mini-solar plants? The UK expects solar enterprise to deliver 20GigaWatts of power by 2020. Africa has no such plans. A small physics lesson: 1,000watts =1Kilowatt; 1,000 kilowatts or 1,000,000 watts=1Megawatt; 1,000Mw=1Gigawatt=1,000,000,000watts or 1billion watts.  Nigeria@52+ makes 3- 4,200Mw.  Africa needs visionary ‘Mr. Solar President’ Leadership.

    Has any African engineer, politician or professor visited a solar farm in Spain, Israel, UAE, UK or USA? Why is this failure to commit to new technologies allowed when our electricity powerless Africa has a mega-sun stroking our land and Nigeria has epileptic 3-4,000Mw after billions of dollars? Why are Africa and Nigeria still holding ‘talk-shop’ conferences on ‘solar energy as a way forward’ but giving mega-contracts for imported turbines for 50 year-old power plants using non-renewable energy, instead of creating the long overdue ‘New African/Nigerian Solar Generation’ to replace us- the ‘Generator Generation’?

    Is our leadership blinded by the government-allocated perks of office – the 24-hour generator and vehicles with anti-sun tinted windows?  The leadership should recognise the technological and moral value of taking Africa and Nigeria solar before God relocates the sun to those who value it more? ‘God gives and takes away’. God can take away the sun if we misuse it as much as we have misused that other energy gift from God, petroleum. Imagine solar energy being provided to Africa by underground cable from the UK, Spain, Israel, UAE or USA. The sun shines on everyone. Why cannot we grasp the future? Nigeria gives citizens 12 watts of average power per person. South Africa gives 457, Zimbabwe 113, Zambia 61 and Ghana 29. Will Nigeria ever become ‘solar wise’? Since Africa is technologically challenged, why do we not turn to the gloriously powerful sun? Tell the AU, ECOWAS, governments and the private sector to get power from the sun, everyone!

    Solar energy is to electricity what the cell phone was to communications –a great leap forward, cutting out the PHCN men. It will not get better with the new power companies who will overcharge. The sun is being underutilised by Nigerians, individual, government and the private sector, who are victims of a conspiracy against the spread of solar energy. Are the conspirators forcing government to use high tariffs and taxes on solar imports? Are oil marketers afraid of losses from reducing patronage and generator companies for the same reason?

    Nigerian authorities are afraid of committing ‘big’ to the new technology which is not new at all and has been around since the dawn of time and has been largely ignored, to our loss, except for sun drying clothes and food items. Nigeria started with the sun and then went underground to coal and petroleum. Now we must come up to the surface again and harness the sun. It has already been done so there is no point Nigeria’s NUC giving ABU N10m to research solar energy as was done some years ago. It is on international record that the prices of solar panels and rechargeable batteries have fallen by over 80% making solar energy affordable. Why is cheap solar equipment not available in Africa? Conspiracy! Entire cities are run by solar abroad. Africa, wake up before they steal the sun and sell it back to your children in a bottle!

    The UK offers government subsidies to families and companies to purchase solar equipment. Such subsidies are not available in Nigeria and denied to Nigerian ‘Sun Energy Seekers’. CBN gives N10b to ABU and billions in rescue money to banks while the federal government gives $200m to Nollywood and billions to textile manufacturers. Few economists have calculated that a large chunk of this financial support will be spent on generators and fuel.  Every Nigerian and every economist knows that the mantra for survival in family, and business is ‘Get Electric Power Right And All Will Be Added’.

    It is not too late for government to target solar power by increasing grants, solar loan portfolios, reducing interest rates on loans, longer term loans to increase solar power use and reduce pressure on the new power grid roadmap. We do not want another talk shop, no actionless ‘Solar Energy Conference’.

    If the current government fails to take solar seriously will the new party? Will the APC, vaguely promising 40,000Mw in four or eight years, rethink and embrace a serious manifesto ‘Solar Power Roadmap’? The powerful people, rich with money obtained from the murky waters of Nigerian commerce and politics, want dependent citizens. Solar energy in the home frees the owner from the grid and solar farms can also supply the grid. Solar is a generator without pollution.

    There are a few African solar projects. Solar energy empowers and reduces poverty –not the goal of Africa’s powerful governments. It is the goal of the poor and their NGOs, seemingly powerless to change government ‘secret plans’. The world must get the poor vote to matter in politics. The voice of the people is the voice of God. We want solar energy today or will make it a 2015 election issue! Fight the ‘Anti-Solar Conspiracy’. Who is afraid of solar powering Africa and Nigeria?

  • Abubakar Shekau’s fate

    A pall of confusion may have descended on security circles in Abuja following the reported killing of Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the rampaging Boko Haram sect, by the operatives of the Joint Task Force, JTF, in Borno State. Last Monday, Sagir Musa, a lieutenant-colonel and spokesman of JTF, dropped the bombshell in a statement which alluded to the fact that Shekau might have died of wounds he allegedly sustained in a gun battle with operatives of the JTF at the Sambisa Forest in Maiduguri. Sambisa had all along been the fortified headquarters of the sect. Musa said that the Boko Haram leader was seriously wounded on June 30, by the Special Forces and was taken to Amitchide, a border community in the nation’s border with Cameroun, for treatment. He said Shekau did not recover from the gunshot wounds.

    The statement said, “Shekau was mortally wounded in the encounter and was sneaked into Amitchide – a border community in Cameroun for treatment.”  Musa added that a video released purportedly by the Boko Haram leader on August 13, was a deceit by a member of the sect to convince members to continue with the insurgency. He added that the video was “dramatised by an impostor to hoodwink the sect members to continue with terrorism and to deceive undiscerning minds”.

    Ordinarily, one would have thought that the killing or the eventual death of such a most wanted and notorious terrorist would have been a matter to be celebrated with photographs and banters in security circles, but this has not been the case. Instead, we are witnessing a preponderance of silence from official and security circles, a situation that seems to have confused almost everybody, except those who are in the know of the true situation of things as regards the fate of this high-priced criminal.

    It would be recalled that at the height of his madness, a $7m bounty was placed on Shekau’s head, which makes him the most priced criminal in this part of the world till date. Nobody has seen any recent photograph of Shekau, even if taken in death, like it happened some years ago in Angola, when Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), a group that had destabilised the country for decades, was put forward for public view when he met his violent death. That singular event put paid to all the speculations about Savimbi’s possessions of a senseless, invincible ‘magic’ that had made him to appear and disappear at will for several years before he was eventually cut down by hot pellets.

    The same thing happened to the two sons of Saddam Hussein – Uday and Qusay – who were both killed after the US-led invasion forces cornered them at a luxury apartment which served as their hideout in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul on July 22, 2003. The death of the duo represented the biggest coup for the coalition forces after the fall of Baghdad, more than three months before then. That singular opportunity offered Washington a genuine hope of a turning point in the bloody guerrilla war and laid the grounds for the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein. While briefing the public at a late night press conference on the day of the incident, an elated General Ricardo Sanchez, the Commander of the ground forces in Iraq, said, “We are certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today. We have used multiple sources to identify the individuals.” Photos of the faces of the two fallen brothers were then taken and sent to Baghdad, where they were identified by Saddam’s private secretary, among others.

    All these were proofs of what the invasion army was able to accomplish in their campaign in Iraq, even before Saddam was himself captured in a hole some months after, specifically, on December 13, 2003. So, it is quite unfortunate that rather than provide proofs of Shekau’s death, the public is being treated to mere propaganda, half-truths and, perhaps, a tinge of fallacy. Otherwise, why should the JTF spokesman say something and nobody, not even at the Army headquarters or the government itself, has come out to corroborate, confirm or put speculations to rest by telling the people the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

    However, it was gathered that the military High Command in the country was jittery about the release of the statement on Shekau’s purported death because of the growing lack of evidence around it. Top security goons in Abuja are said to be wallowing in a pool of disbelief, especially with the assumption that the statement could have been a product of sabotage and an unnecessary contest for glory by the JTF, which is prosecuting the war against terrorism. Furthermore, the release of the news of the killing of Shekau to coincide with the date a new division of the Nigerian Army was taking over from the JTF, was also being viewed with suspicion. The army recently established a counter-terrorism division in Borno State. The division, which is expected to come under the command of a major-general, was established to deal with terrorists and terrorism that have gained currency in that part of the country.

    From all indications, the death of Shekau need not have thrown up any controversy, except that some people may be fighting for attention and glory. In the first instance, Shekau is a fugitive, who is wanted dead or alive. Therefore, if the JTF says he has been killed in an encounter with security forces, the onus is on the JTF, the military High Command or the federal government who declared a state of emergency on some parts of the North and ordered military action, to come forward with convincing evidence. This, they should do as quickly as possible to erase the doubts the news may have left in people’s minds.

    After all, we are all witnesses to the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda terrorist group at Abbottabad, in Pakistan, after about 10 years of being hunted by American forces. As a guide against public outrage, particularly in order to avoid turning his corpse or burial place into a Mecca of sort, where his sympathizers will now pay annual pilgrimage to, the Americans simply claimed to have lowered his body into the deep sea never to be seen again. This generated a lot of confusion until video clips and actual photographs of the bloody encounter started flying all over the place. As they say, seeing is believing – the videos and photographs were used largely to convince the doubting Thomases that, indeed, Osama Bin Laden will never walk on the streets of the planet earth anymore.

    Personally, I am not too sure that Osama’s body was buried in the deep sea. What my intuition tells me is that his body was ferried to the US to be used for forensic analysis in a laboratory. Perhaps, it could be to decode his senses and get to the inner workings of the brain of a mass murderer, a suicide bomber, an assassin, or maybe, a religious fanatic on the precipice of mental malady. As for Shekau, we all know he is a drug addict, a rapist, a terror-personified and a merciless man hunter, whose greatest interest is to cause the suffering of his fellow men. So, if this sort of man like Shekau has been killed or he is dead, either by gunshot wounds or rat poison, he deserves an inglorious end.

    The only thing now is that, if need be, his body should be exhumed, videoed and photographed for all to see that nemesis has finally caught up with the serial killer. In that case, this regime of denial, half-truths, conspiracy of silence and all that will give room for wild jubilation among the people and banters among the security forces. With Shekau and his deputy, Momodu Bama, conveniently out of the way, the war on terrorism is half won, except that there may be other lesser evils lurking around, waiting to inflict pains on innocent people. Time will certainly take care of those ones!

     

  • Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    Why Odimegwu should get the president’s boot

    IF ever a man stands as indisputable evidence that the garb does not necessarily make the man, Eze Festus Odimegwu, Chairman of the Nigerian Population Commission (NPC), is such evidence.

    Thirty four years ago or so, the man graduated from University of Nigeria, Nsukka on top of his class with a first class honours in Chemistry. He soon joined the Nigerian Breweries Plc and, as one would expect of a man of his brilliance, he rose through the lower rungs of the company to eventually become its managing director and chief executive officer in 1997. He left in 2006.

    In the course of his brilliant career he attended leadership and management courses in some of the best universities in the world, including London Business School, Wharton Business School and Stanford University Business School.

    It was this brilliant man that President Goodluck Jonathan saw fit to appoint as the Chairman of the NPC in June last year. A little over one year on, the man has done and said everything to prove the president could not have been more wrong in his choice.

    If, as is possible, even probable, the president was taken in by the man’s academic brilliance and apparently successful career in appointing him to the very sensitive job of Nigeria’s head-count, the president should never have been, understandable though it is.

    This is simply because in spite of the man’s brilliance and successful career he had exposed himself long before his appointment as chair of NPC as one of the most obsequious Nigerians when, in the twilight of his brewing career, he chose to become one of the arrowheads of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s infamous Third Term Agenda.

    So obsequious was the man in his role as a leading promoter of President Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda that it appears to have brought his otherwise brilliant career to an ignominious end when, rather than leave on his own, he seemed to have been gently shoved off for playing too much politics at the expense of his job as the boss of Nigeria’s top brewing company.

    For a man who seemed so servile to President Obasanjo, it is truly shocking that he has since turned full circle to denigrate the man over one of the few successes he managed to chalk up in his eight years as president. For, Census 2006, probably save that of 1991 conducted by the late Makama Nupe, Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, is arguably the least controversial census ever carried out in this country since its first nationwide headcount in 1921.

    At the heart of this controversy has always been the notion that the more sparsely populated North can never be more populous than the densely populated South, as all our headcounts have always shown. So strongly held is this notion in the South that even otherwise well educated Southerners like Senator Abraham Adesanya, the late leader of Afenifere, the umbrella Yoruba cultural group, would peddle the nonsense that Northerners counted their cattle, goats and sheep among their population!

    As if to disprove the numerical superiority of the North, President Obasanjo, well ahead of the 2003 general elections, initially made the possession of a national identity card by any Nigerian 18 and above conditional for the exercise of their voting right, in clear contravention of the Constitution and contrary to the electoral law. In the end, he was forced to go back on his insistence when it became obvious that it was logistically impossible to provide every eligible Nigerian with the ID card before the elections.

    All the same the project went ahead in November 2002 and when the results were released in May 2003, it suggested an even wider margin of population between the North and the South than was the case in all the previous censuses. For example, whereas the 1991 headcount showed a ratio of 53.23% for the North against 47.77% for the South, Obasanjo’s ID card project showed the North had 54.50% of the country’s adult population as against 45.50% for the South.

    It was highly instructive that the ID card project was carried out at a time the president, his Minister of Internal Affairs, the late Chief Sunday Afolabi, the supervising minister who was a staunch Afenifere and Awoist, and Mr Deji Omotade, the late head of the Department of National Civic Registration (DNCR), were all not only Southerners. They were indeed, South-Westerners, the arrowheads of the campaign against the North’s numerical superiority vis-a-vis the South.

    In spite of this exercise many a Southerner still clung on to the apparently mistaken belief that the population of the North was fiction. One such Southerner was Chief Bode George, the Peoples Democratic Party chieftain who was jailed for corruption several years ago but who seems to have since returned to reckoning in the party. The population of the North was fiction, he told a rally organised by the Southern Leadership Forum in Enugu in December 2005, a rally which clearly had the imprimatur of Obasanjo’s presidency. They will make sure the 2006 headcount, he told the rally to a thunderous applause, exposed the fiction. “We will fix it,” he said.

    The 2006 census came and went and apparently all the Bode Georges of the world couldn’t “fix it.” The result the headcount which Mr. Samuila Danko Makama, Odimegwu’s predecessor, announced in October 2006 showed pretty much the same distribution the country had seen since before independence in 1960.

    Odimegwu, it seems, has come to his job with an open agenda to do what many with even bigger political clout than he possesses have failed to carry out. As Mr. Makama pointed out in an interview in the Daily Trust of June 27, at his very first address of the NPC staff after his appointment, Odimegwu tried to discredit all the headcounts that have been conducted in the country since Adam.

    “The most shocking aspect,” said Makama, “was that he said all previous censuses in Nigeria, a section of the country has been cheating other sections, and that I failed to correct that, and that he had come to correct that.”

    Since then the new census boss has been singing one variation or the other of this same theme of a fictitious Northern population. Like most of his regional compatriots he seems to have clung on to the ignorant, possibly merely mischievous, belief that the North is mostly a barren desert that cannot have the population it has been credited with all these decades. They simply refuse to educate themselves about the country’s geography which would have shown them that only the northern fringes of the region are semi-arid and that the vast portion of its 730,885 square kilometres, which is more than 2/3rd of Nigeria’s 923,768 square kilometres, is arable and produces most of the country’s food and livestock.

    His most recent display of ignorance about his job was his widely publicised press conference of August 20, in which he repeated his ill-considered and arrant nonsense that the 2006 census was cooked up. His evidence? The say so of one census official, Inuwa Mohammed, who he said once told an NPC meeting to review the census figures that it was all cooked up.

    Apparently it does not matter to the man that, all told, there has been no more than 370 or so petitions nation-wide against the NPC’s 2006 headcount and that more than 75% of these petitions have been thrown out by the census tribunal.

    The president cannot do worse than retain someone who has displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief as Odimegwu has, as the country’s census boss. Not only has he displayed so much ignorance, insensitivity and mischief, he goes down on record as the first census boss in the country’s history the vast majority of whose colleagues would carry out a full page newspaper advert announcing their vote of no confidence in his leadership.

    If the president wants the country to have a census in three year’s time with any chance of being acceptable at all, he should sack Odimegwu today. If nothing else, any man, no matter how brilliant, who would praise a leader to high heavens today only to turn round and crucify him tomorrow as Odimegwu has done to Obasanjo, simply because the man is no longer in power, does not deserve any responsible job, not to talk of one as sensitive and important as the headcount of a country as big as Nigeria.

     

  • Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    Obj, IBB, Oldbreed and New

    For the second time in recent years, former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), has begged to differ from his “boss,” as he often likes to call General Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj), on the seemingly perennial debate about the Oldbreed political class versus the New.

    Tuesday August 13, Obasanjo, the only person to have served Nigeria as its leader in khaki (1976 to 1979) and mufti (1999 to 2007), came down heavily on the latter class of politicians like a ton of bricks. As a group they were, he said in effect, worse than useless. The occasion was the Fourth Annual Ibadan Sustainable Summit at Le Chateau, Bodija, Ibadan, where he was the guest speaker. His topic was Leadership in Africa’s Quest for Sustainable Development.

    As often happens on such occasions, what made the banner headlines the following day was not the paper the former president delivered. Rather, it was the extempore remarks he made in response to comments and questions by discussants of the paper and from the audience. The comment by Professor Mojeed Alabi, the first of the two discussants and a former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, that the country’s problems stems mainly from the refusal of the Oldbreed to “step aside” – to borrow Babangida’s now famous phrase when he not-so-voluntarily left office in August 1993 – for the Newbreed apparently got old man Obasanjo’s dander up.

    The professor, he said in effect in a counterpoint, was talking so much rubbish. Many governors during his tenure were less than 50. The first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Salisu Buhari, was even much younger, he pointed out. Yet the record of these Newbreed politicians on the whole was, he said, dismal.

    “We had some people who were under 50 years in leadership positions. One of them was James Ibori. Where is he today? One of them was Alamieyesiegha, where is he today? Lucky Igbinidion, where is he today? The youngest was the Speaker, Buhari. You can still recall what happened to him. You said Bola Tinubu is your master. What Buhari did was not any worse than what Bola Tinubu did. We got them impeached. But in this part of the world some people covered up the other man.”

    Trust the man not to leave out his deputy and eventual nemesis, Atiku Abubakar, in his list of villainous Newbreeds; the former vice-president, he found out after studying him for a year, he said, was too corrupt for him to have groomed as his possible successor.

    In short, the Newbreed, he seemed to say, should not complain anymore since they had their chance but blew it.

    This was the conclusion General Babangida, not surprisingly, found somewhat disagreeable, as a well known champion of the Newbreed even though he had had cause in recent times to express his disappointment at their record of performance in power, a complain which I once loudly thought on these pages meant he has at last broken faith with them.

    In a rejoinder to my article in question entitled “A Newbreed apart” (July 7, 2010), which was a tribute to Honourable Isa Kawu, a Newbreed member of the Niger State House of Assembly who had stood virtually alone as a thorn in the flesh of the state’s executive and has also stood almost alone as an example of a rare exception which proves the rule that, generally speaking, our politicians’ first commitment is to themselves and everyone else a distant second, Professor Sam Oyovbaire, my Political Science teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the early seventies and much later, Babangida’s minister of Information, said his principal never lost faith in the Newbreed.

    “It’s not true,” Oyovbaire said in his rejoinder, “that IBB has changed his views about the historic role and value of the ‘new breed’ segment of the political class. His well-honed critique of its disappointing performance from the Abacha era through the OBJ’s horrible legacy to date has been, as usual with the press mindset on anything IBB, badly twisted and made to hang! He believes in the potentials of the youths/new breed in the development process. Believe me on IBB’s thoughts.”

    On the occasion of his 72nd birthday last Saturday, the general seized the opportunity of an encounter with the press to re-iterate his faith in the Newbreed and disagree with his “boss” over his (the boss’s) expression of lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the Newbreed in politics.

    “I am not sure,” Babangida said during the encounter, “I read what he said neither am I sure he said so. In any case this is a matter of opinion…There are other young men who have done equally well.”

    The former military president is absolutely right to say Obasanjo is wrong to tar all Newbreed politicians with one brush. However, he too is wrong to think the role of the Oldbreed in bringing about development in society is essentially marginal simply because the future belongs to the Newbreed.

    In other words, both of them are wrong to think leadership is essentially a matter of age. It is not. The virtues of leadership have never been a preserve of any age group. There are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, old men and women, just as there are good and bad, wise and foolish, etc, young men and women.

    Obasanjo may be right to say that right now the preponderance of Newbreed politicians have proved incompetent and corrupt but to conclude, as he seemed to have done in his counterpoint to Professor Alabi, that governance is therefore best left largely, if not solely, in the hands of the Oldbreed is to mistake correlation for causation.

    Not only does he seem to have mixed correlation and causation in his conclusion, the old man was characteristically selective in his choice of examples to buttress his condemnation of the Newbreed. Conspicuously missing from his list of villainous Newbreed politicians was his own daughter, Dr. Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello who rode into the Senate more on his coattail as president than on her own merit but whose tenure as chairman of the important Senate Committee on Health was scandal ridden.

    Even worse for the selective amnesia was his remark that the media and the leadership of a section of the country employed double standards in their treatment of the accusations against Speaker Buhari and Governor Tinubu in 1999 that they forged their university certificates. While he made sure, he said, that Buhari was impeached – itself an admission of his interference in the internal affairs of the federal legislators, something he had often denied – “in this part of the world some people covered up the other man,” meaning, of course, Tinubu.

    What the former president forgot to mention was, first, he wilfully ignored to check out information in the open that the young man might have forged not only his university certificate but also that of his age, all in his bid to impose a leadership on the House which he could easily manipulate. Second and worst of all, he conveniently forgot to mention that he quickly granted the former speaker presidential pardon after he was tried and convicted and sentenced to jail with an option of fine which he quickly paid.

    However, the one point the former president made which is hard, if not impossible, to disagree with is that development is not just about leadership alone. “If you talk about good leadership,” he said, “you should also talk about good followers.”

    The Encarta Concise English Dictionary defines leadership as “the ability to guide, direct, or influence people.” We have remained underdeveloped precisely because we all think the virtues needed to be able to guide, direct or influence others are different from those needed to be good followers. In this sense, the leader/follower dichotomy is a false one. The fact is that only a good follower can make a good leader because, leader or follower, you need a sense of equity, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, compassion, personal integrity, competence, among others, to be the good and honest person any society needs a preponderance of to make any progress.

    However, in so far as the leader/follower dichotomy exits in our minds, the burden of cultivating these virtues lies more with leaders, elected or self-imposed, than with followers. For, without enough leaders willing and able to practice the virtues of being good and honest men and women, the vicious circle between bad leadership and bad followership will never be broken.

    The problem with Nigeria is that we have engaged for far too long in a futile debate about the false dichotomy between Oldbreed and Newbreed politicians when it is pretty obvious that the answer is Good-breed.

    To that extent, the Oldbreed, Obasanjo included, must accept greater responsibility than the Newbreed for our lack of development because, by merely preaching virtues they hardly practiced, they have only succeeded in creating a Newbreed of leaders – and followers – after their own poor image.

     

  • Still on the Child-bride

    The debate following the decision of the Nigerian Senate’s vote to keep the controversial clause in Section 29 of the 1999 Constitution has been rather interesting to follow. The thorny Section 29 (4) (a)(b) of the Constitution stipulates (in paraphrase) that a married female of any age at all shall be considered to be “full of age,” meaning that it is valid to get married to a female-minor. This further presupposes that a girl-child automatically assumes the status of an adult irrespective of the age at which she becomes married.

    Of course, the exercise started as an innocuous vote to determine the age at which a Nigerian female could be regarded as being old enough to repudiate her citizenship if she wishes. It became such a prominent vexed issue mostly because of the histrionics of Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima, who began to act as though calling for any sort of debate on any subject remotely connected to religion is equivalent to cutting off his oxygen supply. With or without Yerima’s antics, the opprobrium that has trailed the decision of the Senate not to yank off that clause has been right all the same. This is because, somehow, the vote ended up strengthening the position of the likes of Yerima, who has unsurprisingly been at the head of the vanguard for the retention of the vexing Section 29. It has simply given them a good platform to continue to exploit minors under the guise of marriage.

    Having abstained from writing about this issue all along, what really got me ticking this time around were the comments recently credited to a respected Islamic scholar, Professor Ishaq Akintola. Akintola is the Director of the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC). In his contribution to the raging debate, Akintola said: “The conditions of marriage in Islam are four, namely: proposal and acceptance, approval by both parents, payment of dowry by the groom and the presence of at least two male witnesses at the ceremony. Age is, therefore, not part of the conditions which must be met before marriage can be solemnised in Islam. He added: “Where the bride is a minor, Islam prescribes protective solemnisation of marriage without consummation. This means that the girl, who is deemed to be of tender age, is left untouched by the man until she attains puberty. Another condition for child marriage is that the girl herself has the right to repudiate the marriage, when she attains maturity if she does not like her spouse.”

    Now, one needs to ask: Why would a religion in which Allah Himself is said to detest divorce more than anything else in a marriage, a religion in which the Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is said to have admonished couples to strive with every ability within their means to keep a marriage together, turn around and encourage such a flimsy marital environment, knowing that there is a high risk of the ‘bride’ deciding to exercise her “right (to) repudiate the marriage when she attains maturity?” If truly, even by Akintola’s own admission, it is stated in Islam that a minor, upon coming of age, can opt out of an arranged marriage, then, surely, we can agree that this means that either these proponents of child marriage are reading from a different scripture or, as it is now more apparent, are merely twisting the tenets of Islam to suit their personal cravings and those of their co-conspirators.

    From what I know about this issue from across the globe, more than 80 per cent of Muslim countries are firmly opposed to child marriage. Even in Saudi Arabia, the guardian home of the Islamic faith, child-marriage is not a state-sanctioned practice. Hence, there have been heated debates on the subject for decades now. One of the more prominent ongoing critics on the issue in Saudi Arabia is Sheik Abdullah al-Manie, a member of the Council of Senior Ulamma. In a widely circulated criticism of the practice as published in the Saudi Gazzette as well as the Okaz newspaper in Saudi Arabia, Sheik al-Manie argues that even though child marriage was condoned in the time of Prophet Muhammad, the circumstances today are grossly different from what obtained then. The Sheik said further: “It is a grave error to burden a child with responsibilities beyond her years. Marriage should be put off until the wife is of mentally and physically mature age and can care for both herself and her family.”

    I happen to also understand from some of my friends who are Muslims that, in the Sunnah (sayings and practices of Prophet Muhammad, SAW), it was reported that a young girl once ran to the prophet complaining that her parents were on the verge of forcing her to marry a man she did not want to marry. The prophet was said to have admonished the parents not to force any marriage on her. This evidently further puts a lie to the claims by the likes of Yerima and Akintola, who have drummed the religious beat all along.

    But aside from being made to come across as a touchy Islam versus Western civilization subject (which it is not), the issue at hand is one that poses all-too-real socio-economic challenges to the society today and into the long-term future. The truth here is that by bending for this sort of practice, we plant poverty and diseases even more firmly in our society. And heaven knows that the North especially already suffers too much poverty and disease without having to face even grimmer prospects by legitimizing the child-marriage. So, to borrow words from Sheik al-Manie, it would be “a grave error” if the Senate does not retrace its steps and do the right thing as far as this issue is concerned. A grave error it will be indeed if we have to continue to keep northern Nigeria as the home of the highest cases of Vesico-Vagina Fistula in the world. This is a health condition that directly results from under-age sex (or pregnancy), which is, in turn, almost always a direct result of under-age marriage. Are we really supposed to continue to close our eyes and watch more and more girls, mainly from the North, lose their right to education whilst we continue to spread poverty by so doing? The truth is that a girl who gets married off at a tender age does not have a chance to compete mentally and intellectually with her peers.

    I shiver to imagine what sort of wife material my under-13-year-old daughter could really make to anyone at her age. Imagine how grievously her mother and I would have injured her dreams if we suddenly decide to hand her over in marriage at this age. Here is a girl who is constantly reminding everyone who cares to listen of her dream to become a doctor or an engineer in the future. How barbaric it would be for me to be party to taking that future away from her!

    Amidst all of the debate, we are also inadvertently making even more apparent a point that we all know already about our political reality in this country, namely: that the Nigerian politician, nay parliamentarian, does not actually represent the interest of the general populace. Rather, the Nigerian parliamentarian is merely self-serving. How else do you explain the disdain with which the likes of Yerima have continued to treat the millions of voices that have been rising against their decision? As so-called representatives of the people, one would have expected them to begin to come around given the sheer din of voices against their action, especially voices from Yerima’s own North and even the Islamic community. But no, they can’t be bothered at all because democratic representation, as far as the Nigerian politician is concerned, places the representative as an all-wise master over the people. To these senators, therefore, even this most salient of touchy issues of broad social, economic, political and moral ramification for the wider population and generations to come must suitably cater to the perks of the lawmakers first and above all else, even to the mortal detriment of everyone else.

  • Slash Political ‘SAP’ by 75%; ‘24 Hour Power’ in 3 months-Solar; Are checkpoints legal?

    Politicians are often selfish but are they ignorant also? Many are playing with fire, insulting the electorate in their lifestyle and speech and expecting praise. Did you not shudder at the Egypt’s political upheaval gunfire? Patience Jonathan’s expensive, traffic snarling ‘Peace Rally’ flies in the face of poverty, angers the nation and is not the answer! Better governance is the only answer! Politicians should see the effect of bad politics on the faces in Egypt and Borno, in Plateau states and the murderous fire fight on the North-South cattle corridor.

    Politicians would be enlightened if Nigerian newspapers kept a ‘Cumulative Death List’ and counted refugees. Blankets and buckets do not replace loved ones or livelihoods. Refugees deserve large cash handouts and business support. Politicians should learn about the killed and kidnapped. They also voted. The dead are not ‘only 25 died’ or mere numbers. They were living people with life ahead. Politicians should calculate the cost of violence inflicted by their decisions. The River’s State crisis mirrors the Oyo State violence four years ago. The peace in Oyo State today is ‘normal’ and credit to Governor Ajimobi’s strategy of saying “No” to thugs’. The NURTW needs re-education, ID cards, speed limit controls and registration.

    Politicians must be reminded that their exorbitant ‘Salaries and Perks’, SAP, scam since 1999, allowed them to ‘legally but immorally steal billions’, distort the economy and precipitate the current national wages crisis.

    As suggested by this column and by NUC, political SAP should be political issue for APC party and the 2015 elections. The citizens should only vote for politicians signing a ‘Personal 50-75% Salary and Perks Reduction Agreement’. Nigeria cannot afford the hundreds of billions of naira spent on politicians. This dividend of democracy, no Nigerians except the politicians want! Meanwhile government politicians have no money for ASUU bills.

    Never forget that since 1999 every single politician of all political parties, without moral exception, appears to have happily taken their allowances or fees for furniture, hotel, vehicle, sitting, standing-in, out-of-station, bush, travel, overnight, per diem, appearance, brown envelope and cash-under-hat as and when due. In fact we should be forcing a change in politics towards cheaper politics, a Parliamentary rather than a Presidential System or at least a ‘Part Time Parliament’ paid per diem.

    Politicians must accept that their Salary and Perks’ structure SAPed Nigeria dry, post Babangida’s SAP, and is the catalyst for nationwide unrest and inflation in rent and other prices. It has increased those in poverty by devaluing the naira and undermining anti-poverty strategies. SAP are the stick beating down the masses for politicians to earn a minimum of N12m/year rising to N30m while millions are on N15,000-18,000/month or N490-590/day.

    ‘Politics’ is just another subject with an examination every four years or so. ‘The Mass Failure’ of politicians cannot be swept aside by elections, bought and paid for by money largely stolen from the electorate and diverted from development. Politicians must know that nothing is secret. They should not be deceived by the Al Mustaphas or the thieves who stole the petroleum and electricity money and are now big philanthropists to cover their tracks.

    Nigeria is in need of ‘Emergency Measures’. Nigeria is populated by millions of hard working Nigerians trying to be self-sufficient who deserve the rights of 21st century human beings, including cheap grid electricity -100,000Mw. The hopeless power situation is not a game or a joke but a Nigerian yoke. Though this government has power it fails to give the citizens power. This government has held ‘Uninterrupted Political Power’ since 1999, and government was held by others before this government. Old or young, the leadership including every single president during the last 30 years is disgraced by this lack of power which has taken up to half of the earnings of many businesses. If Nigerians ran such businesses in a Nigeria with ’24-hour Power’ like in many African countries and worldwide, imagine the savings, profits, service delivery, silence, lack of noise and air pollution and how many Nigerians would be above the poverty line. In spite of this, government demands more taxes. Government complains about food imports but is silent on fuel and generator imports resulting from government’s power incompetence.

    The questions all Nigerians ask are: ‘How dare governments provide every electricity need for its political and civil servant members, using tax funds, to the exclusion of the people’s needs?’ and ‘Why is there no apology?’

    Nigeria’s government has no excuse not to get the USA, UK, Germany and Japan to provide the ‘Emergency Power Supply’. They are also leaders in new solar battery technology. The Japanese replaced the losses at Fujiyama within three months. It got emergency power because Japanese politicians know that the people’s needs today are more important than long term solutions bedevilled by corruption and never-executed contracts. Here Nigerian politicians ignore even God-sent solar power which needs no grid, gas contracts or distribution networks. Government should invite the Japanese as an emergency measure, now!

    The lesson from ‘The Festus Osugwor Extortion Case’ is ‘Always Turn on Phones’. With many Nigerians owning a phone, we can join the anti-corruption war as the FOP, ‘Fear of Phones’ should reduce corruption and save lives. Has the IGP reversed the law banning static police checkpoints? They are back with one nearly permanent checkpoint now on the Ibadan’s Bodija-Awolowo Road, near SSPeter and Paul.

    IGP, is it legal?