The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Kwara’s strange investment model

    Kwara’s strange investment model

    Too many strange things do happen in Kwara State. And they happen without the critical actors (often time the government) batting an eyelid about what embarrassment such events/happenings cause the people. Sometimes so glaring a lie is told about state of things and so on.

    On February 18, I read the full text of an interview Governor Abdulfattah Ahmed granted some journalists. The interview came under different headings in different dailies. Of all these headings, however, I considered the one in The Punch most catchy and, perhaps innocently, most indicting. It reads: “We’ll hand over Aviation College to investors.” Having earlier read the interview under a different heading (“We’ll make Kwara Nigeria’s agric hub”) in The Nation of same date, I did not bother to read the interview again. The content is the same.

    Now I quote a statement from the interview, as published in The Nation. “For now, the school is fully owned by the state but don’t forget that the state government is not in the business of running aviation. So ultimately we will sell off 70 per cent of that business to those who know how to do it and then the school will run on its own internationally”. Something is very clear from this statement and that is that the Kwara State government owns the Aviation College wholesale! On Monday January 14, the governor’s spokesman, Femi Akorede, made the following statement on twitter: “Kwara will eventually sell 70 per cent of its stake in Aviation College.” Today, after reading the governor’s interview, I asked my 12-year-old younger sister to tell me what Akorede’s statement meant. And without much ado, she said it means the government is selling 70 per cent of its own shares in the business. Prodded further, she said the statement meant the state does not appear to own it 100 per cent. That was the exact interpretation I had in my mind. Instructively too, I recall somebody on twitter asking Akorede whether somebody else owns some shares in the college. He has remained mute ever since. Now the governor just told us Kwara owns the college wholesale. The “its” in Akorede’s statement clearly is ambiguous and I remember somebody had alleged it was a sign of very terrible things to come on this project, citing the Shonga Farm as an example. The governor of course made some false claims about the Shonga Farm such as declaring it a huge success when Mr Irvine Reid, one of the remaining Zimbabwean farmers, said in an interview with Financial Times of London (November 1, 2012, titled ‘Nigeria seeks to beef up farming industry’) that “our farming experience has passed its sell-by date”. Recall that 13 white farmers were there initially. The governor did not disclose that five of the white farmers had since left the farm, much less explain why they left. He did not also say that Kwara State government is having its funds being deducted at source on account of unpaid debt of the “thriving” Shonga Farm which the government says now belongs to “private concern”. An article titled ‘Operation Fool the People of Kwara’, published by Newswatch of March 09, 2012 in the wake of 70m Euro rice farming agreement the state government signed with one Valsolar Consortium of Spain, had far-reaching revelations about this. Why is Kwara shouldering a burden of a venture now belonging to a private concern or where it has a paltry 25 per cent?

    Now to the Aviation College. I do not know of any decent government that spends public fund to put a project in place and then hands same to some “investors”? Where were these investors when public fund was being committed to the same project? Here I repeat a question one terrified Olabisi Ogunwale asked Akorede about this issue: is the aim solely based on future divestiture? And worst still, the governor said in the interview that government has no business in doing/running business! Is this statement an afterthought or the governor had always known this? If he knew this, why commit government fund to a business when government has no business being in business? These clearly defy common sense. Also, we do not know precisely how much of public fund has gone into putting the college (including the facilities and man power) in place. If we do not know these and the government is not the type to give such fact, how do we know it is not being dashed out at giveaway price to so-called private investors?

    I have further worries. It is my prayer that the Aviation College does succeed. Else, Kwara will pay dearly – as it is doing for Shonga Farm. The Governor, clearly attempting to douse public anger at the news of Kwara’s plans to purchase additional 10 aircraft for the college in a state with legendary dearth of basic infrastructure, used the interview to explain that the money is not from the public coffers. He said the college is benefiting from the new EXIM loan that the Federal Government has signed with the Chinese and India governments. The aircrafts are to be purchased from the loan, the governor added, to be paid back by the college over a period of 10 years. Good deal. But the governor clearly was holding back some facts about the loan: who is standing surety for this loan just in case of default? What happens, God forbid, in the event that the college is not able to pay pack? Head or tail, Kwara people would be made to pay.

    But the bad news does not end there. The Aviation College was built from the N17b bond accessed sometime in 2009 from the capital market. Last year, additional N10b loan was taken to, in the words of the government, complete projects, including the same Aviation College! That money (N17b) is due for payment next year. With the college far from yielding any profit and the hope of it doing so remaining dim as at this minute, it is fair to say that the ISPO (Irrevocable Standing Payment Order) – which the state government signed in the event of the businesses for which the bond was taken defaulting from paying – would take effect from 2014, further depleting the meagre resources of the state. Yet Kwara people will soon lose ownership of this venture whose debt would be deducted from the treasury!

    Clearly too many things are not right here. The government will hit back on this, rather than explain itself. But definitely Kwara’s investment model is quite strange. And one would be forgiven to call it an outright fraud. This is the only state I know of where public fund is used to float an enterprise and the government will wake up one morning and auction it out. If my information is right, the multibillion naira Kwara Diagnostic Centre, also built from the N17b bond, is also gone. Kwara is no estate agent.

    • Ajakaye writes from Ilorin

     

  • Bankers’ bonus; In 2013, will political parties stop stealing from budgets?

    Bankers’ bonus; In 2013, will political parties stop stealing from budgets?

    No doubt we will again have the Bonus Saga with billions paid to managers and ‘wiz kids’ just because they handle cash and not like for professions which deliver blood, passengers, babies or children in schools. Can someone, may be CBN, tell us exactly what the bonus levels are in Nigeria – the richest poorest country in Africa. The subjugation of the world to monetisation is ugly and wrong, monetarily and morally. At the very least let all workers get a bonus equivalent to their worth calculated by an actuary. Landing a plane with 800 passengers, docking a ship with 5,000 passengers, running a university with 100,000 students, driving 33,000 litres of fuel from Lagos to Langtang or guiding 30 children through a year in school should all be more worthy of a ‘pilots’, captains’, vice-chancellors’, drivers’ or teachers’ bonus’ than the banker sitting in an office playing Russian roulette with other people’s money, stocks and shares and manipulating COT, bank charges, lending rates etc. A banker’s satisfactory outcome and cost cutting and increased share price is often won at the cost of job losses, death and destruction in the countryside. Nigerians also say no to Nigerians bankers’ bonuses, secret or revealed.

    We Nigerians have been bogged down with failed expectation and begging politicians to give us our rights to water, quick transportation, internationally accepted optimal education, adequate security and adequate recreational facilities. But ‘change has to come’! To correct the past, government must accept its errors, take budgeting line items more seriously, eliminate fraud in the contractor chain and get out of the ‘financial food chain’. The top priority question for all Nigerians is ‘Can political parties stop stealing and if not, will Nigeria survive 2014?

    It is March. Beware the Ides of March, Shakespeare writes! What are the omens? Are they good or bad? The budget is now signed. How much will be spent as budgeted and how much will be misused and stolen? It is a time of upheaval and restructuring and new decision-making in the major political parties. Many parties have been de-registered by INEC and many more may follow, releasing a tsunami of non-conformist, often idealistic and individualistic members, to choose a future in other surviving or merging parties or quit politics in disgust.

    Change is personal and political. Change is political party survival and revival of Nigeria. No change will mean death. We must all stop stealing from the budget and its derivatives during 2013 in preparation for 2014, the 100thyear of the infamous amalgamation. With new budgets in every LGA, state, the FCT, Abuja, and every MDA what political party resolutions have been made to change the culture of corruption? Or are the resolutions merely to continue the age-long ‘shortening the ration’ of the masses by theft alias corruption? Which media hungry TV political personality is making these stealing and theft resolutions in the political hierarchy, at party BOT meetings, in NASS, governor’s and minister’s and commissioner’s and top civil servants offices like Permanent Secretary Director etc? Before you steal, you must decide to steal!

    Just as you plan 2013 and your children’s school fees in your office, know and remember that these other places are real places where the real crime, stealing and theft, official and unofficial, legalised illegality, corruption against the people of the Nigerian nation, is hatched. There the crime is approved and rubber-stamped at 10,000 different levels each January including the tax office. Is no one clean in Nigeria’s political and civil servant hierarchy? Can we have such meetings where they will swear ‘We will not steal any of the budget?’ Or ‘We will steal only 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80% of the budget.’ Who is the chief thief who speaks at the party meetings and directs the theft at every level of corrupt government? For Nigeria to change, the first thing is for every political party to change from thieving, bribing, grabbing mode to service mode. If it happens it will immediately retain trillions in the budgets.

    From exorbitant parking fine fees-N25,000 in Ibadan while it is N4,000 in Abeokuta; to ridiculous environmental and land use bills, outrageous personal assessments, huge energy costs, to budgetary theft, the Nigerian suffers at every turn.

    Nigeria will never achieve the higher ground of better living standards unless we, the citizens, manage to reverse positions with the politicians and wrestle the budget from them. How do we control the political profession’s appetite for the public funds and manipulation of laws for party members’ maximum gain? It is certain Nigeria’s politicians need education and massive reorientation towards service and humility. Arrogance is a disease among politicians and they certainly need deliverance from the vices of greed, theft, stealing, arrogance, corruption of thoughts and actions and policies.

    Political parties must curb their appetites for the public purse and find new ways to raise money. They already have high fees for political office seekers and underhand bribes within the party including new words for theft like ‘palliatives’ and ‘soft landing’ funds. Let them study and use the mechanisms of relatively honest political parties abroad –membership, announced donations etc. and stay away from percentages of budgets, contracts and extortion. Nigeria cannot survive another year of this method of bleeding the state in addition to the murderous multibillion SAPing of political ‘Salaries and Perks’ and constituency projects.

  • Water, electricity not bullets

    Water, electricity not bullets

    Here we go again. By the last count, at least four students of the Nassarawa State University, Keffi, were callously mowed down last Monday. The students had turned out in large numbers on the fateful day to protest lack of water and electricity in their campus when the students met their death. Many more who sustained varying degrees of injuries were rushed to the school clinic and other nearby hospitals for treatment.

    Unfortunately, just like many of such horrendous incidents in the past, the blame game is on. The students have alleged that their colleagues were killed by soldiers from the army’s 177 Guards Battalion based in Keffi who were drafted to the scene. But Ibrahim Attahiru, a Brigadier-General and Director, Army Public Relations, has denied this. While commenting on the incident last week, Attahiru said, “Three soldiers sustained injuries following the stones, bottles and metals thrown at them” by the rampaging students.

    Thank God that the police have not been fingered in this latest killing. Eyewitness accounts said policemen who were drafted to the scene were very persuasive in their approach but, as soon as soldiers came in, they started shooting sporadically. This, the army has denied. But the question is: while the students were hauling stones and other available missiles at the battle-ready soldiers, with what did they respond? And how were they able to dislodge the warring students and got them back to campus?

    We have been told by the army that hoodlums and cultists had hijacked the protest and caused mayhem before the soldiers and other security agents were called in to quell the protest. As more revelations are made in the coming days, I am quite sure the story line will change again and again. Then we’ll be told that some of the students actually carried arms during the protest. And to support this allegation, a cache of arms seized from armed robbers since God knows when, will be displayed for people to see. Such is the nature of cover-ups often employed by security agents to nail people at all costs.

    Yes, the students could have destroyed some of the institution’s property or even public property during the course of the protest. This, in itself, is bad enough. Students cannot be protesting against lack of water and electricity and at the same time, destroying or vandalising many other infrastructure on campus or turn the heat on unsuspecting members of the public. Ordinarily, it doesn’t add up at all.

    Government property or any other public property is the people’s property and, as such, should be protected at all times. Huge sums of money are involved in putting these structures in place. With inflation and the downward trend in world economy vis-à-vis the nation’s economy, it costs a fortune nowadays to replace these infrastructures or property. That is why there must be care and caution even in the face of extreme provocation, denial or lack of facilities in view of the dwindling government revenue earnings which have affected the nation’s expenditure or spending power in recent times.

    I am aware that there are a few students who hide under this ‘Aluta’ of a thing to ventilate their anger unnecessarily on the society by going to the extreme. They hide under such protests to cause destruction. This will not do us any good. Now, some students who were sent to school with hard-earned money by their parents will be sent home in coffins. But then, when are we going to get over these incessant and perennial senseless killings of our youths in their prime?

    The appalling security situation in the country has not helped matters. Mind you, Nassarawa State is a contiguous state to the killing fields of Plateau State where deadly clashes have led to the death of hundreds of people, including scores of security agents, in the last few years. Even though there are occasional lull in the orgy of violence and wanton destruction of lives and property in that part of the country, the ugly situation has often had its collateral effects on many of the adjoining states of Nassarawa, Benue, Niger, and even the Federal Capital Territory, to name a few.

    The foot soldiers of these troublemakers are the hoi polloi in the society who have not been adequately catered for in terms of feeding, housing and other basic necessities of life. They live in abject poverty, deprivation, wants and disease. Life, to them, is meaningless, nasty, ‘short and brutish’. That is why they would take up arms in the name of hoodlums and hijack an otherwise peaceful protest by students.

    But it would appear that the soldiers who were hastily drafted to quell the protest must have used maximum force on the protesters. In the first place, it was wrong to have called in the army to quell an ordinary protest by defenceless students. The students themselves attested to the fact that the policemen who first accosted them were persuasive in their approach but the whole configuration changed when soldiers appeared on the scene. And soldiers, by their training, speak only one language: force.

    So, in essence, those who should take responsibility for this mindless massacre are not the soldiers who pulled the trigger that sent the students to their early graves, but the university authorities who brought them into the fray. It is also possible that the troops’ commanders may not have followed the rule of engagement to the letter.

    What is evident in the latest sad story of Nassarawa University is that those in positions of authority in this country may have totally lost confidence in the police and their ability to deal with all these protests especially by students. That was probably why the school’s authorities quickly called in the army to do what a well-trained police force could have done. Internal security is the business of the police and other agencies. The army or military, as the case may be, should only be called in as a last resort if the police cannot cope.

    I will agree with those who might want to say that protests in Nigeria may not be the same thing as protests in other countries like Britain, the United States of America, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal or even Egypt and other places. We have seen a lot of protests in these countries in the last two years often instigated by harsh economic realities as it happened in Britain, Greece, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria or bad governance in Egypt. At least, far less people have been killed especially in Egypt where the protests have often turned bloody and almost uncontrollable.

    It is true that in Nigeria, many of these protests are often infiltrated by armed hoodlums who convert the protests to personal gains. Many of the security agents too, treat their fellowmen with disdain, contempt and extreme brutality even in matters that require tact, wisdom and experience to handle. With such ruthlessness often exhibited by our security agents, sometimes on innocent Nigerians who are made to suffer unjustly, and or even extorted in the process, it then becomes a natural phenomenon that the average Nigerian, rightly or wrongly, harbours some certain degree of hatred for our security agents. All this must change in order for us to achieve some modicum of decency in our daily lives.

    I sincerely believe that what happened to the four unfortunate students of Nassarawa University is avoidable. The onus now is on our security agents to go back to the drawing board and map out new strategies to deal with the public, especially protesting students, so as to put a permanent end to this recurring human carnage in the name of quelling riots. The students too and indeed, all Nigerians, must strive at all times to be law-abiding, while the security agents should also operate within the ambit of the law. We cannot continue to waste our young, vibrant ones needlessly like this. After all, what the students asked for is water and electricity, not bullets and deaths!

  • Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    Jonathan and his Maradona politics

    It was former Lagos State Governor, Bola Tinubu, who in an interview granted this paper on the occasion of his 60th birthday, called President Goodluck Jonathan ‘Nigeria’s most dangerous politician.’

    Part of that lethal effect comes from the fact that because he lacks the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton, for example, people tend to underrate him and write him off as dour and ineffective. His chess-like moves that threw the much-vaunted Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) into disarray last week, show that you dismiss him at your own peril.

    But the greater danger of his brand of politics that embraces all the dodgy philosophies of the Diego Maradona school of thought is that it always ends in tears.

    Maradona is a famous former Argentinean football player who at the height of his powers at the World Cup finals in 1986 scored a vital goal against England using underhand tactics. He then blasphemously attributed the inspiration for his dubious goal to a holy God. He scored, he said, with a little help from “the hand of God!”

    For the Maradonas of this world the end always justifies the means. It doesn’t matter who or what is trampled upon or run over in the process. But the trouble with dribblers is that they soon tie themselves up in knots because they quickly run out of space for manouvre.

    Former President Ibrahim Babangida never called himself Maradona. But the moniker naturally attached itself to the man and never detached itself. And it was all down to his penchant for periodically sabotaging a political transition that he invented.

    This last week President Jonathan showed that he has assimilated the bare essences of Maradonic politics by demobilising and balkanising the NGF with the creation of the so-called Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors Forum (PDP-GF).

    But while the President and his men might count what happened in Aso Villa last week as some tremendous achievement, I am less than impressed. I have long held the view that the power and unity of the NGF is grossly exaggerated.

    A few weeks ago, prominent Ijaw leader, former Minister of Information, and Jonathan’s chief cheerleader, Chief Edwin Clark, was fulminating against the NGF – accusing the body of all sorts of crimes. In reaction to his comments I had written in my column of January 27, 2013 as follows:

    “Today, Clark would like us to believe that the NGF is this new-fangled monstrosity that is a clear and present danger to our democracy. Closer examination will, however, show that the behemoth has a soft underbelly. They can be a powerful bloc when they agree, but they are as powerless as a congregation of strange bedfellows when their interests diverge along regional, ethnic or monetary lines.”

    The Aso Rock drama therefore goes beyond a clash of egos between a prickly president who wouldn’t brook a contrary word being said about him, and a governor who in the eyes of the powers-that-be was beginning to spill out of his britches. It is, in reality, the foreplay for the coming 2015 battles.

    All these chess moves are evidence of an incumbent president who has decided to run and is putting structures in place to support such a bid. This sort of aggression is usually deployed for something greater than assuaging a bruised ego.

    After Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, blew the whistle on the one-term pact supposedly signed between Jonathan and PDP governors in 2011, the president’s spokesmen would not give a yes or no answer – but rather settled for hot air. The president will not be distracted and will only speak on such matters from next year, they said huffily.

    But we don’t need any other confirmation. His actions speak louder than words. His party chairman, Bamanga Tukur, has even come out to affirm the right of the president to run again. But here they all miss the point.

    In 2011 and as it is now, the real issue was not whether Jonathan as a Nigerian had the right to run. What we are confronted with is the reality that in politics in countries with a multiplicity of ethnic groups, things are not always resolved only by legalities. Sometimes factors like balance, fairness and spread come into play.

    In 1999, every Nigerian had a right to run for president. But the major parties that year decided that given the injustice suffered by the late Chief M. K. O. Abiola whose victory at the June 12, 1993 presidential polls was arbitrarily annulled by the military, that the South-West be compensated with the position in the interest of national reconciliation.

    That year, the PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo ran against the All Peoples Party (APP)-Alliance for Democracy (AD) candidate, Olu Falae. Both men were Yoruba.

    Jonathan is free to run as the Tukur and the courts have said. But the question he will have to answer sooner than later is whether he gave his word to stand down after one term. It doesn’t matter whether he signed a physical document. Did he give his word of honour?

    I recall that after this deal was reached, and the northern governors left the group of Atiku Abubakar, Adamu Ciroma and Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Mohammed Gusau in the lurch, many of them became pariahs in their own states. They were perceived as treacherous individuals who deserved to be stoned for selling out the interest of their region.

    They stuck out their necks in the belief that a gentleman will keep his word. I suspect that someone like Atiku who was especially embittered by Jonathan’s decision to run in 2011 returned to PDP in the expectation that the president will not contest again. Surely, he must be wiser now.

    If there was a deep reservoir of resentment against Jonathan back then, it will be difficult to plumb the depths of regional ill-feeling were he to renounce his pact to serve for just one term.

    The tragedy for the president and country is that he talks up a storm about transforming Nigeria, yet his politics threatens to sink the nation deeper into the mire of division. Instead of offering the ‘breath of fresh air’ he promised during his 2011 campaign, all he’s doing is serving up the regurgitated banalities of previous leaders.

    What is so novel about locking governors up and showing them a video of Amaechi attacking him over the Bayelsa-Rivers oil wells dispute. The late General Sani Abacha patented the Aso Rock film show tour – trucking in everyone from traditional leaders to market women to watch bungling, bumbling generals planning to topple a master coup-plotter.

    In a country aspiring to build a democracy should we be coercing people using the tactics of military dictators, or engaging in a contest of ideas – no matter how contentious?

    What is so unique about changing the goal posts in mid-game? Babangida wrote the manual on that. As for renouncing agreements sealed with a handshake, Jonathan must have torn several pages out of the handbook of a couple of predecessors.

    Unfortunately, this base politics devoid of honour cannot take Nigeria far. If people occupying or aspiring to the high office of president can blithely disavow commitments they made to others – just because they didn’t sign a written document – why should we believe anything they tell us when they come seeking our votes again? Nigeria certainly deserves better.

  • Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Jonathan and 2015: Okupe’s pure wind

    Last Wednesday, the bellicose Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr Doyin Okupe, dismissed as “diversionary,” a declaration by the Niger State Governor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, that in the run up to the 2011 elections President Goodluck Jonathan “signed” an agreement with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors to serve for only one term.

    Governor Aliyu made the declaration the weekend before in a phone-in programme, ‘Guest of the Week’, on Liberty Radio, a Kaduna based private FM radio station. It is apparent that the governor made the declaration against the background of clear indications so far that the President will re-contest for his job in 2015, come rain or shine.

    “I recall that at the time he was going to declare for the 2011 election,” the governor said, “all the PDP governors were brought together to ensure that we were all in the same frame of mind. And I recall that some of us said given the circumstance of the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua and given the PDP zoning arrangement, it was expected that the North was to produce the president for a number of years.

    “I recall that at that discussion it was agreed that Jonathan would only serve for one term of four years and we all SIGNED the agreement…I think we are all gentlemen enough so when the time comes, we will all come together and see what is the right thing to do.” (Emphasis mine).

    These were the remarks Okupe has since dismissed as diversionary – and a diversion which he said his principal is determined to resist with every ounce of his strength. The president, he said, is simply too pre-occupied with his commitment to transform Nigeria into a land flowing with milk and honey to allow himself to be dragged into the campaigns for the next presidential election.

    “We,” Okupe said, “wish to state categorically that this is neither the time nor the season to begin electioneering campaign…and so President Goodluck Jonathan will not jump the gun. Mr President will stoutly resist any disguised or open attempt to drag him into any debates, arguments or political discussions relating to a presidential election in 2015. The President considers this an invidious attempt to sway him from his chosen pursuit of the set out constituents of the transformation agenda which form the basis upon which Nigerians overwhelmingly elected him to steer the ship of the nation in 2011.”

    When the celebrated journalist and novelist, George Orwell, said in his famous essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, published in 1946, that “Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible,” he could not, of course, have had your typical Nigerian politician in mind, much less a 21st century Nigerian presidential spokesman. But if he did, he couldn’t have been more spot-on in his dismissal of political speech as a lot of bull. “Political language,” he said in the essay, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

    Anyone living in Nigerian in recent times, even if he were half blind – except, of course, if he is Okupe and his likes – can see that the presidential spokesman’s attempt to rebut Governor Aliyu couldn’t have been more disingenuous. Few statements, if any, could have been worded to make barefaced lies sound truthful, murder respectable and pure wind appear solid.

    To begin with, most disinterested Nigerians and close foreign observers of Nigeria know that President Jonathan was never “overwhelmingly elected” in April 2011. On the contrary, it is pretty obvious he was overwhelmingly rigged into office, beginning with the dubious PDP primaries, all the way through the manipulation of religion and ethnicity and the abuse of state’s fiscal power and its instruments of violence to square or squash dissent, to finally getting the courts to dismiss opposition rejection of the results on legal technicalities.

    Second, even Okupe knows that his principal has been anything but single-minded in his pursuit of his Transformation Agenda, which, in any case, was an unaffordable shopping list rather than a set of coherent and achievable objectives. If the President has been single-minded in the pursuit of his campaign promises, incoherent and unrealistic as they were, the country would have been a lot better today than it was in April 2011.

    The truth, assuming the likes of Okupe care for one, is that if anyone is guilty of diverting the president’s attention from his job, it is the man himself, certainly more than anyone else. This much is obvious from his single-minded determination last year to replace the “recalcitrant” Timipre Sylva with the loyal Seriake Dickson as the governor of his home state, Bayelsa, and hunt Sylva down into oblivion. It was also obvious from his single-minded determination to impose the loyal Alhaji Bamanga Tukur as chairman of the PDP, even after the gentleman had been roundly rejected by his immediate North-Eastern constituency to which the job had been zoned.

    No less diversionary is his self-inflicted current face-off with Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State whose crime, it seems, is that, like not a few two-term governors, he is suspected of harbouring presidential ambition. At least twice last week the President tried, but failed, to remove Amaechi as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum. Before then his self-appointed godfather, Chief Edwin Clark, had taken out a two-part full page adverts in several newspapers to rant and rave at the Forum for its imagined antipathy towards his godson. Chances are those adverts did not cost the old man one kobo.

    What all this suggests is that the President is single-mindedly determined not to let anything or anyone whatsoever to get in the way of his second-term, some would say third-term, presidential ambition, having been sworn into the office twice already. If anything has been diverting his attention from doing his job, it is this single-minded focus on 2015.

    So it is really disingenuous for Okupe to accuse Governor Aliyu, or for that matter anyone else, of trying to divert the President from carrying out his transformation agenda. The governor apparently did not lie when he said the President signed a deal with the PDP governors to serve for only one term on his own steam. The proof that Aliyu spoke the truth, at least for once, given his reputation as a public officer who talks and equivocates too much, is crystal clear from the egregious response to his claim by friends of the president which in effect says, “So what if the President signed a deal?”

    Politicians everywhere do deals often with no intention to keep them. But only in Nigeria do they sign and seal deals with no intention whatsoever to honour them. Worse still, it is only in Nigeria that a politician can look you straight in the eyes and accuse you of diverting his attention from doing his job for simply reminding him that he has not kept his word.

    The surprise in all this, therefore, is not that the President signed a deal apparently with no intention to honour it. It is not even that his spokesman will attempt to make a lie look truthful or make murder look respectable or give pure wind the appearance of solidity.

    The surprise is that even after the President and his estranged benefactor, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, categorically denied the zoning and power rotation deal in PDP, Governor Aliyu would still talk about the President’s word as a gentleman being his honour in spite of all the indications so far that the man would rather Nigeria breaks up than honour his word not to contest the next presidential election.

     

  • Political crime of preventable suffering; El Rufai’s autobiography

    Political crime of preventable suffering; El Rufai’s autobiography

    When a government takes power it must take on responsibilities to the citizenry. In Nigeria political power is an end in itself. The only activities advertised are self-perpetuating ‘re-election engineering’ supported by theft and accumulation of masses of public money to fill ‘war chests’ to execute a re-election project. This ‘politically legitimised’ but totally ‘criminally illegal’ budget diversion in the moral custody of the political class to personal and party war chests deprived the budget of functionality at every level of growth and development.

    Nigeria has suffered from the political roundabout of ‘win-budget-political theft-budget failure-election corruption-win-budget-theft-budget failure etc’. This preoccupation of politics with self-perpetuation and unenlightened political self-interest has overridden our development as none of the 5, 10, 15 or 20 year development plans were seriously executed. The dichotomy of the North and South views on everything has also been a major drawback to sustained development. The best example is the abuse and misapplication of federalism to mean only a ‘skewed federal character’. This is an on-going 35 year hidden ‘Second Civil War’- with abandonment of basic honest sharing principles on the altar of warped principles, census, LGA and revenue figures and domination or dependency. The spin-off was the conservative versus progressive struggle, usually won by the powerful conservative elements of all ethnic groups. The cost of this stranglehold on Nigeria was a serious lack of three things- development, devolution of power and funds nationwide. This cost is reflected in Nigeria’s woeful showing in sports, electricity power supply, education, medical treatment, railways and abandonment of the well-entrenched colonial culture of building and road maintenance.

    Historically, the Public Works Department would mark a date in five years on the wall and it would return on that date to repaint the house. We abandoned that inherited colonial working civil service maintenance culture. Those who sat at meetings which abandoned such maintenance strategies should be exposed. Note that UK spent over £22m pounds on citizens’ compensation claims for potholes.

    Little could be done by individual citizens and states to cancel out federal abdication of its national responsibility and abandonment and deliberate neglect of the railways or the failure of the national power grid or the bad roads. Of course all used and still use generators etc to substitute for power deprivation. This is preventable suffering. Nigeria would have saved trillions annually if no generators had ever been imported to substitute for a failed government. The grid would have been forced to grow at 1,000Mw per annum to 25-30,000Mw by now, short of the needed 100,000Mw but better than our 5,000Mw. Who pays for this ‘preventable suffering’?

    Every pothole and diversion for development must be studied to reduce ‘preventable suffering’. Remember the anguish at Ogere and Ore? All ‘Preventable Suffering’ is easily solved. Government is not God and must create solutions to prevent suffering even during construction. It is not necessary for citizens to suffer excessively for government development! Government should supervise and force contractors to take care of citizens during construction.

    Nigeria’s failure to develop railways, roads and power and cancel history from schools was no mistake but a deliberate punishable criminal conspiracy against Nigeria. It was deliberate government policy. Those civil servants, politicians and military adventurers who sat at Federal Executive Council and Ministerial Meetings vetoing power grid development, standard gauge railway line, East West roads, second Niger Bridge and history from the curriculum know each other. We want to know them before they get more misplaced national honours. Such people have no business lamenting ‘Nigeria Today’ or advising current governments on the ‘way forward’. All their lapses have paralysed the nation while countries with fewer resources have leapt ahead of us in almost every ranking except corruption and other negative areas. They should be exposed under the Freedom of Information Act and in properly informative biographies like the exciting new 627 page autobiography by Nasir El-Rufai titled ‘The Accidental Public Servant’. Agree or not with him, you should get a copy if you are writing a biography or are hopeful for the future of Nigeria. Criminal politicians beware. We the people will get access, a la El-Rufia, to what you say and do, irresponsible or not, in governance and your deeds will appear in the public domain. Look at the recent sack of judges.

    Government is often people with greed and ambition with little vision. Government’s failure in railways made life a misery and a death trap. Government intentions to perpetuate the railway blight failed when its search for an international container port license for Lagos required railway evacuation of containers. The citizens made do with nothing in some parts while in progressive areas the citizens substituted for federal losses by investment of their resources in their children’s education.

    Happily a few of these areas are finally receiving attention mainly because the conservatives have finally agreed to be dragged into the 21st Century. But the pace is slow relative to need to compensate for ‘preventable suffering’.

    Recently we have seen some movement in solving these problems and serious attempts to achieve the MDGs but at what mega-cost and corruption? Inexplicably, simple mass action solutions like UBEC-led ‘Emergency Operation Textbooks, Science and Sports Equipment Boxes’ still elude millions of Nigerian students stuck in over 70,000 schools mostly unworthy of the simplest dictionary definition of ‘school’ –enlightened inspired teachers, teacher and child friendly school environment, books, books, books. Preventable suffering?

  • Ogun PDP: The Abuja ‘coup’

    Ogun PDP: The Abuja ‘coup’

    There has been an upbeat in the polity. From all indications, there is a looming volatile and combustible confusion that is capable of tearing into shreds the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, the party that claims to be the biggest in Africa.

    There’s no doubt that the PDP is a party run by ‘big people’, which has offered too little to Nigerians in the last 14 years of democratic governance. Therefore, those who call the party an alliance of strange bedfellows may not be too wrong after all as most of the members seem to be united in only one accord – the love of the stomach and filthy lucre.

    Every now and again, the rumbles that tear through the soul of the party are far greater than a volcanic eruption with devastating consequences. I am sure, Bamanga Tukur, the national chairman of the party, cannot be sleeping with his two eyes closed at the moment. This is because some elements within the party cannot really come to terms with his style of administration. To them, he has come on board to ‘chop’ and not to offer any valuable legacy in leadership.

    For now, Tukur seems to have held the rampaging tempest trying to dislodge him from his post at bay. One moment, it is as if he would not survive yet another day in office; the next moment, he is on the offensive again, fighting real and imaginary enemies. By the last count, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the former national secretary of the party, and Bode Mustapha, the national auditor, have been yanked off their offices. If Oyinlola’s ouster was through the instrumentality of the law, Mustapha’s case was quite curious, dramatic, intriguing and strange. The latter was the culmination of several subtle but treacherous moves aided and abetted by Tukur and his lackeys. In this latest chess game, Bode George, the discredited party chieftain who is going about with a moral baggage of an ex-convict, played a prominent role.

    George had, a fortnight ago, surreptitiously corralled chieftains of the party from the South-west into Abuja for a meeting with Tukur. Some of the leaders of the party who could read between the lines stayed away from that purposeless extravaganza. But others, who were goaded by vaulting ambitions and greed, could not smell any rat. They consequently rail-roaded their motley crowd of followers into the Golgotha that had been prepared for them in Abuja. What followed is the mass slaughter that was unleashed on the unsuspecting party faithful.

    Though the ‘family meeting’ was cloaked in the façade of a reconciliation gambit, those at the meeting were dumbfounded when they discovered that they had voluntarily walked into a booby trap set for them by Bode George and others. In one fell swoop, all the contending groups in Ogun State PDP – the Olusegun Obasanjo’s, Jubril Martins Kuye’s and Gbenga Daniel’s groups – were all deposited inside the trash can. The only man left standing is Buruji Kashamu, who, apparently, had a fore-knowledge of the tsunami.

    It was a well- orchestrated coup d’état. A few hours to the Abuja parley, Tukur, through a top legal practitioner based in Abuja, went round the courts and withdrew all the pending cases instituted against Buruji’s group by one of the other groups. The dummy that was sold was that Buruji would follow suit and withdraw all his court cases to pave way for genuine reconciliation. But this was not to be. As soon as the other cases were withdrawn, Buruji became adamant and would not take part in such a charade. That action actually sent a danger signal to the other groups. But alas, it was damn too late in the day to do a rethink or a re-map of strategy. That was how the other contending groups were led to the slaughter slab.

    With power now fully in Buruji’s kitty, the businessman turned politician was said to have thoroughly lambasted Gbenga Daniel, the immediate past governor of Ogun State, who is widely believed to have contributed enormously to the streak of misfortune that has trailed the party in Ogun State in recent times. He was said to have pointedly told Daniel that he (Daniel) was an impostor having left the PDP in 2011 to pitch his tent with the Peoples Party of Nigeria, PPN, the party he founded and funded to achieve a selfish motive.

    Daniel has been desperate to return to the PDP ever since because of the messy situation he found himself soon after the 2011 election. In that election, his favourite PPN came a miserable third behind the PDP and the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, who came second and first respectively. Not even his attempt to ‘romance’ Kunle Amosun, the incumbent governor of the state, now his nemesis, had paid off. Instead, Daniel has been at the receiving end of a barrage of legal cocktails which have greatly unsettled him. He is, therefore, believed to be seeking sanctuary in the PDP as one sure way to wriggle out of the political cobweb in which he has been trapped.

    During the campaign for the 2011 general election, Daniel had confidently boasted to whoever cared to listen, including President Goodluck Jonathan himself, that he was capable of winning the governorship election in Ogun State, through the PPN. At that time, his illusion was that he could win the election and then ‘decamp’ with his PPN followers almost immediately back to the PDP. By doing this, he was obviously infatuated with a false sense of superiority and unfounded popularity even at a time it was clear that his public rating had plummeted.

    It appeared that Jonathan and the party hierarchy in Abuja was sucked in by these vainglorious and delusive promises. This is apparent from events leading to the 2011 election. Daniel had so much sweet-tongued the president to toeing his line of thoughts that any contrary opinion expressed over the delicate position of the PDP in Ogun State election at that time was easily dismissed with a wave of the hand.

    Today, Daniel is like a fish out of water, hence his desperation for a reunion with Ogun PDP by all means. Unfortunately, in trying to reunite with the PDP in Ogun State, he is not willing to follow the laid-down procedure of the party -go back to his ward and rejoin the party. Perhaps, he believes that as a former chief executive of the state, it would be too demeaning for him to be subjected to such party procedures. He has not also helped matters by his blunt refusal to make up with those whom he had stepped or even crushed their toes during the 2011 general election. Above all, there is also this problem of trying to seize the control of the PDP in Ogun State, a move many of the stakeholders consider insulting and outlandish.

    Apart from the kid’s gloves with which Mr. President, Tukur and the party hierarchy in Abuja are treating Daniel for reasons best known to them, some of the past governors of PDP, namely Segun Oni, Olusegun Agagu and Adebayo Alao-Akala, are also believed to be fronting for him and doing whatever is possible to bring him back to the fold. Of particular mention is Oni, who, as former vice-chairman of the party in the South-west, preoccupied himself with the task of bringing in the embattled former governor. Unfortunately, that solo effort has led to his sudden ouster from the exalted position.

    By now, all the powerful men of yesterday must have seen the nakedness of power. They are now like political lepers, courtesy of selfishness and greed. What is certain is that Tukur may have only scored a Pyrrhic victory as the South-west PDP, particularly Ogun PDP, gets further enmeshed and embroiled in internal wrangling. Until genuine reconciliation is effected, the crisis in Ogun State PDP is far from being over. In fact, it has just begun!

  • The centenary Nigerian; Political Party Corruption-PPC; Smoothen the path of Nigerians

    The centenary Nigerian; Political Party Corruption-PPC; Smoothen the path of Nigerians

    We have adult decisions at this 100 year junction in Nigeria’s life. We have bombs exploding and multibillion naira thefts and with millions displaced and tens of thousands injured and dead of the wounds of surviving in Nigeria. Yet, we are not ‘At War’. Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, NISER should quantify the mental, physical, family, work and other costs of being a ‘Centenary Nigerian’, The Centenary Nigerian survives okada mayhem and exists without a predictable salary, pension, mortgage, monthly house rent, water, electricity. In addition banking COT, borrowing and high naira exchange costs have made life a 100 year misery and short life expectancy, 47 years.

    Every good thing arrives late for Centenary Nigerians, be it childhood vaccinations, electricity to study and work and play, books for education, medicines in hospitals, jobs and joy and justice, good roads, affordable accommodation and mosquito nets. But they still say ‘Thank you!’ though ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Things expected from government are mis-labelled ‘government cannot do it alone’ and are delayed, denied, undelivered or delegated to the private sector in a PPP – Public Private Partnership.

    Evil federal polices brought Nigeria to its knees from internal slavery. Government even refused to buy sports equipment for schools while officials stole billions weekly. Sorry, Centenary Nigerian children! ‘Nothing for you’ as Lagbaja says. When in Nigerian education history was the meeting held which cancelled ‘history’, ‘sports equipment’, ‘library books’ and ‘science disposables’ from Nigeria’s education budgets? Whoever did it is probably a ‘big’ retired ‘respected’ Minister or Director of Education and ‘hiding’ in Senate.

    Centenary Nigerians have suffered needless trauma over the last 100 years from failure and abandonment of leadership opportunities – electricity, transport, security, and education. I see it every day in the preventable suffering of my patients and in the pigsties mislabelled ‘schools’. Yes, many Centenary Nigerians are amazingly ‘content with nothing’, accepting what they see on TV as ‘unattainable’. This is Centenary Nigeria where only the sun is free – so free that we refuse to give CBN or other loans for solar equipment! Of course we have several ‘working’ officials. But we require a critical mass of good Centenary Nigerians.

    Our problems are corruption and incompetence. Corruption can stop today, overnight. We must quickly change to survive the huge rock of corruption, far greater than the meteor that hit Russia. Corruption devalues every government naira to 30kobo. Our recent wonderful 2013 Orange Africa Cup of Nations football success belongs to the team, not us, because Centenary Nigeria did too little. And there are even better players, undiscovered because no one gave them footballs, opportunity or scouted for talent in their LGA. Ditto for all sports and many academic programmes which need organised systematic LGA, State and National Sports Databases. Centenary Nigeria could so easily replicate this football success story in events from shooting to swimming. Sport is neglected job creation. This football success revealed how easily Centenary Nigerians overcome mass suffering whenever transient hope and joy appears. But living in hope without much expectation is lethal.

    We are a blessed people but cursed with many corrupt leaders in corrupt party politics and a rotten greedy civil service. If the survival of Nigeria is paramount we must eliminate political party corruption to save Centenary Nigeria@100.

    With the ‘2013 Amalgamation’ of some political parties into APC, remember that Organised Political Party Corruption, OPPC is traditionally the greatest Nigerian corruption. Are political parties entitled to 50-70% of the budget? By what right do political parties steal? Let political parties study international political party funding etc, and stop stealing from budgets and taking high percentages of contract fees, consultant fees, tax task force funds and Internally Generated Revenue to fund political parties and personalities.

    Before Nigerian Centenary amalgamation celebrations, we need delivery on developmental centenary projects and goals. The private sector is not spending its own money for the centenary celebration. Government will still spend billions on junketing, hotel, transport and ‘palliative’ allowances. The private sector is spending the money you, Centenary Nigerian, paid for excessive bank and cement charges etc. So Fellow Nigerians, you are paying to celebrate the 1914 amalgamation and have paid for the post-amalgamation suffering during the last 100 years. QED!

    At least the Centenary film showed us heroic figures including Olaudah Equiano, the first Nigerian best selling author and slave who is not yet taught in Nigerian schools. Every student should have a copy of Olauda Equiano’s Book, ‘The interesting narrative of the Travels of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa.’ We in Educare Trust have given out hundreds of copies of the book and run a reading club called The Olaudah Equiano Poetry and Prose Club. You should start one in your school or university as an Amalgamation Project on Nigerian heroes.

    In Ibadan, we have a newly reconstructed bridge in Bodija, and the Mokola flyover. Amen. Something new, money well spent by Governor Abiola Ajimobi. During construction the poor alternative routes have cost Nigerians millions of hours and naira daily in fuel and time. Some ‘suffering’ is necessary during development but much Nigerian suffering will be reduced merely by tarring and smoothening alternative routes. Even today though the Davies Bridge is repaired, the Tewogbade, Veterinary and Mokola alternative routes need urgent maintenance and pothole filling, to ‘make our paths straight and smooth’. Building a flyover is good but adding smooth motorable alternative routes during construction is better. Make smooth their path, nationwide please.

  • Yusuf and his ‘near acquittal’

    Yusuf and his ‘near acquittal’

    The Nigerian judiciary, through the decision of Justice Abubakar Talba of an Abuja high court on January 28, on the police pension scam case, has sent a clear message to ‘future offenders’.  acquittala Director at the Police Pension Office, was charged to court for criminal misappropriation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, under section 309 of the Penal Code Act, Cap 532, Laws of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria, 2007. He was charged alongside seven other members of the Pension Office whose cases are still pending in court.

    Yusuf, who originally pleaded not guilty to the charges, turned around to plead guilty to three specific charges for which he was convicted. The change in his plea came after a session with the prosecution lawyers led by Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, where plea bargaining purportedly took place. The actual terms of the plea bargaining remains unclear. Yusuf was sentenced to two years imprisonment for each of the three counts to which he pleaded guilty, to run concurrently and with an option of fine, set at N750,000. This, he paid off, with the swiftness of one who had prior knowledge of this outcome.

    This judgment sparked a lot of outcries from within the legal profession, the media and, of course, amongst the populace. Before Nigerians forget their recent history, Bode George was similarly convicted a few years back, after a plea bargaining session with prosecution lawyers. George got two years concurrent sentences on all counts for which he was found guilty. Then, Nigerians lauded the judgment. But in truth, he got off easy as well. The option of fine in Yusuf’s case seems like a world of difference, but really, it is not. Section 309 of the Penal Code, under which Yusuf was sentenced, reads thus: “Whoever commits criminal misappropriation shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine or with both”.

    Now, there are a few issues to be addressed in the scenario. First, what options did the prosecution have in prosecuting Yusuf? Apparently, the Penal Code was one option. Another option, considering that the prosecutors were the EFCC, would have been to bring charges for offences under the EFCC Act. Section 17 (1) of the EFCC Act provides for offences in relation to economic and financial crimes. Section 17 (2) specifically states thus: “The penalties for offences under sub section (1) of this section shall be imprisonment for a term not less than fifteen years and not exceeding twenty-five years”. In addition to this, section 18 of the EFCC Act was clear in sub section (1) and (2) thus: “(1) The Federal High Court or High Court of a State has jurisdiction to try offenders under this Act. (2) The Court shall have power, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any other enactment, to impose the penalties provided for in this Act.” A rational prosecutor, who wishes to set an example as a deterrent for future offenders, will not be at a loss as to which of the two enactments (Penal Code or EFCC Act) will serve better to charge the accused.

    Secondly, if the Penal Code’s Section 309 was really all that was before the court as a guide to the punishment of the accused, why did the judge give an option of fine which is clearly within his discretion to insert or withhold from his judgment? Alternatively, Section 309 also provides the possibility of a fine and mandatory imprisonment running together. And since the judge had given the accused an option of fine, why N750,000 for misappropriation of a figure in excess of N23 billion? While the section does not specify the amount of fine to be set, where applicable, the judge, in the exercise of his discretion, is to be guided by the principles of fairness and justice and, in special cases, public interest. Although, in defence of the judge, N750,000 is a fair fine for two years imprisonment, judging by the similar proportions of terms of imprisonment to fines, where specifically provided. The public interest vote on this particular decision should have outweighed the others in the mind of the judge, as this is a special case with immense national significance. He was within his rights to set that fine as he would have been if he had gone much higher.

    Third, is the issue of plea bargaining. To start with, plea bargaining, in itself, is not a destructive mechanism but rather a constructive one. Its essence is to expedite the process of justice and clear the court’s desks to make way for the tons of litigations flooding the courts. The simple process involves an accused pleading guilty to some or all of the charges brought against him/her in return for a reduced sentence. This saves the court the task of a full-fledged hearing and even clears the prisons by keeping convicts incarcerated for a relatively shorter period. It is practised in many developed countries and, today, is a key part of the United States justice system in terms of effective dispensation of justice. Although it is not specifically provided for in the Nigerian legal system or in any of the laws, there have been calls for its integration in the laws along with alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. The reality is that, in our recent experiments with the procedure, it is the Cecilia Ibrus, Bode Georges and other billionaire offenders that have the privilege, while the common man is sentenced to five years imprisonment for stealing an item worth less than N100.

    Though a copy of the charge sheet is yet to emerge for public scrutiny, it is not unlikely that the charges were brought both under the Penal Code and EFCC Act, as a seasoned legal practitioner would not be so absent minded to overlook such disparity in sentences. It is possible that it was during the plea bargaining that the Penal Code Section 309 was adopted and the EFCC Act Section 17 was abandoned. Whether there was communication by the parties and acquiescence by the honourable judge also is yet unclear. What is clear is that the public feels exposed and vulnerable after what seems like a slap on the wrist for a crime that should not have been taken lightly.

    At this point, different theories of the events leading to the judgment will be passing around in the minds of the people. Was there a conspiracy by the judge, prosecution and defence to blindside the public and pull a judicial manoeuvre that resulted in the ‘near acquittal’ of the accused? Or were the hands of an impartial judge tied by the rusty binds of old statutes that predate that country as we now know it by almost half a century? The Penal Code and the Criminal Code are a 1916 ordinance and, as the current president of the Nigerian Bar Association put it when commenting on the sentence, “It is obvious that the law is inadequate and so the sentence is inadequate”. Since 1960, only Lagos State has ever amended its criminal laws, including criminal procedure rules. And that was done quite recently.

    Yusuf may have also forfeited 32 houses in the FCT and Gombe as well as N325million, which the EFCC said were proceeds from the crime. But Nigerians are not thrilled by forfeitures in a system where there have been rumours of ex-offenders repurchasing their ‘forfeited’ properties and forfeited sums vanishing into thin air. Nigerians need to be sated with landmark judgments that will show that the judiciary is not caught up in the power politics of the executive and legislature. The people are not calling for burning at a stake or beheading; they simply ask for public officials to be accountable for their actions and for the justice system to apply commensurate punishment for crimes. After all, following a plethora of judicial authorities, justice must not only be done, justice must also be seen to be done!

  • Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (III)

    Ten years of Trust’s dialogues (III)

    Finally, this year’s dialogue. The reader will recall that in the second part of my review of Trust’s annual dialogue last week, I concluded with a couple of examples of how the Nigerian media often allowed partisan politics to get the better of its professionalism. This was in illustration of the consensus of last year’s dialogue which was on “Politics and the Media.”

    The chair was former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. The panellists were Senate President David Mark, represented by Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, the minister of Information, Labaran Maku, represented by his Special Assistant on Media, Dr Kingsley Osadolor, and Dr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, the radical scholar and one-time head of Ahmadu Bello University’s Political Science department.

    In his opening remarks the chair, it seemed, could not resist having dig at the minister who, as a student union leader, led violent demonstrations against the general’s increase of petrol price in the eighties. Wasn’t it ironical, the general observed with a knowing grin on his face, that several years on the minister would transform into one of strongest defenders of President Goodluck Jonathan’s unwanted New Year “gift” to Nigerians on January 1, 2012 of more than double the hitherto subsisting price of the commodity?

    The reader will recall that I quoted Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the Edo State governor and one of the most regular participants of the dialogue, of accusing the media of often writing fiction. On that occasion the comrade governor was angry with the media for publishing a story that five mosques had been burnt down in Benin, his state capital. This was at the peak of the sectarian violence that had engulfed the country. He said when he confronted the reporter of one of the newspapers that published the story, the reporter disowned it and said it was his editors in Lagos who rewrote it based on information they got from a foreign news agency.

    All three panellists shared Oshiomhole’s concern about the integrity and professionalism of the Nigerian media. And all four barely stopped short of accusing the media of lack of patriotism. Among the four, Dr Mohammed’s criticism was strongest. Over time, he said, the media “have subjected this country to a sustained barrage of attacks like no other country in the world that is not at war.”

    The Nigerian media, it seems, is a paradox of sorts; most Nigerians acknowledge that it’s been a bulwark against tyranny and misrule in the country, going all the way back to our colonial past, but at the same time it has been widely accused of being too negative about the country. It’s difficult to deny the existence of both virtue and vice in the character of our country’s media.

    For me, however, Nigerians themselves are more to blame than their media. The media may often malign people and distort events in society. They may often even fabricate events. But if our media appear to harp more on the vices of our country than its virtues it is simply because our vices outweigh our virtues. In other words, the fault is less in our media than in our selves.

    So if Nigeria is yet to become a nation that its entire citizens can be proud of almost a century after its amalgamation in 1914, we should blame ourselves more than we blame our media – all its shortcomings notwithstanding.

    For its dialogue this year Trust could not have chosen a more appropriate topic than that of the challenges of nation building. Likewise it was hard to pick a more formidable panel than that of Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, Mr. Femi Falana, Ms Ann Kio-Briggs and Dr Sule Bello, all of them accomplished figures in their various fields of religion, law, human rights and academia.

    All four expressed unhappiness with the state of the nation but Ms Briggs stood out of the lot for her pessimism about the country’s future. “There is nothing to celebrate (about the country’s centenary),” she said, and in effect added that it may yet break up if the part of the country she comes from which produces oil as the main source of public revenue is not allowed to continue to lead this country after 2015 even though she admitted that President Goodluck Jonathan has been a big letdown as leader from her neck of wood.

    If Ms Briggs stood out of the panel for her pessimism, Bishop Kukah stood out for his optimism. All the widespread talk about revolution coming to Nigeria, he said, were just that – talk. “No revolution,” he said, “will take place in Nigeria.” He also did not believe the country will break up.

    I do not share Bishop Kukah optimism about this country’s future, even though I pray all the time that it never breaks up but neither do I share Ms. Briggs pessimism. To say, as she did, that there is nothing to celebrate about Nigeria is certainly untenable. If nothing else there is something to celebrate about the country’s unity. Several countries like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, and closer to home, Sudan and Somalia, which seemed more united and more stable than Nigeria at the time of our independence 50 years ago, have since collapsed.

    We also have a lot to celebrate about our resilience and liberty. Few countries in the world, including Britain the oldest democracy, enjoy the kind of freedom that we do. That we take such freedom for granted is itself a cause for celebration.

    However, for Nigeria to become truly a nation-state its citizens can be proud of we need more than the unity and the freedom that we enjoy and the resilience that is so much part of our character. Of all the other we need, for me the most important is individual introspection about our responsibilities to our communities and to society at large. And the time for that introspection is now, as we begin a year-long celebration of our centenary.

    All too often we blame our leaders for the mess we are in. We are, of course, right to do so. In doing so, however, most of us hardly stop to ask ourselves how much of our own bit we have contributed to help our leaders do what is right by our society and by our country.

    The reader will pardon me if I get rather preachy at this point. But in my own reflections about the ills of our society, I have never found a better solution than the words of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) about the concept of shepherd-hood which has its Christian equivalent.

    “Everyone of you,” he is quoted to have said by some of the greatest narrators of his tradition, including Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud, “is a shepherd, and everyone of you is responsible for his flock. The Imam is a shepherd, and he is responsible for his congregation. A man is a shepherd among his family and he is responsible for his flock (his family). A woman is a shepherd in her husband’s home and children, and she is responsible for them. A servant is a shepherd over the wealth of his owner and he is responsible for it. Lo! Everyone is a shepherd and everyone is responsible for his flock.”

    Each time we blame our leaders for the mess in our society, have we ever stopped to ask ourselves if we have done our own little bit in our own little world we control? When we jump queues in traffic, for example, are we not violating the time honoured principle of first come, first served? When we dump refuse in our gutters instead of properly disposing it are we not violating our responsibilities as shepherds over our environment? And so on and so on.

    We cannot hope to transform our country into a land of peace and prosperity that we will all be proud to identify with if we do not think seriously about the saying that a country gets the leaders it deserves. This is staple food for our thoughts as we celebrate our centenary which comes up next year.