The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Waiting for Jonathan’s transformation

    Waiting for Jonathan’s transformation

    When President Goodluck Jonathan took over as President in May 2010 following the demise of his principal, Umaru Yar’adua, expectations were high. Despite the fact the he appeared unprepared for the task fate and circumstances had placed on his shoulders, a good number of Nigerians expected him to be different from his predecessors. Perhaps because of his saintly visage, peculiar name and the fact he was from a minority ethnic group, they believed that he was the messiah destined to lead the country out of the cesspool of failure where it had found itself.

    In those early days of his administration, Jonathan carried himself with the air of a messiah. Without talking much, he hoodwinked Nigerians into believing that he was heaven’s answer to their prayers. Between when he was sworn in as Acting President till when he declared his intention to contest the 2011 election, he did nothing other than firing his perceived enemies and planting his cronies in key areas of government in order to establish a firm hold.

    After about 10 months as President without any credible achievements, Jonathan threw his hat in the ring for the 2011 elections. Even though the decision clearly contravened the zoning principle of his party and almost threw the country into a political turmoil, he didn’t care a hoot because he felt it was his time.

    After a protracted battle with some northern political elites who were opposed to his ambition, he won his party’s ticket and embarked on a heavily funded campaign to become Nigeria’s president. It was in the peak of that campaign the he came up with this thing called ‘Transformation Agenda,’ with which he hoped to turn the country around for good.

    Lest we forget, what Jonathan did before the election cannot be described as a campaign. It was simply a jamboree where people ate, drank and got free souvenirs. As he crisscrossed the length and breadth of the country in search of votes, there was nothing inspiring in his speeches. There was no blueprint of what he wants to achieve and how he intended to go about it. The most memorable aspect of his entire campaign was that ‘I had no shoes’ speech in Abuja which has now become a satire for critics of his administration.

    When the time finally came to elect the country’s president it, many Nigerians voted for a man they barely knew. They willingly gave their nods to a man who had no direction, destination or commitment other than an abstract document called transformation agenda. Many of those who voted for him were naïve and overly sentimental. They stood for hours in the scorching sun to elect him not because his achievements but because like him, they felt it was his time and nobody should stand in his way.

    Now that the euphoria of winning a presidential election so cheaply has subsided, the real Goodluck Jonathan is gradually unveiling himself. He is showing Nigerians that there is more to a man beyond the look on his face and the clothes on his skin. What many citizens are experiencing today is the exact opposite of what they anticipated when they defied harsh weather conditions to cast their votes for him.

    Under Jonathan’s watch, things seem to have gone from bad to worse. The transformation agenda he spoke passionately about is fast becoming a forlorn dream that may never materialise.

    Counting from when he was sworn in as acting president till date, it almost two years and there is no worthwhile achievement that can be traced to Jonathan’s administration.

    In his inaugural speech as President, Jonathan promised to hit the ground running and almost 19 months down the line, he is yet to get his bearing not to talk of running. He promised to make some reforms in power, economy and other critical sectors but nothing has changed.

    With all the mouthed reforms of the Minister of Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s economy is still at its nadir. Even now that the fuel subsidy has been partially withdrawn, ours is still one of the poorest economies in the world where thousands of citizens are unemployed and live below the poverty line. Like other Jonathan apostles, she goes about analysing improvements in figures and graphs when the realities on ground show otherwise.

    The President recently gloated that Nigeria now generates 4,500 Megawatts of electricity, yet the entire country still languish in darkness. Somebody needs to remind him that South Africa generates almost 50,000 Megawatts which has made life better in the country. Because of the epileptic power situation in Nigeria, industries are collapsing and moving out of the country. The few surviving ones spend a chunk of their profits to run generators and it is only a matter of time before they collapse too. Yet, the president thinks he is working.

    In education, it is the same tale of woes. Jonathan established six new universities when he came on board but they are not different from the other derelict ones. Is it not a shame that no Nigerian institution is ranked among the first 20 universities in Africa?

    With the ways things are today, one can’t help but ask what Jonathan’s transformation agenda is all about. Is it a plan by Jonathan and his acolytes to make the country worse than they met it? If this is how he hopes to turn the country around, then we are on a journey to nowhere.

  • Agricultural revolution in Osun

    Agricultural revolution in Osun

    The State of Osun’s agricultural programme is gradually yielding the desired results as the good people of the state are being empowered through land preparation and free distribution, credits for improved seedlings, fertilizer, etc and commercial production of honey, fish, cattle and birds. The O’honey apiary project that the Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola embarked upon became a reality when it was commissioned at Oyan in Odo-Otin local government, the first of its kind in Black Africa.

    The Bees farm covered about 11.56 hectares of land that will not only produce honey in commercial quantities but will train at least 300 youths annually and by implication reduce unemployment among the youths of the state.

    The largest job creation for mankind is farming, the only way out of food scarcity is a return to land but the petro-naira has made many Nigerians to neglect agriculture in which today we are not only importing foods to feed ourselves but we are importing fertilizers to impoverish the land that is naturally fertile because of our sharp practices and made get-rich quick attitudes.

    For over 30 years in Nigeria, the military governments and the succeeding civilian administrations have not been sincere about the need to take agriculture with all seriousness and to motivate the farmers though incentives to cultivate in commercial quantity. The few commercial farmers were majorly the ex-military generals who knew that there is wealth in tilling the land and a few others who are currently enslaving the youths who are on their payroll tilling the land for them instead of training the youth to become farms owners.

    It was Chief Obafemi Awolowo who declared at the convocation ceremony of the then University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University in 1971 that “except we urgently go back to agriculture our country may soon be importing food to feed the population”. But the government and people turned deaf ears to the political prophet of our time, rather the Udoji awards made the few farmers to abandon farming, migrate in large numbers to cities for white collar job, with the result that we import various kinds of food to feed our people today.

    When in the late 70s the frozen fish was introduced by some of our leaders to complement nutritional needs of the populace, only a few Nigerians patronize the imported frozen fish for one reason or the other. I remember my grandmother refusing the consumption of the frozen fish because of its peculiar smell and many Nigerians distanced themselves from the said fish, it was then derogatorily called “Oku Eko”. Today it is a delicacy that no family can ignore. Many homes eat the meals without meat or fish and the people are becoming malnourished and sick for lack of balance diet.

    The state government of Osun has taken its battle against poverty and unemployment to fish farming and the O’Fish farms have put smile on the faces of the people as the youths are currently undergoing training that will make them not only fish farmers but owners of such farms in the sort possible time.

    Just few weeks ago, the Cattle Ranch at Oloba Farm, Iwo Farm Settlement was revived by the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola who declared that the ranch is open to whosoever is interested in the cattle business and that his government will not only support the individual financially but guarantee security of lives and properties at the ranch. It was the late sage Chief Bola Ige that established the ranch that was later abandoned by successive administrations.

    It was this vision that made the government of Ogbeni Aregbesola to partner with the German government that sent a seven man experts drawn from their agricultural sector State of Saxson Anhalt to meet the farmers’ cooperatives in the state, soil scientists, animal husbandry experts and others on how to improve agricultural products in the state.

    At Okuku in Odo-Otin local government council area of the state, the governor and the state executive council members were more than surprised to see a huge fish farm covering acres of land and with 120,000 fish under production and is now ready for sale, a product of the fish farm initiative of the administration.

    The state Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Production, Wale Adedoyin told the mammoth crowd that came to welcome the governor at the fish farm that the government took the risk of standing as surety for the granting of loan for the commercial farm and also involved in the supervision of the projects to ensure that the money or loan obtained from the bank is judiciously utilized for the purpose.

    The true story is that governor who within the space of one and a half year did not only employed over 20,000 youths of the state but is currently on a mission to revolutionise farming and empower the people to kick out poverty. The rationalization of poverty on paucity of fund has now been exposed as a product of misapplication of resources.

    Just about two years into this government, much impact has been made on good governance and empowerment. By the time the first four years is over God helping the government, the better judge of this administration will be the very people who lived through the aimless and vision-less seven and half years of locusts that added little or nothing to the lives of its citizenry but misery and death, poverty and woes.

    This government is not saying that it has reached the state of Utopia but the hand writing is on the wall for those that care to see that the little resources available would not be consumed by political termites neither would it be poured on project that will not add value to the lives of the people, but rather this administration on the long run bring about the dignity of the people who have a great history and antecedent to stand shoulder high above the ordinary. There is a clarion call from all our people to Ogbeni Aregbesola to not only lift up the standard life of our people but to move our state to a state where we shall eat in plenty and feed other state in Nigeria. With Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola we can.

    • Obaditan writes from Osogbo, Osun State

  • Muhammadu Buhari at 70

    Muhammadu Buhari at 70

    Penultimate Monday, i.e. December 17, General Muhammadu Buhari, former military head of state and perennial presidential contender since 2003, turned 70.

    An austere person, his birthday celebration was to have been low key to begin with. However, in apparent deference to the national mourning over the tragic death in a helicopter crash the weekend before of Sir Patrick Yakowa, governor of Kaduna State where he is resident, along with former National Security Adviser, General Andrew Azazi, and four others, the general virtually cancelled the celebration.

    That virtual cancellation of his birthday bash on account of the previous weekend’s national tragedy spoke volumes about the man’s essential humanity, something Nigeria’s dominant southern media, his nemesis, had done, and continues to do, almost everything it can to tear into shreds.

    This media has done virtually all it can to portray the general as a stone-hearted, tyrannical, parochial and religious bigot, unfit for election as a civilian leader. In truth he is anything but.

    Instead he has been a victim – along with each and every Northerner, with the possible exception of General Murtala Mohammed, who has held power in the country, from the Northern premier, Sir Ahmadu Bello, and the country’s first and only prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, through President Shehu Shagari to Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar – of a sustained media propaganda which has succeeded in creating the popular impression that the Northern elites believe Nigeria is exclusively theirs to rule and ruin.

    As with all successful propaganda, this negative portrayal by the dominant Nigerian media of the Northern political elite, in mufti or khaki, is not entirely without basis; Northerners have ruled this country much longer than those from the other regions and their record in government, generally speaking is, to put it mildly, difficult, if not impossible, to defend.

    However, again as with all successful propaganda, the kernel of substance has been mixed and padded again and again with lots of half-truths and even barefaced lies.

    Take the case of General Buhari as an example. As I said, the man, like all Northern leaders of the country, has suffered more than his fair share of malicious propaganda. There is, however, a major difference between his case and the rest; he never really enjoyed any honeymoon with the media from the time he emerged onto the national arena as minister of petroleum in 1976 up to the time he became head of state in 1983 – and even well beyond.

    Dr. Aliyu Tilde, one time Friday columnist with the Weekly Trust and now a co-publisher of the online newspaper, The Premium Times, accurately captured the general’s hate-hate relationship with the Nigerian media in his rested column in the Trust of July 6, 2001, which he entitled “The Seven Sins of Buhari.”

    Tilde’s piece was in apparent response to my earlier article in the Daily Trust which was critical of the general’s controversial remarks in Sokoto ahead of the elections in 2003 about how Muslims should vote.

    For that article, Tilde lumped me along with others who he said disliked Buhari for no worse crime than committing “seven unforgivable sins” in their eyes. These sins, he said, were that the general was a northerner, a Muslim, honest and transparent to a fault, popular with the masses, apparently disliked General Babangida (his army chief who overthrew him in a palace coup in 1985), enacted Decree No 4 which criminalised embarrassing any government official, and served under the much condemned General Abacha.

    “Briefly,” Tilde said, “these are some of the sins that Buhari committed and for which he is too arrogant to repent. If he could change his habits and become deceitful and corrupt, he cannot change his birth, his history and his faith. After all he is not a politician and does not need our votes.”

    Obviously Tilde was speaking tongue-in-cheek. Buhari, as he said, could hardly change his birth and history and, like most adults, was unlikely to change his faith. And with the exception of the general’s well-known grouse against his former army chief and his enactment of Decree 4, his other “sins” were really universal virtues. Again even his worst enemies could not but acknowledge that he served as executive chairman of the Petroleum Task Force under the much-condemned Abacha with distinction and transparency.

    Even then his virtues never endeared him to the rump of the Nigerian media and by extension much of the Nigerian public. The source of this bad blood between the two dates back to his job as minister of petroleum. Under his charge the media circulated a story that 2.8 billion Naira of our oil revenue had gone missing. A judicial panel that looked into the case concluded that it was all rumour. In the end otherwise respectable Nigerians like the late Tai Solarin and Chief Gani Fawehinmi that had claimed Buhari was culpable could not prove their claims. Instead Solarin, for one, had to admit that it was a piece of gossip he picked up on a bus!

    That, apparently, did not stop the media from continuing to peddle the falsehood as fact right up to the moment.

    Predictably when the man became head of state in December 1983, following the overthrow of the Second Republic under Shagari, he enacted Decree 4 under which two reporters of The Guardian, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, were jailed for a leaked story on the appointment of a new high commissioner to the UK which the government found embarrassing.

    As if the N2.8 billion false story was not bad enough, the media went to town with another one about the Emir of Gwandu and father of his aide camp as head of state, Major Mustapha Jokolo, going to Murtala Muhammed international airport to clear 53 suitcases for the emir at a time the general had closed our borders with other countries to stem the smuggling of currencies and other contrabands.

    That, like the so-called missing oil money, also turned out to have been blatant falsehood. The general’s ADC was at the airport alright to receive his dad who was returning from a trip abroad, but the suitcases belonged to the large family of a former ambassador who was coming home to serve as the general’s chief of protocol.

    Obviously this fact was poor copy for a story so the media decided to spruce it up a bit in order obviously to sell well. To date the lie, like so many distortions that have caught the imagination of the public, has simply refused to go away.

    At the time Tilde wrote about the general’s “seven sins,” the man had repeatedly said he hated politics and politicians with a passion. As head of state he had certainly left no one in doubt as to what he thought of them from the way his regime tried and jailed virtually all of them, many of them many life times over.

    The general must have therefore surprised even himself when in 2002, he announced to an astounded public that he was joining politics. Since then he has become a perennial presidential candidate; three times in 2003, 2007 and 2011 he ran for the job and three times he lost in elections that got progressively worse.

    The last one triggered one of the worst political violence in the North – except for the 1966/67 riots – especially in Kaduna his state of residence, a violence which the authorities naturally blamed on the general’s pre-election warnings that any attempt to rig the election will be resisted by the masses.

    As with the elections themselves he also lost his cases against the ruling party in the courts. After losing his case last year an apparently frustrated Buhari told the world that it would be the last time he will stand for election. It was all reminiscent of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the other perennial loser of elections for the leadership of this country, when he told The Guardian in one of his most exhaustive interviews shortly after losing the massively rigged 1983 elections to President Shehu Shagari, that he was done with politics in Nigeria because he was convinced the country would never experience genuine democracy in generations to come.

    Unlike the late venerated chief, however, the general seems to have changed his mind about not ever offering himself to serve as leader; in an interview in the Saturday Sun (December 22), he said in effect that he would if given the chance.

    His party, he said, has been in serious talks with the two leading opposition parties for merger. At the same time he has, he said, been under tremendous pressure from his huge following to rethink his stand. “If,” he said, “they give me the ticket or recommend me, I will consider it.”

    The general at 70 is obviously now a different man from the one who, until barely 10 years ago, was absolutely sure he will never want to be a politician. It will be a miracle if, as a politician, he ever gets a fair shake from a media that has harboured deep prejudice against him essentially because, like Awolowo whose mirror image he is, he is given to speaking bluntly.

    It is a measure of his dislike by the rump of the Nigerian media that the same quality they had seen as virtue in the late chief they have treated as a vice in the general.

     

  • MEXAHNYIA; VIP or RIP? Nigeria is trillions rich; Resolutions Oteh Vs NASS: Who Wins the Moral War?

    MEXAHNYIA; VIP or RIP? Nigeria is trillions rich; Resolutions Oteh Vs NASS: Who Wins the Moral War?

    Suddenly it is Christmas and a Merry Christmas And Happy New Year in advance-MEXAHNYIA to you. It has been some year. The recognition of the VIP dead should not be so blatantly to the exclusion of the ‘equally dead’ as we are all equal before God. The VIP dead do not jump Heaven’s Gate queue. They have to line up for judgement in exactly the order in which they died, interspersed with the thousands of RIPs who died ‘unknown’ in that timeframe –nanosecond by nanosecond. A thousand years is like a second and a second is like a thousand years. Remember that all the victims in the helicopter crash, VIP and RIP are all equally dead and the families are equally bereaved and half-orphaned. We know the future differential difficulty of the widows in receiving benefits. So please remember all of them in your prayers. It is better to die alone or else you be forever among the ‘and 4 or 340 others’. But there is no choice.

    Nigeria is really, really rich as can be seen by the probably trillion naira corruption and the budget of N4,987,000,000,000 which is N 41,553/Nigerian. It is now clear that if we can kill, dehumanise and vilify corruption and corrupt acts and corrupt people in an acute, decisive manner, Nigeria will save trillions. You can take a New Year’s Resolution Oath that from Jan 1 2013 you and Nigeria will start ‘An Anticorruption Year’ we may jump further down the Most Corrupt Transparency International List and also up the Amnesty International List-since corruption is not just about money but how we treat or ill-treat or mistreat our fellow Nigerians through bad decisions, no decisions, delayed decisions etc.

    Can resolutions replace revolutions?

    Why can NASS members not see the opprobrium with which they are viewed by the massed poor people? There is very little that NASS membership can do that will increase the individual members and collective NASS reputation. Shouting and screaming at ‘witnesses’ and warrants of arrest are seen as mere playing to the gallery. NASS’s excessive acquisition of the nation’s funds for ‘personnel’ comfort, work and even self-imposed and undeserved disengagement, ‘soft landing’ pension schemes, kick-started the recent ‘salary grab’. At this time, NASS members should make a sacrificial 2013 New Year’s Resolution. Since they set their own funds, they should do the right thing and take a big pay-cut in SAP –‘Salaries and Perks’ which are now sapping Nigeria dry. It was this ‘self-imposed political office-holders greed’ that caused salary inflation nationwide. This politicians’ salary cut, if it comes, will help reverse inflation. NASS and the government political classes must know that corruption, political salaries and excesses are glaring abuses while over 100m live in poverty without housing, water, power, health or education or even adequate nutrition.

    After the cutting of political salaries and allowances it will be the turn of the CBN to deliberately improve the naira exchange rate as this will drag many Nigerians above the poverty line. If the value of the naira to the dollar improves by just N1 per month we will lift 10-20m out of poverty per annum. If we add to that a sincere effort to reduce bank lending rates from 20+% to a single digit and get 24 hour power, Nigeria could become heaven-on-earth provided we tackle the crime situation. The abysmal lack of police empowerment from the federal government and a culture of judicial tardiness are noted as major problems. These are not stupid dreams but today’s norms in normal countries.

    Is the NASS onslaught against Oteh a rear-guard action instigated by wounded NASS forces because she, in self-defence at being publicly tongue-lashed and ‘abused’, exposed the soft underbelly of NASS ‘corruption’ in ‘funded trips without travel’ and dared to confront NASS? Is this a genuine campaign against a bad Oteh based on facts? No doubt she will relocate and find herself in a cushy job abroad. Let this be a warning to foreign based ‘industry players’ seeking to ‘save Nigeria’. Nigeria wants people who will play ball. The home players do not like to be exposed and react with protective herd mentality.

    The attempt to starve Oteh out by starving SEC of funds for salaries etc is a typically Machiavellian move used by all dictators – collective punishment. It is sinister and evil. We may later use it on NASS to weed out those who ‘chop our money’ and SAP us dry from fat and indecent SAP- Salaries and Perks. No matter the victory of NASS it is a Pyrrhic victory, won at huge cost to a badly battered NASS reputation from allegations of payments for oversight, gifts, double payments at every point during tours and oversight functions. It is not so long ago that Ghana Must Go accompanied budgetary meetings and Bill approvals. We hope these have stopped but they are still part of NASS history and well documented thanks among others to the Oteh episode. Oteh has thus prevented much corruption in 2013. Does she deserve a National Honour? So what did Oteh do to make them unite against one woman? In America, Susan Rice fell before the Republican backlash against Obama. Oteh lost the battle but she has unwittingly led and won the moral war. No NASS member can ever again demand tickets and freebies during oversight without fearing exposure. The fear of Oteh may sanitise NASS.

  • Christmas, the morning after

    Christmas, the morning after

    The celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the progenitor of the Christian faith, was held worldwide yesterday. Christian faithful, in their millions, trooped to various worship centres to commemorate the day, which is obviously the biggest festival in Christendom.

    But there was a build-up to the day. All over the place, the streets were jam-packed with people – old and young – all engaged in one thing or another in preparation for the day. In Britain, not even the ravaging flood that has changed the landscape for several weeks could dissuade people from going out for the usual Christmas shopping. Elsewhere in Europe, the chilling winter was no obstacle to people who braved the odds and moved round in their winter jackets. With some of the temperature falling below 4 degree Celsius, this year’s Christmas will surely go down as one of the coldest ever.

    In Nigeria, it was celebration galore. Street carnivals were held everywhere. The popular Calabar Street Carnival midwifed by Donald Duke, former governor of Cross River State, has assumed a life of its own. So also is the Port Harcourt Carnival introduced by Governor Rotimi Amaechi.

    In many homes, churches, corporate organisations and some government houses, Christmas carols were held in anticipation of the Christmas Day celebration. In Akwa Ibom State, a 9,999-man orchestra was put together to celebrate the state’s Christmas Carol. In attendance were dignitaries, including religious leaders, foreign envoys and a host of other very important personalities.

    The period also witnessed a regime of bonanzas unleashed on the populace by various corporate bodies and other manufacturing companies who enticed their customers with mouth-watering promos. Market men and women were not left out. They all made brisk business and smiled to the banks as Christmas presented an opportunity for them to do good business and make huge profit. And the governors were not left out in all of these. Though there were no salary increases, many palliatives were approved for state government workers to celebrate the Christmas.

    In Imo State, a two-week holiday was declared for the state government workers in addition to some stipends approved for them to enable them celebrate Christmas with their families. The governor of the state, Rochas Okorocha, known widely for his unconventional style of leadership and, sometimes, erratic decisions, also approved money running into millions of naira for the security agencies in the state. His calculation was that the least paid security agent in the state would go home with at least N10,000 for Christmas. This gesture was replicated in other states of the federation in one form or another. It all borders on merriment during the Christmas as if all Christmas stands for is eating and drinking.

    Notwithstanding the avalanche of mouth-watering offers and merriment associated with the festival, various religious leaders across the country, political leaders and public office holders were quick to remind the populace of the need to embrace peace in the country. The appeals come on the heels of threat of violence which have characterised the season in the past. Last year, on Christmas Day, worshippers at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Suleja, Niger State, were callously mowed down by a suicide bomber who had targeted the worshippers as they closed from church. It was a horrible sight as many of the worshippers died in the blast while others lost their limbs and sustained varying degree of injuries. The church building and other adjoining buildings were not spared in the orgy of destruction. The attack drew wide condemnation from people all over the world. But such condemnations were not enough to deter the bombers who still exploded their lethal wares in other parts of the country, especially in the crisis-ridden northern part of Nigeria.

    As Christmas drew near this year, residents of Madalla were gripped with fear and trepidation. Last year’s incident was obviously still fresh in their memories. This resulted in many people moving out of the area to avoid any unpleasant situation. This is the extent of the psychological torture and trauma terrorism has inflicted on the people.

    The thought of a re-enactment of the Madalla episode elsewhere in the country had stretched the security agencies in Nigeria to the limit this year. To avoid a repeat occurrence, security, therefore, took centre-stage in the affairs of the nation during the Christmas festivities. While the focus of the agencies in the North was to avert any strike by misguided extremists masquerading under the veil of religion, those in other parts of the country were battling kidnappers and armed robbers who have been on the prowl for some time now. The roads, too, were heavily monitored by officers and men of the Federal Road Safety Commission. But because of the generally deplorable situation of the roads, many people either stayed back or risked travelling on the roads. I am quite sure that the increase in traffic during this period must have also recorded its own fatalities. This is because of the nightmare travelling on Nigerian roads has become. It is no longer a pleasure but a horrendous experience moving from one part of the country to another.

    On Friday, December 21, Chukwuemeka Ekweremadu, the elder brother to Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy President of the Senate, lost his life in a road crash on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway. Until his death, Chukwuemeka, 52, was a Director in the Enugu State Civil Service and a member, Board of Trustees, Tertiary Education Trust Fund. His sudden death on one of the nation’s appalling roads has put an abrupt end to an otherwise glorious career.

    Not even the alternative – air transportation – is safe in the country anymore. With far too many air crashes in the recent past, there is virtually no place to hide. The latest involved a naval helicopter that crashed in the mangrove forest of Bayelsa State on December 15. The crash claimed the lives of six Nigerians – former Governor Patrick Yakowa of Kaduna State and his friend, Dauda Tsoho; immediate past National Security Adviser, General Andrew Owoye Azazi (retd.) and his orderly, Warrant Officer Karmal; and the two pilots of the ill-fated aircraft, Commander Daba and Lieutenant Sowole. Daba’s wfe is said to have newly put to bed, while Sowole’s wife is pregnant. The Sowoles were married for less than two years before tragedy struck. This disaster took the shine off the Christmas celebration in the affected families.

    By and large, this year’s Christmas festival has come and gone but what remains is the lessons to be learnt from it. One of these is that Christmas is not about merriment alone. It is about humility, which Jesus epitomised in his lifetime. It is about service. It is about love and care for the less privileged in the society. It should not be misconstrued to mean extravagance or ostentatious display of ill-gotten wealth.

    And now that the carnivals and merriment are over, shall we have good governance and accountability in all facets of our national life? That is the only way this country can move forward. That is the only way we can make progress as a people. So, as we move ahead into another year, let us have a rethink. Let us devote our energy to those things that will make life meaningful to all of us. This should not be a one-sided sacrifice. It is for both the leaders and the led. Together, we must make the world worth living through our actions and utterances. Already, the Presidency is promising Nigerians an El Dorado come 2013. But that refrain is familiar. We have heard such promises over and over again, such that it has almost become meaningless to the average Nigerian. But who knows if God will hear Nigerians’ prayers for a better life in 2013? We are all waiting for that miracle.

     

  • Sir Patrick Yakowa (1948 -2012)

    Sir Patrick Yakowa (1948 -2012)

    Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, who died tragically in a helicopter crash last Saturday in the creeks of Bayelsa State, was a good man. I first met him in 1971 through Mr. Aboki Galadima, his childhood friend who was to become his chief of staff as governor of Kaduna State. I was Galadima’s “fag” as a third year student in Government College, Bida, where he came to do his Higher School Certificate (HSC) from Government Secondary School, Abuja, both in Niger State.

    When I first met Yakowa, himself and Galadima were undergraduates at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. I was a “Basico” (student of then two-year-old School of Basic Studies of the university established jointly by the then six northern states to prepare secondary students from the region for direct admission). When we first met the man struck me as nice and somewhat withdrawn. Thereafter our paths hardly crossed until he graduated the following year to embark upon a successful career as a civil servant which culminated in his brief stint as permanent secretary at the federal level in 1999.

    I got to know him a little bit more when General Abubakar Abdulsalami, the military head of state I served as chief press secretary in 1998/’99, appointed him a minister. This, apparently, was to change his career as a technocrat into an even more successful one in politics. Even then few, if any, could’ve predicted he would end up as governor of his state, once considered the bellwether of Nigeria’s politics as capital of the old powerful North.

    But then God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways. First, Mr Steven Shekari, Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi’s deputy who looked as fit as fiddle, died suddenly in 2005 during the governor’s second and final term. Makarfi replaced Shekari with Yakowa, then the secretary of his government.

    Next, Makarfi’s handpicked successor, Architect Namadi Sambo, retained him as deputy after he and a host of others, including the possibly better connected and certainly more politically ambitious Mr. Isaiah Balat, now being touted as possibly the next deputy governor of the state, lost out in the 2007 primaries of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party.

    Next, God’s mysterious hands took away President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in May 2010 after a long-drawn illness during which attempts were made by many within his kitchen cabinet to stop his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, from acting.

    The sad death resolved the high wire politics that surrounded his illness in favour of Jonathan through the invocation of a little heard of “Doctrine of Necessity” by the Senate. As president his choice of a deputy eventually fell on Governor Sambo. By constitutional progression Yakowa became governor.

    Finally after serving out Sambo’s first term, he predictably won his party’s ticket for the 2011 governorship election and went on, again predictably, to win the election itself. The election proved highly divisive, with the opposition, mainly the CPC, alleging that it was massively rigged.

    As a person Yakowa was a good man. As a politician I am not so sure he was as good. Many, even within his party, had accused him of being highly partisan in his appointments, award of contracts and distribution of projects.

    Last Monday, when I was at my vendor’s to collect my complimentary newspapers and buy others for the day, I overheard a group discussing his tragic death. Uninvited, I offered that he was a good and fair man. Someone in the group disagreed. The Yakowa I knew, he said, was not the same as a governor.

    The man said he was a senior staff in the state’s ministry of education. Before Yakowa, he said, they had eight directors split equally between the Muslim dominated northern part of the state and the Christian dominated south. Since then, he said, the directors had increased to 11 and only two were from the north. Worse still, he said, some of these new directors had neither the requisite skill nor experience. This pattern, he said, was replicated in almost everything the man did, regardless of the impression he tried to create that he was a fair man.

    This claim was perhaps exaggerated, perhaps even false. What cannot be denied, however, is that as a Nigerian politician, he was hardly different from the rest in his determination to get and retain power. This much was obvious in the recently concluded local government elections where the ruling party won an incredible 22 out of 23 local governments. Even the one local government, Kaduna North, which was conceded to the opposition seemed aimed at portraying the governor’s former boss, Vice-President Sambo, with whom he never really had any cordial relationship, as someone no longer of any consequence in the politics of the state; although Sambo is from Zaria, he has lived all his adult life in Kaduna North.

    Whatever may have been his shortcoming as a politician, the one thing I have never heard anyone accuse him of is venality and self-service. Nor have I heard anyone accuse him of lack of humility. In a nation like ours where corruption, selfishness and arrogance have become the main defining characters of its public figures, especially its politicians, Yakowa’s apparent personal integrity and humility made him a rare breed politician.

    Not least of the virtues that recommended him as rare was his apparent disavowal of the First Lady Syndrome, a thing which is not bad in itself but which, as with so many things we copy from abroad, has been turned by the wives of our elected public officers into a sophisticated grand scam. The greater credit for this must go to his wife, Dame Amina, who is probably the most self-effacing First Lady in the country, especially for a woman who is well-educated and from a liberal social background. Some credit, however, must go to her husband for allowing her to be her natural self rather than push her to be like the Joneses.

    As we mourn his death in very tragic circumstances, may his virtues become the guiding principles of his successor, Alhaji Mukhtar Yero. And may the Good Lord give all those he left behind the fortitude to bear his great loss.

     

  • Corruption’s cure is surgery, not softly softly!; Demon of Democracy! A new Armada 2012

    Corruption’s cure is surgery, not softly softly!; Demon of Democracy! A new Armada 2012

    So the thirst season of death is not yet over. Helicopters drop from the sky / Generals and Governors die/ Sabotage, mechanical or human error /Mistake or a form of terror / Their secrets to be buried in the earth/ Just what is a human life worth?/ And who will be next?

    Almost N1,000,000,000,000, one thousand billion naira, spent on fuel imports only because we refuse to operate and police functioning refineries guided by our chemical and petroleum technologists and engineers. This represents lost employment to Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Portugal. Shame!

    This petroleum ‘subsidy’ is only subsidising failure of the refineries and is a N1,000billion needless drain on our resources and a loud attestation to our CINS of Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness. Nigerians in oil power would rather roundtrip to ‘chop our money’ than refine oil for us at home. An intelligent country would have recruited the local technology from the 2,000 ‘illegal’ Niger Delta refineries to make them legal. Hiking prices is not an answer to national governance failure. How can any of our past six rulers in Nigeria explain why a village in the USA has more power than Nigeria at present -4,000Mw.

    Meanwhile British, VIP, Very Imprisoned Prisoner Ibori collects N50m/year as retirement benefit after being a governor. These self-imposed ‘legalised illegalities’, perpetual goodies from the national and state treasury merely for holding political offices are immoral and insult Nigerians and a slap in the face for pensioners denied pension for years. Why should Nigerians be punished in this way. This is not a dividend but a demon of democracy.

    The arrogance with which Senate ‘Rules out’ voting in the diaspora is reminiscent of a military government decreeing stupid laws against natural justice and simple easily implementable IT computer programmes. Remember that many Nigerians collectively send billions home annually as respected citizens. Even Egypt allows diaspora voting. Such voting is available for many countries abroad including France, Germany and the USA. We should demonstrate our ability to recruit our citizens abroad, largely forced abroad by SAP, Babangida, Abacha, poor economy and education and mismanaged democracy. Shame on Senate as we once again lose an opportunity to catch up in democratic ‘modern methods.’

    Of course the Senate knows that 90% of those abroad will never vote for the ruling party because they are themselves political and economic refugees from the same system that is killing us at home. They should also expect to vote. By the 2015 election we would have had, and as usual wasted, four years to prepare and computerise a Diaspora Voters Register for each country through our embassies should not be nuclear physics. Another ‘Democracy Paradise Lost’ opportunity lost to the evil machinations of petty partisan politics.

    Does no one see the big picture –‘Nigeria Okays Diaspora Voting for Passport Carrying Citizens’? It is not too late to make Nigeria great by forcing the Senate to reverse this decision, a slap in the face of millions of Nigerians abroad and our IT capability. After all we have SATNav1 and 2 and thousands of jobless IT ‘experts’ and the voters programme is available for purchase and modification from democratic and IT compliant nations. Senate should not make an undemocratic mountain out of this political molehill. How dare senators attend international parliamentary group meetings when they are so anti-democratic? There should be a letter to Senate ‘Campaign to reverse this obnoxious ruling’.

    Maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar dies at 92, 1920-2012. He popularised internationally, the Sitar, a complex guitar-like Indian instrument to Beatles’ George Harrison, in Bollywood and Attenborough’s Ghandi. A clean living man who kept his reputation against all norms of the period, RIP. Meanwhile many of Nigeria’s greats struggle on without grants, recognition or support or commissions. Bruce Onabrakpeya is 80. When he dies we will have a big cow-killing because ‘we have lost an irreplaceable gem’ party. A museum now will be preferable.

    There are more than 60 large vessels on the Atlantic Coast sitting off the Lagos harbour waiting to enter port, as any news hungry crew with binoculars or a helicopter and a tiny bit of investigative journalistic DNA knows. This 2012 Armada is caused by the massive corruption and lack of management of the ports in Nigeria which have failed to grow to meet demand. The cost is unquantifiable but it must be quantified by social science and political science and NISER staff and student losses to demurrage, to neighbouring countries from diversion of 100s of ships per annum, to multiple corruption layers from different ‘security and anti-corruption’ agencies, to exit ‘fees’ charged by gatemen for container carrying trailers instead of railways- the true mark of a modern container port. ‘Nigeria Incorporated’ must go down in history as the worst run company in the world and a lesson in incompetence and warning to our children as a company that managed to loose.

    Corruption is Nigerian politics’ greatest ‘Dividend of Democracy’ to the Nigeria electorate. But Nigerians know that corruption can and will be stopped immediately, once the conditions are right when the right leaders and followers will be in place. Is a murderer asked to murder less and less or a rapist to rape less and less or a wife beater to beat less and less monthly? Even our police had the checkpoints cut off suddenly by the incumbent IGP –an amazing feat needing repeating.

     

  • For Azazi, funeral replaces Xmas Carol

    For Azazi, funeral replaces Xmas Carol

    For many years, he had hosted Christmas carol services at his Ikoyi, Lagos residence at least, a week preceding Christmas. It was an annual ritual with attendance drawn from far and wide – the high, the mighty and the lowly placed. Over the years, it had assumed a life of its own as everybody looked forward to the yearly event.

    Preparations were in top gear for this year’s event. My brother and friend of many years, Brigadier-General Felix Ayodele Muhammed (retd.), had been made the coordinator of this year’s event. He had had several meetings with those who will actively participate in the service – band leaders, choirs, religious groups, army chaplains and others. Last Friday, Muhammed, whom his boss of many years, the late General Andrew Owoye Azazi, prefers to call ‘Felix’, had intimated the general that he was coming over the following day, Saturday, December 15, to give him an update of the preparations so far. Azazi did not oppose this. Rather, he simply told Felix to meet with Alero, his wife of many years and finalise issues as he was billed to dash down to Bayelsa, his home state, to attend a function.

    Last Saturday afternoon, Felix made it to the residence of his former boss. He drove into the compound oblivious of the fact that something was amiss. As he entered the sitting room, hoping to meet Mrs. Azazi, an eerie silence descended on the whole environment. It was an unusual situation, but all the same, he sat down on one of the chairs waiting for the ‘madam of the house’ to surface from any part of the one-storey apartment. Just then, he started hearing some shrill cries upstairs. It was then it dawned on him that something had, indeed, gone wrong.

    By the time Felix was face to face with Azazi’s wife, the story became clearer. “Oga is dead!” Felix was transfixed and dazed. He inquired to know what had happened and how it happened. “It was a helicopter crash at Okoloba community in Tombia, Bayelsa State. Oga was returning from the community where he had attended the burial ceremony of Pa Tamunoobebara Douglas, father of Oronto Douglas, Special Adviser to the President on Research and Documentation”.

    From then on, wailings and grief took over as family members, friends and associates trooped in one after the other. Although no details of the crash emerged until later that evening, those who had contacts in Bayelsa, Rivers and in the military were able to extract some information about the crash.

    ‘Felix’ or General Muhammed, a chartered accountant, was the accounts officer to the late Azazi when Azazi was General Officer Commanding, GOC, 1 Battalion of the Army, with headquarters in Kaduna. Since then, both of them had struck a rapport that had endured till date. Besides, Alero, Azazi’s wife is also a chartered accountant.

    I had attended last year’s Christmas Carol in Azazi’s house in the company of General Muhammed and his wife. That evening, Azazi read the first out of about nine readings lined up for the day. His wife and some of his children who were present read some while other family members and close friends also took their turns. It was a night of great revelry, sobriety and thanksgiving for God’s abundant blessings during the year.

    Many known faces turned up for that event. They include Colonel Edore Obi (retd.), one-time military administrator of Bayelsa State; Donald Duke, former governor of Rivers State; business mogul Wale Babalakin; Timi Alaibe, former managing director of Niger Delta Development Commission and later Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs. In attendance also were top military chiefs, both serving and retired.

    It was there I came across Rear Admiral Arogundade (retd), the naval officer whose aides reportedly brutalised a lady in Lagos after a minor traffic incident. I took time to ask him some questions on the incident. He did not appear like the ‘monster’ which was painted of him by the media at that time. He lives almost next door to the Azazis and I have met him several times after that encounter both in Lagos and Abuja.

    I first met late General Azazi in early 2005 at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Conference Centre in Abuja. It was at the launch of Iniquity in Nigerian Politics, a book authored by my brother and bosom friend, Professor Steve Azaiki. The launch had attracted heavyweights across the country and the diplomatic community. That was one book launch in which several senators were merely confined to the lobby as all the seats inside the conference hall had been taken over by dignitaries. It was like a carnival and I am yet to witness any other book launch of equal attendance of who’s who in Nigeria ever since.

    At the end of the book launch, Azazi, who was in full military uniform, had moved to the podium for a photo session with Azaiki. It was there that Azaiki introduced me to him. Azazi, who was then a brigadier-general, was at that time the boss of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, DMI. Shortly after, he was appointed GOC, 1 Mechanised Division of the Army in Kaduna. He was later made Chief of Army Staff before he was promoted Chief of Defence Staff. Although he was subsequently retired from service, but by that time, his image had loomed large all over the place.

    In the last few years, Azazi had given out some of his daughters, if not all, in marriage in very colourful ceremonies. I attended the one in late 2006 at the Church of Assumption, Falomo, Lagos. I was at the ceremony in the convoy of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who was then the governor of Bayelsa State. At that time, he had just been picked as running mate to the late Umaru Yar’Adua, who had also earlier been chosen as the standard-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2007 presidential election.

    It was at that wedding reception that the idea of putting together a national political platform for Jonathan was conceived by me, Azaiki and Chief Ephraim Faloughi, the chairman of Sovereign Trust Insurance Company. The following day, we came up with Yar’Adua/Jonathan Committee of Friends and held the inaugural meeting at the residence of Chief Ebitimi Banigo in Victoria Island. Others in attendance at that meeting were Ben Bruce, chairman, Silverbird Group; Chief Lawson Omokhodion, former MD of All States Trust Bank and later Liberty Bank who is now into oil business, and a few others. It was the committee that first rallied support for Jonathan all over the country.

    Generally, in Azazi’s death, Jonathan has lost one of his pillars of support. In and out as National Security Adviser to the President, Azazi had always provided support for the President on security matters. Throughout his eventful career – within and outside the military – Azazi had proved to be a patriot, an officer and gentleman whose watchword was discipline in all his deeds. All the same, he was not without some human errors. One of them was that as NSA, he was too visible everywhere when he was expected to operate more incognito.

    Now, he is gone and gone forever. His funeral might as well replace this year’s Christmas Carol service, which would have been held today, Wednesday, December 19. However, it is not how far or how long one lives. It is actually how well. Adieu Andrew Owoye Azazi. May your soul rest in peace! May the souls of all others who also died in the ill-fated flight rest in perfect peace! May their families be consoled by the fact that death is an inevitable end of all human beings! Amen! We all have our entrances and exits at different times and places!

     

  • The North and Boko Haram

    The North and Boko Haram

    Violence and insecurity is not peculiar to northern Nigeria. Nigeria as a whole is at a point where perhaps its security apparatus needs a radical surgical overhaul in order to better guarantee the safety of the lives and property of the people who, in addition to coping with crippling poverty, have had to also contend with progressively worsening levels of insecurity through successive years, especially since the return to civilian rule on the eve of the 21st Century. What, however, seems to be increasingly peculiar to the north as far as violence and insecurity is concerned is the brazen terrorist toga the violence continues to don. And since mid-2009 when, starting from the then-hotbed of Bauchi State, a radical group first engaged security forces in gun battles across some states of the north, things have hardly let down. From gun duels and attacks with crude war material that group is now the infamous face of violence in Nigeria as its tactics get ever more sophisticated. That group – Boko Haram – continues to thrive in spite of consistent chest-thumping by the government that somehow the government is prevailing in the war against insecurity and violence.

    No doubt, Nigeria’s borders with other states contributes to the problem as some of the foot soldiers carrying out the violence have been found to be from some of these West African countries. Perhaps, this means that the efforts at border patrol and security measures in border towns have not been concerted enough. However, security forces may ransack compounds, and even invade and kill whole towns. This would no doubt, have its own success. Still, we would only just be scratching the surface of the issue at best because sheer, outright force does not seem like the only viable solution to the problem.

    Which is why it ought to (emphasis on “ought to”) be heartening that some people across both sides are beginning to consider dialogue in all this. But you wonder how feasible dialogue, productive dialogue in the interest of peace, is here considering the unrealistic nature of the group’s demands. If dialogue happens, that would be great. However, there are a few things that are beyond the direct control of the government that need to happen in order to have a chance of bringing about peace to the north.

    The staying power that the Boko Haram ‘brand’ continues to demonstrate in the north, especially in its two strongholds of Borno and Yobe states is, arguably attributable to the attitudes of indigenes of the two states, side-by-side the suspected membership composition of the group. There was talk across town recently especially in Yobe, that some of the recent success enjoyed by the Joint Task Force in identifying members of the group and their lairs in Damaturu and Potiskum was down to the fact that a few more people in those cities came forward to blow the whistle on suspected Boko Haram elements, leading security forces to more precise targets rather than having blanket information. This sort of ‘snitching’ is what has to happen more with Boko Haram. Such attitude to violence is one of the things that had not happened often enough in the past especially in Borno State, which has allowed the group to continue to spread its violent tentacles as though its members were aliens with superhuman ability to completely evade attention until Violence Hour strikes. In truth, however, sentiment and lineal affinity has always interfered with the people’s thinking as far as Boko Haram is concerned. As many families are inextricably tied to the group one way or another with having a deviant family member on the group’s payroll, innocent members of the public usually feel compelled to play the unwitting accessory as the family ties that bind them force them not to expose their family member as belonging to the group. But as demonstrated with the relative success of the security forces in the two Yobe towns where this attitude changed, be it for a split second, fighting the group’s brand of warfare is every peace-loving person’s responsibility.

    So, the people have to decide whether they will continue to allow their affinity towards family members who do not give a hoot about the safety and security of their innocent brethren becloud their sense of longing for peace. The people must simply wean themselves of that rather misplaced allegiance and realise that self-preservation and the preservation of innocent lives is infinitely more golden than protecting the interest of murderous, suicidal family members. They don’t have to go too far to find precedence to follow. In 2009, when a teenage Umar Farouq Abdulmuttallab attempted to blow up an American aeroplane, some attributed his behaviour to his privileged upbringing. But it turned out that his father, having watched him closely for a while, had been worried enough to alert the authorities that his son was showing extremist inclinations. In the end, although that act was not directly responsible for the botched bombing attempt, it vindicated his father and the family. It showed that not even a father could be swayed by filial ties to stand in the way of the safety and security of other people, even if his actions meant he was discrediting his own flesh and blood. Similarly, every well-meaning northerner has to accept that the safety and security of the innocent should be superintendent to their rather primordial considerations of filial protection over those whose actions directly and indirectly deepen their misery and make their own kith and kin endangered species in their own land.

    Another primordial factor that seems to be hindering the fight against violence in the north is the attitude towards religion. And by religion here, this writer means the interpretation of Islam by most northerners as against practically everything else, including contrary religious views and religions. If we chose to be naĂŻve we can say that the Boko Haram problem is not a religious cancer. We can also elect to be simplistic and call it a sole problem of religion. Either way, we may not be doing justice to the issue. Simply, as it is today, violence in the north has a socio-religious touch to it, fuelled by political elements here and there. In the midst of this, other criminals of various ilks have exploited the situation to their own diabolical ends such that what we now have is a hydra. But this is one hydra with stronger tentacles of religion and politics – politics feeding on religious fervour to ignite an all too inflammable social canister.

    So, a good way to go is for people in the north to start looking at religion differently, stop seeing everything through the vaunted superiority of the religious compass. What if the people become less uptight and sensitive about religion? What if they start to look at religion honestly as a life journey encompassing tolerance, understand others and allowing other opinions to precede even when this may not be in their own best interest? What if religion is no longer a struggle between faiths or beliefs to them? What if they begin to see Islam as not a fragile Masonic doctrine that must be protected aggressively from others? How about they begin to see religion as a pattern of a series of interconnected faiths each with their peculiarity that might not always seem linked or pleasing to one set in the series, but then the one set does not harm the other set? I tell you what might happen: there would be less room for anyone or institution to attempt to mess with the sanity of individuals or groups by colouring everything as a religious struggle in which every man has to protect his own corner.

    That way also, the people would begin the process of extricating themselves from ‘personality-institutions’ and instead embrace ‘institutional-institutions’ and authority – learning to give their allegiance to rules, social contracts with all, as well as institutions, rather than subjecting themselves to being (mis)led by individual or group of individuals only, no matter how wealthy or ‘knowing’ the individuals may claim to be.

    But then considering the poverty level, the level of ‘unletteredness’ and the depth to which person institutions and religion has already sunk into the psyche of the people in the north, who will bell this cat?

     

  • Berger; Rich Nigeria; Anti-corruption plan; Punish bad advisers; Passing Amnesty and TI exams

    Berger; Rich Nigeria; Anti-corruption plan; Punish bad advisers; Passing Amnesty and TI exams

    Ogere lanes are trailer-free at last! But for how long? Berger, RCC and FRSC must manage traffic better with only very senior, not lowly, officers making plans and taking traffic closure and diversion decisions. Berger and RCC are known for their high contract fees and Nigerians, their employer, expect to be treated with respect on the road in 2012.

    Nigeria is rich but some lie that Nigeria is poor. But check first class in any plane for ‘poor’ government officials and politicians. Presidents can steal 50% of the budget and other corruption takes 50% of the rest and Nigeria still manages to survive on the 25% remaining and the survival strategies of our daily-paid market women and hawkers. Ever hungry, the greedy Nigerian leadership captures the struggling taxed person in cashless systems to ‘chop their money’ also.

    Imagine what Nigeria would have become if every corrupt scheme revealed since 1999 had been nipped in the bud by a vigilant computerised bank police or EFCC or ICPC? What has Nigeria budget to do with the $700,000,000 or N105,000,000,000 – N105billion or N1050/Nigerian Abacha loot and all other stolen loot? The mothers it was meant to save are now dead, the youth it was meant to save are now despondent and recruited for trafficking and prostitution or unemployed, the hospitals lack that equipment, the libraries and laboratories in schools are empty, the Lagos-Ibadan and Ore-Benin and the East-West Highway lack their third lane or rehabilitation or completion, 10m deadly potholes remain unfilled. These and free health, free education, free non-toll roads, cheaper agricultural products, reduced taxes, toll free roads were all expected from that money.

    When generals get greedy and politicians get peckish, they, like locusts, lay bare the land. Horrifyingly, Abacha’s name still survives on a stadium as a monument to his corruption suspected to be in excess of $7,000,000,000, N1,050,000,000,000/ N1,050billion or N10,500/Nigerian. Remember the First Gulf Oil Windfall $12.5b, N1,875,000,000,000 or N1,875billion or N18,750/Nigerian believed by the Financial Times of UK to have been ‘lost’ under Babangida. The most recent examples of colossal corruption being N275b petroleum subsidy scandal, multibillion naira pension debacle, unascertained corruption in Customs, unfathomable ignored un-investigated corruption in NPA where ‘saint’ PDP leader Bamanga Tukor held sway, when a private $5m non-refundable loan for a ship was believed to have been floated and set sail, the nation’s real tax cheats and any bribe-demanding FIRS and their local state counterparts, the FRSC and LGA touts who have replaced Police checkpoints and the new improved wole-wole environmental enforcement monsters, and you can see why we have such little faith in Nigeria.

    Corruption thrives in an audit vacuum. Every Nigeria based public and private organisational head can today ‘nip corruption in the bud’ with a Department-based anti-corruption ‘Early Warning Keeping It Clean Policy’. In every office introduce this ‘Six Point Anti-corruption Plan’: 1. Anti-corruption Regular Weekly Internal Auditing. 2. Anti-corruption Monthly not Annual External Auditing. 3. Anti-corruption Compulsory Cellphone Bank Account Alerts to 10 senior staff in event of money movement in or out of the account. 4. Anti-corruption employment and training of anti-corruption staff. 5. Anti-corruption Signatures, increase to 4 to 5 on all accounts. 6. Anti-corruption Invitation to EFCC and ICPC, in short anti-corruption rotation randomly chosen by ballot, to staff a desk in the organisation.

    Since 1999, we are still ‘surprised’ at corruption. Of course elimination of fertiliser fraud and the nauseating sums of money being made public are a step, but prosecutions and subsequent convictions are in order but government paradoxically reduces the judiciary budget. Happily the NASS is seeking an upward revision of this. What does the judiciary need to reduce our court case times by 50%? As the budget is being discussed NASS should note that the Israelis are building 3000 homes –just like that- while we arrogantly demolish 300 home estates in a 14,000,000 home deficit country. Don’t look at the politics. Look at the facts. In a country where 80% live on less than $1 /day, how dare anyone budget N7-9,000,000,000 for the Vice President’s compound and a further N2,200,000,000 for an Aso Rock extension to the Presidential banquet hall? This totals more than N10,000,000,000 or N100/Nigerian available for low income housing.

    The crazy civil servants and Special Advisers responsible for these outrageous plans should be identified, exposed, censured and probably sacked. Only punishment will caution others. They cannot claim anonymity for their stupid decisions. For example, which civil servants stopped the Lagos-Ibadan road from being made three and four lanes over the last 40 years? Someone must have been ir-responsible. The ministry already has approved plans by the World Bank contractor in 2008. How much was he paid for government’s ‘breach of contract?’ The contract should have been returned to that same contractor.

    And yet the leadership lectures young Nigerians on ‘sacrifice’ and why free education is not possible and why they should be patient because ‘Rome was not built in a day’. Well Rome was eventually built and if the Roman leadership was as greedy as Nigeria’s, there would be no Rome today and there may be no Nigeria tomorrow. Success is not achieved by vitriolic political complaints against Amnesty International and Transparency International methodology and conclusions. Nigeria should learn to pass this annual exam, honestly with PQPs and a ‘Pass Examination Formula’ and national strategy –better human rights, a better coordinated anti-corruption drive.