The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

Ekiti; Honest politicians; Sachet mountains; PVC holiday?

The Ekiti election, won by Biodun Oyebanji in a state of 3.3million population in 2016 and with approximately 989,244 or nearly one million, 1/3rd of the population as registered voters. 360,753, 1/3rd participated and were accredited and approximately 351,865 000+ voted validly with 8,888 void votes. The winner receiving approximately 187,057+ votes, 50+% in an election. So approximately 18-20% of registered voters won the election and only 1/3 of the registered voters exercised their voting rights. Dismally poor electoral participation, apathy or fear of violence, all of which must be addressed for a value-for- INEC-budget-election and higher voter participation in future elections. This assumes that the 989,244 registered voters were legitimate. Making the results available at the polling booth empowers election monitors and protects INEC from fraudulent inducement and coercion.

Sadly, the corrupt monster of vote buying, overt and covert, remains as some Nigerians do not believe promises of politicians – good governance – and therefore prefer immediate financial rewards as the election is misconstrued as  a buy-sell business commodity. Those steeped in this corruption aka ‘stomach infrastructure’ say that there is no immorality involved, just normal political business. But the care of human beings’ lives is not just political business. They are life itself. This mindset is an affront to common sense in a country with so much poverty, hunger and disillusion among most voters who contrast their situation with the disgusting opulence associated immediately with ‘Candidate Success’ characterised by an almost uniformly hyper-consumptive and unapologetic political office-holder class in general and the huge sums which several political office holders have been accused of misappropriating, some say for ‘Election War chests’.

It must be repeated ad nauseum that INEC has nothing to do with security at elections. Violence is strictly a political party precipitation, plan and activity directed and funded by party members and executed by thugs etc.  Note that there is nothing like ‘Political Violence’. This is to trivialise and normalise murder, mayhem and arson. A person planning to murder or maim a politician must face attempted murder and attempted GBH, Grievous Bodily Harm, just like any other accused. Even if it takes place in a political environment and has political goals, the perpetrators remain vicious, common criminals. The US is investigating the January 6, 2022 Washington attack. No one is mentioning politics as an excuse for illegality. A crime is criminal. Period.

Nigeria must follow and start prosecuting perpetrators and their backers. Only the certainty of getting caught, disgraced and jailed on quick efficient-court-process conviction will get this menace of ‘violence during elections’ not ‘political violence’ behind us.

Sadly, worldwide, especially in Africa and particularly in Nigeria, the world’s politicians and political leadership have mostly failed to set aside any credible part of the countries’ cumulative assets as collective inheritance and patrimony. Instead, they corruptly diverted such funds to family and cohorts. The progeny of one political office holder thief now ‘inherits’ the inheritance stolen from hundreds and thousands of an entire slum, nearby. But there are hundreds charged loudly by EFCC, ICPC, Police etc for stealing N2-80 billion and probably hundreds of thousands of other government/private sector beneficiary  thieves, common criminals in flowing garments and tie and suit, admonishing the press on how to avoid corruption.

Constituency projects in focus and being reviewed in Abuja. A conduit for trillions of naira ’to waka’  with next to nothing to show for it and a failure to thrive and develop measured easily by the yardstick of the UN-SGDs. Nigeria is groaning under spirally people’s sachet water cost because governments abandoned their responsibility to continue to provide potable water for the citizenry. Imagine how many pure water bags are used daily nationwide 60m/day. Bottled water statistics are out there somewhere. All plastic is imported but the plastic waste is not recycled but dumped. There are too few places to get clean water to fill a reusable bottle, therefore a high dependency on bottled and sachet water creates environmental mountains varying in size from Olumo , Zuma and Shere Hills quantities of plastic waste daily probably reaching Mount Kilimanjaro’s volume, a ‘Plastic Mountain’ in each country. This is an environmental time bomb primed to explode under our children when perpetrators of this ‘Nigeria without tap water’ have died. The neglect of all infrastructural has never been for lack of funds but always because theft takes official precedence over the citizens’ collective wellbeing. Other countries with oil have huge Sovereign Wealth Funds because they stop hyper-corruption. Google ‘SWF List’. The SWF has ensured a stable currency in times of adverse economics  and guaranteed development strides which Nigerian politicians, who have diverted or pocketed the SWFs,  travel to admire but do not replicate ‘back-home’ for slum dwellers. That attitude will destroy us all.

The political class seeks a mandate for 2023-2027, but did it examine the 1960 -2022 score card to realise that Nigeria is at maybe 20+/-5% of expected achievement. It is planning to rescue Nigeria or financially rape us again. Are we to expect nauseating mega-theft revelations in 2026/7 after the 500th -1,000th time of stealing yet another N1-80,000,000,000 undetected from the poorly educated brains, open hungry mouths and empty stomachs and bad water caused typhoid-ridden and worm-infested emaciated bodies of Nigeria’s  50-80,000,000 youth?

A state government is giving a one week ‘PVC REGISTRATION AND COLLECTION’ holiday for civil servants to obtain their PVC. Imagine the cost to state and work expectancy of government.

June 22, 2022
2023 Presidency: Early predictions and scenarios (2)

By May 29, 2023, barring any unscripted cataclysm, a new president would be sitting in Muhammadu Buhari’s chair in Aso Rock. It would be just two weeks short of thirty years from the day Nigerians participated in the now historic June 12, 1993 polls won by the late M.K.O. Abiola.

At that election, voters turned conventional wisdom on its head and slew one major sacred cow. In electing Abiola, they acceded to the cry for power shift to the South which the late business mogul’s candidacy represented. But that triumph was achieved on a supposedly taboo Muslim-Muslim electoral slate.

Already, we are seeing portents that this won’t be your typical election cycle. One by one political conventions which we thought were settled are being casually sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

The key calculation for parties and individuals is winning and not necessarily passing the test of political correctness. So, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) assumed that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) which has a Northern incumbent, was likely to choose a Southern candidate. Its best bet was therefore to defy zoning and present another Northerner, hoping regional sentiment would sway things its way.

Very few would have predicted that in the current environment when some think a Muslim-Muslim ticket is such a dreadful prospect, that anyone could conceive of a Northerner succeeding a president from a region who would have served eight years in office.

To confirm that we’re in unusual times, the ruling party also actively flirted with presenting another Northerner to succeed Buhari right up to the opening day of its convention. Who can forget national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu’s, dramatic announcement to the National Working Committee (NWC) that Senate President Ahmad Lawan was its consensus candidate!

But for the heroic intervention of Northern governors, the two leading parties would now have candidates from the same zone as the incumbent. The justification for that outcome would have been the desire to win.

In the same spirit, it is easy to predict that APC which wants to retain the presidency would equally take steps that many would have baulked at in a normal election season. That means, for instance, that in picking a running mate for its presidential flagbearer, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, it would look to the Northwest or Northeast. It would probably choose a serving governor to counter the PDP. But most significantly, that person would be a Muslim – reprising the old Abiola-Babagana Kingibe slate.

Predictably, there have been howls of protests from the usual suspects. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) and others have jumped into the argument threatening any party that offers the Muslim-Muslim ticket with dire consequences.

The danger in making such threats is that you trigger the equally excitable on the other side of the fence to go down the same path. We have seen in the recent past that this sort of activism by religious leaders doesn’t always end well. In the 2014/2015 election cycle, many clerics openly and aggressively canvassed support of their congregations for the candidacy of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

It didn’t matter that Yemi Osinbajo who was Buhari’s running mate was a senior pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). His aspiration was scorned by many leaders of the Pentecostal persuasion. So, what was the reason for backing one and rejecting the other? What was the Christian agenda in the aspiration of the two men?

Unfortunately, for these religious organisations, politicians don’t think like clerics. Zoning, for instance, is done on the basis of region, not faith. It has worked a charm thus far because winning candidates and their running mates have come from the dominant religion in their zone. Things are suddenly complicated now that APC is presenting a Southern Muslim from a region that’s largely Christian.

While matters of faith are very important and people find it comforting when they have political leaders whose religion they can identify with, it is important not to get carried away. As many have pointed out over and again, there’s scant evidence that an office holder’s faith is critical to their performance. There’s also no evidence that your lot is better when your president or his deputy shares your religion.

To my mind the prospect of the same-faith ticket is no worse than the casual junking of the zoning principle by parties. Would the religious bodies and others moaning have considered it equitable if the parties offered a running mate role to people of their faith in exchange for those of an opposite faith governing ad infinitum?

The problem with the clerical meddling is that sectarian politics is a slippery slope and you never know where to stop. What next after the big fight over religious balancing on presidential tickets? Would we now be debating how many ministers, ambassadors, permanent secretaries, directors etc are Christians or Muslims? It would get to that because if it matters on the election ticket why shouldn’t it matter on these equally important positions?

In a way it is to the advantage of APC that the Muslim-Muslim ticket controversy is happening now. The more Nigerians interrogate the concept, the more its irrelevance to resolving the critical challenges facing the country would be evident. And as it was in 1993, by election day it would have been largely defanged as an issue.

Indeed, for the PDP and APC it’s not likely to shift the needle significantly in terms of their support or pathway to victory. The opposition isn’t going to make the same-faith ticket an issue against APC in large parts of the North. But it would do so for all it’s worth in the Southeast and South-South which are historically its strongholds anyway. In the Southwest, it’s an issue that leaves many cold.

In the end people are largely going to make their choices based on who heads the ticket and not the undercard. In this instance, they would be choosing between two Muslims candidates of the leading parties.

This cycle, some would take issue with that last line, arguing that in former Kano State Governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and one-time Anambra State Governor, Peter Obi, there are other viable alternatives. I disagree.

Everything points to the fact that the 2023 presidential contest, just like those of 2015 and 2019, would largely be between PDP and APC. Between them they control the governorships of 25 states across the country and in this country, incumbency is no small matter. You don’t overturn that sort of advantage with the rickety platforms on which Kwankwaso and Obi are running.

There’s excitable chatter online about the former Anambra governor’s bid being driven by youth. But that sort of assertion naively assumes that Nigerian youth are one party united in thought and action. In reality they are just as divided along social and ethnic lines. All the major political parties can lay claim to significant support within this demographic.

No matter how positive you want to be, there’s no pathway to the Nigerian presidency for any candidate running on platforms other than APC or PDP. It’s all down to the high bar set by the constitution. To be elected a candidate must win a quarter of votes cast in two-thirds of the states of the federation as well as muster a majority at the election.

I suspect that Obi and Kwankwaso supporters understand the kind of odds those they support face. That’s why they are so excited about talk of the Labour Party (LP) and New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) discussing a merger. The very fact that this on the table is evidence of the weakness of their platforms. Those who are strong enough don’t need coalitions and alliances, they go it alone.

Again, I doubt if anything would come of the merger talks because Obi and Kwankwaso both want to be president. If the former wanted to play second fiddle he would have remained in the PDP and fought to run again with Atiku. The same can be said for the former governor who left the main opposition party for a place where he would be king of the hill.

In the end their significant role might be how they helped one of the big two to get elected by splitting the vote in Kano in the case of the NNPP. Obi’s base could suck votes away from Atiku in the Southeast when he needs his numbers to hold up in a traditional stronghold. But that’s where it ends. To be president, however, you need more than home support.

June 21, 2022
Meet the Vice President

As the deadline approaches for presidential candidates to pick their running mates, the question of who will be the choice of particular candidates has become a hot topic. Partly because he is the presidential candidate of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress; partly because of the spectacular way he won his party’s primary in a landslide; and partly because of his popularity and gravitas, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has attracted the most attention over his choice of a running mate.

Of the three major factors featured in the discussion of who should be his running mate, one is already settled, and that is the geographical zone the chosen running mate should come from. It should be the North, because Tinubu is from the South. The other two factors are: (1) Does the chosen running mate have the requisite qualifications to discharge the role of Vice President effectively and (2) How many votes can the running mate garner for the presidential ticket?

The issue of qualification centres on whether the running mate, considered a heartbeat from the presidency, can truly assume the presidency, while the President is not available. How presidential can the running mate be in carriage, communicative ability, and knowledge of the job? What managerial or governance experience has the running mate had that would enable her or him to step up to govern Nigeria? What preparations for that role has she or he had? These are questions Tinubu and the APC leadership can easily answer, because the Northern region is not short of supply of well qualified candidates for Vice President.

This leads to the third major question about the number of votes the chosen running mate can bring to the ticket in order for Tinubu and the APC to be able to win the election. It is within this context that the question of the religious affiliation of the running mate would be considered by the presidential candidate and his party.

However, others, including the media, ignore electability by arguing that the top of a presidential ticket at this time must be balanced with a running mate of a different faith in order to douse the ethno-religious tension in the country today. Accordingly, it is argued, there must not be a Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian presidential ticket.

The Christian Association of Nigeria has been particularly forceful in advocating the choice of a Northern Christian as Tinubu’s running mate, because Tinubu himself is a Southern Muslim. To be sure, CAN has every reason to defend its constituency, especially in the light of escalated abductions and killings of Christians. The attack on Christians has been particularly frequent and deadly in the last few months during which Bishops were abducted and church members killed in the House of God.

However, it cannot be denied that terrorists and bandits have killed far more Muslims than Christians and the Muslim President has not been able to stop the carnage. Moreover, the ruling presidential ticket under which these atrocities have been taking place is a Muslim-Christian ticket, with President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim, on top of the ticket and Professor Yemi Osinbajo, a senior pastor and a member of CAN, as his Vice President. He also comes from the Southwest, where the horrific killings of church members recently took place.

But what exactly has Osinbajo, a Christian pastor, been able to achieve in dousing the killings of Christians other than visiting the scenes of crime and expressing sympathy? He cannot announce a new policy of containing terrorism and banditry unless he has the express mandate of the President. Even in areas where the constitution grants some powers to the Vice President, such as the chairmanship of the National Economic Council, he can only push the policies approved by the President. He cannot unilaterally reverse the downturn in the economy and lighten the burden of a mounting debt in excess of N40 trillion.

I raise these questions, not to indict Vice President Osinbajo, who has performed exceedingly well in that office, but to show that the limits to his power are defined by the constitution and the whims and caprices of the President, who is empowered by the same constitution to delegate whatever functions he deems fit to the Vice President. That’s why the President was able to whittle down on the assignments previously given to the Vice President, particularly the social protection programmes, he had been supervising.

The point being made here is that the Vice President performs more symbolic than real functions, including representing the President here and there. But election is real and it is a game of numbers. In our present political configuration with multiple presidential candidates, the search for votes is a real challenge. In particular, the APC has to contend in the North with the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, former Vice President Atiku Abukar, who is a Northern Muslim.

To make things harder for the APC, the North is made up of 19 states, only three of which could be regarded as predominantly Christian states. The remaining 16 states have predominantly Muslim populations. APC’s failure to make a significant incursion into Muslim voters may give Muslim Atiku a competitive edge in the region.

To be sure, there is a possible advantage for the APC in terms of control of the levers of power in the North. Of the 19 states, 14 are controlled by the APC. Nevertheless, for the predominantly Muslim population, there are indications that they usually vote massively for one of their own. This can only put additional pressure on the APC to select a Muslim running mate.

Another factor overlooked by advocates of a Christian running mate for Tinubu is the lifemate he already has in a Christian wife, Senator Remi Tinubu, who, incidentally, is also a pastor. Thus, the religious equilibrium he is being invited to practice at the national level he is already practicing at home.

Finally, advocates of a Christian running mate for Tinubu are overlooking one critical factor. When the top of the ticket is from the North, the pressure to pick a Christian running mate from the South is imperative, because the South is predominantly Christian. By the same token, the pressure to pick a Muslim running mate cannot be overlooked, when the top of the ticket is from the predominantly Christian South. Given what we have witnessed in the last eight years, it will be a shame if Southern voters ignore one of their own over the choice of a running mate.

June 15, 2022
June 12: Voter victory 2022? Owo; 61-11=50+1 Baby

June 12, 1993 Voter Victory’ recreating in 2022. The political power of the voters on June 12, 1993, including millions of youth, though annulled by Babangida must be recreated in 2022 in the coming months to allow a correction in the politics of today. There are several million youths who have grown and are now 18-22years old in the 2019-22 political season. We must vocally encourage them all to get their ‘Permanent Voters Card, PVC: PASSPORT TO POLITICAL FREEDOM OF CHOICE’. The deadline for PVC is June ending so it is necessary to motivate and irritate all our non-PVC carrying ‘bored’ qualified members of society to immediately get registered and be counted in the coming election.

It is easy to bribe or cheat when the electorate is small but those coming out are few. It is impossible to bribe or manipulate or cheat enough of a population of 40 or 80 million active voters. The one thing dishonest politicians, the majority, hate is an unpredictable, bribe-resistant, majority of voters, active and willing to shun ‘stomach infrastructure’, one day bribe lunch, or even intimidation and violence and instead vote for good governance. Can we recreate the 1993 election when we had millions of youths patiently waiting in queues, both bored but reading books while waiting? Of course not; this 2022 election the youth will be standing patiently in the voting queues dancing to their cell phones.

The reverberations of the unfathomably murderous Owo massacre will be strong and widespread. Time was when a religious house was ‘hallowed ground’, a place of sanctuary in times of need and conflict and with relative immunity from the murderous madness of terrorism and the associated bloody acts of persecution against those, particularly innocent women and children, sheltering or worshipping within its walls and under its roof. A church is not a castle requiring bombs and grenades. In a church or indeed a mosque or synagogue, bombs are targeted specifically at flesh and blood. The time of such places being recognised and treated as sanctuaries appears to be long gone in ‘The Terrorist Handbook’ as these sacred sanctuaries are now fully in the focus of vicious conscienceless terrorists with an increasingly destructive trail cutting through them. Owo is sadly, just the latest.

So, we must move to the defence of such places and the congregation therein. Who should protect those in such religious domains? Should the unarmed congregation somehow protect themselves or should it be the government’s armed police and armed forces or paramilitary forces or private people with sticks or Dane guns? Yes, the congregation can pray against an attack which is effective, but once an attack is underway, there should be some mechanism triggered that will bring evasive actions, weaponry and resistance to meet the onslaught on its own terms, gun for gun, bullet for bullet, bomb for bomb.

There are those who believe the carnage would have been more in places like Owo, and there have been many, many Owos before this one, if the congregation had been armed or defended by armed guards of the security forces. Just how many more dead could there have possibly been in Owo? No one wants to die, including terrorists. So, some preventive measures and active resistance are necessary to curb, cut off or distract this inhuman appetite of the terrorist monster for murdering anything and anyone but especially infants, children and women.

Should we be trained to block escape routes around such places as soon as we hear gunfire or a disturbance? Will a trapped terrorist group kill more people trying to escape down unplanned road exits than along the planned retreat route? Should we all just lie down and be executed? What can we do?

Searching boots and bonnets and the contents of vehicles may help; being security conscious when your terrorist opponent is harbouring an AK47 sounds difficult and a tall order. Meanwhile we should pray with at least one eye open to unusual visitors and movement of other worshippers and one ear open to unusual sounds and messages. A stop and search is very effective especially when the stoppers and searchers are also armed and dangerous. May God protect us, but we must be empowered to protect ourselves.

You dare not forget to remember March 28 and the murderous Abuja-Kaduna train kidnapping where many were murdered on the train and many kidnapped? This weekend, 11 more were released out of 61. A victim has given birth. It is now three months later. 61-11=50+1 baby. What is the delay in releasing the others? Can the well qualified ‘Sheik&Dr&RetiredCapt&ChiefNegotiator’ Gumi tell us in public or private how much money was involved in releasing 11. Surely the politicians who collectively raised over N4b for mere presidential and other political post aspiration forms, now they have been relieved of the burden of their political aspirations, can chip something in from the profits they may have made by being paid, if at all, huge ‘Stepping Down, Stepping Aside or Withdrawal Fees’ rumoured to be the alleged whole point of the exercise for some of them. If that is not possible, surely they can form a ‘Past Political Aspirants Association’ with a senior section for ‘Past Presidential Aspirants Section’ whose first project should be ‘Free Train Victims Fund’ to raise funds to free the remaining victims through Gumi’s experienced advice for which we should be grateful, perhaps.

June 15, 2022
The semiotics of the Owo massacre

Neither the rough road to the All Progressives Congress presidential primary nor the struggles for power in a presidential election, still over eight months away, should be allowed to overshadow the pain and anguish from the barbaric massacre of 30 or more innocent Christian worshippers on Pentecost Sunday on June 5, 2022, at the St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo. The sad event occurred in the hometown of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, the Governor of Ondo State and Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum.

There are interesting parallels between the incident and the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 during the reign of Henry II of England as told by T.S. Elliot in his verse drama, Murder in the Cathedral. True, no Bishop was murdered in Owo on June 5, but the crude murder of innocent worshippers was viewed as a message to Governor Akeredolu, the equivalent of Archbishop Becket in this allegory, except that he is not Catholic and he was not in that church on that day.

The truth is that many observers did not see the targeting of a church, or any gathering of people for that matter, in Owo town as a random selection. The Yoruba Socio-Cultural Group, Afenifere, for one did not mince words in making the association between the Owo massacre and Governor Akeredolu’s firm stance on security and in championing the course of the South in the zoning debate within his political party

He was tough against bandits marauding the Ondo forest reserve. He backed the activities of Amotekun, the security outfit of the Southwest. He pushed for the adoption of a law banning open grazing in the region. More recently, his call for zoning the presidential ticket to the South has been very strident. But he did not take these positions to protect himself and family. Rather, he took the positions to protect the people of his state and of the entire Southern Nigeria. He acted either as Governor and Chief Security Officer of his state or as the Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum. In the latter case, he only reflected the views of all 17 Governors across party lines in the region.

It is believed that Governor Akeredolu or his state is being targeted for these positions, because they are being viewed as an affront on a group that sees itself more or less as the state. The parallel with Archbishop Becket, as revealed in Elliot’s drama, is very striking in this regard. The four knights who assassinated Archbishop Becket claimed that the king was frustrated with Becket, whose actions were viewed as undermining the stability of the state.

Those behind banditry may view Governor Akeredolu in bad light today for defending his people and fighting for their right to govern this country. But history will judge him well for standing up for his people and the entire people of Southern Nigeria. Even now, in recognition of his tough stance on security, the National Working Committee of his party made him the Chairman of the Security Committee of the party’s convention.

He was away in Abuja on this assignment, when the gunmen struck in his state. He quickly returned to his state to commiserate with his people and condone the bereaved. The entire nation rallied around him with condolence visits and messages.

What is heartwarming about Governor Akeredolu is that he is not a man to be deterred by intimidation. Not even COVID-19 could floor him! No sooner had he returned to Abuja than he quickly put the party Chairman in his place for attempting to go against the zoning decision that Northern Governors had made in consonance with the demand of Southern Governors, which he gallantly championed.

It must be emphasized, however, that the implications of the church massacre reverberate beyond Owo and Governor Akeredolu. The sad event is a poignant metaphor of the high level of insecurity in the nation. It is also a sad reflection of the poor standard of crime control and investigation in the country. Although the nearest police post to the church is said to be less than two miles, no policeman showed up in the church until the bandits had fled the scene of the crime. The police post reportedly had no operating vehicle to take them to the scene. Up till now, the simple information about the exact number of casualties from the church massacre remains unknown. So is the whereabout of the killer bandits

It is easy to extrapolate from this example that the necessary knots and bolts of security in this country are hopelessly loose. No wonder then that many citizens are kidnapped or killed every day. What is worse, there appears to be no solution in sight.

And this is where the next President comes in, now that the stage is set for the presidential election in 2023. The first thing the electorate should focus on in the candidates’ manifesto is their plan to tackle the security problem in this country. The plan must rest on the tripod of state police, devolution of powers, and fiscal federalism.

Put quite simply, every state must be in charge of its own police. However, in order for that to be possible, more powers must devolve to the states as in the United States of America, whose constitution we copied. Moreover, states should be fully resourced in order to perform their functions effectively. This requires further revision of the federal allocation formula and consideration of a new resource control formula.

The truth is that the more each state is equipped to control its destiny, without being crushed by an all-powerful centre, the less the agitation for separation and the less ethnic and religious considerations will count in national affairs. What is more, the best approach to poverty reduction is not by sharing bread from an invisible centre but by having each state put its residents on the path to self fulfillment.

June 8, 2022
N100m Lost? Delegate job; Crushing Okada epidemic

Will the dropped political aspirants ‘lose their deposit’ or get a full or part refund? Will the political delegates pay tax on ‘Delegates Attendance Allowance’? What is the percentage of tax on the ‘FEES -FOR -POLITICAL FORMS’? One-10% of the nearly N4billion for forms from all political parties is N400m to N40m.

Is ‘DELEGATE’ a funded political job? Youth will say ‘When I grow up I want to be a delegate?

‘Should Amotekun be distracted from serious security in this undeclared war on Nigeria or should it involve itself with the NDLEA and the drug problem in Nigeria. Drugs and crime are bedfellows. Is that the angle? The murderous kidnaping by Kaduna train passengers, the contractor, the Methodist Prelate released for N100m – a presidential nomination form, and the heart-wrenching massacre of unarmed Nigerians -this time attending the Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State demand more than condolences. What are our security warlike strategies to defeat those at war with Nigeria? ‘Siddon-look’ till we die? As the presidency may send its 1000th condolence message please also consider a higher state of response and unbiased security.

For years the medical profession had decried the tsunami of Okada motorcycles which continues countrywide filling hospitals with Road Traffic Accident, RTA, wards with almost totally preventable deaths and injuries, long and short term – The Okada Epidemic. It was a political gimmick without a feasibility study to ascertain medical implications to families and the health service. Politicians did not supply crash helmets with the bikes. The few who received crash helmets gratis rejected them as spoiling their headgear. When worn it was rarely strapped. Our roads are littered with the scattered brains of Okada riders and their victims-passengers and pedestrians.

From a scheming political class wrongly buying a few motorcycles to ‘help’ the rural locals get around, we now have a rural, forest and urban invasion of on army of men and their fuming, air-and-noise polluting motorcycles, undisciplined, always endangering everyone. It is indeed like a nationwide invasion of young men on mechanical horseback actually going wild. FRSC now uses ‘Road Traffic Crash’. I use ‘Road Traffic Attack’, because an impact with a mindless 60-100km/perhaps drug high and speed-crazed rider is an attack by an individual totally lacking in road skills, road etiquette, or even human kindness. No empathy. Indeed, by their nationwide past total rubbishing and lack of respect for traffic officials, traffic lights, lane use, roundabout curtesy, speed limits and, other road users, they have rendered pedestrians an endangered species.

The deadly Okada habit of swarming like hornets around anyone involved in an accident/attack/crash or even simple altercation with an Okada rider is abhorrent. All Nigerians know these instant courts too often get away with rough injustice and sometimes murder and burning due to quick recourse to being judge and jury and executioner in one with extrajudicial jungle justice to camouflage their own crime. This has earned the Okada driver/rider the sad and chilling descriptive name of ‘kill-and-go’ which they share now with those it was historically invented and reserved for- a segment of the police force during a deadly police exercise in a political era, I think in Ibadan. And indeed, they do ‘kill-and-go’ most recently in Lekki where a software engineer lost his life over N100. Unfortunately, the police investigation has yielded questionable results accusations of ‘substituting perpetrators’ for the escaped real ones. These moral issues would be easily solved by ‘A LIE DETECTOR TEST BEING OFFERED TO BOTH ACCUSED AND ACCUSERS’, the arresting police.

Regardless, the state government’s reaction has been to implement ‘an Okada ban’ plan it probably had ready to go but was waiting for the right provocation/reactionary time as government was likely to have been afraid to implement it earlier for political reasons. It has banned the use of Okada in six local governments. This is considered to be a drop in the ocean of need to ban Okada for security needs with a suggestion to ban state-wide and nation-wide as the pluses are far outweighed by the negatives when it comes to the impact of Okadas on society. Yes, the passenger may arrive earlier and Okada is fast and goes into any corner servicing passengers. But even this means that Okada-patronising Nigerians walk less than the recommended 10,000 healthy steps daily with the associated health risk including obesity and laziness leading to premature leg weakness beginning with inability to stand up without a table or chair support to push on.

Apart from health issues, every Nigerian is aware of the involvement of Okada in the high crime rate and facilitation of security breaches nationwide. The crushing of 2,000 Okada cycles seems cruel but the Okada epidemic is a hydra-headed menace creating maximum suffering from amputated limbs, battered and broken bodies and bones, broken skulls with scattered brains, corpses, orphans, widows, widowers and parents without a child than the losses due to covid, malaria and maternal mortality put together. A new epidemic of tricycles and mass transit buses are the answer though taxi and public bus drivers are robbing and raping passengers nowadays.

Another human being was burnt to death without trial ostensibly for arguing with a cleric. In medicine we realise that many arguments and strange behaviour may have mental health origins. Surely we have the burden of proof in each case and even if found normal, is that justification of burning to death?

June 8, 2022
APC: From consensus to electoral calamity

All over the world, political parties go into conventions preceding general elections with two clear objectives: to elect the most popular candidate and to emerge with a united front.

Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) appears to be working to achieve the direct opposite – going into the 2023 polls with bitter and disaffected members, labouring under the weight of an unpopular flagbearer.

Yesterday, the party’s chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, stunned many when he announced to an equally astonished National Working Committee (NWC) meeting, that Senate President Ahmad Lawan, was the ‘consensus’ candidate. He said he arrived at the position after consultations with President Muhammadu Buhari.

It was the first that members of what is supposedly the party’s management would hear of a consensus candidate. But we shouldn’t be shocked because a few days ago two Vice Chairmen – Salihu Lukman and Isaac Kekemeke – penned a joint open letter to stakeholders, accusing Adamu of dropping Buhari’s name to browbeat them and running a one-man show. This was the ultimate confirmation of that management style.

Reacting to this dramatic development, eleven APC Northern governors who had collectively announced to the world on Saturday night that the presidential ticket must move South, stormed Aso Rock for showdown talks with Buhari. The outcome was revealing.

First, the president denied anointing any candidate. He asked the governors to resolve all issues about zoning and the flagbearer with the NWC. What Buhari told the governors immediately put Adamu out on a limb and called his integrity to question.

If you say the president picked Lawan and he says he didn’t, that’s called lying. With his honour called into question shouldn’t the chairman be considering his position. In other climes he would resign because his position is now out of sync with that of the president.

Despite the fact that in its short history APC has picked its candidate seamlessly through the ballot, the party appears to have suddenly developed an inexplicable dread for that most basic of democratic devices – elections. For over a year rumour mills have been inundated with talk of powerful forces within the party working to pick the candidate by ‘consensus.’

The common meaning of consensus is a process through which an outcome is reached by universal agreement or compromise. But given the conspiratorial way it was discussed within APC ranks, this ‘consensus’ simply meant the president picking somebody and getting everyone to line up behind him.

It worked a treat when he forced Adamu down the throat of his party men, but in the contest for the presidential ticket the stakes are much higher. The threshold was further raised with the amended Electoral Act which makes parties choosing this route, to not only require aspirants to indicate in writing that they were withdrawing and but also to state they were backing the consensus candidate.

APC tried to work around this by getting contenders to append signatures to a form committing them to accept a consensus candidate. As we have now learnt, all bar one did so. Initially they were told it was optional. In reality, it was a booby trap that was no better than signing an undated resignation letter. People who would like to be seen as experienced politicians should have known better.

Many played along because they had been bewitched into believing they were Buhari’s favourites. They gladly signed on, waiting like Godot for the day when the president would gather all aspirants at Aso Rock to announce their name. Now, he’s reiterated “he’s for nobody.”

The fiasco should embarrass and annoy all aspirants who have been encouraging ‘consensus.’ In the end, they’ve all been had because Lawan was someone’s agenda all along, and the price tag for the rigmarole well over N100 million for each person.

What the world would like to know is where in its constitution APC empowers its chairman or the president or both to consult and pick its candidate. In a bid to calm the raging storm, a party spokesman said last night that Adamu was only speaking for himself. But the damage had been done.

A process where the chairman is supposed to be a neutral figure assuring all contestants of fairness and a level playing field, has been compromised by his brazen partisanship. He has damaged the party’s brand. Put side by side with what PDP accomplished last week, APC’s attempt at organising a convention is nothing short of a shipwreck.

With Buhari’s denial Lawan automatically becomes Adamu’s project. Clearly, APC never chose a consensus candidate despite the president’s preachments. The furious reaction that greeted the chairman’s power play confirms this.

The party should seriously worry whether its processes would pass muster with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which has warned that party primaries must be in line with the provisions of their constitution and the amended Electoral Act. Can this conjured consensus pass that test?

Why this is such a scandal is that the NWC had no role in Lawan’s selection. Collectively they have been embarrassed and made to look like window dressing. It is not just them who have been humiliated but a wide range of stakeholders at all levels. How did the ruling party come to this pass where it’s being run like a parade ground?

On Saturday night, eleven Northern governors who issued the statement backing power rotation as a matter of honour and equity, were widely hailed as patriots. There was so much positive energy generated by their action, with many saying they had cut the ground from beneath PDP. They indeed deserve all the plaudits for rising above sectional sentiments and putting a lie to so many caricatures about them.

They understood the grave electoral danger APC faces if it presented another Northerner after Buhari would have served eight years in office. It’s shocking that in a polarised country, anyone could have conceived such an idea. Obviously, Adamu and his co-travellers know something that the governors and other stakeholders don’t know.

One item in the governors’ reporting of their encounter with Buhari intrigued me. He reportedly said he would neither adopt nor exclude anyone. It’s great that he’s not anointing anyone, but unhelpful that he’s opened a little chink that could be exploited to undermine the growing consensus within the party for power shift. By not “excluding” anyone there’s the chance of a northern candidate emerging after him. Is that a prospect he would be comfortable with?

The minority within the ruling party pushing this agenda tried and failed to get Jonathan involved, calculating that he would serve just four years and their region would be back in power. But what is four or eight years in the life of a nation? The presidency rotating South doesn’t mean it would take permanent residency there. So, the desperation doesn’t make sense.

It bears pointing out that despite his strutting around, Adamu is a general with very few, if any troops. How does he hope to actualise his agenda when 12 out of APC’s Northern governors have put their honour on the line by publicly backing power shift? Among them is Mai Mala Buni, governor of Lawan’s home state of Yobe.

The trouble with the ruling party is that it’s overcome with hubris just like the PDP before it crashed. It has an exaggerated sense of its electoral attractiveness. In reality it’s not exactly flavour of the month given extreme hardship across the land. So, foisting upon itself an unpopular candidate can only be a recipe for disaster. If the one-time ruling party, at the height of its powers could lose, nothing says the same fate cannot befall APC.

Grave damage has been done to the ruling party internally and externally by those who have been entrusted with its leadership. Nigeria would be a laughing stock in the international community given the bungled, underhand attempts by some forces within the party to impose a candidate.

To have Adamu just announce someone is unbelievable and unacceptable. Every time we show up now to lecture our ECOWAS neighbours about democratic culture, they would have a hearty laugh.

But all is not lost if the strong within the ruling party can rise up to fight for their collective future. They must ask themselves whether they want to remain in power after 2023 or return to the opposition wilderness. They must interrogate whether their chairman’s approach is the best way forward.

Will they watch one or two individuals drive them over a cliff or will they secure their future political relevance by firmly standing against imposition?

Buhari has less than a year left in office. What sort of legacy does he want to leave? Does he want to be remembered as APC’s last president? If the ongoing chaos isn’t contained and sanity returns, this may the convention where the presidency was donated to Atiku Abubakar and the PDP.

June 7, 2022
Why the APC should head South
In the heat of the ongoing long presidential primary process, it is not likely that the decision-making body of the All Progressives Congress would read this piece. But I hope that someone, who by chance reads it, would whisper these recommendations to them: (1) The APC should not imitate the Peoples Democratic Party in jettisoning zoning. (2) APC should ignore the lure of northernization that comes with the abandonment of zoning. (3) The party should go for a Southern candidate that could muster the widest voter spread across the country, especially among the masses.

Although the PDP presidential primary was well planned and well executed, the outcome was not without rancour in the South. Southern leaders (the Southern Governors Forum, Traditional and Religious leaders, and Sociocultural Organisations), who had canvassed zoning the presidential position to the South felt cheated and betrayed. In particular, the hotbed of PDP in the South (South-south and South-east) was so upset that the party’s flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar, quickly embarked on appeasement and reconciliation mission. How he can appease the South-east, whose leaders warned its politicians against accepting a Vice-Presidential slot, remains to be seen. So far, Atiku and PDP national leaders have been afraid to even consider someone from the Southeast for the slot, even though one was chosen in 2019.

PDP did not just abandon zoning. It did it in an in-your-face manner. Here’s how the South-east socio-cultural group, Ohaneze Ndigbo reacted: “the PDP is now a political party for the Northern region, with Dr Iyorchia Ayu (Benue) as PDP Chair, Walid Jubril (Nasarawa) as BOT (Board of Trustees) Chair, and Atiku Abubakar (Adamawa) as 2023 PDP presidential candidate,” As if to complete the oppression of the South, another Northerner, Senator David Mark, supervised the PDP presidential primary. No wonder then that, within hours, Southern, Middle Belt, and South-south leaders rejected Atiku as PDP candidate. At the end of the day, this may well be a bluff. However, it cannot go without some repercussions for the PDP.

If there is a lesson the APC should learn from the PDP convention, it is not to abandon zoning but to go South as it originally planned. The argument leading to the election of party officials was that the 2015/2019 arrangement was being reversed, implying that the Party Chairman would now go to the North, while the Presidential candidate would go to the South. Accordingly, the party chairmanship was successfully zoned to the North. If they still exist, the intrigues that led to a stalemate in implementing the promised zoning of the presidential candidate to the South should be ignored, if the APC hopes to win the election.

Another factor the APC should consider in favour of the South is the role of the legacy parties that formed the APC. Many commentators have drawn attention to the role of the Action Congress of Nigeria, which had as many Governors (6) as the other legacy parties, ANPP (3), APGA (2), and CPC (1). It was the ACN that delivered victory to then candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who had previously run unsuccessfully for the same office three times. It speaks volume to the character of a person or group that ignores this history and the accompanying ethical bond in order to hold on to power. In the final analysis, it may well be suicide for the APC to ignore the South, especially the Southwest, the hotbed of ACN until the formation of the APC. Fortunately, the APC is not short of good candidates from this zone.

In his column yesterday, Festus Eriye exposed the fallacy of the idea that only a Northern APC candidate can defeat Atiku, who is also from the North, or that the North is a monolithic voting bloc (see APC’s 2023 options: Facts and fallacies, The Nation, May 31, 2022). Granting that Atiku will be able to cart away some votes, APC should be the party to beat in the APC should still be the party to beat in the region. After all, it has 13 of the region’s 19 Governors currently in power. Equally unfathomable is the idea of another Northerner succeeding President Buhari in the same party after an 8-year tenure. Not only is it an insult on Southern sensibilities, it robs deep on the fragility of our democracy.

Here’s where the PDP does not offer a model for the APC to follow. For one thing, the last PDP President was from the South. Therefore, the rotational principle might operate differently for the party. That’s one reason the same Atiku was their candidate in 2019. True, the idea of matching Buhari with a Northern candidate was in the consideration, that, too, should not be a model for the APC, whose Northern candidate would have been in power for eight years by 2023.

Still lurking in the background of the ongoing presidential primary process is the new political fad, consensus. There are at least three indications that the APC might be working toward a consensus presidential candidate. First, attached to the nomination and expression of interest form is a consensus form, which many aspirants ignored. Second, the aspirants were asked during the screening if they would agree to a consensus candidate. Again, not all aspirants agreed to the arrangement. Finally, as recently as last evening, Tuesday, May 31, 2022, the President met with the APC Governors and shared with them his “dream” of the “ideal candidate” he would like them to consider.

It is no longer the President’s body language. Now it is his dream. It remains unclear where either or both could lead. What is clear is that the President has just given the party leaders another goal to pursue—his dream of the ideal candidate. A categorial statement on zoning could limit the sphere of this wild goose chase. There is no better leadership the President can give on the presidential electoral process at this time than such a statement. If and when he makes the statement, the keyword should be South.
- This column was not published on the back page yesterday due to a mix up.
June 2, 2022
Why the APC should head South

In the heat of the ongoing long presidential primary process, it is not likely that the decision-making body of the All Progressives Congress would read this piece. But I hope that someone, who by chance reads it, would whisper these recommendations to them: (1) The APC should not imitate the Peoples Democratic Party in jettisoning zoning. (2) APC should ignore the lure of northernization that comes with the abandonment of zoning. (3) The party should go for a Southern candidate that could muster the widest voter spread across the country, especially among the masses.

Although the PDP presidential primary was well planned and well executed, the outcome was not without rancour in the South. Southern leaders (the Southern Governors Forum, Traditional and Religious leaders, and Sociocultural Organisations), who had canvassed zoning the presidential position to the South felt cheated and betrayed. In particular, the hotbed of PDP in the South (South-south and South-east) was so upset that the party’s flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar, quickly embarked on appeasement and reconciliation mission. How he can appease the South-east, whose leaders warned its politicians against accepting a Vice-Presidential slot, remains to be seen. So far, Atiku and PDP national leaders have been afraid to even consider someone from the Southeast for the slot, even though one was chosen in 2019.

PDP did not just abandon zoning. It did it in an in-your-face manner. Here’s how the South-east socio-cultural group, Ohaneze Ndigbo reacted: “the PDP is now a political party for the Northern region, with Dr Iyorchia Ayu (Benue) as PDP Chair, Walid Jubril (Nasarawa) as BOT (Board of Trustees) Chair, and Atiku Abubakar (Adamawa) as 2023 PDP presidential candidate,” As if to complete the oppression of the South, another Northerner, Senator David Mark, supervised the PDP presidential primary. No wonder then that, within hours, Southern, Middle Belt, and South-south leaders rejected Atiku as PDP candidate. At the end of the day, this may well be a bluff. However, it cannot go without some repercussions for the PDP.

If there is a lesson the APC should learn from the PDP convention, it is not to abandon zoning but to go South as it originally planned. The argument leading to the election of party officials was that the 2015/2019 arrangement was being reversed, implying that the Party Chairman would now go to the North, while the Presidential candidate would go to the South. Accordingly, the party chairmanship was successfully zoned to the North. If they still exist, the intrigues that led to a stalemate in implementing the promised zoning of the presidential candidate to the South should be ignored, if the APC hopes to win the election.

Read Also: Full list of 27 Imo APC House of Assembly candidates

Another factor the APC should consider in favour of the South is the role of the legacy parties that formed the APC. Many commentators have drawn attention to the role of the Action Congress of Nigeria, which had as many Governors (6) as the other legacy parties, ANPP (3), APGA (2), and CPC (1). It was the ACN that delivered victory to then candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who had previously run unsuccessfully for the same office three times. It speaks volume to the character of a person or group that ignores this history and the accompanying ethical bond in order to hold on to power. In the final analysis, it may well be suicide for the APC to ignore the South, especially the Southwest, the hotbed of ACN until the formation of the APC. Fortunately, the APC is not short of good candidates from this zone.

In his column yesterday, Festus Eriye exposed the fallacy of the idea that only a Northern APC candidate can defeat Atiku, who is also from the North, or that the North is a monolithic voting bloc (see APC’s 2023 options: Facts and fallacies, The Nation, May 31, 2022). Granting that Atiku will be able to cart away some votes, APC should be the party to beat in the APC should still be the party to beat in the region. After all, it has 13 of the region’s 19 Governors currently in power. Equally unfathomable is the idea of another Northerner succeeding President Buhari in the same party after an 8-year tenure. Not only is it an insult on Southern sensibilities, it robs deep on the fragility of our democracy.

Here’s where the PDP does not offer a model for the APC to follow. For one thing, the last PDP President was from the South. Therefore, the rotational principle might operate differently for the party. That’s one reason the same Atiku was their candidate in 2019. True, the idea of matching Buhari with a Northern candidate was in the consideration, that, too, should not be a model for the APC, whose Northern candidate would have been in power for eight years by 2023.

Still lurking in the background of the ongoing presidential primary process is the new political fad, consensus. There are at least three indications that the APC might be working toward a consensus presidential candidate. First, attached to the nomination and expression of interest form is a consensus form, which many aspirants ignored. Second, the aspirants were asked during the screening if they would agree to a consensus candidate. Again, not all aspirants agreed to the arrangement. Finally, as recently as last evening, Tuesday, May 31, 2022, the President met with the APC Governors and shared with them his “dream” of the “ideal candidate” he would like them to consider.

It is no longer the President’s body language. Now it is his dream. It remains unclear where either or both could lead. What is clear is that the President has just given the party leaders another goal to pursue—his dream of the ideal candidate. A categorial statement on zoning could limit the sphere of this wild goose chase. There is no better leadership the President can give on the presidential electoral process at this time than such a statement. If and when he makes the statement, the keyword should be South.

June 1, 2022
Corrupted ‘Richest Poor Country’ or ‘Poorest Rich Country’

The revelations of countless tribunals, fraud investigations and rumours of plea bargaining and estimates of the quantum of illegal money secreted abroad can be accumulated into an astronomical figure for fraud and theft in the trillions, annually. This ‘klepto-currency-mania’ thievery is in all strata of society – politics, professions ‘welfare funds’ recipients, civil servants, contractors and individuals.

Now the politics of the 2022 political primaries, known underground to be awash with offers, demand and payments for ‘money for votes’ has been trivialised as ‘stomach infrastructure’ when the ‘exchange rate for votes’ included condiments. We are disgraced by the exposed Nigerian politics’ extremely dirty linen washed this week in public with plastic bags containing dollars and ‘toilet paper’ naira on camera with the amounts announced and totalled. This whole election will cost many billions or low trillions of naira. Nigerians are aware that every kobo must be repaid from their own public pockets through the coffers of the next elected government, usually within the first year in office from corrupt practices including, unsuitable sadly called ‘juicy appointment’ meaning ‘stealing appointments’ -so-called because appointee is expected to ‘get as rich as Croesus’.

And all this while the country falls headlong deeper into poverty, is poorly governed and making the poor poorer and people, the old and spent aka the backbone give up in despair at the loss of their paltry retirement sum in a mismanaged economy with galloping inflation, and adults aka the arms and legs of the country and the young, aka the future who grow up un-catered for.

The cost to Nigeria of the current politics and the greedy offspring, the simple electoral process delineated honourably by INEC but bastardised by most political participants will be the subject of social and political studies for years. However, we see the effects in greedy overpaid political figures, state officials and the public. These effects cost the country through incompetent governance, contract inflation, poor contract completion, and among the most expensive political systems and cost/kilometre of bridge and road worldwide.

Sadly, the coming election will sap so much with so little return in the badly needed good political leadership and not turnaround in the country’s fortunes.

To decide to steal is both a collective party responsibility and an individual prosecutable decision. Not every politician is a thief and not every thief is a politician. However, a very greedy political or thievery decision costs Nigerians billions far in excess of all the collected funds of Yahoo-Yahoo boys and girls, drug mules etc. put together. Imagine how many thieves in a market you would need to catch to retrieve N80billion. But all theft must be defended before God and, or, the courts, if they are honest and not a hornet’s nest of corrupt lawyers and corrupted and corruptible judges. To steal ‘government money’ or even ‘company money’ or any money anywhere seems, to many officials entrusted with the people’s money or other money, to be the ‘order of the day’ worthy of celebration or a reason for the job in the first place

Where would our education, health, road and rail network and our power and water supply be now if only we had been able to use our God-given treasury for the achievement of SDGs in which we are disgracefully so far behind even tiny African states?

It is a great pity that there is so little appreciation and praise and so little credit given by even parents and the press or government at LGA, state and federal government national honours level for the numerous old students and alumni associations. They have spent huge sums of money propping up and recovering lost standards of health education, cleanliness and hygienic toilet facilities in our schools and universities.

In a country where arrears of pension and salary were unheard off but later became the norm, we must thank especially ASUU for being among the first to realise that the non-payments were actually a brazen politicised form of thievery and raise alarm to that effect. Other watchdogs of standards are more complacent and Nigeria has lost billions in unrecoverable earnings, deaths and man-hours due to the misgovernment allowing such criminal fraud.

About 29 years ago a, I went begging to a friend for support for Educare Trust which I had recently set up to try to recover some of the old school system glory. He laughed sadly at me as if I were a small child with another silly idea. In fact, he said ‘Tony you are a fool’. He said that if I knew how much was looted daily at ports and government organs, I would not bother to even start an NGO for Education because after another 20 years of looting, there would be nothing left to steal and the citizenry would be left in penury and educational ignorance.

He likened Nigeria to a sieve filled with corruption holes and Educare Trust struggling to fill just one hole out of maybe 100,000-1m. He warned me not to return after writing me a cheque of N5,000 then. Sadly, his prophecy was correct. Without cleaning the Augean stable of government, political and corporate corruption, our efforts will continue to be like trying to filling a Nigerian sieve with Nigerian good deeds without blocking the Nigerian corruption holes first which threaten to make us the ‘Richest Poor Country’ or ‘Poorest Rich Country’ world.

June 1, 2022