The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Kingibe, Obasanjo and villains of June 12

    It’s been a week of celebrating a moment in time when a nation known mostly for the negative, showed that it is possible for it to rise above its primordial divisions.

    It was also a week devoted to naming and shaming the cast of villains who ensured that the glimmer of light that shone so brightly on June 12, 1993, was ruthlessly snuffed out.

    Everyone has been talking. Kola, the normally media-shy first son of the acclaimed winner of the polls Chief M.K.O. Abiola, in a newspaper interview spoke of a ‘complex conspiracy’ against his father.

    He was stating the obvious because, for different reasons, certain individuals in the then military hierarchy and civilian power elite were not comfortable with the prospect of Abiola becoming president.

    Over the last 26 years since that dark day when the result of the presidential election was annulled, Ibrahim Babangida who as military president signed off on the infamous action, has borne the bulk of the opprobrium.

    As Head of State the buck stopped at his table. But the decision was a collective one taken by the then ruling military council over which he was head. Whichever way he was inclined on the matter, there were powerful voices in that dark, mysterious conclave who were bitterly opposed to Abiola.

    Many years after the annulment, Babangida was quoted by confidants as suggesting that had he not played along, his own life was in danger.

    Unfortunately, there are no tapes or records of the meetings where the decision to cancel the election results was taken: nothing for the public or historians to review to know the roles played by certain individuals who later went on to become powerful players in the civilian democratic dispensations that followed.

    So traumatised was one key player in the saga – Professor Humphrey Nwosu then chairman of the defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC) – who superintended what has now come to be accepted as one of the freest and fairest of elections in Nigerian history, that for over two decades he has been on a virtual vow of silence.

    Read Also: June 12: ‘Fayose’s diatribes against Obasanjo condemnable’

    Not a word from him giving us an inkling of what played out in those tense hours and days. Not a peep into what transpired between him and the military hierarchy in the days before and after June 12, 1993. Perhaps there are reasons grave enough for the poor man to have kept silent for 26 years. He may yet go to his grave with his secrets.

    But what Babangida, Nwosu and others have refused to say, a motley collection of ‘insiders’ have been regaling us all week with tales of what happened and outing all the villains who plotted the annulment or worked against the actualisation of the truncated mandate.

    You would have expected that it would a Babangida-bashing fest. It didn’t turn out that way. Maybe his critics are sated after what they have been dishing out to him for more than 20 years.

    In his place, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has been at the receiving end of vitriolic attacks. Some are offended that he couldn’t bring himself to honour Abiola – his kinsman – leaving it to a Northerner and another former military dictator to do so.

    But the most intriguing of the attacks has come from Abiola’s erstwhile running mate Babagana Kingibe, who declared that the former president had foreknowledge of the annulment and did his level best to frustrate all talk about revalidation.

    There is no question that Obasanjo for reasons best known to him was never too enamoured of Abiola’s bid for political power. At some point, disgusted with the giddy way Nigerians were falling for the charms of the late businessman on the campaign trail, he declared dismissively that the candidate was not the messiah Nigerians had been waiting for.

    The voters thought otherwise, delivering over 60% of their votes to his then Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket. Despite labouring under the burden of a Muslim-Muslim ticket he won in most zones of the country. Where he didn’t overrun the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC) candidate, Bashir Tofa, he comfortably secured the required percentage of votes to be elected.

    But Obasanjo was just like many others in the Nigerian power elite – everyone had an agenda in the aftermath of the June 12 tragedy. Many who never wanted Abiola were only too keen for the country ‘to move forward’ – even if that meant Ernest Shonekan’s short-lived Interim National Government (ING) or the soon-to-follow full-blown Sani Abacha dictatorship.

    They never believed that actualisation of the mandate was possible, neither did they expect that the fight for it would trigger the political fallout that eventually led to power shift to the South.

    So against this backdrop, even without fuller details of what he did or didn’t do, Obasanjo deserves to be categorised with the villains.

    If the former president was so bad, where do we put Kingibe who is today passing judgment on him? He was attached to Abiola at the hip on his party’s ticket. If they had made it to office and anything had happened to his principal, he would have automatically become president.

    You would have expected that a man in his position would have been more enthusiastic in embracing the fight for actualisation. But he was at best lukewarm, if not even cold. At the first opportunity he jumped ship. The election was in June, by November 1993 he was already in Abacha’s cabinet!

    Nigerians should ask Babagana Kingibe where he was on the day Abiola was arrested and taken into custody. He was with the very people who had come to bury his mandate; he embraced them.

    One of the most shocking and demoralising developments in the struggle to actualise June 12 was his decision to serve the Abacha junta as Foreign Minister. Kingibe gladly abandoned his right for a mess of pottage offered by the soldiers. By agreeing to serve that regime he became a pallbearer at the funeral for Nigeria’s special electoral moment.

    With this history, it is amazing that without any sense of awkwardness or embarrassment he quickly accepted the national honour offered to him for the June 12 election outcome by the Buhari administration. The decent thing would have been for him to graciously decline having renounced the struggle for actualisation.

    Today, without any sense of irony, he’s the one naming and shaming ‘villains’! Only in Nigeria! Obasanjo for all his faults was an outsider looking in. Kingibe was part and parcel of a ticket that received an unprecedented pan-Nigerian mandate.

    He sold out to those who stole what was rightfully his. He chose to cooperate with them while Abiola who picked him over others was incarcerated. There never was a worse case of the pot calling the kettle black.

     

     

  • Of wives and First Ladies

    On Thursday, wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, announced that she should henceforth be addressed as First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Apparently, her original ‘Wife of the President’ title was causing confusion in certain quarters. Clearly, some clarification was called for.

    “When my husband was newly elected, I personally chose to be called the wife of the President,” she said.

    “But, I realised that it causes confusion from the state as to whether the wives of state governors are to be addressed as the first ladies or wives of the governors.

    “So, forgive me for confusing you from the beginning, but now I choose to be called the First Lady.”

    This is an interesting U-turn and I find her explanation less than convincing. If anything it still leaves some confusion in the air. Now that she is First Lady, does that automatically mean that governors wives can deign to pronounce themselves ‘First Ladies’ in their own lesser domains?

    The statement was revealing as she makes it clear it was her choice to be simply referred to as ‘Wife of the President’ in the beginning. I was under the impression that the change of nomenclature was a decree by President Buhari – conscious of the fact the constitution doesn’t recognise or make provision for the office of First Lady.

    Obasanjo equally tried to prevent his late wife, Stella, from assuming the title – telling interviewers in the early days of his administration that she would simply be his wife. He didn’t know what he was talking about. In a matter of months madam steamrolled him and had a full-blown First Lady circus going.

    I suspect that the decision to adopt the ‘Wife of the President’ title initially was an attempt to avoid some of the negative publicity which the excesses of recent occupants of the position attracted to their husbands. Add to that the fact that Buhari’s handlers had projected an image of someone averse to much of the pomp and circumstance that accompanies his high office.

    But the Presidency and First Lady positions are borrowed concepts. In the United States there is a proper Office of the First Lady which is supported by official staff in the White House. She has a retinue of staff – including Chief of Staff, Press Secretary and Social Secretary, but doesn’t earn a salary.

    Aside being hostess in the presidential residence, such spouses can be a force for good on many fronts – leveraging their privileged position by the president’s side. I think where the problem arises is when they overreach and forget that whereas their husbands were elected, they are not.

    So if Aisha Buhari now prefers to be called First Lady good luck to her. What is important is that she recognises the boundary lines so that she remains an asset to her husband and not a liability like some became in the recent past.

  • feedback Re: Life in the time of fake news

    Thanks for the instructive and very educative piece. There can truly be no disputation about the facts you have presented on the social media and its proliferation of fake news, except that you seem to have carefully avoided any mention of the areas it has also impacted society positively.

    Much as the spreading of fake news by social media if not checked can always affect society negatively, there are so many ways the new medium of communication has equally been of advantage in our news industry which one also thinks shouldn’t be overlooked when giving account of its roles in society.

    The bureaucratic method with which traditional media practitioners would follow to ascertain the authenticity of information, its gathering & publication, though very important, has a way of delaying important news and information people may want to know about in a given period.

    But by quickly dashing into such news and getting it published immediately by social media, fake though it might be, traditional media would now be emboldened to investigate the matter and promptly come up with the authentic news. This wouldn’t have been possible had social media operators not first dabbled into the matter.

    Besides, effective journalism work, it is common knowledge, has to do with time-frame in news gathering and publication. The mere fact that there are social media purveyors out there who might want to be the first to come up with certain news of national importance can always keep traditional media practitioners on their toes as they wouldn’t want to be beaten to such important news.

    This not only helps to improve the effectiveness of traditional media practitioners but also assists to serve the society better. But since fake news is increasingly becoming the feature of social media with its negative impact on the society, the trend can’t be allowed to continue.

    It can only be proper to fully incorporate the new medium into journalism work and bring the same law of libel that guides the traditional media to also bear on it as a check. The social media if effectively monitored and its activities properly institutionalised can very well complement the indispensable roles of the traditional media industry for a better Nigerian society.

    • From: Emmanuel Egwu, Unwana, Afikpo North LGA, Ebonyi State.

     

  • Thoughts on 26th ‘Democracy Day’ anniversary

    ABCDEFGGHI=Avoid Bribery & Corruption Daily Everywhere For Good Governance Here Immediately.

    Today is our 26th [from 1993] ‘June 12th Democracy Day anniversary and Hero’s Remembrance’ as the country’s governance structure belatedly officially catches up with what most Nigerians have known and marked since the year of ‘The Great Election’ in 1993 and ‘The Abominable Annulment’.  Celebration without cerebration is useless. Think!

    What manner of democracy are we practicing? Federal, unitary or feudal? Certainly it is a false democracy with an overbearingly often negative federal interference in every development stride by states. President Muhammadu Buhari must improve the ease of doing business between federal government and states.  Sometimes it is positive as with the Lagos Lekki Bridge.  A muted hurray for Democracy Day but take a minute of silence for the thousands of Nigerians needlessly dead defending June 12 democracy. They did not die for democracy to institutionalise extortionist greedy National Assembly (NASS) tactics, pathologically delayed budgets and nauseatingly high salaries and perks and pension scams by politicians amidst a 70% poverty and 30-35% literacy rate. They faced militarism and died for their children to live a still elusive better life. Blood was shed, citizens did die. And their killers are alive. Do not trivialize this matter. Millions of us also lost five months of our lives during the annulment strike. It was not a game. We will never know the benefits and costs of an MKO Leadership. We had high expectations, as at Independence and look where we are today -a shadow of ourselves.

    The Abiola era remains speculation and wishful Utopian thinking. The criminally culpable ’Annulment’ by Babangida dammed River Democracy and also diverted the River Progress. And River Budget. Succeeding governments failed woefully to substitute for the stolen mandate of voter democracy. The governance debacle that followed has been a horror-filled plague on Nigeria consuming the citizens’ potential. It has been a devastating development disaster for Nigeria. It is characterised by over-corruption pauperising the formerly proud people who took pride in caring for extended family and friends. Today we hide from relations. Now Nigerians are forced to fear friends who may present financial requests. The extended family is shunned because ‘there is no money honey’.  The Nigerian is forced to think twice about loyalty to a country which is pathologically politically disloyal in return.

    Do politicians not know that when politicians deprive working civil servants of just earnings, the politicians emasculate parents and ruin the family financial fabric and tear apart the tapestry of the social authority fabric turning children against their parents who cannot offer daily needs, even pocket and transport money and exam fees. Financial misery seizes control from parental authority. The Nigerian hard working monthly paid family, is so full of expectations for its faithfulness, built on the foundation of ‘no government would not pay its civil servants salaries and pensions as and when due’. Suddenly those expectations, justified in every civilized country as a contract between governments and its workers, grind to a financial and social halt. The politicians get richer and build more mansions with stolen or misappropriated money as millions of families slide back into the pit of financial hell they had struggled for years to exit through getting a steady regularly paying job -a now meaningless term.  Governors refused to use the Paris Club refunds to liquidate salary debt.  

    This misery of no salary or pension, for whatever political or economic reason, has affected millions of dependents on these salaries and pensions, truncating dreams of education, healthcare and even daily bread. A salary makes one independent. Our misery today is from this and the pervading acceptance of massive corruption from governance in general and is mainly from destroying the economic stability of millions of families and extended families by a deliberate governance decision not to pay as-and-when-due both pensions and salaries destroying the first African Bank of Nigeria- the extended family. Today economic and ‘personal misery’ migrants march away from Nigeria facing human slavery, danger to life and limb and organ theft, murder and drowning;  crossing  the Sahara sands and Mediterranean Sea demonstrate Nigeria’s ‘failure to thrive’. But they are the tip of the iceberg of misery left behind. This misery and the associated system failure are placed squarely at the feet of successive failed governments, even those claiming we were so rich we had problems spending our money. Imagine if they had upgraded the national grid!! Many past leaders seek office in NASS. Our governments’ failure is adequately signposted by our poor showing on all human developmental international indices. And just look at the appalling roads, schools, hospitals and employment numbers. We are still finding bags of Abacha loot, yet his name is on buildings, stadia and roads. So paying salaries and pensions are urgent priorities of all governors for 2019-2023. Paying salaries and pensions is the first empowerment strategy of governance. Not paying is a heinous, criminal breach of contract and precipitates an economically disastrous ripple effect to adults and children alike.   

    Buhari must bring Salaries and Perks of the executive and NASS into the civil service scale by recommending a political scale from say equivalent Level 10-21. Use USA and UK, UN, EU and AU salary templates. Work to make NASS a single part-time legislature.  Ensure that government agencies take decisions that are not political.  The AIT case, political or not, will put a lot of good people out of work?

  • Oyegun bites back

    A few days ago former APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, grabbed the headlines by savaging the leadership style of his successor, Adams Oshiomhole, as akin to that of an ‘agbero’ – street lingo for motor park tout.

    His intervention was in support of the mini-rebellion fronted by the party’s Deputy National Chairman, Lawal Shuaibu, calling for the ouster of Oshiomhole over the ruling party’s catastrophic losses in Zamfara State and elsewhere.

    I’m not too sure what the former chairman hoped to achieve with his verbal salvo and the manner in which he unleashed it. It certainly cannot be internal health and cohesion of the organisation he once headed.

    READ ALSO: Oyegun: Oshiomhole lacks capacity to lead

    Oyegun believes the incumbent party chair lacks the capacity to lead the APC. His statement proudly declared that the ruling party’s most glorious days were under his stewardship. How generous!

    A lot of people would think otherwise. Under him the party snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when despite its majority in the National Assembly, a PDP-backed alliance seized power and relegated APC to a beggarly status. His leadership was so spineless that it could do nothing to those who had thumbed their noses at the party leadership.

    Under him, governors were bigger than the party and their word was law. He ruled at their pleasure and was ever willing to do their bidding.

    If his stewardship was so satisfactory, a consensus with the buy-in of Buhari and the same governors who had been propping him up, would not have forced him out.

    I understand that at that point he wasn’t quite ready to give up power, so his removal would have been a bitter pill to swallow.

    But he left office with grace and dignity. His bilious comments about Oshiomhole won’t return him to his former position; they only lower him in the estimation of many who used to hold him in higher regard.

  • Necessary Evils and the Deplorables

    When he’s in the mood, President Buhari speaking off the cuff can be a nightmare for his handlers. And so he proved yet again over the Sallah holidays while receiving Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and a delegation from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

    Referring to the shellacking handed him at the polls in February by his neighbours in the nation’s capital, the president promised not to pay back in kind.

    “I am not threatening FCT because to make FCT secure is to make myself secure and the Vice President. I think they are a necessary evil that was why they decided to vote for PDP,” he said.

    Predictably, Buhari’s comment has attracted a fair amount of criticism from those who cannot understand what he was playing at calling a section of the electorate – even if they voted against him – a ‘necessary evil.’ The typical dictionary defines the expression as “something undesirable that nevertheless must be tolerated in order to attain a desired end.”

    READ ALSO: Buhari to Abuja residents: I’ll secure you despite not voting for me

    For context, perhaps he was moaning about having to cohabit with people who are not on the same wavelength with him politically. As is sometimes the case with him, the remark was made half-jokingly. But as bad jokes go, this one was appalling.

    It is reminds me of when former US Democratic Party presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, declared in September 2016 that half of Donald Trump’s supporters could be put in a “basket of deplorables.” It was a gaffe that she would live to regret.

    Her opponent kept hammering away at her slip of tongue. As for those offended, they wore the insult like a badge of honour waiting to punish the former First Lady at the polls in November that year.

     

    Luckily for Buhari, he won’t be running for office again. Otherwise, his foes would be waiting to beat him over the head with his momentary indiscretion.

     

  • Beyond Sanwo-Olu’s Executive Order

     

    Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has begun life as chief executive of Nigeria’s most prosperous state with comforting surefootedness. If morning shows the day, then there are plenty of reasons for Lagosians to be hopeful that this unruly, sprawling city can somehow be made liveable.

    On his first day at work, while some were taking new wives and sacking democratically elected local government chairmen like military despots, he signed an Executive Order outlining the six major areas on which his administration would focus.

    Under the acronym ‘THEMES’, he outlined a plan of action that put the challenge of tackling traffic and environmental problems up top. Lagos, to put it mildly, is a very dirty city that urgently needs a clean-up.

    It is also notorious for its gridlock. Not much has changed since Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang about the infamous traffic jam at Ojuelegba in the 70s. From decade to decade since then, administrations have come and gone with the confusion being replicated in different areas of the city.

    READ ALSO: I’ve lost weight since taking over from Ambode -Sanwo-Olu

    From Maza-Maza to Mile 2 to Kirkiri to Apapa, from Oshodi to Ikeja and Agege, from Mile 12 to Ikorodu, the hapless denizens of the city have come to accept that half their lives would be spent in some ‘Hold-up’ or ‘Go-slow’.

    A terrible situation was made worse by the massive construction of the last two years of the Akinwumi Ambode administration, coupled with the government’s capitulation over enforcement of its own rules regulating the activities of commercial motorcyclists.

    Today, travelling on most Lagos roads is a hellish experience where, if you manage to avoid crushing the ‘okada’ darting in front of you without warning, you are most likely to be careening into some crater that has been left unattended for ages.

    To compound matters, there is the human aspect which no governor has been able to crack. On most of the city’s streets people are a law unto themselves. Very few obey basic rules. Driving against traffic is par the course on any given day. If you stop at the traffic light when it turns red, you are the crazy one! Lawlessness on the road has become cultural; it’s the way we roll in Lagos.

    Another depressing angle is that those supposed to enforce the law, have become willing enablers of the madness. Traffic officers and other security agents encourage unruly commercial buses to clog up choke points, they turn a blind eye to offences especially where there is some financial benefit to them.

    Indeed, for most of these officers the disorderliness is profitable. Unfortunately, they are the very ones expected to implement the governor’s call to orderliness! I can just imagine their enthusiastic embrace of the task!

    It is nice to see the governor, putting traffic management, road improvement and environmental issues, at the top of his agenda. In the last few days I have noticed officers of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA), policemen and soldiers moving traffic along at some of the most notorious problem spots.

    However, while Sanwo-Olu’s efforts are commendable, my worry is about sustainability. How long will his zeal last? Lagos roads and road users need to be tamed. These are people used to a culture of impunity; many have come to believe that you can get away with murder – if not scot free, then at least for a fee.

    They are not going to swiftly repent of their ways and methods just because the new governor waved an Executive Order under their noses. When no one is watching or present to enforce the rules, they quickly revert to type.

    The governor and his team can build the best roads and bridges, if they don’t get the people to embrace a new culture on the road, nothing will change.

    Sanwo-Olu has to project to a people who have become addicted to lawlessness that he would be unrelenting in enforcing the laws as they concern road use and the environment. He has had the seemingly obligatory photo-op arresting some danfo driver driving against traffic. Everyone’s done it: Babatunde Fashola nabbed an army colonel, Ambode bagged a commercial bus driver. He cannot stop there.

    It would be a bitter disappointment if the promising enthusiasm and zeal of these early days is allowed to dissipate – returning us to be chaotic and ungovernable Lagos we have become used to, and resigned to as our lot.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Brave new world at the National Assembly

    The expectation within the ranks of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) high command would be that with the exit of Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as House of Representatives Speaker, peace and amity would break out between the executive and legislative branches of government.

    There is nothing in the temperament of front runners for leadership of the Senate and House – Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila – to suggest that the lingering tension that was a feature of ties between the 8th National Assembly and the executive would be repeated.

    While the numbers don’t appear to favour his bid, the refusal of Senator Ali Ndume to join Danjuma Goje in dropping out of the contest, leaves some air of unpredictability in a Senate race that would probably be conducted under a secret ballot.

    For the Borno senator to win, he would need at least 10 senators from the ruling party to rebel and back him. He would also need the entire 40-odd votes of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senators to remain intact. You look at the states and you are hard put to find where those numbers would come from especially as PDP lawmakers are unlikely to vote en bloc.

    Were Ndume, against the run of play, to prevail then it would be the Saraki scenario all over. He would have won courtesy of PDP votes and would only survive by depending on the same ballots that brought him to power. He would be beholden to an opposition with a different agenda, confronting an angry ruling party frustrated at being cheated, again, out of a prize they assumed was rightly theirs.

    The tension between both sides would hit new heights. I suspect that the ruling party would try everything not just to make the Senate ungovernable for the ‘usurpers’, it would deploy every trick in the book to reclaim its ‘mandate.’

    Ndume would be a headache for the APC. It takes very steely character to have defied all pressure and entreaty from his party and continue with his bid knowing there would be consequences whether he wins or loses. He would pay a price for pursuing whatever principle he claims to be promoting by remaining in the contest after the party had taken a clear position backing Lawan. Anyone who is ready to stand alone in this way, is not the sort of character to listen to any sermons on patriotism from Aso Rock.

    This may suggest that Lawan or Gbajabiamila would just be pliant tools rubberstamping executive decrees in their respective legislative chambers. It is a burden for the gentlemen because their willingness to work with the executive, as well as being the choice of the establishment, puts them in an awkward position of being labelled as potential puppets.

    But the two men are experienced enough to understand that they are required to uphold the constitutional responsibility of the legislature to check the executive, while balancing that with cooperation as one government to deliver on their party’s governance agenda.

    The Senate and House are more than their respective presiding officers. The legislators represent hundreds of constituencies across the country – with their differing needs and aspirations. Neither the Senate President nor the Speaker has any powers to impose their personal agendas on the whole without their cooperation or consent. To be able to collar hundreds of lawmakers to a uniform position requires skill to work out compromises.

    Presiding officers are also only too aware that the moment their members begin to see them as agents of the executive their support base would quickly evaporate. A wise politician would perform a fine balancing act that enables him retain the backing of lawmakers who want to assert their independence while also doing business with the executive.

    That is why, whether it is Lawan, Ndume, Gbajabiamila or some other person who emerges, the 9th National Assembly would still have its fights with the Presidency over modifications to budget proposals, oversight functions and bills that end up being vetoed. Problematic nominees would still have issues clearing the confirmation process. It is the same everywhere no matter how friendly the leaders on both sides are.

    In an ideal situation it would be seen as creative tension between arms of government working towards a common end. In Nigeria, we’ve made it out to be the war of the branches; it ought not to be so. President Muhammadu Buhari would help by not expecting the National Assembly to merely chorus ‘rankadede’ whenever he sends proposal.

    Our constitution has given the National Assembly the power of the purse and as check on the executive. Just as the executive is not perfect in carrying out its functions, so also our legislature must be seen as work in progress. Thankfully, the courts are there when disagreements between the sides become intractable.

     

  • Nation 2019 June 5 ABCD; time wasting is corruption

    Also FG/STATE cooperation, slow flip/flop courts judgements;

    ABCDEFGGHI=Avoid Bribery & Corruption Daily Everywhere For Good Governance Here Immediately.

    Please make copies of this for friends and foe. Stick copies on your notice boards at home, school, church, mosque, office, bedroom, classrooms, school hall, lecture rooms, your door, backpack, car etcetera.

    Each of us can contribute to the anticorruption fight. Take the  ABCD decision and invite others. If not we are responsible for any coming corruption started after today. Corruption is a human act, it is not ‘institutional’. Humans institutionalise corruption and corrupt the system. A building, a business or a computer cannot be corrupt. It is the humans in and using them who are corrupt.  A corrupt person is a criminal and criminals stop their crime immediately when caught. They do not need a period of time to reduce their corrupt behavior slowly like being weened off the drug corruption. Today even after the new government change, there has been no attitudinal change. Buhari should suspend and sack the ogas allowing corruption.  Only a united anti  ‘B&C’ Campaign can immediately  save us. Take the ‘Avoid Bribery & Corruption Decision Everyday’ – personal, collective, corporate and government. If not corruption will kill Nigeria.

    President Buhari, please maximise ‘ease of doing business’ cooperation between states and federal government, cross-party. Please initiate a high powered, red tape cutting, multi-ministry Presidency based ‘Committee of FG/ State Cooperation’. This will give quick approvals and decisions on state requests for FG permission for state projects needing FG input like the wonderful Yar’Adua/Fashola led Lekki bridge. This will reduce the friction and powerplay reducing state development, time wasting and speed state progress.  Beyond grandstanding politics do the federal government staff and politicians know that healthy states mean a healthy federation?

    Still on time wasting. Wasting someone’s time is a calculated weapon of the devil and a sin. Everyone has a limited time on earth allocated by God. How dare you as governor, GM or gateman waste someone else’s God given time. Punctuality and precision are power. Time wasting is a harrowing strategy practiced nationwide and characterized by carefully concocted delays like waiting one hour to start meetings and programmes,  taking time to give information, giving a 14 point information sheet one point each day instead of at once, go-come-go-come instructions, deliberately misplaced or ‘lost’ files kept at the bottom of oga’s or even the messengers draw , file is with an untouchable ‘Oga’,  appointments given but the official is deliberately never-on-seat to sign off documents. These are a deliberate strategy to perpetuate the suffering of the citizenry beyond endurance forcing a bribe. Though the private sector is also corrupt, time wasting is a specialisation of government/civil service. The amount of time wasted is the main difference between the public and the private sector. The government and local secretariat, the worst places for ease of doing business, must be forced to cut the time for delivering services to citizens.  To combat time wasting files must be easily tracked, alarm bells should ring if files are kept for too long by particular officers, appointments should be logged and adhered to. Date and time should be inserted in each and every file movement. Supervising Senior administration staff need to be appointed as ‘Time Wasting Elimination Officers’ to closely monitor the Daily File Movement Register and raise red flags for identified infringement. Indeed, the whole issue of time wasting requires a much higher profile in ‘easy of doing Business’ studies and strategies as time wasting is usually direct evidence of corruption, or incompetence for example in delivery of forms, a required list, the end product eg a license, permission, certificate or document. No anticorruption strategy will work while unsupervised staff can maliciously and without consequence block citizens’ access to services.

    Identify how many new roads have crossed state borders opening new state zones and bypassing deliberately abandoned ‘FG roads’, deliberately left abandoned to keep states in check – subservient to a subversive FG? Instead we watched while the Ore Benin and Lagos Ibadan and other roads became death-traps and unmotorable without a whimper for fear of offending the FG. We cannot even signboard the millions of potholes with ‘Slow Down: Potholes Ahead’ for fear of offending the non-existent or criminally crippled ‘Maintenance Section’ of the Federal Ministry of Works. Our old regions were very successful as ‘economic zones’ and were successful at road maintenance, some lasting even 60 years till today and shaming modern day contractors and mocking corruption. Unfortunately, the cancer greed for power under the guise of military unitary government put its foot in the door of governance and refused to remove it from the pot of gold called the budget.

    There is also time wasting in the legal world. The wave of legal reversals and flip flops especially in political cases are not amusing or merely an exercise in legal gymnastics. The reversals have tremendous costs in waste of both time and money and nation impact. Happily judges are increasing the fines for unnecessary delays and wrong prosecutions or frivolous legal arguments. Such fines should be increased and cover the total cost of the delays.  These have cause and consequence for the entire political landscape as delays and further confuse the citizenry do not auger well for Nigeria. We are still awaiting the conclusion of the trial of an arrested person being accused of being an infamous kidnapper.

  • Life in the time of fake news

    The lifespan of a lie can be quite elastic depending on how intricately it is woven. Some can be buried for years, but in the age of social media it can be brutally short.

    That is why I am often confused as to the motivations of purveyors of fake news who know they can be found out in a matter of minutes or hours. While the creators have their dubious agenda, those who spread the lies – especially online – probably do so with some advantage in mind.

    Desperate bloggers and website owners who want to attract traffic to their sites would push out the most sensational of stories without subjecting same to the most basic journalistic tests. The more excitable amongst us who get their thrills from spreading the latest tales, are only too glad to share same with the gullible hordes on social media. So what, on the surface, looks like a manifestation of extreme insanity, clearly has method to it.

    These days the internet has become a sea of lies: headlines lie, photos and videos tell even bigger lies. The wicked and mischievous can lift a photograph from five years ago and use it to drive a story in a similar context today. The reader would swear he saw the pictures with his own eyes until a rebuttal knocks him back to reality.

    Beginning with the election campaign that threw up Donald Trump as US president, fake news has become a multimillion dollar global industry relentlessly deployed for political ends. Nigerians, quick to pick up on global trends no matter how diabolical – have not been slow to jump on the bandwagon.

    During the recent general elections it seemed there was a competition by liars to outdo themselves on social media. Perhaps anticipating the impact that the phenomenon could have in determining the outcome of the electoral contest, the then Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, launched a campaign against fake news. It was a non-starter that was quickly brushed aside by malevolent forces who thrive best in polarised environments such as ours.

    The inauguration ceremonies at federal and state levels in the last few days provided another fertile ground for fake news merchants to wreak their usual havoc. While the lies exposed the levels of bitterness and hate in our society, it also made for hilarity just imagining what the mischief-makers were trying to achieve. I would touch on a few.

    One headline screamed that barely 24 hours after leaving office former Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, his wife and brother, were arrested by agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Given his controversial nature, and the alarm he had raised in the preceding weeks that his political foes were out to humiliate him using the anti-graft agency, this supposed news break looked like a swift fulfilment of prophecy.

    The report quickly went viral and bloggers lost their heads as they tripped over themselves to see who would be quickest to the draw in the posting the non-news.

    For those in the opposition waiting patiently for the All Progressives Congress (APC) government to set on its own, this was titillating stuff. Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, an alumnus of the EFCC’s Abuja detention facilities, was quick to rush out a mocking post welcoming Okorocha to the club. I am sure wherever he was holed up Rochas must have snorted derisively that this was a clear case of ‘Iberiberism.’

    Several hours after his enemies had rejoiced at the speed at which retribution had supposedly visited the recently departed governor, the EFCC emerged with a spoilsport press statement denying that it had arrested him and his wife.

    Clearly, there must be something about Imo State in this season as another major fake news item – also associated with the indefatigable Okorocha – emerged from there. The great statue builder had planted a giant concrete finger pointing towards the heavens somewhere in the state capital as an enduring democracy dividend for his people.

    But lo and behold, the whiff of his cologne had barely evaporated from Government House, when bulldozers ostensibly ordered by the new governor, Emeka Ihedioha, took to demolishing the so-called ‘Akachi’ statue.

    It was a surprise ‘move’ to see the new helmsman who comes across as the restrained and understated opposite of his excitable predecessor, bare his fangs so early in the day. The headlines announced that Ihedioha had swung into action by destroying one of the most noticeable of Rochas’ infamous collection of statues.

    While Okorocha may have an army of detractors, even they were taken aback that the new governor’s priority would be pulling down his predecessor’s ‘Eighth Wonder.’ A statement by his spokesman many hours later denying he ever ordered the demolition barely spoilt the fun for the fake news brigade. Some only reported he directed a halt in proceedings – leaving out the fact that they ascribed to him an action he never ordered in the first place.

    Meanwhile, back in Lagos State – home to a long line of ‘Action Governors’ – the new man Babajide Sanwo-Olu was apparently too slow for the hacks. A few hours after the oath-taking ceremony and with no word on appointments, they decided to make a key one for him. They announced he had appointed the Director-General of his campaign organisation, Tayo Ayinde, as Chief of Staff.

    Such an appointment was clearly in the works, but at the time the report appeared it had not been made official. It would be confirmed last Friday. Mortified at the leak, Ayinde issued a statement denying he had been named to the new role.

    He signed off with a lecture to the media about always crosschecking their facts – and there’s the rub. These days ‘the media’ is a catch-all phrase for everyone with a Facebook page or Twitter account. Not so. It would not have been lost on him, if he had checked, that not one of the traditional media outlets carried the ‘fake’ report. But this was one unusual case of ‘fake news’ – not being fake. Instead of lambasting those who scooped the news of his appointment, it would have been wiser not to respond and just let official confirmation come.

    I would touch on one more report, but at the risk of being accused of spreading fake news would preface it by saying he ‘allegedly’ did so. Up north, it was reported that the one of the first acts of the newly-inaugurated Yobe State Governor, Mai Mala Buni, was the acquisition of a brand new wife – reportedly his third.

    He has not deigned to respond to the reports so I would assume that is his way of not dignifying the fabricators of an event that never took place with a response. Alternatively, his deafening silence could be confirmation of the nuptials as one of the activities of the inaugural season in the state.

    Perhaps, there hasn’t been a confirmation or denial because the governor hasn’t made strategic media aide appointments. Hopefully, a denial is winging its way to the press – however long it takes. So for now I would suggest we file the report of Buni’s ‘new wife’ in the false reports category.

    For all their entertainment value, fake news represent a cancer that can tear a volatile multi-religious and multi-ethnic society like ours apart. Such reports can trigger devastating damage that rebuttals that come hours after cannot mend. Even worse, those who act on the strength of the initial account may never get to read the denials.

    Aside being a clear and present danger to our collective security, fake news erode trust in an environment where people desperately need to trust one another and those who govern them.

    That is why the government – executive branch and legislature – must make the fight against fake news a priority in this new dispensation. The traditional media also has existential reasons to be part of this effort.

    As a first step, those who generate fake news and those who gladly spread the poison should be made to pay a steep price. It is the least we can do to stave off tragedies somewhere in the future.