The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

  • Nation 2019 May 29  Beyond flyovers; ‘ Anti-Corruption ABCDEFGG’

    A Nigerians are affected by ‘Traumatic Stress Disorder’ caused by our undeclared war with thousands killed and kidnapped and 2-4m IDPs and Leah Sharibu@16 from Dapchi.

    Family security is uppermost for Nigerians this inaugural day for the 2019-2023 political cycle. There was the needless brutal murder of Dr Kelvin Izevbekhai, Chemistry lecturer, shot at the Okada junction. I actually escaped by God’s grace an attack on March 17th 2018 at 3pm at Km 41 on the Ibadan Lagos Road. The insecurity has murdered sleep. Trust is gone. USAID estimates that Nigeria has lost $13b or N4.6trillion to Herders clashes with farmers but no costing for lost loved ones. What is the cost of the okada invasion, a political policy disaster?

    It is shameful that governors and others will today swear an Oath OF Office  they intend to immediately break. Many of their predecessor leaders at federal and state level did not pay salaries and pension, or promote staff as and when due. They sacked at will, destroying the dignity of labour and the security employment and causing a cancer of corruption-driven activities to replace lost income. This plunged extended families and also market commercial activities into financial insecurity leading to this cycle of bribery, corruption, violence and kidnapping.  The wealthy and secure also steal.

    From their podiums our governors survey needy suffering citizens who are filled with suspicions and fears. While we blame ISIS, Boko Haram and herders and marauders, we must blame the political failure to obey the Oath of Office. This has resulted in underpowering, underbudgeting and corruption – all self-inflicted wounds destroying Nigeria. We have 5,000MW but require 150,000Mw. We have the Apapa gridlock costing N5 trillion/year. Neighbouring countries import our goods. We have no shame, just gain and naira/dollar rain. 

    Beyond flyovers, in 2019-2023, Governors should provide better transport and travel in different developmental directions. No ‘launching’ flyovers. Nigeria requires better projects. Some states have enough IGR to become first world countries but corruption prevents them.

    Beyond selfishness, citizens want interstate, interagency and federal/state cooperation for more useful projects like the Lagos Lekki bridge. Governors must capture ‘Internally Generated Ideas’, IGIs, and identify and strategise ministries to work with neighbouring states and institutions, NGOs and CSOs. Beyond Governance guest houses and weekly parties, a state should ensure its citizens benefit from expertise.

    Beyond a ‘Pothole Filling Department’, governors should build bridges and roads in a completely new direction in every state area annually.  Re-taring a road for 50 years is necessary, but not development.

    Beyond the state capital, governors must rotate State Executive Council meetings around the state to bring government to the people.

    Beyond personal arrogance, governors must be civil.

    Beyond personal agenda, governors must resurrect abandoned development plans made by selfless citizens and organisations and incorporate UN SDGs, Federal Government’s ERP and the South West DAWN project and Summits.

    Beyond selfishness Governors must embrace citizen empowering innovation through linkages with intellectual tertiary institutions -state, federal, private- for research and strategies needing little funding to empower citizens. State media must look beyond IGR to ‘Empowering Enlightenment Messaging’ promoting good practices, individuals and activities’ and breakthroughs. For example Ibadan has CRIN, FRIN, IITA, several others and UI which has 75 + department, 400+ professors and an army of research students. The state can also take its problems to the resident University for solution.  

    Beyond the corruption and politics of Abandoned Projects, Governors must complete them to be productive and useful.  

    Beyond headline clips, governors should read newspapers for honest evaluation and ideas for a brighter tomorrow.

    Increasingly traditional rulers are in the firing line of marauders. Why disarm the citizens only to have them slaughtered that very night? Post attack shows of force are meaningless in this our undeclared war. Our constitutional ‘No Go Areas’ are complemented by geographical NGAs, with orphans with no name or language growing up with no memory of homes now claimed by marauding herders. Unfortunately all Nigerians are traumatised at home, work or in transit or in government Ministry, Agency and Department, MAD. Who is clean from gateman to GM? Remember ‘clean’ is also transparency in choices, policy, performance, reporting. It used to be said that corruption is what you refuse to talk about on NTA!

    Governments must suppress the ‘need for greed’, corruption and bad policies causing government’s failure to provide regular livable wage salaries, single digit housing, transport loans, guaranteed pensions, quality healthcare, quality education and housing, a conducive trading/business environment, convert demands for 1 or 2 years rent in advance for lodging into monthly rent payments and combat DISCOdarkness -aka NEPAlessness. These force us all to become our own LGA and pension provider. Most pension offices and education ministries greedily and corruptly feed off the aged and the children– a sin. Yes, Nigerian police and troops have paid the supreme price with little compensation. Nigerians have also died in custody of compromised security agents with no justice or compensation.

    As government offices replace yesterday’s governor’s picture with today’s governor, will things change?

    Developmental progress is as simple as ABCDEFGG=Avoid Bribery & Corruption Daily Everywhere For Good Governance. Here Immediately! Each Nigerian in the Presidency, NASS, Judiciary, and state from President to you can stop our ‘B&C’ immediately from this 2019-2023 inaugural day 29/5/2019 . It is merely takes making the ‘Avoid Bribery & Corruption Decision’ – personal, collective, corporate and government. What will 2019-2013 bring? We cannot survive more corruption.

  • Three nuts to crack in Buhari’s second term

    Insecurity was pivotal to the downfall of former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Back then, not even the nation’s capital was immune to the scourge of suicide bombers who were setting off their ordnance in public places and military barracks in the city.

    I recall that after one such attack at a popular motor park in Abuja, the president paid a quick visit to see victims at some hospital and thereafter headed to a Peoples Democracy Party (PDP) rally in Kano where he was pictured dancing enthusiastically.

    The optics were awful. Not only was Jonathan coming across as not having a solution to the security challenge of the time, his appearance at the rally painted a picture of an unfeeling leader. It was propaganda gold served on a platter to the opposition who milked it for all it was worth.

    Muhammadu Buhari, on the other hand, was sold as the no-nonsense general with commensurate experience to bring Boko Haram insurgents to heel. Four years after being handed the job, and on the cusp of entering his second lap, the scorecard is a mixed bag of significant progress in the Northeast and deterioration in some other areas.

    The government and its security agencies are quick to point to their successes against the insurgents as evidence that things have improved. They have their point because for years not a single bomb has gone off in Abuja or any of the major northern cities outside of the Northeast theatre of conflict.

    Much of the ground that Boko Haram once held has been retaken. This is a far cry from the days when the terrorists’ sleeper cells were uncovered in Kogi State and the fear was it just a matter of time before they struck in the Southwest.

    However, the progress against the insurgents has been vitiated by the snowballing of other security threats like kidnapping and banditry to unprecedented levels.

    No honest person would say we don’t have a crisis with kidnapping – a menace that is occurring in virtually all geopolitical zones. Where, once upon a time, it was a novelty associated with the Niger Delta struggle, now it has become a business venture – shorn of any political or religious motivations.

    The banditry scourge in Zamfara and other parts of the Northwest is even more complex. On the one hand it is a communal conflict pitting the Fulani against Hausas, but the killings have also been linked to economic factors.

    Add to this grim mix the lingering bloodletting between herdsmen and farmers and you have a gigantic headache for Buhari as he heads into the second tenure.

    Today, the armed forces and other security agencies have multiple operations currently running in different theatres across the country – each with fearsome names like ‘Operation Thunder Strike’, ‘Operation Python Dance,’ ‘Operation Puff Adder’ to name a few.

    The fact that they are so many underscores the gravity of the situation. In spite of these diverse emergency interventions, the security situation remains fluid as kidnapping, banditry and other forms of extreme criminality don’t look like they are about to disappear. Despite the position of the agencies that the situation is actually improving, each new day brings reports of some new outrage by criminals.

    Sometimes, the security agencies take the simplistic position that all such activities are fanned by desperate and ambitious politicians. That sort of thinking led the DSS under Jonathan to allege that the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) were the sponsors of Boko Haram.

    Perhaps we are seeing shades of that sort of thinking with the erstwhile rulers now turned opposition being accused of actively plotting to destabilise the Buhari government. That suspicion would remain until evidence is released to back up the charges.

    At other times the argument is that some of these groups just want to confront the state. While we must make room for erratic and irrational behaviour, one is left wondering what the motivation for confronting state is. Is it just confrontation as an end?

    Assumptions about groups bent on confrontation can be reasonably made when discussing Boko Haram and, to a lesser extent, Sheikh El-Zakzaky’s Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN). But the threats to wellbeing of the larger population are not from these two now significantly-weakened groups.

    The earlier the government addresses itself to the fact that criminality is rising because of the parlous state of the economy the better. Youth unemployment is rampant. We have scores of public and private universities churning out thousands of graduates yearly without any idea of how they would be put to work.

    There is even a greater nightmare with the less-educated and illiterate who have swarmed into commercial motorcycle riding (okada) – because for them it is the only game in town.

    Unfortunately, the economy is not creating new openings at a pace to offset mounting job losses. The upshot is a spike in the numbers of the idle and frustrated.

    The government spent the last four years pursuing a strategy of attempting to reflate the economy by investing massively in public infrastructure and paying contractors who were not receiving their monies under the last administration. It has also tried populist initiatives like Tradermoni.

    However, its best efforts don’t appear to be denting the problem. Buhari has to crack the co-joined issues of the economy and insecurity in his second term, otherwise the negative feedback surrounding these issues would totally eclipse whatever he may attain building infrastructure. Quite frankly, it’s still the economy, stupid!

    The third thing that has to be addressed urgently is the structure of the country. Much of the stresses and strains we are witnessing have much to do with how we co-exist, how common resources are apportioned as well as the manner in which power and responsibilities are shared by governments at different levels.

    There is failure of governance at the grassroots because many states have hijacked the funds and functions of local governments and are not willing to let go. Even with what they have grabbed, the sorry states are not in any better shape.

    For its part, the Federal Government has had too much stuffed on its plate by the constitution, making it ineffective and inefficient in many areas. There has to be a radical redefinition of how things work such that certain powers and responsibilities are taken from the centre and devolved to the states.

    In this wise, it is absolutely imperative that control over natural resources is redefined such that states can become viable and local economies built up without the current beggarly relationship that exists between them and Abuja.

    But the process cannot be helped if public officials keep regurgitating clichés about Nigeria’s indivisibility. While the advantages of size make it a wise option to remain one entity, we must accept that ours is a far from perfect union that desperately needs tweaking. That is why the visceral reaction to any mention of restructuring shouldn’t be some lecture about remaining one indivisible nation.

    It might be the wish of some to hold the nation together. But wishes are not horses. Sometimes, historical forces just take matters out of our hands. The centrifugal forces pulling Nigeria in different directions are increasing in their intensity such that there could be a rent somewhere if something urgent isn’t done about today’s issues.

  • Leah, Oyediran@80, North/South governors

    Today we also look at ministers; Missing persons register; Okada register; Fine for non-voting; Cut JAMB fees please; Super Falcons win; Abuja’s war on women; Petty traders register; traders strangling Oja Oba and Okadas strangling Mokola Roundabout!!

    Ministers, thank you! New faces please!

    As victims of our undeclared war, we remember thousands killed and kidnapped and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and especially Leah Sharibu@16 from Dapchi. The great Femi Falana, SAN, recommends Missing Persons Registers obviously at federal and for governors at state, LGA and ward levels.  This register should complement a Herbalist Register to prevent and detect ritual murder. We need Okada and Traders Registers …see below.

    About 22 countries have compulsory voting, including Australia where 10 million voted and which has a fine of $20-50 for non-voting. Perhaps Nigeria should raise election funds like this. 55+million non-voters in 2019 translate to N100b-N300b at a fine of N2,000 -5,000/non-voter, for INEC.

    Warm congratulations to Professor Olukayode Oyediran@80, a multitalented iconic role model who has touched many as a family and religious person, and in the international space as a doctor, in medicine and tertiary education, as an apex administrator including Chief Medical Director, UCH and vice chancellor, University of Ibadan, as an international administration figure in postgraduate regulatory bodies including the National and West African Postgraduate Medical and Physicians Colleges, and as a dedicated environmentalist founding the Nigeria Network for Awareness and Action for Environmental  Health.

    We also know him as a dedicated supporter of many good causes including Educare Trust to which he generously donated a full medical skeleton attracting many into medicine. Please note that the mere holding of high office, private or government, is usually always applauded without question, but is not always a stellar achievement on scrutiny. Far too often, the attainment is self-serving for perks with little genuine service intended and it may be undeserved, bought at a moral price or achieved through means, including bribery and corruption that cannot be proudly told one’s grandchildren or NTA or Channels TV news. In addition, conduct in office often brings the office and the holder into disrepute. We live steeped in the quagmire of pervading crass politics and a corruption-driven political and governance system often celebrating failure even in high office. Today ‘distinguished’, ‘excellency’ and ‘honourable’ are mostly unearned and meaningless to the users, signifying the opposite to listeners. When Nigeria is fortunately presented with an uncontaminated real, true, honest, heroic individual of marked untainted distinction and carriage, we as students and promoters of good practices, should be discerning enough to honour and offer a resounding ovation and a genuine ‘Happy 80th Birthday, Sir’.

    On Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, JAMB under Professor Oloyede took N4,700/candidate yielded N8.8billion from 1.88m candidates. With running costs of N3.8b, JAMB has honestly returned the excess to government. Wrong! That N5b or N2,648/candidate should be returned to candidates.  Certainly in 2020 the JAMB fee should be cut again, to N4,700 -2,648 = N2,162/candidate. It is noted that N2b of the N5b or N1059/candidate was returned to JAMB for ‘development’ costs as JAMB got zero budget in 2018/9. However N3b or N1,588/candidate is still an immoral ‘profit’ from a unemployed section of the community- youth. If N2b is to be returned to JAMB in 2020, then the recommended 2020 JAMB fee is N4,700- 1,588= N3,222/candidate. Averagely the 2019 JAMB fee should be N2,500 yielding N4.7b with N3.8-4b for running costs and N0.7b-N1b for development. Only a greedy corrupted unprincipled government would ‘profit’ from its children!

    Congratulations Super Falcons for the WAFU Cup win. Please don’t celebrate by clubbing or walking around Abuja in football gear to avoid victimization by misled or mischievous unsupervised authorities on a ‘war on women’ without female supervision. Google anti-rape activist Dorothy Njemanze and her lawyer, Azubueze Okocha who took Nigeria to the ECOWAS Court for violating women’s rights and won!

    Northern Governors Meeting, NGM, attempt to stem terrorism, kidnapping and insecurity and also improve financial integration. Great! Action at last. Nigeria requires an immediate complementary Southern Governors Meeting to plan with the NGM to encircle and capture the terrorists or they will merely continue to bring terror southward having fled the over-advertised military heat in the North. If not, issues like the okada ban in many northern states will lead a serious insecurity threat in the South from an invasion of even more okada into the South.

    One important measure that must be undertaken is a ward and LGA Okada Register and government limitations of okadas/road position to ten. The unregulated nationwide Okada Epidemic with riders blatantly contravening every road rules and riding in all lanes at all speeds is hospitalizing tens of thousands and burying thousands and orphaning hundreds of thousands from okada crashes. The Okada Epidemic resists traffic controllers and slows down and even strangling transportation movement to a single lane crawl at for example the formerly famous Mokola Roundabout, Ibadan and at junctions nationwide. Undisciplined ‘Okada Swarms’ gather like wasps or bees at okada crashes to protect their own and also swarm in an unruly manner at junctions. These ‘Okada Swarms’ are superior to or feared by traffic authorities.

    Similar  indiscriminate parking of wheelbarrow vegetable traders at OjaOba, Mapo Ibadan is paralyzing transport around the Olubadan’s palace as does new unregulated street traders selling vegetables and cooked meat all over the city.

  • Ministers! Herbalist register; LASPARK aquarium

    All ministers out! Political Pensions no! JAMB jams results; LGA autonomy; power and security as presidential priorities, NSITF-which scam next and CBN’s Emefiele.

    President Buhari: Congratulate and change all your ministers, please. Comfortable ministers are not the same thing as competent ministers. Nigerians are frustratingly used to old recycled failed ministerial and political faces in power.  We thrive on change which brings new expectations, new faces and renewed desire, we hope to serve. Let the ministerial jobs go around intra-state.

    More political pension abuse. When will politicians realise that Nigeria is fast changing. We are no longer silent. We have no gratitude for politicians who have failed us. Look at the budget approval delay and other shadowy activities characteristic of the Nigerian political class. If they do not change, Nigerians will have to change them until we get it right. Life pension is wrong, especially right now with so many unemployed. Even soldiers and police who risk their lives daily do not have that luxury.

    More ritual killings. I am yet to hear of any serious effort to initiate preventive measures in ritual killings. We always react but rarely prevent ritual killings. Why? Nigeria, particular LGAs and states Houses of Assembly must initiate laws making ‘Annual Herbalist Registration’ and ‘Herbalist Monthly Monitoring by LGA’ compulsory. Nigerians must be protected from professional killers hiding under the masquerade of herbalist.

    JAMB jams 34,120 UTME results. JAMB should be protected from fraudulent students by taking each and every fraud case to court. It is a jail-able crime. After all, the names and IDs are available. Is it possible that we still have this much cheating or are the results withheld for other reasons?

    The Lagos State Parks and Gardens Agency (LASPARK) is increasing the number of activities in Lagos State parks. Gardens and Parks, aka GAP are mostly empty of knowledge. Are you not surprised that Nigeria with 700 miles of coastline has no single aquarium? Why not have LAPSARK aquarium or science museums of educational posters of famous people and events and happenings in these parks? Please involve students and lecturers and tertiary departments in UNILAG, LASU, Yaba College of Technology, Oceanography School, Nigerian Medical Research Council and the various professional bodies to insert science and technology, engineering and mathematical and other subjects games and quiz questions and posters in LAPARK inspirational exhibition centres and museums to fill these ‘empty’ fun spaces to in turn help fill the ‘empty’ brains of our youth with serious science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and other knowledge. For years I have seen this GAP in youth knowledge and asked for this to be done. Nothing so far and now see the problem the youth have and are to others. See how they occupy their time.

    States ‘mismanage’ LGAs of N15.6trillion in 12 years. This was done by the elected politicians legalizing illegality through joint accounts. LGAs are corrupt enough without adding governor-driven illegally legal laws guaranteeing them access to the LGA accounts. Of course even when they were independent, did LGAs perform? Will independence be any different? Serious EFCC and ICPC and community monitoring is required.

    Like Ibadan like Kano when it comes to beaded crowns and creating new emirates like it was in the past?

    Mr. President, Nigerians were cheated by ECN and then PHCN and now DISCOs over estimated billing. Mr. President, give Nigeria prepaid meters and Mr. President give Nigerians the electricity they deserve -24/7 like at Aso Rock. Mr. President, make the supply of electric power to all Nigerians as priority one along with the elimination of the nationwide security threat of herder and bandit terrorism.

    Nigerians are often forced by law to contribute hard earned funds to organisations like ETF, only to find their funds disappear down these conduits of legalised illegality and political and fiscal rascality. We are legally forced to fund NSITF, NHIS, ETF, Police and other security funds or especially pension funds. All have failed us as funds are squandered, stolen or syphoned away in these scam schemes with disappearance of mind-bogging 10 or 11 figure amounts. Knowing the high risk of such nefarious thefts, why not monitor such organisations pre-emptively with bank alarm bells and monthly forensic audits to nip fraud in the bud? EFCC and ICPC ignore such organisations but they must be forced to perform common sense annual General Orders-compliant internal auditing, external auditing and normal thief-catching accounting procedure. The NSITF scam is said to involve cataclysmic corruption involving N42b out of N62b taken/stolen from all Nigeria’s employers between 2012 and 2015. The Nigerian business community deserves and unreserved apology from the supervising ministry and government for this loss of funds due to supervisory incompetence or neglect.

    What is NSITF’s financial position between 2015 and 2019? At least another N62,000,000,000, nearly N800/adult Nigerian. Is the fight to be on the board a fight to serve? Why do these things happen in every single case? Why?  Worse is that no effort is made by government to even make such bodies barely honest or accountable. It is only after multiple billions have been syphoned that one or two heads may roll. Every public organization requires alarm systems to detect when the first one million disappears. Which organisation is next?

    President Buhari has renewed the tenure of Emefiele CBN governor to signal stability, a slow improvement in naira value, and more riches for ‘treasury bill banks’ for no lending work done. Banking is good ‘bad’ business O!

  • El-Rufai the godfather slayer

    Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, is something of an enigma. To some he is a straight talker given to shooting from the lips. Others would say he shoots first and reflects later – thus pushing him into the category of loose cannons.

    This past week his soundbites made front page news because we are stuck in the political season and there’s still plenty of room for intrigues as the new government at the centre takes shape. That very process has implications not just for good governance in these next four years, but also in the unofficial race to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari come 2023.

    It is against this backdrop that the governor’s comments about ‘godfatherism’ at the Bridge Club in Lagos, can be analysed. First, El-Rufai bragged about retiring four notorious godfathers in his state – making him something of an expert in that sort of political warfare.

    Responding to a question as how to bring those who presently call the shots politically to heel, he proffered the following solution:

    “Here in Lagos, you have over six million registered voters, only about a million voted (in 2019 general elections); five million did not vote. If I want to run for governor of Lagos, I will start now. I will commission a study to know why those five million registered voters did not vote; where do they go on Election Day?

    “Then I will start visiting them for the next four years. I will try and get just two million of them to come and vote for me; I will defeat any godfather. The key is to go to the people. The card reader and the biometric register have given us the tools to connect directly with the people.

    “I assure you if you do that for the next four years, connecting with the people; the tin godfather, you will retire him or her permanently. But it is hard work; it requires three to four years of hard work. So, if you want to run in 2023, you should start now.”

    At the same Bridge Club event, he called on Buhari to deal with ‘desperate’ and ‘over-ambitious’ elements within the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) whose activities, he said, could make the president’s second term difficult from day one.

    The governor’s position implies that these ‘overambitious’ politicians were starting to manoeuvre towards the next electoral contest too early – given that the president hasn’t been inaugurated for his second tenure.

    Given the time and place, many have jumped to the conclusion that El-Rufai was addressing his comments to a particular individual – even when he didn’t mention names. You only had to read between the lines.

    My concern is not so much about the target of his verbal arrows. I am more disappointed that for a man who many would describe as among the brighter minds in the APC, his comments are full of suppositions and contradictions. Stripped of their capacity to ignite controversy, they only make the governor look like a hypocrite speaking from two sides of the mouth.

    First, the claim that he saw off four godfathers in Kaduna is impressive if that achievement was actually down to the governor’s political prowess. Sadly, he didn’t mention those he put out of business.

    While the governor would understandably want to claim credit for winning the governorship polls in Kaduna in 2015 all by himself, another school of thought argues that back then he wasn’t a political giant or giant-killer who could have triumphed on the basis of his popularity.

    Rather, he was one of scores of politicians who were swept into office across the north clinging to the coattails of Buhari. Indeed, such was the force of the bandwagon back then that in many places in the region a dog would have been elected into office simply because of his association with the then APC presidential candidate.

    So for El-Rufai to rashly appropriate the success of the party in his state back then as a function of his political sagacity – without finding a place for the Buhari factor circa 2015 – is a bit rich. I doubt if he would have been elected governor – on his own steam – if he had run on a platform like the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) – shorn of the president’s pull.

    Another assumption is that the low turnout of voters at the recent general elections – in Lagos especially – was a protest against some supposed godfather. It is as simplistic an explanation as I have heard for a phenomenon that was widely reported across the country.

    If anything, voter apathy was driven by a complex mix of factors: among them disenchantment with the political class – godfathers, godsons and godfather slayers. In many places the outcome of the presidential election was a depressant to those who expected a different result. The upshot was they chose to vote with their feet. Others simply assumed that their votes wouldn’t count during the governorship contest that followed, so didn’t bother to come out.

    Part of El-Rufai’s counsel to aspiring godfather slayers in Lagos was for them to start working now. He said the project would require four years of hard work to succeed.

    Without any sense of contradiction, the godfather elimination expert who wants politicians to start planning for electoral success four years ahead, is the same person calling on Buhari to ‘deal with’ ‘desperate’ and ‘over-ambitious’ individual who are already scheming for the 2023 contest which is still four years away! How do you spell doublespeak!!!

    In other words, it is okay to work ahead if your aspiration is limited to Lagos, but unacceptable to carry that same mind-set to a political project in Abuja. Contradictory, if you ask me.

    As if the president does not have enough troubles on his plate, El-Rufai now wants him to move full tilt into the witch-hunting business – sniffing out ‘desperate’ and ‘overambitious’ politicians. The first hurdle he would run into is providing the means for measuring when ambition is acceptable and when it is excessive.

    You can never achieve anything in politics or any other walk of life without a healthy dose of ambition. I dare say that it was his ambition – the nameless godfathers he allegedly slew would most probably say ‘over ambition’ – that ensured he is the governor of Kaduna today. In fact, some swear that he has his own ‘next level’ 2023 aspirations. So should the president crack down on him also?

    It is sad that people who should be encouraging the liberalisation and the expansion of our democratic freedoms would be encouraging a militaristic mind-set that seeks to circumscribe what the constitution has freely given to citizens.

    All Nigerians who are eligible for public office should be free to aspire as long as they meet the legal requirements. It is not for El-Rufai or any other person to pick and choose for the electorate. Let the people deal with the ‘desperate’ and ‘overambitious’ using their votes – and not some office holder however eminent.

     

  • Ex-ministers! ‘Druggage’; Niger Bridge

    President Buhari, welcome. Issue ‘All change’ to ministers -good or bad- go, while EFCC must initiate forensic investigations for the corrupt Judases. Nothing personal, just a common sense ‘change’ presidential anticorruption strategy. We have good new people- new minister materials to serve Nigeria 2019-2023. No one is indispensable.

    Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) are suffering too much abuse, rape, deprivation, uncertainty, financial and infrastructural menaces. Government wake up, serve your people.  You could be a refugee tomorrow.

    Nigerian security services work -when they want to. But they react, not prevent. Zainab Aliyu could have been executed. Her release indicts us all, informers and security. Abroad, the ‘Internal Affairs Department’ in security outfits prevents and detects internal crime with pre-emptive intelligence reports, investigation, punishment, prosecution on staff offenders.

    Did ICPC, EFCC not hear of this crime years ago? Today we are deaf to rumoured government pension office scam cartels extorting from pensioners. Are there not preventive measures like luggage counts? These people destroy electronic monitoring equipment.  Are other airports involved? How many other passengers have been traumatized by being wrongly caught, prosecuted, incarcerated and even executed? If Zainab had been executed, they would have loudly clicked their teeth watched the Breaking News and warned listeners not to carry drugs o! In the office they would have lamented loudly ‘Is that not the girl who passed through my duty post? And we did not suspect her o!!!!!’ Of course, they would have known what their failure has cost the drug provider and planned to plant drugged luggage or ‘Druggage’ on a new courier!  This crime should earn the guilty life incarceration. Zianab could have been executed! The media must have structured public awareness projects on such risks.

    International deaths in the Northern Castle, 15 soldiers killed Magumeri Borno, base overrun, weapons seized, kidnapping of Daura leader, UBEC chairman and 100s of serious incidents including murders of police scream impunity pointing to an army of sophisticated informed terrorists. Ore-Benin and Lagos Ibadan road are used to being terrorised and people were abandoned to extortionist police. Add Abuja-Kaduna Road! Remember the government then hardly ever cut the elephant grass to prevent rocks being thrown at vehicle windows. Now the problem is strangling the North by social media enlightened disgruntled talakawa implementing a rebellion or imported Fulani and ISIS militia. This is war. How many personnel and civilians must die? Our goal in any war should be the capture and surrender of the enemy which is not afraid of the police, armed forces or death. Why is there no attempt to limit the influx of terrorists across our border? We merely drive the enemy out from one place to another only for them to regroup, when we withdraw at night, for another counterattack!

    In this war, why do the police and the army go public with secret plans and announce to Boko Haram and marauding herder and road terrorists their python and scorpion operations in advance? Nigeria’s terrorists are not stupid. This is not a confrontational war. It is a hit and run, guerrilla, war. The first laws of war are deception, surprise and concealment of real plans. Does the armed forces want the bandit to flee to other states and come back when the army announces the operation’s end?

    We never see encircling activities to prevent an exit strategy which would capture the enemy. Instead we hear of confrontation allowing the terrorists a clear unmined exit route with no ambush. The terrorists just go away to terrorise another day. Amateur military historians of Alexander, Artemisia, Boudica, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Hannibal, Napoleon, Saladin, Queen Amina, Queen Mother Yaa Ashantewaa, Chaka Zulu know that security means S7 =SSSSSSS -Strategise, Surveillance, Scenarios, Surround, Surprise, Subdue, Subjugate! We are at war. Use ‘The Media Rules of War’. Value our courageous Nigerian armed personnel and do not put them in harm’s way. The media should act in a war mode. Their reports must not feed the enemy with intelligence. News items that endanger our soldiers endangers us all. No more warnings before the armed forces strike.  The terrorists also read the news media, have spies and witness troop movements.

    An innocent white Australian lady, Justine Damond, reported a crime, was shot dead for her trouble by police in Minneapolis, USA. Her family was awarded $20m, no substitute for life. Perhaps such punitive damages will reduce police violence. Who teaches them ‘shoot to kill’ like soldier vs soldier and not ‘shoot to maim’ like police vs civilian? What is awarded to the many ‘wrongful death’ African-American families? If we can pay politicians high pay and pension, Nigeria must raise the value of Nigerian life, and award its murdered victims’ families realistic punitive damages.

    Strangely our Supreme Court awarded a single contractor N132,000,000,000, at N360:1$ that is $366,666,666 and approves fines of billions of dollars for contraventions of regulations against wayward banks and conniving cellphone companies for financial impropriety. Murder perpetrated by security forces is a financial cyber, physical and mechanical, bullet attack terminating a corporate [bodily] person’s financial potential -a financial loss demanding compensatory awards for the surviving families.

    Hurray. The ghost is dead. The Second Niger Bridge, a concrete reality, no longer a mirage, is rising from the Niger River of ghost stories retold at each ‘election promise’and, 9th Assembly disruption aside, opening in 2023 according to vice president.

  • The wild, wild North

    Making sense of how bandits and kidnappers choose their targets is not complicated, if we assume that they are driven largely by economic motives.

    They presumably go after the affluent and influential, those connected with wealth and power, in the sure knowledge that even if their victims are financially hamstrung, their kith and kin would quickly pay up whatever ransom is demanded.

    So, this week the kidnapping plague sweeping through the country finally berthed – symbolically – in Daura, Katsina State, hometown of President Muhammadu Buhari.

    The four gunmen who invaded the town had a special target: Musa Umar, district head of the town, who also happens to be father-in-law to Buhari’s aide-de-camp (ADC), Mohammed Abubakar.

    The calculation would probably be that they would harvest a ton of cash given the Abuja connection.

    Their action speaks volumes about where we are in terms of security. To target the family of a senior security aide to the president without fear of the immediate consequences, speaks to the contempt with which criminals hold the police and other state institutions. The fear factor keeps fading fast because the reign of impunity remains unchecked.

    The abduction of the Daura district head is the latest such incident involving high profile figures in the North Central and Northwest zones of the country. Two weeks ago, Mahmood Abubakar, chairman of the Universal Basic Education (UBEC) was seized along with his daughter, Yasmin, by kidnappers operating along the Abuja-Kaduna highway. They were freed a day later, some say after the payment of ransom in millions of naira.

    Before this incident, there was another that occurred along this same expressway. It happened at the same time that Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai was passing through. He made a very public show of stopping his convoy and marching into the bush with his security aides – ostensibly to pursue the kidnappers. Needless to say none of the criminals was apprehended, but there were photo-ops aplenty.

    As fallout from this episode, men of the Federal Anti-Kidnapping Task Force made a much-publicised sortie along the highway. Again, yielding lots of Facebook posts but very little in terms of kidnappers taken out of business.

    After a series of such operations, Acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, emerged from a security briefing with President Buhari, to declare the infamous Abuja-Kaduna highway free of kidnappers. They must have laughed loudly in their hideouts.

    Less than two weeks after the IG’s all-clear, they pinched the UBEC chairman and his daughter.

    Northern Nigeria is in deep trouble. In Zamfara, bandits and freelance gunmen with unknown agenda are killing and maiming unrestrained. In spite of bombings and other security interventions, sudden and brutal death has become the reality that unarmed local communities have to deal with for the foreseeable future.

    As has been broached earlier, large areas in the axis around the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kaduna State and parts of the Middle-Belt have become kidnapper country. Everyone is a potential target as long as you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    In Kaduna, reprisal killings between communities do not look like they would go away soon because each vicious episode, provides the rationale for victim communities to hit back in kind. The government, which only becomes aware after the atrocities have been perpetrated, is reduced to mouthing platitudes.

    In other parts of the North Central zone, the gory harvest of deaths associated with herdsmen has largely exited newspaper front pages, but they haven’t been totally terminated. From time to time, fresh reports of mindless killings still pop up.

    As for the Northeast, the Federal Government’s declaration of a technical knockout of Boko Haram insurgents operating in the region, now seems like a celebration called prematurely. Suicide bombers wreak havoc from time to time, while outlying settlements are remain vulnerable to attacks – such as the one that claimed over 20 lives recently in Adamawa.

    The Islamists may be in retreat but they are far from defeated – especially with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) breathing life into their operations.

    Even more alarming than the fact that the entire region is increasing looking like untamed frontier territory where gunmen reign supreme, is the reality that nothing the government has thrown at the problem seems to be a long-lasting solution.

    For a brief period, the bombing of the bandits in Zamfara looked like a magic wand that would wipe out the problem. It has since turned out to be a mere salve than didn’t address the issue at its core.

    Similarly, whatever magic cure the Acting IG was touting a few weeks back over the rash of kidnappings along the Abuja-Kaduna highway, now looks like something with all the efficacy of a fake drug.

    In the Northeast, the war against the insurgency brings good news one day and embarrassing setbacks another.

    It is a dilemma that demands more than the government is offering – be it community policing or whatever. Beyond urging security agencies to “deal ruthlessly” with bandits, Buhari and his men have to come up with more creative and all-encompassing solutions – especially those that are not politically correct. Nothing should be off the table – whether it is state police or the hard-to-define concept of restructuring.

    Security interventions may be useful in the short term, but they are not enduring answers. For one thing we don’t have enough soldiers and policemen to cover the vast territory that is Northern Nigeria. Isolated communities can never be covered for 24 hours and would always be at the mercy of the killers. What we need are solutions that provide vocational alternatives for the perpetrators of violence.

    At the root of the troubles is a mixture of economic and religious causes. Banditry and kidnapping are enterprises that generate revenues through cattle rustling and ransom payment. The bandits in Zamfara have also been linked to illegal mining activities.

    Our reality is that there is greater illiteracy and unemployment across the north compared to the rest of the country. For as long as the leaders of the region don’t develop their local economies, but remain hooked to the dwindling allocations from the federal purse, the situation can only get worse.

    Unfortunately, a succession of northern governors and political leaders haven’t shown that they understand the gravity of the problem or the urgent actions needed to address their situation. It is a shame that a region that has produced the largest number of our Heads of State never thought it expedient to let their charity begin from home. Now the region is reaping grievous consequences of failure of leadership.

    This crisis has taken five decades to come to a head and it will take more than bombings and posting of police commissioners to address.

    The time has come for leaders of the North to develop a blueprint for economic restoration of the entire region so it can close the gap with the rest of the country. It should be a document that all will agree to implement on a cross-party basis. Today’s crisis transcends mundane partisan affiliations.

    Amaechi, Rivers and South-South APC

    Strange things are happening in Rivers State. After the political conflicts of the last general elections and, indeed, of the last five years, I was astonished to hear Governor Nyesom Wike, following his victory at the polls, call on his bitter foes on the All Progressives Congress (APC) side, for cooperation and reconciliation.

    My initial reaction was that the comments were tongue-in-check. But at Easter, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, again, struck the same reconciliatory tone – asking the people for forgiveness and unity, declaring that the state was far from where they envisaged it would be at this point.

    Anyone who has followed the harsh rhetoric that has trailed the power struggle by both sides, would therefore have taken notice when Amaechi’s allies in the APC for whom Senator Andrew Uchendu spoke recently, accepted Wike’s olive branch.

    The results of the governorship election in which APC never got to participate were never in doubt given the advantages of incumbency which Wike enjoyed. The closest he had to a challenger was the AAC’s Biokpomabo Awara’s feeble effort.

    Now that the battle has been won and lost, what should a strategic politician do? Continue to moan over spilt milk or begin to plan ahead for the next contest?

    The good thing is that there would be no incumbent on the ticket in four years – meaning the playing field would be more level. Lowering the political temperature gives the minister the opportunity of resolving the internal conflicts that ended up denying the party a chance to challenge Wike effectively.

    Such was the bitterness of the legal battles fought by Senator Magnus Abe – who like Wike was one of Amaechi’s closest allies having served as Secretary to the State Government under him – that reconciliation may seem like a farfetched dream at this point.

    Still, if Amaechi and Wike can be singing the same hymns of reconciliation, nothing makes it impossible for him and Abe to kiss and make up. That is why politics is referred to as the art of the possible.

    A change of strategy is imperative as the parties begin to look forward to 2023. In this wise, APC’s relative weakness in the south is something the party needs to address because PDP may have lost the presidency, but emerged with better national spread – having governors in every zone.

    In the south APC is strongest in the Southwest and weakest in the Southeast where it once again received an electoral rebuff.

    The South-South zone therefore offers the party the best option for shoring up its presence down south. Aside Edo where it has a governor and produced the APC’s national chairman, much hope was invested in the party riding on the supposed political strengths of former Akwa Ibom Governor, Godswill Akpabio, to penetrate the state. That turned out to be a forlorn hope.

    Which brings us back to Rivers, aside Edo and Akwa Ibom, as the party’s best hope of enhancing its national spread and shoring up its position in the South-South zone. There is no denying that APC retains substantial support in the state despite not being on the 2019 ballot.

    If it had had candidates, even if Wike had prevailed in the gubernatorial contest the parties would have shared the state assembly, House and senate seats. The challenge for Amaechi as the party’s leader is to build again on that latent support base by dealing with all the recent fractures.

    His job should be made easier by the fact that whatever losses have been suffered on the home front, have been ameliorated by the success of the presidential campaign which he headed. That virtually guarantees that he would be one of the returnees in Buhari next cabinet. A role in Abuja gives him the continued relevance necessary for this sort of effort.

     

     

  • President; ex-ministers? Political pensions

    The terrifying deaths of nine Boy’s Brigade youths in Gombe is a devilish premeditated road rage and murder by a Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) member-recently armed by government, murdered in turn by an outraged mob. We demand that Nigeria’s uniformed personnel must, like in other countries have regular psychological lectures and assessments annually by employing 1,000s of Nigerian psychologists in the armed forces, police, customs and immigration, FRSC, LASTMA, and banks. The uniform makes them mad, power drunk, uncontrollable, murderers!

    President’s legacy:  Our president is entitled to leave even if he is the most senior employee of the ‘Nigerian government and people’. Let the president go and rest, be repaired or rejuvenated. No one is indispensable or irreplaceable but we are all exhaustible. Come back with good governance ideas and change almost all or all ministers. Nigerians want ‘change’. Four years is enough. Look at Ngige spouting that our poor doctor – patient ratio is okay! There are enough good Nigerians to provide new ministers. Even exceptional ministers can be ex-ministers as new breed exceptional ones will be found. The president should evaluate the tri-Ministry of Power, Works and Housing set up for quick policy-practice transition times and reduction in inter-ministerial friction. Did the Oronsaye model work? Should we go back to three cooperating, not competing, ministries? And now Nigeria through AMCON may owe one single contractor, a benefactor of government, N132b, $500,000+ following a Supreme Court judgement which, unlike Lord Denning’s, failed to order compensation for victims of all contract failures, the downtrodden citizen. Tax breaks for example, for the years of disappointment, development failure no matter who is responsible -Ministry or Man!!

    This is presidential legacy time. Enough of political pandering and plodding along!! It would have been nice to have medical check-up in a Nigerian hospital but remember the corruption even in the Aso Rock House Clinic??

    The pinnacle of Nigeria’s political greed is the blatant indifference to poverty. The politicians pass by Nigeria’s numerous rubbish dumps then dare to allocate inflammatory pensions and greed-driven retirement perks? Are they mad? The politicians see adults and even Nigeria’s children, bent, barefoot, no gloves or goggles inhaling the dangerous chemical fumes and stink of Nigeria’s waste to pick sellable bits and food remains – almost a death sentence. Fellow Nigerians, no one was born to eat scraps and half eaten akara while politicians and others misallocate or even steal the billions given by God to feed, employ and empowerNigerians! No true Nigerian would drive past such widespread despair and debasement only to recklessly create self-serving pension schemes.  The Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission is empowered to fix these figures taking mass poverty and the pension pattern in politics worldwide into account. To misquote English language aficionados; are they not bombastic egocentric kleptomaniacs who should be incarcerated in the darkest recesses of our penal gulags for abuse of public trust and assault on the treasury?

    Is this not a betrayal of trust when pensions and salaries are owed millions? Do they not see Nigerians living abroad and dying in abysmal climate conditions as illegal migrants due to neglect of governance at home? Is this any different from the teacher raping the student he is supposed to protect? Or the ‘uniform’ killing the Boys Brigade children or Dele Giwa or the Apo 6 or 9? All these complicating intimidation from annoyance, drunkenness or ‘deliberately on purpose’ through ‘accidentally on purpose’ discharge.

    So now the pensions are official even if morally corrupt and illegally legal. Yet they put the girl ‘Success’ and 10million like her in rubbish schools to somehow get educated. Shame. Politics is the highest paid, 419, gig in Nigeria, so much spent with so little positive return, compounded by a pension for life and houses and cars for 4 years of some for sometimes disservice to Nigeria. Look at the budget delays and trivial, low intellect contributions to debates utterances and questionable performance, including dance steps and character flaws of many politicians.

    Is this a political pension scheme or a Ponzi scheme or a yahoo-yahoo scheme as the rules are being changed every day? Meanwhile in contrast what is the actual pay-out for Nigeria’s real heroes -our soldiers dying in the undeclared war against Boko Haram and the police dying as escorts to kidnap victims and at bank robberies and the fellow Nigerians murdered by herders, Boko Haram or uniforms every single day? Add to that Nigeria at 5-7,000Mw is still the darkest country in the continent of Africa having been failed by a greed-driven politics and systematic sabotage of our oil refineries now supposedly needing $900m. While we the voters sleep in darkness, the politician commands 24hours power from burning our money in our generators in their houses. Politics appears to be a self-serving anti-development curse, an expensive unproductive, ugly curse and a blight on Nigeria forbidding progress on the world stage and even at the ward and LGA level. The current politics is kleptomaniacbehaviour exemplified by the ‘Political Pension Scam’. Yes, there are pensions for politicians worldwide but no houses, cars, servants, medical expenses abroad. Nigeria has a long history of this care of seniors particularly in the North -Perm Secs, Generals and equivalent in other arms, judges. The legislators must know their own secret payment schedules continue to insult our intelligence. We see it as theft from Nigeria. Will 2019-2023 politicians be different and seriously anticorruption???

  •  ‘Our Girls; Agenda 2019-2023

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014, five years ago and 112 are still unaccounted for. Leah Sharibu, kidnapped on Feb 19, 2018, in Dapchi was the only one held back.

    Another murderous attack in Benue on Good Friday – community clash or marauders?

    Once again Nigeria is at a crossroads, but the people’s agenda remains ‘Development for all’. We have been at a lot of crossroads. Our past leadership and cabals almost always took the wrong turn. When they took the right turn, like refineries, they reverse quickly but pontificate about the solutions knowing they are responsible for the country failing us while denying any personal fault.

    Perhaps they wished they had got electricity power right, by adding 1,000 -2,000Mw annually for 40 years? Add 10,000Mw to the grid, as emergency power supply with generator ships.

    Would they wish they had got railways right by moving earlier to standard gauge and reversing 40 years of railway rustiness and abandonment resulting in millions of road crashes? Add new ‘fast train’ lines in new directions. Would they have wished they had funded larger incorruptible budget for education and a better teacher elite and scholarships and better schools to get education right? Increase education budgets; attach failing final year students to NYSC and specialist teachers to get better performance immediately. Make all schools great again.

    Would they wish they had funded health more sincerely to get health right? Would they wish they had worked better to save the naira and bring down interest rates to single figures to get the economy right? Would they wish that they had built 10,000 bridges across the Niger and 10,000 rivers and streams to shorten travel time, improve business and reduce their travel misery and chaos to get travel right away from overcrowded colonial-installed road arteries build to evacuate goods seized, bought cheap or even stolen from Nigeria?

    Would they wish they had seriously invested in building support for the private sector to eliminate the 17 million housing deficit and get housing for all right? Would they wish they had protected the pension schemes for millions of pensioners and extended families and get pension schemes right? Install bank alarm systems; multiple signatures and monthly accounting for public funds.

    We have had leaders pursuing no agenda or agendas which resulted in stagnation and retrogression. For example there was cancellation of practical aspects of arts, science like chemistry experiments with litmus paper, sports and entire school subjects taught in every other country in Africa and the world including civics, history, and general science. This cancellation, so education money could be stolen and misdirected, has led to a generation of deliberately educationally disadvantaged young adults with no experience or interest in sports except clapping and instant millionairism, no knowledge of the world and little scientific knowledge even personal body knowledge, and few morals and no civic sense of responsibility. Leaders without agendas or with evil agendas have led us to refineries never fully working. Even ‘good policies’ fail.

    Governments have banned gas flaring and fined the companies burning our commonwealth every year for 40 years. A joke! They said it again yesterday!! What country with 75% illiteracy and 70% poverty flares its gas wealth, polluting the atmosphere of three states and leaves the rest of us to burn our salaried incomes in imported fuel fires for generators? Is that a 21st century thought process just to please the insatiable greed of already billionaire importers of fuel? What country allows its refineries to rot in the power play of billionaires deliberately made rich by government’s organised failure?

    We should all be manning the mighty battleship MV Nigeria, our leaders on the bridge, head on at top speed into the 21st century to achieve the SDGs and a place at the world table. Unfortunately we are either a big rudderless ship going nowhere or in a boat paddled in many different directions or we in a tugboat towing a crippled MV Nigeria.

    At the beginning of every new election phase, even a re-elected regime, we point these truths out, hoping to stimulate a serious patriotic development debate, and divert politicians from traditional looting to laying the foundation of a truly great Nigeria within four years. Recovery has to start now in 2019, not two weeks to the next election in 2023. Government must stop ‘The Rape of the State’.

    It is good for 15 people to be tried by JAMB for N8b fraud but JAMB fraud is stealing from the children- no greater crime before God. As revealed by Professor Oloyede, JAMB lost N7b/year.

    We are tired of state treasuries being looted. We demand development, not stealing. States have enough to be great. Lagos and the 13% derivation states should have developed 100 times more than they have if not for corruption.  ‘Stop Stealing, Use everything for Development’ to make a great nation.

    President Buhari: 1] Find 200 Professor Oloyedes to head Nigeria’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)

    2] Teach them crash anti-corruption courses

    3] Put EFCC everywhere as pre-emptive strike

    4] Suspend boards or shut down MDAs without audited accounts up to 2017

    5] Act on audited account reports.

    6] Catch fraudsters young! No more mega-billion fraud.

    For governors ‘Finish the jobs of your predecessor’ executed with the people’s money. Abandoned project are as much a failure of succeeding government as a failure of past governments. No more abandoned projects.

  • ‘Our Girls; Politicians and World Bank

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014, five years ago on Monday and 112 are still missing. Leah Sharibu, kidnapped on Feb 19, 2018, one plus years ago, in Dapchi was the only one held back after a mass release of over 100, excluding five who died directly as a result of the terrorist ordeal. It is said Leah refused to convert from Christianity. During these years, over 25,000 other Nigerians have been murdered and approximately 3-4million internally displaced Nigerians, registered in underserviced IDP camps or unregistered, seeking employment countrywide.

    Unfortunately we in Nigeria are the architect of our ‘failure to thrive’. In Nigeria we must overthrow the retrogressive feudal ideology of master-servant, the deliberate under-educating ofcitizens. We must not fail to change our politicians’ mindset. Instead of Sustainable Development Goals’ strategies, they repeat the scheming about NASS officers, usually an automatic event based on party numbers. Some do not see the national political failure largely because of their own personal good fortune. Good fortune may be through hard work but professionals have been forced to give bribes, or inflate government contracts or give ‘thank you kickbacks’.

    Why can we not change the narrative that ‘No bribe=no work’ or no payment on a contract? It is difficult to imagine that many highly regarded professionals and ‘icons’ have low morals or compromised their principles to survive. Add poor supervision and zero consequence for failure and we are programmed by our own politicians to fail?

    A new president, David Malpass, appointed by the US president in keeping with tradition, is to run the US-led and mainly US funded World Bank. There will be Trump-ic, America First changes. He does have a lot of experience in development and is critical of the World Bank and IMF. So am I. For example while Ghana, to stimulate growth, is reducing and cancelling VAT in huge areas of business and consumption, Nigeria is being pushed by the IMF and perhaps the World Bank to widen the VAT pool and increase VAT, ‘remove fuel subsidy’ and weaken the value of the naira-again. The previous times we did these we were plunged further into poverty by making more poor people. This will certainly cancel the effect of any minimum wage increase.

    In Africa it appears we for the most part cannot help ourselves. We seem to be great as individuals, but collectively lack a successful forward development drive. We have great artists, scientists, professionals at home and abroad but collectively our hospitals, universities, schools and highways are collapsing. We cannot even fill potholes at level crossing consistently.  Ask the girl ‘Success’ to show you round her school – a pigsty unfortunately called after late murdered Minister of Finance the flamboyant Okotie-Eboh. His children are still in court over his assets!

    There is the perpetual African epidemic of poorly performing self-serving politicians who ‘purchased’ their posts at an unsustainably enormous cost of production through overpriced elections. Unfortunately, with too few good exceptions, politicians have placed themselves high above the people forgetting their sworn oath to serve the people. Politicians repeatedly failed to deliver timely budgets and honest accounting to deliver the full economic and societal growth potential of democracy. Rwanda stands out with its recent developmental strides under its focused leader and high female politician ratios but at the cost of 800,000 lives. We in Nigeria have a belligerent new generation born after 1970 when we also ended a civil war which cost more than one million lives. Our developmental strides should not require another civil war. But politicians do not easily change their spots. In Nigeria we must reduce our financial demands on delusional politicians.

    We need help against the apparent corrupt politicians’ agenda. I wish the World Bank and IMF, the UN, the EU,  and even Brexit-ed Great Britain refuse to negotiate any deals, give any loans, agree any diplomatic protocols, provide any contract funds with Nigeria in particular and Africa in general until Africa’s political class demonstrate and introduce a less flamboyant, cheaper, transparent, morally, ethically and economically responsible remuneration structure for themselves and better development budgets for the citizenry. The worst culprit is the shamelessly greedy NASS and now the governors further bleeding their states by insultingly high severance and pension packages. Politicians must be forced, by local and international pressure, to demonstrate a much higher sensitivity to the poor citizenry. In Nigeria all efforts have failed to get the politicians to fully disclose and cut their Salaries and Perks- SAP, which are SAPing Nigeria dry with their irresponsibly high and ‘legally illegal’ total take home pay and allowances.  Many of the countries with high poverty levels also have directly related high corruption levels. Remember many politicians come from a background which still believes in a ‘Keep citizens poor, uneducated and sheepish’ policy. No international assistance will work until that policy and mindset is changed.

    The World Bank can demand a higher personal political fiscal morality. Corruption causes poverty and poverty breeds corruption. Fighting extreme poverty, a World Bank goal, is only achievable if it neutralises an evil, demonstrably greedy elected entrenched political elite which withholds and steals its nation’s ‘responsible’ budget funding for essential development projects like improved maternal and infant mortality rates, education, training and business environment funding.  Africa’s and Nigeria’s politicians, preoccupied by selfish greed abandon their responsibility, leaving it to the World Bank and other agencies. Who is more mumu? Shame.