Category: Tony Marinho

 We are in a world in severe perhaps irreversible climate, crime, corruption, coup-plotting, war-threat turmoil. It certain is ‘Nigeria’s turn’. Watch out for floods now and heatwaves and water shortages to come.

ECOWAS threatens military action to restore the pro-France malleable Niger president. War looms and sides will change then quickly as there are blood and tribal brothers on the other side of the Bismarck line border drawn at the Berlin Conference 1884-5. This Niger coup terrified incumbent civilian West African governments fearing spread of the ‘2020s Coup Virus’. It exposed France’s can of post-colonial neo-colonialism worms spread by social media to ‘the common man’. The reaction to the French oppression by their former-to-present colonial master is not nuclear physics but a get-your-knee-off-my-neck survival vs colonial greed issues.

France’s insatiable acquisition of requisitioned uranium etc. to feed its insatiable 61 nuclear plants begs the question of why, after 60 years of independence, France has not built one nuclear power plant in ‘former’ African territories. If it fears uranium in ‘black hands’, then why has France not placated them by solarising its post-independence colonies? 2023 France, where is your ‘Equalité, Egalité, Fraternité’? Cancel 1960s decree treaties, renegotiate company contracts and return bank held funds to equal status states. France should get its knee off French West Africa’s neck. But France may have already broken the bridge of reconciliation.

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The local cumulative failure to govern has had an increasingly devastating impact on the world, directly and indirectly.

It is a sobering season of death but lost on a ‘Sniggering Senate Sinning against the Citizens’ especially the poor as the senators ‘generously’ ‘‘let the people breathe’’ air, not returning part of the hyper-bloated senate emoluments but with more sniggering and attempts to ‘off -the mic’  sharing N2m/despicable senator ‘holiday money’. A politically shamelessly mis-governed country, on-or-off-mic. It is the mass murder of morality, relinquishing of responsibility and destruction of democratic decency and a misinterpretation of representational power. NASS is a ‘House called the Rising Sun’ bereft of moral fibre seen by the ministerial approvals.

Add multiple mass murders in Barkin Ladi in Plateau and elsewhere in Zamfara, Borno, Kaduna, etc for example. A two-year-old lift plunged 10 storeys. Is death the new ‘wage option of house job’. Was Dr Daiso forced to bribe to get the job or the 10-floor flat like in the Federal Character Commission with financial demands of N1.5-N2m to secure a job? There are deaths from traditional murders for organ ‘get-rich-or-pregnant-quick’ even in central Ibadan where a young graduate was murdered on graduation celebration night and had her uterus removed. What terror for our youth and their families? 

Yet the Federal Character Commission information is known but the police, EFCC and ICPC could not spontaneously investigate. Why? These horrible revelations confirm that these uncivil servants and political government appointees seeking personal wealth by preying on youth in education or job-seeking. These criminals, supposedly guardians of the youth instead, create self-wealth out of nothing by bleeding the youth and increasing the cost of employing like their criminal colleagues in the police and traffic agencies and LGA officials extorting from travellers by creating pay-to-pass roadblocks to success and turning  our ‘Federal Character into a Federal Corruption Character’. Remember the JAMB ex-registrar Professor Ojerinde 2007-2016 and son. If found guilty, the sums in billions have ruined the education of millions. Was the JAMB exam overpriced? He  was registrar NECO 1999-2007 and registrar National Board of Educational Measurement 1992-1999. Professorial Mis-measurement at its Machiavellian malignant worst? What wrong ‘measurements of youth funds disappeared then!  NIGERIA’S YOUTH COCOONED IN A CORRUPTION CLOAK FROM CRADLE TO THE GRAVE.

I remember a church car park attendant some 20 years ago saying he was saving towards N30,000 to obtain a form to join the police force to get a LGA signature. Corruption upon corruption, corruption personified. It is systemic youth-targeted and seen by boys and girls at checkpoints daily and neglect of parental salaries and pensions that have ruined the family hierarchy, destroyed the first NGO in Africa – the ‘Extended Family Network’ and  ‘Destination Nigeria’ for Nigerian Youth and forced them to japa. But the young should know that Japaism is not new. Nigerian government periodically force Japaism .Today’s Japaite used to be called ‘Andrew’ in the 80s. The consequences of illegal migration are many and include abandonment by the traffickers, attack, drowning,

If Africa had good governance, many migrants might have stayed at home and foreigners would come to a safe, progressive country. The numbers of drowned in the Mediterranean, the English Channel and dead and buried in the Sahara desert over the years should shame especially our African politicians into good behaviour.             

We are horrified when fellow humans numbering 250, 120, 400, 41 drown off Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. Some estimates that political failure called japaism was responsible for 50 migrant die/day, 27,000 out of over 602,000 migrating in 2016 from Nigeria – see Guardian Adelowo Adebumiti February 3, 2017. The Sahara is deadlier than the desert. The International Organisation for Migration reported more than 1,200 Nigerian deaths in the first seven months of 2023. Nigerians are in all drowning statistics but the lesson is universal. The migrants’ countries have stay-put leaderships or even a changing leadership which have collectively failed them in terms of development and creating country pride. But colonialist must change their ways.

EVERY MIGRATION DEATH IS A POLITICAL MURDER. ONLY GOOD GOVERNANCE WILL STOP POLITICALLY CAUSED MIGRATION MURDER! 

Hopefully President Tinubu has skilfully avoided a war by first demonstrating democracy-defender willingness thus keeping the West happy but secondly allowing senate to ‘democratically’ overrule him, as expected, so he can save face in a democracy vs democracy irony.  A political accident or a successful political strategy?

Nigerian life must matter more than the cost of lift repairs.

The ‘CINS of Nigeria-Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence, Selfishness’ are demonstrated in the General Hospital, Lagos 10-storey lift crash in which a delightful, successful, full-of-life, very-bright-future, medical doctor and House officer had her life cut short. She had a family, classmates, friends and grateful patients.

Put yourself in that lift in Dr Vwaere Daiso’s place going down to collect a delivery service meal. Sadly, words like terror, horror cannot begin to describe the wrenching feeling of plunging at 60+kph. Close your eyes and imagine being hit by a 60kph car. One of the best places to have an accident is a hospital but sometimes the injuries are such that the best care in the world cannot save one.

In Nigeria we already know the cause of death of Dr Vweare Daiso – our national completely lackadaisical and negligent way of dealing with maintenance in Nigeria in general be it the public space or the private space. Our standards are so low sometimes. From the simplest maintenance like toilets nationwide, potholes, solar streetlights, water pipes, libraries, building components like corridor lights, painting, roofing sheets and of course vehicles especially tyres. Even replacement chemicals in school laboratories. Just look at the cleanliness of your wards, casualty and offices. Try going to the toilet! You are so used to dirty walls stained by hands and feet marks and by backrests of chairs and heads and torn fabric and plastic covering of office chairs that you are no longer offended by them and if you took over you would not paint or repair or replace the damaged furniture.

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In short, you have sunk from a ‘manager’ who would have done all these things to improve the surroundings. Now, you are a mere ‘endurer’ – enduring all the rubbish around. The latter attitude allows the money allocated for maintenance in the budget to be stolen by politicians and officials of central government, or the office messenger,  even as things deteriorate and equipment malfunctions, misfires, breaks down or goes completely off the road or rails as in a car, train or a lift as in this tragic case.       

The worst reason for a lack of maintenance culture is ‘Cost Saving’ which is a stupid and wrongly thought-out excuse. ‘Maintenance And Repair’ were handed over to Nigeria by our colonial masters, Great Britain as the ‘Key to Greatness’ and as being far cheaper and cost effective than replacement. We discovered however that ‘Maintenance Budgeted Funds’ were easy to steal and the theft was easy to conceal with fake receipts.  We are all aware of the disgraceful Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of $180-200M for never-working refineries. Just bring that down to the level of a lift and the lift crash at General Hospital Lagos could probably be an example or opportunity from the maintenance officials. The second reason for zero or poor maintenance is the acceptance and institutionalisation of the disgraceful ‘Manage (aka Endure) Culture’ by which we do not mean ‘apply good managements skills’ but we mean a coping mechanism without improvement or an ‘accommodation of errors’ mechanism of the failure instead of ‘as and when due’ preventive repair and replacement maintenance.

Lifts are expensive and not invisible but important building components, especially for those in charge from politicians, civil servants and out-source contractors. They cannot be repaired by neighbourhood mechanics, masquerading as engineers. Lagos State investigation has revealed that the lift was installed new in 2021, usually with multiple fail-safes, and further analysis will exclude collusion between officials, phantom allocation of ‘Maintenance Budget Fund’, and confirm the paper, text and e-mail trail of ‘Lift Complaints and Recommendations’ from doctors and maintenance staff, through Works Dept to CMD’s Office to Ministry of Health to the commissioner’s table and also Minutes of Meetings where the lift matter were raised. The supply firm’s Repair and Maintenance Contract and Logbook of visits and conclusions by the technicians are vital. Was the company paid as-and-when-due for maintenance or owed or had their maintenance contract been withdrawn?   

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Nigerian lives do not matter much to those who govern and treat themselves very well at the expense of other Nigerians. Now one more life which mattered is tragically and horribly lost. A government lift is government of Lagos State responsibility and it should offer more than an apology and life insurance. On investigation, the guilty should pay to elevate standards of maintenance. Money will not bring the dead doctor back, but a realistic financial punitive compensation for every year of a 35-years working medical lifetime would highlight how much cheaper it would have been merely to shut down the lift with duct tape or maintain it regularly even if it is just two years old.  If a Permanent Secretary was using the lift, the maintenance story would have been different. And therein lies the problem. A widespread almost complete loss of responsibility for the people’s needs.

If ‘Nigerian lives Mattered’ more to every single Nigerian politician and official and contractor, there would be less or no CINS and much more maintenance. STOP CINS TODAY!

The current senate president decries the influx of hoodlums into the National Assembly, NASS Complex. Was he looking at a photo of NASS10, we ask? Are members hiding in plain sight, under NASS immunity, from the wrath of ICPC and EFCC?

This is one statement that almost all Nigerians will say “‘The Ayes’ have it!’ unlike the insensitive senate sniggering around the hollow and insulting support for the ‘plight of the poor’ without any concurrent significant gesture like a cut in ‘Salaries And Perks’ of NASS by 75%. Not even one NASS man or woman has rejected the NASS largess demonstrating that NASS acts like a separate political party from the known parties where any deviation is severely dealt with. Read Oshiomhole’s case.  

Far too many of our politicians think they are supposed to make promises they have no idea, and often no intention, of keeping, as they bring little to the job, pretend to learn on the job while ensuring personal enrichment and inflicting trauma and disillusionment on the citizenry. Of course some are amazing and we would praise them if they showed true transparency, faith, loyalty and honesty. The politicians now claim they are a professional body and have made themselves the first among all professionals.  Politics is said to be the only profession with no specific prior qualification, like diplomas, certificates and degrees in management, sociology, development, budgeting, security et cetera. Yet politicians have the highest responsibility for development and social wellbeing of citizens.

Why have they, therefore, set themselves above everyone by assuming for themselves an illegally legal humongous budgetary allocation and outrageous Salaries and Perks, SAPing Nigeria dry? In the light of the current currency crisis and other economic challenges, notable the suicidal naira value – from a politician-driven corruption and greed-driven economy for years – the personal emolument/operational costs of Nigeria’s political class have unsustainable financial demands creating development failure, damaging the entire structure of the struggling country.

Consequent upon the excesses of the political class in the areas of Salaries and Perks and Pensions, there is a huge underground movement to urge the NLC leadership and the leadership of other major bodies of working and professional citizens including the NMA and NARD  that all groups across the board should now include on their strike demand as number 1 the ‘cutting of NASS salaries and perks by 75%’ with the reallocation of such funds towards workers’ welfare including backlog of salaries and pensions and also infrastructure budgeted programs as many consider the stupendous politics budget similar to the Abacha loot. If the NASS salaries and perks are justifiable, let the NASS put the matter to referendum.

CELEBRATE, HONOUR & REWARD FOR HONESTY KOLAWOLE SHOYINKA THE ATTACKED TEACHER. The attack on a teacher, Kolawole Shoyinka in a secondary school, waylaid and beaten by 10 students because he prevented them from cheating in an arts examination is beyond belief. The police, principal and staff have cornered the criminals. The 18+ year olds should face charges of conspiracy to commit a crime and GBH Grievous Bodily Harm and face punishment. It was premeditated, no accident. Younger ones should face juvenile punishment. Shoyinka should be made by radio and electronic media into a hero and honoured for risking his life on principle. Can the average politician do that?

Kolawole Shoyinka represents all teachers dutifully fighting the moral battle against student terrorism. He deserves the Outstanding Teacher Award from state and Federal Ministry of Education, State Civil Service Honours, Federal National Honours 2023 and awards from corporate bodies. His religious body must make him an exemplary member and award him honours and recognition. Also, his medical bills should be paid now and for long-term injury. He should be promoted and given ‘Teach Cheat-Free-Exams’ assignments state and nationwide. Such honours will empower students so cheating is cancelled from exam strategies.

Many corporate bodies need to search for genuine Nigerians to honour. Here is one such honest Nigerian who risked death, an unexpected risk for the teaching profession or for an ordinary honest man trying to imbibe his honesty as character building in students who violently rejected his efforts. This man is not a one-day wonder story! The media can make it a nationwide matter to be discussed by students, teachers, parents and government and made bigger than JAMB Mmesoma-gate. REWARD THE ATTACKED TEACHER FOR HIS HONESTY. Make him more famous than Big Brother and any politician. The Kolawole Shoyinka Honesty Club in schools. He could have died.

If we do not uphold the good when they face persecution for honesty, no one will ever go against those despicable politicians among that class with murky pasts who think dishonesty is a laughing matter, a joke and can laugh heartily at the plight of the poor while they, the greedy and not-so-greedy politicians alike, wallow in luxury only available because it was illegally-legally stolen and diverted from servicing the poor. The plight of the poor would have been reversed and in fact would never have happened if all politicians had been ‘Honest like Kolawole Shoyinka’ since the word ‘politician’ was mis-invented and used for citizens and not themselves. Our naira would be strong. Will incoming minsters , our ‘servants’, be is honest as Kolawole Shoyinka? We pray so! They should all take a lie detector test. How many Fellow Nigerians would fail ‘THE KOLAWOLE SHOYINKA HONESTY TEST?’

There is a call for amnesty for cold-blooded  killers, kidnappers, terrorists and ‘bandits’ who terrorise by burning houses, farmlands, hospitals, schools, security posts and cutting off economic survival necessities like roads to farms and markets and becoming an occupying force pillaging and misgoverning victims’ ancestral lands with terror tactics and terror taxes.

The live survivors, 5-6+m internally displaced persons, with 100,000+/- 20% dead, live with no ‘war on terrorists’ yet declared. The cumulative horror and terror unleashed on peaceful Nigeria contrasts with the few terrorists killed.

The deteriorating change in security level must be addressed in a ‘War-Like Manner’. The new government seems to be acting. The blood loss, misery and continued suffering from loss of life, limbs and lands have not been placated by a single voiced apology- just more arrogant belligerency. 

In the light of the raw nerves, pain, wonton destruction with bombs and other weapons on unarmed civilians and undefended targets, an unasked amnesty is an insult, a slap on the suffering of survivors, some with lost limbs and using crutches or wheelchairs for the rest of their destroyed lives. Sadly, Fellow Nigerian must visit our military cemeteries shamefully to see the supreme sacrifice of our gallant security outfits including the Joint Task Force (JTF) while fighting the superior weaponry of terrorists.

Many of our kidnapped have been killed, enslaved, married by force or taken to places unknown. Calculate the loss of school-time to our student population with so many of our students also still missing alongside the heroic Leah Sharibu kidnapped on February 18, 2018 at 5.30 by ISWAP and since married off with two children.

Can we calculate and replace the millions of hours in lost learning time by special emphasis on ANTI-TRAUMA PROGRAMMES to help these traumatised, listless Boko Haram-ISWAP survivors -Locally created monster terrorist PSTD-Post Stress Traumatic Disease Generation? No, we cannot. But we can help bearing in mind we have millions of such affected children prone to mental stress and rational thought disorders, depression and suicide and violence challenges.

How dare Nigeria expect that generation to carry on as usual and compete with the rest of the country living in the relative quiet not having herder and other terrorism running through our property or kidnapping and killing of our parents and children in front of us.  The level of terrorism cannot be exaggerated. 

Nigeria’s PTSD GENERATION, started by the deliberately provocative incursions of armed herders into farms and settlements, requires a separate curriculum and additional classes to the traditional curriculum to draw them out and externalise their trauma through confiding in mentors, expression through creative writing, artwork, loosening up with friends. Only then may the pain go and not fester internally only to manifest in suicide by adopting good ‘terrorist capture’, not ‘terrorist-scatter’ military strategies implemented in a coordinated ‘everywhere at once’ multi-pronged plan leaving the terrorists no escape routes. 

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N500b, from the $800m World Bank 25+ years bank loan  planned for conditional cash transfer of N8,000/month x six months totalling N48,000 each to 10-12million low income families as judged by National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office NASSCO which was set up in 2016 with $800m World Bank funding over five years  with a current National Social Register, NSR of over 60m households of which the Poor and Vulnerable Households [PVHHs] register number approximately 15million vulnerable across the country. It already ran the programme giving out N5,000 under Buhari and due to the poor value of the naira, an increase to N8,000 was suggested.  Nigerians ask: can it be trusted to deliver in a country prone to institutional, political and internal corruption failure? It should be open to scrutiny.

Also, can we change the previously implemented 2021/2 programme shortening the N8,000×6 months to one N48,000×1 month, or N24,000×2 months or N16,000×3 months under this new government social intervention/investment scheme. The handout has been discredited by commentators as non-productive. What are the sustainable alternatives offered?

Introduce gas-driven luxury buses or better, multiply by two that number of rugged good/non-luxury buses, perhaps run by a new breed of transporter, not NURTW, is a popular suggestion as is a CONVERSION at subsidised rates of existing public and private mass transit vehicles to gas-driven:  Gas-driven buses which must be rugged and like hard plastic seated London buses should be non-luxury level, but decent rugged buses distributed through state governments to LGAS and needy selected schools and institutions for daily local movement.

Pay government-owed salaries and pensions with immediate effect: The federal and state governments are a continuum and must settle outstanding wage/pension bills which non-payment damages families and local economies. Payment with N500b kills three economic burden birds with one stone, drawing down our domestic debt by the figure, say N1-200b. It will economically and emotionally uplift maybe 1-3 million financially strapped family members with their own long-denied self-development funds to be spent in the local economy settling IOUs, rent and raise purchasing power through cash circulation in markets, for building and rent, school and university and also start-ups in business fees, purchases and power supply. A win-win situation. 

N70 billion for NASS is monumentally insensitivity when 70% of citizens are in poverty. We expected a 70% cut in Salaries and Perks! Learn from France’s Versailles and the aftermath.  Do not dance with arrogance before the desperately deprived. Politicians ignore the poor at their peril. It is a red flag before a belly-empty bull. Reverse this please.

Jamb used to be nightmare ‘JAMBing’ the youth in its corruption tunnel. In 2005 I wrote a poem …

O!  JAMB  2005

 O! JAMB

How I hate you./  You hydra-headed hinderer. You monstrous monument/ To mediocrity.

 Do you not heed, /My agony, my anguish?/ What price, your paper? /My forearm for your form?/ My ankle for your admission letter? Must I frog-jump / To the tune of the whistling koboko/ Wielded by your zombies/ Who turn our right into a riot?

I climb a gate locked against me/ Or relocate to a nearby bukateria/ which sells not just food or even books/ But where JAMB forms and JAMB results/ Are sold to the highest bidder?/ My sweaty palm clutching  stale notes/ Betrayed as a bribe./ It seems I must buy my right/ If I want to become a Jambite/ Or be Jammed in the system.  

THE END

 And I wrote articles on it…

The student faces an examination fraught with fraud, examination forms that may be fake, miraculous and endlessly delayed results, an uncertain opportunity at tertiary education due to the logjam of JAMB.1999.

 There were JAMB fighters against the plague of JAMB corruption vomiting unqualified students into universities polluting the education system. Recently we witnessed the fall of JAMB’s ex-boss, Professor Dibu and the rise of Prof Is-haq Oloyede, a recommended potential minister for a corrupted Ministry of Education.

JAMB and the Anambra State investigations have exposed Mmesoma-Gate negating the social media that thrives on rapid-fire, ear-to-mouth-avoiding-brain explosive statements. Of course, JAMB was born with ethnic bias, immoral cut-off points. Amazingly, Mmesoma scored 249, admitting her on merit. She misled herself or she was ‘played’ and misled badly.

Why? Was she silly, just playing or greedy with an ‘I can cheat ’ moment? Did another/others tempt, bribe or blackmail her into offering her JAMB access to illegally share in the scholarships? ‘So, you have a 249 JAMB Result!! We will show you or change your result to ‘best’. Just give us half of the prize money, understood?’ Had she or her backers through a JAMB mole, seen the winning 360 score of amazing Uche Ukechinyere, or was it leaked, before offering her a cheating score of 362 to steal the prize in spite of her daily promise to be ‘Loyal, Faithful and Honest’?

In short, did she really act alone?  Timelines are important during the investigation of the extent of involvement. Has she been threatened to say she did it alone – a typical yahoo-yahoo ruthless criminal threat? Can she prove she did it alone by repeating the act in the presence of the police and JAMB expert officials? Even that test is not fool proof as she may have been taught.

Is this an unexpected fallout of a Yahoo-Yahoo attack on the newly impregnable JAMB of 2023? It certainly presents material for future JAMB anti-cheating strategies? The National Orientation Agency needs reinvigoration.   

The good employees over the years and the honest leadership team under Prof Oloyede are to be congratulated for bringing the good threads together creating a JAMB all Nigerians can be proud of. Some tried in the past against the endemic culture of corruption. We must make sure this singular institutional ‘anticorruption change’ is appreciated countrywide and spread to every educational and also other federal government and state and LGA institutions. 

Those who immediately vilified JAMB’s ability and agenda are now making lame excuses, silently licking their wounded pride or shuddering at seeing their uninspired public performance recorded forever in priceless social media rantings which gave Mmesoma 99% more publicity. Perhaps even her 249 score needs to be investigated through past school reports to exclude ‘mercenaries and manipulation’.

It is a sad embarrassment for her school but schools are not responsible for the negative activities and ambitions of wayward or misled pupils. Every political and non-political criminal jointly escaping with Nigeria’s trillions, as seen in EFCC, ICPC court cases, was educated in some acclaimed or ‘acquired’ school or tertiary institution. Did they learn their criminality from the institutions? Probably not; unless they were bad criminal cult members who by now must be senior officials across Nigeria and probably even conspiring to become president one day.  

JAMB has revealed another person Atung Gerard who did not even sit UTME but claimed 380/400. Cheating is much reduced from the detected 10-11% minimum some years ago but one malpractice case can destroy the reputation of hard-to-keep-clean public institutions like JAMB, but 2023-JAMB appears clean. Hurray!

Regarding punishment… NASS infamously demanded 21 years for university cheats while financial, political and other crooks repaid petty sums or tiny fines for stealing from the purse and crippling Nigeria. In law, Mmesoma is an adult though youth leaders are shamelessly 50 years old! Today she could face laws pronouncing variously 3-7 years jail and/or a N50-100,000 fine. She has been suspended from JAMB exams for three years. Justice and mercy are often combined especially if remorse is demonstrated but all know cheating is punishable.  

JAMB is hurting as it is an educational institution recently rescuing its reputation which Mmesoma’s actions and followers briefly attempted to poison. Nigeria is just a larger version of JAMB.

All ‘not exceeding N XYZ’ monetary fines make the ‘law an ass’ with today’s rubbish naira value and should be removed from laws and left to the court.

Today ‘JAMB IS FIT FOR 2023 PURPOSE’.

You, the reader, probably work to save Nigeria from destitution and destruction. Good. Please join me at my work: Last week I saw many needy patients. Two stood out. A boy and a girl from different families, three and two years old, each came blind in one eye. On examination both children had an eye cancer – a retinoblastoma. Google it.

There is a maliciously negligent deliberate politically driven underfunding causing lack of care for blind, mentally and physically challenged citizens in Nigeria and is evidence of underfunding medicine and education. Politicians should increase health and education budgets by reducing greed-driven political budgets. The parents will require often unavailable family, friends and other support for expensive cancer care and surgery or the affected children will be left at home to die or be victims of quackery or unrealistic miracle religious or traditional cures.

Citizen-targeted budgets are stolen as witnessed by the huge number of Fellow Nigerians in authority and politics accused of stealing, misplacing, misappropriating billions. This must stop.

We face a bleak future as, countrywide, doctors and nurses struggle in poor quality centres and see cancer patients daily and patients requiring expensive interventions like difficult surgery and expensive prolonged medications and specialist consultations. Poor patients cannot travel for ‘medical tourism’ strangely taxpayer money guaranteed to politicians, high civil servants and armed forces bosses for life. If that money was used properly on service delivery, no one would need to go on ‘medical tourism japa.’

We must take better care and make better use of masses’ money than during 1999-2023 when trillions were stolen undetected from the common patrimony.

We can first legislate to divert the N150b corruption-driven Constituency Projects from the politicians to the people’s budget, 50% for health and 50% for education and any change going to the power sector.

A politician says he needs money to pay huge demands for financial assistance for medical treatment and education from needy constituents. Wrong. Put that money directly in education and health instead will reduce the need for constituents to beg politicians.

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On that clinic day another child, eight-year-old, had an okada run into her and a left kidney injury requiring surgery. Another huge cost. A countrywide medical experience.

Sadly, even good intentions by politicians are sometimes thwarted by political insincerity, lip service, diverting funding or lack of ability to unite and follow through and finish projects, the uncompleted project, perhaps because the bribe had been given, on demand, to a previous office holder or nobody to supervise or answer to. No concern for citizens’ needs.

When I was younger, around the early 80s, UCH, Ibadan acquired the first CT scan in Africa to help it as a ‘Centre of Excellence in Neurological Sciences’ based on the work of Professors Odeku, Adeloye, Osuntokun and others. Frustratingly, the CT scan lay rotting unopened in a wooden crate for 10 years awaiting a room allocation or purpose-built building. The building never came. The CT was outdated, destroyed. Waste! No allocation. Corruption! Politics, an inability to execute multiple segments of the same project.

Elsewhere, government strangely buys non-syllabus books and forcing schools to take the useless books from a contractor who never asked what was required reading. A contract guaranteeing good education needs to become the norm. Stories of commissioners, etc. charging for books to get on book lists – a crime against the children of Nigeria! Corrupt civil servants, contractors and politicians should not dare pollute education.

But government rot is pervasive. All government activities are corruption prone resisted by the few at great personal cost. Remember Nigerian passport palaver worldwide? Simply a lack of fast benchmarks and supervision for efficiency! Remember the unopened crates of technical equipment littered around schools in the 80s – incompetence and lack of cohesiveness of the participants -government, politics, civil servants unable to unite to reach the classroom with technical material already in a container in the school. Shame!

Remember the 30 or 40 electricity parts containers left to rot at ports for years simply because government, the supervising ministry, the contractor and customs could not meet and unite to honestly deliver the ‘urgent Nigerian Electricity Project’ timely instead of dragging matters long enough for the equipment in the containers to be vandalised, become obsolete or stolen and resold to the contractor or government for other projects.

The above points out the Social Development Goals (SDG)s of health, education and contractual agreed obligations of government often neglected deliberately, by incompetence, corruption or selfish alternative agendas of supervisors who see themselves but as willing obstacles deliberately set up to change the ‘honesty game’ in favour of personal gain at public expense.

No country can grow well with more than 10% corruption in its health, education and electric power programmes. This is clear from where we actually are today in Nigeria. Our planners, politicians, failed.

In 2023, this government inherits blackouts, no potable water, underequipped schools and hospitals, 40-100% unbridled greed, 80% poverty, 50% real illiteracy, 6m IDPs, terror on most roads, corruption and conflict, lack of cohesion, disunity, between MDAs.

What will we say in 2027? Will we have cohesive action-packed governance or more of the same corruption and dangerous lack of unity in plan execution. Only government action now will change today’s statistics by 2027.

Journalists should please stop making light and sometimes sniggering, smiling or even laughing jokes when discussing terrorism, murders and banditry. Our people are dying. Some journalists may have ‘bad news fatigue’ or are immune but that is no help for the victims and their families.

 It was reported that 93,000 passports remain uncollected. Why? This government must reduce Passport Request-Delivery times to international time frames of 2-4 weeks. Where are the standard internationally acceptable ‘Time and Motion Studies’ which will reveal the need for increased capture points in all the passport offices to reduce appointment times and solar power?

CBN’s new directive to obtain social media handles from customers seems a step too far, crossing the line of good governance. The hundreds of high-level people stealing N1-109 billion under the noses of the CBN monitoring units, the so-far negligent apex bank, have no social media handles. Such information should only be available during a police, EFCC or ICPC enquiry into individuals after a court order according to the law and not a sweeping blanket social media revelation. The CBN should hold back on that aspect of the new directives/regulations and if in doubt seek a judicial opinion from the apex court. As apex bank to apex court, could CBN not have asked an opinion from the attorney general’s office or even the Supreme Court.

Yes, it is tempting for CBN to misuse its power by wanting to use what should be illegal even if ‘directive backed’ access to private social media handles and private groups and private sites to ensnare financial criminals through their greed-driven purchases boasted about on such social media vehicles.  But that is not the way forward to combat financial criminals. What is needed is not a ‘directive’ about customers but enforcement of the directive to banks to raise investigation and alarm when customers come suspiciously wealth.

CBN and banks must urgently relearn follow the money in a renewed effort at financial crime prevention and not post financial criminal detection.  Nigeria cannot survive a 2023-27 round of another batch of 20 or 100 new multi-billion naira thieves.

We must catch financial and other criminals at the first thought of stealing or criminal or terrorist activities not even actually stealing N100,000 and N1m and not only after the N100b has disappeared puncturing the economic growth of millions. Only we, in medicine, see the blood and death caused by these ‘clean harmless’ white collar financial crimes. No financial or other crime is harmless. There is always a victim and often blood on the floor.

It is up to the banks to point out to the CBN and the police and vice versa any suspected financial irregularities in customers’ accounts immediately and not only not after billions have been stolen from citizens or when a girlfriend’s uncle reports profligate spending by the girl. It is only after this observation or a corporate investigation into financial crimes that the authorities would authorise further financial and even criminal investigation.

Nigeria has suffered financial ruin mainly because such financial criminals, be they politicians or contractors or civil servants or middlemen or women, were not exposed before maximum damage was done. And too many then go free through legal illegality and judgmental technicality assisted by mimicking emergency medical and acting gymnastics.

CBN, auditors, accountants, EFCC, ICPC should be warned by the citizenry, watchdogs and the Presidency which stands the most to lose in this expected era of legacy projects and acts of great citizen need.

The presidency should direct that all MDAs obey the Annual Audit Law and should immediately have all audits should be brought up to May 2023 before any budgetary spending immediately to prevent the blame game. Subsequently they must compulsorily be DONE ANNUALLY in 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 and to May 2027 and immediately expose corruption. One way to do this is to audit monthly or quarterly making the last quarter easy to complete.

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The Presidency should direct the EFCC and ICPC to insert finanacial experts into all MDAs now with monthly or three-monthly audits, not in three years’ time investigating a three-year-old crime. Insert your men, and women, very visibly at meetings, praying they cannot be bribed, threatened or even killed. Introduce legal preventive measures to stop mega-financial crime now and not when we have been raped, robbed and rubbished by yet more in the billionaire bandits brigade.   But the EFCC and ICPC also need to keep their house clean every step of the way by adequate internal supervision and monitoring. They lack of supervision in all spheres.        

 One reason for our high white collar crime rate costing billions annually and ruining our citizenry and the naira is that anything without violence and some actions even with maximum violence like so-called ‘political election related crimes’ appears trivialized by the courts. Steal a billion and almost get congratulated. Steal a goat and get seven years. This is middle ages justice.

A man found guilty twice of money laundering N240m was initially sent to jail for 42 years and a N240M fine has now been jailed 42 years or the option of a N240m fine in a case in Akwa Ibom. This is two steps forward and three steps backwards. Where is the punishment? Meanwhile the man has ‘fallen sick’ as usual in such cases. They are never sick before being accused and getting to court. Maybe all courts have a virus?