Category: Tony Marinho

Our court system is a major nail in Nigeria’s coffin plagued with all the vices enunciated in the ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’ the biblical ‘corrupt judge’ and please add the ‘corrupt lawyer’ and ‘corrupt court clerk’, complementing the cries in the police that ‘ bail is free ‘ and ‘police is your friend’ and ‘corruption at checkpoints is a thing of the past’ all opposite to the reality seen by even children.

Yes, but the police recently dismissed yet another whistleblower in their midst. Yes, most judicial officers and police are exemplary, some giving their lives for Nigeria. Remember the ‘pepper soup coup theory’ days when a Police PRO Alozie Ogugbuaja was transferred to Nigerian ‘Siberia’ and later dismissed. Yes, many have been dismissed for bribery, but far more await being caught by Police Internal Affairs, a nonactive or non-existent self-regulating police watchdog.

Attending court or even the police station generates nationwide misgivings and mistrust, firstly in how it has treated and mistreated citizenry since forever- putting petty criminals and even falsely accused away ‘awaiting trial’ but releasing real criminals ‘on technicalities’ which in other professions like engineering and medicine would have led to accusations and trials for professional misconduct and negligence. A ‘technicality’ in law is often a mistake, sometimes deliberate by a judicial or police personnel or by a lawyer to be used for a reversal of a judgement or halt in the case or a dismissal of evidence or the whole case. The cunningness of the courts includes the unrecognised act, perhaps a new crime, called ‘‘judicial ‘trivialising’ of information’’ regarding an obviously nation-wrecking, citizen-destroying judicial action like, for example, granting bail to an Accountant-General accused of ‘breach-of-trust’ and ‘stealing N109b’ charges. Is the court lenient because there was no blood shed or body dead to terrify the social media millions?

Let the court be informed that we the citizens see the blood, sweat and tears and feel the loss whenever any kobo is stolen from you and me in a population of approximately 160 million. Note we are not the ridiculous estimate of 200 million and someone actually suggested 250 million on TV today -a calculated figment of political fake population inflation dissemination.

The court should have taken note when considering bail that every suspected theft of a naira in the government or private sector deprives every Nigerian of the value, with the suspected thief being the ‘Anti-corruption custodian,’ the Accountant General in charge. Sadly, he has mutated into a serious accused ‘Corruption Czar’. This act deprived Nigerians of a variety of essential and social rights to SDGs.

The court should calculate how many weapons for the police and armed forces this theft has denied Nigeria’s gallant troops and police, costing our security forces their lives. There is blood on his hands if found guilty.

The same court/police system in 2021 had committed 50,234 accused ‘awaiting trial’ out of 70,056 total prisoners with just 19,234 convicted. Why the discrimination? At the very least the accused, if guilty, is in ‘breach of national trust’ and dare I say ‘treason’, as the action of such magnitude certainly endangers the military integrity of Nigeria. Every action has a cause-and -consequence for budgeted bullets, books and building maintenance. Removing the N109b may have forced more of Nigeria’s foreign and domestic borrowing and helped precipitate the naira’s calamitous crash. He should never have been granted bail.

An important nail we should remove therefore is our ‘CORRUPTION NAIL’ manifest by individual disregard for Nigeria’s urgent need for genuine service to Nigeria. This counts for nothing today. We must have FLH, Faith in Nigeria, Loyalty to Nigeria in all dealings, and Honesty in every action and undertaking-public and personal -to help turn Nigeria back from the precipice. No country can survive and develop with a corruption level above 10%. Certainly not 20-100% estimated for Nigeria on various ‘contracts paid-no building’. Sing, make a poster – CORRUPTION IS A CITIZEN, NOT A COUNTRY. Today our ‘ANNUAL CORRUPTION BUDGET’ is a huge part of any budget passed generating   losses which are believed to be equal or in excess of the Annual Budget especially when the MASSIVE EXTRA-BUDGETARY CORRUPTION plaguing appropriately acronym-ed ‘MAD, Ministries And Departments.’

An ANTI-CORRUPTION YEAR may rescue Nigeria by removing this nail. Maybe Sep2022 -Aug2023. Our budget will double in amount and efficiency. Contracts will be cheaper, faster to execute.

One nail is ‘BLOATED POLITICS -FROM ELECTION CAMPAIGNS, ELECTIONS COSTS AND CORRUPTION, AND THE BURDEN OF POLITICAL OFFICE HOLDERS ON NIGERIA the deliberate misappropriation of income streams specifically to finance, fund, fuel and feed needless Salaries and Perks, SAPing Nigeria by an insatiably greedy bicameral NASS-Senate and House of Representatives and the huge unendurable burden of financing all political offices.

Collectively, these become a huge financial blight on the country, in and in addition to budget, reducing funds available to meet the SDGs by consuming funds especially for maintenance and upgrades, scholarships, bursaries and other desirable developmental contributions to the nation’s wealth. All election costs, accountable and corruption driven, are eventually deducted with interest from the budget – the people’s money. Political parties/Government must cut governance cost and NASS unbridled salaries and outrageous perks, megalomaniacal in the current economic gloom especially with the political party’s role in inflation of the APC nomination forms leading to a hike in kidnapper demands to N100m also. Shame.

The nails in the coffin of Nigeria have been placed over the years and may differ from analysis to analysis. Nails like the long one hammered into the beating economic heart of Nigeria causing a haemorrhage of seeming uncontrollable proportions by those who fix the black market naira value every night. Who and where are these mysterious economy destroyers, evil puppet masters of the Nigerian economy meeting tonight at 10,11 or 12 o’clock laughing at their profits and emboldened, perhaps in their perpetual greed, to make a dollar N1000, terminating a coffin-bound Nigeria in a final financial stranglehold?

They are unpatriotic economic saboteurs and mega-financial terrorists, nails, stealing the hard-earned money of Nigerians refused ‘white market dollars’ by a central bank whose ‘banker’ governor appears unable to take on board available ideas for naira-rescue proposed by many economists. He should flush out anyone ‘round-tripping dollars’ even if they are close to him. Should he not resign or be abruptly retired or fired? It is believed that bankers, in and out of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), are more interested in today’s banks profit/share margins while economists worry over longer term recovery goals.  There appears to be a 50+-year currency cabal with a motto ‘Reap where you do not sow’ controlling the black market’s ‘toilet-paper naira’ traumatised naira. Others work hard earning the naira while the cabal devalues their labour/earnings.

Who gives out CBN dollars controlled by the cabal and the rest of the black market but pretends to blame politicians for doing the exact same thing-both denying genuine dollar requests for citizens and companies? Is there a dollar haemorrhage to the favoured few in the CBN vault? There is financial terrorism against the naira-a nail!

Our immediate future seems gloomy because our immediate past has been disastrous and even deadly, nails in Nigeria’s coffin, for the over 10,000 acknowledged murdered since January, 10,000+ graves with collateral mental and physical injury to millions of those nearby and family. Despair weakens Nigeria’s 160 million, not 200m, exhausted by almost daily ‘Presidential Condolences’, running gauntlets of death, injury, robbery and kidnapping in local criminal and international terror attacks, the precipitous fall in our once proud naira, the skyrocketing living cost, the inability to farm and harvest without extortion and death threats and farmer deaths and non-payment of pensions and wages-more nails.

All these, with political rubbishing of the people’s existence politically, another nail, result in the mental and physical pauperisation of people with lives devalued paradoxically confirmed by a devilish kidnap N100million demanded by some kidnappers, not for a group but for each person.

Question: Did this kidnap figure, N100,000,000, a nail, predate or was it plagiarised from a criminal politics as it is the same inexplicably huge figure demanded by the APC for a Presidential Nomination Form, a nail, resulting in N3-4billion being acquired through nomination form selling at National Assembly, a huge economic burden nail, level. Kidnappers, nails, are demoralising and rendering many thousands of paupers from just one kidnapping. To pay ransom of N100,000,000 one needs 100 friends each having to give N1m each in a country with minimum wage =N30,000.  About 3,333 minimum wage earners will be equivalent to N100m. imagine the disruption too business, family and others of raising this money through frantic sale of property etc. Wickedness of the highest order.

How can we measure all the nails in Nigeria’s coffin on our fall into near anarchy? Yes, we can measure the naira value and count loss in naira value. We can also add the loss of life, livelihood and quality of life due to attacks and killings and billions stolen, nails, by just one person, a trusted accountant general, a nail. And add a guesstimate of all the other mega-thieves in power, also nails, who escaped the EFCC net through legal gymnastics, technicalities, court leniency and medico-dramatic skills rehearsed in acting classes. When accused of stealing, the political class, also nails, summons a lawyer and an acting coach? Nollywood directors and Theatre Arts professionals – Course ‘Corruption Avoiding Court Antics Drama Lessons -Course 419!

Note that if the accountant general, an accused nail, can be accused of stealing N109b, there are many others also stealing many billions each also, but unreported. This is a breach of trust at the national and state level in a crazy dimension beyond normal thought.

Let us measure ‘Trust’ at the individual level. Growing up we prided ourselves on being friendly, which includes trusting. Sadly, being friendly and trusting can get you killed or kidnapped today or have your children stolen. Yesterday’s trust has been replaced by distrust which is spreading like wildfire between and throughout families, friends, businesses, communities, religious and ethnic groups. What do parents and teachers teach our children about trust?

A simple example of our collapsed ‘Trust Level’: Most Nigerians no longer give pick up lift-seekers or stranded strangers along the highway or accident or injured citizens on the road or police officers and drop them at the other end of the expressway or other destinations like the motor-park or the hospital. This is an exercise of national pride repeated many times over the last 50 years. It shames me not to be confident enough of ‘security and safety measures’ to help those in need. Even church, mosque, work and home are no longer ‘Trust venues’. The death of trust is another nail.-[ to be cont’d….]

The Lagos State governor, Zonal Assistant Inspector General of Police and the Inspector General of Police and human rights, legal aid organisations should prevail on the wise Lagos State Commissioner of Police to please not charge with ‘inciting the public against the police’ the victim of police brutality – an  NYSC member at New Garage Ikorodu at 10 am, around July 19. The ‘altercation’ was inflicted on the NYSC member,  ‘SERVING’ in Lagos State under the ‘PROTECTION’ of the NYSC scheme and the GOVERNMENT OF LAGOS STATE-  and his brother on the one hand, by three police officers, who should, by training and supervision, be ‘officers and gentlemen’ acting within the law. Was he was saved by his video?

Indeed, the government, directorate of NYSC and its DG must demand that its legal team stoutly defend the human rights of this individual under compulsory national service.

I did NYSC in 1975/76 as the second set in Jos and Lafia General Hospital, Plateau State. We wore our uniform proudly and worked hard on our primary assignment and culvert building community development projects. We also navigated, cautiously, prayerful unpredictable fully-loaded checkpoints of variable friendliness as the itchy finger of civil war ‘environment’ still lingered.  Nigerians know what national service is. It is not an uncertain sentence to suffering.    Others must be asked to respect, not rubbish, NYSC participants. Parent and child suffer for educational success and NYSC members should not be brutalised or worse. Police are our friends if we are not criminals.

Strangely, this NYSC member faces prosecution for virally releasing the abuse video. Is this really the ‘educated and legal opinion’ of the IGP and Lagos State prosecutor’s office? It is the opposite of human rights and criminal law.

Recall the USA and the young 17 year-old horrified girl, Darnella Frazier, released the video of police choking George Floyd. Lawyers did not dismiss the video as ‘inciting the public against the police’ or even ‘recorded with no permit or authority or relationship to Floyd and therefore ‘without permission’ from the dying Floyd and the murdering officer’’. There was no USA prosecution for ‘incitement’ even though it triggered human rights protests in 60 cities.

Is it not the three police officers whose recorded actions ‘incited the public against the police’? Perhaps the video helped to keep the young NYSC member and his brother alive by providing a ‘virtual reality yardstick for humal rights accountability’. This is a human rights case to save a brutalised 24 year-old NYSC member from this strange official interpretation of the law.

The federal government rewards ‘WHISTLEBLOWERS’. Darnella Frazier received the Prestigious Pulitzer Prize. This NYSC whistle-blower should receive human rights awards.

The police have many amazing fine men and women risking and giving their lives and working hard for a pittance. To protect the police reputation, it is not the video recorders, but the police bad eggs carrying out activities which ‘incite the public against the police’ who should be prosecuted. The video is a documentary ‘truth over lies’ and should be encouraged not persecuted or prosecuted. The IGP and government agencies should welcome it, act on it, use it in training and eradicate such ‘Human Wrong’ behaviour.

See how we wrongly claim the success of our sports, academic and political arena citizens abroad as Nigeria’s glory without correcting our failure to implement our National Development Plans, ‘Visions’, MDGs, SDGs and other infrastructural development strategies which precipitated the 50 year-long ‘Nigerian Political and Economic Foreign Flight’. No foreigners rush to our institutions. Our country did not fail to deliver God-given assets – SOIL-Sun, soil, Oil and wonderful citizens. But the leadership and much followership misappropriated such assets and cut citizens down with outrageous academic cut-off points, biased CV assessment and selective hiring, promotion and distribution of financial assets.

Nigeria’s core is rotten and we have been unable to harness our fiscal assets for value-adding to Nigeria’s commonwealth, preferring corrupt, greed-driven personal gain and general pain. This results in our abysmal current systemic infrastructural and financial ‘architecture’ failure and chronic economic ill-health manifest by a cataclysmically catastrophic collapsed currency causing a toilet-paper collapsed naira value making the naira less valuable than one sheet of toilet paper with black market =N650:$1. Emefiele’s intervention makes the dollar unavailable for simple family gift and minor transactions without risk of a draconian closing of account for undefendable ‘suspicious activities’. This in a country where the chief financial officer, can be accused of stealing  N109,000,000,000 ‘after undisclosed corrupt deductions’ in this self-advertised ‘anti-corruption regimen’. Nobody shut his accounts; Emefiele threatens the common citizen seeking $200.

There is need for social, political and sports studies research to count the millions lost through Nigerian fans support for foreign football. Nigerians are experts on foreign football chairmen, coaches and players all with zero value except for betting agencies while home teams decay and die without government support.

Education suffers like football. Witness the gale of Nigerian students graduating from foreign universities this week, a date guaranteed when they entered university four years ago. This privilege is unavailable in Nigeria. The press focused on the VIP children graduating while identifying education neglect precipitating Government/ ASUU strikes resulting in 200,000+ ‘Nigerian Based’ students missing graduation in May/June complicating the frustration of Nigeria’s youth.

Debt service cost is N1.94trillion exceeding our revenue by N310billion. This government inherited a growing security threat. However, it has created its own financial debt crisis despite two+ years of professional warning.

In Osun State population 4.7m, 1.9m PVCs [41%] were made and in the election Adeleke Adeleke – PDP 403,371 [20% of total PVCs made, 27% of collected PVCs  voters and 51+% of actual voters],  wins over incumbent Governor Adegboyega Oyetola – APC 375,027 [19% of total PVCs made, 25% of collected PVC voters and 48+% of actual voters] with Lasun Yusuf – Labour Party 2,729[ 0.1% of actual voters] totalling 781,127 voters [52%] out of 1,479,595 PVCs collected. This means 698,468 [48%] DID NOT VOTE.

Remember that INEC complained that out of 1,955,657 PVCs issued only 1,479,595 PVCs [75%] were collected, leaving 476,062 [25%] no shows – more than voted for the winning party. In addition, where were the 698,468 [uncollected PVC owners-35% of total PVCs] + 476,062 [24% collected PVC, non-voters] = 1,174,530 PVC holders [60% of total PVCs]?

Are they ‘GHOST PVC holders’ equivalent to one and half times the number of the actual voters? Imagine if they had cast 1,174,530 or even 698,468 or 476,062 ‘protest votes’ for a minority candidate? He would have won easily.  There is an unacceptable waste of INEC budgeted resources. Are INEC waste papers incinerated or recycled for school children’s jotters?

The election went without violence. However, intimidation, fear factor and voter apathy due to a perceived lacklustre past performance and bleak future and little difference between the candidates/parties/ideology may have paralysed many voters. PAST PERFORMANCE MATTERS EVEN IN A RIGGED ELECTION.  So, what kept the electorate away? Civil Society/INEC should investigate this epidemic of ‘Non-picked-up’ or ‘Non-use of PVCs’.

WILL OSUN STATE BENEFIT FROM THE NEW GOVERNOR’S PLANS AND ACTIONS OR WILL THE NEW GOVERNMENT JUST BENEFIT FROM OSUN STATE?

The election points to a 20-30% lower population, 150-160m, than the 200m boasted about! Were the PVCs criminally made for non-existent or for voters with multiple registrations?

The election may be over, but will Osun State recover and eventually grow with serious SDG-compliant policies and practices and anticorruption strategies by the new government?

It seems INEC could reduce its ‘Printing Voter Card Budget’ and plastic footprint by one third by researching and better predicting actual voter numbers. Just think of the cost of the 48+% unused and therefore wasted voter cards! Sadly, crime in politics persists and criminally we heard a lot about N2,000, N5000, N7000 and N10,000 offered for the new name for ’vote trading’-the new name to soften the criminal interpretation for the action which is bribery and corruption! ‘Vote trading’ should not be used as it reduces voter corruption into a political gimmick.

Is vote buying better than vote stealing, ballot box stuffing, creative vote counting and underage voting? All are wrong, prosecutable and must be prosecuted. The politicians responsible, are criminally influencing the result, should be jailed and barred from public office.

If you cheat to get power, you will cheat to stay in power and cheat the treasury while in power leading to massive ‘approved’ corruption inflating  governance costs to ‘recoup with 1000% interest’  election expenses. Now we must add N100m to that bill if the governor seeks the Presidency in future.

We applaud the progress of a British Nigerian Kemi Badenoch, 42, in the conservative party and the corridors of power around Number 10 Downing Street and being among the last five from over 30 PM aspirants. Fortunately, she did not face a criminal N100m or $240,000 fee to buy a form. We wish her success.

Nigeria has borrowed, particularly during the last seven years, creating a debt profile of N41+trillion-? N45trillion by end 2022. N41,000,000,000,000 or N150,000 -N200,000/Nigerian if my math is right. Some of Nigeria’s creditors are now also in financial trouble with citizens protesting high cost of living and falling currency values, the Covid disruption of family and business, high oil prices, the trouble with Russia, impending food shortage, destructive climate change events paradoxically causing massive flooding, heatwaves and frequent forest fires destroying economies and livelihoods. Can Nigeria’s children pay our current debt without paralysing our home economy and decimating even further our ‘toilet-paper’ currency, the once proud ‘N1 :$1.5’?

Governments and politicians at state level in Nigeria often inherit debt and uncompleted projects without question, not prosecuting guilty political predecessors, who corruptly diverted funds and robbed their true employers, the people, of salaries, pension and infrastructural inheritance. Hail Nigeria, where the captains of state and federal government agencies regularly turn into pirates accused in their hundreds and sometimes convicted of stealing sums totally trillions- caught only after crazy amounts have been stolen from Nigeria’s children’s present needs and future.

The latest among smiling, playacting dead, diseased or maimed accused was the Accountant General of the Federation, responsible for the safety of Nigeria’s public money, accused of N80b- 200billion i.e. N80-200,000,000,000, [N300- N2,500 per Nigerian population 160+m ] and owning 15+houses, caught only because he offered a 15-year-old any house in Abuja which she reported to an uncle who deserves GCON, a whistle blower reward and recognition by SERAP, Transparency International etc.

Who in the ICPC/EFCC/SFU failed to screen before appointment and monitor during the accountant general’s tenure? Is this ‘anti-corruption government’ so corruption-porous and without checks and balances and alarms when the first N1m or N1Om/N100m/N1,000m/N10,000m/N100,000m/N1b took off? We trivialise the word ‘Accountant’. It is a burden and means ‘to keep account’ and ‘Account for’ the nation’s funds. That is his only task but strangely full of apparently unmonitorable temptation. Monitor governments.

Who are responsible for keeping maximum security terrorists in an under-equipped, undermanned ‘less than medium’ security facility-terrorist captured at huge cost to Nigeria and inspirational military bravery with so lives lost? All gains cancelled in one night – so painful to watching war widows, fatherless children and bitterly conflicted colleagues of the fallen heroes, sacrificing blood and lives to capture the 67 terrorists and 443 others now free.

Will security improve or are we just ‘shocked and disappointed’ again after seven years in power? Does the released prisons’ budget since 2015 tally with the visible expenditure? Why were they not confronted on exiting the prison?

So, 103 days after, seven Kaduna Abuja train kidnapped citizens are freed, leaving 43 still in dangerous humiliating captivity. While we rejoice with the freed and sympathise for the delay, we wonder what plans will release the 43? Sadly, Nigeria’s kidnappers demand huge ransoms beyond victims and families and private and public sector reach. Personal and relations’ lifelong livelihood home investments and assets are liquidated. Do not forget the Fellow Nigerians murdered by their kidnappers, merely for ‘entering a train’.   Nowadays, when you ask most people to do anything, even when they are paid, they do it resentfully, grudgingly with a huge frown or otherwise show they should not be doing the task or/and are unwilling to complete the task. The result is half-completed tasks nationwide starting in the room, home, classroom, lecture hall, office, ward, clinic, hospital and contracts. So, few tasks are completed, leaving shoddy-jobs. Your artisans will mess up their areas, the cleaner will only clean easily inspected areas. Nobody wants to clean up their own mess. In fact, it seems they plan to create work for each other.  Professionals come late to work, take long breaks and are hostile to clients and customers thinking ‘work is punishment’.

Copy out the slogan ‘Work is not punishment’ and paste it around your offices and on WhatsApp. Sadly, the drive towards entrepreneurial gain has meant that people are reluctant to do work-for-no-pay and the loss of the golden age of ‘Volunteerism’ now considered to be a foolish, ‘Mumu venture’.

School punishment with manual labour like extra grass cutting and fetching extra water and cleaning the toilet have unfortunately ingrained the idea that ‘work is punishment’. The idea of ‘work is a honourable responsibility’ is rarely visible in work-is-not-my-father’s -business Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) including Nigeria’s schools – remember Chibok classrooms and filthy dormitories-  prisons – all highlight our monumental security work failure. Such places are often left dirty, to be cleaned and maintained only when an ‘0ga-at-the-top’ is visiting.

Even when cleaned, most offices remain eyesores in the corners and especially on the walls where the staff members heads and bodies and the chair backs have rubbed dirty stains and lines into the painted walls from years of sleeping-on-duty hair oil stains and plastic chair/concrete wall interface  damage. By now every office manager should know that chairs should be moved at least six inches off the wall to prevent such damage. This can be done with a flat board wedged behind the chair legs. This would reduce the need to paint offices more regularly. If not, we will continue to face eyesores like disgusting dirty offices, largely because supervisory staff and workers see ‘work as punishment’ when ‘work is not punishment’ but ‘work is an honourable responsibility’.

Workers do face problems. Apart from low morale from poor salaries and the poor economy, there is often poor and inadequate modern equipment to make work easy. We see road sweepers, rubbish clearers, rubbish clearing vehicles. Most of the workers are underequipped and the equipment provided is often inadequate. Budgets for cleaning equipment, toilet paper, toilet cleaning etc. are diverted. Remember that we are all workers, not just the hands-on workers. What do we face in our work that is militating against maximum performance? What do you face? Is your office clean, are you and your workers working optimally?

The real question is ‘Could you, your environment and office be better positioned if all workers around you imbibed the spirit and practice of the slogan ”Work is not punishment. It leads to perfection”?

Of course, work must be ‘honest work’ and a worker must work hard enough to be ‘worthy of the pay and eventual pension’. Sadly, some governments and pension funds specialise in denying worked wages and pensions as-at-and-when-due, destroying the work ethic and morale and motivation of even the best workers and also their families and communities. A society without hard workers as rewarded role models faces destruction.

Roundabouts and ‘T’ junctions and crossroads have become the nightmare focus when it rains and late after office hours when the police and FRSC have ‘hands-off’ their joint responsibility to maintain legal road movement. Sadly, the common courtesy of ‘Giving Way To Traffic Already On The Roundabout On Your Left’ which used to be a badge of traffic efficiency, resides in the dustbin of ‘Traffic Courtesy’. Today we face the wicked viciousness with which public and private drivers block roundabouts and junctions.

The common sense ’If you don’t go, I can’t go’ is abandoned and replaced with ‘If I don’t go, you won’t go’. This ‘Roundabout Revolt’ by Nigerian drivers is anger-driven and an irresponsible moral character flaw manifesting as an impatience that makes everyone suffer longer and is a cruel, miscalculated mistake. Nobody wins!

It is not right to stop the Voter Registration PVC capture exercise for any reason at all, except corruption or imminent election, and definitely not so long before the election. Nigeria claims a questionable population figure of 200 million and the more realistic one of 160million taking into account a 20-40%, average 30% politicised and economic advantage ‘Ghost Citizens’ inflation of populations in LGAs and states.

Statisticians can use the acceptable population statistics to answer the question: ‘How many Nigerian youth become 18 every day, every month and every year?’ This answer is essential, as it will arm INEC as to numbers of new young voter registration figures to expect when those youth who were 14/15/16/17 at the last election in 2019 are now 18/19/20/21 years old and qualified, entitled and actively encouraged to register to vote. We must remember that age is the only criterion. And this figure does not consider older apathetic and migrant Nigerians seeking to register, but it is a huge positive start. INEC’s deadline has certainly energised political parties, social and religious and even governments and private sector to encourage its young workforce, and its older politically-negligent class to register before the deadline. Great. The PVC is now weaponised; the right outcome for the wrong reason, PVC obtained because of fear of sanction, not patriotism and the necessity of ‘Citizen Participation’.

Voter registration has been made a big deal by politicians and INEC. Instead, it should have been ingrained in the education system at secondary and tertiary level as a motivational means of separating age grades — ‘18 and above vs below 18 by election day’.

Should PVC be introduced as the most valid form of ID at 18? Not everyone has the skill or opportunity to get driving licence and may not be in the type of employment which issues an ID Card. But every Nigerian 18 year old can and should own a PVC.  Yes, it is a big deal in countries where votes count legally and age and nationality disqualifications exist against under-aged and non-nationals being criminally registered.

Everyone is shouting about the child rights and under-aged trafficking and organ trafficking abuse that seems to be apparent in the Ekweremadu matter. And so they should be shouting if the case is as first presented. But is it as it seems? There is a lot of conflicting information out at the moment? Several agencies face questions. Even if the child is not a child and was actually 18 or 21years, is he a fit person, knowledgeable, to make such a life-influencing decision as giving up a kidney? Were his family members involved, on board and fully informed? Did they have the right to make such a decision for a person aged whatever his age comes out as when interrogated?

Some are asking if the poor girl suffering from the kidney disease has no siblings or closer blood relations willing to donate a kidney. We look forward to the time when the truth is sorted from the fiction and ‘faction’. Certainly, one child has been saved from having an unnecessary operation. He may ‘seek asylum’ and end up in the UK for life for the error, transgression, omission or commission of others. Some have pointed out that the Ekweremadus and Buharis of this Nigeria have been in power long enough to have had governments build not one but several first-class facilities capable of delivering the full range of first class medical care to Nigerian citizens nationwide without the recourse available to politicians earning government money and receiving government ‘perks’ which they can use to access and visit foreign institutions. The questioners add that those institutions abroad are sadly populated in most cases by a large cohort of ‘Economic Medical Migrant’ Nigerian medical experts, from doormen, porters, laboratory, nursing and medical and consultant staff all forced to leave Nigeria in order to feed and provide for their families adequately and provide life’s basic infrastructure. A shame!

But coming back home, how many are shouting about the ongoing widespread child rights abuse and under-aged ‘Political Trafficking in and Deception of Under-aged Persons’ involving several political parties and INEC? Do the leaders sitting condemning others not know of the trafficking in children’s rights in their own ranks?  Child PVC registration and voting is a prosecutable ‘child abuse/human rights abuse’ crime and is as much a crime as child trafficking. It is an illegal corruption of youth morals and criminally, making them pretend they are ‘older than they are ‘and thus depriving them of their childhood. It exposes them to violence and other dangers of being present at polling booths during rowdy electoral processes.

In Nigeria why do hardly no more than 35% of the existing voter card holders ever vote anywhere in the country? Voter apathy is the accusation but it questions the accuracy or authenticity of the voter card holder count. Where is the hidden voter card silent majority, about 50-60%, in Nigeria, which agreed to be captured but refuses to pick up or refused to vote if they picked up their Permanent Voter Cards, PVC.

Yes, there are serious security fears from political parties behaving badly by using violence as weapon of politics. The other source of violence is the serious insecurity in the land.  Solutions please?

Clearing the okada epidemic in Lagos requires repeating in neighbouring states to stem relocation violence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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