Category: Tony Marinho

  • Olutunde Oni@80; Killings; NMA

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 740,000, infections 20,500,000, with around 48,000 recognised cases and 960 deaths in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    Dr Olutunde Oni, a distinguished product of Government College, Ibadan and distinguished medical professional and doyen of the private medical practice, fluent in German, having attained his medical professional training in Germany, and still in active practice, was 80, Sunday August 9. He is a Past District Governor of Rotary International and foundation member and the current chairman of Educare Trust, a youth targeted NGO and was Oyo State chairman, of the NMA, and also chairman of Ibadan Dining Club which was founded by late Chief Simeon Adebo. Happy Birthday, Sir, and many more healthy years. O, and Yes, he taught us briefly in St Gregory’s College in the 1960s.

    Our hearts go out to all people of Lebanon as they struggle with the trauma of the huge blast in Beirut port taking at least 200 dead and 5000 injured with thousands of homes and workplaces destroyed.

    Killings in Southern Kaduna’-police arrest protesters. Why are Nigeria’s presidents silent, or are they noisy in private? Don’t ‘Black Lives Matter’ to them??? The torrent of tears shed for the dead have bled like their blood into the red earth around their angry graves. Has government arrested anyone or prevented attacks? It is impossible to protect one’s family if disarmed by security before attacks -an intelligence breach or spies. Are security agencies Unavailable? Motorcycles have heat trails trackable by drone, Nigasat or UNsat to their lair. When one reports assault to police one risks becoming accused.  The dead paid the price of life. Why is Southern Kaduna lethal? The authorities claim it is not religious but inter-community clashes. Locals claim government complicity. If only the dead could announce their killers!! The president and governor speak differently from the survivors.

    ‘Armed Fulani killed 33 in Southern Kaduna Attack -SOKAPU’, Southern Kaduna Peoples Union. New victims were killed with names released but no murderers held. So, a protest should highlight government failure to preserve life, peace and security. Our mothers marched ‘naked’ recently to protest these constant murders. The #RevolutionNow protest led to arrests. Are they not the wrong people to arrest for mourning and holding government to its neglected but sworn oath to protect the vulnerable? Many asked if there is complicity in killings. It is an insult to Nigeria for government official spokesmen to denigrate the protest as an ‘irritation’. Are the dead an ‘irritation’ too?? No!!! They did not kill themselves.  Will that same presidential spokesman dare to go, without guards, to the ‘irritated’ families of dead ‘irritated’ victims in Atyap Chiefdom of Zangon Kataf LGA?  Since I was a child, Zango Kataf has been under onslaught. How they survive is a testimony to resilience under adversity, foreign and local. Government should support the citizenry with closely monitored security, who are not extortionist but supportive to ensure peace. The happenings in Southern Kaduna demonstrate inadequacy of any anti-bandit war. The governor and the president are failing the country and Zango Kataf in particular. They must eschew religious and ethnic branding to achieve the award of true leadership. Anything less is failure.

    The thirst for power, political and financial, exists in everyone. Some professions, including medicine, are supposed to be like Caesar’s wife, above accusation and reproach, more-so because of the humanitarian aspects of the calling– ‘Do no harm’!! Unfortunately, the use of NMA office at state level on the CV as a stepping stone to Commissioner of Health, NMA President and then perhaps federal minister is a strategy irresistible to politicalised doctors, mimicking the NBA. Governments interfere in professional body elections presumable to muzzle intellectual middleclass opposition to their political neglect of citizens.  The stakes seem high enough for a few doctors to use violence and mischief to rig or ruin good elections to disenfranchise colleague voters. The ‘Medical Thuggery’ or ‘Doctors Violent Voting’ witnessed in Enugu NMA is disheartening because successful elections have been held silently across the country mostly using e-voting with around 1000 voters in each election with no Covid-19 and no violence. The few instigators of the Enugu debacle are an NMA disgrace. They should face charges, pay all medical, structural and clean-up costs and be suspended from work and the NMA and face an NMA/MDCN Disciplinary Committee Hearing and risk being struck off the Medical Register for ‘Practices unbecoming of a doctor’ and breaking the Hippocratic Oath. But ‘No Knowledge is Wasted’ even negative results. From this ‘Clinical Case’ a few Enugu NMA renegades have confirmed that ‘Political Corruption of Mind and Body’ is a dangerous ‘Communicable Disease’ as it has crossed from pure politics into Medicine. Fortunately experiments across Nigeria by the NMA prove it is treatable by compulsory e-voting. So, it will not be the ‘Next Pandemic’.

    Calculate the lives destroyed by one person in an NNDC/MDAs, NASS believing wrongly that ‘Commission’ means not ‘A Body to Serve’ but ‘A Percentage (20-100%) of Every Budget or Contract’.  Every state has always had enough to ‘Make Their State Great’ but the leaders have, without other tribes, crippled their own flesh and blood enriching five or six relatives  but the extended family suffers, like the rest, neglect of good sustainable developments and scholarship opportunities. Personal stolen wealth is no substitute for collective economic and social satisfaction and must be forcibly removed from ‘The Nigerian Political Leadership Handbook’.

  • C8: A country at war with itself

    C8: A country at war with itself

    By Tony Marinho

    The C8 War: CCCCCC: Covid, Country, Citizenship, Character (Federal), Corruption, Currency, Crippling Debt, Conflicts.

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 700,000 infections 18,600,000, with around 45,000 Nigerian cases. Hand-wash, Social Distance and mask are essential.

    Country, Citizenship, Character War: Is Nigeria a country at war with itself and its citizens and abusing federal character, but refusing to admit it or take ‘war-like’ action? Let our leaders prove it is not.  Nigeria is a country -a piece of land within borders. Chief Obafemi Awolowo said in 1947, Nigeria was a ‘mere geographical expression’. Citizens make it feel like home for each other. Dominance and subjugation negate nationhood. Awolowo had no citizen ‘at home’ feeling. Have you- in 2020?

    That definition is step 1 in making a country. We citizens have a country name, passport identity to back-up the country assertion. But some ‘haves’, in Nigeria claim they feel we are a nation – a natural goal, but not always achieved. Look at Sudan and Ethiopia. So, Nigeria on the scale of nationhood is a new country searching to become that great moral entity- a nation. Nigeria is a ‘nation in evolution’! But there is a cost to delay – citizens’ bloodshed, loss of growth, life in despair, emotional dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement, and loss of a feeling of belonging, with no authority rectifying the devastating feeling.

    In football and many sports, all citizens, Nigerians discover their collective responsibility and camaraderie and unite as a nation behind the best Nigerians, but not daily.

    A nation is where the chest bursts with pride when challenged or on the first music note of the anthem, where heartbeats quicken and warmth glows through the head and hairs stand up on the neck at mention of the name ‘Nigeria’, with a tear shed at recall of the nation’s dead or at the heroic passionate singing of the inspiring Nigerian national anthem or at the unfurling of the Green-White-Green flag flapping musically in the breeze or at the swearing of the glorious binding Nigerian national oath and taking of the profound Nigerian national pledge. These are welcome tasks for the national patriotic citizen and carried out with easy love, concern, and commitment for a greater tomorrow.

    But at end of game, that burst of pride and nationalism are merely transient.  The grim reality is the powerlessness, potholes, corruption and insecurity of life and the trauma and difficulty of sewing the Nigerian multi-coloured doll together or keeping a fractured Nigeria together.

    We only partially succeeded after the Civil War (1967-1970) in the repair of the country but that war did not heal completely. Old war wounds caused by poor post-war progress causing delays have festered and re-opened as demonstrated by the still unfinished Second Niger Bridge, East-West Road and poor East West Railway and atrocious federal road network. But beyond the physical is the mental neglect and oppression with insultingly ethnic-biased appointments creating non-representation issues with dangerous effects on citizenship and polity. The breakdown of the principle of citizen involvement caused by the refusal to implement federal character in appointments and distribution of federal resources and also over-centralisation over peripheral activities through the Unitary Federal Exclusive List, a military coup relic, are the most glaring signposts that must be redirected to send citizenry in the ‘we are one country, one nation’ direction . But will the political class be bold enough to give and take enough for the country to change direction and become a true nation? There are millions of citizens pointing the way, but those with political sway, dangerously for Nigeria’s future, arrogantly ignore the route to confirming the nation has grown from a country. How myopic and malicious can they be? We grow, they grow. Get them glasses to see the children of every ethnic group, sex and family seeking one thing- a nation which loves them.

    With such war fronts on many sides, it still appears that the leadership cannot combat the multiple lethal conflict wars facing citizens daily. It takes few preventive measures. Why is government fast to sympathise, but   too slow to save the citizen from repeated bloody attacks by marauding herders, Boko Haram and ISWAP even in Maiduguri and its suburbs best manifest by conflicts in Northeast and Southern Kaduna with 4-5 million IDPs- neglected refugees in their own country.

    Add the Corruption War of ‘Most Nigerian Officials vs. All Citizen’ and undetected and un-resisted until there are over 50 different multibillion naira cases and thousands of multimillion naira cases of theft from repeated un-prevented assaults on every single MDA and state government budget by the politically appointed, workers, contractors demanding ‘20-100% Commission’ on everything?  Indeed, tell citizens that state officials have stolen more for their own tribal citizens than federal government greed.

    There is a Currency War from theft, fraud, lack of financial control and transparency, oil prices, poor sales, and fraudulent refineries. Another C is the Crippling Debt N33+trillion especially to China the old/ new husband of Africa- the beautiful bride with a cheap dowry to be paid with assets. Google ‘China Debt-Trap’. On our behalf, SERAP and NASS demand to see the documentation on this N33trillion debt.

    The attack on Governor Zulum convoy is another ‘isolated incident’. A further ‘Declaration of WAR’ against Nigeria while the armed forces court-marshals its finest! The violence on traffic in Lagos during the Third Mainland Bridge closure signifies government negligence. Who, what ‘C’ is next?

  • Faster Contracts; Stopping MDA corruption

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 660,000 infections 17,000,000, with around 42,000 recognised Nigerian cases. ‘Social Distancing’ and masking are essential.

    More mindless killing of 31 citizens, unarmed farmer families by Fulani militia in Southern Kaduna??? Yet we have satellite, drone and helicopter surveillance. Can Nigeria survive this constant unmourned blood loss? Who next?

    Government contracts are slow, killing business. Six-month Third Mainland Bridge closure?? No urgency!! Expressway 15 years repairs and counting.

     

    Has government opened the BRT lane on Ikorodu/ Funso Williams Road to allow 1/3rd more vehicles access, relegating the BRT lane to the access road where it should have been all along?

    With unemployment more could be trained for work even divers from Niger Dock or Niger Delta? Make 20 gangs, not one or two.

    Employ psychologists to lecture, monitor and mentor uniformed officials from traffic, military and police to cut police harassment and abuse of women seen in video last week. George Floyds exist in Nigeria.

    Forensic accountants and HND accountancy are yearning for ICPC, Reformed-EFCC, and MDA jobs. The amount of theft in MDAs also suggests need for psychiatric evaluation as a reformed-EFCC strategy.

    Flying Officer Tolulope Arotile 1995- 2020 dubbed ‘Bandit Slayer’, first female combat fighter pilot was laid to rest, after being victim of a freak accident involving classmates.

    Anyone who has known any air-force pilot, and I have my life-long friend former Squadron Leader J.B. U  as reference, knows that it is a paradox of major proportions that a person with such highly precision, positional and tactical local and international training and fundamentally special brain skills is killed by a driver reversing on a slow road.

    Maximum competence meets maximum incompetence with catastrophic consequences. Phone records, contacts, visitors will help exclude conspiracy theories like ‘Make it look accidental’. She was walking 400metres. Did she have a car, and why not if she did not?

    The NDDC, NNPC, NEDC, EFCC corruption and other accusations remind us that all MDAs and organisations are buildings and immune to corruption.

    Nigerians in those organisations, with children, choose non-corrupt or corrupt dealings with visitors also with children!

    Blame leaders and workers and sack, suspend, move to ‘suspended animation jobs’ any ‘unsackable’ leaders or staff who cannot stop being corrupt ‘with immediate effect’.

    There are five months left in 2020. We cannot afford to lose 30-50% of our budget to corruption or by January there may be nothing. Nigeria is sick from corruption disease.

    We must stop this for it to recover enough before stealing starts again next year, abi no be so? Theft in any organisation above 10% of total budgetary allocation will kill the business e.g.

    Nigeria PLC. ‘Cause of Death’ may be put as Corona’ or even ‘Boko Haram’ but the underlying condition will be’ Systemic Corruption’. ‘What Is In It For Me-WIIIFM?

    How can I make money beyond my salary from today’s work?’ asks every ‘gateman to GM’ as they arrive at work. Many honest Nigerians dismiss the thought.

    The dishonest get caught by the corruption bug. They create, innovate or participate in pre-existing office schemes pretending and spreading the myth that it is the organisation that is corrupt.

    On Saturday /Sunday, the building is not corrupt! Only Monday to Friday when humans are present!! Who withholds and delays documents and ‘’disappears’’ files to be miraculously found when ‘something for the boys and girls’ is paid? Was it ‘prayer’ or ‘envelope’ that recovered the files?

    We must change the narrative from ‘NGO accusatorial’ to ‘MDA aggressive compliance’. Anti-corruption should be normal not imposed.

    The Oath and Pledge force serious personal responsibility on the taker. The anti-corruption fight needs leadership leading from inside out.

    Don’t take an MDA or NASS office if you will not fight corruption. Let us blame everyone in every MDA office for the seething cesspool and river of corruption at federal, state and LGA levels.

    All management running public office is holding that office in anticorruption trust for the people. One element of trust pacts is the ‘Anti-corruption Strategy’.

    It is not nuclear physics to expect daily oath taking in every office in MDAs – a call to be ‘FLH-Faithful, Loyal and Honest’ through 1] Specific, 2] Publicly Articulated and 3] Demonstrable Successful Anticorruption Strategies beyond posters in the foyer of a known corrupt organisation.

    Both MDA leadership and followership need to salvage the value of government to society by ramping up their anti-corruption strategy which they execute on our behalf.

    MDAs must exonerate themselves one person at a time. If any single government agency has examined its systems, identified its flaws, plugged corruption loopholes and published audited accounts, it should be shouting for forensic auditing.

    Let that organisation step forward for ‘Anti-Corruption Compliance Testing’. It is social and political science 101. Why is no Nigerian happy visiting MDAs?

    Corruption can be stopped today nationwide if we stop each our personal corruption. We account to God as individuals, not political parties or cabals.

    An IGP stopped checkpoint corruption nationwide. MDAs hold that ‘STOP CORRUPTION TODAY’ meeting today.  Nigeria depends on you, too.

    Nigeria is not yet reliant on NASS politicians in the anti-corruption fight. Every organisation including NASS needs demonstrate internal ‘Anti-Corruption Strategies’ not just ‘Aggressive Microphone Denial Strategies’ for legitimacy.

    MDAs, NASS look inward and clean out any corruption rot you have got. Do not shout critics down. Show them around clean MDAs, NASS.  No smoke without fire. Brandish your anti-corruption strategically proven credentials.

     

  • Politicians, MDAs pledge: Stop stealing NOW             

    Politicians, MDAs pledge: Stop stealing NOW             

    Tony Marinho

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 620,000 infections 15,500,000, with around 39,000 recognised Nigerian cases. ‘Social Distancing’ and masking are essential.

    Nigeria’s Diplomatic Corps and CBN must engage government and the National Assembly (NASS) on the dangerous Lebanon situation [pop 6.8m] before we fall into the same irreversible financial and insecurity cycle on a huge scale. Governance is not a joke but a heavy yoke, requires daily adherence to the abandoned National Pledge and Oath which should end ‘or let my children be punished’. He may be happy to have his wife punished.

    Last week’s column reported that every dollar stolen is a dead Nigerian baby, mother, child- for real. Ask the Nigeria’s illegal migrants risking dangers and deaths in the Sahara Sun, Mediterranean Sea, razor-wire fence, organ donor threats or prostitution in Fortress Europe. Ask the disillusioned doctors whose country failed them, forced them to think ‘abroad’ and leave Nigeria to the greedy political class. Nigerians derisively remind every single politician, official and contractor that they would have long since fled Covid-19 with their families but for cancelled flights. We must sincerely build up Nigeria’s infrastructure particularly the health service from LGA to state to federal government level. Who asks why Nigeria’s migrants risk their lives? Nigeria’s corruption is causing their migration and murder. The murderers – the politician, MDA and civil servant and contractor thief. Politicians say they do not see people eating out of dustbins or dead children. They are CAC- ‘Cause and Consequence’ and ‘Ignorance is no excuse’ -a popular NASS insult.  But politicians do see tomorrow’s dead the urchins at every street corner through bulletproof glass in the NASS jeeps each paid for by depriving street corner urchins of boreholes and classrooms.

    Buying cars with the people’s money in the near depression budget is a crime and punishable! Our doctors and other health professionals have frustratingly stood, like me, in needlessly shed blood, lamenting the dead, prescribed out-of-stock drugs, been attacked by relation’s thugs, operated without gloves and used a torch in operating theatres infested with bacterial bugs, and having to strike to get rights for their patients and themselves. Yet, such ‘rights’ are wrongly harvested by politicians wallowing in outlandish ‘Salaries and Perks’ which are SAPing us dry and which should be cut by 75%, to meet much lower international standards political renumeration.  Their new avalanche of LGA taxes in the time of Covid will kill more. LGA thugs will anger more when LGAs are greedily expecting fattened direct allocations from federal government. Their greed knows no bounds.

    When greeted, remember you are not ‘surviving’ as many politicians, officials and contractors do by manipulation and even stealing billions from NSITF, NDDC, NNPC and most MDAs which would never survive forensic audits. They apparently read the pledge to be ‘Unfaithful, Disloyal and Dishonest’ to Nigeria My Country!!!! Fellow Nigerians and Nigeria itself are not ‘surviving’.  ‘We are dying’ and will die -dead- if we do not stop corruption and act our pledge daily ‘Today July 22 No Corruption in this Ministry, MDA or Contract’ and stop corruption for six months at least. We will not die because 58 or 200 doctors leave. Try to get a decent paying job in government as a doctor or specialist consultants! Endless waiting, connections, insults, and corruption!! They refuse to fill vacancies, divert the salary ‘elsewhere’. And when you get the job and request modern equipment, they answer ‘Are you the first doctor in Nigeria? Go and manage’. You then ‘manage’ government lapses and consequent suffering and untimely death. And when you strike- since the 1960s ‘they’ only listen in a strike, you are derided by PPP-patients, press and public- as selfish!

    Problematically the politician is now ‘know all’ replacing all other professionals but has largely become incompetent in solving citizen’s needs, particularly patient needs, and nationwide insecurity. Politicians consider medical treatment as a waste and non-productive, consumptive. Did they approve the State Health Insurance Schemes to raid the warehoused funds as was done with salary and pension funds?

    In Nigeria there is a sinister scam to fit every sincere scheme! And we mistakenly blame 419 and yahoo-yahoo boys while ignoring their seniors. Governments mostly do not want to pay doctors, preferring ‘almost free’ NYSC doctors, keeping their own general hospitals as 19th century colonial medical outposts and glorified referral centres to nearby teaching hospitals or the recently introduced Federal Medical Centres. Which governor would go to a state hospital? Yet annually each and every state has had mega-enormous funds, enough to annually propel citizens into ‘better than federal’ 21st Century education, health, roads, water and sanitation and other infrastructure for all corners of their own ethnic citizenry enclaves. Hatred of self. Governors in particular and LGA chairmen must be seen to love citizens.

    A thief if caught will stop stealing immediately. Zero corruption for ministers, officials, and contractors, is their decision. My good friend Niyi Osundare reminds me of my Guardian article titled ‘Wanted: Genuine ten percenters’ 9/2/1984. In 1960-70s, 10% corruption was the norm, divided among all involved. Now we have at least 10 levels each demanding 10% – leaving little for execution! My article on 21/2/1984 was ‘Wanted: A watchdog on drugs’. Eventually NAFDAC happened in 1993/4. Today, Nigeria demands we live up to our pledge of zero corruption. Why must we settle for 10% corruption? Any higher and we all die. No country or business can develop with corruption above 10%.

  • PMB: WAEC now; Hating Nigerians       

    PMB: WAEC now; Hating Nigerians       

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 600,000 deaths, infections 13,300,000, with around 34,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    President Buhari, open schools for WAEC please – A Covid-19 wartime leadership decision!  Ministry of Education is to protect children in school. Worldwide class sizes are Covid-19 compliant.

    As a doctor I say: Covid-19 is dangerous but cancelling WAEC is disastrous – throwing the baby out with the bathwater leading to childhood depression and suicide. All schools meet Covid-19 Safe Distance now by dividing final year students into empty classrooms.

    Only WAEC children are in school. One student/desk, 20-30 per class, with variations of ‘single seat five-six rows of four-six columns’, practical maths.

    Provide water. Masks from home. Teachers: Practice less contact. No exchanged homework. No rough games. All teachers to cover extra classrooms opened.

    President Buhari, open schools please. PS. Could/should WAEC postpone by one month?

    Why does everyone hate Nigerians. Hatred is stealing $48m, pension funds, bridges funds, education budgets for children’s classrooms and libraries, sports budgets for youth sports, training, travel and competitive activities.

    Hatred is stealing money from children, women and men needing immunisation, health education, health centres and hospital equipment.

    Hatred is stealing money from potholed roads, unbuilt roads and bridges in new directions.

    The colonialists ran roughshod over the citizens.  We thought they hated us because we are black, but they hated the Irish, Gypsies and Jews and many hated dogs. Selective racialism.

    Then the civil servant run roughshod over us. We thought because we are less educated, but they also hated each other.

    Then the military ran roughshod over us. We thought because we are ‘bloody’ civilians. But they hated and killed each other in coup after coup.

    Most politicians have run roughshod over us. We thought because we are not party members. But they cross from party to party and back again and do they not unleash thugs and steal with pathological consumption and criminal pride?

    Certainly, they hinder contractors and contracts and approve for themselves unjustifiably exorbitant Salaries and Perks -SAPping Nigeria dry. Cut by 75% please.

    Throughout our history, contractors have run roughshod over us ruining dreams of finished roads, bridges and other contracts and nightmare travel stories on rubbish roads characterised by eternal journeys on roads plagued with a leprous rash of malignant and lethal potholes.

    We thought they hated us because they had connections and could ignore us. But roads to their own houses are rubbish too.

    We thought the leadership hated us because even in 2020 the president ‘mono-ethnicised’ key positions even ‘permanentizing’ service chiefs as Boko Haram’s death certificates were fake.

    The Aso Rock troubles, the ‘Toxic Cabal Effect’ depressing citizens, presidential inaccessibility even before Covid-19 are an APC strategic and PR disaster (e.g. too few photos of president with young citizens) and presidential allocations to Daura development perhaps to spite IBB, Abdusalam and OBJ?

    Some say it is to be a future Nigerian capital, post-federalisation, opposite Lagos, to rebalance Nigeria from first Lagos and now Abuja and raise new edifices related to Daura-development with complete dismissal of the national ‘righteous resentment’.

    He may not be greedy but a Daura devotee. The other 340 ethnic/tribal groups remind the ruling party APC that it is multi-ethnic and is riding roughshod over its manifesto commitment to the jaded ‘War and Peace’ lament of ‘Where is true federalism and federal character’?

    Millions feel discriminated against, barred, ministers are denied direct ‘president/ministerial 20-30 minutes monthly’ meetings with loss of presidential personal-touch moral, personal (NB: in Nigeria, name at the table even nominal name-without power- announces ethnicity), physical, political and representational at the centre.

    Then add underuse of a loyal VP¸ pre-governorship election calumny, ignoring APC governor achievements, make us question APC’s leadership morality as it is a laughing stock, or better a ‘crying-stock’.

    Is it that the governors spent money on development/ citizens’ welfare instead of on party members welfare packages? Political top-notchers hate not only the people but each other also!!

    All these equal a very low Happiness Factor, a UN Index. Why does everyone hate us, the citizens? We are not docile. We work diligently at family, socials and work.

    Apart from our heroic armed forces and police members fallen in defence of Nigeria and society, many fellow Nigerians have also struggled and fought and died in coal and poll and justice riots, Abiola and other boycotts, elections and against human rights and labour abuses and on repeated sometimes corruption-driven verification death queues for unpaid parental salary and unpaid pensions.

    We protest foul play and corrupt practices. Thousands of Nigerians have been in the trenches, courts and gulags, been tortured and killed illegally-legally even by security. We have many like George Floyd and his killer cop. Are we in slavery to experience such savagery?

    Can we mould a nation out of this moral and financial calamity called a country, which does not love itself and which raises alarm if billions are stolen?

    Is not this same Honourable Justice Salami they said was too old to run EFCC or ICPC?? Welcome Sir. We hope they don’t use and dump you again. Who accuse Magu of magomago??? The answers will help cleanse the Nigerian Aegean stable.

    Why do we haggle to the last naira for a yam tuber with a hungry child hawker from the bullet proof window of air-conditioned Jeep. Shame!!! Give her school fees jo!!!

  • Primary old students association; Bank fines?

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 550,000 infections 11,800,000, with around 30,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    ‘Social Distancing’ and masking are essential.

    Is Kanye West’s ‘presidential’ quest just jest, a CV ego spree or to split/dilute Biden’s vote to favour another by control remote? We shall see, but nobody should fall for number three!!!

    Secondary School Old Students Associations’ success is a financial testament to pride, love and commitment to Generation Next. But this is Step 2. Step 1 is missing.

    Why leave others out? Approving Primary School Old Students Associations will allow millions to participate. Governments can offer Annual Best Secondary and Primary School Old Students Association Prizes at LGA, state and federal level. Up School!

    Primary School OSAs will help reverse the ‘Hushpuppi Generation’ tag wrongly being stamped on our innocent youth.

    The disgraceful Hushpuppi criminal behaviour is true not fake, traumatic, but applies to a minority. Such people will get more young followers because there is an imposed cycle of deliberate education and youth development underfunding.

    The result leads to inadequate life-skills and poor education outcomes imposed by a homegrown Nigerian ‘Vicious Knee on Our Youths’ Neck’ and held there by a ‘Greed-Driven Political, Civil Service and Contractor Generation’.

    It pays itself outrageously but allocates N48 billion to Education, N46 billion to health for 170+m people 60% youth and children while raking N125 billion for 465 people in parliament [NASS] thus misdirecting and diluting the birth right of this youth generation.

    NASS should cut its salaries and perks by 75%!  Every naira or dollar diverted is stolen food from mouths of IDPs and our children’s future.

    Corrupt politicians, civil servants and contractors belong to a ‘Corrupt Hushpuppi Elite’ or an ‘Anti-Citizens Group’ which by stealing, has stolen livelihoods and lives with financial and health effects.

    These effects are equivalent to or worse than any racist group worldwide from the ‘Black Lives Do Not Matter’ KKK, Nazis, Apartheid, slave traders/masters and colonialists running the Arab Trans-Saharan, Caucasian run Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and in-continent 1865-1908 atrocities of Belgian King Leopold 2nd whose murderous reign cost 10million black lives[which did not matter to him] in the Congo Free State Genocide where African families’  hands and feet were severed for failing rubber quotas and British colonial concentration detention camps during Mau Resistance [Google pls]. Sierra Leone’s 2006-9 War paid macabre tribute to Leopold’s evil history by ‘long sleeve’ or ‘short sleeve’ hand or arm amputations. Add the millions killed by genocide against Native Indians by white Americans.

    Figures guestimate that one percent corruption is 100% too much. However, no country can grow under more than 10% corruption countrywide, the level in 1950s-60s Nigeria. Countries will get ‘Stagnation’ with 10-15% corruption and ‘Regression’ with 15-20% corruption and ‘Destruction’ with 21-30% corruption at which point valuable assets will be stolen, stripped and resold -like a baby, hungry after finishing the bowl of food, and then selling its foot in exchange for food, crippling it.

    Eventually, since nobody will buy what is left, the baby will eat its own remaining foot and then a leg and the last leg and one arm and finally dig into its own abdomen and eat its stomach and gut. It is happening live.

    Nigeria allocated and delivered funds for forensic laboratories, schools, hospitals, roads and bridges, not once, twice or thrice but sometimes annually in the case of maintenance funds, for the money to disappear leaving zero or negative growth and decay, from absent maintenance.

    That is eating one’s own hand, chewing one’s own lips, biting, and swallowing one’s own tongue, taking an eye out and eating it.

    They greedily eat money destined for children’s needs sowing seeds of ‘surprise’ failure by youth who rather follow social media fake creations because there was no history of Nigerian heroes taught for 30 years.

    That is racism/ tribalism responsible for 30-100% corruption content shrinking actual money available, in biased appointments, in political power division in Federal Mis-character.

    Solving racism/tribalism/ethnicism federal character will make everyone great again. The ‘Anti-Citizen Group’ committed ‘Anti-Citizen Activities’ by cutting by 40-100%+ funds available for ‘life activities’ thus taking food, medicines and shelter from millions of vulnerable babies and children – a ‘Genocide’ against poor and tribal victims. Only the families and doctors count the dead.

    The ‘Anti-Citizen Group’ politicians, bankers and corrupt contractors whose actions and inflation of contracts and personal foreign exchange insatiable thirst resulted in a refusal to grow our foreign exchange reserves to $100billion when we had money are responsible for ‘Rubbishing the Naira’ and devaluation.

    Corruption gave us a ‘Millstone foreign debt’ -a ‘Financial Knee on Our Neck’. Citizens question whether poor infrastructural/ maintenance service ignited by corruption above 10% corruption will continue in a vicious corruption-poverty cycle.

    Banks, directors and staff caught in the corruption web must be fined heavily for ethical breaches and the fine money given to IDPs or NSITF. Alert levels need a lower threshold.

    The disgraceful bribery and mega $48m, 46 house corruption by the then female 2009-2015 at the NSITF, a female, is the latest, not the last, in the financial plague perpetrated by legally-backed, pathologically greedy unsupervised officials harassing businesses suffering from a fallen naira, disgraceful politics and financial scandals like NNPC’s unaudited accounts for 43 years insulting national accountability, the NHIS, NSA and Military, some facing justice. Congratulations to enforcement and judiciary officials. More investigations, faster prosecutions, please!

  • COVID 10m+; Akinkugbe; Ajimobi

    Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 530,000 infections 10,400,000, with around 26,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    The astronomical increase in Covid-19 cases is no joke. ‘Social Distancing’ is no joke. The words ‘Safe Distancing’ are better at family level. Nigerians: ask ‘Am I safe, is my family safe?’ If in doubt – stay at home. Pray, stay at home.

    A tribute in memory of Emeritus Professor O. O. Akinkugbe July 17, 1933 – June 15, 2020.

    I first met Professor Akinkugbe when I was a medical student 1968-74 in the College of Medicine/ University College Hospital Ibadan.

    Flowing sparkling white coats billowing behind ‘stethoscope strangled’ necks and a retinue of hurrying clinical staff, followed by medical students like myself, was a daily sight to behold in UCH.

    It was a glorious foothold and opportunity to participate in the days when UCH was properly funded and maintained, spotless, sparklingly clean and the fourth best teaching hospital in the Commonwealth and where Saudi kings came for treatment and queens delivered princes and princesses and medical students reported for first class ward rounds, lectures and tutorials with their teachers – Consultants and Professors who appeared infallible and ‘godly’.

    Professor Akinkugbe will remain in our medical history as among the top rank of medical and administrative professionals as an iconic academic, medical and university administrator, medical guru in the fields of hypertension and renal disease, post-graduate educationist, large international figure and one with valuable government and medical agency connections.

    He is a prime example of his professional generation which strengthened the faculty of medicine/ medical school foundation laid by a dedicated team of mainly British academic doctors who came with missionary zeal to start UCH in Adeoyo Maternity Hospital before moving to UCH.

    For me, it was an honour to be known by him. In our profession, when you see your revered teachers leaving an event you instinctively offer to accompany them to their vehicle.

    It was always an uplifting pleasure to accompany any of his generation on such short trips. One of his many talents was choosing enigmatic titles for his numerous excellently delivered academic and public lectures.

    His first medical love, active patient care, shone through his numerous accolades as dean, founding vice chancellor of University of Ilorin and member/chairman of many organisations including medical supplies and Health Management Organisations.

    After the hurly burly of active medicine, in later life, he established the Hypertension Clinic, where he kept his precious library.

    He ran that clinic, with a charity component, till 85yrs of age when he memorably ‘Hung His Stethoscope’, out of his reach, on a tree in a well-attended international event.

    He extended his generosity to me when he and Professor E. Edozien once asked if I was interested in the health minister’s post.

    ‘Yes, sirs,’ I said appreciatively, but declined [mistakenly, in the angry view of some family and friends] because ‘I could not work with the then government structure’. And that was the end, since they did not or could not change the government just to give me a job, haha!

    Specifically variously as a member,  distinguished member,  chairman, patron and trustee of Educare Trust over most of the entire 26 year life of Educare Trust till his passing, Emeritus Professor O.O. Akinkugbe has lent his name, stature, advice, multifaceted experience,  presence and financial support to almost all of the many Educare Trust’s board meetings and its myriad activities to stimulate the youth to greater heights.

    He was never willingly absent from Educare Trust meetings and youth activities. He was at the opening of our first Educare Trust Exhibition Centre in Brick House Bodija in 1997.

    Thus, his impact on youth in Educare Trust was immeasurably large, multifaceted, and varied. He followed the first chairman, Dr J.O. Toyosi into that post and helped give Educare Trust the steady hand and, through his reputation, an international stamp of recognition associated with his person and those of his distinguished colleagues, also patrons and trustees in similar positions of towering role model giants and elders.

    The entire Educare Trust Family deeply mourn Emeritus Professor Akinkugbe. We will miss his grand but unassuming presence, his incisive contributions and constant prompt attendance.

    Educare Trust has been blessed with a cloak of dignity in willing senior ladies and gentlemen. We join them to encourage his wife, Professor Mrs F. Akinkugbe, children and entire family. May he rest in perfect peace. Amen.

    We also mourn late Senator Abiola Ajimobi, immediate past two-term governor of Oyo State who is credited with, among other things, facilitating the restoration of dignity of labour at BCOS, the technology university and infrastructural projects.

    He is also credited with breaking ‘the jinx’ of a ‘one term/governor’ for the state and bringing peace to a state sadly previously known for murderous inter and intraparty political mayhem and the instability of the unbridled territorial ambition and disgruntlement of ‘other ranks and file’ in the parallel political hierarchy of the motor parks which spilt over into violence leaving innocent bystanders unsettled, dead, injured or deprived of their possessions.

    We mourn, with his loved ones at this time, especially Chief Mrs Florence Ajimobi and the children, and the wider family.

    Such a family loss is a huge personal paralysis and almost unbearable family burden. We pray that God will grant them the support strategies needed, Amen. May he rest in peace, Amen.

     

  • COVID; Insecurity; Rape; The tongue

    COVID; Insecurity; Rape; The tongue

    By Tony Marinho

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 480,000, infections 9,200,000, with around 21,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    The astronomical increase in Covid-19 cases nationwide is a clear and present danger. Every day we see medical patients in our clinic and many of them have to be told that to enter the clinic, face and nose masks and hand-washing are prerequisites of entering. ‘Social Distancing’ is taken as a joke. The word should be ‘Safe Distancing’ which is very easy to understand and teach. I drove three kilometres in Ibadan and found four out of 1000 people wearing face masks last week. I only see face and nose masked patients and I refuse to see their accompanying relations in order to reduce opportunity for Covid to spread through contact. Nigerians who are in doubt about what to do in regard to Covid should ask themselves simple questions. Am I safe, is my family safe? If there is any doubt, stay at home. Pray at home, stay at home.

    On the issue of security in Nigeria and having been robbed on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway by herders/bandits, I know at first hand the terrors of being attacked by guns, gunfire and machetes and witnessing loss of life. There is terrorism everywhere and in every state. The security arms, under nearly permanent service chiefs, seem not to be up and doing or are overwhelmed. The unrest is nationwide and not just in the North. The government disarms the villagers and allows them to be terrorised that same night. Even if Nigeria is not at war with terrorists/ISWAP and Boko Haram, those terrorist bodies are at war with Nigeria. Those organisations are definitely at war with Nigeria. It is time for Nigeria to declare itself at War with Boko Haram, ISWAP, terrorist and terrorist-herders. Without this war footing, the country will grow weaker and weaker as these terrorist organisations grow stronger and stronger. Our people and soldiers are dying daily, many unsung and in mass graves.

    I am disturbed at how Nigerian citizens and politicians and officials jumps to condemn killing in foreign countries but seem not to see or ignore or seem helpless in the face of many years of systematic and fast rising violence and murders from the large numbers of kidnappings, ritual killings for economic or political or other advantage, terrorist and Boko Haram murders and cult activities. All levels in our own Nigerian culture are culprits and now rape and sexual abuse are so rife that additional legislation is being created. The problems are found in our neighbourhoods, tertiary institutions and the violence deliberately perpetrated by para-political organisations and unions-particularly the NURTW is yet to shake off its violence reputation in this direction. Nigerians across the country are very traumatized. Many lie dead or suffer indignities and deprivations in Nigeria’s IDP camps as well as in individual families across the country. Unless Nigeria’s highest security officials takes a firm ‘military dispatch’ stand against these forces of evil, beyond just ‘presidential silence or sympathetic noises’, Nigerians will not overcome its problems. Peace and security and peace of mind are the basic promises of government and necessities required to overcome the fall in the value of the naira, the economic downturn and the loss of vast areas of arable farm land with subsequent exposure to famine and poverty. Mr. President, Nigerians are not seeing the love as manifest by protection, on the roads, in our homes, at work and at play in Nigeria. Covid will go. But beyond COVID, security is a minute to minute, nationwide affair and not just Northeast today, Northwest tomorrow and South-south next week. What is happening????

    A policeperson should not need to be man or woman to show appropriate empathy and best practice to rape victims.  There are more women officers and DPOs now than before. One would hope that they will quickly implement normal anti-rape strategies and care of rape victims. Sometimes women turn out to be harder than the men to prove they can do the job. Hopefully this will not be the case with the female officer of our police service. Rape and domestic violence are menaces that must be tackled with tact and skill and not just brute force and preconceived bias.

    Unfortunately, in domestic abuse, the tongue is the greatest weapon of domestic violence and it leaves no forensic trace for police or peacemakers. It is usually one parties word against another. We must remember that ‘sticks and stones may break my bones AND names will always hurt me’ is the correct version of an old adage. The tongue can fire wicked words which burn the soul of the tongue-victim. Let us actively teach our children to guard their tongues, no matter what we think. As yet there is no thought crime. You can think what you like about another party but as long as you do not say ‘what is on your mind’ and anything that will bring a violent reaction you will be able to escape safely from an unpleasant environment. It is unwise to goad a bullying partner or an excessively quiet and moody on into a reaction, any reaction. A violent reaction will be unpleasant for all the family. Do not risk your life. Guard your tongue as you would any weapon, a knife or a gun.

     

    BE AWARE: COVID IS NEAR!

  • June 12, G Floyd’s Hero- Darnella Frazier -Record!! 

     Tony Marinho

     

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 450,000, infections 8,000,000, with around 16,500 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    We mourn with Pastor Ituah Ighodalo on the transition of his wife Ibidunni to Heavenly glory. May God grant her eternal rest and comfort to pastor and the family, Amen, Amen.

    Unfortunately, Nigeria also mourns this week over 150 murdered in Nigeria in the war waged by Boko Haram, herders and ISWA.

    June 12 is still not a celebration, but a sad memorial for the lives sacrificed as every single president, governor and assembly member has failed woefully to serve enough to pay for the democracy blood spilt especially when compared to the available natural resources and financial incomes since June 12, 1993.

    Any apparent progress or success is insignificant when compared to the excessive lifestyle of beneficiaries of governance structures at state and federal level. Expecting better, we got worse -what a useless marriage!

    June 12, 27 years after MKO Abiola’s victory and subsequent Babangida-led election robbery at cost of many deaths and billions in economic loses from protests and under the coup-plotting military, the economic migration of hundreds of thousands under Babangida and the political migration under Abacha’s reign of terror, what do we have? No true federalism, northern-biased lopsided administrative and political appointments, no elections without killings and unending lucrative court tribunals.

    We have eternal contracts being ‘ongoing’ forever and never ending -e.g Lagos-Ibadan, East-West Road, 2nd and [haha] 3rd Niger Bridge, and even unpaid soldier and civilian pensioners. There are too few new intrastate and trans-state Nigerian projects.

    Instead we have ‘repeat, repeat’ overlaying old colonial roads and railway routes at snail’s pace. Nothing new – like the Lekki Bridge.

    Nigeria is where a project can poetically take 100 years for 100 kilometres of road. Bridges do take several lifetimes.

    All this when the greedy politician should, as a June 12 present to Nigeria, cut by 75% NASS Salaries and Perks SAPping the budgets of Nigeria dry, a political unsustainable burden.

    Nigeria needs 2020 style faster shorter contracts with meaningful faster start-finish times. Nigerians did nothing to politicians.

    Why do politicians give Nigerians a 15-year still uncompleted repair-work on the former Lagos-Ibadan Expressway that took four years to build from scratch? Why is contract work a petty joke to them? Contracts kill. Period!!

    The Lagos Ibadan road, 2nd Niger Bridge, East-West Road routinely appear in every presidential speech since 1999 always ‘to be finished next year’! People, there is no year called ‘Next Year’. It is code for ‘never’. Try asking the Supreme Court.

    We mourn the unknown dead of June 12 but nothing has changed enough for Nigerians in a world of 24/7 solar energy, 400km/hour highspeed trains and 1000-bed hospitals build in four days.

    How can Nigeria’s government even sleep when we fail all SDG indices including the right to life in four Northeast states? Government should do more and better. Contracts are for servicing citizens’ needs, not for politicians’ greed and for them to play ludo or monopoly with our money.

    Nigeria has lost over 100,000 precious souls to terrorism with five million as IDPs and other refugees across Nigeria. Not one of those victims needed to have died.

    They were largely unprotected. Has anyone asked what June 12 means to them, the dead and the alive- living as beggars in derelict schools with loss of ancestral lands and livelihoods, now daily begging to feed children and visited by Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter politicians? Now we rape IDPs, rob them and raid their camps.

    For Covid, corporate Nigeria built a 300-bed hospital in a few weeks. Not for IDPs. Racism??? On June 12, we have another deadline for roads and railways and even new Siemens electricity.

    But we have to do more police-wise and militarily to keep the murder of disarmed rural Nigerians down or who will benefit from the president’s promises come June 12, 2021.

    We see Daily Cumulative Covid Dead figures.  The media should give us Daily Cumulative Nigerian War Dead figures from 2000 or from June 12 -this week’s 150=150 George Floyds -no outrage in Nigeria.

    The people’s slogan for June 12, 2020-2021 could be ‘Do Nigerian Lives Matter to Politicians?’. PHCN has just taken light at 3.59pm on June 14 in a consistently poorly-led country. We await Buhari Vs Boko Haram/herders/ISWA war results during his remaining term!

    After George Floyd, we have another killing, a 27yr old African American in Atlanta confirming a systemic problem.

    Mr Rayshard Brooks, from bodycams and car-cam video, was unarmed, drunk yes, until he armed himself with a probably used uncharged taser taken in a fight with the police. ‘

    Shoot in the lower leg to disable’ must replace ‘Shoot in the heart to kill’ in the Police Training Manuals worldwide.

    By being executed on camera, George Floyd has exposed racist police brutality and the unjust justice system. Covid has concentrated the minds – no sports or other distractions.

    Who was the phone camera recorder? A 17-yr old, Darnella Frazier who took a decision ‘Press Record’. She joins many who recorded atrocities.

    Dennis Flores, also DF, has a project ‘Film The Police’. In Nigeria, appreciate the person who recorded the lady traumatised by the Nigerian Naval and many others.

    Honour DF and ‘Press Record’ in honour of Darnella Frazier. Every potential GF needs a Darnella Frazier! No video, no evidence!!!!

  • Silence is violence: Get your knee off our neck

    Silence is violence: Get your knee off our neck

    Tony Marinho

    COVID-19 records deaths approaching 420,000, infections 7,300,000, with around 13,000 recognised cases in Nigeria. Stay safe!!

    We have watched with disgust, the clinically executed and casually applied, hands in pockets, callousness and disinterested face of that officer who deserves the maximum force of the law. Though there are many good police there are also more like the kneeling murderer. And they are protected by law. We all saw the participation of three police co-conspirators, acting like ‘fellow gang members’ and their refusal to prevent the murderous outcome.

    We witnessed the ‘I can’t breathe’ and videoed pleas but total inability, being against the law, of the crowd of witnesses to intervene against the police action.

    We stood ‘eight minutes and 46 seconds’ at Rev Al Sharpton’s request at the service for the unnecessarily dead George Floyd, with all Black Americans and probably billions all present and watching courtesy BBC, CNN etc. (thank you).

    Following this murder, we witnessed an unending ‘Catalogue of Citizen Abuse Videos’ of hundreds of blacks and some whites being maximum-force manhandled, horribly held-down, tasered, attacked with excessive force using batons, shields etc. and even shot one, eight, 41 times by police.

    Martin Luther King Junior explains why the Black American has not risen. The American racist and the silent co-operators or co-conspirators enacted a lethal racist scheme to disenfranchise an entire racial group. A scam so far successful. They too fought in the War of Independence, the First and Second World Wars and every war since and are dying on both sides of the Covid-19 war front line. After decimating the indigenous American, the American authorities reluctantly gave Black American nominal freedom in the 1860s but the Black American was never ever equal, not given land or access to amenities which were given the European immigrants. Most communities had a black/white housing line- hence ‘you crossed the line’ a lynching charge! MLK Junior said ‘They were given no boots but asked to pull themselves up with their bootstraps’. They were asked to rise but with no assistance. Lynching kept them in their place.

    This was re-echoed by powerful words by Rev Al Sharpton at the memorial service for George Floyd when he said America has for 401 years had ‘A knee on the neck of Black Americans’ in every sphere of endeavour- health, education, employment, security, profiling arrests and a justice system deliberately weighted heavily against the Black American ensuring Black Americans cannot meet bail terms and fill jails, hospitals and mortuaries out of proportion to their numbers. He demands ‘Get Your Knee Off Our Necks’. Indeed, the authorities express fake surprise when the Black American does not arise. The authorities do express real unpleasant surprise when a few Black Americans actually rise and then plot their destruction. Imagine police having a target number of arrests of blacks. Reminds us of stories of our own uniformed authorities in Nigeria. What is it with uniforms worldwide?

    Indeed, as recently as 1922, you could get a licence to kill black Americans. The last lynching was of George Floyd 2020. This uprising is against police brutality and all racism forms to stop racism once and for all! Black Americans are tortured by the need to have ‘The Talk’ with their adolescent children about how to ‘behave’ when stopped-to keep them alive!

    Being back in America is associated with gross unhappiness from daily disgrace and indignities, daily delayed and poor restaurant and other services, daily racial slurs and looks and comments causing higher toxins in the body, less ability to fight disease, higher inflammation, increased diabetes cases and blood pressure and heart disease levels all adversely affecting  health and mental health outcomes for American black populations. They occupy poor housing, neighbourhoods, schools and health services – all carefully calculated to keep them, though freed slaves, in perpetual poverty and service. A society which allows the glorification of police violence in silence needs to change.

    There is a saying going around and a group – ‘Silence is Violence’ and ‘White Silence is Violence’; people are marching globally against police and judicial brutality. The greater dialogue must result in reform in the legal, police mentality and training, health, and education provisions everywhere.

    Even business is parroting support for ‘Black Lives Matter’. ‘Corporate Silence Is Violence’. Institutional and Corporate racism and slavery must stop. The Black American community must no longer be only for profit making by Corporate America.  It is give back time-big time. They provide products for African American consumption with no growth or increased self-worth. Worldwide, music has words too often steeped in derogatory words F, MF, S, N and B, integrated into all languages create low-esteem and glorifying violence especially against females worldwide.

    Back home, we have all these police brutality problems and more; corruption by politicians, civil servants, contractors and middlemen and police is a major killer. The needless deaths in tens of thousands by herders, Boko Haram, ISWA, terrorists and the ritual murder, rape, kidnapping and torture and murder of thousands including executions from Dele Udoh to the rape and murder of Miss Vera Uwaila Omozuwa and Miss Bello Barakat and even infants.

    We must appreciate the invention of the camera phone. It has the power to overcome lies and can stand up in court. Teach how to use it constantly.

    They say silence is violence’. For Nigeria: Politicians – Get Your Knee Off Nigeria’s Neck’.