The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Our Girls; Political pirates of Nigeria

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and threatened with execution and one of three female aid workers, SaifuraKhorsa, was executed and there are still more Boko Haram and herders killings and many others dying at a rate beyond all comprehension even in a war. Is there something far more valuable beyond feuding and crops and cattle involved?

    With Buhari on the one hand and Atiku on the other, the middle-aged and youth 18 to 20years have not got much choice unless they quickly interrogate the motives, manifestos, methodology and policies of the existing track record of Buhari and the past and projected or potential Atiku parties. The youth and women must also seriously examine the same information from the currently fractionated small new parties. Peter Obi with his tremendous track record for probity and cutting waste is a genuinely inspired masterstroke choice for VP pitting the South against the South. Nobody has a bad word against him, just as with incumbent VP Osinbajo, who has performed well in the limited and severely restricted space allowed him by the kitchen cabinet. He compensated for the major publicity shortcomings of the administration. If Buhari wins, will he reinforce his so far less than comprehensive anti-corruption drive while perpetuating his manifest moral corruption amply demonstrated by his warped sectional appointment preferences, the inadequate response to the murderous enemies of the state, and his slow or no response to inner circle fraud in whichADC to his wife will ‘disappear’ N2,500,000,000, N15 for every Nigerian?

    What were the ICPC and EFCC doing? They should by breathing down everyone’s neck, protecting the president from any scandal-prone staff by making criminal activities difficult or impossible to initiate. ICPC, EFCC must be proactive, preventing corruption and not detecting it only after it has reached ‘The New Minimum Nigerian Wage for Stealing/Corruption’ of a billion naira, reaching N2.5b in his case.

    Let it be known by every politician regardless of party that the youth and the women of Nigeria are not stupid or as gullible as in the past. They have suffered beyond belief and are growing in the knowledge of their power in the warped arithmetic of voter power. They know that it would be difficult to rig against the entire youth or women’s vote going in a few or one direction. Armed with this information, our swing vote youth and swing vote women could vote either way of the big parties. They are  quickly getting involved to mobilise all those who have been deprived but bad budget activity  to overcome their inertia, get some of the new parties to come together and unite with or against old governance or vote for a new party.  One or 10m can join one party tonight and change the political face of Nigeria tomorrow. All the citizens need is the will and the understanding that one step and one vote can become an avalanche that will save Nigeria from big greedy unproductive politics and selfish crisscrossing politicians. You change, invite others to follow.

    Under the ‘unwritten’ zoning arrangement of north/south rotation ‘two terms and you are out’ Buhari is supposed to leave in four years and the candidate should shift to the South. If Atiku wins, will he not insist on eight years even if we hear him say four years now? We all know about the secret meetings are different from the public sayings of politicians. Personally I believe that no job in Nigeria should exceed one term four or five years maximum, too many people run out of steam in four years- and become spent forces and money grabbers during second term. Second terms have not benefitted Nigeria. There are enough good Nigerians to take over. Will a Buhari second term be different?

    Meanwhile other countries, like Ghana progress at a normal rate. This is manifest by a quickly passed Ghanaian budget operating January 1 to December 31 while Nigeria’s budget was delayed by National Assembly (NASS) for nine months, like a pregnancy October 2017 to July or August 2018 before delivery and passage. Which if any international standard of excellence is of any relevance to the political pirates, sorry politicians, in NASS which seems to be a separate political party? Do we run a ’Political Monetary Policy’’ best described and in the old chant of prostitute ’money for hand, back for ground’. Are we not in an era of ‘political prostitution’? Already our leaders have led us downwards to the bottom of most UN development indices and abandoned us there as poverty and educational ignorance are growing malignantly everywhere stunting the potential of 30 years of school- aged youth in and out of rubbish schools. Politicians can see their failure at junctions nationwide overrun by urchins. There has been a 50 years’ war against progress and development. The population is desperately restless surrounded by violence narrated by terrified IDPs and the manifest political insensitivity and arrogance of 100s of millions of smiling selfy posters of mainly insalubrious political pirates while Nigeria’s empty schools have no educational posters to learn with. The political leadership especially at NASS, governors, assembly and LGA level has mutated into what resembles a band of pirates, by definition self-serving and cutthroat, ‘The Pirates of Nigeria’.

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

     

  • Our Girls; Army kudos; Victims in other ponds?

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and threatened with execution and one of three female aid workers, Saifura Khorsa, was executed and there are still more Boko Haram and herders killings.

    We hear of fines on MTN and banks by CBN and other regulators on banks etc. Where do the fine funds go to; the people or ‘chop chop’ for CBN?

    The apparently serial murders on the Plateau demonstrate that the Plateau has real live cesspools of corruption and murder malignantly manifest by the vehicular carcasses and corpses revealed by draining of the ‘secret’ I mean ‘sacred’ ponds – legacies of the open tin mining era. Who would have thought that evil indigenes could perpetrate and perpetuate such a serial criminal dastardly act against travelling Nigerians?

    If they had not ‘caught’ a General in their bloodstained fishing net, would this crime have ever been exposed and would the murderers face the possibility of soon being caught, in our society where adequate police resources, tenacious investigation, quick justice and scientific accuracy are not available for solving crimes against ordinary citizens?

    The rumour of tin mine ponds being murky graves must have been in circulation for years. ‘Don’t go through that village after dark!’ So the ancestors’ spirit for which they ‘walked naked’ was the restless spirit of entombed corpses of fellow Nigerians and their crashed cars horrendously hidden beneath the innocence of calm ripples on the pond surface. No horror story would be worse than this and Nollywood should for historical purposes, make a film to memorialise the victims, fellow Nigerians, who left their homes innocently on trips of trade and pleasure and necessity. These trips became an eternity for them and deep suffering and loss for their bereaved families without closure, the truth or bodies to bury as the victims were murdered and thrown into the lake, a murky grave, a mining pond, over many years and destined to lie undiscovered until the General came to join them.

    His gallant and very astute men refused to fall for the actualisation of the threat – ‘we will march naked’. They kept on digging and draining till tearfully they found their boss’s vehicle, absolute proof that the pinnacle of evil was at work. But they did not stop there. They are finishing the draining job searching for his body as they do not know if the General is drowned dead in the pond, buried in a shallow grave nearby or alive in criminal kidnap captivity.

    Of course when such mayhem was to be perpetrated, there must have been some innocent villagers who were also mere bystanders and victims of concocted rumours which intimidated the unaware villagers into staying indoors trembling in fear as they heard maybe gunshots, screams of defiance and the groans of agonising death and drowning. This would be followed by the mysterious splash of water as it parted for the vehicles to be pushed into the pond to sink and be ‘drowned’. The innocent villagers may even have been told that the village was under attack and the robbers were repelled, when it was actually the robbers peddling rumours.

    The successful army investigative unit must be given promotion and medals for cracking this case as it has saved many unknown citizens from becoming victims in the future. This technique of submerging stolen property and drowning victims is not new. There should now be a systematic draining of all such artificial bodies of water looking for bodies of people and cars. Too many people go missing without trace. How many are at the bottom of the village lake? If this single pond is graveyard for six-10 cars and at least two corpses, how many cars and corpses are in the other 100 or more artificial lakes?  The army must protect the workforce that is doing the draining.

    Of course, there is internationally available scanning equipment that can be used to scan the ponds and locate the vehicles without draining each and every pond. The British regularly drag ponds when someone goes missing. Meanwhile though his car was found, the General remains MIA- Missing in Action. Whose action caused him to go missing?

    Our police forensics standards would make Sherlock Holmes, the 19th Century detective who depended on clues and tests, refuse the case and are a constant embarrassment as we do not even have a criminal computer database of fingerprints and mug shots of faces. Do we have a ‘central missing persons database’ with a ‘missing vehicle and plate number database’? So we are nowhere near good enough to scientifically solve this case. Computer data should be requested and retrieved from EU and US satellites which sweep over every inch of every county worldwide and using the grid coordinates around that pond and the approximate dates of disappearance the data around those dates can be painstakingly reviewed from the last 10 years. Pictures from our own NigSat 1, or is it 2, should be interrogated to locate people pushing vehicles into the lake. This is the science of crime-solving and the pond is a huge crime scene of multiple murder requiring international investigation techniques.  By now those who have lost loved ones in the area should be contacting the media, the army and police.

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; UN/Goalkeepers: An SDG in every advert

    Subtheme: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BMGF/Goalkeepers UN Media SDG Partners-2018

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and again threatened with execution, a very real possibility following the heartless kidnap of the three female aid workers with one, SaifuraKhorsa, executed and still more Boko haram and herders killings while President Buhari mourns 400, now 1000+ dead to the tsunami in Indonesia.

    The NLC strike is over. Let the new minimum wage begin. I endorse adding three levels to the pay scale to accommodate legislators and the presidency on say Level 18, 19 and 20 for president. The country will not improve until the naira improves.

    Away from politics where yesterday’s hated are today’s jovial media comrades. Politics is certainly an example in forgive and forget failed democracy and a huge lesson. Perhaps politics is a religion. Imagine a party welcoming the architects and executioners of merciless pain –even murder. Remember Ayo Daramola, Uncle Bola Ige, Funsho Williams, my first cousin. Perhaps we should ask which politician is without blood and election fraud on their hands?

    The UN/BMGF is partnering with ‘Global Media’ houses to disseminate information on the SDGs as ‘World Media Social Responsibility’. This is a personal triumph for me and the team at Educare Trust as for 11 years we canvassed the Secretary General of the UN and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for UN Guidelines that each electronic media house should allocate ‘’at least one hour in divided 30-60 second slots for such ‘life skill behavioural change’ social messages each day as an International Guideline to achieve the MDGs [now SDGs].’’ This was inletters to Ban Ki Moon, SG of UN in 2007 and to the BMGF in 2008 and Jeffrey Sachs and many others and over the years in this column and at public lectures and journal articles and TEDx talks and in documents to the BMGF Goalkeepers Meeting held in New York in late 2017. It was therefore a personal dream come true to hear and see that this UN/Global Compact/BMGF/Global Media interface is today with Channels TV Nigeria taking a leading role to eliminate ignorance of SDGs in the huge 7.4 billion media audience for them to actively and quickly empower themselves to start SDG strategies in their homes and communities worldwide immediately.

    But the dream is only half achieved because the world’s media participation in promoting knowledge for SDGs is only half of the solution to bridging the SDG knowledge gap. TV and radio may not be on 24/7 but there is an advert within eyeshot of everyone worldwide right now! E- secret is advertising media.The other half was to recruit Global Corporates in the Global Compact to use the advertising media. ‘’The UN/ BMGF/Global Compact could champion the introduction of a DUAL/Piggyback MESSAGE Programme. If worldwide every mono-message commercial advert in addition to the primary, principle message also carried a subtle or overt secondary social life skill messag, we could educate the public and change the world. Such secondary messages would include the advert picture showing or saying ‘Read a book’, ‘get an education’, ‘learn about HIVAIDS’ etc. or any of 200 other UN slogans. This dual/piggyback message programme would keep citizens and potential customers alive longer at no extra charge. A simple example is ‘Use Microsoft Computers/drink Coca Cola but if the tide goes out suddenly run to higher ground as it may be a tsunami’ then 220,000 people may still be alive today using Microsoft computers or drinking Coca Cola benefiting the companies concerned. We have just had another deadly tsunami. Such dual messages reinforce each other and double the points of contact for the primary message. Even a poster, newspaper and magazine advert could and should have the primary product and the secondary social message occupying 10-20% of the advert space.

    This amounts to a 21st C Advertising Revolution! Any strategy that seeks worldwide witness must involve both the public and private media houses on the one hand and the advertising media, outdoor and branded products, on the other –a $500b opportunity at no cost to the SDG messages. The advertising gurus must be welcomed for quick SDG knowledge dissemination and empowerment. Every hamlet, hut and UN refugee tent boasts of, or complains of, having items branded with advertising, Coca Cola has saturation advertising reaching all citizens of the world’s -7.4billion! Imagine if Coca Cola took on serious SDG messaging, as its social responsible, on each of the 7.4b next generation adverts and stickers, the world would be a better place. And Coca Cola is just the tip of the ice and knowledge is power. Worldwide corporate giants control the minds and buying power of 7.4b citizens. Soon perhaps by 2020 the best awards will be UN/Global Fund/BMGF SDG Media and Advert Prizes for commitment to Achieving SDGs with a WWW a worldwidewinner.

    There are other ideas to achieve the SDGs. Ignorance kills a corporate self-interest to keep all 7.4b citizens alive and buying. The dead do not buy products. Many out of ignorance, although corporates, do not support SDG. Suggested UN/ BMGF Recommendation: Insert an SDG message in every advert worldwide. Happy and safe 58th year of Independence.

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

     

  • Our Girls; INEC; IDPs; Ibadan/Lagos Potholes; @58

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014.

    Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released and again threatened with execution, a very real possibility following the heartless kidnap of the three female aid workers with one Saifura Khorsa executed. Government must win against Boko Haram killers and the rampaging herdsmen. Politicians have trivialized, minimized and distorted the killings. Obviously politics is taken more seriously than marauding herders in ‘distant villages’. But people matter more than politics. Government should deploy police and army against herders in numbers it did for Osun elections. Of course, many others will die awaiting release of captured who exemplify unsung victims. The devilish masterminds who planned and executed the 10,000+ deaths and 1,000s+ of homes, farmlands and livelihoods destroyed are morally reprehensible, international criminals. Until government deals decisively with the lethal herders’ menace, we live with the bloodshed at breakfast until it is our turn or the menace is stopped. Then 3,000,000+ Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), across Nigeria, will be returned securely to a sustainable education and livelihood on ancestral lands – the only solution facilitated only by a greater response to IDPs needing to restart their routine lives. There are professionals and teachers in the camps who can immediately be paid to teach the children in IDP camps supported from Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and State Primary Education Board (SPEB).

    We require a ‘Visionary Rehabilitation Programme Master plan’ and monitored to prevent now routine billion naira corruption. Past visionless rehabilitation programmes for Bakassi etc were full of sound and righteous fury signifying government failure. Tragically, though we have consumed the profits from their land, Nigeria still offers lip-service to the Ogoniland Environment CleanUp, now, like the Second Niger Bridge, a pre-election gimmick.

    Government: STOP THE KILLINGS. NO MORE VISISTS ONLY AFTER DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!

    Nigeria also faces millions displaced by flooding. The capsizing of a ferry in Tanzania reminds us that lifejackets save everyone, not just children. River users must take responsibility for them and their families. Own your own lifejacket.

    If Ambode’s promise to fill potholes in Lagos State is just political gimmickry, then it is good example of why Nigeria has such poor infrastructure. If kept, Lagosians can blame or credit Tinubu for Ambode being ‘forced’ to fill the potholes, abi no bi so? A pothole count is the hallmark test of government pre-election, easily seen with consequent suffering by every single citizen of all parties and all ages. Citizens do not forget needless suffering in unfilled potholes –the yardstick of government performance. A road promised in 10 years is rubbish. What is wrong with ‘A Pothole-Free State’? Pothole filling should be first line budget call of government – to keep the country moving. The 100+ governorship and presidential aspirants nationwide must learn that the citizen loses billions of hours, billions of naira in wear and tear on bodily and mental health and vehicular stress, by the potholes between house, office, school, business and social opportunities. A pothole is a micro-economic disaster, powerful in its own right. Have the governors and presidents taken charms or ‘oath to protect potholes’ from harm? Governments must overcome its fear of filling potholes before they fester into large destructive ulcers paralyzing development. Remember the Apapa Port Road.

    All potholes start small. Potholes appearing suddenly may have been dug deliberately to slow traffic so road selling business can thrive. Charms are sometimes buried there as a modification of the old days ritual when on the way to school we would see a calabash at the junction with kolanut and food or lizards’ tails, palm oil and chicken feathers. I have recently studied the ‘Evolution of the Secretariat Roundabout Ibadan Pothole’. It took three months to grow to seven feet wide, three feet across and nine inches volume 180 or so litres enough to water herdsmen’s cows and for babies to swim. Snarled traffic diverts to both sides of the pothole creating a ‘junction nightmare’ and turning a ‘Pothole’ into a ‘Carhole’ at the entrance to the state’s governance structure. Who is hiding the pothole from the governor? Someone should ‘Whistle-blow the Secretariat Roundabout Ibadan Pothole’ before the governor discovers it from the governor’s overhead bridge. It could become a campaign issue. When can we announce the death of ‘The Secretariat Roundabout Ibadan Pothole’ pothole and other potholes like at Uncle Joe’s, Mokola and Dugbe?

    Thankfully the Parliament Secretariat road has solar lights at night. Very nice. But no politician reads by such lights at night. Please extend the solar lights state-wide.

    Nigerians are angry at bank profits and unfair bank charges. The calculation at N65 ATM charge/customer banks rake in N4,940,000,000. This information is from #StopCBNATATMRobbery. Join the fight against immoral Nigerian bank charges.

    The English identified foxes as mass cat murders in London though some victims’ owners think forensics also points to a human mass cat killer. Meanwhile Nigeria’s terrorists kill actual human beings with no forensics, photographs or fingerprints or blood samples taken. A killer today could become a Nigerian king tomorrow. No evidence gathering.

    Have a deeply thoughtful October 1, the 58th anniversary of independence. Remember the unacceptably high human, political, moral and financial cost viciously imposed on us for being Nigerians spending a decimated naira in the midst of plenty for the few.  The youth and other citizens demand a better today@58 and brighter future.

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; Flood; fire; Cholera

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why?

    The foreign media is preoccupied with their flood and the flood in the East Asia. We are on our own and must deploy boat, boats, boats, boats from all over the country to alleviate the serious suffering in the affected states.

    Where are the new faces of the politics of today and tomorrow? Are there none within the two main parties? We are swamped with yesteryear’s aged men and women with yesterday’s fossilised ideas which matured not into development milestones but instead floundered and highly costly ‘today’s failures’. They have constituted themselves into a nationwide poster blitz of picture posters everywhere –roundabouts, walls, even your own body if you stand still long enough. This national portrait gallery, many say similar to a rogues gallery, did not rescue Nigeria. How many are featuring in EFCC or Interpol investigations? The membership is made up largely of politicians in JAPIP=Join Any Party In Power.  Are most presidential and governorships candidates merely hoping to be paid off or bought out?

    I had hoped that Buhari’s would be a single four-year term, laying irreversible foundations for a new Nigeria following which the next four years would see a new, younger, knowledgeable leadership  take over in 2019 led perhaps by Osinbajo. Of course, I have not forgotten that Nigeria is cursed by the decision, written or unwritten, that a presidential term is eight years divided into two four terms interrupted by an often sham election. Looking casually at the names and faces seeking nomination in both of the major parties for president in particular, we see no fresh faces, just washed old faces again and again. Old faces who are not associated with any particular landmark achievement apart from ‘media noise’ and being persons of questionable love for Nigeria but great personal self-aggrandisement over 20, 30 40 and even 50 years at the helm of affairs or in the corridors of power or a phone call away from advising the incumbent president of the time if not actually being the president.

    The array of photographs reads like a ‘Who Is Who’ of past political failures and few acceptable achievements. One is left not with hope but a cold chill of the country facing criminal continuity of power by the same people who failed again and again to take Nigeria to a level of normal development meeting collective world community measured international standard as best measured against the MDGs, SDGs and various UN indices.

    Nigeria Super Eagles coach captured on Ghana video being bribed to take footballers into our national team, received a token rubbish slap on the wrist by being banned and told to hands-off football and football related matters for just one year. That is a petty punishment for ‘Bringing Nigeria into Disrepute’. Dismissal without prosecution is not effective. No jail term for breach of trust, breach of contract to be honest?

    The stupendous amounts of money charged for merely taking a form to run for party offices once again makes Nigeria a laughing stock of the world of politics. For President N45m is 207 years minimum wage at N18,000/month. Can any political scientist explain the moral or even financial justification for this high-handed and highly inflationary political position? To accumulate N45-55m not as total earnings but as savings or profit over earnings is no easy task and means more than N450-550m to save that amount as spare funds. Of course the donors will expect reimbursement when power comes. Who can give away N45m just for good governance? Announce the donors.

    Cholera in the time of water scarcity? Naturally. Cholera is expected when water supplies are down or contaminated. There is no excuse for any government to have citizens dying of cholera. Each LGA gets about N1b /year every year for ever even if their governors, LGA council members misappropriated the funds. Water is life. Dirty water is gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea typhoid and of course death. Too many Nigerians share the water of animals like goats, cows and camels. We are incubating disease in our water and yet seem unpleasantly surprised when our poor citizens die from drinking such water. Kano has just made a pact with federal government to jointly establish a 30-year water project. This is strange as Kano already through its 44 LGAS and its questionable population census figures get a lion’s share of the federal allocations every month. Why add another special relationship binding the federal government to supply what for 30 years. Who knows what is in that contract to the disadvantage of other parts of Nigeria.

    If smoking and passive smoking can ‘seriously damage your health’, then the pollution of the thousands of hectares of burning forest worldwide will cause health problems. Add to this pollution by hydrocarbons, easily seen on the smoky, choky, coughing  road of a 1000 belching tankers –diesel, petrol and household kerosene and gas – and firewood and charcoal and we can really see how from home, the street to office to bed we are haunted by pollution. The volcanic eruption is the equivalent of 1,000 or 10,000 diesel trucks or 100 factories emitting poisonous smoky fumes from their exhaust pipes. Now it is proven that micro-particles of such roadside smoke can poison you.

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; Ghana’s anti-corruption; Berger, RCC red card!

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why?

    The Ghanaian president informed us that he created the Office of Public Prosecutor to independently investigate past and present government corruption. That the post is occupied by an anti-corruption opposition lawyer is exemplary for Africa. Nigeria dropped the Office of Public Prosecutor here. Existing structures, ICPC and EFCC, struggle under the yoke of authority of the very people needing maximum investigation –politicians and the president. The president of Ghana gave guidelines to pursue the anti-corruption drive across an Africa where a text book, a kilometre of road or a classroom block built by African government contractors costs many times more than in the non-government world with African contracts padded up to 45-100% minimizing the developmental mileage of budgets and terminating African developmental dreams. African leaders are directly responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment leading to  ‘The Great Youth Trek’ from underdeveloped Africa through the Sahara to the ‘The Great Youth Mediterranean Crossing’ breaching developed Fortress Europe by many thousands of mainly young desperate African migrants of whom 10,000 drowned off Lampedusa with others raped, robbed, murdered and sold into slavery by human traffickers. The blood of Africa’s youth is on African politicians’ hands.

    The long-term horrible experience on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway exemplifies a ‘perfect storm’ nationwide faced by government projects which have failed, are failing, long delayed uncompleted like ‘shell buildings’ – abandoned or semi-abandoned projects. Though started to fulfil African developmental dreams, nobody gains by abandoning for 15-20 years, the six-storey see-through ‘shell building’ owned by the people through former NEPA on the Bodija road in Ibadan or the Ilubirin massive 10 block estate of see-through ‘shell high-rises’ in Lagos. Political successors have a duty to eliminate funds being lost as if to punish predecessors. Certainly, please quickly investigate mismanaged funds and hold past contractors to account, recover funds but always renegotiate the completion of contracts.

    Nigeria ‘achieved this disgusting failure’ by the deliberate CINS – Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness of its leadership, military and political and civil service and contractor classes in spite of our great God-given soil and oil wealth, yielding the national treasury nearly $1,000b, in oil and other revenues so far. Where is the infrastructure to keep pace with ‘the population guesstimate? Unimaginably, we struggle with 3,000Mw vs UN recommended 1Mw/1m population or 150,000Mw. Perhaps the $10b China facility will provide electricity from China which adds 30-40,000Mw to its national greed annually? But vested petroleum interests want us to remain dependent on generators, fuel and air pollution.

    It is sickening to see the unnecessary exposure to discomfort, disability and death that millions face daily as their only ‘DOD- Dividends of Democracy’ since 1999 on unmaintained or abandoned highways nationwide. Roads labelled ‘Under Construction’ are worse as construction work means nightmare traffic with a suspension of any moral obligation for maintenance to ease the suffering of citizens during re-construction. In fact ‘Under Construction’ roads automatically get worse. Is this punishment under the ‘You have to suffer to develop’ or ‘No pain no gain’ mantra from government? Empowered, the contractor’s unsupervised employees abandon or destroy existing contracted roads, neglecting the citizen’s rights during contract postponements rivalling adjournments in courts. Today the Lagos-Ibadan Road exemplifies an agonizingly slow upgrade to its former ‘Expressway Glory’ postponed to 2017, 2018 and now to December 2019.

    All such roads require contracts with ‘A Maintenance Clause’ demanding pothole filling during construction with easy access diversions pending completion of the roads. Ministry of Works’supervising engineers must take protection of the citizen from ‘Death by Contractor Negligence’ seriously and monitor contractors’ activities. Contractors in Nigeria, expatriate and local, have been allowed to ‘inflict pain’ as part of malicious contract execution. Lagos Airport road and the Apapa Port roads exemplify mass suffering. The problem is with poorly constructed entrance and exits from diversions. RCC and Julius Berger deserve red cards from supervising engineers!  Just smoothening the rough entrance to diversions at the two main Berger diversions and filling potholes on diversions and existing unrepaired roads will help greatly. Who will speak out for the citizens?

    Millions have been forced, by a lack of supervised construction, to face the multi-potholed ‘under construction’ or ‘yet to be constructed’ treacherous parts of the Lagos-Ibadan Road riddled with jagged potholes which must filled. Travellers may die in or trying to avoid potholes till the contract is full executed. Postponements increase deaths. Each pothole costs a few thousand naira to fill. ‘Death by Pothole’ is loss of a human economic resource-a life, a wife, and a multi-million naira waste. Now, as a direct result of National Assembly, NASS anti-people tactics, we are to await December 2019 for final construction, which may be postponed again. NASS stalled the completion of the road. Every go slow, crash, robbery attack, linkable to bad road traffic jams can be placed at the feet of NASS members who should all be denied re-election in 2019.  The people must sweep most NASS members away.

    We lost several NYSC members to accidents and other causes in 1975/6 when I did NYSC. A coffin is an unacceptable cost for NYSC. Some are even murdered. What honour do they get and what support do their families receive for paying the supreme sacrifice with an irreplaceable family loss of dreams and future?

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

     

  • Our Girls; Cancer centres; Road probes; Guesstimated census

    Our girls from Chibok were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Why?

    Both Aretha Franklin and John McCain had magnificent but beautifully different funeral events, after the best cancer care. Nigerian cancer patients suffer deprivations though Nigerian politicians shamelessly pay themselves the highest salaries and perks worldwide but rarely offer world class medical facilities to the citizens on whom they prey.

    Life is serious for citizens. This week alone I have seen three 20 year olds with breast, colon and ovarian cancer and far too many other patients in need of care that eludes them because they have insufficient funds or face inadequate government medical facilities due to corrupt reduction in health budgets, theft or misplaced unchallenged developmental priorities!

    Politicians selfishly forget their responsibility until one is afflicted by a disease that affects thousands with no funding! Then the politicians approve flying the fellow politician abroad at the people’s expense. Citizens are not pebbles to be trodden under politicians’ feet or dogs waiting for crumbs from the National Assembly (NASS) table. They are real desperate humans maliciously denied their right to good medical services by kleptomaniacal theft of trillions since pre-1999 by a wretchedly selfish ruling class refusing to have a powerful watchdog financial system, supervised banking, civil servant and contractor classes now steeped in bribes and 10-70% kickback sleaze pathology! Instead of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) investing directly in medical and cancer facilities, it put N150b in non-medical banks and shady fund-managers. Could this be for corruption-driven ‘finder’s fees’?

    Vote only for politicians in 2019 who present concrete development plans to decentralise health care and particularly cancer care to states!

    Please search www for ‘Attorney General dies’. The AG of Gombe State died at 58, Spain’s AG died at 66, Tasmanian AG died at 48, and now the AG of Rivers State died in London of cancer of the colon. In a typical knee jerk reaction, some governors have ‘magnanimously’ proposed an ‘Immediate Effect’ ‘Cancer Centre’. A Cancer Centre in UK where Nigerian politicians, and Nigeria patients, jet to for cancer treatment, can cost the British £25to £160m.

    Nigeria can only establish such cancer centres with a major government mind-set change, prioritizing cancer care and if Nigeria stops corruption dead, doing like Prof Ishaq Oloyede did with N14,000,000,000 ‘Excess of JAMB Fees Over Examination Expenses Revenue’. A corruption-free government will then use the un-stolen money for the people generally and medical cancer tourism. The governors’ cancer centre may never materialise. Remember Prof WoleSoyinka reported the frustration NASS and the Ministry of Health visited on late Professor Femi Williams who died aged 81 years spearheading a cancer centre in Lekki Lagos. Hardly any serious professional idea passes through the corrupt political/civil service/contractor approval system without crippling compromise destroying its goals and any development outcome and killing patients.

    For more than 40 years, the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has demanded decentralization from the traditional sixregional teaching hospitals of the specialized ‘Cervical PAP smears, Ultrasound, Mammography, MRI, CT Scan, PET Scan and the Laboratory Histopathology and Cancer Screening Bloodwork Investigation’ and also the ‘Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy Treatments, the Monitoring and Terminal Care of Cancer Survivors’.

    Every one of the 36 state capitals need cancer care facilities ‘within easy reach of the state citizens’ – a right which when denied force so many to die prematurely or find money to go to India for medial tourism –a very sick word for a patient traveling with a cancer!!! Imagine if the senators, three per state, planned a senatorial cancer centre instead of the fake ‘Constituency Projects’ amounting to N100+b annually, which since 1999 have left no trace in 2018 – 19 years later!!! Shame!! Such cancer centres would ease access, minimise life and family disruption and emotional upheaval, aid early cancer diagnosis and ensure quick and easy access to treatment. It is agony witnessing patients travelling 600km to receive ‘lonely cancer care’ with few relations in 2018 or are told to come back or the heart-breaking news to never return because the cancer is too advanced or the machine has broken down!! True stories!!!

    You have no idea the job disruption and financial cost to the family member[s] accompanying a cancer victim to a regional centres. Governors preside over 2-12million people, bigger than 20 countries, and do not provide state-based cancer services. This is a total dereliction of duty and abandoned responsibility. Is it not just because a friend/AG died of cancer that governors suddenly think of a cancer centre? We in medicine pray for such centres, but only politicians and governors have arrogated financial power to authorize them. Mr Governors, your people have been dying from cancer and you did nothing. Any hope?

    A Channels TV picture showing a DamaturuYobe State eroded road reveals that only laterite, no stones, were used as underlay- faulty design, faulty supervision, corruption and collusion with the contractor?  The Nigerian Society of Engineers’ investigation committee and EFCC should investigate collapsed roads as they should collapsed bridges, building and crashed planes.

    Who believes the population figures? Guesstimated census! We parrot ‘fake’ census figures. Our National Population Commission, NPC, has failed to pass the integrity test and will not be believed. ECN, PHCN and successors invented the corrupt ‘Guesstimated Bill’, a hyper-inflated imagined amount designed to destabilise and force the meter owner to pay a bribe. Reduce figure by 30%.

    Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; Ransom? Pothole disease, Sango-Ojurin Ibadan

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Who will free Leah? Where are the graves of the five dead?

    Did millions of dollars dissipate and disappear under Lawal Daura, the ex-DG DSS, using the budget heading ‘Ransom’ as highlighted by international forensic evaluation with bank data evidence but denied by our government? Where lies the truth? The messenger in Nigeria, big or small fry, often feels entitled to ‘disappear part of the delivery’ 50-70% of ‘messaged money or gift’ as compulsory ‘transport fee’. This is especially if, out of good manners, the recipient cannot confirm the exact amount or number of gifts sent except to say ‘thank you’ be they gifts, for ‘delivered’ money for political bribes and for political mobilization. The boss’s close employees are often guilty. The messenger is not immune from inflating the ransom demand and keeping the difference.

    Nigerians know how the system works or fails. We struggle through endless traffic jams in Lagos, a city in need of at least two more bridges, while 50 year-old roads and bridges fail us. The 2nd Niger Bridge is a mythical four yearly political pawn to be brought out again during the 2019 election. The myth has lost its allure and the ‘2nd Niger Bridge Promise’ charm will fail. The 4th Mainland Bridge is cancelled and the Lagos Light Rail Project is postponed again having been cancelled by Buhari over 35 years ago precipitating permanent developmental stagnation. Our transport network’s deliberately delayed development is engineered by myopically insincere politicking and theft under past leadership with corrupt civil servants and contractors. They have succeeded in making Nigeria the Undisputed Pothole Disease Centre of the world! Imagine, the first walkway across the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is being put up only now, on a toll road built in 1975. General Yakubu Gowon told me that the road was planned as three lanes each side. Who stole the third lane 120km each way or 240km- billions stolen condemning us to 40 years of transport misery? The road generated billions in tolls for maintenance which was all ‘disappeared’ by toll contractors and accomplices -another development disaster.

    In Ibadan we have Pothole Disease like in elsewhere. Disease Alert: Example of an actively growing mega pothole disease is a new pothole six feet wide on a 12 feet wide road which has grown in two months at Secretariat Roundabout within 100metres of the secretariat – interestingly on the UCH Secretariat side – perhaps waiting to make casualties? For 40 years there has been no solution to the disease at the railway crossing ‘Sango Ojurin’ on the right side of the Sango Polytech junction road. This has resulted in a perpetual traffic jam around the un-motorable section of the railway crossing defying an engineering solution for ever. Perhaps we can offer the problem to PhD students of University of Ibadan to solve. Is it not just a job of filling spaces between the railway and road with construction underlay and pouring tar and using a roller just like at Bodija Ojurin, which also needs attention now, not post-election? I am no engineer.

    We once learnt to use PWD, Public Works Department, methods to fill potholes from the ‘hated’ colonialists. Unfortunately the PWD methodology has been ‘lost in translation to the Post-Colonial Civil Service Code’ and we have refused to remember or forgotten, how the cardinal rule and secret of the success of PWD – ‘maintenance’. We have also lost the apparently difficult engineering science of how to fill nightmare potholes and the space between railways lines with tar and underlay. In Nigeria filling potholes is ‘Nuclear Physics’. Nigerian post-colonial governments prefer that citizens die in potholes and suffer in Sango Ojurin’s 40 year traffic chaos rather than participate in the Herculean effort to simply fill potholes and smoothen the rail-road junctions Nigeria-wide, and ‘make straight our path‘ .

    They could also place strategic ‘Pothole Warning’ Road Signs. Why have road authorities lost the art of preventive writing road signs to warn of ‘Potholes Ahead’ to prevent accidents before they fill them in 2020. The patrolling traffic control agencies say it is not their job to signboard potholes. They are preoccupied by repeated ‘stop and check particulars’ activities and often embarrass citizens for their cash needs. They say signboards will expose and embarrass as ‘incompetent and lazy’ their sister organizations –the federal and state ministries of works, which obviously are ‘incompetent and lazy’. Instead, private tow vehicles, usually old LandRovers, position themselves 50 metres after the pothole to malevolently prey on the injured and corpses- dead of pothole disease.

    Our plight is manifest by the magnificent N7billion annual fraud at Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) uncovered and stopped by Professor Oloyede as DG. Wow!! This was followed by exposure of fraud at National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and National Primary Health Care Development Agency ruining our health services.

    APC, do not come in 2019 to reveal fraud in 2018. Prevent it now!!!

    John McCain, US senator, Viet Cong prisoner, fighter pilot died at 81 years. Nigerians should note that you can be a soldier and politician and honourable, ethical and respected. Some are, but we wish there had been more.

     

    • NB: INEC is not responsible for election violence or its prevention. Whistle blow election political perpetrators!

    NNB: Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

  • Our Girls; Classroom Aretha/ Annan corners pls!

    Our Chibok girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably Our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released. Is government doing anything to save her?

    Selfishly, a politician lost an election and insultingly dismantled the projects he put in place with taxpayers’ money that paid him millions. This confirmed that the projects were just ‘voting tricks’ and not for development. He is no different from a political prostitute who changes political party like underwear, concerned not with service but only the need for greed. He should be dismissed from his party.

    The term ‘constituency projects’ is a corruption criminal corridor and should be removed from all budgets. Politicians should lobby and direct their local requests through relevant ministries to be included under existing budget headings. Then the National Assembly (NASS) will pass the budget quicker next time.

    First the great Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has died. She made the Otis Redding hit ‘Respect’ into a feminist anthem and also reminded everyone of the value of prayer with ‘Each morning I wake up, before I put on my make up, I say a little prayer for you’. Rest in Perfect Peace, Amen. And now it is Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, opposed to the Iraq War and peace mediator is dead. Unfortunately during some of his peace missions he was rejected on racist and religious grounds by some protagonists. He founded the Kofi Annan Foundation for International Development and was a member, later chairman, of the Elders Forum.  He was a key leader and motivator in the fight for a cleaner, cooler better-protected safer environment anticipating the fearsome global weather upheaval we see today with forest fires, floods and heatwaves and the epidemic of plastic everywhere including in the food we eat.

    Kofi Annan was a classic gentleman, a warm smile, a calming modulated unhurried empathetic voice, a super-statesman and diplomat par excellence on the world stage. He leaves that stage a distinguished gentleman who contributed hugely to the elevation of the African profile in the world except among racists. He personified the UN of which he was staff member, elected twice as Secretary General. May his soul Rest In Perfect Peace, a credit to Ghana, Africa, the human race and a template lesson for citizens particularly African.

    There is one last Kofi Annan legacy you can create and participate in: Homework for you as a teacher, lecturer or parent. Every teacher should obtain a magazine/ newspaper cutout picture of Kofi Annan and a newspaper biography and create a role model classroom teaching tool poster – a ‘Kofi Annan Corner’ for  every classroom, school and university department notice board worldwide. All students should be asked to write and read essays and opinions on his life and achievements.  Kofi Annan should already be in the African schools curriculum. Start a Kofi Annan Prize in your school and institution. This can also be done for Aretha Franklin and other great leaders, local and international.

    Walking in the footsteps of Kofi Annan, Africa certainly has many fine professionals working in all spheres of life and particularly in organisations at local and international levels. But politicians with questionable contributions to development get almost all media publicity. Shame on the media.

    In access to the media and ability to influence society, the media prefers the trivial pursuits and utterances of the worst and most disgraced politicians over efforts of the professionals to develop the country. Africa’s media personnel should promote such professionals and bring their ‘road of struggle and achievements’ to public knowledge. Young Africans at the secondary and tertiary institutions level, so preoccupied with ‘Reality Shows’ like Big Brother etc, need help and guidance and documentaries to improve their minds with what is good for their professional and moral growth.

    Our youth are distracted by the struggle to survive-food, water, sanitation- and the struggle to make progress surrounded by African schools’ bare walls in empty classrooms, libraries and laboratories and subjected to class subjects lacking in stimulating teaching methodology and updated curriculum content. The miracle is that our children often succeed in competing against youth attending fully functional schools.

    We envy developed countries and migrate to them because their budgets are not stolen in billions and the money is mostly used for development. Nigeria, indeed Africa, must put in power those who will see servicing the needs of the youth through sanitation and schooling as more important than stealing.  The potential African politician, contractors and civil servants require regular university-based 1-3 month workshop courses on Delivering a Development Targeted Democracy highlighting the cost of corruption. It can teach monitoring and evaluation of political agendas and projects, implementation of UN SDGs and UN and other agencies’ statistics like from Transparency International.

    International standards define a school. We put our children in rubbish non-schools and pray for the ‘Miracle Of Good Broad Education’ to be inflicted upon them while ignoring their needs in sport, brain-gain, morals as dictated by the definition of school in the dictionary or the internet. Most schools are abandoned by most politicians in favour of ‘theft of book budgets’ and have less attractive items than enumerated by Professor Soyinka when, at the age of three and a half, he followed his older sister to school.

    Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.

     

  • Our Girls; Old students, MPR

    Our Chibok Girls were kidnapped on April 15, 2014. Release the remaining Chibok girls. Inexplicably, our Dapchi girl-child, 15, Leah Sharibu is not released.

    We must establish Old Students Associations, OSA, in all primary schools. This encouraging act will get millions to assist primary school development. It will build on secondary school OSAs success which has provided billions to substitute for negligent authorities and the ministries, governors and state assemblies which underfund and abuse the inadequate education budget. Plagued with low education quality, Nigeria provides 1/6th of the UN recommended 26% of the budget for education. Nigeria runs an annual education budget of 3-5% subject to fraud and non-release reducing such budgets to 2-3% too miniscule to grow the brains of 70+million youth. Do not be deceived by those who proclaim ‘government cannot do it alone’. Government can do far more for education alone. Citizens and Corporate Nigeria are to supplement.

    Before Prof Is-haq Olarewaju Oloyede was appointed registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), N7,000,000,000 was probably stolen annually, oiling corruption in education. Are other multi-billion naira arms of the Ministry of Education -ETF, TET Fund, UBEC and SPEB? Congratulate President Buhari for appointing Prof Oloyede over the negative voices of ‘Corruption Fighting Back’ CFB Party. Buhari should investigate those opposed to Prof Oloyede’s appointment. Did they benefit from the annual N7billion in past years?  If politicians, civil servants, contractors and political parties stopped stealing, government could do its own share alone in education.

    Government in Nigeria has been made up of little small-minded selfish, citizen-neglecting, greedy men and women in big robes and boubous who hide billions behind statements about the pains of development while neglecting their responsibility to citizens. We hear of billions diverted even if wily lawyers and ‘anti-prison’ admission to hospital, thwart convictions! This is not the price or consequence of democracy, but demonic ‘billion-billion’ kleptomania while citizens suffer, becoming victims of criminality or criminals themselves. They refuse to do what governments can do for development.

    Just N1,000,000,000 of the many billions padded or stolen from an education budget is loss to 4,000 schools of N250,000 for laboratory equipment, 3-500 library books and a complete set of Chess, Scrabble board games with table and lawn tennis, field sports equipment like hurdles, javelin, weights, shot-put, whistle annually. But the loss is in many billions reducing the earning potential to self and Nigeria of a 30 school years of Nigerian students. No, our governments have no excuse considering what will be spent by INEC and politicians during the coming elections estimated at N750b -N1 trillion and also with the production of up to N1billion face posters of politicians but these politicians will never authorize school posters purchased or produced by ministries of education.

    Contractors on the Iwo Road, Ibadan have abused their moral responsibility not to punish the citizens during construction. The contractors and supervising government engineers are abusive of citizens’ rights by rendering major junctions almost un-motorable. To add to the insult, this atrocity is within sight of Government House, thus disrespecting and insulting the governor! The Maryhill and the Civic Centre junctions are a nightmare. Government must call the contractor to order and force the contractor to maintain decent temporary junctions even if they refuse to make the roads they have torn up motorable, notably Iwo –Akobo-Ojurin road, during the prolonged phase of construction which raises dangerous laterite dust for months. It cannot be right for contractors to inflict such maximum pain for a development gain. Is this ‘democracy pain for development pain’?

    There are government responsibilities to be taken to develop Nigeria while the National Assembly (NASS) is distracted with the repetitive struggle to clarify its permanent and seasonal pre-identity crisis.

    This NASS crisis is self-manufactured and macabre entertainment while the nation’s real news, the murders and police extrajudicial killings take the inside pages. Shame. The political shenanigans are ‘changing of the political garb’. Who has moved from party to party the most? Perhaps we should offer an award? Politicians love awards. They demonstrate no consistent ideology, no puritanical or logical distinction between progressive and conservative policy positions.  Movements between parties are so frequent now that politicians must be reminded by their personal assistant whose side they are on today. To keep track we should demand that whenever their NASS names are called, or used, they will be followed by the initials of their current party, their last party, second last party, and more. Mr So-and-so, PDP, APC, PDP, SDP, APGA to ‘give’ discredit to whom discredit is due for an Any Government In Power (AGIP) person. Political prostitution is producing the usual rash of diseases to infect us all, notably greed and kleptomania!

    So CBN seeks to increase the Monetary Policy Rate of 14%, further stifling any helpful business and personal loans. MPR of 14% goes to CBN coffers, killing business and family life. What does CBN do with the money it accumulated from such 14% out of the 21-30% that banks charge? Worldwide only 6/54 African countries and 4/74 other countries have rates similar or higher to Nigeria while more than 80 countries have rates 0- 13%. CBN leave us alone. What is the salary and perks of a CBN Director?

     

    • Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.