The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Our Girls; Herders; N8trillion ‘theft’

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 15 year old, Leah Sharibu.

    Why is obvious preventive action not taken until after preventable misery and deaths? Are we to applaud the Armed forces for its widely announced counter terrorism adventures in states bloodied and battered and lacking assistance against a terrorist -style onslaught of herders? ‘Better late than never ’ will never bring back the dead, the crops and be parents to the orphans. Where is the apology for trivialising or ignoring the war? Besides wide publicity before the mission encourages the marauding herders to transfer their nefarious activities to other non-militarised states until the military‘whirlwind’ blows over. By the activities of our gallant soldiers, the armed forces reputation as protector against terrorists will be retrieved and Nigeria’s farmlands will be recovered and returned to their original owners or their descendants, survivors of the vicious onslaught.

    We must never forget, even if we forgive, that this is one war which was allowed to escalate into a massacre spread across 26 states by the failure of government to engage the enemy years ago and especially during the escalation of Fulani herder hostilities in the last 3 years. Farm deaths appear meaningless on the corridors of Abuja politics and do not easily tap into the milk of human kindness and human decency. I care little for Lai Mohammed’s submission that the herders violent is not ethnic. Enough rhetoric. Not all of us are fools! However, whatever it is or is not is irrelevant to the solution. Killers must urgently stopped before we are all killed. Let the army bring us results. We want action even as yet another 5-10 killed after the VP’s visit. Did he not leave any security behind for the people?

    When will we mature democratically enough to hold FAF ‘Free And Fair’elections with nothing beyond the heated word? A political party membership that lacks the discipline to hold peaceful, violence-free, murder-free internal elections is not fit to participate in multiparty elections. No vote is worth the death or the cheating of others. Do not vote for any party with any history of violence in 2019.

    The wedding is over. Let the marriage begin!! Lessons for Nigeria. Meticulous organisation and respect for crowds. Security without oppression. No buntings or flower arrangement obscuring views in church or at the banquet. Throw out obstructive buntings at functions.

    ‘Government Stole/misplaced from Government’ N8,000,000,000,000+ ie N8+trillion naira equal to an annual budget in five years, according to forensic auditors KPMG released by the National Economic Forum. In some countries the citizens get paid a bonus when the economy does well or free electricity when there is excess. In wealthy Nigeria the ‘white collar’ steal it all. The heads of the relevant MDAs at the time should be quizzed and the guilty removed for incompetence and/or corruption, and then prosecuted for Machiavellian financial terrorism, have their personal assets stripped and be jailed. NNPC, FIRS and NIMASA, Customs, the Ports et cetera are all run by human beings who must be held responsible. Pay all money into TSA, not Agency accounts and credited by paper or commuter trail to the Agency? Who made such Agencies have leaders who are so arrogant in accumulating funds and so corruptly irresponsible in passing the funds to the cheated federal government and the Nigerian citizen crying for justifiable infrastructure –denied because there is no money? Ask how many Fellow Nigerians are dead and dying or deprived of a rightful need from books in school to drugs and the latest equipment in hospitals and better roads everywhere because of this stolen/misdirected/mismanaged money? Now ask how honest are your Agency leaders? Again this should have been anticipated by preemptive ‘Regular Weekly Forensic External Auditing’. As wealthy as we really are why should Nigerians have to continue to bear the cost of waiting five years to know they has been shortchanged by 20% of the budget annually by their own agencies not to mention stupid policies that idiotically give away our national oil blocks to individuals forever? Do they know what they have done to the lives of almost every single Nigerian? We shout about unemployment and employability-both solved with adequately funding good education and job creation and health services. On the hands of these financial criminals as CEOs, are the woes of the naira collapse, the blood and tears of 50+ millions of students denied good comprehensive education, bursaries and scholarships nationwide even as they beg for free or subsidized tuition. Women want free Antenatal care. When that money is finally added to the nation’s budget, if ever, and recovered we require a N1,000,000,000,000 or N1trillion invested each in health, education, roads, railways, electricity, housing, Sovereign Wealth Fund and drawing down the Foreign Debt. It could be partly converted to foreign exchange to increase the Foreign Reserves and reverse the exchange rate back towards N150 as a real strategy to improve the value of salaries. This is a financial catastrophe and nobody cared. This government’s move requires ‘Recovery of funds, Prosecution and Prison’ for the guilty Agency staff. Now ask ‘How honest is your Agency today?’ audits should be brought up to date 2018.

     

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

  • Our Girls; FRSC; Single term!

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. Disarming villagers, without providing protection is like preparing them up for slaughter as the herdsmen have not been so disarmed.

    Can FRSC clarify why one FRSC official Olanrewaju stopped me on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway before Ogunmakin on Sunday 13th May at 8 o’clock and kicked carelessly at my plate number and informing me that my vehicle registration plate number was ‘not in the FRSC database’? Is that a crime?

    Name a single politician at presidential, Governorship, LGA or even NASS, or professional in any parastatal who has done better in a second term than in the first term. Very few and far between.

    We are a nation supposed to be in a hurry, because of our low ranking in all UN development indices and the relative disadvantage of our citizens. Having even a good leader demanding a second term as of right and rigging his or her way back into power deprives us of even better leaders. If the recycled leader is bad it further impoverishes the quality of life and the level of service delivery for another four years. We know that the people’s will is not always carried out at elections. As for federal and state parastatals, the heads hold office and re-appointment by the President’s will and his circle or the Governor and his own circle. Any renewal or extension of terms has become more of a burden than a blessing of continuity.

    More often than not new Vice Chancellors and other parastatal heads, governors and even Presidents spend a good deal of time belittling the achievements and dismantling or abandoning construction work of predecessors. This happens worldwide. There are several ghostly see-through incomplete buildings to confirm this, Federal secretariat in Lagos is a disgraceful waste of the Nations patrimony as is the Ilubirin Estate.  In Nigeria a sect in power has managed to make the school subject history redundant. We are all witnesses as students or workers, to Heads of Departments and such places, going off at a tangent to the previous direction while warning that their predecessors name must never be mentioned again.

    However such issues do not call for perpetuation in power by anybody. There is an obvious decline in productivity during the second term. In Nigerian ethnic politics compounds this problem as the longer one ethnic group or one part of the state is in power, the less content are those who feel left out leading to perceived and often genuine cries against marginalization following a 2 term, 8 years rotation,  instead of a single term 4 year rotation. At the presidential level the present acrimonious 8 year North –South cycle of power has done no one any favours. The cycle is too long and requires revision and reduction to a single term of four or maximum five years. With a teeming population of qualified professionals why should one person be allowed to take up someone else’s job, depriving other Nigerians of the same job and depriving   and the citizens of new ideas, directions and goals every four years? Second term has become a cancer depriving Nigeria of exposure to the tree of leadership. Of course there are exceptions – few and far between.

    Today therefore let us think deeply about the value to Nigeria and Nigerians and the cost : benefit analysis  to our rapid development by introducing a single term of four or maximum  five years. Let us contrast that gain with as yet unwitnessed gain and losses from the ‘second term syndrome’. We must change the mindset of the citizen and the politician in this regard. All political parties should initiate studies and look seriously at the second term. Imagine where Nigeria would be today if it had had a new President every four years. Better or worse?

    At some point in our future we Nigerians have got to face and deal with the ‘8 year- two term right’ because it is wrong and has stunted our political and economic and even our ethnic recognition development. We all know that ethnic differences may be brewing at every national political opportunity but they also fester at state and LGA level. A compulsory four year system with create a wider playing field with more winners and hope for aspirants and more opportunity for development delivery.

    The strangely boastful Obasanjo claim that he ‘made’ several billionaires while he was president may be correct. The other way of saying ‘I made billionaires’ is to say that he did not make 1000 people with $1,000,000 each but a few who had over $1,000,000,000 each. Imagine the different impact on citizens in the wider spread of wealth. The result is cement is more expensive in Nigeria than anywhere in the world. Strange abi? Are billionaires not supposed to be generous? Of course not! Perhaps only in later life?

    Please note that the security of material and elections in not the responsibility of INEC who has no security personnel. It is government’s full responsibility.

    NASS has failed to deliver a budget in 7 months. Why should even a single one be re-turned to office in 2019?

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Terrorism: Garrison Villages

    It is four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu and an end to war hostilities or terrorism by both Boko Haram and The Fulani herders and their murderous rampage across most of the innocent and unarmed and now terrified and terrorised general population. There are attacks and killings in every location from Local Government Headquarters to roadside culminating in those 27+ BBC says 51,  slaughtered in Kaduna and those recently killed inside religious houses. This is a maximum terror tactic because it is the religious leaders who are charged by God and even by government with keeping the citizens calm and holy and ‘turning the other cheek’.

    Murdered people, Priests or Paupers, Senators or servants, are equally precious to families, friends and God. Terrorism, mayhem, destruction of property and laying waste other people’s labour are a breach of their human right to a good life but obviously Herdsmen do not agree! President Buhari is being reactionary by crying wolf after the recent killings. We need  preventive leadership, nipping potential death and disaster in the bud before the loss of  a single life. The current rate of loss of human life and the cost of the ‘laying waste crops and the burning the land’ if added to the well-known coming potential violence associated with elections will further cripple the country into 2019 in a nation where it has taken 6 + months to think of passing a budget!

    Our Nigerian democratic system pretends when it suits it to follow the UK system and now the US political system. However our political leaders are not forced to put their activities under the microscope of scrutiny like in the UK and its Question Time in UK parliament  or US’s press conferences. Why did not President Buhari cry out, and take decisive proactive actions during the last 3 years before accumulating thousands of deaths under his watch and now suddenly giving the Ghadaffi-sponsored- them angle as a lame excuse to side-track accusations to escape personal responsibility. To the dead, does it matter who sponsored those who killed you on your own father’s farm and in your own sovereign country which has not yet declared war?  For years Buhari said nothing even in the face of rumours arising from a study of lapses in Presidential conduct marked by inactivity and lack of condemnation of the massacres. He as Grand Patron, must know more than he is telling Nigerians and his routine silence is not comforting to the corpses or the living citizens. No president we know ignores the death of thousands and displacement of millions and survives an election. The herders War against farmers and road users and villagers is a major ‘2019 Election Issue’ because the war impacts with misery and mourning so many millions of eligible voters. They cannot explain logically the slaughter and cannot have faith in a security apparatus that has allowed such murderous routing of village and roadside populations. Potential voters in every state – far beyond the Boko Haram War will react to this insurgency/invasion by Ghadaffi in diaspora -something every security observer pointed out as far back as 5 years, including in this column. How come therefore can the security and even the president be pointing out to us what we know after doing no counterinsurgency measures for years?  A failure! Murderous armed herders are murderous armed herders, no matter where they have come from-local or Ghadaffi bred. No ranching will stop the thirst for blood or the pattern of wonton destruction because ill managed-ranches will not hold the herders in check as the grass will die and not be nurtured and will always be greener on the other side of the fence where the diligent farmers are tilling and watering and  tending crops -soon to be food, not for humans but for cows! Nigeria is a sad country where cows are better fed on stolen and seized  yams and cassava than the citizens who plant the crops. Should we become like cows and led to other people’s farm to farm for free feeding?

    following the okada motorcycle epidemic every single Nigerian has witnessed an okada attack or knows a victim. Unchecked herders violence and the destruction of livelihoods  and human life have meant that most of us know farmers and families and places where these nefarious crimes are being committed. In addition to discussing the questionable origin of marauders with Trump, has Buhari strategized with Nigeria’s  security agencies who need to change from post attack visits and reporters of terrorism to preventers of terrorism.  He has not been proactive enough in the mayhem. Buhari’s finding that many are Ghadaffi/Libya mercenary graduates is no comfort to Nigerians under terrorist alert. Just provide security, close the barracks and redeploy to garrison the villages and use drones for surveillance and ask Trump and UN bosses for hourly satellite terrorist movements. Nigeria must garrison its villages.

    There was a local council election across the UK on Thursday. Approximately 22 million people were eligible to vote. No violence or marked fraud and everybody went to work. What stops us in Nigeria replicating this ‘normal cyclic democratic activity’?  Politicians or he people. Ourmumudondo-Charlie Boy!

     

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

  • Our Girls; No Bullying; Uniform Corruption

    It is now four years plus since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. We also seek an end to hostilities by both Boko Haram and The Fulani herders who recently killed inside religious houses. Priests or paupers, all are precious to God not the herdsmen!

    All hail the Cancer Control Strategic Plan of Oyo State. Every state in Nigeria is larger than many other countries and should take total responsibility for citizens’ welfare without waiting for Abuja. Upgrading medical services to ensure the citizens receive even better care than offered at Federal Medical Centres and University Teaching Hospitals is a first step. Cancer screening is a human right and for cancer care is best delivered in the local environment.  So far these big hospitals have been the only ones offering cancer treatment and the states have refused to upgrade and employ expert cancer manpower for diagnosis, treatment and care. There is only one reason why state governments do not make its state hospitals better than teaching hospitals. That is corruption! It takes motivation and manpower and equipment.

    Why does the media make the same mistake year in year out? The media always puts the politician ahead of people. A media house interviewed Saraki but failed to interview the woman Sergeant At Arms who Saraki went to visit. She had been injured on duty for trying to block the mace thugs entrance into the Senate! Surely that human interest story should have been a large report in order to enlighten Nigeria and give a genuine role model. The citizen, especially the hero citizen deserves media exposure. The media did not even put up the standard media ‘suspected rogues gallery’ mug shot pictures of the mace thugs in the most media covered act of political thuggery in Nigerian history.

    In notoriety and brigandage, it beats standard political assault on the citizenry like stealing ballot boxes any day! Nigeria’s media must take an oath not to subordinate the people to the politician to stop the creation of yet another set of monsters who will devour even the media. We should not continue with this backward trend into 2019. Nigeria by 2019 requires a ‘new direction media beyond even social media. The media must refuse to publish every silly comment by politicians of questionable election honesty and character. Already some media houses discriminate in favour of one party or another in line with their ownership or policy bias-a worldwide ‘ownership’ practice. However, paradoxically perhaps, we expect journalists to be unbiased and give more exposure to the people than to the politician. Almost all professionals debate national issues and come up with guidance and planning for the next year. Of course little gets done but dreams are made of planning.

    What priorities do the media have in Nigeria beyond music and advert revenues? Of course there are many educational programmes but can the media massively motivate young voters and all female potential voters to vote in 2019? Beyond reportage and the editorial what does your favourite newspaper do for the nation?

    You have heard the estimated cost to the constantly empty pocket of Nigerian youth and the profit on the phone calls of the millions of Big Brother ‘de-voters’ and tweeters? Add the corporate sponsorship and advertisement arena and you may easily count the billions projected by economists.  Ask yourself what a warped society we have when one single show of little ‘conconbility‘ about “Virtual Reality, artificially inflated egos, lies and cheating, and nearly live sex on screen can provide revenues suspected to reach nearly 10% of the national budget of N7 trillion while IDPs live in misery, farm destruction in thousands and poverty among millions. Imagine if these unfortunates also had the wherewithal to vote and the cost could have been higher. This is an amazingly unfortunate spin-off of the instant millionaire programmes championed and executed by a section of corporate Nigeria during the last 20 years which has poisoned a generation of youth, against my and others advice, in the direction of ‘get rich quick’.

    Christiane Amanpour of CNN says ‘I will be truthful not neutral’. That is the answer to those who trying to cover over massive criminal activity seek the neutral ‘non-judgemental’, national interest or unity as grounds for a bad solution when caught out often drowning injustices like mega-corruption, one-sided violence, discriminatory policies and law enforcement  under the canopy of ‘that was yesterday, let us move to today’. Without restitution? Without justice? No bad for the future!

    First the Nigerian people, then Amnesty International, then Transparency International and now the US State Department have ‘objected’ to Nigerian human rights and anti-corruption success! Amidst the fine men and women in our uniforms there are bad eggs who terrify Nigerians, even with full documentation,who approach any uniform on roads or ports with terror and trepidation. ‘Stop and search’ is a terrorist activity. And this in full glare of the anticorruption government and its agencies EFCC and ICPC. For the few caught, ‘Dismissals’ without prosecution after ‘guardroom trial’ is useless. Prosecution is essential. Unless this government can stop such ‘public and visible corruption’ there is no hope against invisible corruption. Stop uniform corruption now.

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; ‘Say No to bullying’

    It is now four years + since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped on April 15, 2014. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14-year old, Leah Sharibu.

    Amidst the outcry against a really lopsided anti-corruption effort, we may be forced to appreciate even these small beginnings even though National Assembly (NASS) and courts have tied the release of the returning money in knots in order to tie the hands of the government and perhaps guarantee a failed budget 2018 with consequent 2019 election failure.

    Nigerians should understand fully the statement that “We Nigerians are where we are in this largely imperfect Nigeria because of the massive serial politically-led theft of the resources” that God gave Nigeria leading to moral and monetary insufficiency throughout the reign of these leaders. The process was accelerated by a 50-year agenda to deliberately cripple the police force. This was compounded by a major political policy criminality as Nigeria is the only country in the world that gives away [allocates] publicly owned oil wells to individuals depriving millions of desperate citizens of billions of dollars in developmental income while making a few boastful billionaires and many silent billionaires.

    A developmentally different civilian or military leadership, since the 1960s would have probably left us well in advance of any country in Africa and many in Asia. Instead under their short-sighted and greedy guidance and full control, with full collusion of a corrupted followership and weakened policing system, Nigeria has been a beautiful bride robbed, raped and left for dead on her wedding bed of soil, oil and sun. Economics does not describe our lack of power, water, bridges, and books in schools! Corruption does!! So those believing that corruption should be forgotten should remember that corruption is now a measurable economic ‘failure to thrive’ with the politicians proclaiming a ‘We will not save’ policy. The results have decimated development and the foreign reserves which 50 years on should be $300b, robbed allocations and prevented our needed 150-200Mw of electricity being provided. Corruption is also about evil laws!

    Seeing the thugs invading Senate reminded me of their childhood in school where they were probably bullies if they went to school at all.  Remember that corruption made their schools rubbish pre-programmed by greedy politicians years ago. It is too late to help adults traumatised by a stolen education during youth. The youth accused of expecting handouts are largely products of little or no education delivered in rubbish schools – see Chibok and Dapchi pictures.

    Back to bullying. But we can each do something. Unchecked, bullying manifests itself malignantly in adult callous behaviour and violence at home and office.  Bullying really changes the lives of both victims and perpetrators. By adulthood, the bully gets worse and the victim is physically and mentally traumatized. After corruption, bullying ruined and is ruining the happiness of millions more daily and we can change that for the better by taking a pen or sitting at the computer and making a font 48 poster – ‘SAY “NO” TO BULLYING. ABC – AVOID BULLYING CHILDREN AND ADULTS’. Tomorrow we could put 1,000,000 such home and office posters around school and office ‘bully venues’ and help save millions another day of helpless hopelessness and fear.

    Parents write out 10 or 20 signs at home with your children for school tomorrow. This simple sign will help prevent and start authorities monitoring bullying today in your school, home, workplace, office.

    Ten people, fellow human beings, killed in Benue. Is that 1,000 or 10,000 in the last five or 10 years? When will it end?

    Kudos to the vice president’s ‘Ease of Doing Business Initiative’ by reducing a deliberately obstructive and actively and passively, ‘delay until you pay’ corrupt bureaucracy and even the cost of setting up an office. The effort moved Nigeria up by 24 places on the ease of doing business. Go and tell that to farmers driven from their farms by herders. The Nigerian public service and business model is best represented by remembering and regularly revisiting the formerly impressive Federal Government Secretariat (FGS), Ikoyi, which had thousands of offices which could have been immediately rented out to Lagos citizens when the FGS was closed. But no, it was stripped bare and a now just a naked skeleton, an eyesore. A good example of a bad, if not evil, government decision and showing how government shoots itself in the head regularly for questionably altruistic or corrupt goals. Electricity, single digit loans, corruption, one year rent in advance are not nuclear physics but cumulate into the denied right to a decent work environment.

    President Buhari should guard his speeches to ensure they cannot be interpreted, correct or misinterpreted.

    Stealing the mace is not the only disgrace to the nation’s democracy in the NASS. Stealing the mace is certainly wrong but NASS questioning adult members because of political differences and then suspending members is equally wrong. Is it doing the work you elected it for? Is it providing an obstacle or a wheel for democratic motion? Why is NASS deaf to the difference between ‘Ayes’ and ‘Nays’?  Why has NASS not passed the budget 2018 in nearly seven months? Is it to guarantee the failure of governance with uncompleted projects pre-election? NASS has not passed! It has failed and disgraced us.

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

  • Our Girls; ‘Middlle Belt must not fall’

    It is now four years and three days since our Chibok Girls were viciously kidnapped in a terrorist attack on an unprotected all-girls school on April 15, 2014. The title of every article in this column since then has started with ‘Our Girls’ to prevent the absent ones being forgotten. ‘Our Girls’ will remain. Figures are being released of dead Chibok girls. Are you incensed? Or are you insensitive to the catastrophic calamity of losing a child to such barbarism like in the 15, 16, 17th Century Slave Trade? This followed many unreported ‘Silent Kidnapping’. Some cases were investigated ‘after the fact’ just like with the murderous herdsmen attacks. No proactive effort!

    The creation of Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) made Chibok insuppressible and many girls eventually returned. Unfortunately Nigeria deploys more police against BBOG than against herders’ terrorism! We learnt no lessons and Dapchi followed with the tragic loss of five girls though the rest were returned in suspicious security circumstances. However we await the release of the remaining Chibok girls and the Dapchi girl-child, 14 year old, Leah Sharibu. Nigeria is a dying patient ravaged by the disease terrorism on an operating table with blood dripping to the floor with thick red-black clotted material round the feet of the surgeon –the government including the National Assembly (NASS). How many time have police pensions and weapons’ funds been bastardised from within and outside the force? Too many daily deaths, 99%+ farmer/villager 5-20/day x 365 days a year at the hands of Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen or Gadhafi trainees, and now Niger Delta pirates terrorizing shipping lanes. Death is death no matter who kills you! The police manage to arrest a single Fulani herdsman with an AK47 out of the many hundreds marauding across the country. Contrast that with gleeful way that 28 villagers are already in court for allegedly defending themselves and killing 10 herdsmen. But no herders are in court for killing even one of the thousands of dead farmer/villagers. A paradox and an injustice!!!

    My article ‘Maiduguri must not fall’ was in response to Boko Haram’s evil intent on Maiduguri. Maiduguri did not fall. Now we must shout ‘The Middle Belt Must Not Fall’ to herder terrorists because we all will fall after it. Listen to Governor Ortom. We need a huge deterrent and proactive police and army body presence nationwide. Only they have the weapons to combat this extreme violence and the villagers have been disarmed ‘to prevent retaliation and bloodshed’. Whose bloodshed??? UNICEF figures for both wars include 1000 children kidnapped, 1400 schools burnt, 2275 teachers murdered, 100,000+ hamlets destroyed, at least 3-5% of Nigeria’s population rendered homeless and dependent. If that is not war, what is? We are under invasion by a terrorist force, Nigerian or imported.

    The president is now fully informed to upgrade the Fulani herders attack threat to the war we know it is and add the herders’ war and the Niger Delta pirates crippling shipping to his daily briefing itinerary. Meanwhile the military is investigating its own military complicity by silence or otherwise in herdsmen attacks. The military must remember that complicity may not be proven but perception is key.

    Mr President, ‘hate speech’ is not the cause of Nigeria’s current wars but please be seen solving the problem fast, today, not post 2019 election. The face of Nigeria would have changed by them with every family knowing a terror event at first hand. Please urgently deal with it as such with military precision, not ‘Attack And Withdraw’ or ‘training mission’ but ‘Attack And Liberate. Your job title demands it and your party’s re-election with or without you depends on it. Please do this before the daily death count will include us all! Did not Boko Haram grow from a mosquito bite into a monster?  Mr President, it is good to order the rehabilitation of all barracks. Mr President your country needs you not only to cater for the welfare of our gallant troops. You must deploy them out of the barracks to fight the herders war, on the side of the farmers/villagers to save Nigeria’s rural population and rural economy now that the villagers have been disarmed by government and left like sitting ducks.

    Second Niger Bridge 44% complete? Wow!!! But, quiet, do not tell NASSty NASS it will most likely stop the funding as it did Lagos-Ibadan Expressway which brought the government into disrepute.

    I still complain about weak media political analysis as the 2019 election approaches. In addition to the moral and legal issues of the Omo-Agege’s suspension from NASS, NASS is about numbers. No media or TV house I saw analysed how the suspension of one and the deaths of two members recently affected the ‘political party numbers game’. Shame!! Of course our NASS voting behavior is politically, deliberately immature with too much credence given to misinterpretation of hearing ‘ayes’ and ‘nays‘ volumes. Hearing voting should be cancelled in NASS.

    Apart from the huge undeserved salaries and perks that Nigerians seem unable to strip from it, NASS appears pathologically pre-occupied with self -protection. Disenfranchising 1/108th of the country’s citizens for 90 or 180 working days is outrageous. Is it a crime to be political in parliament? Peculiarly the whole matter exploded from a statement of loyalty to the president. NASS is indeed a mutated animal, separate from party and citizens desires.

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Cancel Budget 2018? Education

    Our Chibok Girls are missing since April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Dapchi girl-child, 14-year old Leah Sharibu. Too many more deaths even as the police claim a victory by arresting a single Fulani herdsman with an AK47 out of the many hundreds marauding across the country. The rampage in Offa, etc. was a murderous outrage demanding quick solution. The police have lost six or more officers and men and perhaps women and many civilians. The police announced they have several suspects. Good. No country can allow its police to be attacked so recklessly. Prevention is better than cure. Lives once lost can never be replaced.

    There is an international wave of jail time for corrupt leaders across the world. All cases started in national courts. When will Nigeria follow this fine example? Nigeria has to DIY, Do It Yourself and take past leaders to courts.

    It will soon be six months that the budget was given the Senate. No matter who is wrong and who is right, it is an insult to the nation of Nigeria by all elected politicians, in the Presidency and the National Assembly (NASS). It is a 12-month budget. We are the only country in the world who would dare to waste the peoples’ time by spending 6/12s ‘discussing’ a 12 month budget –a complete waste of the time of the nation for whatever reason, politics – pure or dirty, power, pecuniary benefits, distribution of figures, protection of turfs or even corruption issues. Like with universities constantly on strike, Nigeria will soon lose a year of budget. Perhaps it is time for NASS to pass a stupid bill ‘Cancelling the 2018 Budget Year’ and give the now infamous 2017 Budget an ‘Elongation of Tenure to End 2018’.

    Budget 2018 can be renamed Budget 2019 and worked on during the next eight months for release in December and effective in January 2019.  ’Tenure elongation’ to the still running 2017 seems the logical lazy man’s solution. Every politician identified as being involved in this budget delay should be removed from office at the next election. Budgets must become above politics. We are proving ourselves to be a dysfunctional society not like the USA. Unlike the established US, Nigeria cannot afford the luxury of repeated political debilitating delaying budget rows which render it even more dysfunctional.

    CBN is insensitive to the common man by keeping the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) at 14% point component of every Nigerian 30% bank loan – probably the highest in the world and creating a free fund for CBN, governments which burgeoned under Babangida. Sadly Nigerians live in country in 2018 with maximum interest on very difficult-to-get loans, 1-2 year rent demanded in advance, absent hire purchase, almost zero availability for mortgages. We also live in a country where we must substitute for an archaic, immoral, moronic electricity system that defies improvement in spite of billions of dollars allocated and released. And someone who becomes a politician demands generators etc. as personal  dividends of democracy and ’political perks and necessities of office’ and says we should be happy with our lot and it is the will of God?

    It is not the will of God that Nigerian should not have 24/7 electricity. NB Portugal has gone 100% renewable from solar, water and wind power. Can we use our coming vote to protest against and work to stop the excesses of NASS ‘Salaries and Perks, SAPping us dry?

    If Nigerians are among the happiest people living among such misery, then we are very easy to please or mesmerise or just mumu because we substitute the lack in developmental governance with our sweat or corrupt acquisition of bribes.  Imagine how ecstatic all Nigerians would be with 24/7 electric power, running water, a police force that protects and schools with, guess what,  a library, a lab and a clean attractive toilet-all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

    For most schools in Nigeria, the quality of the schools we send our children to is so low as to almost guarantee no inspiration, low performance, little achievement and poor examination outcome; why is that? We are awash with government organization struggling for political authority over these children but the high failure rate at the last WAEC and NECO says it all. Nigeria’s education system does not need Boko Haram to force its failure. It is a failure in its own right with snail pace curriculum innovation and sometimes curriculum innovation reverse, a bureaucratic quagmire of corruption for book purchases, an almost zero allocation for science and sporting equipment, empty classrooms bereft of posters and visual learning aids.

    We have a paltry six percent, Vs 26% minimum to prevent deterioration in normal societies not under-budgeted like Nigeria, of the budget going to education showing the general political disgust at initiating the educational mechanisms required to procure an educationally competent electorate and workforce. Even the application of UBEC funds supported by huge efforts of Old Students Associations at secondary school level have not  rescued education from the “I am a dunce dustbin’. Our education system, if it can be called a system at all, fails woefully to teach, provide toilets, inspire, motivate, provide labs and libraries or adequately prepare our millions of innocent expectant children for examinations or for life post-examination-SDG rights in spite of politics.

     

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

     

  • Our Girls; Amnesty? Hollow apology?

    Our Chibok Girls are missing since April 15, 2014. We await the release of the remaining Dapchi girl-child, 14-year old, Leah Sharibu. We hear of talks with the other killer groups and amnesty ‘a la Niger Delta’.’ Is it possible that one day we Nigerians will again be free of fear, but at what cost to the threadbare treasury, left empty by the PDP and neo-APC mutants manifest by the PDP finally rendering a ‘nonspecific all embracing’ apology without facts or ‘pay-back schedule’? And is the APC innocent of ravaging Lagos and other states? And for how long will terrorists who perhaps temporarily ‘down AK47 tools’ be undeserving recipients of funds needed for 2.5+ million citizens in IDP camps?

    The amnesty raises a paradox. In the Niger Delta case, there was the citizen protectionist ideology of resistance to oil companies, the NNPC and unitary federal government which left the oil-bearing states wastelands. The Niger Delta targeted the ‘enemy’ – the Federal Government and oil companies. However todays’ terrorists have their ideology targeted directly ‘at the citizenry’ as an ‘anti-education, anti-development agenda’. They kidnap thousands and strap suicide vests on other people’s children, especially girls.

    By the same logic Fulani cow owners, or someone, has instilled in Fulani herdsmen and their protective militia, a driving ‘divine right‘ ideology of ‘’cow first’’ and ‘’free feeding’’ and ‘all Nigeria belongs to us’.

    Both Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen and their string-pullers have targeted ideology at citizens as ‘enemy’ and invade the farms of the highest, execute monarchs, soldiers and policemen seeking to ‘teach a terror lesson’. This makes all citizen targets.

    And under amnesty what is their intended reward for participating in the massive murder of citizens who by the way got no support and little or no compensation for being victims? Perhaps lifetime salaries for murderers like for National Assembly (NASS) leadership. Some of us hold the view that the Niger Delta blanket amnesty, without a truth commission, admission of guilt and some apology was self-defeating, and encouraged other ethnic groups to apply. And now we have come full circle as the financial tap will again be opened for Boko Haram to reap where they sowed suicide bombs and the Fulani herdsmen rampaged.

    Please note that the long bridge at the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway origin near the cow market is now a murderers’ den for victims’ broken down vehicles. If police cannot places patrols there, government must mount barbed wire to make the under-bridge area less porous. Recently a gentleman had his hand almost cut off by a machete cut aimed at his head.

    Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) passes through NASS, 5-10 years late? The federal government’s 2018 budget is still struggling to live. It is now renamed a ‘Premature 2019 budget’, or is it an abortion carried out by NASS!!

    The hollow ‘empty barrel’ apology, ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’, should be by parties in whatever power anywhere. Too few were credible and which one did not use thuggery and rig elections. But apologies are rubbish without a catalogue of the woes and a restitution particularly of what is left of their amassed massive loot to the public treasury. Rigged elections, budget thefts, anti-democratic decisions must stop in 2019 in favour of honest violence and thug-free elections.

    All hail the Ikeja Branch of the Lagos NBA. Other professional bodies should sign with them. No matter the good intentions of government, it must subject itself to scrutiny and exorbitant un-negotiated fees are counterproductive to re-election in 2019. The people have had their earnings halved in buying power and deserve defenders from the politicians’ ambitions for ‘trillion naira economies’ creating local post-colonial slavery. Politicians parade as consumptive parasites, running homes and offices ‘free’ on generators and 50-100/litres /day diesel, paid by budgets though the citizen cannot afford similar electric power substitution for their families. Can Nigeria’s political leadership forget the generator for one year and remember when they last bought fuel and serviced a generator with their own money. We do it daily!

    We booed Gowon and others for blocking Lagos roads for hours during state visits. And 40 years on, no lessons learnt. Shame!!!

    Ivory Coast’s electricity company – Compagnie Ivoirienne d’ Electricité (CIE) has a drone school to facilitate monitoring power grids with options for road transport monitoring, security, river flows and medical services.  Will Nigeria, as usual be late to this developmental technology and its introduction to help achieve the SDGs 1-17. The drone is a very cheap, locally-controlled satellite. Nigeria ignored developing its power grid for 50 years and its telephone system until the citizens were rescued by the cell phone. Will Nigeria be late to the drone dining table? Having seen the rubbish schools of Science and Technology best exemplified by the TV photos of the Dapchi school and seen the dilapidated tertiary science facilities and deficient curricular offered by colleges, polytechnics and universities.

    Teachers strike in Oklahoma, USA, over poor pay, poor facilities, insecurity. They should please visit Dapchi school- a hell-school on earth!

    Meanwhile the world buries Stephen Hawking, cosmologist, science populist theoretical physicist, black hole expert, with Sir Isaac Newton. Nigerians parents should teach their children about him and scientists should teach and demand ‘Hawking Essays’ from all their university students.  But will they? Probably not! Happy Easter Period.

     

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

  • Our Girls; Danjuma; Budget 2019? 

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Yes, 104 of the 110 Dapchi Girls have been released from a captivity that would never have happened if the checkpoints had not been withdrawn. Also five young innocent school girls died plunging their families into despair and sorrow. There is no name in any language for an unbelievable pain of a parent who has lost a child. Kidnapping is a deadly game not a drive in and out sport. One 14 year-old, Liya Sharibu, is still held as she refused to renounce her Christian faith. She may have been released by the time you read this. In the 21st Century, unlike in the historic and bloody past, there is wide acceptance that faith is a personal choice and not imposed. In my family, we have Christians and Muslims, no one imposes on another. Children often are brought up uncomplaining in their parents’ faith unless there is a mixed-religion marriage when the children choose one particular one for life. Conversion by coercion should be consigned to the dustbin of history. It is meaningless to one’s soul.

    While the Dapchi girls’ release is welcome, it should be subject to a public enquiry and forensic analysis. There is no comparison between the Chibok and Dapchi episodes except that both are ongoing preventable tragedies and resulted in totally preventable deaths, distress, and depression and have had disastrous Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome results on the children, parents and citizens and dent our international image again. To have a repeat, with deaths, is shameful, inexcusable and resignations or sackings should be demanded. Who will comfort the parents and siblings of those five dead girls? Why did the same Boko Haram convoy of nine lorries return unchecked to the same scene of the crime? Some say the army checkpoints were removed again allowing the same terrorists to psychologically terrorise the same people until it became clear that the girls were being returned!  Nowhere else in the world has any large-scale kidnapping of this nature occurred and then rewarded by allowing the terrorists to return triumphantly to the scene of their crime. This is shocking double trauma to the citizens of Dapchi. Everywhere else in the world the Red Cross or Blue Crescent would have received the girls at an agreed point and they would have been then brought home by such experienced neutral humanitarian organisations. What were the girls thinking as they were driven back home? Were they to be released or executed in the town square? This handover though successful, is shoddy, socially irresponsible and dangerously inhuman negotiating outcome practice -unrepeatable.

    At last General T Y  Danjuma, a key player in Nigeria’s military history and a personal oil block multi-billion dollar beneficiary,  has cried out about the horrific effects of the Fulani herdsmen ‘Not Yet A War’ with deaths in their many 1000s and the destruction of over 1,200 churches and 1,000s of homes in pillaged villages and towns and the war strategy of ‘laying waste’ the land with maliciously burnt harvested and growing crops and forcing millions to be Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.  The ongoing Kaduna nightmare encapsulated by Bishop Mathew Kukah at a funeral oration for fellow Bishop Bagobiri in a synopsis crying for a ‘unity and justice’, not ‘unity minus justice’ solution. Just last week, 11 soldiers were killed in Kaduna, 11 citizens including a whole traditional monarch and wife were murdered in Kogi, -is this not war? Who is keeping the death toll? The police in Ogun State have caught and killed six of the robbery gang which attacked us on Wednesday March 14, at 4 pm on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and also robbed others and kidnapping of two doctors from UCH. They have been recognized in the Tribune newspaper photographs as the being from that gang. Congratulations to the police which sustained injuries to two of its men. May they recover quickly, Amen. Apparently the gang was ravaging villages for weeks. If only they had been arrested then!

    Government praises its agricultural strides but remembers to forget the cancelled-at-gunpoint impact of the 170,000 farmers, 100s of communities and thousands of hectares of pre-harvest food on land destroyed and burnt and laid waste by the needless war of Fulani herdsmen marauding with impunity. Farmers are digging trenches around their land. Confirm the best source of your meat i.e. shipped in by trailer or grown locally.

    Party loyalty appears zero in a National Assembly (NASS) APC divided against itself and seemingly disinterested in Nigeria which was so desperately looking for cyclic Jan-Dec budget order. What does NASS want? Is NASS overreaching itself demanding to see every MDA? We have an APC-NASS membership unable to grow mentally, swallow its money-ridden pride in its political pettiness or execute its role to protect even its own APC government’s agreed flagship project – a  budget agenda of a Jan-Dec budget, no matter how flawed! The delay in passage of the 2018 national budget is an economic and political bullet in the heart of this government fired by NASS-APC members in sheep’s clothing and the opposition to rubbish and cripple its programmes pre-2019 election. Is this silly strategy or simple sabotage?  Let’s call it Budget 2019, abi?  Please evict them at the 2019 election? Will the 65 other parties coalesce?

     

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

  • Our Girls;  Fulani herdsmen war; Expressway robbery

    Our Chibok Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 and add the 105 or110 Dapchi Girls to our hearts broken by the horrifying excesses of the Fulani herdsmen ‘Not Yet A War’ with deaths in their many 1000s and over 1,200 churches and countless homes in villages and towns and burnt and millions as IDPs.

    What is war? Just this week another 25 or 32 in one new incident of massacre and mass murder. Among others, on March 17, Sahara Reporters reported an attack on an army GOC’s convoy with four soldiers killed and many injured. If the attack on farmers is ‘the farmers’ fault and ‘passive provocation’ for ‘being there’, is the attack on Nigerian soldiers by superior firepower ‘their fault’ or a Declaration of War, DOW, beyond the scope of any armed forces operation ‘whatever’ requiring a Senate-led declaration of war if the president, patron of herdsmen, tarries?

    Meanwhile we dismiss this murderous rampage in a sentence on the news and go on eating meat, suya and chatting. I did see four trailers bearing cows to Lagos on the expressway- the right direction. Eat only locally grown meat that did not cost the blood of fellow Nigerians. Degrade the value of cows. An unsellable cow is as worthless as a dead cow. If we are forbidden to be armed and defend ourselves with weapons let us forbid ourselves from eating cows and use our brains. If we agree that the Fulani herdsmen war is wrong, we must judge their produce un-buyable because of Nigerians’ blood shed and livelihoods destroyed. We must not support their war with our funds! The product of the Fulani herdsmen – cows – will quickly lose value on the ‘Nigerian Kitchen Table and Livestock Exchange’. Initiate a fasting from meat as we pray. We have a right to buy or not to buy alternative meat sources. No single Nigerian will die from not eating cow meat.

    Fulani herdsmen proxy war is not the time to pretend that ‘murdering, burning, pillaging and laying waste the land’ are not established weapons of war and nothing else. They are a pure act of war and terrorism, terrorizing the landscape and our children.  What made us so insensitive? Surely the viciousness and monumental loss of so much potential must reveal the urgency for everyone in all media to act morally responsibly and begin every report with an updated number of dead from the Fulani herdsman ‘Not A war’ onslaught against Nigeria!

    How many more must die for being born a farmer in Nigeria against AK-47 weaponized ruthless killers fearless of the armed forces and police?  Are the Fulani herdsmen a protected paramilitary rampaging arm of government? There is devastation in the land. Soon everyone will know someone who has suffered this violence as with The Okada Epidemic.  How many more will die before an end to this calculated mayhem?

    They are all around and everywhere. On Wednesday March 14, it was my turn to be a victim of an armed robbery attack at 4pm on the Ibadan-Lagos side of the expressway around Km 45, one kilometre after the Ipara, Ogun State flyover and police station, a slim tall man strode into the middle of a face-me-I-face you section of the road under repair. I thought madman but he waved violently and brandished a black machete with a straight not curved end. I saw the red in the eyes of the machete-wielder and a blackened face I learnt was a concoction.  My driver, Mr Simeon shouted ‘armed robbers’ and I saw a gun pointed at us by a green T-shirted robber on my right as we veered to the left and the cement construction blocks. A car came from behind and beside us and slammed into our front fender, trapping us against the concrete. We reversed away towards other armed robbers, numbering about 10 encircling about six vehicles behind us pulling the occupants from the vehicles. We reversed violently opening a space between two cement blocks and fell backwards into the trench and miraculously out on the other side into a lane under construction. We were about to drive forward to a gap between the concrete blocks when a car crashed in front and straight across the road and unfortunately plunged down a ravine and disappearing pursued immediately by two robbers. We drove forward 25 metres forward to a break in the barriers, made a U-turn facing Ibadan and drove through the remaining three or four robbers aiming guns at us. I saw the white of the eyes of the armed robber with a gun aimed at us. I stared down the barrel and ducked. No shot. We drove fast through the cordon to safety and the Toyota Corolla car tires and engine were undamaged. We drove to Ibadan and Stations of the Cross in Church of the Ascension in Bodija where we found irreparable damage to doors and skirting from the escape. We are alive and well, unscathed and unrobbed!  No personal injuries, Thank God and Mr Simeon.

    The armed robbery for us was in slow motion, an Einsteinian warp in space and time but actually 30 or 60 nightmare in broad daylight, but a person almost certainly died. There were additional reports of at least two robberies on the road on Thursday. Whither Nigeria?

     

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