The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Our Girls; Build real bridges; Slaps injure eyes & ears

    Our Girls are still mostly missing in spite of the near closure of Sambisa Forest and the recovery of Nigeria from Boko Haram. Some of us continue to pray for their families and their safe return. What do you pray for in this 2017? Did you include ‘Freedom for Our Girls’ in your 2017 Prayerful Wish-List? It pays to pray for others and not just for yourself and your family. Governor Ambode has just brought true freedom to the people of Badagry. His government has built a 500-metre bridge in Badagry among many new projects being executed. Bridges cut distances and costs, bringing communities together but have been largely neglected by governments with the notable exception of the wonderful example of Federal-State cooperation, the Lagos Lekki Bridge, built during the Fashola administration. Nigeria requires 100 new bridges in new directions for development to break the stranglehold of the colonial-driven major roads built to evacuate goods to the UK and now largely abandoned by the federal government. If 2017 can become the year of bridges, we will get to places through ‘bridge short cuts’. More bridges please!!!  Meanwhile we have been waiting 25 years for the 2nd Niger Bridge.
    In the light of the political profligacy, in the past and ongoing, I think we all need to do reality checks regularly. My reality check is what I see in my clinic. Every family is affected one way or another by illness in members of the family or friends or co-workers. I see the pain of illness and the joy of health daily in my work and contacts. This week I saw in my clinic a three-year old girl who was blind since birth in both eyes, a 25-year old woman who will never have a pregnancy because she has no uterus, a 40-year old man who will be dead from liver cirrhosis by Feb 1, a 15-year old girl pregnant for her father’s brother, a house girl pregnant for her employer’s husband,  a 51-year old man who has cancer of the pancreas, a 10-year old boy with one testicle, a 13-year of girl with a breast lump probably not malignant, a 25-year old undergraduate with a breast lump probably malignant, a 30-year old woman with a 28-week pregnancy with  twins only one of which is alive, a 29-year old with kidney stones and blood in the urine and backache, a 45-year old politician and a 55-year old priest and a 60-year old woman lawyer all with fatty liver disease, a 35-year old man with a scrotal fluid collection-hydrocoele, a 25-year old woman with a pregnancy of a baby with short limbs, three women with ectopic pregnancy not in the uterus, several women with dead pregnancies in the uterus and many women with perfectly normal pregnancies. One of the most painful to me personally was a child who had lost an eye to a slap from a parent.
    Slap injuries really annoy me because of all the diseases and conditions mentioned that we see daily mentioned above, the one really preventable condition is a slap injury and yet it is so common, slap injuries are not the only problem affecting the eye. The SLAP EYE INJURY is followed quickly in numbers by the BEATING EYE INJURY from beatings at home and in school using canes, belts, whips and often affects innocent children and bystanders as the weapon for beating is raised over the shoulder or the individual being beaten seeks refuge behind another individual. The dirty slap and the beating eye injuries from family, friends, workmates or foes and enemies like teachers, bullies, security personnel and other violent people are recognised medical effects of GBH- Grievous Bodily Harm- an assault.
    But partial or total blindness in one eye is not the end of the matter. Please note how close the eye is to the ear. Do you know how many of you readers, your children and your colleagues are deaf in one ear following a perhaps long forgotten dirty slap in the past- so treasured in bad language fights –‘I will give you a dirty slap’. The force of the slap can make the eye pop out and also burst the eardrum. So next time you hear someone say ‘I will give you a dirty slap’ or takes a whip or cane to someone please take preventive action or someone may go blind and become deaf in one eye and one ear for a lifetime because you took no action. Why spend so much time in hospitals and money on investigation, medication, operation and seeing and hearing aids. SAY NO TO THE SLAP AND THE BEATING.
    When did Nigeria sign on to babysit and offer geriatric care to anyone elected or imposed on it? Yes, a pension is eight and just for long service, but is politics worthy of such stupendous rewards?  Nigeria’s eternal gratitude to its voted and coup-leading Presidents, Vice Presidents, High Civil Servants, Governors, Deputy Governors, has recently been partly measured. It grew exponentially under the Jonathan era. To complicate matters it seems that such people are blessed with long life meaning that we have many, some say too many, ex-leaders to feed, clothe, bath, transport, medicate, and eventually terminate in a grand funeral.

    •[To be continued]

  • Our Girls; Police Barracks; Kaduna Killing; Bridge Bombing

    Our Girls; Police Barracks; Kaduna Killing; Bridge Bombing

    Our girls are still missing since April 15, 2014.  As the year 2017 begins painfully for many parents, may they all return safely, Amen and Happy New Year 2017 to you and yours.
    The collapse of the Police Barracks with the death of a recently transferred Sergeant and his visitor speaks volumes of the level of ‘responsibility for staff movement’ and discipline in the uniformed services as an ‘unsafe building’ on which quit notices had been administered twice. It also tells of the quality of maintenance in Nigeria. The police barracks nationwide are unsightly buildings wholly-owned by government with no maintenance in 50 years while government gives its (109+ 360 = 469) National Assembly (NASS) members billions annually for housing etc. What a paradox as the same police leave their collapsing barrack hovels to protect these NASS members living in luxury at Nigeria’s expense. The maintenance money, perhaps also padded heavily over the years, has been allocated and stolen by the police hierarchy or was stolen elsewhere so there was no allocation. NASS could investigate sums allocated for ‘maintenance’, though the exorbitantly high NASS salaries and perks, SAP, are partly responsible for under-allocations in budgets. In the 60s, the standards decay had not set in. As students in St Gregory’s College Ikoyi, we lived next to a clean Obalende Police barracks. Historically the coups led to the military policy of a weakening the police through a reduced or diverted budget and a blind eye to internal fraud which  resulting in massive diversion of funds for maintenance and barrack buildings into private pockets making barracks – a disgrace to Nigeria and uninhabitable by human beings. We should recall the Channels TV investigation into the Command Training College in Ikeja and the withdrawal of the Americans from a joint training exercise at that same college because the sanitary and teaching standards were subhuman. Add the persistent failure of the police to aspire to Global Police Practice by establishing an International Standard Forensic Laboratory in spite of checkable N50m annual budget allocations ‘BELIEVED TO BE STOLEN’. Yes, a FORENSIC LAB is at last coming on stream but will maintenance corruption remain? Of course some local heads will roll, but the big fish will continue to escape. President Buhari should enquire as to who ‘chopped’ or mismanaged the police building maintenance money over the years. Could the police corruption 1999 to 2014 be any less than the military corruption being investigated by an EFCC crippled and made ‘headless’ by NASS questionably motivated refusal to confirm Magu?
    You can then see our predicament in a country were FINGER-PRINTING AND FACE PHOTOS are not routine in every station and added automatically to a Nigerian data base. Why not use common cell phones. How do we use the existing databases -Voter, Driver’s Licence, Passport, Cell Phone SIM Registration, Bank BVN, Tax [TIN] etc.? Are they interlinked, crosslinked for security or kept separate, fragmented, incomplete and virus-corrupted by recruited ‘419’ experts to protect a corrupt elite?
    Can we get some honest results from NASS enquires into other people’s activities? The second reading of the law apparently criminalising even accusations against NASS members in social media suggests NASS will be protected. Accusations always come before investigation and prosecution. Unfortunately there appears to be NO PARALLEL LAW PROTECTING THE CITIZENS FROM OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS, LYING AND STEALING BY POLITICIANS in general and NASS members in particular which has an unrepentant, and unenviable reputation in probity and leadership qualities and love of country aka nationalism. It is on record that even actual charges often do not result in any shame or punishment for NASS members who appear to mercilessly adverse to higher moral goals and have a very thick skin, so the new law will only attempt to muzzle the Nigerian citizen more. This law will allow NASS members to continue their unbridled and avaricious grip on power for their own benefit and not that of the nation which still lacks Nigerians who love Nigeria in most political offices.
    Since forever, each spike of killing fellow Nigerians in Southern Kaduna results in a spike of the same political platitudes, a lull and further killings of fellow Nigerians. This cycle of murder and violence matches the three+million IDP, 30,000 dead siege of Nigeria by Boko Haram, the 25,000 dead blood soaked trial of Fulani herdsmen criss-crossing the country. Is this a country with a future when we add the disasters of false federalism? In the actual electrical and economic darkness of the times as we end the year with two hours of power a day and nearly N490:1$; the foiling of the plot to blow up Third Lagos Mainland Bridge must bring congratulations to the security services. The press should not give too many details or over-flog the issue so as not to spread the infection.  I am not sure that we ever had regular or irregular surveillance patrols along the underbridge water route to detect criminal activity or recruited local fishermen as patrols or spies on strangers. Even the on-bridge police patrols to secure rush hour traffic seem to have been withdrawn. Surely there are some constants in security that limits crime and terrorism? Unfortunately the stepped-up police patrols and the complementary FRSC and other patrols inside cities and on expressways make life miserable for travellers, driving tourists away.
    We must put INCREDIBLY KNOWLEGEBLE AND NATIONALISTIC PERSONS IN POWER at the next elections. Search.

  • Our Girls; Identify ‘Love and Work for Nigeria’

    Our girls are still missing since April 15th 2014. As the year ends may they all return safely, Amen.’A Poem Unread Is Dead’ and there will be nothing more to be said!!!! I want to share with you my 2016 Christmas Poem read at Trenchard Hall University of Ibadan Christmas Concert. Preamble: In our greed, Nigeria failed to feed our own Nigerian family of IDPs and thus created a crisis of malnutrition and starvation in our IDP camps awaiting a UN solution while Fellow Nigerians steal their food. What manner of criminal culpable and preventable incompetence is that @Christmas?
    POEM: Where do we go from here?/ It is so difficult to generate Christmas Cheer/ Empty bank accounts are creating Christmas fear/ Empty pockets shed a Christmas child’s tear/ A new meaning for cashless economy/We have no bank card to use as money/Naira worth less than toilet paper/ Disappears like water vapour /With no money to travel home or for presents
    Parents’, replace Christmas presents by Christ’s presence/ Christmas is under deadly attack/ / Throwing our life, work and home off-track/ Merry Christmas replaced by an anonymous ‘Season’s Greeting’ Pack / Who wants Christmas Dead?/ ISIS, Boko Haram and now Berlin/We must make sure they do not win./How will the living cope/ 3 million IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons], malnourished cannot give a Christmas laugh/ As their food is stolen, cut by half
    But December 25th, Christmas, is an annual reminder/ For us to be kinder/ To friend and foe, employee and enemy/ Christ forgave the repentant thief/ And gave him Heavenly relief /There is no repentant politician to forgive/ We die in penury, their progeny in luxury live/ Perhaps it is time to find a person in need/ And do a good Christ-like deed/ Are you an employer of labour/ Then it is time to imitate your Saviour/ If only our politicians listened as well/ Then we would not be living in this kobo-less hell/ Powerless, waterless, cashless/ But politicians could not care less/ Today’s Christmas Concert carols lighten the load/ Of the tormented timid and the brave bold/ Rich or poor, Christmas offers everyone a free gift –the Child Christ / Christ is be born on Christmas Day / Will you rock the cradle or move it out of your wicked way?/ Will Baby Jesus smile at what you do and say? / This Christmas you may be empty-handed/ But never be empty-hearted/ Give a BJS, Baby Jesus Smile/ To bring the Christmas Sun/ To someone… and everyone/ Merry Christmas END
    I hope you had a good Christmas and shared it with someone in serious need, and shared a smile and some fun. Even the poor are entitled to laugh.
    There is no doubt we are in serious trouble. I say this in spite of the efforts of this government to rescue the country through Presidential and official reduction in the traditional ‘top down corruption’. But ‘uniformed’ corruption at the grassroots is alive and very well. Buhari hopefully is not corrupt. Are those around him? How much have we saved as ‘the President is not corrupt’? Corruption is also about ‘Policy Corruption’. One policy like killing the railways can impoverish a country while enriching trailer owners. One policy like developing Tin Can Port instead of Apapa Port can guarantee a life of haulage instead of rail evacuation. One negative power policy can provide ZERO power forcing economic darkness and environmental pollution. One policy can pit an immoral Federal Might against pauperised states’ right to develop and build 100 Lekki Bridges nationwide. One policy can turn an oil nation into a generator generation ‘exporting raw oil material and importing ‘fine finished fuel’. Some say this government should ignore or legitimise the wholescale politically driven robbery over many years also used by all parties to fund fraudulent elections as ‘war chests’. We have been here six times before with tumbling naira and quality of life, absent salaries and high loans and ‘belt tightening’. It is hard to stomach the stolen sums–the cause of part of our current penury complicated by policy weaknesses.
    A friend Professor Osofisan asked rhetorically ‘Is this what we are going to leave for our children?’ It appears so. The change may be in progress but in less than two years, the battle lines of politics will be drawn again and billions of naira will feed a dirty billion poster and mega billboard advert campaign and the campaign trail of vultures, vagabonds and voters-for-sale, all to expound the questionable virtues of those with political ambition but little or no pedigree, personality, policy or potential to actually change current misfortune and stop ‘50 year corruption curse’ against the poor and rich Nigerian alike.
    Check out your friends, acquaintances, even strangers you come across for their sterling qualities in this koboless country. Can they be introduced into the next political race to save Nigeria? Of course sterling qualities before being elected or selected often fail in office. Nigerian leaders have covered the spectrum. Too few have succeeded. Put an illiterate, professional, man, woman, rich or poor there. Most failed spectacularly but almost without exception come away rich and in-famous for their capacity to acquire huge chunks of national cake for themselves and progeny. All this while in ‘service’. Find future politicians who will LOVE AND WORK FOR NIGERIA to make it grow, not regress! HAPPY NEW YEAR.

  • Our Girls; DSG Amina M: UN-SDG life skills advert prog?

    Merry Christmas to all and ‘Our Girls’ many missing since April 15, 2014.
    Shameless country owing hard-working athletes with no sanctions against corrupt administrators who disrupt Olympic and sports development with impunity? Buhari, root out this sports administrator corruption. How hard can it be? Easier than with judges. Change!
    While politicians jostle for double pensions in Senate, other Nigerians impact positively. Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is new UN Secretary-General, the ninth and appointed Amina Mohammed as UN number two – Deputy Secretary General. Congratulations. Wow! She is leaving as Nigeria’s environment minister and former Director Nigeria MDG Programme after posts as Assistant Sec General/Special Advisor on MDGs, and negotiation/creation of the SDGs -United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Former Health Minister, Professor Babatunde Oshotimehin is also ‘high up’ as Executive Director of UNFPA, a UN Under-Secretary-General. These are Nigerian role models for children, not the destructive shameful corporate instant millionaire programmes and those in National Assembly (NASS).
    She has to tackle famine and starvation from Nigeria and elsewhere. One huge ‘take-away’ from Nigeria to the UN HQ that Amina Mohammed can take, is a UN-led 21st Century revolution to quickly ‘get the SDG message across’ by recruiting our billions of adverts to support the UN’s ambassadorial effort to publicise and implement SDGs from birth to the grave. At more than 10billion+, adverts outnumber citizens worldwide, reaching from Time Square to every village square and hamlet. In spite of this advert blitz about products not needed, citizens remain ignorant about LIFE SKILLS – THE NEGLECTED WEAPON OF SDG MASS DEVELOPMENT and COMMERCIAL MESSAGES ARE THE UNUTILISED DELIVERY SYSTEM for this weapon. Massively inadequate budgets for UN SOCIAL SKILLS PROGRAMMES cause a disease ‘Ignorance’ in society about measures to stay alive, healthy and productive causing with a lower quality of life, added misery and even death from preventable medical/social causes. But corporate bodies know that dead citizens do not buy commercial products. It should pay them to keep citizens alive to buy their products longer.
    A new worldwide UN SOCIAL SKILLS ADVERTING PROGRAMME should bring empowerment to achieve SDGs. It should be the responsibility of the state to educate the citizenry on ‘The Top UN 100 ‘How to Stay Alive’ Points and not the NGOS as at present. The UN must institutionalise attacks on social ignorance with a booklet UN BOOKLET OF 200 LIFE SKILLS’ taught at assembly in schools worldwide and funded by the commercial world.
    This will help achieve the UN-SDGs –credited to Amina Mohammed and others. One mark that hindered the MDGs was a lack of big corporation commercial, social and cable TV media opportunities as strategic partners to enlighten citizens. We are all unpleasantly alarmed at how ignorant the Generation Next is about Life skills. The UN-SDGs should develop strategies to recruit commercial, social and cable TV media to save mankind from ignorance of not-for-profit life skills, they already know for-profit commercial products. Nobody dies from not knowing about the top 1,000 commercial products advertised with billions of dollars. Citizens die from lack of knowledge of life skills. Correct this with a sign strategy. There are red drinks advert stickers in every corner and kiosk world-wide, billions, especially in schools and homes but children still get bullied and women still get battered and raped. Sticker signs are not sacrosanct. They can be added to especially the mega advert market influencing the purchases of females for self, family, food and friends. Let the UN-SDGs associate that red sticker with an ‘ABC-Avoid Bullying Children’, ‘XYZ Drinkers Respect Girls And Women’ Or ‘ABC suit wearing Men Don’t Beat Women’. The UN says ‘Wash Your Hands, It’s Bad For Germs’, ‘Girls Deserve Education Too’, ’Invest In Education’, ‘Citizens, Do TBM Total Body Monthly For Lumps And Anomalies’, ‘Do Your Blood Pressure’, ‘Cut Back On The Salt And Sugar’, ‘Don’t Burn Tires’.
    Most of the media wrongly believe that social adverts are a waste of space and time, no profit in them, but think nothing of receiving billions from companies marketing products of no life-preserving use. The world needs to either advertise social messages or marry commercial messages to social messages in a marriage, piggyback, joint or twin message programme. Since the world knows negative messaging on cigarette and alcohol packaging, it is logical to harness the world’s Global Advertising Giants like Sir Martin Sorrell to help save customers lives through positive social message add-ons to help keep customers alive longer and thus buying their commercial products longer.
    Surely Amina Mohammed can spearhead a new UN ‘Ignorance Elimination Adverting For Life Initiative’ and hold a SG or SDG driven top-level Annual UN –Advertisers Strategic Exhibition’ with big corporate giants with big advert budgets to ‘selfishly’ give space on their packaging, billboards, product bottles, boxes, bags and tins used in every kitchen, office table and school desk or fund 1,000-1million UN Posters. Even football and basketball team shirts can carry UN messages. This would educate the citizens about the ‘TOP 100 UN Messages for Life’ from UN agencies annually. The UN can invite the Face book, cable, twitter, Disney etcetera to put UN Message Runners under their programmes. UN led Annual UN SDG Media Strategy Awards, Rewards and Recognitions will bring multibillion dollar funding for UN adverts at no extra cost to the corporate world. The UN is a huge brand the corporate world should want to work with. Ask Bill Gates. to_marinho@yahoo.com,

  • Our Girls; Starved IDPs; NASS Constitutional Mis-Amendments

    Our Girls; Starved IDPs; NASS Constitutional Mis-Amendments

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. We pray for their safe return.
    The disgraceful hand of stealing and sexual assault meted out to three million Nigerian Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in the nation’s care, by those charged with the mantle of ‘aid-giver’ or ‘protector’ was as preventable as it was predictable. Nigeria’s administrative skills are severely limited and the care of the IDPs was a project bound to fail. Why? Because we do not know when to alleviate the suffering and not be selfish. We stoop to stealing food ‘from the mouths of babes and sucklings’ or self-gratification by ‘harming the hair on the head of one of these children‘ with rape of them or their mothers or insisting on a ‘SEX-FOR-FOOD PROGRAMME’ instead of security or administrative duties.
    We have clamoured for educated and professional IDPs and indigenes of North-east to be in-charge of their own affaires instead of employing out-of-state cowboys who come to feast on the misery of distressed Fellow Nigerians. Nigeria tragically failed the North-east when Boko Haram was controllable.  Nigeria fails the IDPs again in IDP camps by releasing unsupervised predators in sheep’s clothing to ‘feed on them’ instead of ‘feed them’. Add those displaced by Fulani herdsmen terror. God is watching. Is nothing sacred in Nigeria, even children’s suffering? We need a new leadership for the National IDP Programme not agencies struggling to be ‘The Worst Carer’. We need an IDP food and safety watchdog or ambassador like Dora Akinyuli, may she RIP. The children are undernourished in a country with no food crisis or famine – just national incompetence and irresponsibility in child-care. This is a monumental earthquake and structural failure of governance which should bring shame to rosy-cheeked, pot-bellied Abuja occupants in and out of ministries and National Assembly (NASS).
    Referendum is the answer OO! Italy had a referendum to reduce the bloated, expensive parliament naturally refusing to self-reform, cut costs and reduce numbers. Sound familiar? That referendum failed but democracy is moving with harsh economic times beyond flamboyant democratic practices. We have called for a referendum to reduce our NASS to one House, the Representatives, part time with sitting allowance funded by their home states. They say referenda have no basis in Nigerian law. This is simple because the paid ‘constitution writers’ were told to leave it out.  But the weight of public opinion must count in this oppressed lopsided country where to politicians ‘STEALING IS ‘A RIGHT AND A RITE’ and for others it is a jail-able wrong. The consequences of political arrogance are visible on TV. The way and offhand manner NASS’s postponement again of the confirmation hearing of the EFCC Acting chairman are insulting. Instead of an apology, the matter of ‘national corruption’ was ‘not a priority’ for Senate. This same Senate seeks to ‘mis-amend’ the constitution by stripping the presidency of more powers.
    The same NASS is seeking to ‘enshrine’, a poor choice of word for our military imposed constitution, constituency projects in the constitution after the same NASS brought the very term constituency projects into disrepute with major NASS corruption. The odour emanating from constituency projects is a stain on NASS.
    The attempt to ‘CONSITUTIONALISE through MIS-AMENDSMENTS’ such mainly fictitious projects will favour only NASS, as usual guaranteeing a corrupt gravy trail. Nigeria is too broke to afford another cunning plan to rape and rob Nigerians by a morally compromised, ‘legally illegal’ creation of corrupt practices like constituency projects maliciously enshrined in what are personalised constitutional amendments. Introducing constituency projects into the already warped constitution is an effort to ‘DRY CLEAN A ROTTEN CLOTH’.
    In the light of past horrible corrupt experience with the ‘Harrowing Chamber’, if a NASS member ‘has a cunning dream’ for delivering a pressing project to aid the development of constituents and a constituency, that idea should be taken to the relevant ministry well in advance of the budget or discussed at special public NASS/Ministry Constituency Project meetings with the men from the ministry. The various Ministries, Departments and Agencies would then include such chosen projects in their budgets. We the citizenry say ‘NO TO CONSTITUENCY PROJECTS’ because of past abuse and to prevent further abuse. No more robbery of the citizens through constituency projects. Expunge constituency projects from the Nigerian political and economic lexicon. Most never existed in reality as they were conduits for graft and should never exist in the Nigerian political and economic space. Legislators legislate and let governments initiate and execute contracts.
    The Nigerian Press should have mass appeal programmes for the people to see the Constitutional Amendments, CA, maneuvering in the NASS and view the exercise with suspicion and engage in an enlightenment campaign and vox pop and analytical programming on this selfish tinkering with the constitution which really requires implementation of the many of the recommendations from the Constitutional Review held under Jonathan.  Nigerians demand full coverage of future CAs, not a minute news bite on TV but massive media coverage, analysis and broadcast to prevent high-jacking of the constitution review by the Abuja based multiparty political elite in spite of an announced ‘Retreat on Constitutional Amendments’ by NASS. It will be a pity if the media does not fight for the citizenry in this CA matter before another NASS coup to perpetrate questionable laws which defy logic, law and morality, all to preserve the NASS in all its abused power and glory.

  • Our Girls; Potholes; Total Body Exams; SDGs

    Our Girls are still missing since April 14, 2015. We pray for their safe return.
    As Europe enters winter, what would the death toll be if Nigeria had cold life-threatening harmattan with only 3,000MW when electricity is the only lifeline for warmth? Already 20,000Mw of the UN-recommended 150,000MW for Nigeria is an insurmountable by 2020, a Nuclear Physics Problem, for the violence-prone Nigerian scenario? Answer? Go solar. However ‘Nationwide Pothole Filling’ is a competence daring issues, not Nuclear Physics or stopped by violence. Nigeria’s potholes are created by Nigerian government’s active decision ‘NOT TO FILL THEM’. This is confirmed by the mad FRENZY TO FILL A FEW POTHOLES FOR VISITING ‘DIGNITARIES’. All Nigerians deserve an ‘EPIDEMIC OF POTHOLE FILLING’. Even broke Nigeria can ‘make straight our path’ and fill all potholes. POTHOLES ARE AN INHUMAN WRONG THAT MUST BE FILLED AS A HUMAN RIGHT. President BUHARI can answer the critics that he is slow, by an urgent ‘NATIONWIDE POTHOLE FILLING EXERCISE’.
    UN-SDGs Continued: Have you wondered why Nigerians seem to have taken a ‘vow of suffering for development’ in the midst of formerly available plenty? There is serious life, lived and suffered by the majority of hardworking honest Nigerians nationwide, beyond the gaudiness of debilitating politics that keeps Nigeria prostrate.
    The UN recognised this and created the MDGs, especially for suffering countries, to save those parts of the world afflicted with the disease ’Underdevelopment’ from its evil cause – the gluttonous political class. That political class seems happy to steal money meant to save the lives of the corpses of dead children, mothers and unemployed fathers without pensions while the same politicians accumulate single and double pensions for life for four years work. Is that not blood dripping from their mouths?
    Am I too harsh? Look at the example of a Black politician in America, Obama’s neck and his abdomen, and Michelle’s neck after eight years as American President and first family- the most powerful worldwide and compare them to the gaudy National Assembly (NASS) men and women roaming Nigeria doing the now familiar oversight functions for example. Are they receiving the traditional rumoured illegal ‘perks’ and double transport and lodging and inconvenience or bush allowance perhaps including girls from the ‘oversight-ed’ companies forced to ‘buy’ a favourable report or face public ridicule, the weapon used against whistle-blowers and those who fail to play ball? I am not harsh, just reporting the harsh and blood-spattered reality of Nigeria’s greed driven politics, bereft of higher moral goals, Olympian ideals of fair play and honest losing or winning. That politics even lacks the simple fear of God’s wrath for ‘padding’ aka ’criminal inflation of budget items’ which is contrary to the injunction not to ‘harm the hair on the head of one of these little ones’ through theft of the budgets for health drugs, education books and pothole free roads.
    There are human and humane challenges in every country, rich and poor, even Obama and Trump’s America. However poor countries are especially punished by the excessive financial and moral burden of a criminal visionless politics. Why is stealing a jail-able crime for the poor but a congratulatory event for the ‘Politicians Perpetuating Poverty Party’ PPPP???? Stealing should be a reprehensible and punishable crime for politicians too. Politics is inert, non-mobile. It is politicians who drive and manipulate politics for good or bad.
    As the world’s greatest ‘humane’ doctor, loving lawyer, peaceful policeman, endearing environmentalist, quickest tent builder and sociable social worker for the poor worldwide, except for some tragic events, the United Nation’s launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, UN SDGs, by the Secretary General is the next step in an unending Herculean struggle, against bad politicians, to save the poor. Unfortunately the majority of politicians may smile but are pathologically of evil character and intention. This fact should make us all ashamed and act to save our ‘Fellow Nigerian’ people, in spite of massive political Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness, CINS. Politicians celebrate serial failure-to-perform daily in parliaments, government houses and uncivil services. Hopefully most of that corrupt excess stopped under Treasury Single Account and Buhari. Vocal people are yearning for the ‘bad old times’ when corrupt money circulated to corrupt families and friends. Did you benefit corruptly during the Babangida to Jonathan era?
    Life skills are about health and social issues including knowledge of Breast Examination and Total Body Examination for every human monthly, blood pressure, violence, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, dangerous driving, safe motherhood and that the sex of a baby is the responsibility of the male partner.
    An absence of life skills including the ‘moral compass’ causes a darkness impenetrable to the tiny torchlight of UN Goodwill Ambassadors, Special UN Days or tiny advert budgets of the UN, NGOs or media houses ‘allowing’ a CSR social message. Indeed some media outlets expect not-for-profit social messages to cost for-profit commercial rates.
    Let us not ignore the new media, the ‘social media’ with billions of hours of audio/visual social media streaming to a vulnerable mainly young audience eager to absorb the good, and especially the bad and ugly messages. What is the UN SOCIAL LIFE SKILL MESSAGE for today, changed daily, in 10,000 languages and in braille, worldwide on all social media outlets? It does not matter who delivers the life message, celebrity or blogger, child or geriatric, a Kardashian or Hamilton, Nollywood or Bollywood star. Just to create ‘HUMANE-ITY’ a HUMANE HUMAN RACE. To be continued wwwtonymarinho.com

  • Our Girls; UN-SDGs and private sector

    Our Girls; UN-SDGs and private sector

    Our Girls are still missing since April 14, 2015. We pray for their safe return.
    The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, UN-SDGs, recently launched by the Secretary General should make us act to save our people, in spite of massive political corruption, incompetence and failure.
    All development has a cost. We are all regretfully too familiar with the human losses suffered by the UN worldwide and even here in Abuja and on the Polio outreach.
    We appreciate the efforts of the UN to make the world a better place in spite of the paradoxical and sometimes schizophrenic and double speak, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do antics of many of its member states through variations of democracy and good governance.
    Contrary to the unfounded belief in certain ruling class circles, the average human being was not born to suffer and does not have to Suffer-for-Development a popular axiom among the corrupt leadership of fledgling democracies except in extreme weather conditions beyond the power of man to avert. But man-made-misery and man-made-indifference to growing natural disasters have for too long taken precedence in the causation of additional needless human suffering-the suffering soul. The human psyche is largely selfish and vicious, adept at inflicting needless pain and it is greedy thinking nothing of the insensitivity and insult of parking a branded car beside a burnt body or a model in Blood  Diamonds beside some else’s mud hut in an advert.
    We should all want to get the private sector more involved in the SDGs and ‘CONNECT THE MONEY TO THE MISERY OF Million ’- the goal of the UN SDGs. Not only private sector money, but also love of country, allegiance to this generation, expression of private sector opportunity to participate in the creative alleviation of the consequences of bad governance and multi-billion naira corruption which is beyond the control of the victims –the needy. And nothing is Nuclear Physics!  About 10 years after their mothers die in ‘hard labour’ failures, the motherless children are in shamelessly placed in bookless pigsties miscalled schools receiving empty exercise books as misnamed Dividends of Democracy, not textbooks from a failing government, because a bookless, posterless, fooball-less school is an education-less place, not a school –a learning space.
    Yet from home and during break-time we expect and indeed demand that these unstimulated minds + and their parents spend billions buying private sector products to fill their bellies and clothe their bodies, wash themselves and use sanitary apparatus, even as we conspire, sometimes through ‘masterly inactivity’  to ensure that their brains remain empty. ‘They ask for bread and a football and unforgivably, we give them a stone to play with’, because the uneducated idiots, are easier to manipulate as cannon-fodder in elections. And tragically every school has an ‘I Have A Dream’ multi-coloured sparkling billboard with a plastic football but the advertiser  bought no football, or books, for the children in the loveless school staring longingly up at the Brand Ambassadors sports stars in the N25M sky-blue billboard smiling the ‘it’s a goal’ smile from on high.
    How close is your company to the community which your cash comes from?  Is your company a user or user friendly?
    The UN tries to keep us on course as the humane human race, a much over-rated species in the love-of-neighbour and if-you-can-do-no-good-at-least-do-no-harm department. The UN gave us the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) which saved millions of lives by holding wayward governments to some benchmarks and yardsticks worthy of a Nobel Prize for the thinkers. At their expiration, the post MDG era has a new set of stepping stones to a human utopia –the 17 SDGs. The masterstroke- ‘political, financial and ‘I am very useful in the world’-  is bringing the private sector on board and firing it with zeal further added to the billions of dollars being spent through the Global Fund and numerous Foundations and partners on poverty and vaccinations et cetera .
    But and there is a big but…..in hindsight could  the MDGs have been more effectively met if the world’s advertising agency gurus also sat at the UN high Command Global Fund Table dispensing wisdom on branding MDGs and participating in ‘Global Ignorance Elimination’ strategies?
    With their access to a heretofore ‘wasted social development opportunity’ of multibillion advert budgets, billions of hours of radio/TV airtime and a runner under cartoons and music shows to access the youth brain during hours of boredom, millions of stickers and cartons and other product packaging, surely MDGs could have had and now SDGs must ride on the back of the adverting tiger to more quickly make a better, more informed world? The advertisers, corporate and agencies should be brought on board early for the SDGs adding billions at little extra cost –just shared space and time!
    If knowledge is POWER, What disease pervades the world ‘for profit’ commercial [products we often do not need] and non-commercial ‘not for profit’ – the hard facts of life called social life skills. The private sector is the big brave doctor treating ignorance about its products and services using ‘for profit’ COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING-billions of messages worldwide. Advertising is king and queen especially ‘for profit’  ‘CORPORATE SATURATION ADVERTISING’ and for making Presidents and is 99.9% of advert budgets visualised and heard by every human but little for the ‘not for profit’ non-commercial advertising with social messages, less than 1% of advertising. This must change. [to be continued]

  • Our Girls; Ex-Presidents’ pensions; Lagos-Ibadan track

    Our Girls; Ex-Presidents’ pensions; Lagos-Ibadan track

    Our Girls are still missing since April 14, 2015. We pray that more work will release them all.
    All pensions/ allowances ‘legally/illegally’ granted and now ‘owed’ to our numerous ex-Presidents should be ‘graciously or strategically’ waved by them or cancelled as ‘austerity contribution’; Ditto at state and LGA level for governors etcetera. Longevity is an expensive blessing. Some states have 11 ex-governors feeding! Of course LGA chairmen and members may also be feeding fat? Why travel for Abacha loot when our ‘Ex-Presidents loot’ officially monthly with obscene pension funds from our revenues? No wonder ‘ASUU strikes again and again’. In fact Nigeria should strike until all fat political pensions are reduced by 90% ‘voluntarily’ cancelled.
    Quite frankly, Nigerians should move forward from the ‘monumental’ achievements of regional founding fathers of Nigeria and face our ‘Political Mediocrity’. Though our professionals impact worldwide, our political professionals remain at the bottom of the political class worldwide incapable of the past visionary implementation of our founding fathers. We talk of ‘Awolowo Schools and Roads’ in 2016. Name two outstanding great political leaders of Nigerian modern political history who loves Nigeria above themselves? Can we cleanse ourselves and spend two years of true ‘Love of Nigeria’ actions to provide infrastructure and development, modernising our roads and schools? Awolowo Roads still exist today while modern ones are pothole-ridden. How can Nigerian authorities, in the face of recent politically driven multibillion naira fraud, justify its lip-service to education, when Nigeria had over N100billion in a UBEC fund and while Nigerian students still lacked books, chairs, desks, libraries, sports equipment and science laboratories? Why should Nigeria’s innocent children, rightfully seeking knowledge, suffer the absence of basic education tools to eliminate their educational ignorance in 2016?
    To live comfortably and not just ‘manage’ or ‘survive’, Nigerians urgently need adequate uninterrupted electric power as a human right in 2016. Generator power costs have crippled finances, initiative, industry and individual and family ‘happiness’ – a measurable quality of life. We all know how painfully expensive it is to our pockets, the increasingly polluted air we breathe, our bombarded ears and to have to say ‘Turn on the generator’ instead of just ‘Switch on the light’. Is government delivering 150,000Mw as required?
    We have been stuck in 3-12 hour gridlock on the Lagos-Ibadan Road during the last 10 years- an ignored warning sign of impending failure. Every Sunday afternoon, the Ibadan-Lagos side is a 20km five-lane, queue-jumping 3-4 hour nightmare traffic jam from bad and failed sections of the road. The Lagos-Ibadan Road is ‘Not Fit For Purpose’ and joins many other major roads in Nigeria abandoned by governments. Contractors do not build roads, governments do. Therefore, no one should shed crocodile tears at last week’s ‘crash waiting to happen’ – a multiple vehicle road crash and fire claiming three lives, lost vehicles, lost business hours added to the usual millions daily lost to gridlock on that ill-fated Lagos-Ibadan Road. Ask people how they feel before embarking on that road. Apprehension, doom, uncertainty and prayerful. You cannot predict journey time, paralysing your planning, just because of uncaring governance.  Awarding contracts is not the issue alone without pothole filling and opening the road during construction. Today ‘Contractors Rule’ and without the protection of the government during the construction, we suffer. Amazingly road traffic authorities add to the chaos and Russian roulette feeling by pulling vehicles out of such gridlock traffic for checks on suffering citizens – double jeopardy.
    Yes IN NIGERIA POLITICIANS DELIGHT IN BRAINWASHING US WITH ‘YOU MUST SUFFER SEVERELY FOR EVEN TINY DEVELOPMENT’ –LIKE A ROAD MUST BE MADE IMPASSIBLE DURING CONSTRUCTION. But that would not happen abroad because government fears and protects the citizens. Only a Nigerian in government could insult his compatriot citizens’ intelligence by boastfully telling us ‘you must suffer today for development tomorrow’. Nigerians, ‘No’, you do not have a ‘right’ to suffer for development. The citizens ask why, 40 YEARS SINCE THE OPENING OF THE LAGOS-IBADAN ROAD, it did not grow but shrank to a rough road, a pothole-filled menace and treacherous track especially during reconstruction. On Saturday November 19, it took seven hours to reach Ibadan. What development agenda has Lagos with one major easily blocked artery with Ketu, Lekki and Ota as poor secondary roads? ROADS AND POTHOLE FILLING ARE NOT NUCLEAR PHYSICS- JUST LOVE and COMMONSENSE, LACKING IN NIGERIA’S GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE. What a shambles!
    According to General Gowon, the design of Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was three lanes each side. Who stole two lanes? Who did not grow the road to anticipate development demands and instead supervised its degradation?
    Construction work on the Lagos-Ibadan Road may be ‘internationally excellent’ but can Nigeria really afford a four-year wait for a 110km road. Can Nigeria afford two concrete medians, running 240km instead of one 120km median? Is this not an immoral waste when we need pothole filling and roads everywhere? Can Nigeria afford a central median ‘gutter’ which could be another lane? Can Nigerians afford the petrol to drive 20 or 30 km before turning back to the other side to access home, office or emergency? More crossing points please! Can Nigeria afford a first class road when so others are ‘Class zero’ potholed and murderous? Even with construction, Nigerian drivers recklessly force others to their deaths as they drive at 150kph. ‘We lose, God Win’.  wwwtonymarinho.com

  • Our Girls; ‘Borrow’ or ‘Lend’ me data?

    Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014 and recently there have been more bombings and late military war hero Lt Col Muhammad Abu-Ali and his equally brave six compatriots have been laid to rest after a strategic attack by Boko Haram. The nation joins their families in mourning them and 30,000 murdered victims. Life is so deadly serious. Contrast their heroic deaths with some of who they died for –National Assembly (NASS) members. Every time we see the ‘2-3 salaries and pension scams, I mean schemes, of ‘ex-governors ’ and other corrupt ‘legally illegal’ NASS antics, one feels like vomiting as its members act immune to the disasters in Nigeria and the political poverty inflicted by their greedy actions and evil-inclined inactions. Prostitutes, and apparently politicians, have a saying that ‘money for hand – back for ground’. The need to stop NASS and politicians’ financial profligacy is urgent. This profligacy commenced in 1999 reaching new lows in morals, decency and democratic demonism all totalling 15 ‘Years of Plenty’. This, paradoxically, instead of fuelling a Monumental Development Agenda, created the ‘Years of the Locust’ during which Nigeria was looted by its political citizens from every political party and civil service at all levels of governance leaving nothing for the youth and nothing saved causing the on-going ‘Years of Famine’.

    Can we protect INEC from intra-political rascality? Nigerians, it is not the responsibility of INEC but that of the irresponsible party to choose between candidates from factions in political parties. Indeed such duplicity represents serious party indiscipline and a failure to meet INEC’s LEGAL DEMAND OF ‘ONE PARTY, ONE CANDIDATE BY DEADLINE DATE’. INEC is an umpire and should be put in a legal position to refuse to recognise both or all the candidates and de-recognise/ de-register the offending political party at that election for breach of trust -submitting two or more names instead of one –thus breaking the rules of political engagement with the electorate.

    Power palaver: Shamefully ‘Power Generation reaches 3483.7Mw’. Will someone tell government that is failure and a shortfall of 146,516.3Mw by UN’s 1000Mw/1million? The political thieves have built their fortunes with our development money. Power failure has taught Nigerians we do not need power at home throughout the day. Cut out grid power during the day while at work and avoid high bills. At night 4-6 hours NEPA or PHCN or generator will keep your freezer and fridge cold, if your wife agrees and she will probably not.

    The telecommunications companies could have eradicated a simple English error in Nigeria. Instead, they have reinforced the error with slogans like ‘Borrow me data’. Imagine exams where the choice is between ‘Borrow me your biro’ or ‘lend me your biro’. Obviously the ‘lend’ is correct and the ‘borrow’ is incorrect.  However students will remember the adverts and wrongly tick ‘Borrow me your biro’. Corporate giants should ‘do no harm’ even as they ‘do no good’. Perhaps the NIGERIAN ACADEMY OF LETTERS should lead a campaign to get telecoms companies to change to the linguistically correct ‘LEND ME DATA’.

    On Monday, The Punch newspaper published a picture revealing a failed road with several feet of red laterite and a too-thin layer of bitumen/ tar. The road was built to fail by corrupt government and contractors not using the foundation of rocks already paid for. They should ask the Romans whose stone roads have lasted 2000 years.

    The refurbished hospital in Benin is a credit to Governor Oshiomhole and reminder to all states that they are each bigger than 20 countries in size or populations and state hospitals must outclass teaching hospitals and Federal Medical Centres. Governors must guarantee a citizen’s human right to good health which is not a dividend of democracy.

    The whole ‘Abuja Political Project’ has become a crippling millstone around the drowning Nigeria’s neck. To the glory of God and Buhari [whose daughter got married without fanfare last week] and Treasury Single Account (TSA), a headline last week announced that politicians complain they cannot reimburse themselves for election costs through ‘business as usual’ contracts deliberately padded, brown envelopes for oversight function reports, envelopes with ‘finders’ fees’ for ‘introductions’ or ‘percentages in perpetuity’ and ‘receiving a percentage of ‘salary money’ illegally deposited in banks instead of paying workers. They have all dried up at source- Aso Rock. It is now a financial ‘ghost town’ all from fear of EFCC, dwindling access to ‘hard currency’ and a lack of budget-fraud funds. Good. Buildings bought at excessive costs cannot be resold even at 50% discount, because no-one has the old money, or is hiding it from EFCC in plastic bags in soakaways. Now it is the ‘Unusual Business Era’ without the thick ‘corruption club sandwich’ layers of political, civil service, legal, and CBN release envelopes and corruption, served in multi-star hotels around Abuja. We hope!

    Hopefully this will also translate into cheaper election campaigns encouraging a more dedicated, participating Nigerian at the next election. Perhaps the Trump election will inspire new Nigerian politicians, not from godfathers and big money but from development. But will the people change from self-gratification/‘stomach infrastructure’ at the grassroots, ward and state leadership and their ‘rent-a-voter culture’ to higher moral goals of a development capability and intellectual capacity?

    Thank you for the huge response to ‘Sex and Perfume’ which will save many marriages. Happily, Nigerians are more passionate about their marital partners than foreign football and politics- local and Trumped Clinton.

  • Our girls; sex and perfume; China power

    Our Girls are missing since April 15, 2014 with five million Internally Displaced Persons, home and abroad, staying with friends, family and working nationwide.

    This leads us to ‘Let’s talk about sex’. The Human Rights Watch Report on sexual abuses against IDPs should have been anticipated at meetings with workers for organisations and victims’ funds, predicted and prevented. Even enemy captives are protected under the Geneva Convention. When any crime is committed, we must ‘Suspend, Investigate, Dismiss, Prosecute and Sanction’ those in authority. Did they not read about UN soldiers’ atrocities and learn ‘Prevention of abuse is better than a non-existent cure’? You cannot ‘cure’ a rape victim. Big heads must roll to jail for ‘Negligence of duty and failure to Institute Protocols, Preventive Measures and Monitoring Methods for staff’.

    Lets’ talk more about sex. As doctors, we get queries. The human body has a MO, Mouth Odour, and BO, body odour, attractive or off-putting. Perfume was invented centuries ago and it can change life in public and at home! Who needs to talk when you can make a ‘Perfume statement’? Modern women try to ‘smell’ divine and enhance themselves with foreign attachments et cetera-adding to God’s gifts. Almost every man has bought perfume for a partner. But do men smell the perfume they buy? She wears it to work, NOT at home, giving the office more ‘Perfume Days’ than you who bought it. Even as a married couple, your ‘Perfume Days’ or even ’Perfume Night’ are just birthday and Christmas night without a fight.

    Men wonder why women do not wear their perfume in the home and every night, unlike in week one of marriage or during a hotel weekend -remember. So ladies, open those perfume bottles in the drawer for more Presidential ‘Perfume Days’ and Presidential ‘Perfume Nights’ in your personal Presidential home, in your Presidential kitchen, in your Presidential sitting room, in your Presidential bathroom and in your Presidential ‘other room’ where there is often a useful chair and bed, your Personal Presidential space.  Women, more ‘Perfume Days’ and ‘Perfume Nights’ will keep your marriage more Presidentially ‘Perfumed and Alive’ long after dark when the generator dies.

    Love and sex are ‘a two way street’ and a man may require sex due of love, lust or ‘Cyclic Male Readiness’. Sex at home is love and simple lust from a recent sexy experience or the ‘Male Sperm Cycle’ a biological response to the cyclic sperm manufacture regularly fortnightly or monthly depending on protein, meat, intake. Plenty protein = plenty sperm = plenty sex in the ‘other room’.

    The human is the only animal which clothes and perfumes itself. Unlike women, men smell particularly of stale sweat. Men and women use armpit deodorant and men shave and use after-shave lotion. Many men collapse into bed unwashed and must endeavour to consider a shower nightly before going to ‘the other room’ on Home Presidential assignment. Men must ‘be prepared’ day and night even though women answer too often ‘nay’ or ‘headache’ and not the ‘aye’ they agreed to on wedding day! Why not perfume your body every night, sex or no sex. Perfume companies will double sales, so buy shares. Beyond politics, every family must survive the corrupt earthquake called politics which has reduced happiness at home. A good family sex life is therapy to help emotionally survive a family economic crisis. ‘Perfumed Days and Perfumed Nights’ will help do just that.

    Thank the President for raising ‘the other room’ discussion points. Political parties may divorce and disintegrate but families must survive political rascality. With a good perfume, a family can tune to a good Chanel to Escape as a Happy couple should to consume with Passion, without Guilt, and enjoy the Poison of an Eternity of Intimate Diamond studded Obsession without Brut force as they share Old Spice in married life at The One, the correct Fahrenheit. Perfume and the Other Room are more important to family than politics.

    Now we have saved the family, back to politics.  May no Nigerian sniff the other ‘evil perfume’ handkerchief of kidnappers in taxis and NAPEP seeking body parts, Amen!

    Excuse me, as politicians return money taken under false premises -theft- know that N1b, N1,000,000,000 is stealing N6.6 from every single Nigerian baby, child and adult, many dead from no development. The ‘condemned to return  funds’ are naturally visited by family, friends, priests and pastors as Jesus said pray for and comfort sinners and robbers. But who is comforting and giving ‘restitution’ to the robbed? Instead, honest Nigerians are insulted for demanding investigations and prosecution twisted to mean ‘persecution’. The holy visitors must demand from their adherents – confession, restitution and reparation, not just forgiveness and solidarity.  Nigerians, STOP CELEBRATING, CONDONING, DEFENDING OR FORGIVING CORRUPTION BEFORE RESTITUTION AND JAILTIME.

    Some ‘power experts’ gloomily proclaim Nigeria cannot provide or distribute 20,000Mw by 2020 – 15% of national needs at 1000Mw/1million UN recommendation. This is a Nigerian National Emergency. Because of population growth and additional technology development, even 20,000Mw by 2020 will be inadequate. To execute a 5-10yr 150,000Mw Emergency Power Plan, turn only to China which grows power at 50,000+ Mw /annum and provides 120m homes with wind power. Na development sleeping sickness de kill Niga?

    Hurray, there is a Nigerian AB Bukarti-led petition for a REFERENDUM ON THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY as I have been calling for, for years? Sign up at www.change.org. www.tonymarinho.com