The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Palliative photo-trick; Carter; Noise

    Palliative photo-trick; Carter; Noise

    Another Christmas/New Year season of media-drenched political palliatives is ending. Hurray for beneficiaries. Too many got nothing this Christmas. But whose money did politicians use? The citizens’ money held by government. Government should stop paying stupid money to service the need, greed, illusionary grandeur of politicians. IT IS NOT POLITICAL PHILANTHROPY. JUST A TV/SOCIAL MEDIA FAKE POLITICAL PHOTOTRICK! Instead, government should use that money to increase budget services for accountability, Constituency Projects should be abolished and funds channelled to actual monitorable projects.  

     Please note the respectful, dignified execution of activities, previously well-planned, for President Jimmy Carter’s internment at 100 yrs. Why are our own activities so rowdy with photographers’ bottoms blocking us from witnessing everything from weddings to funerals? Photographers stay back, use zoom lenses! Photographers, security officials and ‘bigmanism’ disrupt the best protocol arrangements when they surround the coffin and access areas. Remember and make a plaque and wedding congratulations card stating Jimmy Carter’s happy marriage mantra of ‘NEVER GO TO BED ANGRY’ to keep marriages going longer. We must all try to imbibe and teach lessons from his life, death and internment.   Though his Carter Centre, he eliminated guinea worm. Wow! Think, as we witness real multibillionaires not doing much good.  May he Rest In Perfect Peace, RIPP.

    In addition, please, let us learn from President Carter to moderate music volume on the streets and at events, for health and safety reasons.  Communities surrounding unmonitored lawless insensitive nightclub owners and even shops are forced to stay awake 24/7 in unpleasant house-vibrating vigil by the irresponsible music level from such clubs and shops.

    It is obvious that the music is selfish, self-centred and totally lacking in discipline and sympathy for babies, mothers, children and the elderly around them, many suffering music imposed mental health issues caused by fear of going to school or to the office or even home to ‘face the music’ next door, sleeplessness with subsequent poor performance and mood at work and home, mood swings and depression. The music industry needs a rethink and re-education especially on the volume of the music and positioning of speakers at events.

    A nightclub and an event centre should be soundproofed and, if it is in the open air, it should be limited by law in decibel volume allowed and time for opening especially limiting it to 9pm weekdays and 11-12pm on Friday/Saturday.

    Who executes the law? Can the local area police command which already knows the terrain and polices the nightclubs for prostitutes and criminals be instructed and empowered with Sound Level Meters to measure decibels and initiate prosecution. Or will that job be for the local Environmental Protection Agency?

    Also, it is laziness by the band technicians and medically dangerous to have eight speakers mounted together blaring from one side all the way to the opposite wall. Each corner should have two speakers for surround sound which can then be lowered in volume so that the guests do not have to shout into each other’s ears. Guests often go home hoarse from shouting, deafened by the music and ignorant and angry from inability to hold a simple discussion, speak or listen to friends on the same table for six hours.

    Read Also: New Coronavirus: Nigeria not at risk, FG insists

    Many governments at state level are placing adverts on the TV boasting their service projects. Not one of them is exceptional-just their celebration of ‘doing their job’ and well within the-call-of-duty. Nationwide, there are several over-celebrated road and roundabouts reconstructed. In the past some of those roundabouts were decorated by historic leaders and events, like the Oritamefa Roundabout in Ibadan which Meta reports was called ‘The Horseman’ or  ‘Ori Olokun’, Head of the River, designed by the Nigerian sculpture Dr Dele Jegede in 1991 . Meta reports ‘It has since become a prominent landmark and a source of pride for Ibadan and Oyo State.’  It cost citizens a huge amount to commission and put up the statue. But even Meta is unaware it was removed years ago for de-construction reconstruction. Unfortunately, after the reconstruction, The Horseman was not remounted but disappeared. Was it stolen?  Who has it now? A contractor’s or politician’s garden or inner sanctum? Was it melted by workmen for spoons and machetes?

    Today 2025, Nigeria’s greatest artists and sculptors are ignored by politicians as LGA, state or federal resources to beautify and landmark their localities with government commissions for inspirational works. Their jobs at the potential roundabout artistic spaces are given to commercial companies for undisclosed fees. Instead, the companies should sponsor ‘Roundabout Artists’ – a win-win situation.  Yet we visit countries for selfies at Trafalgar Square et cetera which have become monuments. In Lagos, Obalende is beautified. Hurray! There are too few such monuments of historical origin and too many political mansions in Nigeria.   

    Please Cut and Paste on your office wall…

    Remind each other daily throughout 2025 to find and work with true honest Nigerians; there ARE many, to run everything including government agencies and keep them honest in office by PREEMPTIVE EFCC MONITORING!

    In 2025 RECITE AND OBEY the National Anthem, the Pledge and the Rotary FOUR WAY TEST.

    FOR THE 357 DAYS left in 2025, LET EVERYONE DAILY BE FLH- FAITHFUL, LOYAL AND HONEST  and OF EVERY ACTION ASK –  Is it the TRUTH, FAIR, BUILD GOODNESS & BETTER FRIENDSHIPS & BENEFICIAL TO ALL CONCERNED?

    IF SO, GO AHEAD. IF NOT STOP, FOR NIGERIA2025’s SAKE. Please—FOR THE CHILDREN!

  • Should your wealth actually impoverish others?

    Should your wealth actually impoverish others?

    Respect to Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer, American president, Nobel Peace Prize winner who died at 100 on Dec 29. He helped end apartheid, brought about the Camp David Accords, authored 32 books. His marriage mantra ‘Never go to bed angry’ kept his marriage 80 years or so to Rosaline who was co-founder of the Carter Centre. May he RIP.      

    The world should reset its worshipful attitude and misplaced applause to mega-rollover lottery winnings especially as many participants are needy. The world must treat rollover lotteries as ‘failed and incomplete’ if not actually ‘misleading and fraudulent’.    

    As we embark on 2025, the world is faced with the moral and economic question of ‘Should your wealth mean many other people’s poverty’? This is a profoundly relevant question when so few people have so much while so many others cannot guarantee just one meal.

    Look at most lotteries. The ‘rollover’ lotteries mean random numbers can be drawn from the one million computers. If the number of a purchased ticket is not picked during the draw, then no one wins and the pot is rolled over to the next draw with the money added to the available fund for the next draw. We say ‘there was no winner’ when in actual fact we should say ‘we were all losers’.

    The old raffle draw method was sensitive to the needs of the people as it used only sold ticket numbers. So, there was always a winner – unless the winner had lost the winning ticket. Not for the first time the lottery, having been rolled over several times was in excess of $900m -1billion in the USA recently. The US has its plenty living in poverty, the dirt poor and the street people and those afflicted by drugs. Imagine if that $1b winning had been won not by one person but was won by 1,000 people each receiving $1m or 500 people receiving $2m each or 10,000 people receiving $100,000 each. Or even 100,000 mostly poor and low-income citizens, the majority of ticket purchasers, winning $10,000 each from the same lottery system.

    Read Also: University don raises the alarm over alleged extortion of customers by IKEDC

    Studies have shown that the megadollar winners often end up unhappy in their lucky win but broke financially, broken in spirit and battered by constant demands, sometimes fraudulent, for assistance by their insatiable fellow mankind members.

    Most winners under these circumstances of excessive wealth awards are actually happy to have spent all such money and be ‘poor at last’ or at least revert to before the winning point and again lead ordinary ‘complaining’ lives again as in their pre-winner life. Sudden wealth has its own burdens and difficulties and this is why many big winners keep their anonymity so as to protect them from being targeted for loans et cetera.

    Nigeria has its own lottery system and must recommend a focus on more realistic winning pots with more frequent and more widespread winning formulas. ‘Every single lottery should draw and redraw until we have a winner – no rollovers’. If a winner does not step forward, it should be easy, after a standard grace time e.g. 48 hours, to promote every other ticket drawn upward one step until a winner or winners step forward and are identified and rewarded.

     Another example of the ‘should your wealth mean other people’s poverty?’ is in ‘The Minimum Wage’ across many countries relative to another yardstick and not just Civil Service Structure.

    We must compare and categorise the minimum wage to the total Salaries and Perks and Pensions of serving politicians in the same government or private sector organisations. There is already an existing index for this calculation or ratio in regard to private sector salaries – the CEO: Worker Pay ratio. In Nigeria we need the current ratio for the minimum wage: Politicians pay ratio to be improved if we are to better distribute our lean purse and lift our citizens out of poverty.  Liveable wages are a requirement of lifting the working class and their immediate families out of poverty.

    As Nigeria enters 2025, we must prevent Nigeria being bled to death this year through already well-known paths in politics and governance and contract inflation. Theft kills Nigerians especially the massive theft, in N100s of billions, more than US lottery mega winners, which still robbed us well into 2024 with the most recent in court for N80b and also recent forfeitures of N12b+. These cases demonstrate government’s almost complete lack of pre-emptive ability to fight and prevent this maximum extortion from the Nigerian citizen’s purse. This is best exemplified by unpaid salaries and pensions, non-metering of oil wells, low electricity supply, criminal band ABCD structure ‘buy more pay more per unit’ defying capitalist economics of ‘buy more-pay less’, and our oil and refinery products theft and underreporting.            

    To find true honest Nigerians in sufficient numbers to run government agencies cannot be impossible. How do we keep them honest in office? PREEMPTIVE EFCC MONITORING!  

    The best way to carry Nigeria safely through the economic troubles of 2025 is to recite and obey the National Anthem, the Pledge and the Rotary FOUR WAY TEST daily.

    FOR THE NEXT 365 DAYS, DAILY BE FLH- FAITHFUL, LOYAL AND HONEST and OF EVERY ACTION ASK, ‘Is it the TRUTH, FAIR, BUILD GOODNESS & BETTER FRIENDSHIPS & BENEFICIAL TO ALL CONCERNED?’

    IF SO, GO AHEAD. IF NOT STOP…FOR NIGERIA 2025’s SAKE.Safe 2025 Journey… AMEN!

  • Dying for food: Preventive planning, patience, discipline

    Dying for food: Preventive planning, patience, discipline

    As some of us celebrate Christmas today, many are in mourning from accidents or illnesses which may not have been preventable. We also join in our Christmas prayers the families of the victims of these tragic palliative-related stampedes.  Dying for food is a terrible result. Being crushed to death by one’s Fellow Nigerians is not deserved after surviving poverty inflicted by the economic hardship precipitated by 50 years of unchecked theft by the ‘Collective Thieves of Nigeria’ causing ‘The Poverty Disease’ in 80% of Nigeria’s population.

    Every problem has immediate and remote causes. Yes, we are outraged at the organisers not planning against this problem. They watch TV, where the Immigration recruitment deaths and several other tragedies should have been learnt from. Buhari and Idiagbon introduced War Against Indiscipline, WAI, to get Nigerians queuing up. Yes, the organisers did not expect to pay for crowd control but they must include it as a budgetary line item. Life is irreplaceable. Yes, they have done massive charity before without mishap.

    Remember it was not the organisers but some members of the crowd who broke the rules of ‘lining up’ or ’Queuing Up’ or ‘Wait Their Turn’ WTT. Organisers failed to anticipate and prevent. Nigerians never want to WTT when entering or exiting religious premises be it church, school, transport or office. The two-lane traffic merging ‘after you’ or ‘one car follows after one car from the other side’ law is anathema in Nigeria.  They will argue and push forward. Yes, organisers, morally and maybe criminally, failed to rehearse staff for ‘the Management of Worst Case Scenarios’.  A crowd should have been anticipated.  Nowadays we run a gauntlet of poor urchins, calculating adolescents and thugs.

    Read Also: Christmas: Akpabio, Barau, Adeola, Natasha, Southern Senators’ Forum congratulate Nigerians

    Proper organisation is not new, does not need a computer and is not nuclear physics. All large bodies require to be subdivided to avoid some people being cheated of time or position. Even army organisation demands segments of increasing numbers from 4-10-14 in the basic team, squad, platoon etc.

    In the Bible, when  Our Lord Jesus, as recorded by Mark,  fed the 5,000, he directed his disciples to get the 5,000 people to sit down in ‘groups of 50 and 100’ while Luke writes they sat in ‘groups of 100’. Crowd management is part and parcel of planning of large functions historically. Examples of poor crowd control are instructive and include the Hillsborough football fan disaster which claimed 97 lives. The losses – Oyo State we lost 35 mainly children, 22 in Anambra and 10 in Abuja are unacceptable. Now, it must not be forgotten that the organisers usually start with pure intentions-charity and love of neighbour, though some are ‘cheap publicity and the funds source is sometimes political of corrupt. They usually were never and will never be villains. St Vincent De Paul is a worldwide Catholic charity of parishioner members using parishioners’ own locally generated funds to assist local poor sick and needy patients every single week. The funfair tragedy provider, a separated Queen of Ife, was to be joyful for 5,000 children. The philanthropist in Anambra was pure of heart and a regular giver. Some other organisers are political or personally purely self-serving and self-advertorial. Sadly, the victims are never the ones guilty. They are the victims of other Fellow Nigerians’ collective, arrogance, haste, greed, and refusal to obey ‘WAIT YOUR TURN’ and ‘PLEASE LINE UP BY NUMBER’ and ‘FIRST COME -FIRST SERVED’. CCTV would have identified the citizens who precipitated the stampede. The investigators must obtain all video evidence, construct a timeline and identify instigators. 

    Personal will, patience, responsibility, being one’s brother’s keeper are key. In the late 60s and 70s, Ibadan was known for obeying traffic laws especially ‘Give way to traffic on your left at roundabouts’. Today, if you stop to allow anyone else to pass anywhere in the country, you will be horned at, verbally abused, ‘waka-finger’ signed – an actual curse on self and family- and immediately overtaken on both sides by okadas and the cars behind you which will screech to a mega horn-blaring halt when they find the person, the children, the pregnant woman or the elderly person or the obstruction crossing the road for whom or for which you had stopped. As if that is not enough, during the act of overtaking, you will hear ‘Go get a driver’, ‘Woman, make your man drive for you’. ‘I beg, no enter road again!’ 

    Crowd control is a recurring problem in Nigerian life and even at public functions with large security presence. Witness the number of pseudo-security and VIPs milling around the president on arrival in Lagos. Sometimes one cannot see the Nigerian president because of the crowd around him. Similarly in public funerals. There is little or no organised effort to restrict access or limit access to secure areas.

    Citizens resist good things and misplace blame for failures. Many vehemently mistakenly blame INEC for every election fault forgetting that it is the thugs and political parties’ adherents killing and causing mayhem. America with its 500million guns owned by civilians just had a violence-free election. Our citizens too frequently drown from not wearing simple life jackets. We in Educare Trust fought to make lifesaving seatbelts, crash helmets and life jackets normal. They were not 30 years ago! There was even resistance from commercial users. Today lifejackets are still resisted-what can be more obviously preventable than life jacket? 

    Merry Safe Christmas 2024.

  • Ten million wasting brains; Corruption fiction?

    Ten million wasting brains; Corruption fiction?

    Why are we growing 10 million educationally empty brains? We must not shirk our national responsibility to rescue them from the disease called ignorance and instead fill those brains with the knowledge making them better, more self-sufficient, higher-earning educated citizens in future. For politicians please before allowing colleagues to embark on the next week’s round of stealing ‘awoof government funds’, please make them aware of whom they steal from. They steal from the baby I saw in my clinic with both eyes blind from an eye cancer retinoblastoma. Indirectly they steal from the huge number of children out of school, estimated at 10million who seem to have become a badge to boast about at international meetings rather than a burden of shame for families, states and government.

    Certainly, it is not being treated with the ‘Education Emergency Fiscal Measures’; the human helpless faces making up this huge figure deserve and need to prevent a knowledge gap 10,000,000 brains wide. Each one of the 10,000,000 is a flesh-and-blood hungry child failed by family and government.

    Simple education mathematics tells us that Nigeria’s 10,000,000 children require 333,334 classrooms for an ideal class size of 30 children each and 333,334 – 666,668 teachers at 1-2 teachers per 30-student classroom. Classrooms will need to be in school compounds of approximately 200 students each i.e. 50,000 schools or 300 students each i.e. 33,334 schools. Classrooms need 10 wall posters each -3,333,340 posters, 10 textbooks a child – 100,000,000 books and 100,000,000 exercise books, two writing implements /child – 20,000,000 pencils and 10m rulers, 10m schoolbags, 10m one-child chairs and desks or 5m two-person benches and desks. 50,000 teacher desks and chairs.

    Read Also: Alake hails COMEG for sanitising the mining sector

    Now do the maths for the finances involved and pay up to build, equip and give our 10m children their schools before you allow any politician or civil servant around you to even think of stealing from the 10m children hungry for knowledge. They are not faceless even if you are heartless. Governments certainly need to allocate higher percentage of budgets to education and may need to re-negotiate the budgets and targets of Universal Basic Educational Commission, UBEC and State Universal Basic Educational Boards SUBEB.

     How much corruption can a single country endure? Anything more than 10% corruption will kill the country. Ask anyone doing business as many people treat Nigeria as a business for them to extract a luxurious living from. It is the same in business from tiny business to corporations. In Nigeria we all know someone whose business was ruined by mega theft.  Our farmers lose chicks, eggs, fish and yams stolen by staff or others the day before harvest. We all know shops ruined by staff-orchestrated theft often on a daily basis. If the staff cannot steal because of the high level of perimeter security preventing items being taken away, they have been known to take the tins and food down to the basement or into the backyard during break and open the tins and eat the sardines along with stolen bread and then wipe their mouths clean before returning to the shop floor. The tell-tail open tins are discarded carelessly to be discovered much later, and no one bothers doing fingerprint checks or DNA to catch the thieves. 

    So, to reiterate, any corruption more than 10% will kill the business and country. All advancing countries and their citizens know this and teach this lesson to their potential and incumbent political class. They also pay a more living wage as an anti-corruption strategy. One sees that it is not taught to Nigerian politicians of civil servants or contractors. This is obviously demonstrated by the stupendous and scandalous, in a poor country like Nigeria, ‘Salaries and Perks and Pensions’ allocated or self-acquired to the political class, contrasted with the minimum wage, recently raised  from N30,000 to N70,000. The negative impact of corruption is buttressed by the tsunami of multibillions dollar and naira in the hundreds, all cumulatively economically disastrous for the success of Project Nigeria. Every day brings news of new mega-corruption, each less creative and more blatant than the previous one.

    Now it is an education fund, the TETFUND being accused though the accusations have been denied. Hopefully, justifiably denied. In advanced countries the politicians and contractors and civil servants steer clear of stealing from ‘Healthcare, Education, Agriculture and Transport’, HEAP as these are collectively the foundation of the nation and stepping stones to survival and potential greatness, as well as adequate care of the majority of citizens and the fulfilling of the Sustainable Development Goals in a timely manner.

    Sadly, most Nigerians, especially those who volunteered to become politicians, have consistently refused to comply with this no-no. We know that all Ministries and Departments, MDAs are vulnerable to be extorted from by greed-driven politicians demanding a share of everything. Such politicians may threaten them with budget cuts or non-confirmation during any parliamentary proceedings, relentless and inquisitional and costly profit driven oversight, and even embarrassing negative comments on open mic sessions at political events and in the public media. Often in society, even being wrongly accused of doing wrong is stigma enough. Some accusations are diversionary. Can we ever imagine the quantum of money really extracted by this ‘POLITICAL EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY’?

    It also highlights a major flaw in the Nigerian political structure needing correction – accepted secrecy sources and expenditure of political party funds.         

    Wishing all a worldwide safe and Merry Christmas 25-12-2025. Amen.

  • Syria, Pensions, Don’t re-steal 1506 homes

    Syria, Pensions, Don’t re-steal 1506 homes

    Congratulations to Syria overthrowing Bashir Assad, mad medical doctor, ophthalmologist, like Hastings Kamuzu Banda before him. Sadly, doctors can be deadly. Governments learn lessons please!

    The tragedy of seeing any retiree but particularly the Armed Forces Retirees forced to protest in Abuja last week is a measure of the insult to the elderly by many governments. PAY PENSIONS BEFORE PALLIATIVES AS A POVERTY ALLEVIATION STRATEGY.

    We get our maths wrong. We call 35-year-old Nigerians ‘youth’ while America calls 18 years adults who can be executed for crimes. Now we are talking of 753 duplexes instead of 1506 homes, an enormous crime. The recent seizure of 1506 houses in Abuja indicts the financial watchdogs and political bosses ignoring the fact that PREVENTION OF FINANCIAL CRIMES IS N3-5 TRILLION NAIRA CHEAPER THAN THE CURE. Everything should be forensically audited with subsequent recovery, prosecution and restitution as indicated. This graphically explains why the naira plummeted as for years we were seeing an economic cake without a filling, which had been corruptly removed, just like our collapsed buildings countrywide are due to corruption in building. While Martin Luther King dreamed positivity, officials like Emefiele dreamed a bad result about acquiring. Does the 1506 -home estate obey the building code? It looks over-crowded.

    Of course, corruption is endemic in Nigeria mainly due to a lack of will and strategic anticorruption methodology including poor preventive, little pre-emptive continuous monitoring and too-late investigation measures. Huge estates, farmlands, multiple houses and bank accounts ‘worldwide’ are the normal vomitus of post-power investigation into many state governors. Sadly, proving guilt appears quite difficult. The EFCC, frustrated by technicalities and court delay antics, changed strategy to ‘seizure of properties probably acquired through proceeds of a crime’.

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    However, state governor greed and impunity is notorious. Similar or worse greed has perhaps never been seen in a CBN governor, usually notorious for its opaque dealings, though early governors were exemplary. Recent CBN governors rather than build up foreign exchange reserves to $1b/1m population took the CBN as a common street bank and gifted and misspent billions sometimes along ethnic bias lines.  

    Just look at ex-governors visiting EFCC doing everything to remain in NASS after office to further postpone the investigation day. Some CBN governors have mutated into self-serving state governors or MDA government CEOs accused of misappropriating funds. Emefiele even tried to become president while in office!!!  He did not stop at 1, 50, 100, 500 duplexes on the land allowing each to have a decent half plot garden. No!  Instead, he allowed his greed to cram a duplex onto the property to fit two houses per plot.

    Question abound. Will there be a transparent programme for ‘what happens to seized properties?’ with publication of Quarterly Recovered Property Reports’ and a website?

    Simple fiscal maths 753 duplexes = 1506 houses x ?N200m each = N301,200,000,000 =N301.2 billion or N1,882/Nigerian assuming a population of 160m citizens. It is imperative that these houses are made to contribute to the purse or purpose of the people of Nigeria, the citizenry. There are many other ‘Questions and Matters of Urgent National Importance’ to be quickly and thoroughly interrogated and answered publicly. What was the money trail?

    Sadly, Nigerians learnt of this N301.2 billion heinous crime because Emefiele had the ‘Roofing Quotation’ in his office. This is how the N109billion stealing Accountant General was caught merely because his 18-year-old girlfriend told her uncle that she was being gifted a house and the uncle informed the EFCC. We must stop this ‘Capture By Chance’ after huge damage has been done. That 1506 house estate can be seen from space. Who approved the land and plans? Who are the building experts? Did they not ask questions? They should be punished for lack of supervisory inquisitiveness. 

    The authorities and auctioneers must publish a list of such buildings, lands and properties over the last 20 years and explain the exact modus operandi and to whom and how they have disposed of them in the past. There have been many corruption-related questions and stories around ‘Post-Seizure Procedures and Outcomes’. NIGERIA CANNOT AFFORD FOR THE BUILDINGS TO BE RE-STOLEN. AFTER OPACITY, TIME FOR TOTAL TRANSPARENCY AS A WARNING TO OTHERS.

    Whither these 1506 houses? Should they all or some be sold? How should they be sold? Who should be denied permission to buy, maybe someone with a house in Abuja or a serving or past NASS member? Should it be a private or public auction with identified prices and bidders?

    What percentage or number of the 1506 will be ‘retained’ by government? How will retained buildings be utilised or allocated among the greedy and actually needy Ministries, Agencies and Departments and their needs by government? Will government see this as an opportunity to allocate some properties to the usually neglected NGO Community especially those NGOs catering for the needs of those facing physical and mental challenges who cannot afford office and home accommodation in Abuja?

    Of course they need completion. Who will complete them? Will some be sold so the others can be completed at no charge to government? The contractors must be investigated to ensure they are not tempted to disappear with any upfront money already paid.

    Where did the money come from to pay for the estate? Round tripping dollars? 

    The estate is now a national asset must not be left to rot.

  • NOA cartoons; ‘Pensions before palliatives’, Pls

    NOA cartoons; ‘Pensions before palliatives’, Pls

    Nigeria needs Argentinian style cuts in its political posts.

    At least 27/200 Nigerians dead in Kogi boat accident. Can Nigerian garment factories not make 10,000 life jackets? Even discarded empty water bottles can be made into rafts and life jackets. Should adults kill their children through such neglect? WEAR A LIFE JACKET TODAY! 

    There was a wonderfully cartoon super boy in a motivational skit where one person ruined the work of many, on TV – commendable. The end credit read ‘Powered by National Orientation Agency’. Hurray, NOA, congratulations for championing the ‘morally clean’ Nigeria First cartoon drive. However blanket banning foreign cartoons, unless morally illegal, is overkill, draconian. Talking of film credits, other governments, even Ghana, Senegal and South Africa, are frequently credited for grants supporting their home film industries. Nigerian governments must include film making in their budgets and give similar film grants at LGAs, state and federal government level.

    Nigerian writers, designers and film location experts need to consciously create Nairaphilic costumes, emblazoned with Nigerian fashion brands and places, ‘I Love Lagos’ or ‘…Bodija’ or ‘…Barkin Ladi’ with African/Nigeria pictures and symbols and Nigerian colours on their walls, bags, hats, T shirts and clothing.   

    There are a growing number of great Nigerian cartoons around. Cartoons are costly to make and then, purchase expensive airtime, expected to compete with commercial product advertising. Moral cartoon and social messaging space should be better negotiated, helped by NOA, to reduce access cost to give adequate space and time to ‘Youth Motivational and Empowerment Messaging’.

    Moral decay is all around. Moral enlightenment should be in ‘Corporate Social Responsibility Time and Space’ of the electronic and print media which is uncriticised when it comes to assessment for CSR commitment.  For 30 years we at Educare Trust have fought for and got 1% OF PRETAX PROFIT IDENTIFIED AS THE GOLD STANDARD FOR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. Ask MTN. Few corporate bodies live up to 1% CSR. Educare Trust also recommends that every large or small company CSR TRACK RECORD SHOULD BE A SPECIFIC REQUIREMENT submitted for evaluation and grading along with the professional competence grading as qualifying criteria for private and public sector contractors and partners. We also fought during the same 30 years for 10% OF DAILY ADVERT TIME IN RADIO, TV, AND 10% ADVERTISING SPACE OF EVERY ADVERT IN PRINT AND SOCIAL MEDIA TO BE ALLOCATED TO SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT MESSAGING. These steps are urgent countermeasures to the moral and social decay today! NOA can help with laws and honours to achieve these.

    Read Also: 15 major takeaways from Tinubu’s speech in South Africa

    Government asks itself: ‘Pay Pensions or Palliatives?’ Citizens demand ‘Pay Arrears of Pensions before Palliatives’. 

    The federal government just announced that pension arrears for 2023 to date will be paid ‘subject to the availability of funds’. In contrast, government distributed billions as palliatives to people they do not know or owe and who have never worked for government. Government ‘which cannot eliminate pension arrears accumulated through systemic failure of its own party from nine years in office’ offers to pay ‘palliatives/incentives for out-of-school children’ to go to and stay in school. Free education for the few by the back door?

    JUST MAKE EDUCATION TO SS3 FREE-FOR-ALL! Remember Awolowo?  A wise man pays his debts to his former staff before asking their successor staff to ignore those same hungry predecessors and give their money to passers-by.  A recipe for disillusionment and further moral decay. This is another needless discussion which needs urgent reversal, like the despicable 18year minimum age to enter university, thankfully reversed with sack of the offending minister.

    Has government thought through this ‘pension payment subject to availability of funds’? It is outright ‘Breach of International Human Rights Law and Contract’, an insult to our heroic retired workers, especially the majority who refused to self-enrich-in-office. Millions of koboless, penniless parents or grandparents have been turned from provider to a pariah, dependent on handouts. Remember their pension funds have been looted repeatedly by unsupervised government officials and appointees during this and past governments which also failed to pay all employer contributions pension funds. Governments should accept responsibility to replace stolen and shortfall employer contribution funds in the pension funds.  

    Nigerian governments, federal, state and LGA, have turned an International Standard Retirement Scheme into a Nigerian financial nightmare with citizens unable to access rightful returns after 10-35 years of work – an arrogant political crime, breach of legal and morally obligatory economically indexed monthly pension. The emotional trauma to adult citizens, falling from breadwinner to beggar, destroys the economic bedrock steady historically oldest bank in Nigeria, ‘The Extended Family Bank’, the first social security safety net in Nigeria, but it depended on regular salaries and pensions, which enabled the elderly to always fulfil their leadership role and financial obligations. Grandparents no longer have coins or sweets of biscuits for the grandchildren. Now, broke grandparents, but pension-owed, rely on their children for survive. The nature of our greedy political class has brazenly denied millions of their legal pensions. But even worse, is the fact that our ‘survival only’ minimum wage structure has guaranteed that our elderly have never earned enough to save or set up any income after retirement.

    Let us not forget lost pensions for the millions displaced from their ancestral homes by war, terrorism, banditry and environmental hazards. Do we give the IDPs the dignity to be paid to work and use their skills within the IDP camps?    

  • One year jail/N2m; Auditor General 2020-21; Fuel

    One year jail/N2m; Auditor General 2020-21; Fuel

    ‘One year jail term /N2m stolen’.   Please note this is the new EFCC corruption exchange rate. ‘Businessman jailed 21 years for N45.5m misappropriated in 2016.’ Corrupt politicians, civil servants, contactors and bankers should paste on their walls, a poster with this new rate for ‘jail time for theft’ with ‘immediate effect’. Using this rate, theft of N100m, N1b, N10b= 50, 500, 5,000 years in jail. ‘Steal big: Jail time big!’

    Newly released Auditor-General’s Office Report discovers N197bn contract fraud in MDAs for 2020-2021. Good report with bad news but the accused organisations have accounting teams, heads and other officials requiring to be brought to book for accounting, administrative, ‘Early Warning’ and corrupt lapses.  Nigeria has lost huge developmental progress in poorly monitored uncompleted contracts in rural electrification and other areas across 31 MDAs. The Auditor-General’s Office needs catch-up staff and a quick intervention increased budget as it still has 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 reports outstanding.  EFCC should step in now.   

     Who is afraid of local refining? 

    The murky waters of the petroleum industry are not clearing but appear to be getting even murkier and facing a crisis without end. Notice that since the death, no, murder, by international conspiracy,  of Nigerian refineries in the 70s, every time a saving lifeline appears, it raises our hopes only to be dashed sooner than later. We were told that local refining will cheaply solve our problem and give us 1] Cheap fuel because there is no international mileage to travel or transportation costs in dollars, and, 2] visible, usable and sellable by-products galore which usually, and corruptly,  have always completely disappeared in international financial accounting and corporate remittances from international oil refining. We must factor these by-products and in-out international transport costs added to the cost of fuel.

    Now we find we can refine fully in Nigerian in the brand-new Dangote Refinery, witness the multitude of obstacles strewn in the way before providing the required number of 340-600,000 barrels of oil, per day. Witness the huge quantity of fuel imported recently almost as an emergency to prevent the need to use any fuel from the Dangote Refinery. How is it possible that exporting barrels of oil, refining abroad, reimporting products could ever be cheaper than  local export-local refine and immediate local distribution? Oily mathematics?

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    But remember,  it is only in Nigeria that a nationwide electricity  company, which had repeatedly failed the country, boastfully providing a shaky 5Mw when we require 200Mw, criminally sat down and set out to scam consumers and said ‘let us charge higher per unit for more product use’  i.e. ‘more-for-more’. It got away with it and now we have the same problem with the petroleum industry.  So, the electricity band system is a ‘legalised’ scam, simple impossible in a normal ‘more costs less per unit’ world. Band A is criminal, extortionist and an immoral punishment for the consumers on Band A. Ditto for all bands.  Elsewhere in the world, the business model is ‘the more you use – the less the unit cost’.

    The good thing about the Dangote Refinery, even if ‘they’ , ‘the cabal’ or ‘whoever’ sabotage its function now is that with government backing and increased daily exports to 2.2 m barrels per day, our true, daily consumption of finished products will be revealed. The correct figure is the most closely guarded secret among the corruption causes of Nigeria’s past failure. We were told our daily petrol import needs dropped from 60m litres to 40m on so-called removal of subsidy.   It was already revealed that the so-called daily consumption was corrupted by thousands of diverted tankers crossing Nigeria’s borders; daily feeding other countries need with the greed of our own petrol managers. Any customs’ connivance? These stopped. The petrol and diesel consumption is even lower, 4-20m/day now as evidenced by the empty petrol stations, empty roads even at rush hour and the masses walking and fewer social visits.

    Without imported fuel and with reliance only on the local refineries, none working yet apart from Dangote Refinery, it will be easy to compute and publish our daily consumption of fuel, less with poor naira value.  And this is when the extent of our perennial ‘FUEL FRAUD’ will be revealed in all its pungent criminality. That figure is what the oil thieves want concealed as long as possible.

    As long as they can muddy the ‘locally produced fuel’ waters with ‘undisclosed fuel import volumes’, for that long will petrol corruption persist. Please note I am not a fan of Dangote or his well-known monopolistic business tactics. However, it is our job as a country to give him and others, there are other local refineries, the opportunity to use Nigerian oil fields to produce Nigerian petroleum products for the Nigerian market and local export to neighbouring countries.

    Remember, although initially successful for 5-10 years, our government-rundown refineries crumpled into a brazen corruption driven recurrent Turn Around Maintenance scam as well petrol smuggling networks for 40-odd years and a petrol tanker count scam where a ship  is counted as loaded but does not offload  but the country pays for the fake delivery.

    The cost of fuel to the citizen will depend on the exchange rate and the source of the oil for the refinery, imported or local, as well as the greed and honesty of those delivering and if the almighty regulators are corrupt or not.

  • ‘Free C/S: Policy to Practice’

    ‘Free C/S: Policy to Practice’

    Every new governor brings hope to the common man, too often dashed as the governor, no matter his dreams for state development, is caught in the state-wide quagmire of corruption, as evidenced by the fact that almost every governor leaves a desolate state behind, not even paying salaries and pensions and faces multibillion naira questions by EFCC. The question all governors must ask is: ‘How would I like to be remembered?’

    As the three new governors answer, we pray it is ‘To be Faithful, Loyal and Honest and Even-Handedness.’ They should investigate why so many states fail. The governors should ask where all the state citizens are as for example in Ondo State only about a quarter of the 2.1million voters actually voted. Is it possible that the population is half or less the projected population? As this ‘poor voter turnout’ is a nationwide phenomenon, INEC must verify its National Voter List and eliminate ‘Ghost Voter Cards’.

    Meanwhile the World Bank (WB) identified $32m as unaccounted for in a Water Development project asking CBN, the guarantor, to return t$22m to the WB. Meanwhile our citizens in 2024 die of cholera etc. The WB Report should be handed to EFCC, ICPC etc for immediate prosecutorial action including ‘Disgracing Nigeria’. Heads should roll! Officials must be sacked and demoted. Trials and prison sentences should follow.      

    Nigeria verbally offers free Caesarean Section operations for poor needy Nigerian women. The ‘Best of News’ for pregnant women going forward and a great plan on paper. The practice traditionally in Nigeria has been completely different in outcome in past promise cases, even for simple promises. Remember that we promised an Academy for Brilliant Students and had the disgraceful temerity to gather them and then abandon the children to mediocrity even though the academy was in Abuja. Remember the recent absolutely unnecessary ‘old backward education @18 years thinking’ now finally changed to 16 years which required a minister to be removed. It is easy to understand why it was probably some government order to let the academy and its pupils rot, while being surrounded by an opulent political class in the same Abuja. Let us face grim reality. If Tinubu was not president today, the age of entering university would still be 18 or even raised to 20!

    So, when we cannot hold government to its sacred political promise to one single education institution in Abuja, how will we offer free C/S with all the immediate urgent ‘two lives’ threatening emergency financial and facility  demands?

    A service will be meaningless if, as of now, the patient’s relations are still given a midnight list of TTB – Things To Buy before the ‘emergency Caesarean Section’ can take place. When, during NYSC in 1975, I used to do CS operations at midnight or later in Lafia, then Plateau and now Nasarawa State, the single generator for the entire town had to be turned on for the operation. Next morning people would thank me because their fans came on. Nowadays the TTB list disgracefully often includes oxygen, water and petrol or diesel for the inevitable power failure, usually at the most critical and blood flowing time of the surgery. We have all used a torch to locate and tie off a seriously bleeding artery deep in the pelvis and lost in NEPA-lessness darkness.

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    Having done 3,000 Caesarean Sections and stood in countless pools of poor mother’s blood, I know that ‘emergency’ means instantly, now. Imagine the doctor who gives such a TTB list to a desperate father-to-be, his wife’s labour screams driving him to dementia. He will insult the doctor, pointing to the wall-poster proclaiming ‘FREE CAESAREAN SECTION FOR ALL’ FROM NOVEMBER 2024. The doctor will be in a no-win situation. He or she will not get enough equipment and support services from the hospital and will have to say he cannot do the surgery. The husband for genuine poverty reasons, rejecting the TTB, will accuse the doctor of stealing the needed equipment or refusing to work or sabotage, and manhandle the doctor. It happens now. ‘FREE CS’ though desirable may put many medical personnel at risk, unless the strategies or all hospital scenarios are worked out. For example, what to do if there is inadequate equipment to perform surgery? How to reimburse to families any expenses incurred on TTB list. Does free CS include post operation antibiotics, pain killers, wound dressing or is it just the theatre procedure cost being eliminated?  Remember to factor in the anaesthetic drugs and drips.

    Nigeria has had many ‘free  programmes’ education, feeding, health, for example, which backfired on the supervising teachers left with nothing to teach with, or with supervising doctors, nurses and pharmacists left with nothing to give patients. A Commissioner of Health once asked us to stop writing O/S Out of Stock, as it reflected the government ‘free health programme’ in bad light, and instead give patients Panadol when there were no antibiotics as the patients did not know the difference. Of course we did not! The lethal consequences for failing to perform a CS are immediate. The medical profession cannot take responsibility to deliver a free CS as and when due in the absence of a monitorable, non-budget dependent government budgetary commitment to the equipment and medications and CS kits to bring a successful outcome. The C/S delivery devil is in the support for the surgical detail, turning the policy into practice.        

  • Hurray! $40b reserves: $180b needed

    Hurray! $40b reserves: $180b needed

    Foreign reserves are not just a number but a ‘cash rock’ on which nations are built or fall as demonstrated by our current suffering. Some entrusted with such cash funds steal and misuse their position because they are small-minded myopic persons with no national pride despite medals and national [dis]honours.

    Nigeria’s accumulation to $40b as foreign reserves from the ashes of our recent disastrous financial mega-mismanagement and corruption is therefore especially worthy of applause for the CBN team led by Governor Yemi Cardoso. Foreign reserves are only grown by persons of vision, professional responsibility, national pride and a passion to pave the way to a brighter financial tomorrow for the street children they see through their bullet proof glass daily on the street. They are driven to try to turn a rag back into the rich cloth as it was in the beginning when our currency was a proud N1=£1. Such persons work for the citizens, not for themselves.

    To further their success, the CBN governor and his team must take on a new task. The CBN governor must lead and prod Nigeria further down the economic road to foreign reserves stability  and project a roadmap to meet timelines for a national target of foreign reserves, (FR), at least $180b at $1b/1m population to strengthen the naira ‘in the beginning’ years. For CBN figures to be the masterclass in relevance, FR must be compared with other countries and their populations.

    Nota Bene that our population may not be more than 160-180m judging from our historical corrupt census inflation for political reasons. Our voting numbers and other statistics do not add up to more. Does Nigeria have 20-40 million ghost citizens?

    Our fellow travellers in this economic journey can teach us something. South Africa has foreign reserves of $63b for 60m citizens, $1b/1m citizens; Morocco has FR$37b for 36m citizens, $1m:1m citizens;   Algeria has  FR$72b for 46m, $1b/0.6 m;  Egypt has FR$46b   for 112m, $1b/2.4m;  Ghana has FR$7b for 34m citizens, $1b/4.8m citizens.  Nigeria has $40b foreign reserves for maybe 180m citizens i.e. $1b/4.5m. So, we have a lot of good governance, anti-corruption and wasteful spending to curtail to build up to $1:1m a developing country’s target minimum ratio.

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    This headline of FR $180b would have been achieved years ago with a strategic published and publicised economic roadmaps with re-education of the political parties and politicians and their special assistants and properly articulated plans by our presidents and CBN past governors since the 60s. That action would have saved the CBN funds from being so recklessly looted by in-house complicit CBN directors and other staff and carpetbag politicians and private sector moguls and rich but common thieves especially in our banking system who seem to think that all money must be ‘stolen not saved’. Stop stealing saved funds. 

    The calculated $180b would merely make Nigeria’s foreign reserves levels close to international developing country levels and massively strengthen the naira. The CBN governor needs to instruct its CBN Public Enlightenment Division to engage and enlighten the National Orientation Agency to, in turn, articulate regularly and publicly the causes and the cures for our deplorable disease of poor naira: dollar value. This enlightenment should repeatedly target the legislature to cure their delusional demand for ‘Political Salaries and Perks and Pension Grandeur’ and ‘all knowing over-sabi’. This enlightenment drive may get a more cooperating political and public response and support for its policies than in the past since we are all every man, women and child is passing through this 1+year of the shadow of financial death!

    Growth in our FR is a main key to rescuing our naira, traumatised by greed-driven unbridled political acquisition of enormous cash through ‘legal and illegal incomes’ requiring changing to forex for ease of carrying and concealment. In addition, there is a historic massive general corruption and a historically arrogant and wayward unbridled ‘black market’ in foreign exchange. We must add a disregard of ‘naira pride’ as a national symbol by successive governments and the ‘cash splashing’ political and rich classes who stopped spraying in favour of throwing naira bricks! Spraying, stomping and squeezing the naira do not affect the economic value of the naira, already less value than toilet paper! They spray dollar now. Did the dollar fall in value on the floor? No.

    Government, citizens and political class must address all the above as well as our careless over-dependence on imports even of toothpicks. Unfortunately, instead of nurturing, we have lost manufacturing capacity. Poor, third world, asymmetric costly power generation, multiple taxation and negligent supervision of weaponised and road security personnel remain stumbling blocks to economic development.

    The sooner our FR reach and pass the required important milestones of $45b, $50b, $55b, $60b to $100b, the better for the exchange rate. This will force the vulture forex traders, in banks and black market, to find productive jobs. An example of banking negligence of supervision… ‘A bank staff laundered N70b and forfeited N120b to federal government as part of a plea bargain’. Ditto for billions of CBN funds.  

    So, let us support Governor Cardoso and his team and tell everyone especially politicians  that for Nigeria to grow, Nigeria’s CBN and banking system must be ‘closed for corruption business’, ‘lock the corruption shop’ and achieve a target of $160-180b in foreign reserves just to be on par with South Africa and Morocco, our football foes.

  • Punish supervisor negligence; Dis-Honourable

    Punish supervisor negligence; Dis-Honourable

    Hurray, Dr Ganiyat Popoola, traumatised and kidnapped on December 27, 2023  is finally released 30 October 2024 after 11 months. Thanks to all including the NMA. Please repeat for all kidnapped victims.

    The ‘Curse of the uniform’ discussed last week is further exemplified by the killing of a musician recently. Why are supervising senior officers not held accountable for subordinates’ abnormal activities? They should be tried together. This will stop the ‘Uniform Murder Crime Wave’ immediately. Juniors fear the ‘OGA AT THE TOP’! Beyond guardroom trial, we demand senior officials/officers to also be held accountable and charged with ‘culpable negligence of duty to closely supervise subordinates and failure to instil discipline and self-control and to prevent an illegal act.

    Learn from the US school gun crime epidemic where government now prosecutes parents alongside their murderous children, both disgraced in orange prison suits, handcuffs and leg irons.  Now parents will help prevent gun crime. The UK government should prosecute parents in the epidemic of knife crime related to no father-figure, single-parent families and youth, school and neighbourhood gang crime.

    Similarly, but at a higher governance level are politicians not taught good manners, dignity, comportment and respect for every citizen voter. Perhaps orientation is only about how to spend the huge salaries and perks of office? The arrogance of Nigerian public office holder and even official drivers knows no financial, moral, physical or mental or Highway Code boundaries. The self-acclaimed self-styled excellency, distinguished & honourable prefixes mostly fail woefully to describe them. They constantly disappoint us with their mediocre performance and social arrogance established solely with huge amounts of the people’s money while we have 10+m out-of-school children.

    This behaviour has made too many of our politicians pompously ‘Un-Excellent, Un-Distinguished and Dis-Honourable’ and now we have a House of Representatives ‘Most Dis-Honourable Member Award 2024’ winner. He inflicted harm and also threatened to inflict Grievous Bodily Harm, GBH, including murderous ‘disappearance’ on an Uber driver. All Nigeria REJECTS HIS APOLOGY. He should be suspended until after the court’s judgement, dismissed in disgrace or forced to resign, be arrested, and prosecuted. He is half Russian- does this interest DSS?

    If and when found guilty of a felony OF HARM, GRIEVIOUS BODILY HARM OR THREAT OF MURDER AND [a new one unknown to law] ‘DISAPPEARANCE’ under Criminal Code Acts sections 320, 335, 355 he will be liable to IMPRISONMENT FOR 3, 7, 14 years. Thereafter he should be banned from holding public office and government contracts and should do 100 hours of Community Service.          

    The parade of 67 under-aged children in court is a disgrace to Nigeria’s police and criminal justice system. ‘JUVENILE COURT WHICH DENIES THE MEDIA ACCESS’ is a CHILD RIGHT to anonymity as the child is not mature enough to be fully responsible for aberrant behaviour requiring a court case. The juvenile court eliminates sensationalism and prevents mental scars. Privacy is the right of the child and can only be guaranteed in a juvenile court. Worse, apparently some children face the death sentence. Seriously? Is this the terrible headline that Nigeria wants to be known for, added to ‘Nigeria abandons 10+million out of school children and under-educating an entire generation of Nigerian children’?

    No matter their crime including ‘Rioting for a foreign country’, it is inhumane that they have been incarcerated in Nigeria’s notorious prison conditions from August to November. Shame. Note, UK was jailing convicted rioters within 2-4 week of the riot.  Justice delayed is justice denied.

    A lawyer in the case said on television that the accused were not children. If he lied, he should be prosecuted. Also, was ‘mass fainting’ genuine or rehearsed – another ‘court tragi-comedy’ play-acting plaguing our courts when politicians and those accused of financial crimes routinely feign a faint or other illness to delay justice. Note that those politicians, claiming to be too sick for trial, but were never too sick to steal. Lawyers worldwide seriously coach clients on ‘acting on the court stage’.

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    The children were actually punishingly undernourished and some could genuinely have collapsed. Shame on us all. However, some of this ‘67 Court Performance’ could have been engineered for the court stage worthy of a ‘Nigerian Judicial Oscar Nomination’. If so, the defence lawyers should be prosecuted for ‘deception’. Beyond ‘Humane justice for the 67 and Presidential Order of RELEASE’ we should get them and 10-million others into quality school, now!

    Let us add FAKE MEDICAL COURT PERFORMANCES to Nollywood for a new category of Annual Nollywood Awards – ‘Most Dramatic Court Deception-2024’. And the winner[s] is/are ……….!

    But look at the FALSE outrage and condemnation from ‘Northern Coalition’  politicians who for 30 years have serially failed to send to school and educate these same 67 children and 10+m other out of school children’ and vulnerable street children who are now in court as ‘political cannon fodder’. The political architects of this education failure should be ashamed and face court for ‘Failing to provide a conducive learning and living environment’ for 10m children. The politicians’ own children do not riot or rot in prison or feign a faint in court. Why were those 67 in a position to be arrested? The answer is because we have a consumptive politics and not a service politics. How else can we explain this degree of abandonment of the education system – the cause of the ‘case of 67 children’?