The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • Jagged road edges kill again! RoboCup 2013; Lagos Osborne Sand-sand Challenge Cup Pls

    On the NTA News, did you see the jagged road edge at the crash that killed five NANS students? Honest Nigerian political and road maintenance managers, if any exist, should know that jagged road margins kill more people than speeding, by forcing vehicles to suddenly cross lanes into other traffic. If the ‘unemployed’ in the ministries of works ‘dressed’ the road edges and filled potholes,  vehicles would ‘Keep Right’ and stop jerking around and thus reduce crashes thus saving hundreds of lives and misery for thousands. The Lagos-Ibadan road is a good example of bad maintenance road edges.

    Will someone please put WHO messages and other life skill social message films like CNN’s Girlrising about girl education, child trafficking, prostitution, violence etcetera on local TV and radio for the millions without cable TV? How many actually watch CNN to see Girlrising, ACT adverts and other wonderfully educational films?  Check www.girlrising.com.

    Life is serious. Seven happy proud Nigerians died from generator fumes. It is not hard to trace the deaths to the corruption and incompetence-ridden power paralysis at local PHCN office, ministerial failures and historical myopic presidential inadequacies in power policies and implementation. Their deaths were engineered 10-20-30 years ago by failures at Federal Executive Councils that refused to power Nigeria into the 21st Century. So next time you hear of someone getting CON or yet another plaque and pension for ‘services rendered’, remember these seven prematurely dug graves and thousands more. Government must accept policy and financial responsibility and apologise for the last 30 years of failures in power, education, health and roads. We must institute compensation strategies. ‘Death by Deliberate or Failed Government Policy’ should be actionable. Politicians and civil servants must pay for their failures in the past and present. A government jagged road causing a crash must be compensated for by government. Lawyers to the families of the dead NANS 5, where are you?

    Coming out of Lagos on a Sunday morning, there is an inspiringly beautiful sight on the sun-warmed sand-sand ‘landfill’ reclaimed from the ocean next to Osborne/Third Mainland Bridge area. As far as the eye can see there are youth- all occupied with the great game-football. It should be a Nollywood youth inspiration set. There are many different teams and the games are civilised and well-organised. This would be a goldmine opportunity for government, individuals and corporate bodies to invest in the ‘good’ youth. Talent scouts, 1000 good footballs with government and corporate logos and perhaps even kit can be provided. A ‘Lagos Sand-sand Challenge Cup’ can be donated and competition funded. The media can visit and identify rare talent. If those 1000 youth are kept off the streets and doing something healthy and constructive, Lagos and Nigeria will be safer places.

    Government often ignores the good active, strong, sports and other talented youth at its peril. Good honest Nigerian kids, who just want to engage in unavailable positive social and sports activities deserve as much of a break and funding assistance as the youth being ‘rescued’ from negative social activities like thuggery, NURTW, violence, drugs, alcohol and HIV/AIDS.

    Ever heard of the RoboCup? The Robotic World Cup is on this week engaging America and Columbian universities in cutting edge robotics and artificial intelligence. This game is not a game but a high tech battle disguised as a game. Where are Nigerian universities in spite of the cry about IT? Are they too myopic and preoccupied with ‘biz-admin’? Budgets, politicians and powerful academics often consumed by in-fighting, neglect to fund, access or utilise research grants in robotics. Therefore Nigeria’s robotic experience is negligible in its technology faculties. We have in Nigeria many bomb and crash amputees needing robotic limbs. It is up to government and technology faculties to broaden their scope, encourage their students with grants and travel to attend inspirational events as the RoboCup for skills. International linkages with Japan, Columbia and advanced robotic countries would help. Nigerian students could do so much more with better education policy and leadership.

    We join in sympathising with Senator Asiwaju Bola Tinubu on the loss of his illustrious mother Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji at 96 years. And as we do so, will some newspaper please start a body count of the daily victims of the various violence prone areas? Violence today is epidemic, killing more Nigerians than AIDS and malaria. This violence is in the press and encompasses our lives, including cultists on campus, Fulani anti-Birom, Fulani anti-Tiv, pro-cattle anti-farming, commercial road carnage defying the speed limit, robberies, murders, kidnapping, uniform brutality and finally political anti-democracy violence towards 2015. Add to these the Boko Haram mayhem and you have enough names to fill a memorial cenotaph every week in most states. And please add the army of Nigerian pregnant women lining up to ‘die of childbirth’ in rubbish ‘mission’ houses and poorly equipped, understaffed maternity centres, private and government. This particular government-sanctioned conspiracy against women is ‘Mass Maternal Murder’ and engineered by evil government policies. Should the families sue the system?

    Meanwhile the revenue continues to be shared and Nigerians are scared at the cost of politics. Any chance of a parliamentary system? The British want to send reckless bankers to jail. The Senate suggesting that principal officers of Senate should have salaries for life even though they get special position allowances and disgraceful emoluments while 70% of Nigerians earn less than $1 or N150/day.

  • Cheapness of student life! ‘Wetin you carry’ by FRSC and Police again!

    The death of five students of NANS and the numerous deaths of students across Nigeria and particularly in the last month are truthfully mostly preventable tragedies and demonstrate the cheapness of life in Nigeria. They are not what parents expect when they borrow save up money to pay for students to go to university or for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). No parent expects a coffin, an unbelievable burden. Such tragedies remind me of the discussions I often have with enthusiastic students of higher institutions about their reason for them visiting off campus businesses and professionals. These visits are all in efforts to raise sometimes ridiculously outrageously high sums of money, from N300,000 to N3,000,000 recently, as ‘donations’ for student activities like Annual Faculty Weeks etc. The female students often unintentionally expose themselves to moral impropriety all to raise money while their parents have paid good money and offered many prayers for their studies and think they are at lectures or revision. Instead, they are out begging for ‘stupid’ money.

    Nigeria is dangerous enough for us all but students endanger their lives unnecessarily out of bravado, carelessness, needless travel, speeding and an ‘I will live forever’ attitude. Just last week a group of students overtook my car at high speed on the murderous and mislabelled Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

    Why cannot higher institution students be taught to keep students activities ‘within realistic student budgets’ and not mimic adult budgets and quality and expect money to fall from heaven without any of their own money being involved. In our days in University of Ibadan in the late 60s and early 70s, we as students, funded our own activities with our money. Institutions must actively support student activities more in kind if not in cash and provide venues and infrastructure free as a strategic ‘anti-cultism’ measure to assist good or moral student activities. The patrons of these student bodies fail to advise them to make student budgets realistic and more affordable for the targeted long-suffering donors harassed by numerous unrealistic financial demands. And this happens year in, year out.

    Students should learn, and be taught during induction month, to plan and execute their plans as students, at student level, with student funds. That is why they are students. Instead of using printers, as students, they should write out their placards and posters. We participated and recruited 50 students to write 500 posters in one or two hours, cheaper than using professional printing. Students are students. They should act like students. Students should not act beyond their station and mimic National Assembly members who have millions to spend on trivia like congratulatory and obituary adverts and brochures and buntings.

    Buntings are an adult extravagance that students can design themselves if they have to instead of paying high end costs. Talking of buntings, most venues are fine as they are and do not need buntings. The buntingmania in Nigeria must be curbed. What country’s citizens will be so irresponsible as to cover designer chairs, polished wood panelling, Italian marble, imported artwork and high imposing ceilings with yards of cheap ribbon material crisscrossing the ceiling and obstructing the view of even churches. We cover N1-5000 chairs in N300 rags called chair-covers and cover millions naira walls with N100/yard ribbons of reused material.

    The Lagos-Ibadan road, mislabelled expressway, appears demonised or at least jinxed, as it seems to be getting worse. Will it ever get better? The initially ‘heroic’ efforts of Berger and RCC have petered out as presumable government has failed its own end of the bargain which was not a ‘bargain’ but a lucrative contract. No money, no performance! But it is only in Nigeria that a serving government with billions of naira earned daily would be so callous as to expose millions of its citizens to the easily patchable hazards of the road – deep and wide potholes, narrowing to one lane and lethal road edges. Add to that left hand driving by slow vehicles and uncontrolled speeding particularly by commercial vehicles and you have the deadly mix of road deaths that characterise that road and defy solutions, making contractors and FRSC look like incompetents.

    The police are back on the streets with a vengeance. It seems that police checkpoints are creeping back into several states ‘through the back door’ including Oyo State as Zonal and state commissioners relax the order from the IGP. The police onslaught against tinted windows has been surreptitiously extended to reintroduce ‘wetin you carry ‘. The IGP needs to keep the police service on the straight and narrow. We said ‘No’ to checkpoints and it remains ‘No’. The need for widespread and comforting ‘Police Presence’ is necessary as a deterrent. That need can be fulfilled by static and mobile teams without resorting to checkpoints except in specific crime fighting incidents. The IGP introduced the police to modern police tactics. He should weed out those who are there for retrogression and checkpoint corruption. The harassment of the public, families with small children even on their way to and from church on Sundays and of danfos full of tired passengers by overzealous and unsupervised Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and the police should be curbed. Nigerian citizens have rights and FRSC and police harassment is wrong. Of course police and FRSC do some good work but that work is spoilt by these strong-arm, heavy handed roadside roughing up tactics.

  • PPPs; Banks, loans and the naira; Police Service Commission affair

    PPPs; Banks, loans and the naira; Police Service Commission affair

    Who can forget today is June 12 when democracy was so callously killed at a huge cost to normal Nigerians who are yet to recover. Governments should stop calling for public/private sector partnerships before they themselves do anything good. Government should stop haemorrhaging so much wealth needlessly in corruption and deal with the poverty issues. Only then will the private sector come on board through CSR projects. Governments should not shirk their leadership role in this anti-poverty area.

    A slum is a slum and almost impossible to escape. Everyone in the slum needs water, toilets, security, education and a job just like those in the government reservation area or a mansion near the governor’s lodge. A poorly equipped school is a poorly equipped school. Poor people do not ruin banks. Rich people do with schemes and rich people’s unpaid loans. Bankers are rich men and women. Therefore they have no real right to talk about poverty alleviation especially since it is their policies which perpetuate that poverty in the land. How many poor Nigerians are victims of shylock lenders because the bank interest rates are too high and the bank loan is unavailable to the poor? Greed-eaten landlords demanding two or three years exorbitant rent for shabby gutter-close face-me-I-face-you or better put face-me-I-disgrace-you holes glorified with the name ‘rooms’ must accept their own responsibility in perpetuating poverty in the ‘failed state affair’. Lagos State has banned the taking of more than one year rent, but is that working? Landlords are just as guilty as bankers. In Ibadan, government has given notice that toilets are essential in all houses.

    Everyone needs a small loan at one time or another, even CBN governors. It is now realised that even a funeral or wedding can be turned into a business venture with projected profits after a short term investment in flashy IVs and infrastructure like wakings, wedding parties, canopies, luncheon and well-placed N500,000 obituary adverts in newspapers and on the NTA nine o’clock news to bring the waking and wedding worms, www, out of the woodwork. The sympathy helicopters and jets, often paid for by government and therefore people’s taxes, scuttle from and to Abuja swarm like fat flies and mosquitoes darkening the sky and filled with the great, the good, the bad and the ugly to be seen with lesser mortals regardless of whether or not they knew the deceased or the wedding couple.

    When a loved one falls sick, name the bank which will give a troubled wife or husband tiding-over money for surgery, medicines, or school fees? Most banks worldwide would, but Nigerian banks would not, so what is the use of putting your salary there year after year for your working life. No trust or shared responsibility!

    Can the new Police Service Commission actually do anything? Remember the fate of the last Police Trust Fund meant to upgrade the police and with the likes of past IGP Tafa, of N19b fame, still giving advice to the current IGP, what hope have we in heaven of getting a police to be proud of? A sum of N5-10billion should be set aside now as we are at an intermediate stage between war and peace. The police need a higher visibility with more mobility and patrols. N1billion will buy 100-500 vehicles@N2-5m each. In most cities small cars costing N2m will suffice for corner parking and increased presence. The larger jeeps@N5-7m are for centralised police station back-up, convoys and interstate roads.  Therefore if we allocate N5b to different sized vehicles costing N2-5m, we will triple the available vehicles on the country. Motorcycle patrols, in pairs are also valuable for around the police station and neighbourhood patrols. Instead of crushing okadas, perhaps it would be more useful to recruit the machines to this job although they are usually two stroke pollution generating engines. Each equipped police patrol motorcycle probably costs about N500,000. How many police stations are there in Nigeria? 5000? The annual maintenance budget is what? Investment in data bases, criminals fingerprint, photographic, occupational etc must to be pursued quickly as must a network of forensic laboratories. In these days of unemployment and entrepreneurship and Sure-P employing 5,000/ state or LGA, it should be obvious that white collar computer jobs for photographic and fingerprint and personal records and DNA data base entry are needed. In addition hackers and other computer wiz kids, retired yahoo yahoo 419ers, digital still and video photographers, basic scientists, biochemists, food technologists, microbiologists, ballistic experts, forensic anatomists  etc are all needed to make up a formidable forensic armament against corruption, fraud, crime and political devilry. Even accountants and banking experts are required to unravel the intricacies of bank fraud. You cannot employ such people on a silly salary scale.  They should be treated as if on secondment from the private sector equivalent elsewhere to avoid being frustrated by police interested parties to any investigation.

    One cannot escape the conclusion that powerful forces have consistently paralysed good police work and police workers by deliberately refusing to properly elevate the forensic laboratory to international standards even though money was allocated annually in the budget. Someone should tell us how much that money is in total. Is it N1b in some Past IGP pockets? We can all see investigative forensic policing and crime detection on television, so we know our deficit. The 1930-style police station requires to be upgraded in design and content.

  • Freedom; Chimamanda’s Americanah; CBN’s MPR and the rest of us

    Thank God for the successful efforts to secure the release of the Rhodes Vivours. We must thank God even as we pray earnestly for the release of all other kidnap victims and a final full stop to this evil method of extortion.

    The wars against the Boko Haram, indigenes in Plateau and farmers on the North-South cattle route go on even as the rest of Nigeria goes on. I read Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah. It is a long good read, covering a wide range of incidents and sites. I was on the Third Mainland Bridge when it came up in the book. Perhaps you will find yourself ‘live action’ in places and scenes mentioned including Obalende, my old haunt. The book discusses race, confirming it is a non-issue in Nigeria, and love- that worldwide problem engaging every reader in one scenario or another. You will find a lot of ‘been-there-done-that’ as my daughter taught me to say.

    It is amazing in love the same action can be so contrastingly cruel and kind, common and individual and cause so much gain and pain, but we all know that anyway. That is not a reason not to read the book. It is nice knowing you are not alone in your gains and pains from love. And you will learn a lot about women’s hair, beautiful and otherwise. In my clinic I tell my patients that small cysts seen on ultrasound are normal signs of womanhood and that without those cysts the women would be men. They immediately cheer-up. Not one of them has wanted to be a man in spite of the dedicated hours regularly spent weave-on-ing. Amazing. This book answers the unasked question ‘why weave-on?’ and many more ‘whys’.

    Meanwhile the inter-bank interest rate MPR, has been kept by the award winning CBN at 12% making bank loans 21-25% to ‘fight inflation’. What inflation? The one in the pockets of millions of Nigerians or the banks statistics caused by corruption? The commercial banks could cut their own additional 10-15% interest even if CBN insists on 12% but they will not –greed. Meanwhile they make billions! How? Who are they doing business with? They screw us out of our money with COT, cheque, ATM and a myriad of other financial burdens invented in the boardrooms by financial wiz kids seeking bonuses. What do Nigerian banks pay as bankers bonuses? The trouble with being a Nigerian when so many are stealing so much is that the average person suffers so much to service the bankers’ greed. In spite of our oil, Nigerians have the highest interest rates loans in the world and the highest energy costs from generators and fuel from imports while government demonstrated a pathological failure to fix refineries –Corruption, Incompetence, Negligence and Selfishness-CINS.

    Most middle class Nigerians could have afforded to buy a new car annually from what they are forced to spend on power substitution at home and in the office during the last 25 years. So the prohibitive cost of doing business through loans, supplying power and corruption are key problems facing every business and entrepreneur. Today we face political whirlwinds among governors seeking dominance at the Governors’ Forum. Who does not know that 19 is democratically more than 16? We face Presidential pronouncements on incumbency and lack of vacancies in Aso Rock made by proxy through political attack dogs and self-appointed ‘Ministers for Presidential Defence’. We face ex-presidents who for many observers were mega-failures in areas of job creation infrastructure like power, road and rail networks, bringing interest rates down, improving the naira value and in human rights particularly during elections and odiously in Odi. Why did the naira fall further even after the dark days of Buhari, Babangida Abacha when it ended at N88 to $1 under Abacha? These pontificating ex-presidents, including ‘civilian/military’ presidents like Obasanjo with eight years of failed hope and disappointing prosperity under their agbadas, are talking boldly of the failings of an incumbent president who appears to be struggling through a multiple minefield laid by the same past governments’ failures in power, political and electric and economic and social responsibility.

    Why did they, our ‘Failed Past Presidents’, not improve education to make Nigerian students them fully employable with easy access to business advice and normal worldwide acceptable interest rates on loans? The problems today were problems created deliberately, ignorantly or negligently for years.  The Nigerian adult now knows that there was money to service education but it was government policy to starve education –exposed by an unappreciated ASUU.  Parents and students preferred a ‘Let My Children Go Ignorantly Into The Future’ policy to supporting ASUU’s fight for better conditions. For years government has manipulated the education situation to make it appear that ASUU was the cause of the poor education situation, when ASUU was fighting for quality-a losing battle against ‘Acada-hating politicians in power’. Ask Jubril Aminu’s opinion. Has he published his memoirs of ‘A Minister of Education in an Ignorant State’ yet?

    On Sunday we followed Pope Francis’s request to all 1+billion Catholics to join him at 5pm to pray among other things for the poor. A person born poor is at an unfair disadvantage but has ignored rights to make demands on government to cross the poverty line- $1 or $2 a day. Government has a failed responsibility to rescue the poor who are getting wiser and more violent.

  • Our Father…Deliver us from ‘K-evil’; Racism, sports violence fines?

    We hoped the kidnapping ordeal of friends the Rhodes –Vivours would be over if never forgotten by now. A kidnapping is a particularly malignant form of invasion of privacy. A week is a long time in article writing and often matters such as this are settled within one or two days and comments are rapidly made out of date. But it is three weeks already. This was why I did not comment earlier. Another reason is that one should not give the criminals any opportunity to gloat or appear successful at their despicable performance as they probably have access to the print media and scour it for articles on themselves just to torment their victims -an innocent mother and daughter just going about their typical ‘Nigerian responsibility’ activities- attending a wedding in a far off place at great inconvenience and price and at huge personal sacrifice because ‘apology will not be acceptable’.

    Let us all, readers, families and listeners to you, follow Our Lord Jesus Christ’s advice when we pray and today say a loud and complete ‘Our Father who art in Heaven…. Deliver us [the Rhodes-Vivours and all kidnapped victims] from ‘K-evil’. Amen’. K-evil = Kidnap-Evil. O God Please Make us ‘Invisible to the Enemy’. Amen. We pray that the power of joint prayer complemented by the efforts of the police will bring them and all kidnap victims home, safe and unharmed, Amen.

    Once more Nigeria features prominently in an ugly side of violence. After the rich kid, fully Nigerian but trained abroad Abdulmutallab incident, which, remember, could easily have killed the over 200 airline passengers aboard, we now have the Woolwich affair in which two Nigerians, including one called Michael Adeboloja, a Nigerian by descent who has never been to Nigeria, who ran over and then barbarically killed a white British soldier Drummer Rigby, leaving blood on their hands for social media worldwide. What possessed them? The media gives the impression that their Nigerian ancestry is to blame. They disgrace their ancestors, Africa and Nigeria. Successful children are claimed by the father, ‘My child has passed’. Failing ones are blamed on the mother, ‘Your child has failed’.Successful athletes of Nigerian descent are claimed by foreign powers like Britain. Nothing wrong with that, as they used the facilities. But bad ones are blamed on Nigeria-something wrong with that! What is it that makes a young man of Nigerian ancestry kill in a foreign land, even if he was born in that land? Drugs, religion, brainwashing, publicity, protection, paradise, bullion or what? Was it murderous madness or malicious murder? He sounded sane when distinguishing between women who could and men who could not approach the dying victim. One or two women were so spectacularly bold they should be in the Queen’s Honours List.

    This frightening event reminds us of Nigeria’s Plateau State ‘Civil War’ with murderous violence inflicted by Hausa Fulani herdsmen settlers on indigenous farmers apparently systematically killing 8-10 farmers per day or the regular bloody border clashes in Nigeria or the killing of ‘other’ personnel during kidnappings. The murderers of Drummer Lee Rigby have succeeded in questioning the achievements and friendship of millions of Fellow Nigerians and Africans worldwide and replacing trust with fear. There will be a new debate which will not only involve Moslems but also Christians as one of the killers started as ‘Michael’. The net of mistrust is now wider. We Africans, and particularly Nigerians, are all ‘suspect’,questionable and worth avoiding during ‘choose your friends carefully’sessions. The murderers have truly managed to ‘murder sleep’ for millions of non-Nigerians moving closer to Nigerians and Africans in need or for love and friendship. The clock has been turned back. Many will cross to the other side of the road when an on-coming person is black and Nigerian.

    The international football organisations are taking racism and physical attacks on officials like referees and linesmen a little more seriously. Other sports including golf should follow quickly. Punishment should be meted out for verbal and violent ‘V&V’offences on and off the field of play. It is well known that snide remarks are the bedrock of even formerly staid ‘games’ like cricket where insults are part of psychological warfare to destabilise opponents. Fines for sports‘V&V’ offences should be larger. Closure of stadia for sports ‘V&V’offences only costs the clubs money in lost income which goes to nobody. Every punishment must also compensate the victims of the racist chants, slurs, whispers and offensive gestures. Closure also results in the good being punished along with the bad by denying all the enjoyment of the game. Personal bans sound good also but may not cost the perpetrator anything as he has a contract not a daily paid job. Such bans could amount to a pre-planned holiday if the player insults someone only to get banned and thus have time off to attend a friend’s wedding. However, what happens to the fines? Government and sport governing bodies must not be the sole beneficiary. If we settled for higher fines with most, or all, of the fines going directly to enriching the offended player or victim, things will quickly correct themselves and make targeted players very rich from compensation. Racists do not want to make their victims rich. Such transfer of fine fee funds from violator to victim will solve the racist problem immediately.

  • The new Mad Cow Disease- ‘Blood Cow Meat’; ‘Operation Save Our Farmers’

    It is so difficult to write about our failed governance, power supply, education system, intra and intercity roads when just around the corner the ravage of war tear populations apart where there is no war declared – only ‘emergency’. In medicine, in every other country, except in Nigeria, an ‘emergency’ is a very urgent matter. In the military ‘an emergency’ is a task that must be done with necessary force. After all, the various enemies are equipped with modern weapons of war courtesy of Nigeria’s gunrunners from the uncivil civil war, to the more current Libyans, Chadian jihadists, and Maghreb rebels among others. The weaponry is frightening.

    When two guns fire at each other we hear of superior power, ambush, outflanking, fleeing, bullet wounds, blood and death. The dead and the dying lie distorted in or near their graves. We trivialise death even of our neighbours because we are not directly killed or left with a bleeding machete or gunshot wound. Witness a fatal road crash. The main offenders, the commercial vehicles, slow down, pray for themselves, not for the victims and race away at murderous speed above the speed of sound and legal limit, all lessons of the recent dead lost on them. How many fewer lessons will be learnt at a bomb blast scene with body parts and blood and wreckage strewn for hundreds of yards? Compound this with the serial killing of farmers to force them off their land in indigene/settler disputes. Add to that the serial killing of other farmers just to allow passing cows to devour their hard labour produce on the way to the dining tables of millions of carnivorous families, many of whom claim they will ‘die’ if they do not eat meat every day.

    But why is that luxury a lethal luxury? Why should fellow Nigerians think that it is their right to kill other fellow Nigerians just to fatten cows of the North-South cattle run? Surely a cow or a herd is severely overpriced if it costs a single human life? How can any sane citizen feed himself, his wife and his children with cow meat that he can see from his daily newspaper costs the life or lives of hundreds of farmers and destruction of the family farm and other property and livelihood every year? If that is not a new form of ‘Mad Cow Disease’ then what is?

    In the entire world there is nowhere where such human sacrifice is an acceptable price for an animal’s safe passage to the dining table. It is cannibalism through the backdoor.

    We are going to have to call a halt to this mayhem with fasting and praying to reverse this Mad Cow Disease. Nigerians need to begin to ask questions about the origin of their cow meat. Was the trail safe and free of bloodshed? Are these cows ‘ethically’ or ‘fatally’ fattened? We should encourage pre fattening at point of origin and mass transit methods like trailer transport and the train as alternatives to the rampant cycle of murder and retaliation on the farmland/cow tracks borders. Anyone seeking permanent solutions should read Wale Okediran’s Tenants of the House which elegantly tackles this recurrent nightmare. Nigerians should fast from cow meat for one month in the first instance until both cattle tenders and farmers come to their senses. If we stop buying this blood meat, like blood diamonds, the trade will be forced to sanitise itself. Your and my personal greed to have cow meat on our tables must be suppressed in the over-riding national interest to curb this ugly food violence now being capitalised on by ethnic, religious, political and other divisive agenda-seeking groups. How can a cow in your pot be adequate compensation for a farmer, his wife and children being buried beside his yam heaps? Such a prayerful fast is not a boycott, but a responsible act of self-denial in response to a strange paradox –the cow being more valued than the fellow Nigerian!

    What country values its cows heading for slaughter more than the backbone of the nation, its farmers? For those who cannot fast from meat, there is always a substitute for cow meat-goat, chicken, fish, sheep, turkey and I am told lizard! All these conflicts are the ingredients put together to make the stew that is Nigeria. For how long will Nigerians extract and pay such a high price, life and death, to eat meat at the table of luxury? We may run out of farmers before we run out of cattle. At the end of the day, and the quicker the better, the Nigerian nation must decide who is more valuable –the farmer and his crops ready for harvest or the cowherd and his cow ready for slaughter -whose slaughter? They may even be socially and politically equal but my medical background tells me Nigeria can survive without cow protein but not without fruit and vegetables, rice, cassava and yam. There are substitutes for cow meat but not for a farmer’s produce? None! Farmers already are facing sufficient challenges and too many have left the job further reducing national land productivity. Should more be killed by herdsmen? We need an emergency ‘Operation Save Our Farmers From Decimation’! Let us fast from cow meat till a truce. If the cows do not die, the farmers will not either. It is new economics ‘Cow-Conomics’

     

  • Widows of violence; Police Empowerment in war and peace

    Widows of violence; Police Empowerment in war and peace

    It is difficult to write anything meaningful with so much deliberate kidnapping, murder of orderlies and the carnage in the rank and file of the police recently just outside Lafia where, in 1975, I did my NYSC in the General Hospital. It was a pleasant memorable posting and we worked very hard for the people at that time. The recently bereaved police widows receiving a token N1m, or stopping traffic with protest dirges are very real and their pain is excruciating. That pain is no different from the pain of all the other widows of this new vicious violence in the country. Many get no compensation at all except from friends and family if they are lucky. We painfully add these 40+ new widows and their children and the police families to the long list of unsung suffering relations of bomb blast victims and those violently slaughtered on a daily basis in the brutal herdsman’s war against the farmers from many states on the North-South cattle corridor. We add the families of those killed almost like clockwork at the rate of 10 murders a day in the well-engineered bloody Hausa Fulani settler Vs indigene Plateau State crisis.

    Of course the police are no saints and many will remember the odious events of Odi and numerous other incidents including accidental discharge and checkpoint killings going back to ‘Kill and Go’ days when the citizen was on the receiving end. Recently it has been revealed what the police go through to get into the police service like purchase of the application form with maybe N30,000 and also the extreme hardship in training exposed by the award-winning Channels TV Corporate Social Responsibility Project documentary.

    We all know what it is like losing a breadwinner in a family when there is no ‘social network’ to provide the daily needs of sickness and education, housing and feeding.

    Almost every Nigerian police station had to sell its soul and start to put up shops along their perimeter fence during the years of the locusts. Of course the police officers women got involved, selling shops to each other and taking years of rent in advance from traders. Now the police is facing an unpredicted security breach as there are thousands of shops right on their doorsteps available for rent by anybody as few security checks are possible in Nigeria where we specialise in ignoring databases like the INEC, Passport, cell-phone SIM card registration, ID card and road safety databases and we destroy computer based systems to allow corruption.

    And when one dies, truth may just turn out to be a lie, someone must be wrong no matter how his argument is strong. Two groups carrying weapons paid for by Nigeria confronted each other over oil bunkering- Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC and the Police. We know the Police well and their track record. NSCDC is also not an unknown quantity. In fact rumour has it as largely incorruptible. Who was right?

    The police are fond of contradicting the body count and contesting it with NGOs and the mortuary. Hear them say ‘Only 22 died’. Meanwhile 50 families are searching the mortuaries and are fatherless, brotherless, motherless or childless as a result of the ‘Only 22’. The police’s ability to limit casualties is only matched by their spectacular ‘sirening’ around the country in their new vehicles. Recently yet another State Police Fund for a federal force was inaugurated. Does the federal government have no shame? With N884 or so billion/month can it not spare N5 or 10b to quickly equip the police to help fight this escalation unrest in Nigeria before we descend into total anarchy? Already the police are ‘legitimate’ targets of undeclared war in some states. As the police belong to the federal government, does the federal government not have any conscience or responsibility to finance and empower its own frontline security employees? It is shameful for the federal to expect the states to prop-up the police. The security vote in most states is a secret fund, probably illegal, a hangover slush fund from the military. It is time the security vote becomes part of the state budget, simple! It was pathetic to see the commissioner of police in the state introducing police trust fund again and inviting corporate Nigeria and concerned citizens to contribute. We have been down that road many times and after five or 10 vehicles have been bought the rest of the money always disappears down the malignant hole of corruption. So who is a fool and who is the criminal? Indeed many real criminals are wealthy and will also donate loudly to the fund for protection. Paradoxically we were told that the murdered police in Nasarawa State were well-equipped.

    The federal government needs to declare some form of police emergency to empower it to bring the police up to international standards starting from the on-going refurbishment of basic training facilities to databases and forensic laboratories. That would help solve unemployment. It is not only Aso Rock, governor’s offices, NASS and State assemblies that need furniture and equipment and transport and electric power. Watch the TV to see what police stations around the world look like, even South Africa with clean painted exterior and interior, good quality furniture, computers, stationery, camera, video camera, communications and internet linkages -all available in Nigeria but unused. As the nation hangs in the vicious balance between war and peace, what is planned role for the police?

     

  • Fraudulent federalism; FRSC and Sunday service; Women and delivery services

    Fraudulent federalism; FRSC and Sunday service; Women and delivery services

    When will true federalism come to Nigeria? Is the current wave of violent unrest in Nigeria not directly linked to the massive 40-year fraudulent federalism and fiscal fraud with the resultant underdevelopment that has reduced Nigeria’s children’s maximum aspirations to celebrate the sporadic arrival of electricity sparks while in other countries, even African countries, electric power never departed, but just increased in 40 years? Those other African countries have never known an epidemic of fuel fumes and generators. Governor Fashola has asked this ‘True Federalism’ question as many times as this column has. Who can reconcile ‘True Federalism’ with the warped LGA creation between Kano+ Jigawa with 77 local governments and only 20 for Lagos State? Add to that warped federal policies on water, power, railways, jobs, scholarships, education and health. It is a miracle of self-help allowing us to survive the evil machinations of federal rule!

    To what purpose does the FRSC patrol the road on Sundays when locals are taking their children to and from church or lunch? Is it road safety? That is the time the FRSC selects to do ‘stop and search’ on the only day you are trying to get on the right side of God. I always feel sad when I see a danfofull of suffering citizens or a vehicle driven by a woman with her children or a family man with his family under such stress of Sunday. What motivates such FRSC officials to be out as early as 7am on Sunday in both Lagos and particularly in Ibadan on the Bodija/ Secretariat road? National interest, arrest number quotas, clearing the roads of dangerous maniac drivers or Road Safety which is their primary assignment?

    Of course we must not suggest the dreaded but widespread self-serving ‘corruption’ as a motive but it is the responsibility of the FRSC and EFCC authorities to exclude that as a motive. Perhaps the motivation is just overzealousness as they are hoping to eventually replace their ‘oga at the top’ and need a powerful CV of road service as testimony to their ability? Seeing big strong FRSC men and women jumping sometimes from hidden positions into the road in Lagos, at Ogere and in Ibadan to stop vehicles merely going about their honest Sunday business does not speak well of the FRSC, especially if the vehicle is obviously on Sunday morning church mission. You must have noticed that even police have got their checkpoint mojo back through the back door by arresting anything moving with windows even faintly ‘tinted’. Opportunity knocks again. After that FRSC trauma, if they are released, the victims arrive in church late and frustrated if they are not arrested and the priests or pastor frowns at their bad example. ‘You do not go late to work. How dare you come late for God? If you are late for God, He will be late for you, Amen!’

    Of course, FRSC must be no ‘respecter of persons’ when it comes to the law but Nigerians should respect women a lot more than they do. Natural courtesy demands publicly funded bodies behave in a becoming manner. Of course dangerous and nuisance driving deserves and demands intervention but does intervention mean ‘draconian intervention or intimidation’ like ABCD=Arrest, Booking, Clamping, Detention when it is obvious that ABCD=Advice, Before Caution, Detention would be the more humane and logical way forward? Where is the guiding hand? Should everything be through fear and intimidation? The expressway is still full of trailers and lorries dangerously driving on the left instead of the right lane. The nation’s professional drivers have certainly failed their ‘KEEP RIGHT’lessons of the FRSC.

    At Ogere on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway exactly where the road has been cleared of tankers and trailers after 30 years of pain and anguish to millions of travellers daily, guess what? The FRSC has a permanent roadside checkpoint which narrows the road by their tactics of standing in one of the two lanes and waving you down. What was the point of opening the road into two lanes if the very force supposed to keep the two lanes open delights in creating an instant go-slow? Surely the FRSC patrol cars should not park in, or force vehicles to park in the same place it took 30 years to remove the trucks from? Does nobody supervise these patrol units? Sunday stop and search of women alone in vehicles and with children can be considered as a form of harassment and intimidation. It should be taken up seriously by women’s groups across the country including lawyers, nurses and NAWOJ.

    Not everyone who declares ‘I love you’ wants you to live or actually ‘loves you’. I tell my female patients to look in a mirror and realise that the person in the mirror is the only one who has their genuine maternity interests at heart. The man is more interested in the baby than the bearer. So their being neglected, beaten, deprived of antenatal care or good delivery facilities is manifestation of a warped ‘love from their husband’. No one can love you more than you. Nigerian women should each look in a mirror, before it is too late! Women should take more interest in where they and their female children and sisters are taken for ante natal clinic and delivery. The men do not care. Mission houses are for deliverance, hospitals are for delivery.

  • What will our non-children inherit from us in Nigeria? NTA Nigeria Map again! ExxonMobil/malaria

    What will our non-children inherit from us in Nigeria? NTA Nigeria Map again! ExxonMobil/malaria

    Can we think for a moment about what our ‘non-children’, the rest of Nigerians, will inherit from us, as people and government in Nigeria? We inherited powerful images of ‘life after colonialism’ from our Independence parents dancing around a flagpole with descending British and rising Nigerian flags. At the Governor’s Mansion, in 1962 as a Boy Scout I served medi medior hors d’oeuvres to retiring colonialists and budding Nigerian-ists. Those images turned into schools without books, taps without water, switches without power, police with blood stained corrupt checkpoints, elections without votes, education without scholarships and finally the fear factor. A parent even in a village is mindful of the inheritance laws and what will be left to the children –farmland, a hut, a house, trinkets and beads, clothes.

    What is the splendid legacy we shall leave for all the wealth and good weather God has endowed us with? When you visit countries across the world, the citizens are at pains to point out public and private buildings, monuments to great thoughts, ideas and events. Often they were built ‘before our time’ like the Pyramids and the Sphinx, The Taj Mahal, The Houses of Parliament, the Red Fort, the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, The Tower of London, The Great Wall of China, Hadrian’s Wall, the castles and fortresses, the great Cathedrals and Mosques and Temples and mansions. These were built for war, peace, love and hate and many were built under ‘extreme anti-human rights conditions’ with slaves and slave trade profits.

    Many others have been built ‘in our time’: The Eiffel Tower, The Burj Khalifa Building, The Gherkin, the Great Bridges, The Three Gorges Dam, and the Sydney Opera House. These have been built for development. Though not always owned by government, governments take ownership to showcase their primary place ‘all the world is a stage’. It is these magnificent structures which make the countries a focus of eyes. Did I forget the White House? Of course not! Everyone knows the White House. None of these buildings is a white elephant. And in Nigeria what will we leave our non-children? The CBN building in Abuja, The Villa or that boat-shaped building in Abuja, so far from the ocean? Or Jos and Boko Haram corpses? A negative budget, a huge debt and many thieves loaded with Nigeria’s naira?

    Na wa O! NTA on Sunday 28-4-2013 News at 9, at 9 .03pm, put out a map of Nigeria without the Rivers Niger or Benue showing. Perhaps NTA has withdrawn the previous adulterated maps while awaiting authentic space age NigSAT 2 infrared maps? Good, but this confirms the magomago going on by ‘some people’ with the map of Nigeria in the national media, a media paid for by the taxes of all Nigerians, North and South of the aforementioned rivers. The result of this ‘Geo-investigation’ should be publicised. The ‘some people’ found responsible for trying to alter the course of history and the topography of Nigerian geography should be brought to book before Nigeria is irreversibly changed or actually disappears as a country! It seems ‘some people’ and their backers are praying for Lagos and all states south of ‘The Rivers’ to disappear under an as-yet imaginary tsunami from the Bight of Benin. Imagine crossing the Onitsha Bridge and finding no land South except the Atlantic Sea. That would be the fate of Nigerians if ‘some people’ had their way! We no go gree O!

    Not everyone who declares ‘I love you’ wants you to live or actually ‘loves you’. I tell my female patients to look in a mirror and realise that the person in the mirror is the only one who has their genuine maternity interests at heart. So their being neglected, beaten, deprived of ante-natal care or good delivery facilities is manifestation of a warped an useless ‘love from their husband’. No one can love them more than themselves. No one can love you more than yourself. Nigerians should each look in a mirror, before it is too late!

    Is Exxon Mobil’s publicity campaign in the newspapers ‘fair to all concerned’? It admits to just $15m spent ‘over 10 years to malaria prevention in Nigeria’. Hurray, I suppose! Some companies do nothing, so ‘doing a little’ is ariwoable,abi? Ariwoable means noisemaking-able. You may think that $15m over 10 years is a lot, worthy a national honour for the Managing Director or Chairman because ‘money talks’. It is actually just $1.5m a year or N2.2b or one tenth of the money stolen from the Police Pension Fund. It is only $4109.5/day or 41 barrels/day at $100/barrel. Wow!!!! Check how much averagely ExxonValdes, I mean ExxonMobil, landed daily during that time out of the two million barrels/day produced in Nigeria. The ExxonMobil campaign was through adverts across newspapers, each costing probably over N150,000 and in total perhaps N1.5-N2million plus. Small, abi? It is unfortunate that in all that advert space, there was not a single instruction to the thousands of readers on malaria prevention tips or strategies.

    If Exxon Mobil had put out such a malaria prevention ‘life skill message’ in the adverts and included a comment on ExxonMobil’s contribution, it would have been wonderful, cost-effective, use of money, space, and attention span and saved lives. This advert should have been a dual message, the primary advert about ExxonMobil’s contribution and the secondary message – ‘Be Warned’ anti-malaria strategies. Yet another wasted opportunity.

  • Lessons from Boston; 2020 or 3030? Crisis of leadership, where is the love?

    Lessons from Boston; 2020 or 3030? Crisis of leadership, where is the love?

    kudos to American law enforcement and citizens’ response in the Boston bombings. Federal Nigerian budgetary authorities take note. Security costs big money in the budget and not security ‘votes’ that are stolen! Enough of police and political ‘security vote’ corruption. We have enough fingerprints from our repeated ID cards and voters’ cards, and mug shots from passports and SIM registration for a Nigerian National Police Database and you say there is unemployment. Who is afraid of being caught?

    Here we are struggling to become among the world’s leading economies by 3030. Ups, sorry. I meant to type‘2020’, but my computer chose ‘3030’. Certainly it seemed it will be 3030 to me, in darkness all weekend, my ‘generator finally dying’. It is unimaginable incompetence that 52 years after independence and ‘self-ownership’, with no colonialist to blame, we have merely 2,000 to 4,000Mw while aides, governors, ministers, politicians, contractors and civil servants take home stolen billions. Our current 2,000-4,000Mw in Nigeria is the power to a small western city. Abroad they talk in Terawatt which is 1,000Gigawatt. A Gigawatt which is 1,000Megawatt. A Megawatt which is 1,000Kilowatt. Every government in the last 40 years has failed in power. They also abandoned roads, water and education. It has taken 40 years to ‘consider’ a second Niger Bridge and 30 years to repair expressways. Schools still have no books! What is the level of incompetence – 80 or 100%? The Japanese love their people and replaced the Fukushima nuclear plant losses in three months using companies which provide urgent power through generator ships and large land generators connected to the local grid. We could have done this, years ago. Giant generators consume far less than the million+ generators in Nigeria from ‘I fine pass my neighbour’ to the 1,000KVa VIP giants powering the President, his men and women, NASS and country homes and governors, first ladies, assembly men and civil servants. If Nigeria had a people-loving leadership there would be 100,000Mw now. It is a multiple failure of power policy, commitment of professionalism, political will, competence and a power failure of love. Ultimately it is brain failure and malicious failure of responsibility. Mass transit, mass power supply are better than mono-transit like the lethal motorcycles and dangerous power sourced from belching generators and substitute power in 40 million Nigeria homes and hovels. No love!

    The economic losses in family, business and intellectual activities from political incompetence can be calculated by NISER and departments of Social Sciences. The sheer magnitude can only be realised if you, the reader, add up how many 25 litre kegs, filled to 30 litres, are used daily in your home, office, street, estate, office block, by government officials and NASS homes and offices, by your factories and those near you. Multiply that by 365 and then by N4000/keg to get the cost of government incompetence. Your tax pays for political home and office generator and you cannot even get a tax rebate for the losses you encounter paying for power substitution at home. Then add the cost of purchase and maintenance of every generator. Trillions! No Nigerian escapes paying.

    Imagine what you would have done annually, times 30 years, with that extra money in your family and office pocket! Add to that the cost of darkness and powerlessness. Your family cannot function optimally and does not read at night with resultant loss of academic potential. Many homes have been broken because the husband has proved ‘inadequate in the power supply area’ and unable to provide ‘one keg of fuel/day and four/weekend’ – a status symbol. You lose business. Business costs are too high. In fact the tax man has no right to take anything until he gives a ‘fuel allowance’ for your home and office- government officials get this free. The people making the money are the generator sellers and maintenance staff, the fuel billionaires and those bribed to keep power off the grid. Through government incompetence we have been unable to refine our fuel in our refineries. But here comes, yes of course and just in time, a brand new Dangote Refinery to the ‘rescue’ us, just as he ‘rescued’ the falling price of flour, sugar and cement, abi? Na waya o! Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Do we want power and fuel rescue again by Dangote billions? Do we pay another heavy price for the Dangote touch?

    No other leadership in Africa, at war with itself or neighbours, and with such large resources as we have in Nigeria will allow its peoples to suffer so much from the lack of supply of the third element of civilisation –electric power- third only to air and water. Water has gone and the air may be threatened. Can we have a leader who is willing to surgically excise political profligacy and introduce part-time legislation houses? The surgeon has to operate on a family member to save the nation.

    Under the burden of a blighted leadership and its ‘CINS: Corruption, Incompetence, Neglect and Selfishness’ a generation of Nigerians has been led badly and has missed out on Nigeria being great. Will Nigeria disintegrate? Amalgamation celebrations and ‘De-amalgamation’ debates loom. The gum cannot be forced to work. It is love that will bind us, nothing more, nothing less. Bombs and political bombast will disintegrate us. No matter how evil you are, do some good or Nigeria will be destroyed and die!