The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

Media/ Educators: Use ‘Cartographically& NigSat2 Approved’ Authentic, Map of Nigeria

The prevention of error, mistakes or deliberate misinformation, require the same level of awareness and investigation and a high level of suspicion about the most trivial of ‘things going wrong’. When is a mistake part of a secret plan? When it recurs, in spite of correction, again and again. Now here is a storm in breakfast tea or tuo cup On NTA Breakfast AM on 11-4-13 at 8.28am there appeared a hand-drawn ‘map’ or better called a ‘mis-map’ of Nigeria during a film about Nigeria and close to a section showing people carrying bags of farm produce out of canoes.

The so-called ‘map’ of Nigeria had the Rivers Niger and Benue hardly out of the Atlantic Ocean, maybe about 10% from the Bight of Benin resulting in a huge‘potbellied’ North and a miniscule ‘short knickers’ South. In a few seconds, before I could exclaim or protest to my TV, the picture had gone and been replaced by a map of Nigeria showing states. But the damage had been done. Mind control. The psychological damage had been done to millions of viewers nationwide. The message was clear ‘I’m bigger than you!’ Only a few weeks ago and previously some years ago, I raised the issue of ‘Authentic Approved Maps of Nigeria’ showing accurate topography and especially the manipulation of the positions of the Rivers Niger and Benue. The manipulation of the position of these rivers is part of the psychological warfare going on as an undercurrent in the media and education systems controlled by those more interested in dominance than democracy. Of course if you teach with falsified maps and pictures in schools and show falsified maps and pictures on the media then the people are forced to believe what is fed to them.

However it behoves those of us who went to school to learn how to ask questions to now ask questions on behalf of those who do not ask any questions. In the absence of a Tsunami eating up Nigeria’s coastline at the rate of 20 km per annum how is it possible for the Rivers Niger and Benue to be approaching Lagos so fast? Even if it is, the distance of the Rivers Niger and Benue from Maiduguri, Daura and Sokoto should remain the same abi? Fortunately we have the pictures from late NigSat 1 and surviving NigSat 2 and copious Google maps and photos from astronauts, cosmonauts and ‘Chinesonauts’ to help verify if this new phenomenon is true. Of course rivers change course, deserts become seas and seas become deserts, but these monumental events take millions of years. It really would be a first for NTA to have discovered that the River Niger and Benue are actually moving ‘down South’ into the Bight of Benin.

It raises the question of where will all the people go when the South disappears. Will these millions be swept into the sea and extinction? Will they migrate over the Rivers Niger and Benue into the North? There what will they be called? Refugees, immigrants, Southerners or strangers? What will we call the North when there is no South? New Nigeria? These questions are for the future but the future may be here, the way the cartoonists are redrawing the map of Nigeria perhaps to suit secret political instructions. There is need for powerful Presidential, NASS, NigSat1 & 2, Geological Survey, Cartographers, geography teachers and swimmers and canoe makers conference to sort out this issue of ‘Where are the Rivers Niger and Benue in Nigeria’. The venue of the conference can be at the confluence of the said rivers where Lord Lugard pitched his tent to ‘rule’ or ruin Nigeria and where Nigeria was conceived and born -Lokoja. Of course some would prefer to have conference in Ladi Kwali Hall, now almost synonymous with profligate government spending for little poly direction returns.

The conference outcome would be the ‘True Authentic Position of the Rivers Niger and Benue vis a vis the Northern and Southern Borders of Nigeria-2013’. It would produce the map dimensions to be used in all public and private discourses on Nigeria, teaching, politics, economics etc. Only this will save the South from being swept into the seas, mentally and physically, by cartoonists, cartographers, graphic artists and career politicians with agendas.

Territorial grabs are well known instruments of subjugation and oppression against other countries. But criminal and calculated‘imaginary’ rerouting of physical structures as important as rivers belonging to the ‘the common man and woman’ is a new dimension in psychological warfare when we are not at declared war. Tsunamis can come from the sea and some say they can come from the land or‘Sahel Sand’ as well. Well this psychological tsunami must not be allowed to drown the South, by mistake or design.

Who ‘owns’ Nigeria? We are not and have never been satisfied by the crumbs that fall from the table set by God as our birth-right but sat at by politicians and their close confederates/ co-conspirators- the civil servants and contractors. If any other country had our resources where would they be now? There were European monarchies with the citizens called serfs or glorified slaves. The local ruler could even sleep with your new wife on wedding night –just to show how decadent they were! We must reassess the value of being a Nigerian. Why are we being undervalued by our leaders?

April 17, 2013
Cutting MDAs; UNESCO’s 26%; ‘Amnesty’ for amputees? FRSC: the new police?

Streamlining Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) is welcome if money saved improves infrastructure in education, health, security and power. To free its citizens from the financial demon of electricity power insufficiency and failure, Nigeria urgently needs 100,000Mw. We should meet UNESCO’s 26% of budget invested in education infrastructure. The MDA cuts needs similar cuts in obscene political ‘Salaries and Perks’ which are ‘SAPping’ Nigeria dry. How about part-time legislators?

Amnesty is not just amnesty pay-outs to retired bombers. How about ‘Amnesty for Amputees’ with pay-outs for all bomb victims? Amnesty strategies should go with compensation and care for amputees and other victims.

The North under-developed the South through federal manipulation and forgot to develop itself to catch up with the stunted South. Where is that money? If Ibori and Alams had billions what did other governors have? There are few saints, military or civilian, North or South of the Rivers Niger and Benue. Happily the North embraces the train after killing it for 30 years of road transport. Kano announced a 4-year Chinese construction of intra-city monorail. This will be a near-replica of Lagos State’s ‘Jakande-rail’ truncated by Buhari/Babangida at a cost of $183m for breach of contract 30 years ago. Forgive me if I do not clap for ‘progressive’ Kano. Better get Buhari’s permission. But perhaps being Kano, you do not need it, abi?

Congratulations to government for the Ore-Benin road. Friends said they ‘did the road in an hour instead of the 5-24 hours last year’. Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Minister of Works, can take off her orange overalls and stop weeping on NTA. However with good roads come responsibility to drive safely, conscious of one’s cargo, passengers and other road users. The loss of between 45-80 precious Nigerian lives is a blood-stained testimony to the need for less haste and more speed control. Unmindful of tyres, obstacles or state of mind of the driver, high speed kills worldwide and inflammable cargo like petrol is begging to ignite. I have always dreaded passing through Ogere during those endless stand-till go-slows. How many of the thousands of us stuck there would be burnt in a holocaust if 1 or 1000 of those tankers had caught fire or been maliciously ignited to cover-up a petrol theft? Such a conflagration, funeral pyre, would have been seen by the cosmonauts in space just as the Ogere go-slow is a talking-point for pilots on the Lagos-Abuja and Lagos-London air route! The FRSC struggled for 30 years with Ogere before December. Can NISER calculate the cost of ‘Ogere Traffic Mismanagement’ in financial losses and the trillions of man-hours? It is only when, in two minutes, you drive through a nightmare like Ogere or a deadly pothole, where you spent countless hours of misery during 30 years, that you look back in anger at those who refused to make the road passable for 30 years. So as we clap today, we remember the suffering and death we have endured due to government and MDA maximum incompetence and a lack of love for Nigeria.

Potholed roads injure Nigerians including Great Achebe and claim lives but so do smooth new roads. But at a point we blame the drivers not the road. Tanker and trailer drivers seem above the law with ‘might is right’, wrong lane driving, poor parking and overloaded axles. For the commercial vehicles driven with a death wish, NURTW has been more efficient at providing the fifth column army for violent party politicking than queuing, driving within speed limits and obeying the Highway Code. Infringements are more often ‘bribed’ and it seems ‘FRSC stop and search’ has crept into the vacuum left by cancelling the police checkpoint. The FRSC must reverse this public perception to further justify the recent award from NASS and international outreach plans.

In Ibadan, just before the Secretariat junction coming from UCH, there is a daily 7am FRSC ‘Road Marshals checkpoint’. Perhaps they have the highest moral goals. But if I was a commercial driver, I would feel annoyed and destabilised at the delay of a methodical ‘particulars and vehicle inspection’. At that time ‘FRSC operation Keep Moving’ is better than FRSC ‘Go Slow’ particulars check. Are they authorised? The authorisation should be withdrawn as it is giving FRSC a bad name. I have been flagged down on the expressway for ‘particulars check’ on 10 occasions to fill ‘a quota of arrests’. Once, unsolved murdered late Uncle Bola Ige was my only passenger. As a foundation FRSC Road Marshal, I believe this is a misapplication of powers and responsibility of FRSC. FRSC cannot become the new police checkpoint and FRSC should not allow its staff, from boredom, lack of supervision, seeking financial gain, wickedness or ‘quota catching’ to take up checkpoint duty cancelled by IGP Abubakar! If they do that near Secretariat what happens in the hinterland? Keeping FRSC’s reputation clean is a glorious accolade for FRSC management. So far the NSCDC seems, in public perception, the cleanest organisation. There is room for more ‘My oga[s] at the top’ of the honesty tree. Forgive that man. At least he is honest. As roads improve, educating tanker, trailer and NURTW drivers, enforcing right hand driving, speed limits, parking off the road, axle weights, and holding waking/services for the dead road users in the motor park where the NURTW vehicle originated, will become more important than ‘particulars checks’ for cutting deaths!

April 10, 2013
Boat owners: Buy Lifejackets. Dead drowned boat-users don’t buy goods

Happy Easter! No Easter for the 164 drowned. How much is a simple lifejacket? The murder and suicide of Nigerians on road and in water continues. But what can I write that is different from my past articles on lifejackets? Here is a small adapted sample.

Article 1: In two years we have lost 1000 or more to canoe accidents and drowning. They would all be alive today if they had life jackets. Despite more than five years of trying we have not succeeded in implementing simple laws on life jackets. When will Nigerians stop murdering their children? Lifejackets are the seatbelts and crash helmets of the river and seas. It is unimaginably painful to lose a child. It is even worse to lose a child through an easily preventable cause. Life is not a joke. We talk of job creation but how many lifeguards are employed at our swimming pools, recreational rivers, beaches and lakes at this time when our youth are so unemployed? We fail to create the jobs that make us a civilised, always taking short cuts which backfire at great cost to life as in Kaduna. Comet June 1, 2005 Life jackets

Article 2: What does it cost to insist on a lifejacket for everyone in a boat even if it is dashed them by NPA or NMA or the Governor of Bayelsa? It should clearly show the need to wear a lifejacket when on the high seas and in the riverine areas off Lagos and in the Delta and on the Benue and the Niger and their tributaries. A lifejacket lasts a life time and is a wise investment for travellers. No one knows when disaster will strike. Comet 2006

Article 3: I had a discussion with my late, unsolved murdered, cousin Funso Williams when he was made political chairman of the maritime authority around how to prevent more drownings through a lifejacket campaign. Last year Nigeria lost over 1000 to boating accidents. In ten days 17 fellow Nigerians drowned.

Is it possible that lifejackets are impossible to make in Nigeria as maritime authority Corporate Social Responsibility? Is it so difficult to organise a lifejacket campaign? Can the maritime authority, like NAFDAC, campaign for lifejackets. Rubber rings, used empty water bottles and plastic bags could be researched by polytechnics and universities.

Just how many empty water bottles will float a baby, a child, a youth or an adult? According to our estimates at Educare Trust, our children are dying for the lack of four or six empty plastic bottles tied around them. That is the price of life in Nigeria.

We must get life jackets, made in Nigeria, into the canoes and ferries. Companies provide lifejackets for workers. Niger Delta Development Commission could fund lifejackets production and distribution to women and children plying the waterways? A mother taking a child unprotected into a canoe is attempting to murder that child and should be so accused. Child slaughter is the minimum. There is not enough prosecution. The police should to prevent such murders by pre-emptive prosecution of the canoe owners and the mothers. The child is trusting and is forced to be exposed to drowning breaching a child right to life.

Nigeria faces a deficit of maybe 500,000 – 1,000,000 life jackets. Can the oil companies, the maritime authorities, the banks and the governments please fund these life jackets? After a helping hand, we need a helping life jacket. We owe it to Nigerian babies and children. If not for every waterway user, then at least for the babies and youth forced to use canoes and ferries. Financial Standard Feb 13, 2006

Article 4: In Kano another 38 Fellow Nigerians drowned. A simple lifejacket made from six empty plastic bottles, costing nothing, and tied around the waist would have saved them especially the babies and children. Is a life in Nigeria not worth an empty bottle life jacket? Over 2000 Fellow Nigerians drown annually- ten plane loads of Nigerians and still no “Lifejacket Law’. Corporate Nigeria, research university Nigeria or National Assembly please get us a lifejacket culture –or must we wait for a senator or representative to drown? If so, do so quickly please. Nation April 9, 2008 Human Rights; Life jackets;

Article 5: The drowning of over 200 on the Tanzanian Ferry off Zanzibar reminds us of Nigerians with a death-wish saying ‘No to life jackets’. Nigeria also loses many annually to ‘life jacket’ irresponsibility! The Nation Sept 14, 2011.

Article 6: Wonder of wonders, someone may be reading this column. Remember our call for locally made lifejackets to save lives of mothers and babies? Well Alhaji Aminu Aliyu Shagari, has bought 45 lifejackets. So citizens, make it a political issue so that we get life jackets. The Nation Dec 9, 2009.

Article 7: With over 2000 drowning annually, enact a Lifejacket Law under which passengers and crew of all boats should have available and wear life jackets. The Nation Dec 12, 2007.

Article 8: Another 50 Fellow Nigerian citizens, this time from Bayelsa drowned while crossing a river as traders. More sacrifice to the bloodthirsty gods of lives that could have been saved by a life jacket, a few empty bottles of water cello-taped together or an inflated used inner tube. So life in Nigeria is not worth an inner tube. This week’s pictures from Uganda and Mozambique showed a rescue mission wearing orange life jackets. Any children among the victims in Bayelsa were murdered by irresponsible parents, guardians, government and the boat owners. We had this same fight for seatbelts and now 80% of people use them. Let us set a target of 2007 for 80% of river users to use some form of life jacket. Financial Standard Mar 12, 2007.

N886.4 billion distributed in February 2013 and yet no lifejackets. Nigeria is rich but poorly, even criminally, managed. Dead drowned boat users do not buy return tickets, goods or services! It pays companies to keep people alive. This ends Article 9 on lifejackets. Anyone listening?

April 3, 2013
Achebe: a tsunami of crocodile tears; Wanted: Genius Grants in budgets, books in schools!

Chinua Achebe whose ‘Things fall apart…..the centre cannot hold’, has given Nigerians and others worldwide, in 50 languages, happy rehearsal times, exciting copycat wrestling scenes, many jokes, the fruition of a myriad love unions, many pre-examination sleepless nights and a legion of pleasant memories. Thank you, Sir. May you Rest in Perfect Peace. Amen! Note ‘Chinua Achebe’ does not flag red for ‘spell check’ on computers as the name is ‘recognised’-an accolade speaking louder than ‘GCON’ Awards. Achebe studied with a ‘wonderful school library’ and started medicine in the University College, Ibadan, only to change after a year –Nigerian medicine’s loss and world literature’s gain. So many in medicine write seriously – an old ‘disease’ needing a new name–mediliteratitis or mediliteratureitis. You choose! But contrast his literature book access in Umuahia 1944 to our 2013 bookless, libraryless and a nearly illiterate youth and readerless society. What price a book- Achebe’s death?

Weep with those who will cry a ‘tsunami of crocodile tears’ in the corridors of power. Many of those crying loudest championed the truncating of education, practical science and book availability during 1983-2013 and some now actually sit in senate perpetuating mischief! Boko Haram started, surreptitiously, then as Boko Haram Phase 1, with falling standards, federal government anti-reading policies and withdrawal of annual grants for library books and sports. Phase 2 is the bombs, burning and executions. There were probably more literature books in Chinua Achebe’s primary and secondary schools and University College Ibadan in 1944-50 than now – 50 years and $600,000,000,000 later. He nearly died in a Nigerian pothole and moved to the USA where care of the physically challenged is a human right, not a human wrong and a First Lady ‘alanu’ Easter hand-out photo-op. No doubt some government organs and many people who could have, but did not, provide the needed 17million books, will pay a few millions for a ‘befitting burial’ – the one thing Nigerians are expert at- funeral extravagance and financial waste in the abuse of culture!

Meanwhile the schools will remain bookless as we await another ‘irreplaceable icon’ to die. The Nigerian presidents, blessed with inexplicable longevity, who failed in every sphere including education, are mostly still alive. Is this their punishment- to witness a failed education system in a failing state with failed ‘simple science’ refineries? Do they have any conscience as they spew out ‘obituary sound bites’? If he, the great Chinua Achebe, could not influence Nigeria to buy books for children during 82 years of an illustrious literary life, what hope have we with our petty articles, like this, in an ignored and vilified press? Literature, culture and the arts are entrepreneurship strategies abroad, creating events and T-shirt and other memorabilia and also wealth. But do Nigerian banks and corporate Nigeria know that?

Let us weep real rain forest tears for our children’s booklessness even as those with power achieve nothing and weep a tsunami of crocodile tears and advise on education. What stopped any one of six Presidents and over 100 state governors giving a N5m or N10m Annual Achebe Grant directly to Achebe for ‘anything artistic local or worldwide you like, Sir’ knowing that an economically beneficial work of literary genius would result. But they dish out billions for NASS and political office holders and open our vaults to pardonable thieving governors.

The professional must take back recognition from politicians. Education does not require another billion naira Summit in Ladi Kwali Hall. It requires books, posters, sports and science equipment in Nigeria’s 70,000 schools and 1,500,000 classrooms. Even President Jonathan’s reading project needs many books, Nigeria cannot develop with just a narrow national reading book list. No nation will survive if all pupils read only the ‘famous four or five Nigerian authors’. Nigeria probably has over 5,000 books written by 1,500 Nigerian authors needing a readership. When did a minister, commissioner, principal, teacher, parent or student visit any good bookshop or publisher last? In spite of booklist corruption, the literature list can be broadened by simple mathematics like buying fewer copies of more books, just as we used the ‘The St Gregory’s book Way’ in St Gregory’s College in 1961. There the literature teacher came to class with six copies of five titles. Each of the five class rows had a different book to read and exchange every two weeks with another row. In 10 weeks every student had read five books and the exam was in week 13 for the price of one book per student. In a year 15 books are read, in three years 45 books were cheaply read by each and every all students between forms 1 and 3. A student who has read 45 books has a different take on life than most.

Anyone seeking to immortalise an already immortalised Chinua Achebe, should allocate budgetary funds for ‘Genius Grants’ for other icons before everyone who is not a politician dies or emigrates. In Nigeria last week, NANS and other youth organisations shamelessly took 10 plus full page colour congratulatory adverts for a young former youth senate president. Where did that approximately N5m come from? What an insult to Nigerians and an abuse of Nigeria’s political learning process. Note that 100 ‘we have lost an icon’ obituary pages@N500,000, totalling N50m will not put books in schools – failing yet again a ‘dying wish’ of Chinua Achebe.

March 27, 2013
Patriotism, NYSC and ‘True Federalism’; ‘Victims Compensation Fund’

N886.4 billion distributed in February! Meanwhile, no books in schools and unrepentant failure of power supply. We are so rich in our poverty! Shame on us! But at least the almajiris are sitting on the best school furniture in Nigerian schools.

Apparently suggesting that the NYSC should be scrapped is ‘unpatriotic’. The ‘Unpatriotic List’ is long. It includes not to have true federalism and to have only 20 LGAs in Lagos State Vs 77 in Kano/Jigawa States but who cares about those aspects of patriotism! Changes will not get through a ‘patriotic’ National Assembly. NYSC, under the guise of ‘patriotism’, serviced educational, health and other needs of all but especially so-called disadvantaged states at a cheap rate, allowing billions to be stolen. Today’s resultant decay has given an excuse for terrorism and arises from yesterday’s failures to develop in spite of funds at each point in our fiscal history. In human terms, patriotic NYSC members are often treated little better than cheap labour, cajoled into accepting wretched accommodation and feeding during orientation as their ‘patriotic duty’ and in ‘the national interest’.

Remember the hundreds of patriotic parents sending their patriotic starry-eyed sons and daughters to go for NYSC only to have them return in coffins. Sometimes they arrive in those coffins with their throats slit merely for being NYSC members attempting to serve their country patriotically. And we are not at war, so they were not sent into ‘enemy territory’ but into a neighbouring state! What compensation do you give those bereaved and grieving parents whose children’s goals have been so sadly truncated? One who has lost a husband or wife is a widow or widower and one who has lost both parents is an orphan, but there is no word in most languages for one who has lost a child. Those parents will weep fresh tears today as they read this small honour done to their children, forgotten by a country struggling and killing its children in order to become a nation.

Where is the ‘NYSC Memorial Wall’ listing and honouring fallen NYSC members? I did my NYSC in 1975 and we lost comrades. I am here with family and children but they have been dead since 1975, 38 years. What impact has that loss had on their parents and siblings and economic loss to Nigeria? Does anyone think about these things? When you get in your car, bus or walk down a road, it may be the last time due to no fault of your own, no matter how patriotic you are! Our police and soldiers are dying in greater numbers than their colleagues posted to war-torn Mali, in shootouts, drive-by attack, robberies, bomb blasts and as escorts for bullion vans and VIPs.

Money and other material compensation acts do not substitute for a life needlessly lost or the pain inflicted by such a loss on the family. Prevention of loss is better than compensation. But for many, compensation is all they can see as a survival strategy for their families. However, if compensation is big enough and regular, it becomes helpful in paying the daily maintenance utility and education survival bills of those left behind. What compensation actually comes to the family survivors of the victims of the robberies and bombs? What comfort does that give to the junior brothers and sisters of the slain who in their own turn are now being called up to serve NYSC in the same states where their brothers and sisters fell victim to ‘unpatriotic actions’ of others, actions which can be triggered at any time? One-off compensation, one dose cure, even N1 or 10million, is inadequate. We pay ridiculously huge salaries and outrageous disengagement allowances, and even life-time pensions and salaries to convicted or pardoned four-year office holders. Therefore government and NASS owe NYSC and other victims of bomb blast and violence in this ‘The Undeclared War’ in Nigeria regular stipends to enable siblings and children and old parents achieve some measure of physical and fiscal comfort.

Such an all-embracing ‘Victims Compensation Fund’ would be a welcome act of ‘patriotism’ by government and NASS. It would need to be renewed every year by N1b or more budgetary allocation and run by public/private competent hands without huge governance, not by ‘pension scam’ government officials. Meanwhile NYSC is sending unarmed young men and women into violence-prone and armed areas-just because there are Nigerians living there. It is unpatriotic to send them into harm’s way as the uniform, title and job mark them as targets. The suggestion of scrapping NYSC may attract attention to the NYSC to provide better safety measures and protection and to get members deployed in relatively safe areas. Do the NYSC officials and those complaining against NYSC being scrapped send their own children into such unsafe areas? Perhaps not! If the NYSC cannot be run better and safer, then it would be patriotic to reappraise it and perhaps restructure it or suspend it in some states or scrap it as having outlived its usefulness. One of such reappraisal suggestions is that it should justify its existence and the cost in lives.

Meanwhile, let us salute those currently in NYSC, pray for their safe return, set up state and national memorials to ‘NYSC Heroes Past’ and initiate political strategies to legitimise and legalise a ‘Victims Compensation Fund or Foundation’. To many heroes past and present are dying in vain.

March 20, 2013
Who owns Nigeria: North or South?- The key amalgamation question?

Are Rivers Niger and Benue sinking down the waist of Nigeria towards the Bight of Benin/Atlantic Ocean? Soon there will be no South. The map of Nigeria on NTA demonstrates ‘Sinking or Moving River Disease’. This is a political disease of criminally-minded officials bent on distorting the truth. If it is NTA policy it is punishable as mental terrorism for ‘altering the geographical internal borders of Nigeria’. I checked ‘Nigeria Map’ on Google. You should too! The Rivers Niger and Benue are not quite half way up Nigeria. It seems our lekedi or belt is falsely falling. Nigerians require our own ethnic cartographers to check maps, text and exercise books and almanacs for distortion. It was not so long ago that Europeans could not bear the thought that Africa was bigger than Europe and adjusted the world map to make Africa smaller. The Americans revealed all from the moon in JF Kennedy’s era. Check your map against Google map or Niga SAT2 and complain politically to prevent the South shrinking further or North being made falsely bigger. In 2013, a year from 2014, some say ‘Amalgamation Memorial Day’ not ‘Centenary Day ‘, we cheat each other as if cheating is OK?

Who owns Nigeria in 2014: North or South or Nigerians? This is ‘The Key Amalgamation Question’. From the manipulated census figures, federal character, true federalism, fiscal federalism, distorted LGA numbers between Lagos, 20, and Kano+ Jigawa States, 77, resource control, oil windfall, choice appointments, the South continues to be screwed under national unity’. ‘National unity’ does not mean ‘Sectional idiocy’ or unilateral emasculation. It should mean mutual respect, equity, justice and transparency.

How are Nigerians supposed to react to Boko Haram claiming poverty as motivation for mass murder and seeking amnesty and also to react to the fact that the North operated initially nearly 100% of Niger Delta oil blocks down to 82% which translates into multi-billion dollars/annum not used for development? The Forbes billionaires list does not include those with stupendous undeserved civil service and military wealth. They have no right to begrudge the Niger Delta citizens of just 10%.

ZZZZZZZZZZZOOOOOOOWWAABIA is Nigeria and ZZZOOOOOOOOOOO are the undisputed kings with the controlling share, the leadership position, the master manipulator but failing the true leadership progressive role so desperately needed–a cumulative disappointment for Nigeria. Ask anyone in a marginalised tribe not ZZZZZZZZZZZOOOOOOWABIA. It is true feeling of oppression. As pointed out by Ita Enang all oil well licences could be cancelled and renegotiated with Federal character- a suggestion not popular with those making billions daily merely for possession of an oil block. Commonwealth ownership is only good if it affects someone else’s property. ‘What is yours is mine and what is mine is mine also’ is the secret code which does not bode well for the survival of any country seeking nationhood. We may well stay together but is it a union of the heart and mind or a union of fear and ‘by force’? The fact is that those, Northerners and Southerners, who have with little or no respect for others, have held Nigeria to political and financial ransom, kidnapped, for 50 years must have a change of their own heart. We are not the enemy, slaves won at a high stakes game of power and oil roulette. We must first be set free within the borders of Nigeria and then be allowed to feel fully Nigerian, not slaves. How are we set free? Easy. Constitutional review, true federalism, devolution of more powers to the states, derivation formula, review and reduction of the ‘Federal Excusive List‘. Nigeria has remained almost in the stone age in transport and education. Hurry! Nigerians have suffered a lifetime of suffering in this country so rich in billionaires with God’s gifts of arable land and underground black gold which paradoxically makes billionaires of some and poisons millions in abject poverty. These are the prize and the price of false federalism which has failed to move Nigeria forward. We are where we are today because of those military rulers and their cohorts from all ethnic groups. They were ‘The Occupying Power’ of a conquered Nigeria. What is the role of the CBN past and present in the naira and federal Nigeria? And then came Obasanjo with Odi and Expressway failure and dismantling of some political power bases nationwide.

I really weep over the Jos crisis having spent a peaceful newly-married NYSC in Jos, Bukuru, Lafia General Hospital Lafia as my very busy base. That so-called ‘peace’ came from those who decided not to, or could not react to provocation and warped policy initiation due to fear or bribery or saw their citizens cheated at Supreme Military Council and Federal Executive Council Meetings. Nigeria has been at war for years before the Civil War and the war continues, with ‘mis-allocation’ of the spoils of war, read ‘sp-oil’, only abating slightly when Obasanjo became President. ‘All Is Not Quiet on Any Front in Nigeria’. Time for ‘An Amalgamation National Conference’?

Those who owned power –electric, generator and political-, the oil blocks, the customs, the NPA, the armed forces, Abuja for years and the unseen faces behind the cell phone and internet companies should not shy away from their responsibility in the failure of Nigeria. It is time Nigerians, all Nigerians owned Nigeria. This is not a monarchy or a slave state, though it appears to be so.

March 13, 2013
Bankers’ bonus; In 2013, will political parties stop stealing from budgets?

No doubt we will again have the Bonus Saga with billions paid to managers and ‘wiz kids’ just because they handle cash and not like for professions which deliver blood, passengers, babies or children in schools. Can someone, may be CBN, tell us exactly what the bonus levels are in Nigeria – the richest poorest country in Africa. The subjugation of the world to monetisation is ugly and wrong, monetarily and morally. At the very least let all workers get a bonus equivalent to their worth calculated by an actuary. Landing a plane with 800 passengers, docking a ship with 5,000 passengers, running a university with 100,000 students, driving 33,000 litres of fuel from Lagos to Langtang or guiding 30 children through a year in school should all be more worthy of a ‘pilots’, captains’, vice-chancellors’, drivers’ or teachers’ bonus’ than the banker sitting in an office playing Russian roulette with other people’s money, stocks and shares and manipulating COT, bank charges, lending rates etc. A banker’s satisfactory outcome and cost cutting and increased share price is often won at the cost of job losses, death and destruction in the countryside. Nigerians also say no to Nigerians bankers’ bonuses, secret or revealed.

We Nigerians have been bogged down with failed expectation and begging politicians to give us our rights to water, quick transportation, internationally accepted optimal education, adequate security and adequate recreational facilities. But ‘change has to come’! To correct the past, government must accept its errors, take budgeting line items more seriously, eliminate fraud in the contractor chain and get out of the ‘financial food chain’. The top priority question for all Nigerians is ‘Can political parties stop stealing and if not, will Nigeria survive 2014?

It is March. Beware the Ides of March, Shakespeare writes! What are the omens? Are they good or bad? The budget is now signed. How much will be spent as budgeted and how much will be misused and stolen? It is a time of upheaval and restructuring and new decision-making in the major political parties. Many parties have been de-registered by INEC and many more may follow, releasing a tsunami of non-conformist, often idealistic and individualistic members, to choose a future in other surviving or merging parties or quit politics in disgust.

Change is personal and political. Change is political party survival and revival of Nigeria. No change will mean death. We must all stop stealing from the budget and its derivatives during 2013 in preparation for 2014, the 100thyear of the infamous amalgamation. With new budgets in every LGA, state, the FCT, Abuja, and every MDA what political party resolutions have been made to change the culture of corruption? Or are the resolutions merely to continue the age-long ‘shortening the ration’ of the masses by theft alias corruption? Which media hungry TV political personality is making these stealing and theft resolutions in the political hierarchy, at party BOT meetings, in NASS, governor’s and minister’s and commissioner’s and top civil servants offices like Permanent Secretary Director etc? Before you steal, you must decide to steal!

Just as you plan 2013 and your children’s school fees in your office, know and remember that these other places are real places where the real crime, stealing and theft, official and unofficial, legalised illegality, corruption against the people of the Nigerian nation, is hatched. There the crime is approved and rubber-stamped at 10,000 different levels each January including the tax office. Is no one clean in Nigeria’s political and civil servant hierarchy? Can we have such meetings where they will swear ‘We will not steal any of the budget?’ Or ‘We will steal only 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80% of the budget.’ Who is the chief thief who speaks at the party meetings and directs the theft at every level of corrupt government? For Nigeria to change, the first thing is for every political party to change from thieving, bribing, grabbing mode to service mode. If it happens it will immediately retain trillions in the budgets.

From exorbitant parking fine fees-N25,000 in Ibadan while it is N4,000 in Abeokuta; to ridiculous environmental and land use bills, outrageous personal assessments, huge energy costs, to budgetary theft, the Nigerian suffers at every turn.

Nigeria will never achieve the higher ground of better living standards unless we, the citizens, manage to reverse positions with the politicians and wrestle the budget from them. How do we control the political profession’s appetite for the public funds and manipulation of laws for party members’ maximum gain? It is certain Nigeria’s politicians need education and massive reorientation towards service and humility. Arrogance is a disease among politicians and they certainly need deliverance from the vices of greed, theft, stealing, arrogance, corruption of thoughts and actions and policies.

Political parties must curb their appetites for the public purse and find new ways to raise money. They already have high fees for political office seekers and underhand bribes within the party including new words for theft like ‘palliatives’ and ‘soft landing’ funds. Let them study and use the mechanisms of relatively honest political parties abroad –membership, announced donations etc. and stay away from percentages of budgets, contracts and extortion. Nigeria cannot survive another year of this method of bleeding the state in addition to the murderous multibillion SAPing of political ‘Salaries and Perks’ and constituency projects.

March 6, 2013
Political crime of preventable suffering; El Rufai’s autobiography

When a government takes power it must take on responsibilities to the citizenry. In Nigeria political power is an end in itself. The only activities advertised are self-perpetuating ‘re-election engineering’ supported by theft and accumulation of masses of public money to fill ‘war chests’ to execute a re-election project. This ‘politically legitimised’ but totally ‘criminally illegal’ budget diversion in the moral custody of the political class to personal and party war chests deprived the budget of functionality at every level of growth and development.

Nigeria has suffered from the political roundabout of ‘win-budget-political theft-budget failure-election corruption-win-budget-theft-budget failure etc’. This preoccupation of politics with self-perpetuation and unenlightened political self-interest has overridden our development as none of the 5, 10, 15 or 20 year development plans were seriously executed. The dichotomy of the North and South views on everything has also been a major drawback to sustained development. The best example is the abuse and misapplication of federalism to mean only a ‘skewed federal character’. This is an on-going 35 year hidden ‘Second Civil War’- with abandonment of basic honest sharing principles on the altar of warped principles, census, LGA and revenue figures and domination or dependency. The spin-off was the conservative versus progressive struggle, usually won by the powerful conservative elements of all ethnic groups. The cost of this stranglehold on Nigeria was a serious lack of three things- development, devolution of power and funds nationwide. This cost is reflected in Nigeria’s woeful showing in sports, electricity power supply, education, medical treatment, railways and abandonment of the well-entrenched colonial culture of building and road maintenance.

Historically, the Public Works Department would mark a date in five years on the wall and it would return on that date to repaint the house. We abandoned that inherited colonial working civil service maintenance culture. Those who sat at meetings which abandoned such maintenance strategies should be exposed. Note that UK spent over £22m pounds on citizens’ compensation claims for potholes.

Little could be done by individual citizens and states to cancel out federal abdication of its national responsibility and abandonment and deliberate neglect of the railways or the failure of the national power grid or the bad roads. Of course all used and still use generators etc to substitute for power deprivation. This is preventable suffering. Nigeria would have saved trillions annually if no generators had ever been imported to substitute for a failed government. The grid would have been forced to grow at 1,000Mw per annum to 25-30,000Mw by now, short of the needed 100,000Mw but better than our 5,000Mw. Who pays for this ‘preventable suffering’?

Every pothole and diversion for development must be studied to reduce ‘preventable suffering’. Remember the anguish at Ogere and Ore? All ‘Preventable Suffering’ is easily solved. Government is not God and must create solutions to prevent suffering even during construction. It is not necessary for citizens to suffer excessively for government development! Government should supervise and force contractors to take care of citizens during construction.

Nigeria’s failure to develop railways, roads and power and cancel history from schools was no mistake but a deliberate punishable criminal conspiracy against Nigeria. It was deliberate government policy. Those civil servants, politicians and military adventurers who sat at Federal Executive Council and Ministerial Meetings vetoing power grid development, standard gauge railway line, East West roads, second Niger Bridge and history from the curriculum know each other. We want to know them before they get more misplaced national honours. Such people have no business lamenting ‘Nigeria Today’ or advising current governments on the ‘way forward’. All their lapses have paralysed the nation while countries with fewer resources have leapt ahead of us in almost every ranking except corruption and other negative areas. They should be exposed under the Freedom of Information Act and in properly informative biographies like the exciting new 627 page autobiography by Nasir El-Rufai titled ‘The Accidental Public Servant’. Agree or not with him, you should get a copy if you are writing a biography or are hopeful for the future of Nigeria. Criminal politicians beware. We the people will get access, a la El-Rufia, to what you say and do, irresponsible or not, in governance and your deeds will appear in the public domain. Look at the recent sack of judges.

Government is often people with greed and ambition with little vision. Government’s failure in railways made life a misery and a death trap. Government intentions to perpetuate the railway blight failed when its search for an international container port license for Lagos required railway evacuation of containers. The citizens made do with nothing in some parts while in progressive areas the citizens substituted for federal losses by investment of their resources in their children’s education.

Happily a few of these areas are finally receiving attention mainly because the conservatives have finally agreed to be dragged into the 21st Century. But the pace is slow relative to need to compensate for ‘preventable suffering’.

Recently we have seen some movement in solving these problems and serious attempts to achieve the MDGs but at what mega-cost and corruption? Inexplicably, simple mass action solutions like UBEC-led ‘Emergency Operation Textbooks, Science and Sports Equipment Boxes’ still elude millions of Nigerian students stuck in over 70,000 schools mostly unworthy of the simplest dictionary definition of ‘school’ –enlightened inspired teachers, teacher and child friendly school environment, books, books, books. Preventable suffering?

February 27, 2013
The centenary Nigerian; Political Party Corruption-PPC; Smoothen the path of Nigerians

We have adult decisions at this 100 year junction in Nigeria’s life. We have bombs exploding and multibillion naira thefts and with millions displaced and tens of thousands injured and dead of the wounds of surviving in Nigeria. Yet, we are not ‘At War’. Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, NISER should quantify the mental, physical, family, work and other costs of being a ‘Centenary Nigerian’, The Centenary Nigerian survives okada mayhem and exists without a predictable salary, pension, mortgage, monthly house rent, water, electricity. In addition banking COT, borrowing and high naira exchange costs have made life a 100 year misery and short life expectancy, 47 years.

Every good thing arrives late for Centenary Nigerians, be it childhood vaccinations, electricity to study and work and play, books for education, medicines in hospitals, jobs and joy and justice, good roads, affordable accommodation and mosquito nets. But they still say ‘Thank you!’ though ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Things expected from government are mis-labelled ‘government cannot do it alone’ and are delayed, denied, undelivered or delegated to the private sector in a PPP – Public Private Partnership.

Evil federal polices brought Nigeria to its knees from internal slavery. Government even refused to buy sports equipment for schools while officials stole billions weekly. Sorry, Centenary Nigerian children! ‘Nothing for you’ as Lagbaja says. When in Nigerian education history was the meeting held which cancelled ‘history’, ‘sports equipment’, ‘library books’ and ‘science disposables’ from Nigeria’s education budgets? Whoever did it is probably a ‘big’ retired ‘respected’ Minister or Director of Education and ‘hiding’ in Senate.

Centenary Nigerians have suffered needless trauma over the last 100 years from failure and abandonment of leadership opportunities – electricity, transport, security, and education. I see it every day in the preventable suffering of my patients and in the pigsties mislabelled ‘schools’. Yes, many Centenary Nigerians are amazingly ‘content with nothing’, accepting what they see on TV as ‘unattainable’. This is Centenary Nigeria where only the sun is free – so free that we refuse to give CBN or other loans for solar equipment! Of course we have several ‘working’ officials. But we require a critical mass of good Centenary Nigerians.

Our problems are corruption and incompetence. Corruption can stop today, overnight. We must quickly change to survive the huge rock of corruption, far greater than the meteor that hit Russia. Corruption devalues every government naira to 30kobo. Our recent wonderful 2013 Orange Africa Cup of Nations football success belongs to the team, not us, because Centenary Nigeria did too little. And there are even better players, undiscovered because no one gave them footballs, opportunity or scouted for talent in their LGA. Ditto for all sports and many academic programmes which need organised systematic LGA, State and National Sports Databases. Centenary Nigeria could so easily replicate this football success story in events from shooting to swimming. Sport is neglected job creation. This football success revealed how easily Centenary Nigerians overcome mass suffering whenever transient hope and joy appears. But living in hope without much expectation is lethal.

We are a blessed people but cursed with many corrupt leaders in corrupt party politics and a rotten greedy civil service. If the survival of Nigeria is paramount we must eliminate political party corruption to save Centenary Nigeria@100.

With the ‘2013 Amalgamation’ of some political parties into APC, remember that Organised Political Party Corruption, OPPC is traditionally the greatest Nigerian corruption. Are political parties entitled to 50-70% of the budget? By what right do political parties steal? Let political parties study international political party funding etc, and stop stealing from budgets and taking high percentages of contract fees, consultant fees, tax task force funds and Internally Generated Revenue to fund political parties and personalities.

Before Nigerian Centenary amalgamation celebrations, we need delivery on developmental centenary projects and goals. The private sector is not spending its own money for the centenary celebration. Government will still spend billions on junketing, hotel, transport and ‘palliative’ allowances. The private sector is spending the money you, Centenary Nigerian, paid for excessive bank and cement charges etc. So Fellow Nigerians, you are paying to celebrate the 1914 amalgamation and have paid for the post-amalgamation suffering during the last 100 years. QED!

At least the Centenary film showed us heroic figures including Olaudah Equiano, the first Nigerian best selling author and slave who is not yet taught in Nigerian schools. Every student should have a copy of Olauda Equiano’s Book, ‘The interesting narrative of the Travels of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa.’ We in Educare Trust have given out hundreds of copies of the book and run a reading club called The Olaudah Equiano Poetry and Prose Club. You should start one in your school or university as an Amalgamation Project on Nigerian heroes.

In Ibadan, we have a newly reconstructed bridge in Bodija, and the Mokola flyover. Amen. Something new, money well spent by Governor Abiola Ajimobi. During construction the poor alternative routes have cost Nigerians millions of hours and naira daily in fuel and time. Some ‘suffering’ is necessary during development but much Nigerian suffering will be reduced merely by tarring and smoothening alternative routes. Even today though the Davies Bridge is repaired, the Tewogbade, Veterinary and Mokola alternative routes need urgent maintenance and pothole filling, to ‘make our paths straight and smooth’. Building a flyover is good but adding smooth motorable alternative routes during construction is better. Make smooth their path, nationwide please.

February 20, 2013
‘Amalgamation anomalies’; Keshi GCON, players CFR; Wanted: a Youth Centre/ ward?

The President could enter a promissory pact with Nigerians to hasten deliver on nasty ‘amalgamation anomalies’ plaguing unity. These include functioning refineries, fuel exports not imports, true federalism, restricted corruption through well-funded proactive EFCC and ICPC and police in every Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, empowered judiciary with faster trials and stiffer penalties, 50-100,000Mws of power, an East-West Road, a second Niger Bridge, an improving N100:$1 naira exchange rate and reduced single digit borrowing rate, a youth centre in every ward and most importantly, a stop to corrupt party machinery and party members from thieving and taking 30-100% of budgets and contract values ‘as of right’ for being in power.

Time for some deserved honours. Huge gbossas and congrats to Head coach Stephen Keshi, fluent in English and French, GCON –Grand Commander of Nigeria, who commanded his men to African victory, or Grand Coach of Nigeria, of Africa and the Green Eagles, CFR, Commanders of Football of the Republic, for their amazing journey defying the odds, abuse and the abysmally evil Nigerian politics of football and sports in general. Keshi for Minister for Sport in future.

Yes, Keshi, GCON, should resign. And come back immediately even in a week having renegotiated his next Brazilian World Cup contract bearing in mind that the Senate President is mentioned with a figure of N400m/annum as each Nigerian Senator has over N100m‘disposable’ not salary income, is it quarterly or annually for ‘constitutional projects and LGA wives get N50,000/month for their marriage certificate? Get your money man. At least you have done something honourable that we can see! Elsewhere coaches earn more than their presidents! Let us get real: sports and particularly football, not politics rule the world!

But think of the odds against our success. Though we have no war, how many real quality footballs, N3000 each, or other sports equipment have been bought by Governors for our 70,000 schools and 1000 tertiary institutions? Too few!! How many talent scouts do tours of ‘under the flyover’ and school games? Instead of reactionary too-little-too-late N130 million Dangote donations is there a Glo OR Dangote database for sports monitoring in any sport in Nigeria? No, just multimillion naira Coca Cola or Pepsi or MTN billboard and a plastic football at every junction overlooking every school football corner. You can dream but do not play, boy! Wanted: 70,000 logoed footballs signed by the 2012 Orange Africa Cup Of Nations Champion Green Eagles and a ‘Stephen Keshi School for Coaches’ funded by government land, and the private sector sponsors. No more billboard only football sports. Let us get it right from now on, please. Immediate Induction into the New Football Hall of Fame is not enough and wrong-headed. They had football hero ancestors. Let us do things in order. Sports teams and coaching support teams should be totally indigenous to really pit countries against each other even for the World Cup.

The centenary celebration logo could have benefited from a central map of Nigeria inside the green layered circle.

The N650 Abuja Youth Support Centre is welcomed with mixed feelings. Anything done for the ‘abandoned’ youth is overdue. However N650m could have built, rented or modified and then equipped hundreds of centres of N1-10m in 65 to 650 nationwide. As part of 2013/2014 Youth empowerment and anti-terrorism strategy at LGA, state and national levels, Nigerian politicians and visionary leaders in CSR must incorporate budgetary plans for Youth Inspiration Centres. As the political unit, the ward, should have ‘One Youth Centre/ Ward’ Policy, 15,400, within walking distance of all Nigeria’s youth. In such centres youth can interact, learn from each other and others, learn and practice computer and social skills and transition to being responsible citizens. The army of youth corp members, retired Nigerians, teachers, professionals, professional bodies and government agencies can assist in projects. There should be a link through the network of Youth Inspiration Centres to each other, ministries and NGOs with the education hungry youth for two-way interaction.

DANGER: The Minister for FCT offered to name the Abuja Youth Support Centre (YSC) after the President’s wife. Bad judgement. It a wise rule of thumb and a ‘Youth Law’ never to name a public youth centre after anything politics. Things named after serving politicians are abandoned by subsequent politicians even of the same party, especially if a wife is involved. The backlash is real as following the recent African First Ladies Peace Mission Vs Past First lady’s WATEF, Women and Youth Empowerment Foundation will see. That youth law is merely to guarantee continuity from one government to another without stigmatisation, discrimination, starvation of funds and failure to attract visits from rival party government officials. In addition deliberate destruction of the communal Youth Support Centre property during subsequent political upheaval by disaffected party members and faithful of other parties is possible. So a political name is counter-productive and renders the project stillborn. In short, how many will visit the centre if it is named after an ‘opposition’ politician or his wife. All these can easily be avoided with neutral names, like the site, historical event or individuals of blessed memory. Political neutrality is a watchword for youth centre activities. Youth issues must be beyond politics.

But when did Nigeria’s population become 170m? Just because of politics? Politics and politicians conjuring figures do not increase populations –families do! Soon Nigeria will be ‘claiming’ ‘200m’, maybe at the Centenary Amalgamation? More fiction-like the power supply.

February 13, 2013