The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tony Marinho

  • The uniform as a curse

    The uniform as a curse

    There is a video of a ‘five-man team of uniformed officials vs a white minivan’. Three of the uniformed men were in white tunic on black trousers with black lapels and black face cap and two of the uniformed men were in grey T-shirt with right one arm in red and grey face cap. Vehicle Inspection Officers, VIOs, they were. They strategically encircled the van which they had directed ‘to park’. One grey uniform was strategically stationed in front of the van stopping it ‘in the name of the law or bye-law’; one in white uniform was strategically stationed at the driver’s window talking to the driver. Another, also in white uniform was strategically stationed at the passenger side all in typical harassment/distraction/disorientation/ submission strategy. And yet another in white uniform was strategically stationed at the vehicle driver’s side rear blocking his mirror view. Surrounded, he must have committed the most heinous of traffic offenses.

    Had he run over a groundnut, driving on three tyres, exhaust on fire or overloaded? Perhaps his birth certificate expired and could no longer be linked to his NIN so he was no longer human but a spirit? To choose from this tsunami of offences would be wrong. He was none-of-the-above, but just another innocent Fellow Nigerian, doing legitimate business, completely well documented and probably recently VIO-certified. The uniforms were not yet accusing him of any traffic transgressions because none had as of then been committed. He was being held ‘in advance’ for the ‘uniform newly created crime’ to ‘catch up’ with him! They were a devious gang getting ready to charge him with a crime they were creating for him. 

    You would never guess how evil people can be at work even though they have proud parents, wives and children boasting ‘My Son/husband/father is in white or grey uniform. To discover what crime they were devilishly cooking we observe the evil work of the fifth government official, actually paid by taxpayers’ money who went to office and agreed to do what? So, the fifth person in government uniform turned robbery gang? The fifth person in grey uniform is actually bending down and using government time and probably government screwdriver struggling to remove the legitimate vehicle number plate. Yes! On successful removal, the one in white uniform at the vehicle’s rear who had been supervising him, signalled, by placing his right hand on top of his cap, to the other talking to the driver ‘Mission Accomplished’. The one in rear then went behind the vehicle and took hold of the number plate to allow the second grey uniform to reapply the screws. The one in white uniform gave the one in grey uniform back the number plate and then disappeared in the direction pointed out by the one in white uniform. Then all remaining uniforms descended on the innocent-now-guilty driver, accused of a crime he did not commit and has no knowledge of. They pounced on him, verbally, mentally abusing his fundamental rights as they were the accusers and the criminals.

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    The suitable government agencies should check their records for a white van victimised and facing charges on the charge sheet of ‘NOT POSSESSING A REAR NUMBER PLATE’. THE CRIMINAL OPERATION WAS SO WELL RUN THAT THERE MUST BE MANY MORE VICTIMS’. So, a search must be carried out especially in the area run by this criminal gang in white uniform to identify and exonerate all other victims. The gang must have already boasted at departmental meetings about their ‘successful arrest’ and their departmental heads must fish them out and have them paraded so other victims can come forward.  A proper internal investigation will get the syndicate but we need their history of crime-driven arrests. We want restitution from the authorities and better internal policing of uniformed officials especially those coming up with strange new crimes like ‘MISSING REAR NUMBER PLATE’. Thank God for this video and the recorder. Make sure he is not targeted.

    Nigeria is awash with officials disgracing their uniforms covering terrorism. We saw police putting drugs and bullets in cars for arrest at the next checkpoint. I used to carry police out of sympathy. We read of a ‘fake LASTMA’ fellow ‘mis-making’ 750k monthly. The nearly invisible faded yellow line at Ojota incoming Maryland was routinely used to extort from travellers on Saturdays. Some time ago, at Ikire Dam, off-duty LGA officials harassed motorists savagely.  In Ibadan, LGA officials blocked my car on a federal road.  And we want tourists? A FRSC official at Ogere actually kicked my licence plate accusing it of being fake and unregistered. This was not the FRSC we hoped for when the FRSC logo was being designed and drawn and the final draft of the 2nd Highway Code was being synthesised with social service friends on my dining room table in Ibadan for FRSC’s Professor Soyinka and Olu Agunloye from three Highway codes and the FRSC Owl was being designed gratis by Fellow Nigerians. Then being nationalistic, we were pride-filled and happy with a red-inked Soyinka ‘ok’ or a tick.

    Uniformed men need to be constantly supervised, secretly, by superiors. Unsupervised Uniforms too often create evidence and give false witness leading to fines, loss of livelihood, disgrace within the family and society, imprisonment and even death. We see what solders sometimes do. And some FRSC will soon be carrying arms? UNSUPERVISED, THE UNIFORM IS ALREADY A CRIMINALLY MURDEROUS CURSE.

  • EducareTrust@30: Youth centre per ward please

    EducareTrust@30: Youth centre per ward please

    Educare Trust has worked in the largely underfunded field of youth education and health since October 20, 1994 i.e. 30 years on October 20 with the help of financial support from many corporate and individual donors of their time, talent and treasure. Thank you all. How and why did Educare Trust start? Has the journey been worth it? Where did we pass and where did we fail? What did we learn?

    Some Fellow Nigerians come together to set up Educare Trust (ET) at the inception of the despicable Abacha regime when ‘Youth Education and Health’ were in need under an increasingly oppressive and corrupt regime.

    During that 30-year period of time ET has impacted in millions of youth in and out of school and also impacted the general public in health, democracy, morals in general as well as addressing certain social vices like drugs and corruption and policy matters. At 30 years of experience, we at Educare Trust have the right and knowledge to have an opinion.

    Educare Trust notes a need for a redirection of Corporate Social Responsibility structure and application. We must interrogate what quality and quantity of CSR is done, under-done or left undone. Nigeria must demand more CSR and change from being seen as the ‘generous gift’ from Corporate Nigeria and preserve of corporate headquarters to being much more widely appreciated and felt by Nigerians.  Devolution of CSR from headquarters activities to distributors, company branches in towns and villages. Has any corporate used its ‘Army of Employees’ as a ‘Corporate Staff CSR Army’ to ‘DOMESTICATE CSR’ to the grassroots by taking CSR material back to their neighbourhoods and villages? Corporate Nigeria should, therefore, educate and recruit the workforce to the CSR battle. Imagine 1000 books or balls or scholarship offers being taken from the office by 1000 employees to the needy youth in their neighbourhoods.

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    In a nation with10+m out of school youth, Corporate Nigeria must adhere to the recommendation of 1% of pre-tax profits allocated to CSR and choose between the valueless N20m bill advert billboard with a football on it or helping to service N10m worthwhile purchase of footballs, books or music equipment for many of the 10million out-of-school children. Lagos outdoor adverts alone would take 10million out of school children back in school. We need a 10%s CSR surcharge on adverts. Educare Trust recommends that every effort from stock market and industry CSR prizes, monitoring and recognition be employed to encourage or force companies to improve the impact of their CSR footprint nationwide. Corporate CSR Record should be a compulsory part of every corporate application portfolio for a contract. 

    Educare Trust asked: ‘Where do the youth of Nigeria congregate safely in their community?’ We created an Educare Trust Youth Exhibition Centre (ETEC) in 1998 for that purpose. Children, in and out of school, would come by after school, put their sale items like oranges, bananas, groundnuts and cautiously come into the ETEC where they would be exposed to the first computers at the time by typing their name, a microphone to sing or read a poem or give a talk, a stage to perform a play, games like scrabble and chess, interactions with others and, of course, conflict management library books and educational and informational posters on every subject imaginable for A to Z including career choices. As they leave, we would buy their wares and share them among the students so they would not be punished at home. 

    How did we monitor the effectiveness of our Educare Trust programme? Simple. The smile on the faces of the children leaving the centre and the fact that they return again and again, eventually learning a skill, a hobby or discovering a talent they never knew they had. Eventually they would be showcasing that talent before an audience of appreciative peers, coaches and professional experts around and beyond Ibadan to inspire in Meet-The Expert sessions. We had many inspiring guests that included High Commissioners and Ambassadors including HC Sir and Lady Graham Burton who became Life Patrons. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a guest. We encouraged the explosive growth of the after-school and out-of-school enquiring minds and cerebral needs of over one million visitors. Educare Trust concluded that the Nigerian society urgently requires Youth Centres to guide and empower the youth.      

    Having established need for Youth Centres, Educare Trust asked ‘How many youth centres are required in Nigeria?’ The ward is the political unit of the country. A youth centre should be within easy distance. It was not nuclear physics for Educare Trust to conclude that Nigerian Youth require an educational ‘ONE YOUTH CENTRE PER WARD’. Just like the health related ‘ONE PRIMARY HEALTH CENTRE PER WARD’. Some want to start at one per LGA but that is merely a beginning but not the Gold Standard.

    From inception, Educare Trust proposed the CAP – COMMON ACTIVITY PERIOD, in secondary schools, to improve co-curricular activities. This was accepted by Oyo State. The current CAP should be energised to be more competitive between schools with zonal and state prizes to encourage competitive creativity, co-curricular activities, and more constructive use of the CAP.

    Secondary School Old Students Associations which should be applauded and rewarded with prizes for best OSA by Zone and STATE. Educare Trust asks: ‘Why does government not encourage/insist that PRIMARY SCHOOL OLD STUDENTS ASSOCIATIONS be started to bring similar success at no cost to government?’

  • Tinubu education stimulus, not varsity

    Tinubu education stimulus, not varsity

    How many millions of Fellow Nigerian Citizens bombarded their representatives with petitions and tsunamis of social media messages demanding they reach a decision that among the most urgent needs of the citizenry in the immediate three-year future of this regime are a Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages-BATFUNL OR BATFUONL and weaponisation of the FRSC?

    Yes, a similar event occurred for Muhammadu Buhari Federal University of Transport, Daura. But two wrongs may make a harmful tradition, just like female genital mutilation, but they do not make a right. Even that university is referred to as FUTD not MBFUTD. Will BATFUNL or BATFUONL become FUNL?  The premature naming with Buhari’s name was a political aberration and mistake and a red flag cautionary tale ‘DO NOT REPEAT’ to the current NASS and not a shameful example of ‘precedence’ to be exploited, repeated, and boasted about.

    Historically, a university is conceived, built and born and then named generically-science, marine- or geographically -Ibadan, Jos- at birth. Later as it grows to adulthood, sometimes it attracts a ‘popular’ demand for a new name after a personality, far too often a milito-politician, too often of questionable reputation. It annoys Nigerians that so many buildings, roads and institutions have been named after those failing the ethical yardstick.

    To buttress the point that naming buildings usually occurs post-delivery, it has taken 38 years for Nigeria to decide that a relevant federal structure, the National Theatre Iganmu, Lagos Stadium, already built since 1977, be named after Nigeria’s Nobel Prize winner Professor Wole Soyinka, who won the prize in 1986, 38years ago! 

    There was a time we fought to ban chieftaincy titles being awarded to officials before they left office. How come we are suddenly having federal building projects, named before the construction and delivery and before the politicians have adequately performed? We are used to their prolonged multi-year gestation period and repeatedly postponed delivery, copying NNPC PLC and our repeatedly failing Turn Around Maintenance targets.

    Frankly, Nigerians are tired and insulted when their people’s government property are being misappropriated and misnamed by the transient political class seeking perpetuity for mundane performances. When President Tinubu has run his political presidential course and his exam results are in, it will be the people, not the politicians, demanding we name the fourth Lagos Bridge and the Lagos Calabar Highway in his honour. This preconception of a naming ceremony goes against the traditions in Nigeria. Political pride may make it happen but it is a tasteless political pettiness.

    President Tinubu is not deceived by such political sycophancy. There are many linguists who have fought since the 50s for education in the various mother tongues who qualify to have universities named after them, but when they are built.  Named universities also face possible future discriminatory neglect by opposition governments.

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    In Nigeria, it is ethnically wrong to name an unborn baby. Similarly, naming of buildings or things at prefunding, preconception, pre-birth stages of development in a country well known for its criminal budgetary and savage political neglect may be futile gesture if delivery never takes place. Many good people with roads named after them are disappointed at the subsequently neglected roads associated with their family name.  In Oyo State, the current PDP governor, Seyi Makinde named the University of Technology, Ibadan set up under his APC predecessor after the predecessor Governor Ajimobi. Nobody objected.

    What is the guarantee that the traditional budgetary and political neglect and manipulation, mentioned above, will not also plague the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Federal University of Nigerian Languages-BATFUNL OR BATFUONL? Or is the [mis]use of the president’s name just to get the project, profits and ‘presidential padding’ with no questions asked? 

    Nigeria has thousands of contracts deemed complete but incomplete or non-existent creating phantom projects, e.g phantom roads and bridges, but the real money was always fully paid to phantoms contractors and their phantom political partners. So, what hope for this university?   

    However, in our massively underfunded education system, is there even space for a special University for Nigerian Languages of which Google says we have approximately 525. Let us recall the education crime against Nigerian children – causing brain deficit of 40+ years of EXCRUCIATING EDUCATIONAL ECONOMIC NEGLECT from ‘political negligence’ suffered by federal universities, Unity Schools, the unforgivable neglect of special schools for the physically and mentally needy and most bizarre, the neglect of the school for the gifted in Abuja.

    Our national languages already have documentation and research in Linguistic Departments as they face enough  neglect and extinction in homes at home and abroad especially among the community founded by fleeing Nigerians since the late 60’s- the JAPA COMMUNITY. However, right now, such a university will just be neglected even more by low or no budgets for documentation, library and archival facilities.

    Language learning equipment costs money but politicians prefer their government-paid-for jeeps.  Is a University of Nigerian Languages, costing several billions, though needed, our priority? That money could have provided in-and-out-of-school learning for millions of our 10+million shamefully out-of-school children. Even most in-school children are also deprived by the system of ‘adequate learning’ as testified to by the 40-90% JSS and SSS failure rates in some schools. After failure most are abandoned instead of being offered free ‘COACHING CLASSES’.

    Existing education edifices need a TINUBU EDUCATIONAL STIMULUS, NOT A TINUBU UNIVERSITY. With the coming AI great leap forward with ChatGPT, alias ‘Chat-JIBITI’ etc, the need for a physical university will disappear. 

  • Palliative ownership; Dangerous dams; Pensions 

    Palliative ownership; Dangerous dams; Pensions 

    Nigerian politicians need to meet and agree to hand Nigeria back to Nigerians, politically and financially. Election rigging deprives citizens of their voting choice. Corrupt governance deprives the citizens of Social Development Goal (SDG) targets. Together they are the bane of citizenry and budgets. Nigerian politicians have caused enough deceit and problem in their ‘Command and Control Strategies’ over the citizenry.   A key hurtful example in the ‘Nigerian Political Power Game’ is the ‘Donation Game’ in which, while supervising the ‘misplacement’ of billions, they insultingly announce ‘I, Governor/Senator/Representative so-and-so Donate XYZ TO ABC’…’ when it should be ‘Our People Donate through me the sum of …’ Please let us ridicule, call out and ban nationwide, the illegal personalisation of publicly owned funds disbursed to the citizens and especially Constituency Project funds.

    Please and please, LGAs, states, federal government at ministerial, MDAs and Presidency and political wives should desist from the scandalous ‘take-over of public resources’ by boastfully branding palliatives with personalised photographs and names of LGA and SCDA chairmen, , senators and representatives, state governors ministers, heads of MDAs and even the vice president and president and even the SCDAs. It is not their money or material to give away. It is the citizens’ money being channelled back to the citizenry. The picture on the palliatives should be absent or a ‘Not for sale’ stamp. The name on the palliatives should be ‘Fellow Nigerians’ or ‘Citizens of Nigeria’. Constituency projects should be scrapped. Nigerians, not politicians, own palliatives. Politicians are merely the messenger and must not claim the ownership or credit.

    Of course, this will not stop corruption in Nigeria but is an essential step in politicians giving up ‘illegal and corrupt ownership of public funds’. It is not their money for them to spend. It is our money, not to be used as yet another cheap political publicity stunt. After that step, just maybe, the political class will understand its sworn responsibility and then undertake the actions required for all levels of politics to ensure that the entire budget will be expended on projects and the citizenry. Only then will corruption be seen as an aberration instead of the current perception that ‘CORRUPTION IS THE CENTREPIECE OF POLITICAL DECISION MAKING AND ACTIONS’.    

    Now another 42 dead in Gbajibi village, Niger State mostly because of no life jacket or helpful waterways authority.  Sadly, there is tossing of responsibility for purchasing life jackets between governments, the canoe owners and the passengers. Whose responsibility is the life jackets? Please conclude. Looking at the canoes, the water level is less than six centimetres below the edge. Too small for rough weather. Do the canoes need redesign?

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    Dredging and clearing of refuse is always a far too late government response to an easily predictable flood. Why not more preventive measures? It is better to pre-empt floods. However, the tragic floods in Maiduguri displacing two million and costing billions in losses and hundreds of dead Fellow Nigerians and more recently in Lagos and now Ondo highlight the need for planned and executed preventive measures. Not all floods can be prevented, not all lives can be saved, but loss of life and property can be minimised by a ‘Disaster Prevention Plan’. Sadly, politicians see ‘Disaster Prevention Plans’ as being at the same level as ‘Monitoring’ and the much maligned ‘Maintenance’. These budgetary headings are 100% conduits for corruption as the funds are labelled ‘ETS’ Easy To Inflate or Steal’, often non-traceable and easy to steal or ‘divert’ to unknown avenues. For many years the murky waters around Nigeria’s dams have concealed much corruption as their [non]maintenance has been exploited maximally politically by those in charge of the budgets of the dangerous dams of Nigeria. It is unconscionable, irresponsible, criminally liable [except in Nigeria] for senior dam  authorities to publicly attest to the integrity of dams like the Maiduguri Dam which burst a few days after killing hundreds. IN FUTURE, DAM AUTHORITIES PERSONNEL SHOULD LIVE WITH THE PEOPLE BELOW THE DAM. It has come out that the Maiduguri dam was known to be compromised especially in the last two years. Politicians are so selfish that they think corruptly and ‘self-enrichment’ about everything, even decisions to reduce life-threatening outcomes. Disasters like bridge collapses, dam bursts, road disrepair and floods are collectively catastrophic over large areas and damage far more than just the structure.               

    Zamfara governor pays retirees since 2021 N9b pension areas. We thought such headlines were history. Past governors must be prosecuted for not paying pensions. Pensions are small and poorly index-linked especially for level 7 and below. Naira value makes pension arrears settlement using earned rates an ‘anti-citizen pension scam’ as N1000 in 2021 was $3 in 2021 but today it is $0.66 and this loss of value has rubbished the value of late pension payment which has caused economic and social disaster across Nigerian society and is a major excuse for the obvious greed and corrupt self-enrichment of particularly Nigeria’s civil servants. How many pensioners are dead because governors stole their pension funds years ago? After clearing arrears, governors must pay pensions as and when due. How many Nigerian pensioners are being disgraced before their families for being broke, unable to contribute to the education and maintenance of family members while politicians steal billions? 

    Over 600 citizens killed in Burkina Faso in one motorcycle bandit attack and bandits attack Katsina mosque. Danger all around!

  • Nigeria @ 64; Governors: Serve, not steal

    Nigeria @ 64; Governors: Serve, not steal

    Happy National Day October 1, yesterday. Has politics passed its GGE, Good Governance Examination @ 64? Which of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals did we achieve? The SDG chart should be in every government office and addressed daily! On the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index Nigeria @ 64 scored 25 % and placing 145/180 countries. The ‘pride of the nation’- its currency, the naira, is drowning below the value of a sheet of toilet paper. Petrol is N50K-100K/tank, while N70k is monthly minimum wage. Who is holding Nigeria back when we have so much to spend or steal?

    Historical Fact check:  South Africa’s apartheid, anti-black, delivered 45,000Mw of electricity in the 70s. Nigeria @ 64 with years of politics promise struggles with 5,300Mw and the cost and losses to education and work productivity of constant blackouts and millions of generators. Shame! Obviously a corrupt milito/politics since the 60s is worse than apartheid as the power deficit remains uncorrected despite a corrupted multi-billion naira power roadmap including the Mambilla debacle. Will the Siemens Plan bring succour or be forced to feed political greed, further depleting the electricity grid? The Oct 1, 2025 Nigeria @ 65 exams will tell.

    What is the dark secret of our low election turnout vs high voter cards numbers? Look at the Edo election turn-out. Approx. 562k out of 2.2m voters registered i.e. 25%. Where were the remaining 1.6million voters? Do they actually exist? How many voting cards are fraudulent? How many of the 562K votes were just criminally thumb-printed? Perhaps actual voter numbers were lower by 1-20%. A frightening thought.  

    From Nigeria @ 64 our governors and LGAs must step up to ‘Save our Souls’. Nigerians ask: “What is the economic or criminal problem with our governors? Are they broke on arrival and swear to be multi-billionaires on departure? Are they financially exhausted from the election and must spend 4-8 years recouping the expended fund to the neglect of the oath to the state children? Why do many governors leave office and proceed on invitation directly to the EFCC office which ‘suddenly discovers’ the disappearance of huge sums accompanied by huge jubilation with chants meaning ‘Hurray! The thief is gone, gone, gone’?

    A governor is primus inter pares, the first citizen out of 2-15million citizens of the state with responsibility and hopefully respect for each and every state citizen and passing traveller.  During 4-8 years, the governor swears to take responsibility for the education and health policies and provisions of the children and youth he, the governor, chose to become leader of. Disgracefully we see many governors accused, if not arrested, prosecuted and convicted by EFCC and the citizenry of stealing multiple billions of the state’s funds. Governors are known to fight hard to secure the ‘Safety of the Senate SEAT’ after office, while accusing EFCC of corruption, party vendetta, incompetence and even with power to interview and intimidate the candidates for EFCC and the Chief Judge. Yes, most governors usually manage to escape criminal charges often on irresponsible court summersaults like legally illegal jurisdiction and absolutely unbelievable irresponsible technicalities but the deplorable condition of most states in terms of Sustainable Development Goals assessment backs up the question ‘where did all the money go?’ Yet these people are from their intra-state tribal grouping, and not from federal or another state where ethnicity could be blamed but not excused for mega-criminal activities like theft of billions. 

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    Yes, Mr Governor, these state citizens especially the beautiful children are your own flesh and blood who as governor you sent yourself to undertake to provide maximum social services to as ‘Papa OF ALL THE STATE CITIZENS’. Is it not enough for you to have 4-8 year unknown pay and perks and ridiculous pension and 4-8years of secret security vote. Do not forget to add the avalanche of personal gifts and presents of office given by all and sundry for ‘congrats for becoming governor’ and governor’s family events like for 4-8 annual rounds of birthday presents, 4-8 rounds of wedding anniversary [x number of wives] presents, 4-8 rounds of children’s birthdays, children’s weddings while governor, the odd family parental mega-funeral [for the illustrious papa or mama governor or his wife/wives] replete with presents and fat envelopes and cash boxes from towns, LGAs and every Ministry, Agency and Department very appropriately abbreviated, not by me, to MAD. Then let us add every contractor etcetera. No need to steal!

     States have 50-100% Federal Allocations increase added to the increased Internally Generated Revenue. Even though the naira has been rubbished, governors do not impress the citizenry in need. Excellent public schools should be among minimum standards expected from Nigeria’s ‘Excellency’ governors. A good education system brought praise of Chief Awolowo. His jurisdiction as Western Region Premier is now under 5-7 governors. Yes, the numbers of children has exploded but so have the resources. After all EFCC accuses many governors of stealing N27-80b. 

    Citizens, governors and wives please imagine what 27 or 80 separate allocations of N1billion each would have done to standard projects like sports equipment, scholarships, libraries, classroom books, computers, educational posters, hospital and clinic equipment, pothole filling, water and sanitation, and security provision in the state schools and communities where the governors offered to serve, not steal.

    Governors @ 2024: There is more glory serving than stealing. No governor will ever have enough to spend. Honest governors steal their people’s hearts. A stealing governor steals his people’s future.

  • Oct 1: $50billion birthday present

    Oct 1: $50billion birthday present

    Oct 1: time to give back a $50billion birthday@64 present. We used to say that Nigeria had only one disaster,  a greed-driven politics and its misleading selfish political class- 100% subsidised by the citizenry! We reached this conclusion because Nigeria has for years been saved from the other disasters plaguing the world. We thanked God that Nigeria did not experience wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, floods, famines and murderous conflict- all of which would have compounded our problems and crippled us further as a nation by adding millions to the list of suffering with massive material and economic losses. So, we had no excuse for the poor delivery of services as the money for health, education, transport, justice and security was available, but sadly was always misused or abused or overpaid for with massive padding of contracts or just boldly stolen with impunity under the ‘immunity clause’.

    Today however the confluence of political and climate change catastrophes, like the ongoing Maiduguri floods with more than two million displaced, unites in an explosion of poverty. 

    Corruption and consequent poor political service and Social Development Goals (SDG) delivery have been compounded by a poor political and inadequate military response to terrorist and bandit attacks with thousands dead, 5+ million Internally Displaced Persons IDPs, and millions made broken in spirit and financially. These victims, through family and business losses are now dependent on anyone especially passers-by at traffic lights, road junctions and social functions nationwide where the avalanche of desperate poor is threatening national security at every victim/passer-by contact point. This has made transport and travel nightmare events. The traveller feels very uncomfortable and in danger of physical attack if a financial token is not immediately paid.

    Remember that most travellers are not particularly well-off because most people are also having financial troubles and there is a conflict between the desire to help and the reduced financial ability to help the needy poor who multiply as soon as any cash appears for one victim.

    The poor value of the naira, the key component of our nationwide economic suffering and main cause of the current backbreaking fuel and electricity price crisis, must be laid at the feet of the serial criminals in and out of political office backed by an irresponsible banking structure. This banking structure revels in annual mega profits from round tripping and super-high bank charges for little actual banking services delivered and a high level of ‘criminal banker’s  silence’ over even hugely suspicious high volume bank account movements. These excesses have rubbished the economy over more than a generation.

    It is hoped that the EFCC is truthful and not just idle talk or deceptively boastful, when it says it is investigating the banks and bank account holders as a new key to unlock new doors to financial crime detection and deterrence. But the EFCC has been around for many years.

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    Why did past EFCC officials neglect its sworn duty to prevent economic crime by preventive surveillance like reports of strange and large deposits? Even if it did not want to or was prevented from going after political figures, there are thousands of non-political financial criminals who could have been caught or cautioned long before Nigeria fell into this sorry economic state and terrible exchange rate. EFCC needs to sit down with economists and discover and redraw its strategy, responsibility, opportunity and remember it has a huge role in raising the foreign reserves.

    Raising funds for a foreign reserves of $50b, $60, $70, $80, $90, $100b, could have and should have been done long ago by nation building politicians. Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth must be distinguished from Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth has been given away as oil blocks to individuals. This crime was committed by our civilian and military leadership and has helped impoverish the country while making the recipient owners into dollar billionaires, by being dashed oil blocks or bidding for them. This personalisation of public wealth, oil blocks, is something alien to most oil producing countries worldwide. The oil block owners form just one single group of dollar billionaire beneficiaries of Nigeria’s Sovereign Wealth. There are other groups of dollar billionaires including bankers, and some business moguls. They often benefitted from loopholes, tax breaks and even illegalities often at the expense of the poor citizen.

    Sadly, today we witness the despair, desperation and demands of countless adult and child beggars, living and facing the dangers, day and night, in the terrifying corners and crevices of the roadside. Close your eyes and imagine their lives at night! We should remember we are witnessing a possible impending massive poverty driven breakdown of law and order at the traffic lights and road junctions countrywide. We must do something urgently to alleviate this hunger for food and justly paid work.

    The various groups of Nigerian dollar billionaires, many at the expense of the other citizens, should give an October 1 present to Nigeria and collectively meet and decide to lend or donate or give back or return $20-50billion back to the country through the CBN. Sounds stupid? Really? Predicting the degree of poverty today sounded stupid when we warned that 100% corruption would kill the country 100%. Just as you look out of your car window at poverty; poverty is looking in through the same window. Be warned! Oct 1 IS TIME TO GIVE BACK and give or loan Nigeria@64 CBN a $50b Birthday present.    

  • Before Nigeria @64 October 1 speech

    Before Nigeria @64 October 1 speech

    Do politicians in new governments have a ‘right to recoup’ funds reportedly expended on the election – ‘The Election Deficit’? Most governors immediately announce a mega-project believed to have ‘The Election Deficit’ built in.

    There is often also an exit plan to fund the next election by similar fictional project funding to create a so-called ‘Election War Chest’. In short, it is not politicians, but the people who pay for elections. Most of the politicians must admit the source of wealth is illegal through the government purse, a mega-subsidising of politicians themselves.

    In contrast to this double theft, elections of the US, UK etc. are funded by non-refundable voluntary donations from citizens, in and outside the party and the private sector. No federal or state fund theft! We refused to learn correct democracy methods and take wrong turns including stealing real public funds for sham democratic elections.

    The world now knows that some countries are playing with ‘disgraceful democracy dynamite’ set to explode the myth of superpower democratic principles. We have political and governance problems created by the undemocratic among us who seek to manipulate everything or smash the world around. This serial ‘greed above need’ caused our national disgraceful economic failure to meet the development plans, Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) and now Social Development Goals (SDGs) and the power supply needs since 1960.

    Another October is around the corner and no doubt new promises, new dreams and new directions will be pointed out to feed the spirit if not the bodies of the needy 80% living in poverty with political rhetoric to fill their empty stomachs. However, we are brought to October 1, in wheelchairs, on stretchers, hobbling on crutches and walking sticks, drop-ups from schools and health system failures, being led and cared for by carers who are increasingly turning to steal from and murder their employers.

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    Already, farm workers have a very low reputation for honesty.  The police have struggled with a similarly tarnished reputation. Even rich politicians steal, but has anyone addressed the wages of these groups of workers, or are they kept low because the teaching is that they would steal even if much better paid?

    Those preparing to listen to the rhetoric on October 1 are mostly reeling from unmitigated fall in their quality of life and the truncated pleasures of life due to a miserable financial situation. Before the speeches, it may be wise for speech writers, speech givers and advisers to mingle with the poverty struck masses, visit representatives of the millions out of school, the occupants of the IDP camps and growing army of desperate hands knocking persistently on car windows for something to eat-or else! They witness, participate in, or are victims of the unbelievable pain and suffering across the land from the multiple deep cuts of an arrogant and growing menace of terrorism, fruition of secret plots displacing entire generational and ancestral populations to the grave or the IDP camps for years in order to seize possession for mining as well as political control, unpaid salaries and pensions, maiming or murdering many millions, underpaid for work done.

    Almost no one earns a living wage outside the political class and upper echelons of the private sector. As we approach October 1, what type of speeches, and what manner of content, do we expect from our president and governors come October 1, Nigeria@64. Certainly 64 years is long enough to get Nigeria the same electricity power as South Africa. Look at the Asians, penniless in the 60s at their independence and now so good that they are called Asian Tigers. Any African Tigers? Certainly, we have many politicians, bankers, corporate leaders who are billionaires at the expense of the people but their contribution to the economy is little beyond a few underfunded or misguided Corporate Social Responsibility projects with a few exceptions.

    October 1 speeches need to deliver uplifting real solutions to our politically precipitated problems which have mutated into severe economic hardship nationwide. Now add terrorism and floods! Even the rich are suffering as masses of needy staff, family, friends and strangers explode in number and desperation. The call to help the masses is ringing from every corner and will not be silenced.

    Disgracefully, speech or no speech, ten million Fellow Nigerian children will not go to school-an ignored ‘National Child Social and Educational Emergency’ and unimaginable collective political insult on Nigerians and a failure. Tens of millions of other children this week are resuming in schools that their parents can no longer afford to continue to send them to. And this does not include the astronomical increase in fuel cost of transporting school children. Everyone is afraid of everybody especially domestic staff, drivers and even security staff and passers-by. Nigeria is descending into a fear state. We all remember giving rides to strangers as a social responsibility for years. Like you, I have done it tens of times. It was what defines our humanness, our morals – to help the accidented, the injured, the broken down and the hitch-hiking policemen on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway travelling merely to collect their criminally or negligently withheld salary for months after a transfer. Now you are warned to do ‘none of the above’.

    Who will help the needy of Nigeria now? Last week a person reminded me that I had given him a lift 45 years previously. No more? Or just less humanity?    

  • Nigeria: Stop subsidising politicians

    Nigeria: Stop subsidising politicians

    We wish Ajuri Ngalale a good outcome on his family emergency. We urge an urgent full-scale assault on terrorists everywhere. 

    Understanding subsidy necessity: Economists, if not politicians, know that economic power depends on worldwide honest subsidies which are the weapon of the ‘good politics war’ to keep the economy going especially with unliveable minimal wages. The rich need no subsidy. They pay for their needs, and greed. Politicians cannot pay but force themselves into this rich class by abusing the system to get riches often as self-awarded perks of office –‘free’ housing, security, generator power, vehicles, free staff and huge corruptly calculated Salaries, Allowances, Perks and Pensions.

    Think carefully. All these seized political benefits are actually dishonest subsidies taken forcefully from the citizens’ budget. Please cut every political income by 75%.   Politicians, with too few exceptions – immediately ostracised for breaching the ‘Political Greed Code’- are often poor in mind, morals and material wealth and are not born rich. In office these politicians abuse their control of administrative buttons to disproportionately allocate unto themselves budgetary billions, constituency and contract projects, specifically to make their own personal income, connections and opportunities enrich themselves more than the ‘legitimately’ rich. 

    On election, most politicians spring out of poverty like out of a pool of blood-thirsty piranha. They run up the economic ladder, like lizards with fires in their tails, ascend palm trees, leaving the miserable poor people behind. They abandon their political responsibility to uplift the people. The politicians refuse to travel, shop, use medical or educational services; rely on grid-electrify or live within budget or reduce the people’s poverty burden. They refuse to adequately raise workers’ salaries to counter the negative effects of currency collapse or reduce the cost of living by providing affordable essential services.

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    Yet, delivering such services by very definition requires the government to identify, absorb or input the cost differential-called a subsidy. That is what government is for – to make decisions favourable for country and citizenry survival and not to satisfy political greed and corruption demands. 

    The massive figure called corruption built solely by the dishonestly subsidised political class, though it blames the citizens, grabs all the funds from essential services the citizen needs. Good governance demands that government provided running water, electric power, motorable roads, health, security, education and entrepreneurial opportunities-with honest subsidies.    

    Every nation needs a citizen survival lifeline from government, even the richest. Interestingly, the richest countries have such lifelines in quantity providing honestly subsidised health care, power, water and other services. We know agricultural, health, road, educational and energy subsidies throughout the developed world and all with under 10% corruption.

    But to do this successfully, governments must keep corruption at bay, usually under 10% in each project.  Where massive political corruption scams take social, salary, transport networks, electricity, pension services schemes hostage with minimal, unworkable or unearnable wages, then social disaster explodes.

    Social disaster turns back the ‘Human Behaviour Clock’ precipitating society collapse! The 12 o’clock good citizens become 2 o’clock bad citizens, the 2 o’clock bad citizens become 4 o’clock criminal citizens, the 4 o’clock criminal citizens become 5 o’clock harmful citizens and 5 o’clock harmful citizens become 6 o’clock murderous citizens and the 6 o’clock murderous citizens become 7 o’clock terrorists and kidnappers.

    Since the 80s, diplomats and IMF and World Bank officials have condemned our dishonest fuel subsidy as abused by massive corruption, transportation across our deliberately porous borders, oil theft, and with only a trickle of benefit reaching the citizenry. Agreed, but the citizens were also getting their God-given gift -cheap fuel. This guaranteed cheap fuel reduced transport, food, housing, healthcare and access to services and even pocket money and home-school-home costs. No subsidy, no cheap fuel, just suffering. Period!

    The citizens cannot provide military, customs manpower to police borders, monitor often politician owned border petrol stations, prevent petrol tank columns crossing known smuggler border points, stop round-tripping fuel tanker ships with zero fuel off-loaded, mega-oil theft, and other para-oil industry corrupt practices like killing Nigeria’s refineries. These are government jobs but corrupt government people benefit. These are Nigeria’s permanent, deliberately orchestrated, security failures. Period!

    But why should the citizen pay for government corruption? The citizens should not pay with ‘removal of subsidy’ considering the already poor-quality service delivery with poor family life, hunger, thirst, starvation and inability to afford medical and education bills, all victim to a fall in income and pension value and job losses.

    Cheap fuel was that God-given lifeline, forever corruptly squandered by our politicians, which helped keep most other costs just endurable and life just bearable. Without the safety net of government regulated energy, all the other safety nets-salary, pensions, services- are exposed as inadequate and may collapse. It has been clearly demonstrated, against foreign predictions of no effect, now that cheap fuel helps keep food and transport within reach. Hospitals, schools need cheap fuel to work. Every private sector shop, home (most Nigerians live in private housing -except politicians), factory and building needs cheap fuel to offer services. Every child, worker and socialite needs honestly subsidised fuel to achieve for daily success.

    Dishonestly subsidised politicians subsidise their children every day until they can earn for themselves. But most parents cannot provide and will require honest subsidies until incomes, the naira, foreign reserves and Sovereign Wealth Fund recover enough to require the honest subsidy cancellation. We require honest petrol subsidy with maximum anti-corruption security. 

  • 32 doctors kidnapped: NARD strike

    32 doctors kidnapped: NARD strike

    The citizens are struggling with the consequences of a National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) strike aimed at drawing positive conclusion to the seven-month detention of Dr Ganiyat Popoola. Dr. Popoola was not released and nor was her nephew even after her husband and child were released when N120m ransom was paid. The ransom demand is as usual outrageous as it amounts to 40 years’ salary @approx N3m annually. However, the family actually found this unrealistic sum money but still did not get their members back.

    Nigerians should note that kidnappers began demanding N100m for ransom just after politicians fixed the price for Presidential Nomination Form at N100m. No one told kidnappers that we are not all presidential candidates. Political insensitivity and greed became the yardstick of the greed of murderous criminality. Note that many victims of kidnappers are killed even after paying ransom suggesting callousness, perhaps drug-elated.

    The other day when the police and security forces successfully rescued the 20 medical students kidnapped around the Oturkpo access, the police boss did refer to the tremendous pressure from the Presidency and NSA as well as maximum cooperation from all services and communities which led to a shootout killing of the kidnap kingpin and rescuing of all 20 medical students and hopefully and neutralizing other kidnappers. This rescue is highly commendable as are all past reports of tracking, identifying and engaging and neutralizing kidnappers and releasing hostages, sometimes injured, sometimes unharmed.

    Most Nigerians are sad because they are under the firm belief that if such ‘immediate intense activity’ had been applied to each and every kidnapping across the country during the last 20 years, kidnapping as a profession or epidemic would not have become so disgustingly fashionable to many criminals. To name one example, the dastardly activities of Evans, the jailed kidnapper is still fresh.

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    No kidnap victim will fully recover from the unimaginable trauma of imminent death every second during captivity with constant movement and emotional upheaval. No group of friends and family, no matter how rich will ever forget the trauma of raising such huge sums of money as are now ‘routinely’ demanded nowadays. Many kidnap victims return to a life of unimagined poverty having had their family, nuclear and extended, as well as friends and even business connections stripped of massive amounts of money and often even having lost the roof over the family head to emergency sale to raise the ransom money. Also, they live in severe mental torture including fear of anyone coming near them or being frightened at every sound and severe mental trauma for the rest of their lives. 

    So, Nigeria’s security challenges in dealing directly and decisively and publicly with each case of kidnapping from the inception of the current epidemic kidnapping is why we have this epidemic of kidnapping and consequent unrest among the potential victims; be they Fellow Nigerians or foreigners. Each one is important. 

    Most countries have a Kidnap Protocol which is implemented triggered by such events. We know that the first 24 hours is more important than the first 48 than the first 72 hours as ‘Hot Pursuit’ with quick intelligence gathering, forming concentric and widening search rings around the ground zero of the crime scene and using dogs and now drones for following scent and the heat trail of escaping kidnappers. Are we equipped and empowered for this? Nigeria has lost many gallant security personnel on rescue missions. 

    It is this frustration that has led many organisations like the NMA and NARD and other citizens groups to cry out to government for faster, firmer, more formulated action against kidnappers and to locate the funds they demand.              

    The president of the ARD at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Dr Innocent Abah, has released an approximately 32-name list of recently kidnapped medical practitioners most of them still in captivity. The strike has made it widespread knowledge but it is hurting millions. The government is hopefully acting.

    The named doctors abducted in 2021 are Dr Akindele Kayode (January 4), Dr Oladunni Odetola (April 4), Dr Solomon Ndiamaka (July 19), Dr Edmund Akpaikpe (November 19), Dr Zubair Erubu (December 9), and Dr Saidu Bala (December 10).

    Those taken in 2022 include Dr Samuel Audu (January 9), Dr Felix Ekpo (February 22), Dr Bulama (March 15), Dr Chinelo Megafu (March 28), and Dr Steven Baashaw (December 10).

    The 2023 list includes Prof. Ekanem Phillip (July 13), Dr Orockarrah Orock (November 4), and Dr Ganiyat Popoola (December 27).

    For 2024, some of the abducted doctors are Dr John Robin Esu (April 30) and much more recently, Dr Gimba’s family (June 27), Dr Steven Ezeh (August 15), and Dr Olufunke Fadahunsi (August 23).

    However, five have been released– November 22, 2022), Dr Obadiah Etito (May 13, 2023), Dr Alex Igyemwase, Dr Asema Msuega (July 23, 2023), Dr Luis Onyeukwu (August 15, 2024) and, Dr Nwoga Innocent. Prof Ekanem was also kidnapped in Calabar.

    Government has heard the NARD and other distress calls and just announced a potential security architecture shakeup to confront banditry, hopefully nationwide beyond the North. But it would have been security-wise to act before the announcement. We need massive security forces to successfully enclose, encircle, entrap and eliminate the bandit and kidnap threat. We must neutralise and not just disburse the bandits and kidnappers in 2024 to other states. We pray for release of all kidnap victims.

  • Security; first salary, first pension payment

    Security; first salary, first pension payment

    Nigeria must stop politics and immediately execute a cross-party united ‘military dispatch’ war on banditry, kidnapping.

    The resignation of the National Intelligence Agency Director General, (NIA D-G) Ahmed Abubakar after serving since 2018 and being reappointed by Tinubu speaks volumes into the silence around security successes and failures. Everyone has a right to resign for personal reasons. And his tenure must be assessed. Unfortunately, the security situation has been worsened by poverty spread by joblessness, poor currency value, confidence-destroying ‘high cost-low value’ actions of current state and federal governments, a dangerous countryside where kings and kinfolk, leaders and led end up dead.

    Abubakar knows more about Nigeria than all of us readers put together. That is the burden of security leaders – to know and not to speak. Clearly security challenges are shaking the country mentally. We must assume that Abubakar’s tenure prevented threats and averted crises, so we must thank him even though what he has done must remain secret. Thank you.

    The incoming NIA D-G has a huge file of security problems to overcome and will need state cooperation. The last of eight NYSC participants kidnapped last year has been released. Obviously, they must receive their certificates, as their right! Congratulations to all security and NYSC officials concerned. However, Nigeria still faces threats which test our security agents to preempt, prevent, pursue, arrest the perpetrators and prevent recurrence.

    We are told that pensions do not start being paid to pensioners for more than one year after leaving office. When they ask what new pensioners should live on before the pension kicks in in one or two years, idiotic pension staff reply ‘your savings’.

    Mr President, surely you can get an Executive Order to force Pension Fund to immediately pay a sum equivalent to the projected pension to the new pensioned individuals from the first month of retirement. It is disgraceful that pensioners are treated like lost property. Just last month we learnt the unthinkable crime of ‘non-payment of salaries’ to 1,800 Federal Government College new teachers for more than 18 months? An unimaginable crime against humanity perpetrated by some ministry infighting or total administrative culpable catastrophic incompetence for which many heads must go to jail as a human rights abuse leading to depression, disease and death.  Why were these teachers, members of Nigerian working society all not paid their dues from ‘month end one’? What quality control standards exist in the Federal Civil Service and the MDAs of Nigeria? Who knew and did nothing? Were the teachers expected to bribe to get on the payroll?

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    I am sure everyone in the Presidency 2023-2027 got paid from ‘month end one’. So, it should be for every federal, state, MDA and private sector employee. There must be a ‘month one’ way to pay the new employee instead of the current 3-18 months. The paperwork should not take a month; ditto for retirement and pension payments, subjects of corruption for too long. It is time Nigerian government officials step into line and we must imprison negligent, corrupt and fraudulent officials.        

    There is some security ‘good news’. Hurray, all 20 medical students and doctor kidnapped recently have been released. How soon will kidnapping become a thing of an ugly past?   Already, a doctor in Ilorin has been kidnapped. It seems we have so quickly forgotten the mass execution of over 60 Fellow Nigerians, names known only to their bereaved families, murdered simply for being on their farms doing their ancestral agricultural chores recently. We need no reminding of the murder of a District Head of Sabon Birni, Isa Bawa, along with the psychotic demand of N60m+five motorcycles as ransom to release his body for burial.

    Many kidnap victims have been murdered even after full ransom was paid. Just last week a state government, Niger was appealing to the military to again deploy troops to re-secure Shiroro forest, a permanent thorn in the flesh of Nigerian security, after some spectacular successes in May. It is reported that the military strategically withdrew some months ago. Is it at all possible that the military does not know of the need to do this or are they willing but unable, due to under-equipping, to respond spontaneously and preemptively? All this is when the federal government has received a presidential jet and presidential limousine and has recently expended 15+billion on revamping vice president’s complex et cetera. Choices, choices! Perhaps the terrorists have regrouped or been reinforced from internal and external sources.

    Nigeria seems to be in a ‘fight and let go’ operational mode allowing the enemy to retreat, but not repentant. But the terrorists retreat to other parts of Nigeria and not to other countries. So, they will come back and kill! Simple!! But Nigeria has had war declared on it. Nigeria must be seen to declare war back on the terrorists, kidnappers and all wayward herders among the herders. And not merely drive off pockets of the enemy from one locality to another where they will repeat their bloodthirsty evil deeds in double and triple portions. The enemy must be neutralized for Nigeria to enjoy peace and chart a return to agriculture success, job creation and an elimination of daily tragic bloodletting which has precipitated an ocean of orphans, widows and jobless youth.   

    Security savvy Nigerians ask what is the role of cellphone and heat seeking tracking, drones and satellite imagery from friendly countries in terrorism investigation?