Category: Hardball

Hardball

As expected, Adams Oshiomhole, former two-term governor of Edo State and former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), is making enthusiastic efforts to sell Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the APC governorship candidate in the state, to the electorate.

To do so successfully, he needs to show why he rejected Godwin Obaseki, the ex-APC incumbent governor he had similarly sold to the electorate in 2016, who is now seeking re-election as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Oshiomhole had rubbished the candidate he is now promoting, who was the PDP gubernatorial candidate in 2016. But he does not want to be reminded of the bad things he had said about the man in the past, saying those things were said “in the spirit of electioneering.”

He is now singing a different tune. According to him, “Pastor Ize-Iyamu is a good man with genuine plans to move Edo State forward. He has the support of all and is on his way to repeating the 2012 feat of winning in all the 18 local governments as I did when he was my campaign director general.”

On Obaseki, “I am sorry I sold the bad product,” Oshiomhole said when he addressed constituents in Benin, Edo State, recently. “I am telling you, any of us could have made that mistake.”

An amusing headline, “Oshiomhole turns prayer warrior, begs God to sack Obaseki,” highlighted his zeal. His prayer: “To those I sold the product that turned out to be fake, God you know I didn’t know he was fake. Only time shall tell who a man is… Lord, he who forgot us, our time is coming. We shall speak to you, God in Heaven. You know we voted him in innocence and in trust. He has abused the trust. Enable us Lord, with our PVCs (Permanent Voter Cards) we shall punish him. With our broom we shall sweep him out… All these and many more we say in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Oshiomhole and Ize-Iyamu also visited the palace of the president of the heads of the towns and villages that make up the Benin Kingdom. He spectacularly knelt before the traditional rulers and asked for their support.

From all indications, Oshiomhole will perform more spectacular somersaults before the September governorship election. He will display acrobatic skills that will make the public wonder about the ways of Nigeria’s political leaders.

Hardball

The Yoruba would slam it “Karounwi”, with ringing contempt to boot — meaning just jiving, with more nonsense than sense.

But that is what is trending in the name of former Niger Delta militant, El-Hadj Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, over the alleged N81 billion scandal at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Asari is leader of the Niger Delta People’s Salvation Force.

In a rather wild and insensate reaction to mind-boggling allegations of sleaze, by Niger Deltans, against the Niger Delta, Asari made it clear that the alleged amount, numbing and mind-boggling as it is, is mere “pick-pocketing”, compared to what other non-Niger Delta natives allegedly steal from the Niger Delta.  What crap!

Even assuming without conceding that were true, is Asari claiming it’s okay for Niger Delta sons and daughters to steal their own blind, while railing and pointing fingers at non-natives, who commit the same crime?

Big or small, does Asari even realize every stolen kobo, from that troubled region, helps to further under-develop the area; and sentence the majority there to penury, squalor and disease?  So, natives are excused to do that?  Again, what arrant crap!  Does this son of the soil love his native land at all?

Let’s even consider Asari’s rogue (il)logic, which he perhaps had hoped would snare the deluded native, to who hell is always “other people” — to again parody French existentialist philosopher and playwright, Jean-Paul Sarte.

Okay, our folks are stealing — and so what?  Do you expect me (thank God he didn’t use the Shakespearean royal “we”, to complete the full emptiness of that statement!) to chase after those pick-pockets, when “alien” robber barons are pillaging my land?

That rogue emotion can only impress the naive; for between the pick-pocket and big-time robber, stealing is stealing.  The principle is the same.  Still, the fraudulent nativism in this declaration (whether earnest or as Freudian slip) is well and truly prodigal!

Does Asari’s standpoint then symbolize how low Niger Deltans, as loud as they are on “restructuring” and “resource control”, think of their ravaged region?  Or was it some Asari ashen face to cover the smouldering coal of shame and embarrassment he really feels, at the itchy fingers of his co-natives in NDDC?

Restructuring!  Well, to the loud orchestra that think restructuring is some magic bullet, a jab of which straightens every crooked stuff, here would appear cold reality check.  Yeah, you need to restructure the polity, from the current cost centres to profit centres.  But before that,  even more imperative is a radical restructuring of attitude and mindset.

Even if you “restructure” and Asari and co’s mind remains as it is (the one that sees no big deal in natives stealing their region blind; the other whose alleged greed generated the NDDC scandal), how can that troubled region benefit from any political reform, no matter how sweeping?

But again, that’s a troubling metaphor that applies to every part of the country, particularly those who think unbridled nativism is alternative to rigorous thinking and positive attitudinal shift.

Nevertheless, to Asari, from Hardball: next time keep quiet, if you lack something reasonable to say.  Even without its contemptible arrogance, the Asari remark is  insensitive to the majority Niger Delta poor and a grave insult to other conscientious Nigerians.

Hardball

Where is the element – even the slightest tinge of human compassion as opposed to insensate bestiality of animals? That was a question you wouldn’t help asking if you watched the visuals of the recent execution of five aid workers in Borno State by Boko Haram insurgents. It was, without mitigation, a retreat from human civilization.

The victims were humanitarian actors providing succor to millions of Nigerians displaced by the insurgency and in existential threat of survival. They were unarmed operatives putting their lives at risk to save other lives; they were taking help in the face of danger to distressed civilians and were on no account combatants. But the jihadists had other value indices: they abducted these harmless individuals in June and just recently faced them up against one-directional violence. A video of the executions they posted online showed five hooded armed men standing behind the blindfolded hostages as an unidentified voice delivered a message to “infidels,” warning them to “repent and turn to God.” Immediately after, one of the gunmen ordered his colleagues to shoot their helpless captives – from the rear. It was horrid bestiality!

Civilised humanity predictably was outraged and benumbed with shock. But two responses are at issue here. President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to bring the killers to justice, also pledging to “wipe out the remaining vestiges” of the insurgent group. The United Nations deplored the killing of those it described as “committed humanitarians who devoted their lives to helping vulnerable people and communities in an area heavily affected by violence.” UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria Edward Kallon said it was unacceptable that aid workers were being killed when the assistance they provide made the difference between life and death for entire communities. He cited as part of the challenge “the number of illegal vehicular checkpoints set up by non-state armed groups along main supply routes,” adding: “These checkpoints disrupt the delivery of life-saving assistance and heighten the risks of civilians being abducted, killed or injured, with aid workers increasingly being singled out.”

It wasn’t the first killings of kidnapped aid workers by insurgents. Last year, terrorists abducted six humanitarian workers including a female. Five of the hostages were later executed and the female operative remains in captivity.

All eyes are on government to bring these murderers to justice and stop the abductions of humanitarians in the North-east. A low hanger is to immediately clear the routes of those illicit checkpoints the UN fingered. But also, ex-insurgents who are now ‘graduates’ of government’s Operation Safe Corridor programme could be mined for intelligence on hideouts of these criminals that enable them to strike and run, then stage open executions before the military comes around. No potential resource should be left untapped.

Hardball

It is said that we live in “the digital age.” But it is obvious that this does not apply to everybody. There are many people who still live in a pre-digital age.

This explains why the Soludero Hunters Association, a group of local hunters in Oyo State, says its members will not register online to join the Amotekun Corps in the state. The chairman of the association, Oba Nureni Ajijola-Anabi, was reported saying recruitment into the Amotekun Corps should not be based on paper qualifications.

He said: “We told them to focus more on the local people, who know the terrain, including the forests, but they told us to go and register online.

“What does online registration have to do with providing security for the people? If they insist on this, we will back out of the exercise…We are hunters; we are familiar with all forests in the zone.”  It is noteworthy that Amotekun is a Yoruba word for Leopard.

Operation Amotekun was launched in January by the governors of the six states in the country’s Southwest, Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Ekiti states, “to ensure an end to insecurity in the South Western, Nigerian region.”   It is the country’s “first regional security outfit initiated by a geopolitical zone.”

Members of the security outfit are supposed to include local hunters, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), Agbekoya, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and vigilante groups.

How the outfit is expected to operate shows why the Soludero Hunters Association is opposed to recruitment through online registration. This is the picture:  “The operatives of the security outfit will assist police, other security agencies and traditional rulers in combating terrorism, banditry, armed robbery, kidnapping and also help in settling herdsmen and farmers contentions in the region.”

Obviously, the outfit needs people who have practical security experience, which is a more important and useful qualification than familiarity with the ways of “the digital age.”

It is the responsibility of the outfit to ensure that would-be members are not discouraged by a burdensome recruitment process. If the leadership of the outfit in Oyo State insists on online registration, it should simplify the registration process by providing the required digital devices and recruitment personnel in accessible offices. Are hunters, for instance, expected to bear the burden of online registration?

In particular, it is unrealistic to ask hunters who want to join the outfit to apply online, which is alienating, considering their background.  Is this a covert move to turn the security outfit into an elitist outfit?

Hardball

Why does the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s leading opposition party, celebrate the odyssey of Ibrahim Magu, with so much gusto?

Why does the party rejoice, like denizens of the red lights district, who wildly glory at the rumour (obviously false) that their zone has been decreed off-limits to the Police?

Does the party have an especial interest in sleaze as economic growth area?  Or it’s just playing politics, for the sake of politics, even with such an existential threat to national life?

The party’s initial reaction to the Magu arrest and probe appears fair and legit enough.  PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, advised the Federal Government to go for the truth, as the embattled EFCC chief had been “indicted” vide a memo by Abubakar Malami, SAN, the Justice minister and federal Attorney-General.

Still, it was awry that the party’s mind automatically jumped into “destruction of evidence”: “Now that Magu has been pulled in for investigation, the Federal Government should … forestall destruction of evidence as well as unnecessary interferences in the matter.”

Well, what was that jump?  Health skepticism or just plain mischief?

But PDP appeared to hit the panic button at Magu’s lawyer’s claim that after all said and done, his client would be found innocent and unimpeachable, and reinstated to his position.  It didn’t also find amusing, the reportage that Magu didn’t only get bail, but also got his security details restored.

That very hint got Ologbodiyan exposing the party’s most secret fears, even if rather premature: a possible Senate confirmation; and Magu staging a come-back as substantive EFCC chairman.

“The PDP wonders if Magu’s counsel is now informing Nigerians that the activities of the presidential panel, as well as the indicting memo by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abubakar  Malami, are all drama to facilitate Magu’s clearance at the Senate.”  Dire Freudian slip!

But apart from the Magu-phobia so clear from this statement, where is the PDP sense of fairness?  So, it’s okay for Magu to be accused and roasted in the media? But it’s heresy for his lawyer to, in the same media, claim that based on solid facts before the panel, his client would come out clean?

And if that claim came to pass, PDP would declare the anti-corruption war dead — pray, when did it ever acknowledge it lived? — simply because an innocent man wasn’t dragooned into guilt and disgrace?  What cant!

This PDP-think is just mind-boggling.  Anyway, in government or outside, the former ruling party isn’t known for much introspection.  Indeed, it’s this scandalous lack of introspection, that penchant for brute force, rather than deep reasoning, that has led it to political perdition.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem to learn from its mistakes!

In any case, why the Magu fixation?  With or without Magu, Nigeria must fight and triumph over corruption if it hopes to survive and thrive.  So, even if Magu exists, the war must continue.

So, why this infantile whoop over a suspect “victory” in a battle, when the long war must be won — or we are all doomed?

Hardball

By the latest word on the N118million Covid-19 assistance the Oyo State government recently said it rendered the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, you never know whether the institution’s authorities have adopted tactful avoidance of controversy or the truth of the transactions is now ascertained.

State Finance Commissioner Akinola Ojo late last month announced that the government had so far spent N2.7billion to tackle the pandemic, out of which N118million was spent in support of UCH. The tertiary giant swiftly denied that claim, saying it had received no monetary grant but only 250 pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) from the state government. “All services rendered to Oyo State by UCH have been strictly humanitarian and no financial benefits have accrued to the hospital,” spokesperson Toye Akinrinlola stated. He hinted that the government might have confused the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan with UCH.

But the Provost, College of Medicine, Professor Emiola Olapade-Olaopa, was at the time reported denying any grant to the college from Oyo government. “College of Medicine did not receive N118million from Oyo State government. Note that (the) government did not say that it gave N118million to the College of Medicine,” Premium Times quoted him saying. Even the UI corporately dismissed the alleged grant as alien, with spokesperson Tunji Oladejo noting that the college had already refuted the government’s claim.

On the heels of those concerted denials, however, the state government insisted it supported UCH with N118million over Covid-19. A government statement cited the finance commissioner saying the money was spent on meeting varied needs of the Department of Virology, College of Medicine and the UCH, between which government saw no distinction. According to him, the government procured medical supplies to the tune of N25million for the hospital, added to money spent in direct support to the Department of Virology in procuring medical equipment and consumables, wet leasing of Covid-19 testing machine and payment of departmental staff allowances, all adding up to N118million.

Asked last week for confirmation of the transactions, Prof. Olapade-Olaopa, dismissed need to engage the issue further. Speaking on a radio programme in Ibadan, he said: “There is no more explanation to give because officials of the state government said they gave the money and materials to some people at the Department of Virology, and those concerned did not deny receiving such…There would have been a problem if those fingered as the receivers had denied. Now, I don’t think there is any more issue to be discussed on this.”

But, read between the lines: the provost’s response was too evasive to be a confirmation of transactions that purportedly transpired under his superintendency of the College of Medicine. In other words, even if the state government made those transactions as outlined, they were so untidily made that authorities of beneficiary institutions couldn’t even own the transactions. That was most untidy.

Hardball

It’s the talk of the town. Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Godswill Akpabio allegedly got what is called a “dirty slap” in local parlance for sexual harassment.  It is described as “A slap that brings a person back to his/her senses.”

The Very Important Person (VIP) allegedly on the receiving end has not denied the claim that it happened, which makes this particular slap a very important slap.

The claim by a former acting managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Joi Nunieh, represents yet another low in an unfolding drama that has exposed one mess after another concerning the agency.

Nunieh’s sensational allegation was a response to the minister’s uncomplimentary remarks. Akpabio had fired the first salvo: “I wish she would go to a hospital, see a doctor and then get some injections and relax. I am not saying something is wrong with her, I am saying something is wrong with her temperament. You don’t need to ask me, you can ask about four other husbands she married.”

Nunieh hit back. After pointing out that Akpabio was wrong about her love life, she stung him, saying: “Why did he not tell Nigerians that I slapped him in his guest house at Apo? I am the only woman that slapped Akpabio. He thought he could come up on me. He tried to harass me sexually.

“I slapped him. He tried to come on me. I am an Ogoni woman and nobody jokes with us. I showed Akpabio that Rivers women do not tolerate nonsense.”

This exchange, in the middle of a corruption-related legislative investigation and forensic audit of the commission, is a distraction. In October 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a forensic audit of the agency’s operations from 2001 to 2019.  About nine months after, the president’s move to deal with the NDDC’s failure has only produced twists and turns without the desired result.

There is no doubt that the NDDC, established in 2000 by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, has failed to develop Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta. More than six decades after oil production began in the country, in 1958, the story of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta is a continuing story.

The country is the largest producer of oil in Africa and sixth largest in the world. It is inexcusable that many communities in the region that produces the country’s oil wealth reflect perplexing poverty. The NDDC needs to be sanitised to make it an effective development agency. The same thing applies to the supervising Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs.