The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Babalakin’s fatwa 

    Babalakin’s fatwa 

    Hardball

    \Wale Babalakin, SAN, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, University of Lagos, Akoka (Unilag) just turned 60 — congrats!

    But the Unilag Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), appear in no celebratory mood with him.  Instead of cake, they offer Dr. Babalakin a “fatwa” — don’t show your face anywhere near the campus, or else …!  Blood will flow?  The lecturer unionists weren’t that gorily exact.  But the threat appeared menacing enough!

    Babalakin’s crime?  His swashbuckling deeds — which Unilag ASUU clearly think it’s condemnable misdeed — which led to the postponement of the university’s 51st convocation, earlier slated for March 2020, no thanks to the Pro-Chancellor’s power play with the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe.

    For the heresy of having the convocation postponed, the Unilag ASUU, apparently siding with the VC, passed a vote of no confidence in Babalakin, which came with a persona-non-grata-on-campus tag.

    When the unionists heard Dr. Babalakin might be showing up on campus for a council meeting, between July 15 and 17, they reiterated their “fatwa”; and summoned an emergency congress for July 15, to walk their talk — and wait for it: at the very foyer of the Council Chambers!

    “If dem born Babalakin well,” you could almost imagine the avant-garde unionists swearing in pidgin, “make im come!”  It appears the making of a university “roforofo” fight.  But ASUU has warned the Pro-Chancellor to stay off, so as not to provoke violence.

    But the Unilag Governing Council has riposted, warning ASUU to stay in its lane, know the limits of its powers as a trade union and stop behaving like lawless brats, in the name of campus unionism.

    Oladejo Azeez, Unilag Registrar and Secretary of council, in a signed response, said it was the Vice Chancellor — Unilag ASUU man, see?  — that even requested for the meeting.

    It further warned Unilag ASUU that its action, of a clear mob threat, violates Section 41, Subsection 1 of the 1999 Constitution, which guarantees every Nigerian freedom of movement.   It also reminds Unilag ASUU of Section 4 of the Trade Union Act, viz: “No person shall subject any other person to any form of constraint or restriction in the course of persuasion.”

    Indeed, the scandal here is not Unilag ASUU’s disagreement with the Unilag Council.  It is rather the threat of violence, by a university trade group.  That violently bucks everything the university stands for.

    Violence, threatened or real, is the bastion of the brainless — the brainless that lack the basic faculty to think through issues and marshal winning and persuasive logic.  But when university egg heads resort to threats, and not reason, to make their points, something is tragically wrong!  Is Unilag ASUU saying its member-dons are dunces that cannot challenge the Unilag Council on the high front of ideas?  Come on!

    Enough of cheap threats, and union rascality, on the intellectual front!  The Nigerian Academy must be made of sterner stuff!

     

  • Magu agonistes

    Magu agonistes

    Hardball

    Yes, we are borrowing from John Milton’s closet tragedy of Samson Agonistes in his 1671 epic titled Paradise Regain’d to depict the struggles currently being faced by suspended Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Ibrahim Magu. These, perhaps, are his toughest times ever.

    Magu was taken into detention early last week after being commandeered in traffic to go face interrogation by an investigative panel raised by President Muhammadu Buhari over allegations of corruption, abuse of office and insubordination, among others, levelled against him. His main accuser is none other than supervising Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation Abubakar Malami. The investigative panel probing Magu is headed by retired Court of Appeal President and Chairman, Corruption and Financial Crime Cases Trial Monitoring Committee, Justice Ayo Salami.

    It has been an ironic reversal of fortunes for the suspended graft fighter regarding the hand he’s been dealt since his ordeal began last week. He was intercepted en route a scheduled appointment at the Force Headquarters in Abuja and corralled into honouring an invitation by the investigative panel sitting at the Banquet Hall wing of the Presidential Villa. Although the Department of State Security (DSS) and his own organisation, the EFFC, initially denied that he was arrested, nothing could have been any different if he was. Besides, the spin about the manner of his being reined in soon proved of no consequence as he was taken from that first panel appearance into detention. He had just launched a battle for bail as at the weekend. It was wholesale twist of fate for Magu, comparable to experiences of suspects over the years he held fort at EFCC.

    A worse turn is the media trial the anti-graft warrior has been subjected to. There’s been no end to claims of surreal amounts of money and other illicit assets purportedly traced to him. Some reports bordered on the farcical, like an alleged cash pile said to be found stashed away in Ikoyi cemetery! Apparently because the Salami panel is digging still and yet to make public statements, the allegations have festered into terrains of libel against other top functionaries. That was another ironic twist, comparable to experiences of Magu’s quarries.

    Things do not seem very auspicious presently for the embattled czar, with the President having placed him on suspension and the Police lately reported to have redeployed its men who worked with him at EFCC. Truth, however, is: Magu remains innocent until proven guilty and deserves all benefits of the doubt. His reversal of fortunes should serve as advisory to law enforcers that ostentatious rough-handling and media trial of suspects before they get justice is itself pre-emptive and vile injustice.

  • Speaking without thinking

    Speaking without thinking

    Hardball

    He was expected to know what he was talking about and the implication of his words. But he said one thing, and then said he meant another thing, suggesting he had uttered words thoughtlessly and unclearly.

    After he had resigned as Secretary to the State Government (SSG) in Ondo State, Sunday Abegunde was quoted as saying in an interview on Crest FM, Akure: “Akeredolu didn’t win the election in 2016 but we made it possible for him to become governor. We were the pillars behind him and we will not support him again. He will lose this time around.”

    It was sensational. He did not provide details of the implied manipulation that allegedly resulted in Akeredolu’s emergence as governor. Who were the manipulators? What did they do to turn an alleged loser into a winner? He did not say whether the magicians had performed the magic with Akeredolu’s consent.

    Expectedly, Governor Akeredolu reacted to the damaging claim. His Chief Press Secretary, Segun Ajiboye, said in a statement that the governor “is not a beneficiary of the fraud Abegunde and his unnamed cohorts allegedly perpetrated during the 2016 governorship election.”

    The defensive statement added: “Abegunde’s outbursts are weighty confessions that must be investigated by security agencies. Anything to the contrary will only encourage future acts as contained in the confessions. Such brazen anti-democratic acts are unambiguously grave dangers to our fledgling electoral system.”

    Unexpectedly, Abegunde released a clarifying statement that suggested he had been careless about his use of words. He seemed to have used words without thinking about their import.  “I wish to reiterate that at no time did I say that the PDP won the 2016 election. That’s far from the truth. The APC won with a wide margin so that the PDP thought it fruitless to join issues on it at the court of law,” he explained.

    “However, I only stressed that it was the steady and concerted efforts of our loyal party stalwarts of which I was prominent that won that election. I said Governor Akeredolu was not the one that won the election, that we the people won the election for him. That we contributed all our efforts.”

    Abegunde got himself into a mess, and was forced to clarify his words, because he had failed to make himself clear, which he could have done by using words clearly. He gave the impression that he spoke without thinking.

  • Afe’s Ivy League

    Afe’s Ivy League

    Hardball

    Chief Afe Babalola, legal silk and university investor, is angry — angry that university final-year students were not among those to resume school, this COVID-19 season, like primary 6, JS 3 and SS 3.

    His ire is especially directed at the “all-mighty” Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which he guessed must have muscled the Federal Government, from extending school resumption to the university finalists.

    Even then, in a statement signed by Tunde Olofintila, Head, Corporate Affairs, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD), Chief Babalola propounded a rather weird policy, that pretty much equates education apartheid, in a pandemic.

    He (well, the ABUAD spokesperson, speaking in his name) wished the Federal Government would grant private universities’ final-year students a waiver to resume, leaving their public university counterparts in the lurch.

    And why? The legal silk’s Nigerian Ivy League theory: “Already, in the private universities in Nigeria, an Ivy League similar to that in America is emerging.

    To me, the top ranking private universities should be the mirror or the template for resumption of students because of the hygienic, safe environment and the undoubted discipline amongst students and teachers.”  Still, what of private universities outside this “Ivy League?”

    Now, that well-serenaded “discipline” must have emerged from this beautiful ode, in the same statement, to private universities, by the ABUAD founder: “Most private universities are reputed for their moral and physical discipline, quality and functional education, hygienic and safe environment, predictable academic calendar, absence of trade unionism, committed teachers, modern teaching equipment and laboratories, and adequate preparation to prevent COVID-19”.

    Fine traits, to be sure — except that “absence of trade unionism” smells like the university staff in a military barrack; and “moral and physical discipline”, a euphemism for the university churning out zombies — youths who even need to take exeats, before leaving campuses, like some secondary schools or monasteries!

    Need Hardball state the two — staff regimentation and students as virtual zombies — buck the very essence of the university, where young adults are allowed to make youthful mistakes and self-correct?

    Still, it is legitimate choice: splash the cash to train your children and wards as university zombies or mount a vigorous campaign to fix public universities, even as both compete for student intakes.

    To be fair, Chief Babalola has been consistent in pitching his university — no crime!  When COVID-19 broke out, he lashed at the Federal Government for shutting universities when his “all-mighty” (ah, that word again!) ABUAD students were writing their semester examination!

    He said that action would make his ABUAD calendar less “predictable”, as public universities.  But had the government cowered and ABUAD was struck by a major COVID-19 crisis, who would have borne the blame?

    Let the chief market his investment as much as he wishes — that is legitimate.  What is not, is using public universities, which most Nigerian homes still patronize, as a battering ram.

    That is not only insensitive, it is provocative in a region where Chief Obafemi Awolowo left a legacy of education as a right for all, not some special privilege for some moneyed class.  And no — nothing can justify educational apartheid.

  • Noose on our necks

    Noose on our necks

    Hardball

     

     

    WITH the inherent volatility of oil market dynamics, the prospects of the price Nigerians may have to pay for petrol in the near future are troubling.  We get a faint glimpse of such prospects from the latest adjustment of the pump price of the product by the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

    The agency in a circular to marketers last week raised the cost of petrol to between N140.80 and N143.80 per litre for the month of July, from between N121.50 and N123.50 that applied in June. Government had since March made it known that the retail price of petrol would henceforth be fully determined by market forces, especially the international prices of crude oil, although PPPRA would yet modulate the domestic price range for every month.

    For its latest adjustment, the agency said it arrived at the new price band after factoring in fuel marketers’ operating costs. “After a review of the prevailing market fundamentals in the month of June and considering marketers’ realistic operating costs, as much as practicable, we wish to advise a new petrol pump price band of N140.80 – N143.80/litre, for the month of July, 2020,” PPPRA Executive Secretary Saidu Abdulkadir explained in the circular, warning marketers against selling above the upper limit set by government. By the way, even though the agency sets a price band with lower and upper limits, marketers rarely set below the upper limit.

    Talking of market fundamentals, the price of crude oil at the international market averaged $35 per barrel at the time N121.50 – N123.50 was prescribed as the going rate for June, and it had only inched up to between $38 and $40 when the latest price band was determined by PPPRA. Considering the percentage disproportion between the differential in spot market prices of crude oil and the prescribed retail prices of petrol for June and July, it seems apparent that the impact of inflationary trends in the local economy on marketers’ operating costs accounts for the leap in the pump price of petrol. That is to say, even with spot market dynamics of crude oil prices already volatile, the retail cost of petrol is now further fuelled by local inflation, which itself is conventionally exacerbated by higher petrol costs – a perfect vicious cycle of unbridled inflation.

    The regime of subsidy payment was too thoroughly abused and is better dispensed with. But if petrol retail prices are now being determined by local inflation in addition to volatile global market forces, we are headed on a price journey certain to go unhinged. Crude prices are depressed for now because of Covid-19, but will certainly rebound sooner than later, and local inflation is one-directional upwards. The tag-teaming holds dire prospects. It is a looming storm.

     

     

     

  • Untidy beginning

    Untidy beginning

    Hardball

    It is curious that some of the prominent people listed as members of a new political movement known as the National Consultative Front dissociated themselves from the group.

    This is an untidy beginning for a group that “reportedly had a month-long nationwide consultation and virtual meetings” before its launch. It is a start that ironically suggests an ending. It remains to be seen whether the group can rise above this initial turbulence.

    In a statement to mark its takeoff on July 1, the group announced that it would start “immediate mass mobilisation of the nooks and crannies of the country for popular mass action towards political constitution reforms that is citizens-driven and process-led in engendering a new peoples’ constitution for a new Nigeria that can work for all.”

    Surely, a group with such lofty ideals should be much more organised. The denial by its alleged members suggests otherwise.

    A former governor of Kaduna State and retired army officer, Dangiwa Umar, declared: “I was never consulted and I am not part of the National Consultative Front.”

    A former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), tweeted: “Without prejudice to the need for a political movement, I want to place it on record that I was not consulted and so I am not part of the National Consultative Front.”

    Lawyer and human rights activist Femi Falana (SAN) said:  ”I observe that my name has been mentioned as one of the pillars behind this initiative. While I appreciate the concern of the leadership of the new group to enlist my support, I wish to say that at no time have I been consulted and neither did I attend the meeting where the forum was launched.”

    Why were they listed as members of the group? Who listed them? Did the group need to use their names to polish its image and promote its brand? Were they expected to say nothing about their improper inclusion? Were they expected to feel good about their imposed membership, and consider it a sign of their importance?

    The group has not responded to the claim that they were not “consulted.” What kind of group lists people it had not “consulted” as its members?   A group that calls itself “consultative” should have had consultations with those it targeted for membership.

    This group needs to get its act together if it wants Nigerians to take it seriously. The group needs to be reformed before it attempts to reform the country.

  • Kogi’s COVID-19 horror movie

    Kogi’s COVID-19 horror movie

    Hardball

    The Kogi COVID-19 farce just produced its first horror movie!  Is this the beginning of a tragic series, just to live in COVID-19 denial?  Lawdavmesi!

    On July 1, some executive thugs, armed to the teeth, in unmarked Toyota Sienna buses, wreaked hideous violence on a federal health facility, the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Lokoja.

    After that brazen attack, the hospital sources declared the following missing: infra-red thermometers (a key medical tool, in this high season of COVID-19 management), laptops, ATM cards, car keys and two motorcycles — all in daylight raid.

    Not only those: the swaggering, swashbuckling thugs left the administrative block of the hospital totally in shambles: smashed glasses and scattered chairs, in a brazen destruction of a health facility funded by taxpayers’ money.  Besides, that senseless attack has left the masses that patronise the facility grappling at straws: the workers, medical and support staff unions, have declared an indefinite strike, until the facility is well secured.

    Now, there is no dispute that there was a raid.  The dispute is over whodunnit.

    The victims and immediate eye-witnesses claim it was an executive band of thugs, who came in unmarked cars, that unleashed violence on the hospital.  The thugs apparently knew their target and zeroed in on it, in Kogi’s own version of Operation Shock and Awe.

    How thugs, no matter how brazen and misguided, would deign to attack a federal hospital, in a state capital, in broad daylight, is simply bewildering; leaving not a few to conclude it was only the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob.

    Besides, is Kogi’s capital city so porous in security that armed bands, zooming all over in unmarked cars, can attack anywhere and vanish into a hole?  Kogi wonder!

    Still, the Kogi government has come up with own explanation.  It claimed the raiders were provoked by the hospital staff’s indifferent attention to patients, claiming that the brewing patient-hospital tension climaxed in the ugly event. Some yarn!

    In-between, Governor Yahya Bello has been speaking in tongues, after driving himself into a live-in-denial trance over COVID-19 presence in his state.  The Kogi Chief Judge just died in an Abuja, FCT isolation camp, reportedly of COVID-19 complications.  But the governor insists that isn’t true.  Well, might there be other non-COVID-19 isolation camps anywhere?

    The governor even went into an executive fit, claiming the whole COVID-19 stuff was a foreign scam, being forced on people.  Again, Kogi wonder!  But don’t psychologists say a crisis forces out folks’ true essence?

    Let the Kogi folks enjoy their COVID-19 rascality as they damn well please.  But when such a brazen crime is committed — as it was at FMC Lokoja — the Federal Government must move in and smoke out those criminals, no matter their local backers.  That is why the Inspector General of Police should draft in men and materiel to arrest these criminals, arraign them before the courts and obtain a conviction.

    No matter anyone’s empty COVID-19 conceit, we can’t helplessly watch a medical facility become fair game for criminal gangs.  That would diminish all of us as civilized people.

  • Let the facts speak

    Let the facts speak

    Hardball

    The scriptures are clear on this matter. We ought always to tell ourselves the truth and that, as the Good Lord said, shall set us free. One of the pitfalls of this democracy, nay this republic, is that corruption is about stealing, but also about lies.

    Sometimes we play down the area of lies and focus only on the thieving, and in this republic we have seen brazen and elaborate theft by those who should protect our patrimony. Also footloose lying.

    What democracy enjoins us is for a republic to be true to itself. Hence the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has turned laser eyes on quite a few public officials who have acted as fat cats in charge of our fishes and grown even fatter doing so.

    One of the persons under such scrutiny is the former governor of Abia State, Theodore A. Orji, who made headlines when the EFCC reeled out charges against him while in office as a two-term helmsman.

    The fellow has confessed to quite a few astounding details, especially to the way billions of security votes were disbursed during his stewardship by one Felix whose surname we are still to be furnished with. The former governor has responded to charges of monetary spending, which he said was passed to security officials like the military, the police and others. He also said he did the same to lawmakers and also traditional rulers.

    None of the lawmakers or traditional rulers or even members of the security have come up to say none of their people collected money during his tenure. That shows that corruption is a shared vice in this society, and when it is time for reckoning only the “oga at the top” shows up in the dock. There often is no paper trail or document in what in Nigeria is called “chop and clean mouth.” The only mouth that is grubby with oil and crumbs is that of the person who carries the can. He or she becomes a bizarre sort of martyr for them.

    So Orji is awaiting the EFCC on that. But Orji says in spite of all that is done, some properties have been hitched to his name, and denies they belong to him, even if EFCC have said they belong to him.  They include the Abia Mall, which he says belongs to the state government with Pro/M Ltd and funded by Ecobank, BENAC Hotels owned by a private business man and proprietor of BENAC Ltd. Another such property is the Estate located at the former ministry of works. Orji’s folks say it is owned by Trademore Ltd, a company with real estates all over Nigeria. Also another Estate now under construction at former Isi Gate, according to them, belongs to Trademore. The fifth is Amaokwei Estate, which he says belongs to the Abia State government.

    The documents, not claims, should settle the matter. And courts will have to peruse the documents and tell who owns what. As Apostle Paul says, “We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” Let us not hang him before the court says so. Let the law take its course.

  • Laughable reinvention

    Laughable reinvention

    Hardball

    Now that Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki has left the party that brought him to power, and joined the party that had been opposed to him and his administration, he seems to have lost his sense of history, if he ever had a sense of history.

    After failing to get the support of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for his re-election ambition, he jumped to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where he struck a deal that favoured his re-election aspiration. Suddenly, he forgot his history.   Before he became governor in 2016, he was the Chairman of the Edo State Economic and Strategy Team (EST) inaugurated by the immediate past governor of the state, Adams Oshiomhole, in 2009. For seven years, he occupied that position in the Oshiomhole administration. He was also the Chairman of Tax Assessment Review Committee for Edo State Internal Revenue Service (TARC), and the Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME).

    In other words, there was no reason for him to feel that he was not in the right party.  Indeed, there was no reason for him to leave APC until the party gave him a reason to leave.

    In his new political party, he wants to give the impression that there was nothing to be happy about in his old party. In other words, he is trying to rewrite his political history. Of course, he enjoyed happy times in his former party before the sad times forced him to exit.    When he spoke at the Abuja secretariat of the PDP on June 27, at a ceremony to endorse him as the party’s governorship candidate, he said ridiculous things, all in an effort to erase his political past.

    Obaseki, who spoke for himself and his deputy, Philip Shuiabu, said: “It was only when we entered the house (PDP) that we realised that this was the house we should have been in the first instance.

    “Because we now saw that the values in the house are the values we cherish and the values we lived for; values of justice, values of law and order, values of care for our people, putting the people first.

    “These are the values we have always been in pursuit of, which we found in this new house in which we have been graciously accommodated…In our hours of tribulation, when we were pushed out in the rains and storm from our political party, you came out with that huge umbrella to give us cover and shelter.”

    There is no doubt that he will say more laughable things to reinvent his history as the September Edo State governorship election approaches. But Obaseki’s denial of history cannot change history.

     

     

     

     

  • From IE, customer terrorism

    From IE, customer terrorism

    Hardball

     

    BETWEEN Ikeja Electric (IE) and an estimated bill customer, with Account Number 0100218678, it’s been a tale of customer terrorism.  But don’t pitch your tent either way, until you get the facts.

    On June 12, IE sent Customer 0100218678 a telephone text message, concerning the May electricity bill it earlier sent.  The text read: “Dear 0100218678. Your payment of N17, 000 for your IE bill was successful.  Your outstanding bill is N21, 198.81.  Please pay to avoid service disruption.  For enquiries, call 017000250.”

    Yet, by June 24, the same IE that affirmed payment for its May bill, sent its gang to disconnect the account, on the excuse that co-tenants, on the four-flat property, were owing it!  That much information was extracted from the disconnecting gang, who felt unmoved disconnecting one customer for the sins of others, and bragged they’d do it over and over again.  What terrorism!

    For the records: the IE “outstanding bill” is no more than disputed past bills, for darkness supplied, nevertheless billed for, that IE has been pushing forward in its books, as instrument of accounting blackmail.  Billing for darkness aka ”crazy bills” is where DisCos nationwide have attained notoriety.

    Indeed, the so-called bill was an object of peaceful protest march by the Okota Residents Association (ORA) Zone A community (where Bill 0100218678 is resident), to the IE Okota Undertaking office on Okota Road; and for which an IE delegation had visited the residents to try thrash things out.  The resolve was to migrate from estimated billing to pre-paid meters, which process is ongoing.

    So, the so-called “outstanding bill” is no legal or rational basis to disconnect anyone.  Neither was it the basis for the June 24 disconnection.  As already reported, the basis was that another customers in the building was owing, so whoever that had paid should mount pressure on those that had not, to prevent being cut off, for service paid for!

    How a legally registered corporate citizen like IE could run on such thumping illogic is just bemusing.  Then, how its operatives could go unleashing such brigandage, on lawful customers, and hope to be taken seriously, is the height of corporate brigandage and terrorism.

    Indeed, IE and its tragically deluded operatives think they still live in the old glory days of NEPA, when they were the unfazed public and government problem child!  Hardball thinks the industry regulators should snap them out of their grand delusion.

    In its protest mail to IE customer care, Bill 017000250 bared it all — a classic case of common sense not being common, even to Ikeja Electric Plc:.”In carrying out this brazen act, your gang claimed a fellow tenant is owing IE — but how is that my business?  Do I now work for IE that I should join its disconnection gang to mount pressure on a co-tenant to pay his bill on the pains of disconnection, even if I have fulfilled my own contract with you?”  Is it not common sense that IE should separate the wires to secure its revenue?

    IE customer care cared so much they didn’t deign the mail required any response!  Still, in the spirit of full disclosure, the line has since been reconnected, since the erring party settled with IE.  But that didn’t blot out the injustice of the 24-hour blatant disruption and the combative ignorance with which the IE disconnection gang acted.

    It’s time the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) called IE and other DisCos to order, if their acts of brazen customer terrorism were not to lead to avoidable social tension and disorder.  A stitch in time saves nine.  Brazen outlawry is no corporate virtue.  Rather, it courts corporate catastrophe.