Category: Hardball

President Muhammadu Buhari’s intervention in the shocking case of Salome Achejuh Abuh, the 60-year-old female politician who was burned alive two days after the Kogi State governorship election of November 16, reflected public outrage.

In a statement by Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina, Buhari described the murder as a “reprehensible act” that showed “primitive behaviour, which should not be accepted in a decent society.” He further described the murder as a “descent to barbarism” and “pure criminality and bestiality.”

The President directed “all security agencies involved in the investigation to do a thorough and expeditious job on the matter so that justice could be served without fear or favour…Such evildoers must be brought to justice, irrespective of whatever allegiances they hold.”

The victim’s husband, Mr Abuh, who was in Abuja at the time she was killed, captured her last moments in an interview:  “When I got information that those guys were moving towards our house, I called to inform my wife and she said, ‘Okay, I am going out now. Let me rush out now.’

“Those were the last words she said to me. I called her five minutes, 10 minutes and 20 minutes later, nobody picked up the phone.

“I was told that she was on her way out before the guys came, shot her and set her ablaze. Anybody that says they didn’t know there was someone in the house is lying.

“At her age, there was no way she could have overpowered the irate young men. My wife was burnt alive. It was not a mistake.”

Read Also: Buhari: killing of Kogi PDP woman barbaric, callous

Buhari’s reference to “allegiances” is significant because the late Mrs Abuh, a former councillor, was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) women leader in Kogi State. Her party’s candidate in the election had lost to the incumbent governor, Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who was reelected for a second term.  Those who burned her alive are believed to be opponents of her party, meaning supporters of the APC which controls the state government as well as the federal government.

It remains to be seen whether the political complexion of her killers will not matter in the investigation. The President has expressed his shock and outrage, and ordered an investigation, but the conduct of the investigation is a different matter altogether.

It is unacceptable that Mrs Abuh died the way she did. Beyond words and politics, her killers must be caught and punished.

Hardball

Lucky Prof. Egodi Uchendu, professor of history and director of B.I.C Ijomah Centre for Policy Studies and Research, conveners of the academic conference on witchcraft, that has sent Christian Nigeria going ga-ga!

Had she lived in the Middle Age era of the French Joan of Arc (1412-1431), she probably would have been burnt at the stakes, for her temerity to essay an academic conference on witchcraft, simply because some Christian zealots are miffed!

How about these in pious rage, from a university community?: “University of Nigeria belongs to Jesus.  So witches and wizards, no way!  No vacancy!”

“Say no to the meeting of witches and wizards!!!”

“We plead the blood of Jesus over the University of Nigeria.  Hence, we reject all forms of witchcraft overtly or covertly in Jesus name.  Amen.”

Geez! Is UNN a monastery?

Don’t get it mixed up.  It’s perfectly within the legitimate rights of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) to mobilize for the defence of its faith.  After all, before the Biblical King Ahab, Prophet Elijah showed strength, by matching the powers of Jehovah against those of the prophets of Baal — and triumphed in open competition.  So, grant CAN the right to mobilize and crusade, as Prof. Uchendu rightly conceded.

But even CAN must realize an academic conference is in the realm of knowledge and research (which forte is endless questioning); and not faith (which forte is blind belief). Under a democratic dispensation, both can fly in the wide skies of freedom and liberty.

Under the university charter, however, academic conferences which power scholarship, which thrives on eternal questioning, is master of the realm, with no prejudice to the religious faith of individuals, in that scholarly community.

That would appear to explain why, before she died, members of the University of Lagos community affectionately referred to Prof. Sophie Oluwole as “Iya Aje” (Yoruba for “Witch mother”, in want of a better translation), for her excellent strides in the African philosophy of religion.

Even the late Prof. Bolaji Idowu (1913-1993) one-time patriarch of the Methodist Church of Nigeria (1972-1984), was a renowned scholar, at the University of Ibadan, on African traditional faith.  That neither affected his Christian faith nor stalled his rise as Nigeria’s No. 1 Methodist, of his time.  His academic forte was the ethnological and theological studies of the Yoruba people.

Which is why Hardball cannot understand the CAN hysteria over an academic conference on witchcraft. Though CAN can justify its stance on the faith plain, it went beyond its brief to put Christian students on virtual war path.

While these students do nothing wrong to defend their faith, even if the CAN “battle order” was deliberately skewed (with CAN wilfully mistaking an academic enterprise for a religious one, simply because its topic is witchcraft), the students do grave damage to their budding intellect.  The university is for the intellect to soar, not to be caged by any religious ardour.

The Nigerian academy is all the more retarded by the reported cancellation of the booking, for conference venue, on the UNN campus. That is bowing to herd blackmail.  It is a disgrace that ought to be corrected fast.

Whatever happens, Prof. Uchendu must resist this arrant blackmail, secure a new venue and go on with her conference.  No spirituality is superior to another.  Let Christians, if piqued, also organize an academic conference on say, speaking in tongues, if they so wish.

The Nigerian academy must be robust enough to lunch scholarly studies into faith phenomena, without any side turning nasty and adopting bully tactics. That way, we can thoroughly understand our environment, and annex even spirituality as part of technology for development.

INSPECTOR-General of Police (IGP) Muhammad Adamu introduced another dimension to news of irregularities that characterised the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states on November 16.

After a meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and security chiefs three days later, Adamu responded to allegations that security agents, particularly police officers, colluded with thugs to steal ballot boxes and disrupted voting at polling units.

Adamu said: “During the elections, anybody you saw either in police uniform or military uniform that does not carry the tag that has been given for the election, that person is not a genuine police officer or military officer or that he was not on official duty.”

“Because, we were aware of the fact that or we were told that some politicians were going to sew police and military uniforms, so we devised some other means of identifying those that were on election duty.”

Adamu needs to substantiate his claim that fake policemen were responsible for the alleged irregularities. For instance, PREMIUM TIMES reported that “Our journalists in Kogi witnessed how armed men, including those with police escorts, raided polling units and snatched ballot boxes.”

The Nigeria Police Force said it deployed 66,241 policemen in the governorship elections, 35,200 in Kogi State and 31,041in Bayelsa State.  In addition, there were the police mobile force, special protection unit, counter-terrorism unit and other security outfits. The IGP also ordered the posting of deputy inspectors general of police (DIGs), AIGs, CPs, DCPs, and ACPs to all senatorial districts and local government areas in the two states.

If so many genuine policemen were on the ground, they should have apprehended some of the alleged fake policemen. Or is it the case that the genuine policemen couldn’t identify the alleged fake policemen?

It is noteworthy that a senior fellow of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Jibrin Ibrahim, observed during a press conference in Abuja: “But on the ground, that massive deployment was not visible to eyes. Maybe they took another form because you know we are in Africa. We went through a lot of the roads leading out of Lokoja and there were no checkpoints and because the police were not there to check, those who were moving around, were armed thugs in vans, carrying weapons and moving systematically from polling units.”

This observation means that beyond the alleged fake policemen, the genuine policemen underperformed. What’s the use of police involvement in elections if they can’t help make elections free and fair?

If you are professionally condemned to using data like Hardball, you would perhaps testify to the seeming racket that calls itself the data market.

True, the GSM networks are varied, no less than four at the last count.  But we just might be seeing the birth of a ruthless oligopoly, come to ruthlessly milk the data market, with the market regulator not nimble enough to protect subscribers from network greed.

All too sudden, data is vanishing from subscriber accounts, like luckless dew, under the early morning sun!  Even the minister of Communications and Digital Economy, that earlier expressed outrage, and read out the riot act for prompt correction, has no less promptly been mollified to let the regulator — Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) — do its work.

That itself is conventional wisdom, which in itself is not bad, since it’s good optics, being free-market friendly.  But it might turn not-so-wise, for a case — a seeming abuse — that appears to be hitting an emergency.  NCC should therefore treat it as such; and hearken subscribers’ cries, as the minister appears to have done.

Hitherto, and this is as near as two, three months ago, Hardball would load N2, 000 worth of monthly data bundle: to power the Internet, email, Facebook, WhatsApp; with little or no videos, and certainly no Instagram.  In that pristine data Eden, it would last all month; and only recharge for another month-long deal.  Not any more!

Last month, a N3, 000 worth monthly data plan barely lasted 10 days!  Then this month, Hardball happened on an expected elixir: N5000 for a 15GB bundle, hoping that would do the magic.  But alas!  In just 18 days, it is hinting the data is all but used up, remaining only 50MB!

Even the back-up, from a rival network, worth N3, 500 monthly bundle, is spewing the same yarn, even if that was strictly for back-up, should the main bundle come up short.

So, you have two different networks but same dreadful story of vanishing data!  Yet, the networks assail you with a blitz of adverts, promising data as

plentiful as the never vanishing sea water!  The reverse is the case.

This is what the subscriber out there faces, day in, day out; and there appears no help in sight.  The annoying thing is the whole thing bucks basic economic concepts, that undergird the so-called free market.

Basic economics speaks of the economy of scale: the larger the market, the likelihood the price would crash, other things being equal, so long there is competition.

On the surface, there would appear competition, all right.  But with how data just vanishes, across the networks, other things would appear violently unequal!

What is it?  Could it be that the networks have signed an industry-wide oligopolistic deal, for sweetheart jumbo data profit, leaving the subscriber perpetually groaning?  How do you explain more data on the surface but far less in real terms, the way the thing vanishes?

That is what the NCC should investigate and fix.  On this, the minister should stick to his instinct, and push NCC, to push the networks, to do the right thing, by the market.

The networks are entitled to due nourishment from their investment, but not at the expense of selling short the subscriber.

That is what is happening now in the data market.  It is fast becoming racket.  The minister should push NCC to investigate; and ultimately smash this racket.  That is the right thing to do, to sanitize the data market.B

Hardball

After the governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states on November 16 have been lost and won, it’s time for a win/loss review. Yes, All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates, David Lyon in Bayelsa, and Yahaya Bello in Kogi, were elected and reelected.  But the polls were not just about Lyon’s election and Bello’s reelection. Things happened that shouldn’t have happened, which ultimately diminished the polls and the results.

On Kogi, The Nation report headlined “Violence, ballot box snatching mar polls” said:  “Ballot boxes were snatched at the Lokoja Club, St. Mary by Paparanda Square and Fehintolu (Adankolo New Layout) polling points. Two persons, namely Umoru Shuaib and Faruk Suleiman, were feared killed in Abocho community in Dekina local government area.”

The report also said: “In Aikpele-Ajaka polling unit 002, Igalamela-Odolu local government, masked armed men shot sporadically into the air, disrupting the exercise as voters and Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials scampered for safety.”

On Bayelsa, PREMIUM TIMES report headlined “#BayelsaDecides: Ballot box violence, corruption, other irregularities mar exercise in Yenegoa” said: “Thugs invaded Opolo Ward 5, Polling Units 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 via a nearby river with an attempt to snatch ballot papers. The thugs who were fully armed also beat up some voters while some observers and journalists sustained injuries.”

The online medium also said its reporter “reported how thugs invaded the PU 020, Ward 05, Etegwe Primary School, Yenagoa, at about 4:21 p.m.”  The medium said its reporter “who witnessed the violence reported that about 20 thugs came with dangerous weapons and chased away some Youth Corps members working as ad-hoc staff of INEC. The thugs carted away thumb printed ballot papers and boxes and escaped through the rear of the unfenced Etegwe Primary School. Many of the voters also fled the poling unit for fear of being harmed by the rampaging thugs. Electoral observers and INEC officials also fled the venue.”

These eye-witness accounts show that the polls were a mockery of democracy. It has become normal to expect extreme irregularities in elections conducted in Nigeria. After such travesties, life continues as if nothing terribly bad had happened.  Then such terribly bad things happen again and again.

In the end, the so-called victories are not victories properly so called. They are pyrrhic victories because the negatives outstrip the positives. The next elections will further show that the abnormal has become normal in Nigeria. It is tragic that nothing has changed in the way elections are lost and won.

NOT long ago, this quote, attributed to Joseph Evah, coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group (IMG) and popular Niger Delta activist, went viral on the social media:

“Give the 13% derivation money to Julius Burger, G Cappa, RCC, etc Instead of the Governors and charge these companies to turn Niger Delta  to Abuja. That was how Babangida gave crude oil to Julius Berger in exchange for massive construction in Abuja…”

Hardball is unaware of any denial by Evah.  It therefore assumes it is true, even if you must handle, with utmost caution, information from many social media sources, bar the serious and credible online newspapers, and research websites that can demonstrate the processes leading to the information they give out.

Even then, with the level of distemper in that oil rich region, with its dirt poor masses, these sentiments expressed are probably apocryphal, given the allegations and counter-allegation of sleaze coming out of that region.

Hardball is, for now, not really concerned about the tales of alleged sleaze, even with its dire under-development implications; and its resultant fearsome poverty and crippling penury.

What irks Hardball is what appears a total loss of confidence in the political elite of that area, vis-a-vis the trenchant call for “restructuring”, to prune down the powers — and cash — from Abuja, and domesticate the two in the local elite of the “new” , federating units.

If you blow a clarion for “restructuring” because the Abuja central power elite have failed; but crave to pass resources direct to contractors, simply because you can’t trust the local political elite with their alleged itchy fingers, how far can your “restructuring” campaign go?

Even if the Evah recipe is right, wouldn’t that suggestion, even if it leads to a great surge in physical infrastructure in the short run, not also strengthen the hand of the hated centre, and further retard the ability of the new “federating units” to really take charge, and turn cash, first into wealth and later, development and prosperity?

Indeed, the Evah recipe has set Hardball thinking, which nevertheless conforms to an earlier hunch: the more “restructuring” is mainstreamed, as an idea “whose time has come” (to borrow that popular cliche), the more it appears a mere catchy slogan, which its advocates grimly hope would be some magical open sesame, or what in Classical Greek drama is deus-ex-machina — a–shoe-fits-all magic, come to solve all problems!  Nothing like that exists.

The moral in all of this is, of course, that while everyone blames the central authorities (and for good reasons, to be fair), the local political elite, patriotic champions of “restructuring” themselves, boast no restructured ethos!

Indeed, when the “open sesame” to arrest the Niger Delta’s developmental laggardness is bypassing the governors and shoveling cash direct to contractors, that have absolutely no stake beyond their bottomline and corporate name, then something well and truly terrible has dawned!

Nigeria needs a radical re-tinkering of its political infrastructure.  It sorely needs to re-federalize to make development bottom-up and organic.

But restructuring itself would end as another hollow slogan if everyone, Abuja and regions or state, don’t first radically restructure their minds.

By Hardball

A week after the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Acting Executive Director of Projects, Dr Cairo Ojougboh, caused a stir by alleging that a certain serving Senator from Delta State got 300 contracts from the agency, Senator James Manager representing Delta South challenged Ojougboh to name the Senator. Ojougboh said 120 of the contracts had been paid for, but didn’t say if these contracts had been executed. He didn’t name the Senator.

According to Manager, Ojougboh’s “outburst has given a job to pull him down heavy-weight politicians and their ever-ready hangouts to make stupendous insinuations and innuendos… Just mention the name in public and submit same to law enforcement agencies.”

Ojougboh’s response: “The Commission has forwarded the matter to the anti-corruption agencies and the particular Senator will soon be invited and the public will know the person soon.”

If the ball is in the court of the anti-corruption agencies, when will the anti-corruption agencies reveal the identity of the Senator at the centre of this scandal? Indeed, it is scandalous that one person allegedly got about 300 contracts, and got funds for 120 of them, which may not have been executed.

Scandals like this one may well be why the NDDC, established in 2000 by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, has failed to develop Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta.   The first commercial oil discovery in the country happened in Oloibiri in present-day Bayelsa State, in 1956; and the first oil field began production in 1958.

More than six decades later, the story of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta is a continuing story.  Nigeria is said to produce about 2.5 million barrels of crude oil daily. The country is the largest producer of oil in Africa and sixth largest in the world. The country’s oil-producing states are: Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross River, Ondo, Edo, Imo and Abia.

It is inexcusable that many communities in the region that produces the country’s oil wealth reflect not only a lack of prosperity, but also perplexing poverty. It is noteworthy that President Muhammadu Buhari last month apologised to communities in Kula Kingdom, Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State. Buhari, who was represented by his Special Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Ita Enang, said: “On behalf of the nation, I apologise to you. We will change for the better. We will not only build schools, hospitals and provide potable water for you; we will provide complete communities for you.”

What is the connection between the Niger-Delta’s underdevelopment and scandalous contract awards? What are the anti-corruption agencies waiting for?  Not only the Senator who allegedly got 300 NDDC contracts, but also those who gave him too many contracts should be probed and exposed.

THE incomparable Kongi wrote Ibadan: the Penkelemes Years, his participant-observer take on the Western Region political crisis, which started in 1962.

The Action Group (AG), that region’s ruling party, had fallen upon themselves, with the opposing Awolowo and Akintola factions feuding to the very death; anarchy was loosed upon the land and the polity became a peculiar mess!  Ibadan was the epicenter of that fierce battle.

A certain Adegoke Adelabu, aka Penkelemesi, maverick politician and charismatic Ibadan native, inspired the title of that book. Perhaps more than anyone dead or living, Adelabu epitomized the push-and-pull, the brawn and wit, of Ibadan politics.

Now, another Penkelemesi, Adebayo Adelabu, the grandson of the original, is right in the vortex of battle, as the latest “war”, on the Oyo front, broke out on November 11.  That day, the Court of Appeal outed with a sensational verdict.

It allowed the appeal of Adelabu, the APC candidate in the March 9 governorship election for Oyo State, ruling that he didn’t get a fair hearing from the lower tribunal.  It therefore dismissed the tribunal’s judgment as “perverse”,  and set it aside.  But it refused to make any consequential ruling against Seyi Makinde, the PDP candidate who was declared winner and who, at least for now, still sits pretty.

A o ti seyi si, penkelemesi? — what do we make of this peculiar mess?   There is certainly a peculiar mess about Ibadan politics !  That clearly shows in how the two opposing camps have reacted to verdict.

The more upbeat  has been the Adelabu camp, buoyed by its moral, if not definitive legal victory.  Enthused Ayobami Adejumo, the Oyo APC publicity secretary: “The verdict given on Monday was unambiguous, apt and sound enough to convince any informed mind about the genuineness of our claim that Makinde’s declaration as the winner of the March 9 poll was done by INEC in error.”

Unambiguous, apt and sound — but not enough to make any unambiguous, apt and sound consequential call for the appellant?  No matter!  The Penkelemesi camp is in celebration mood — until the Supreme Court decides one way or another.

The Makinde camp appears the more crestfallen, though it tries to cover its panic with bluff and bluster, so apparent in its legalistic stacking of cards.

“In its ruling, the Appeal Court refused to grant any of the three reliefs sought by the APC candidate,” countered Taiwo Adisa, Governor Makinde’s chief press secretary.  “The court refused to nullify the election; it refused to order a fresh election and it also refused to order a retrial of the petition.”

True.  But if it was that trite, why the long lecture?  Panic!

Then the final bluster, from both sides, starting with APC: We appeal to “the good people of the state … to remain calm and resist being provoked … by the PDP government … who are apparently occupying the Agodi Government House on borrowed time.”

And the counter-paranoia, from the governor’s spokesman: “We … enjoin the people of Oyo State to ignore the doctored reports in some media outlets, which are merely quoting the judgment … out of context.”

Oyo penkelemesi, aa ti seyi si?  All roads lead to the Supreme Court, to resolve this umpteenth peculiar mess!