Category: Hardball

By Hardball

Her simple honesty put the outrage in its grim perspective; and more than justified the severe penalty for the sex beast.

Justice Sybil Nwaka quoted her testimony in these gripping, haunting words: “In our present case, the victim said Adenekan put his finger in her ‘wee-wee’, put his ‘wee-wee’ in her ‘wee-wee’, and his mouth in her ‘wee-wee’ .”

Geez!  How can a trusted adult put a child under his care, through those filthy and varied sexual acts?

It is the making of a convicted paedophile, Adegboyega Adenekan, 47, who just earned 60 years in the slammer — no tears!  But the question is: how many more paedophiles are still loose in our schools, in a society where shame-powered silence shields these heinous criminals from the law?

Adenekan, a former supervisor at Chrisland School, Lagos, was said to have committed these acts, while defliling a child a month short of her third birthday, at one of the school’s branches, located in Victoria Garden City (VCG), Lekki, Lagos.

You have got to break out in cold sweat, seeing the way the man must have experimented, at different times, with different styles, on a poor child, in his charge!

You can also imagine the trauma of the girl’s parents, and the life-long impact that abuse might have on the poor child, if it is not well handled.  But you must also commend the parents for following through with the case and ensuring justice was done.

What of the shame Adenekan has brought his immediate family? Does she have a wife and children?  If he does, how would his wife and children face the society, knowing her husband and their father was the heinous paedophile just convicted — and for good reason too!

What of the trust in the school system?  Sure, Adenekan couldn’t have been the only paedophile in the system.  How can the schools system be the same again, if parents are not absolutely sure there are no sexual perverts on the prowl, hiding under the cover of teachers and other school staff, not unlike the biblical wolf in sheep skin?

Adenekan’s conviction is a new low. But it also a wake-up call to the emergency of the  sexual abuse of toddlers and minors, which now appears rampant, in our society.  What is not clear, however, is whether it is a new scourge or routine crimes, under-reported in the past, because of conspiratorial silence, pushed by shame.

Whatever it is, it is time to depart from that culture of shameful silence.  It is time to go after every paedophile out there.  It is time to name and shame.

But beyond naming and shaming, some of these incidents could be questions of mental health.  No, mental ill health does not justify sexual pervasion.  That that pervasion is visited on a helpless child makes it even more unpardonable.

Still, in tackling this epidemic, no possible solution should b spared.  Yes, throw the paedophile into the can, and with a vengeance too!  But work on a programme aimed at greatly curbing the menace, if not completely eliminating it.

Adenekan has shown the paedophile is no good to anyone: the family of his victim, the criminal’s own family, the school which name he has blighted and the society at large which cringes from his depravity.

Let his conviction therefore signal a new wave of aggressive campaigns against this evil.

Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi’s re-introduced social security scheme for indigent elderly citizens in the state provides food for thought.  He had introduced the scheme in 2012 during his first term from 2010 to 2014.

There was a pause when Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost to Ayo Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who governed the state a second time from October 2014 to October 2018. Fayose discontinued Fayemi’s social security scheme for needy senior citizens, which is known as Owo Arugbo.

Fayemi was reelected governor and inaugurated in October 2018. To mark the first anniversary of his administration, he re-introduced the social security scheme on October 16. Under the old scheme, 20,000 old people from 65 years of age got N5,000 naira each monthly. Fayemi was quoted as saying: “You will all recall that when we started the programme, it was the first of its kind in sub-Sahara Africa. It attracted criticisms and commendations alike.”

Read Also: Taxing the air we breathe?

Explaining the new scheme, Fayemi said:  ”From the register, a total of 13,813 elderly citizens and physically challenged adults who are 18 years and above, representing the first batch, have been selected as beneficiaries of the grant. Each beneficiary will receive a quarterly grant of N20, 000 for every three months and payments will be through their bank accounts.” The inclusion of physically challenged people from 18 years of age is an improvement.

When Fayemi’s social security scheme was first introduced, the beneficiaries got N5, 000 each monthly. This was in 2012, seven years ago. This time, at N20, 000 every three months, the beneficiaries will get a little above N5, 000 each per month. The difference between N5, 000, the old monthly allowance, and about N6, 666, which the new allowance amounts to monthly, is very small, indeed insignificant.

If the scheme is supposed to provide succour to the beneficiaries, how well can it do so if the monthly benefit is not significantly different from what it was seven years ago? It is unclear whether the Fayemi administration considered the insignificance of the increase in the social security allowance. It is unclear how many people will eventually benefit from the re-introduced scheme.

It is said that half a loaf is better than none, which suggests that getting N5, 000 or N6, 666 is better than getting nothing at all. But it is also said that if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well, which suggests that the Fayemi administration can do better.

SPARE the rod, says the Bible, and spoil the child.  Hardball can’t readily pick out the Koranic equivalent of this charge; but the severity of the discipline, in many traditional Koranic schools, seems to lend credence to this charge.

Of course, there is also the all-important distinction between what is lawful and what is legitimate.  Tales from the three Islamic normative centres (two in Kaduna and one in Daura) speak of clearly lawless “disciplinary” actions — excessive beatings, alleged rapes, torture, forced lesbianism, etc.

But then how do you reconcile these misdeeds to the fact that — and these are also tales emanating from these torture centres — that many parents and guardians found it legitimate to send their children and wards there, to be “disciplined”?

When then does legitimacy aid illegality?  Maybe when discipline spirals out to cruelty!  It is the classical abuse of the centrality of discipline, in any educational system: traditional, Christian and Islamic.

The Nation of October 22 gave an update on a running story: the odyssey of a Lagos secondary school pupil, Daniel Agboola, which now risks blindness.  He was an SS 2 pupil at the Camp David Group of Schools, in Ogba, near Ikeja, Lagos, when his teacher, on March 29, reportedly flogged him and “damaged his right eye.” It was another bout of discipline gone awry.

While the case is before the courts, the young Agboola is in a race against time to save his vision; with his broke and distraught mother even appealing for funds to get the surgical procedures done.

Now, flip to the Malam Niga Centre, which the Kaduna State government just shut down, and its 147 inmates released, after a police raid, led by Governor Nasir El-Rufai himself.

“There is something they call ‘Gaschember’” volunteered Ibrahim Musa, 32, software engineering graduate and post-graduate student at Gombe State University, who even went into the facility almost out of own volition, because he was having a drug problem.  “They put shackles on our legs.  I was on shackles for six weeks [until] my uncle came … My uncle was made to write an undertaking that I won’t run away …”

Maryam Lawal, 21, from the female wing of Malam Niga Centre: “Hassan beat us, raped us and they make us inhale the smoke that they call medicine [remember Ibrahim Musa’s ‘Gaschember’?] … I don’t know why my father will bring me to this kind of place.”

From Musa, who came in search of drug cure, to Maryam, whose odyssey resulted from severe fatherly love — spare the rod and spoil the child!

Then, the final tale from Hauwa Muhammad, a Nasarawa native but Abuja resident, whose parent thought was losing her life to cocaine.  Again, Hauwa’s nemesis was Musa, son-in-law to the facility owner, who Maryam complained about.

“I was abused several times by the son-in-law of Malam Niga, Hassan Sani Dauda,” Hauwa disclosed. “For his sexual pleasure and desire, Hassan made us make love with ourselves.  I mean, he subjected us to lesbianism and he would watch us for his pleasure” — and that was when Hassan wasn’t busy raping the girls himself!

The government should thoroughly investigate these brazen abuses and severely punish every single person involved.

But we must also critically examine — and eliminate — the socio-religious mores that stamp legitimacy on such torture and rape centres, as acceptable normative and correctional homes.

The same mindset that drove the discipline-minded Lagos teacher to nearly blinding his pupil, is the same that propels the northern torture chambers.

That is the root of the problem.

Fake news is in the news, it seems. But fake news is not news. Two former commissioners under former Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode rubbished a report that they spoke against the ex-governor before the House of Assembly committee investigating the purchase of 820 mass transit buses. The report, published in PM News, was headlined “Ambode shuns Lagos Assembly again, ex-aides indict him.”

Former commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Wale Oluwo, in a letter to the Managing Director of Independent Communications Network Limited, publishers of PM News, complained particularly about a part of the report that said he and the former commissioner for Agriculture, Toyin Suarau, told the committee that many projects, including the Oshodi Transport Interchange, were never captured in the state budget. He described this as “completely false and indeed a misrepresentation of the proceedings.”

Oluwo said:  “For the records, I wish to state the facts as follows: I attended the second session of the Committee proceedings on October 15, 2019. The ex-commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Toyin Suarau and I were called into the Committee room at the same time. So the questions asked both of us were in the open. Suarau was asked questions on the Lagos State Rice Mill project in Imota while I was asked questions on the LED-UK street lights installations (a UK Exim Bank funded project). I answered the committee’s questions to the best of the information available to me and at no time was any of us asked questions on Oshodi interchange or any other project outside the two mentioned above.”

Former commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Olusegun Banjo, said in a statement:  “…the press reports of my testimony before the committee are skewed in such a manner as to suggest that I had been scathingly critical of the last Administration in which I had served and had painted the executive in bad light. It is instructive to note that the operational lapses in the other arms of Government that I also made specific mention of in the course of my testimony before the committee were deliberately ignored and were not reported on by the press in their coverage.”  He accused “a section of the press” of “abdication of a basic tenet of professional journalism- impartial reportage.”

Both reactions suggest that the medium’s report was shamelessly unfactual and unreliable. It is noteworthy that Oluwo asked the medium to investigate the alleged misrepresentation, adding that it should demonstrate that “it is unbiased and capable of staying above the fray in the high-wire political events unfolding in Lagos State.”

The medium needs to respond to the allegation of unprofessionalism, if it cares about its public image.

FORMER Ekiti Deputy Governor, Prof. Kolapo Olusola Eleka’s attempt to play to the gallery, over Ekiti’s far-from-satisfactory 12th placing at the WAEC SSS results just released, has got to be most disingenuous.  Indeed, what the good professor postures is nothing but professorial illiteracy.

Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi, represented by “home boy” and current Speaker Funminiyi Afuye of the Ekiti legislature, was speaking on new policies to right the WAEC result wrongs, so that Ekiti could return to its immediate past elite league of top performers.  Fayemi was opening a new school at Ikere-Ekiti.

Pronto, Eleka jumped into the fray — no crime!  The setting was local.  The governor’s representative was an Ikerre son.  The school being commissioned was on Ikere soil.  Damn Eleka, if he would allow a rival local partisan steal the thunder.  After all, all politics is local!

But alas!  His take?  Fayemi should follow Fayose’s educational “policies”!  How disingenuous!   Did Fayose have any worthwhile educational policy — or any policy at all — aside from fobbing the so-called “mekunnu” (dirt poor) with his empty but explosive “stomach infrastructure” — visiting neighbourhood buka to wolf down  ponmo and shaki, quaffing shepe (local liquor), with local Okada riders cum street enforcers, in an unabashed show of crude populism?

To be sure, Ekiti towering show in good WAEC performance happened on Fayose during his inglorious second coming — that’s right, “.happened”, because Fayose had absolutely nothing to do with it.  The architect was Fayemi, in his first coming, who invested in school infrastructure (gifting pupils laptops to start with, among other learning tools) and investing no less in teachers’ welfare, even spawning a special deal for rural teachers.

But no thanks to voter fickleness and tantrums, which threw out Fayemi after one term, even if his developmental policies were first-rate, Fayose was the ultimate beneficiary of those investments.  That would have been tolerable if Fayose had continued and deepened the deal, but no!  He chalked up the plaudits but junked the policies that fetched him those undeserved bragging rights, clearly too busy with his so-called “stomach infrastructure”.

Well, one year after Fayose had completed his undistinguished tenure, and Ekiti had snapped from their costly reverie by rejecting Eleka at the polls, the Fayose emptiness has returned to plague Ekiti children.

Ekiti slips on the WAEC SSS perching order.  Ironically, by inverse logic, Fayemi becomes the prime victim of Fayose’s neglect, just as Fayose had become the merry beneficiary of Fayemi’s promptitude four years earlier.

Yeah, the luckless Ekiti children are the direct victims.  But the actual rebuke is for the Ekiti adults that made a rotten electoral choice by allowing Fayose to mess them up again, for the second time in eight years.  It is Fayemi’s tough luck that he must start re-building again — from scratch in 2019 — a tower he would long have completed, had he gained a second term in 2014!

Which is why Eleka’s “Fayose’s policy” crap is rather rich!  Which policy?  Another round of future-ruining “stomach infrastructure”, while the good professor was mum, while the government in which he was No. 2, inflicted a lack of future on Ekiti school children and youths?

Policy, my foot — and the former deputy governor had better thank his stars that this polity lacks institutional memory!  He would have had a full measure for his galling professorial illiteracy!

JUST as well that the president has ordered an audit of one of the great wastelands of this democracy. That is, the Niger Delta Development Commission. While he has said this in the presence of the governors of the region, it is also clear that the governors balked and cried foul when the same president announced the new board and projected parochial and selfish interests on who should have been on that board.

Some of them are even working in cahoots with some of Buhari’s ministers and so-called loyalists to undermine during at the senate clearing even though it is a painstakingly selected and representative board.

But it is this sort of affray that underlines why the NDDC is so fraught. It is why competing interests would not allow worthy projects to bloom, good ideas a room, and the suffering people enjoy a little boom in their lives.

Before, the law allowed contractors to get their full money before executing their work. It became a chasm of evil in that the contractors took away all the money, did not do even a one percent of contract and came back for more. It was a cesspool of impunity. That was stopped, and now the NDDC board allows part payment. Even at that, contracts continue to be abandoned.

So, it was well that the Buhari order stretches from 2001 to 2019, and that includes up till this moment. For the news has stunk like the polluted waters of the region that rather than issue great deals, the NDDC disbursed a scandalous N1.9 billion to clear water hyacinth from the region. Water hyacinth? And for N1.9 billion? And the deal is connected with one person’s companies.

Is that not crazy, and in spite of the outcry, that decision has not been changed. The Niger Delta has pollution and other environmental challenges, and getting rid of water hyacinth is not one of them, and how is it that you have to milk the purse to get rid of some pesky herbs. Baffling.

The roads are in poor shapes. Navigating the marshy, soggy terrain is a task for the miraculous at times, so rather than think of highways, bridges, great educational infrastructure, housing, and the provision of templates for jobs for the lowly, we are seeing this abuse of priorities?

Even the militants have begun to seethe over a sort of gangster overthrow of the region’s treasure. Even recently, an arbitrary job recruitment of over 300 staff full of cronyism and nepotism turned out to be road block  to harmony in the region and it was withdrawn thankfully.

It is only fair that all the misdoings at the region’s most favoured commission should be probed, and one of the questions to be asked is whether the commission should return to the supervision of the presidency, Hardball thinks this would rein in this excess of power show and rapacity in the NDDC

AN Edo State government advertorial, which Osarodion Ogie, Esq., signed, published in The Nation of October 16, sure made interesting reading.  It had to do with reported attacks and counter-attacks, with Adam Oshiomhole, the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the middle of the storm.

News has earlier filtered that some elements massed on Oshiomhole’s Benin GRA home gate, chanting anti-Oshiomhole songs and angling for a showdown with the chairman.  Though a counter-element, which the news described as “APC youths” came to neutralize that threat, the Oshiomhole camp claimed the excitement, which could easily have turned ugly, emanated from the Edo Governor, Godwin Obaseki’s camp.

Shortly after — and that would explain the Edo government’s advertorial — other elements massed to attack another APC gathering.  According to the advert, it was an ongoing party meeting, in Ikpoba Okha local government area.  Two days after, the attacking waves roared again at Protea Hotel [in Benin City, Hardball presumes] and the victim of that was Taiwo Akerele, the chief of staff to the governor.

Now, it would appear the Edo season of attacks and counter-attacks: the sitting governor on one side, the former governor and APC national chairman, on the other.  Indeed, those the gods would destroy, they first make mad!

At least, the state government which rather blithely dismissed the first Oshiomhole attack as a non-issue, is concerned enough to buy space to comment on the second and third (against local Edo APC elements and the Edo governor’s key pointsman) to explain the incidents and put them in perspectives.

Now, when a sitting government that controls legal coercion starts grumbling about “thuggery and hooliganism” against it own figures, in own public spaces, you know the problem, whatever it is, is veering into the streets, from the political caucus room, where it could be controlled and curtailed.  Those the gods want to destroy!

To start with, the government’s advertorial is rich in cant.  You don’t, in one breath, condemn “the resurgence of thuggery or hooliganism in any form or guise” and, in another breath, caution Oshiomhole, the near-victim of the first of such hooliganism, to “make reasonable effort to ensure that hoodlums do not take advantage of his presence to unleash mayhem.”  If he wasn’t attacked first, one wondered if there would have been a retaliatory show — perhaps to show who owns the land!

So, should the Oshiomhole camp, citing the first attack which it alleged came from thugs sympathetic to the governor, buy another newspaper space, and employ similar cant to put the Obaseki government on the spot?

As for Oshiomhole, former governor and now APC national chairman, must he fight to finish, over a gubernatorial mentee clearly going sour?  Would he not be cutting his nose in rage to spite his face, given that he is national chairman and Edo is his base?  Do you start a civil war at home, yet stay strong on the national front?

Besides, where are the party elders, state and national?  It’s time to call both parties to order.  If they don’t, it could well be doom foretold for their party in the state.  As the cliche goes, a house divided against itself won’t stand.

Those the gods would destroy …

YET again, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is in the news for the wrong reasons. An October 13 report shows why so many policemen and policewomen appear in shabby uniforms and other clothing.

In the 2020 Appropriation Bill that President Muhammadu Buhari presented to the joint session of the National Assembly, the police budget for uniform and other clothing is N571, 921,344, but the figure is unlikely to change the shabby uniforms of so many policemen and policewomen.

An Assistant Superintendent of Police with the Ekiti State Command, who has been in the NPF for more than 20 years, was quoted as saying:  “I have been buying my uniform since I left the Police College. We are aware that there is always a budget for uniform but we do not know what becomes of the money earmarked for it. In fact, if you ask any police, they will tell you they are aware, but people don’t get the uniform. So, where does the money go?”

Another Assistant Superintendent of Police with the Federal Capital Territory Command, Abuja, who has spent about 17 years in the Force, was quoted as saying: “I’m aware that we are supposed to be given a new uniform, a belt, shoes, beret, lanyard, among others every two years, but even people at the top know that those things don’t get to us. Imagine, with my level in the Force if I could be complaining like this, imagine the fate of junior officers.”

The figures for eight years show that the police had budgeted N9.88bn for uniform and other clothing: N2.01bn for 2010; N1.94bn for 2011; N1.36bn for 2013; N710.8m for 2015; N1.99bn for 2016; N752.5m for 2017; N573.22m for 2018; and N543.22m for 2019. The figures for uniform and other clothing for 2012 and 2014 were unavailable, the report said.   The total allocation to police formations and commands in these years was N2.47tn.

When the budgets for uniform and other clothing do not translate into uniform and other clothing, so many policemen and policewomen will appear in shabby uniforms and other clothing.

It is scandalous that the police leadership asks for funds for uniform and other clothing, gets the funds, but fails to provide the items. It is scandalous that such leadership failure happens year in, year out.

Policemen and policewomen in shabby uniforms and other clothing reflect a police leadership that needs a lesson in accountability.

NEWS came through on Sunday that organized Labour is doing “anticipatory mobilization”, for all its state affiliates to go on strike, should its talk with the Federal Government, slated for October 15, break down.

The Nation of October 13, quoting an “Agency Reporter”, reported that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in a circular Emmanuel Ugboaja, its general secretary signed, asked its state branches to go on a nationwide strike from October 16, should the October 15 talks collapse.

Yeah, the circular quoted a joint communique, by three Labour centres, giving some earlier notice.  Yet, the loudly quiet threat of blackmail was unmistakable — give in to our way, or else!  Talk about gun-boat collective bargaining, and bad faith of the crudest crust!  Couldn’t Labour have been more optimistic before threatening a strike?

Still, it would appear Labour languishes in its lack of institutional memory.  Had it been otherwise, it should have realized it had traversed this barren path too many times before: declare a take-it-or-leave-it strike, put a virtual gun to the government’s head, extract an unworkable deal and declare a pyrrhic victory!  A few months down the line, however, the merriment turns ashen — there is just no cash to pay the expected windfall!

Besides, what is that English saying about being wary of the Greek and his gift?  This threatened strike isn’t about the minimum wage per se.  That one is settled, with a law okaying N30, 000 per worker.

It is rather about the consequential adjustments across the board, not for the lowest paid worker but for others from salary Grade Level 07 to 17.  Labour wants 29% increase for the GL 07-14 bracket (to the Federal Government’s offer of 11 %); and 24 % for GL 15-17 (to the government’s 6.5 %).

Well, Labour will have none of such nonsense as where the government would get the funds to pay, especially in states already labouring to pay workers.  In their rippling patriotism, and ardent love for worst paid workers, they don’t even “give a damn” (to quote President Goodluck Jonathan in his presidential ribaldry days), if the polity heads for another salary payment crisis.

But did Hardball say “worst paid workers”?  Well, that’s the news and that’s where the Labour Greek comes bearing his gift.  You would have thought all the excitement was on behalf of the least paid.  But o no!  It is more about consequential salary adjustments, for the comparably not-so-poorly-paid.  Indeed, patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel!

Labour screams “minimum wage”.  But behind that, it tries to spin a general salary review.  Still, it doesn’t ask itself where the cash would come from, without recourse to productivity, especially in an economy trying to find its feet.  When Dr. Chris Ngige, the Labour and Employment minister, talked of the Federal Government opening its books to all, Labour sneered at that arrant nonsense.  Get the cash — or else!

The government should get Labour the best deal practicable under the present circumstances.  But Labour too should stop belabouring old habits of extracting unimplementable salary increases that often end as useless paper works, dispensing agonies to primed up workers, who suddenly find out the promised salary el dorado is nothing but a cruel mirage.

Let both sides get down to serious but honest negotiations.  Labour can’t pretend to wielding the strike machine gun at the negotiation table and still kids itself it does collective bargaining.  Labour, it’s time to get serious and play less to the populist gallery.

IT’s good news that the police know the whereabouts of the six female students and two staff of the Engravers College, Kaduna, kidnapped on October 3.

Kaduna State Police Commissioner Ali Janga said, a week after their shocking seizure: “We are negotiating with the kidnappers to rescue these students and their teachers, we know the location of the kidnappers but we do not want to endanger their lives.”

How can Janga talk of rescuing the kidnapees and also negotiating with the kidnappers? Kidnap victims who are released by kidnappers, possibly after a ransom is paid, can’t be said to have been rescued.  It is when kidnap victims are set free by the police without having to pay a ransom to kidnappers that they can be said to have been rescued.

Janga explained why the police are negotiating with the kidnappers: “Most of these kidnappers are operating under the influence of hard drugs, so killing is nothing to them; this is why we are still negotiating with them and as soon as the victims are released, we will go after them. We are assuring the people of Kaduna State that we will arrest these kidnappers very soon.”

The plan to go after the kidnappers after the kidnapees have been released, and a ransom possibly paid after negotiation, raises questions about how the police are handling this kidnapping.

The six schoolgirls, the school’s Vice Principal, Academics, and House Mistress, were kidnapped from the Engravers College in Kakau Daji, Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State. The kidnappers at first demanded a ransom of N50 million for the eight kidnapees, then    demanded a ransom of N10 million for each of the kidnapees.

Initially,  the police spokesman in Kaduna State, DSP Yakubu Sabo,  had said “the Command immediately mobilised combined teams of Anti-kidnapping, SARS, and conventional police to the area for possible rescue of the victims and arresting the perpetrators of the unfortunate incident,” adding that “IGP’s Intelligence Response Team (IRT) has been contacted for technical support.”

If the result of involving all the security teams that Sabo mentioned is the information that the police have located the kidnapees and are negotiating with the kidnappers, then it is a poor result indeed.

Locating the kidnap victims isn’t enough. The police are expected to get them out of the grip of their kidnappers. It’s bad news that the kidnapees are still in captivity.