The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Mr. Lecturer!

    EEDRIS Abdulkareem, in his musical heydays, set the charts blazing with the number, Mr. Lecturer — the ribaldry of the scholarly mentor that turned the female student under his care into to some sexual fringe benefit!

    Flip back to the Old English era of Geoffrey Chaucer, and hear the distant rebuke of the upright but humble Parson, pastor at some rural parish of his day, in Catholic England: if gold rusts, what would iron do?  That was golden query, en route to Canterbury, in Chaucer’s Prologue to Canterbury Tales.

    Both Eedris and Chaucer just echoed in the University of Lagos, as a lecturer was caught in a BBC undercover video, crooning of a cold room, in that university’s Staff Club, where tender girls were alleged taken for forceful fondle, in an unequal quest for the forbidden to fruit that sent Adam scuttling from the magical Garden of Eden!

    That sting operation, of a stunning documentary, has stung everyone into new restlessness, over the loud silence on sex-for-mark scandals, in our universities and other tertiary institutions.

    It sure is not pretty!

    Unilag has suspended the lecturer in the eye of the storm.  The church, where Mr. Lecturer pastors (with due acknowledgement of Eedris’s trademark!) has also thrown Mr. Pastor under the bus.  Lechery, the church declares, has no place in its holy tabernacle!  The university has even slammed shut the area housing the so-called cold room, seething with hot illicit pleasure!

    Even Kiki Mordi, the BBC reporter — call her the slay queen of Mr. Lecturer-Pastor if you will! — has even been reported hinting at reportage mimicking grim, ugly reality: how she could possibly have been a victim of such lecherous foray, which had reportedly halted her degree programme.  Meanwhile, reported death threats were her lot, for her present laudable odyssey of exposing sexual bullies — or at worst sexual perverts — preying on students under their care!

    Still, before you throw the first stone and zestfully demonize Unilag as hated bastion of hateful Mr. Lecturers, just remember that cynical Nigerian quip: all of us are rogues; but he caught red-handed is the barawo!

    This condemnable practice has been around for eons; and is more wide-spread and reckless as most care to admit, being protected by conspiratorial silence and institutional conspiracy to protect the culprits, on sickly peer esprit de corps.  Imagine this outrage: a lecturer set on “slaying” his female student (or fail her if the girl refused), ordering the victim to book and pay for the hotel space!

    It’s even more depressing that, from the BBC expose, the abuse appears to be fast becoming a West Africa epidemic, as another don, from a Ghana university, was also caught, in riveting Technicolor, rolling under the illicit hay!

    As a journalistic feat, this BBC documentary is another proof for the imperative of adequate capitalization, if the media must do its bit in ridding the society of its vices.  How many local media houses could muster the staying power that sustain this BBC sting reportage?

    Sexual abuse of female tertiary students must be frontally attacked and stamped out.  Universities should be centres of academic excellence, not bastions of sexual perverts.

  • Rule-benders

    AN argument by a member of the House of Representatives showed shallow thinking.  According to a report, another member, Haruna Dederi, had observed that a quorum was not formed on the floor as members debated a motion on drug abuse on October 3. Dederi had noted that a quorum of 120 members was not formed in the 360-member lower federal legislature.

    Then the member who displayed shallow thinking presented his shallow argument. The report said: “But Minority Leader Ndudi Elumelu said a quorum cannot be determined by the number of members in the Chamber. According to him, “some members have come, signed in the chamber and left for committee assignments and oversight.”

    Question: Is a quorum determined by the number of members present, or the number of members who had “signed in the chamber” but were absent?  The answer is obvious. But it isn’t obvious to Elumelu and other lawmakers who think like him.

    The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, had to straighten the crooked thinking. He is reported to have “noted that the usual excuse to continue plenary when the quorum is not formed is wrong,” adding that the legislators should obey the rules of the House. Specifically, he highlighted Order 4 Rule 2, which says the quorum of the House shall be one-third of all the members of the House.

    Gbajabiamila said:  “If the intention was that people should come at 10am, sign and go; then, we’re kidding ourselves. We cannot be conducting sitting with 10 members. Hon. Elemelu, I hereby rule you out of order.” The Speaker’s words were in order.  The rule of the House regarding a quorum means that when there is no quorum, there is no proper gathering.

    Then the Speaker, instead of being firm, yielded to the same shallowness he had opposed. He added:  “On the issue of committee work, I’m inclined to agree with that. That’s important and part of sitting of the House. But just to play safe and for future, move for suspension of the rule so we can continue.”

    Suspending the rule suggests bending the rule, even breaking the rule. This explains why the question of a quorum remains a question. This explains why some lawmakers think a quorum includes members “who signed in the chamber” but are not in attendance.

    When there is no quorum, it likely affects the quality of debates in the House. When there is no quorum, what happens is a travesty of the legislative process. Indeed, without a quorum, the elected representatives demonstrate that they don’t understand why they were elected.

  • Enemy in the house

    After the media had blown hot, feeding its readers, listeners and viewers with tales of “Fulani herdsmen” holding criminal monopoly in kidnapping, latest discoveries have shown the kidnapping enemy-in-chief is nowhere but indoor.

    A news story broke on October 5, speaking of a kidnap attempt gone awry, in the Ajowa, Akunu and Auga Akoko areas of the Akoko North West local government, of Ondo State. The botched crime led to the arrest of seven alleged kidnappers, after their escaped victims spilled the beans on them.

    One Alhaji Jamiu Zakariyahu, a local secondary teacher, returning from evening prayers from a neighbouring mosque, was seized and tossed into a kidnap vehicle, around 8 pm on October 2.  He was thereafter marched deep into the bush, where he found other kidnapped victims tied down like rams; and their kidnappers phoning and negotiating ransoms — starting with N10 million but eventually settling for N250, 000, with distraught families.

    But then, the virtual impossible happened: some of the kidnapped sprung themselves, made a dash for it and alerted local hunters, who also alerted the security agencies.  By the time the heat cooled, seven kidnap suspects were themselves in legal chains.

    But the real news was that the alleged kidnap kingpin, now in police net, was the son of a traditional chief in the area — talk of the enemy in the house!  That shock find moved Rasak Rauf, the police area commander for Ikare, to appeal to the locals to seek synergy with security agencies, to rid the area of kidnappers and other criminals.

    Before this shock find and sorry pass, you could imagine how many triumphant local kidnappers had grossed millions in illicit Naira ransom, only to join his co-local folks to rail and gnash their teeth over the evil of “Fulani herdsmen” kidnappers!  Should a voice demur, (s)he would most probably have risked being a pariah — the enemy of the community for bucking the general hysteria!

    That way, the bout of kidnapping stretched for much too long, with a hysteria-soaked media, in patriotic anger, busy luring the authorities away from the real culprits, in their maniacal bashing of the Fulani!  It was the dress rehearsal in local xenophobia, before the one that grabbed global attention, from South Africa!

    Hardball by no means says there were no Fulani involved in the horrendous South West kidnapping, which took the space by storm and virtually knocked everyone dead.  But could it not have been trite that they couldn’t have mastered the crevices of the local forest and illicit business fort without the collusion and cooperation of local Judases?

    This is trite but it bears restating, given the scandal of the emotive disgrace that plagued the kidnapping crisis: let the media report crime as crime, and forget where the criminal comes from.

    That way, you get the job done by not creating a future crisis.  Only God knows the future price this polity would pay for this Fulani scapegoating — after all, no people boast a monopoly of wilful hysteria, or even ethnic rascality.

    However, to the Federal Government that controls the Police and other security agencies, the lingering cases of free-wheeling kidnapping is absolutely unacceptable.

    Now that we know every part of the country has contributed to the kidnap menace, it’s time the central government worked out a solid security net with the local folks.  Now that we are done with media-driven, wilful self-deceit, it’s time to show these criminals that kidnapping doesn’t pay.  We must inflict dire punishment on these criminals.

  • Homeless

    IN a sense, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and their deputies are homeless. According to an October 3 report, President of the Senate Ahmad Lawan, and Speaker of the House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila, live in their private homes, instead of official residences, five months after the inauguration of the 9th National Assembly.

    According to the report, “While Lawan still resides in his house in Maitama area of Abuja, Omo-Agege remains in his Guzape home also in the FCT.” Omo-Agege is the Deputy Senate President.

    The report also said: “It was gathered that Gbajabiamila still lives in one of the former official residences in the Apo Legislative Quarters, which were sold to members of the 6th National Assembly by the Federal Government. Wase lives in the Gwarimpa area of the nation’s capital.” Ahmed Idris Wase is the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

    These presiding officers of the National Assembly are entitled to official residences like the heads of the other arms of the Federal Government, but their official residences are still under construction, more than eight years after construction work began. The cost of the official residences is “estimated at N27.1bn upon completion.”

    The presiding officers of the 9th National Assembly are in this situation because ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration had, on November 30, 2010, approved the sale of the official residences of the presiding officers of the sixth National Assembly in the Apo Legislative Quarters. The beneficiaries at the time were former senate president David Mark; former deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu; former Speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole; and former Deputy Speaker, Usman Nafada.

    Those who sold these official residences and those who bought them were unthinking people in power.  By privatising these official residences, they showed that they could sell and buy anything.

    Since then, the construction of new official residences for the leadership of the National Assembly has been work in progress. “It was reliably gathered that construction of the official residences of the presiding officers of the National Assembly was slowed down for financial reasons,” the report said.

    It’s nearly a decade since the former official residences of the leadership of the National Assembly were privatised. They shouldn’t have been sold in the first place; and they shouldn’t have been bought.  The selling and the buying amounted to corruption. The sellers and the buyers were corrupt.

  • Ajimobi done talking!

    Breaking news: Abiola Ajimobi, perhaps the most colourful — and most formidable — talker of his political generation, is done talking!

    Now howzat, to throw in that cricket-speak?  Would Oyo politics ever be the same, without the lean, mean, colourful and electric Ajimobi-jive?

    Is this some modern-day political Pauline conversation? Or some political end-time in Oyo State, where the Ajimobi sharp tongue had ruled the roost, these last eight years, where the man with class and dash held gubernatorial court; and would allow no one — not when he had his tongue! — to stand between him and the arduous task of building a modern Oyo State?

    Or just, the mood of Ecclesiastics 3 in the Bible, which pronounces a time for everything — in this case, for Ajimobi, a time to speak and a time to be mute?

    Changing times!  Changing fortunes!  Changing moods!

    Yet, you can’t be but be impressed by the context of the Ajimobi no-more-jiving declaration which, at least in Hardball’s opinion, suggests commendable statesmanship.

    On Sunday September 28, Ajimobi was among 95 honorees at the Catholic St. Mary’s Cathedral, Oke Padre, Ibadan.  Asked to assess Governor Seyi Makinde, his PDP successor, across party lines, the former governor said the virtual impossible: “Yes, I have done eight years of talking; now it is time for me to keep silent and allow the other man to do his job.”

    Wise, deep and statesmanlike — particularly as the Makinde camp appears never passing up an opportunity to rubbish the old czar, as part of its own power-entry strategy.   Ajimobi was indeed a flamboyant, no-nonsense gubernatorial czar, whose sharp tongue never suffered fools gladly.

    But perhaps Ajimobi himself was changing tack, a form of silence is golden — and damning — strategy: to confront all post-gubernatorial barbs with loud and deafening silence.

    Still, before the silent treatment (?), the old tiger appeared to have let go some valedictory, self-lifting music: “I feel really elated, I feel happy, very honoured,” he declared of the Catholic honour, “especially when you are being honoured by the people that we serve and the people that serve God.  When you are recognized by clerics, men of God, it is the best honour you can get.”

    Irrespective of whatever partisan foes’ yarn?  Why does this remind Hardball of King Sunny Ade’s Let Them Say musical hit?

    Still, a mute Ajimobi? Ajimobi done talking?  Hardball can’t quite wrap his hands around it!  The Oyo political tapestry would be all the poorer for it!  The most cutting — and caustic — tongue of his political generation is pushing his democratic right to be mute!

    But golden advice from Hardball: the Makinde camp had better not push their luck too far — or the cutting, raking tongue might just be back!

  • Question for Kashamu

    WHY were items that should have been distributed in Ogun East Senatorial District, Ogun State, in 2016, still at Senator Kashamu Buruji’s Constituency Project Office in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, in 2019, after he had left the Senate? Only Kashamu can answer this question.

    Of course, news of the discovery and recovery of three ambulances and a 500 KVA transformer at Buruji’s Constituency Project Office by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) raised questions about so-called constituency projects.

    ICPC spokesperson Mrs. Rasheedat Okoduwa said in a statement: “The three ambulances which were procured at the cost of N6million each were meant to be supplied to Obada Healthcare Centre, Oke Sopin in Ijebu North Local Government Area; Community Health Centre, Itele in Ijebu East Local Government Area; and Community Health Centre, Ogijo in Sagamu Local Government Area.”

    According to her, “The transformer is the last of an initial 11 meant for distribution to various communities of Ogun East Senatorial District which were procured at the cost of N3.6million each, bringing the total for the entire 11 transformers to N39.5million.”

    In June, ICPC had launched an investigation into N900bn constituency projects in states. The probe is to verify constituency projects executed by immediate past senators and members of the House of Representatives in the 8th National Assembly between 2015 and 2018. The verification will involve 180 key projects in the 36 states, with at least five projects identified for tracking in each state.

    The first phase involves 12 states across the country’s six geo-political zones: Kogi and Benue (North-Central); Adamawa and Bauchi (North-East); Sokoto and Kano (North-West); Imo and Enugu (South-East); Lagos and Osun (South-West); and Akwa Ibom and Edo (South-South).

    About 2, 516 projects were tracked between 2015 and 2017; 918 were not done, 395 were ongoing and 214 could not be located.  ICPC Chairman Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye had remarked: “Constituency projects are intended to be developmental, such as provision of water, rural electrification, rural clinics, schools, community centres and bursary for indigent students. In the light of annual budgetary allocations to constituency projects and based on actual releases by the government, it is firmly believed that the impact of constituency projects on the lives of ordinary Nigerians ought to be more visible…The concern is that in Nigeria, rather than address the needs of constituents, many constituency projects have become avenues of corruption.”

    Interestingly, a concerned citizen had informed ICPC about the items at Buruji’s Constituency Project Office. Again, the question is: Why were the items still there when they should have been distributed in his senatorial district? Kashamu should answer.

  • SMBLF’s new angst

    A body that calls itself the Southern, Middle Belt Leaders Forum (SMBLF) just came out with fresh fears over the National Livestock Transformational Plan (NLTP) and a proposed piece of legislation, the National Waterways Bill.

    But with its clear fixation with “Fulani” Armageddon,  which  appears to have captured and thoroughly eaten up its psyche, it is doubtful if this body is not driven more by a mere bogey, than by sound reason or even common sense.

    The National Economic Council (NEC) just endorsed the implementation of NLTP (voluntary to states); while the National Inland Waterway Bill is before the National Assembly for processing.  But SMBLF opposes both because of anti-Fulani hysterics.

    As far as the body is concerned, there is no fundamental difference between the NLTP and the RUGA project earlier shot down, despite ample explanation that the NLTP was much more robust; captures almost the entire animal husbandry value chain; seeks to modernize livestock farming; and to halt open grazing, which has led to farmer-herders conflicts, consuming thousands of lives.

    But SMBLF is predicting nothing but more Armageddon.  It declared: NLTP “will only escalate the clashes between the indigenous communities and cattle settlers as experiences in southern and Middle Belt areas of Nigeria have shown that the Fulani imports do not assimilate …”

    On the bill, the SMBLF thunders: “the Waterways Bill is another land-grabbing move like RUGA by ethnic supremacists who are working against the unity of the country. Major rivers in Nigeria can be made available, by federal law if the bill is passed to Fulani pastoralists and there is nothing the indigenous people within such vicinities can do about it.”

    How the irony of this statement escaped the SMBLF beggars belief.  It dubs others “ethnic supremacists”.  Yet, its own very words, in this release, ooze ethnic supremacism, fired by blind hate!  That exposes a disturbing Freudian slip, which projects the body as no better, in basic principle and temper, than the Fulani it scalds and loves to hate!  Besides, its explosive and emotive diction is a threat to “national unity”.

    A harvest of hate helps no one. Such blighted activism only pollutes the ethnic waters and breeds needless tension; which could yet lead to more loss of lives.

    SMBLF is at liberty to criticize policies.  But it should do so with facts and figures, not scalding hate.  It has projected too much ethnic toxins in the Nigeria cultural air, such that no one is sure if it hadn’t even planted a huge seed of future ethnic slaughter.  Yet, no people develop, nursing perpetual grudges and hate.

    Let SMBLF — a presumptive pressure group with no elective mandate — switch to a saner path, of hard reason, love and tolerance.

    It started wishing to be part of the solution.  But now, it has clearly become a part of the problem.  The tragedy is it can’t even see it!

  • Reality of malnutrition

    Again, Nigeria is benefitting from external sympathy. About 87, 000 malnourished Nigerians in the troubled north-east region are targeted in a three–year programme funded by the United Kingdom to the tune of 22 million pounds. This intervention, from April 2019 to March 2022, is expected to significantly reduce the significant number of malnourished persons in the region, particularly children and women.

    The Nutrition Manager, United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Sanjay Das, who gave the information to journalists in Maiduguri, Borno State, on September 25, said the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) had released the fund. This isn’t the first time the UK has funded a programme to tackle malnutrition in the region. According to Das, the UK had released $10m for the treatment of about 233,000 malnourished children between October 2018 and May 2019.

    But such foreign funding can’t stop malnutrition if the local authorities fail to tackle the causes. For instance, three years ago, the conflict in the country’s north-eastern region was said to have displaced 2.4 million people and had stretched food insecurity and malnutrition to emergency levels. Sadly, Boko Haram’s reign of terror, particularly in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, has caused a humanitarian crisis.

    In February, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) at Teachers Village Camp in Maiduguri took to the streets to protest food shortage in their camp. The Teachers Village Camp is one of the largest, with about 20,000 displaced persons.

    The protesters, mostly women and children from Baga, Kukawa and Monguno, blocked the Maiduguri-Kano Road and caused a gridlock. They complained that they had been neglected by the government. They also said only three in ten people in the camp got food cards that were issued by the Red Cross earlier that day.

    “It took the intervention of officials of the Mobile Police to bring the situation under control. The policemen dispersed the protesters when they reportedly fired canisters of tear gas at them,” a report said.

    Fatima Ibrahim, an IDP from Kukawa, was quoted as saying: “We are hungry; our children are seriously hungry. Thirty persons share a bag of rice. We are in need of foodstuffs; please tell them to bring food for us.’

    The connection between insecurity and malnutrition in the region is clear enough. But it may well be that the causes of food insecurity are beyond the reality of insecurity.  Help from outside isn’t bad, but help from inside is better.

  • A death so gory!

    A DEATH so gory!  A death so senseless!  A death so diminishing, pushing savages to be savage with envy!

    Pondering the gruesome hacking of Navy Commander Oluwayemisi Ogundana, you begin to wonder where R.M. Ballantyne, in his The Coral Island (1858), got the fib that humankind was essentially good.

    Or how it took two World Wars, of epic madness and gargantuan slaughter, before William Golding plotted his Lord of the Flies (1954), which at last conceded human beings perhaps are worse than beasts, with their wanton propensity to destroy life they cannot not create.

    How can the Ogundana murder happen in 21st century Nigeria, in a military education facility to boot, and you still doubt that Golding was right and Ballantyne was wrong; and that the human is essentially evil?  Well, that would appear a tad too sweeping for there are still very decent human beings.  But isn’t the chain as strong as its weakest parts?

    The suspect killer of Navy Commander Ogundana, reportedly now under arrest, is said to have confessed that he indeed killed her, because she shoved him off an illicit gravy, as chair of the Armed Forces Command Secondary School (AFCSC), Jaji, Kaduna State., Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)!

    Pray, what deal, no matter how sweet, is worth taking life?  But even if you must indulge in such abomination, must you kill a person in her bedroom, chop her body into bits — just imagine the excruciating pains of the dying and the fearsome bestiality of the killer! — pack the grisly cargo in a bag; and drop the odious bag inside a shallow well?

    Good God! Does blood run through the veins of this alleged killer and his accomplices?

    As if that was not grim enough, the suspects must sell off her car, and pretend none the wiser as the school authorities launched a search party for their quarry?

    This is even one moment you tend to be angry at the slow grinding of justice.  If the man has really confessed, and his co-suspects are already nabbed, why the wait?  Still, it is the procedure; and as civilized people, we must bear with it — fair enough!

    Let the military authorities painstakingly investigate this murder and bring the beasts responsible swiftly to justice.  Humankind is far better off without those dregs!

    What soulless killing!  What savagery!

  • Empty ritual

    A new date, meant to renew public hope, doesn’t change the reality of failed targets. According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Group Managing Director, Malam Mele Kyari, the full rehabilitation of the four national refineries will commence in January next year.

    By his schedule, the country’s refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, will refine crude oil at optimum capacity by 2022. The NNPC boss gave the new date on September 21 during a tour of the Port-Harcourt Refining and Petrochemical Company (PHRC).

    Kyari’s words: “We will stick to time; we will deliver this project by 2022. We will commence actual rehabilitation work in January. We will do everything possible between October and December to close out all necessary conditions for us to deliver on that project. I believe that with the support that we have from the shareholders – government of this country, the entire staff of this company and the contractors, I believe it is doable and we will deliver the project.”

    It’s good to set targets, but better to achieve targets. This isn’t the first time a big player in the oil sector has set such targets. This isn’t the first time Nigerians have been told to expect new things in the oil sector. Three years ago, for instance, the then Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, had said the Federal Government’s target was to stop fuel importation in 2019.

    Kachikwu had declared during an interactive session on removal of fuel subsidy organised by Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Lagos in May 2016:  “I am putting so much strength in terms of what do we do with our refineries, because that ultimately is the solution… the plan is that by December 2018 we should have reduced our importation of petroleum product by 60 per cent. This is because we would have brought enough money to get our refineries working to the tune of about 90 per cent.”

    Obviously, things didn’t go according to Kachikwu’s plan. The refineries are not working “to the tune of about 90 per cent,” which should have happened 10 months ago, going by Kachikwu’s timetable. Indeed, Kyari’s announced plan to start “full rehabilitation” of the refineries next year says a lot about the current operational state of the refineries.

    It remains to be seen whether what should be done to achieve Kyari’s targets will be done. Fixing dates for reviving the refineries should not be an empty ritual.