The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Makinde and the Omititun jest

    “OMITITUN” is Yoruba for fresh waters or new spirit, depending on the context of use.  When Candidate Seyi Makinde was running for the Oyo governorship, he used it, as biting campaign slogan, to mean the dawn of a new era, if he won: “Omititun ti de, eja titun wo” — new waters, fresh fishes, better era!

    But the Oyo governor’s partisan opponents really sounded devastating in mockery, when they tweaked “Omititun” to mean fresh flooding — just after a part of Ibadan groaned under flash floods — linking it to the governor’s campaign byte, insinuating the new flood (“omititun”) was rich comeuppance for a disastrous electoral choice.  It was the ultimate sadistic pun!

    “The people of the state of 36-page exercise books,” the sardonic and sadistic pun goes, though put in cutting Oyo Yoruba wit, “it’s a big congratulation on your new big — and destructive flood” — Omititun!

    That was gibberish, of course, as with much on Facebook and allied social media channels.  Flash flooding, after heavy rains, now appears a universal affair, from the United States, to China, to Russia — no thanks to the plague of climate change, fired by virulent global warming.

    But trust cynical Nigerians, waiting for just any tool to unleash and blame a present order, just because they are political foes!  Anything would do to skew situations and poisons minds!  That’s how Nigerian politics rolls!

    Still, the Oyo governor, in a way, has himself — or more exactly, his spin doctors — to blame for this blistering though bizarre attack.  When you go on a spin over-drive to sell yourself, blame no one if you eventually shackle yourself to spin: no matter what you do or not do.  Spin gives, spin takes!

    Makinwa has done some things right since he assumed office.  To be fair, those are sweet low-hanging fruits, to shape your new government and make your electors happy.  Morning shows the day, goes the popular saying.

    The trouble though, is when you go on an over-drive to spin such, cast your predecessor(s) as empty heads, and shape yourself as new and eternal magical kid in town.

    Enjoy your moment, kid!  But prepare for the mo(u)ring after — the long hangover, with its splitting  headache, after the raucous party of promise had collapsed; and your people are sore and bitter, with your perceived non-delivery and general angst!

    As the Makinde government makes some real fantastic claims — of, for instance, printing some millions of textbooks for free distribution to school pupils; as well as building (note: not finishing) some model schools, within its first 100 days, without recourse to the efforts of the immediate previous Ajimobi government — it starts casting itself as a political shaman.

    Shamans are great when the trick is right and the magic gels.  But they are the very Devil — charlatans from the pit of hell — when the magic unravels.  Any government that goes on a spin over-drive, as Makinde does now, just leaves itself open for a vicious sucker punch.

    Makinde is somewhat reminiscent of the opening months of Ogun’s Gbenga Daniel (Ogun State governor, 2003-2011), whose spell of spin — over some laudable opening strides, to be sure — snared quite a few.  But the opening honeymoon turned nothing but gall in the end.

    Governor Makinde should stay focused, concentrate on his job and do less of spin.  That’s the narrow way to true legacy.

    This present way of media noise, over just about anything, is the political wide and merry way.  It leads nowhere but self-distraction and eventual perdition.

  • Fix the pothole

    SIXTEEN cows died following a vehicular collision at “Moshalashi Bus Stop along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway,” a report said. The cows were not supposed to die in that manner, but they did. No human life was lost, but human lives could have been lost.

    The September 17 accident happened “around 6:30am” and involved “a fully loaded mass-carrier bus popularly called ‘molue’ and a lorry packed with 32 cows.”  According to the report, “The bus was heading to Oshodi area of Lagos State, while the lorry was heading to Abattoir when the accident happened… the drivers of both vehicles were trying to avoid a deep pothole at Moshalashi bus stop when the accident happened, triggering a traffic snarl for hours.”

    How deep was the pothole reported to have caused the collision? How did the pothole cause the collision? An eye-witness was quoted as saying: “There is a big pothole here in Moshalashi bus stop. The lorry carrying the cows first partially hit the bus breaking some of its glass, all the passengers ran out of the bus and there was no loss of life. It was while the lorry driver was trying to prevent further falling on the bus and was trying to move out of the pothole that it fell and 16 of the cows died on the spot. The lorry driver fled the scene and was nowhere to be found.”

    What is a cow’s life worth? The 16 cows that died were valued at over N5m by the owner of the lorry, Sulaimon Olarenwaju, who lamented that the police had towed his lorry to Alagabdo Police Station. “It was not as if the lorry driver intentionally caused the accident, the pothole caused it, I don’t know why my lorry is not released, they should please release my lorry and not ask me to pay for it,” he said.

    Who or what is to blame for the accident and the death of the cows? The police seized the lorry, which suggests that the lorry driver is to blame. What about the pothole, the “deep” and “big” pothole?  The police are not thinking about the pothole, obviously. Who is supposed to ensure that there is no pothole at Moshalashi Bus Stop, or anywhere else? Who is thinking about potholes and the deaths they can cause, even if the dead in this case are cows? What if human lives had been lost?  Who should fix the pothole?

  • BOS, conk environmental outlaws

    IT is amazing how life imitates literature. The Lagos refuse crisis somewhat reminds one of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  Apart from the general admission, after two savage World Wars (1914-1918: WW I; 1939-1945, WW II), that man might not be inherently good, after all, the novel often cited as the main work that won Golding the Nobel Prize for Literature, also showed how even the best trained and cultured of persons tend to lapse into atavism, if the environment is radically tweaked.

    In Lord of the Flies, British public school pupils, glorified poster boys — and girls — of the very acme of high culture and polish, regressed into near-savages, just because they were temporarily trapped in the jungle, after their aircraft crash-landed.

    But what has all this has got to do with the Lagos refuse crisis?  Legit question.

    Just as those boys regressed fast into savagery, the Ambode Visionscape fiasco pushed out the pre-historic refuse behaviour in some Lagos denizens — or how can you explain folks bagging their household wastes and dumping them on major road medians?  As that crisis deepened, many just packed their refuse and “sprayed” them on the road; and passing cars just pressed the dirt into some sickly mart on the tar!

    Though Lagos appears getting cleaner (note the comparative: cleaner, not yet clean) — thanks to faster PSP operators’ waste-clearing relays — it is still a far cry from the pre-crisis situation, when Lagos thought it had put behind its smelly hills of refuse.

    For the PSPs, though, it would appear negative payback time — what goes around comes around!  At the height of the PSP versus Visionscape protest, against the Ambode government’s Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI), some rogue PSP operators stood legitimately accused of deliberately emptying refuse in odd places: to colour bad CLI — and the government that sponsored it.

    At that time, the lunacy of households dumping their wastes, wherever they damn well liked, flared out of control. That misconduct has lasted till this day.

    What PSP operators now do is picking up packed wastes, along high-street medians, as if medians are now legitimate refuse dumps.  That should never be tolerated.

    Which is why Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Tunji Bello, his Environment and Water Resources Commissioner, should somewhat forge a neighbourhood intelligence network that would snare these environmental saboteurs, arrest them and bring them to swift justice.

    All you need is to make a few grand scapegoats, in their own community.  Whoever is arrested putting his or her refuse in wrong places should be tried — by a mobile court — and promptly sentenced to visible refuse-clearing community work, in the same environment he or she had undermined by wilful refuse-dumping.

    Pounce on a few and the stern message would go round fast — refuse outlawry is no longer be tolerated!

    After, the government itself might just be surprised at how fast refuse sanity would race back to normal.  It can then consolidate and build clean Lagos well past the old peak, during the Fashola era.

  • One term at a time

    AMBITION is positive, but overambition may not be. It’s good that Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State wants to be on a fast track, but he shouldn’t forget that speed kills.

    His three-month-plus government plans to launch a 20-year development agenda. Makinde said at a retreat for members of the State Executive Council and his senior aides on September 15: “We have been underachieving for many years; administrations had come and gone. Yes, they did their best, but still, we have to set a high bar for ourselves. Within the shortest possible time, we have to put in place a strategic development plan for the state.”

    The governor added: “Administrations had come and gone, but most of them operated on ad-hoc bases. We will put in place a 15 to 20-year development plan for Oyo State, and we will be bullish about our development plans.” Twenty years is a long time, considering that Makinde just started his first four-year term, and may, at best, get another four-year term, which would be terminal.

    Makinde knows he can’t be governor for 20 years. But he is thinking beyond his tenure, and thinking for his successors. In other words, he is living and governing in the moment, and seeks to influence governance even when his time is past. “Of course, we are aware that our mandate, for now, is for four years. What we want to do now is to put up a plan or vision so that successive administrations will not need to go back to do the work again,” he said.

    “We will do the work,” he added. “Who knows whether the leadership of the next administration is here with us? So we should not take anything for granted.” But Makinde is taking things for granted by his overambitious 20-year agenda.

    It’s good to plan for tomorrow, no doubt. But the governor should do so with a sense of the impermanence of his position. Electoral cycles will come and go. Power will change hands again and again.

    In a similarly overambitious move, on September 12, Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki had inaugurated a 35-man technical working group to draft a 30-year development plan.

    The problem is not long-term development plans. The problem is that implementation of such plans is beyond the control of the planners, and they may actually be dumped by their successors. In the end, isn’t it more realistic to govern one term at a time?

     

  • Glo data raid?

    What’s this — looking a gift horse in the mouth?  Or a compelling friendly fire?

    08054504169 is one of Glo’s dedicated media lines, powered by the telco with N10, 000 airtime monthly, even if the beneficiary subscriber also tops up with between N3, 000 and N5, 000 every month, depending on his consumption of voice calls and data.

    This month, however, an account that has never dipped to N1, 000 before top-up is hitting a trough of N849.35 — and further down.  But the subscriber cannot top up — no thanks to what appears the telco’s raid on his credit balance, purportedly for data auto-renew.

    From August 30 (when the subscriber’s N2000 monthly data subscription from July 31 to August 30 lapsed), Glo has auto-renewed the data plan four times: August 30 (to expire September 29); Sept. 6 (to expire October 6); Sept. 8 (to expire October 8); and Sept. 13 (to expire October 13)!  Still, 08054504169’s data consumption has not radically flared!

    All of these transactions can be confirmed in Glo’s text message communication with 08054504169.

    In other words, a data plan that hitherto lasted one month, for the last three years at least, now started lasting days — the longest, this data tornado month of September, lasting from August 30 to Sept. 6: seven days!

    In an especially swift and triumphant raid, Glo even declared a one-month plan over in two swift days — from Sept. 6 to Sept. 8!  Glo, we hail o!

    The other renew, from Sept. 8 to Sept. 13, lasted five days — complete with the “huge 934.2 bonus data” (Glo’s exact words), that comes with auto-renewal before data plan expiry.

    So, between August 30 and September 13, Glo has grossed N8, 000 (pre-September, a comfy bill for a four-month data plan) — and only Glo knows how many days that last renew would run out, before it cones raiding again!  So, an account that was well over N10, 000 on August 30 is down below N1, 000, on purported data alone!

    The most annoying thing is before the September 8 “renewal”, the subscriber chose to cancel the auto-renew plan, as the Glo text requested.  But alas!  Despite sending “cancel”, Glo still renewed and deducted!

    It was then a furious subscriber that yelled at the Glo customer service line to complain.  Though the prompt and polite female voice, at the other end, admitted Glo got the “cancel” text, she said once data had been transferred, no reversal could be effected; and no refund made, even if the error was Glo’s!

    It’s also amazing how the Glo customer service, virtual or physical, only seem to listen to themselves.  Both on the customer service line (twice) and face-to-face at the Cele Glo centre, on Apapa-Oshodi expressway (once to complain on this issue), that attitude — and it’s very annoying — is that the customer is always wrong; and Glo is too structured to be at fault.  That’s very dangerous thinking for any business.

    There would appear a glitch in the Glo network, particularly its billings for data.  The management had better check it out, admit its fault if it is wrong, and re-credit subscribers already wrongly billed.

    Otherwise, the telco would stand legitimately charged for subscriber-fleecing.  Even if the NCC is slow to sanction, subscriber-fleecing is no strategy to grow sales and expand the network.  Rather, it’s a fast track to contraction and ruin.

    A word is enough for the wise.

  • Demolition of reality

    NEWS of the demolition of a mosque by the Rivers State government is different from reality, according to Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi, who visited the site to see things for himself.

    “With what I have seen here,” he told reporters on September 8, “I cannot see any evidence of any building that was demolished…From what I have seen here, I think it is a storm in a tea cup. There is nothing to warrant this kind of media hype that has been given to it.” He didn’t need to add that the media had been unprofessional in their reportage. That was implied.

    Kano State Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, a Muslim, had reacted reflexively to the reported demolition.  A press statement by his spokesman had said Ganduje would institute “legal action against this demolition of the Mosque as well contest it with appropriate authorities for redress.” The governor had taken a position on the matter without finding out what had happened.

    Alhaji Haroon Muhammed, the Imam of the said mosque, had claimed that, on August 20, officials of the Rivers State Ministry of Urban Development and Physical Planning came to the site with policemen and pulled down the structure. “We want the whole world to help us beg the Governor of Rivers State to have a change of heart for us to have a place of worship, because the Trans-Amadi Central Mosque is the only mosque serving the whole of Trans-Amadi,” the Imam said in an emotional appeal.

    Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike, who was blamed for the demolition, had explained:  “They came here to erect illegal structure. There was no approval from the Rivers State government for any structure to be erected here. The people who began the foundation had already dragged the Rivers State government to court on the disputed land.  The Rivers State government won the case. What they attempted to do was to start the illegal construction, to tie the hands of the Rivers State government.”

    If government officials stopped work on the foundation of a planned building, is that the same thing as demolishing a building? Can a mosque that is yet to be constructed be demolished?

    This story, with all its negatives, started with misinformation. Those who had spread fake news on this issue, and those who unthinkingly believed the fake news, should hang their heads in shame.

  • Tourist in xenophobic country

    How would Nobel Laureate and Nigeria’s treasure, Prof. Wole Soyinka, advise a tourist, set to visit a country of rabid xenophobes?

    Judging by his poem, ‘Death in the Dawn’, he probably would start: “Tourist, you must set forth/At dawn/… The right foot for joy, the left, dread/And the mother prayed Child/May you never walk/When the road waits, famished”!

    That prayer is taken from a Yoruba superstitious-powered belief, which holds that the road at some time is thirsty for blood; and may one never travel at such precarious times!

    For that, as part of that poem dutifully records, you even make some sacrifice, or some  caring family members on your behalf, for your journey to be when the road is sated, and you come back safe from your journey.

    But how does this prayer even hold, for a tourist bound for a xenophobia country, where the natives always prime themselves for foreign blood — and foreign shops for prime looting?

    That is the unflattering image South Africa paints with its xenophobic thunder, and its periodic volcano.  Though it  now consumes foreign blood, limbs and sweat, eventually it will consume South Africa itself.

    Take tourism.  That market is dependent on a relay of foreign visitors come to feel the pulse of your country, taste its flora and fauna, sample its cuisine and drink in its landscape.

    But no matter how beautiful your country might be, how do you convince visitors — tourists — to come, when you make a manic show as unrepentant and unapologetic xenophobes, badgering and slaying foreigners in your midst, sacking their shops, looting their sweat?

    That is the sorry pass South Africa is wedging itself but no one seems to care.

    True, President Cyril Ramaphosa has decried xenophobia, which is fine.  But the body language of many in the Ramaphosa cabinet has been, at best, mixed: if not condoning then regrettably justifying — which is quite awry, for a state that benefited from huge foreign support to spring itself from apartheid White minority rule.

    But this show of barbarism would hurt South Africa most in the long run.  Traditionally, South Africa has a strong tourism market — exotic parks, game reserves, water falls, not to talk of other post-apartheid historic troves like the Mandela centre.

    But with an increasing xenophobic image, who in his right sense would travel to South Africa?  And if the tourism sector continues to contract, where would be the tourism aspect, of the so-called jobs, be — after the hated foreigners had all been killed, for taking natives’ job away?

    The xenophobe kills his tourism market — how sweet!

    Weep not for South Africa, the country that in Nelson Mandela produced the finest of humanity but also cancelled that out that trove with the very dregs in xenophobes!

    A tourist in xenophobes’ country!  How sweet!

  • Talon Benin?

    JUST as well Benin Republic’s new president is Patrice Talon.  No disrespect, but that name appears a fitting pun, on how Nigeria’s closest western neighbour has sunk its talon, like a predatory animal, into the Nigerian economy.

    Benin has been worse than an economic predator.  It is more like a reckless but foolish parasite, burying its snout inside its host.  In its close-eyed bliss, it forgets if the host dies, the parasite too goes kaput!

    Such has been tiny Benin’s economic hostility towards Nigeria, in large-scale smuggling fuelled by some unpatriotic and greedy Nigerian citizens, aided by Benin’s policy of economic terrorism.

    Pray, how do you erect your economic survival on brazen smuggling that you know slowly kills your neighbour?

    The Buhari government’s agricultural policy is hinged on grow what you eat and eat what you grow.  Audu Ogbeh, former Agriculture minister, pushed that policy with such patriotic venom, with the CBN backing him with specific supportive monetary policies and incentives.

    The fiscal authorities also imposed concurrent policies, chief of which was the limit of rice imports to sea ports, not land borders.  But pronto, as local farmers took the gauntlet, encouraged by the new policy template, rice cultivation soared and sea import of rice dipped, tiny Benin suddenly roared: West Africa’s new monster consumer of imported parboiled rice!

    The Benin authorities knew the brisk business in Benin ports was a direct sabotage of Nigeria’s attempt to achieve food security.  Yet, they played dumb because of the coins their country grossed.

    Petrol smuggling was — and still is — an open sore!  Nigerian fuel is retailed, in Cotonou and Porto Novo, in ubiquitous, monstrous bottles, with hardly any fuel station opening again.

    Now, see what has happened, with the ongoing partial closure of the border.  Mele Kyari, NNPC’s managing director, in a tweet monitored by ThisDay, says fuel lifted from depots to service stations had dropped significantly; adding that there is credible proof to suggest a good chunk of the nearly 60 million metres of petrol Nigerians are said to daily consume, actually get smuggled to Benin Republic and other thieving neighbbouring countries — hardly news.

    Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Financial Derivates Company Ltd, a Lagos finance consultancy firm, in a monthly report to Lagos Business School, came to a similar conclusion: the partial border closure is somewhat stemming the smuggling of Nigeria’s petrol.

    That explains why President Talon went begging President Muhammadu Buhari in Japan for a lift, just as the late President Mathieu Kerekou came begging former President Obasanjo, at the Badagry border town, during an earlier face-off.

    Benin presidential names have had different impacts on Nigerians.  Nicephore Soglo sounded especially heroic, particularly among the sovereign national conference (SNC) crowd, for the late Soglo rose and fell by the Benin SNC.

    Thomas Boni Yayi sparked immense racial cross-border  pride, being an ethnic Yoruba; and ex-Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) don in its UNIFE days. Kerekou, of course, also fell and rose by the Benin SNC, signalling the arrival of Benin democracy.

    But Talon is the name on which Nigeria must rivet, until Benin is purged of its economic terrorism against Nigeria.  Nigeria must keep those borders shut until Benin comes to its senses.

    An economic talon is no friend.  It is rather a merciless fiend.

     

  • NDDC and wailing governors

    The Niger Delta Development Commission always makes news. When it is silent, it roars. When it roars, the roof comes down. When an ant enters, an earthquakes rumbles around the region. So, no wonder that when an appointment is made, some hail while others wail.

    It is amazing that of all groups, it is a supposedly hefty group that is shedding tears and pleading over the new set of appointees, that include the well-known Bernard Okumagba as the managing director, Otobong Ndem as executive director projects and Maxwell Okoh as executive director finance and administration.

    The governors that include Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State, Godwin Obaseki rose against the appointees. We can understand faceless groups like the Niger Delta Youth Council that gives its nod to the Buhari picks or the Western Ijaw Consultative Assembly that frowns against them.

    But for governors? This is a first. One, it is a decision for the APC government. What is the business of the PDP governors to say who the APC governors appoint to a board. They had lost their chance during the last elections when the people gave the vote to the APC. When Goodluck Jonathan was in office, the PDP had the prerogative to pick who should lead the board or any board anywhere in the country. That is the democratic way.

    It was amazing that the only APC governor in the midst of these dissenters, Obaseki, showed how out of sync he was with his party. He is a governor and that makes him a henchman, at least on paper, in the ruling party. If his influence failed, at least he should not join a band of anti-party howlers against his party head. That he has exposed his lack of grip on his party in his own region. It is a show of political naivety.

    Now the governors spoke about consultations. The question is, who did they consult before making some of their key appointments into local governments, cabinets, and even agencies in their states. Governors are the last set of people in this democracy to mention the word consultation because they act as monarchs. Is it true that they are simply unhappy just as an APC spokesman, Ntufam Eta, described them as only interested in ensuring that their family members, cronies and stooges are appointed to strategic positions to the detriment of the generality of Nigerians”? the governors are not the only Nigerians who may be guilty of this, but it is bad that they have set up themselves for such charges.

    The appointments have happened. They should live with it.

  • SA: nobility died with Mandela?

    THERE is a popular belief about Karma — what you sow, you reap.  By Karma, those who sow evil must reap evil, even if payback time could be a later generation.

    But could Karma also come in advance, punishing the parents in anticipation of their unborn children’s future crime?

    Could the traumatic apartheid system, under White minority rule, have been just but advanced desert for criminal progenies now plaguing South Africa, well beyond the era of apartheid and White supremacy — and with some tacit official support?

    First, what is the difference between the racial violence of apartheid (separation and different development of races) that brought the South Africa of Nelson Mandela to its knees; and the xenophobic violence that criminal-minded South African natives inflict on fellow Blacks, which by the way, Bongani Mkongi, South Africa’s deputy Police minister, insists is no xenophobia, but just speaking “truth”?

    So, if South Africa has somewhat failed to satisfy the yearnings of its post-apartheid natives, the solution is to attack, loot the shops and kill hardworking foreign nationals in that country, even if some of these foreigners are themselves accused of drug pushing and sundry crimes?

    Minister Mkongi’s nativist bluster, in the face of clear evil, is a perfect manifestation of the popular quip: patriotism is the last bastion of the scroundrel!    Though Gen. Bheki Cele, the Police minister, has apologized for Mkongi’s vomit, that such crap could come from such a high official of state means the xenophobia, by the lowlifes, is not entirely an accident.

    Mkongi just told the world that since foreigners dominate South African cities and townships like Hillbrow to the tune of 80 per cent, no one should raise an eye-brow that the overwhelmed 20 per cent natives see looting and arson and murder as their sole salvation.  Good luck to such a criminal country!

    Yet, that violently jars against the spirit of the Madiba, the one and only Nelson Mandela, one of 20th century’s living saints.  Now, did all decorum and decency and nobility die with Mandela — Mandela who after spending 27 years in White gaol, still emerged as one of the noblest and most refined personage in the whole of the globe?

    Is this present redoubt of muggers, looters, arsonists and murderers really Mandela people?  Or Mandela was just a freak, conferring undeserved humanity to vandals, who thoroughly deserved the trauma and horror of apartheid?

    Mandela must be weeping in his grave!

    Still, it’s important to state that these barbarians, and petty, murderous thieves, can’t define South Africa, if Hardball is not to commit the illogic of sweeping profiling.

    Gen. Beki has apologized for Mkogi’s crap.  Julius Malema, the maverick leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, the radical breakaway of hotheads from the ANC, has also condemned this horror.  Let more weighty voices speak up, not the least President Cyril Ramaphosa — and ANC.

    Meanwhile, these scums and petty xenophobes are giving nobody but their country a bad name.  For starters, they portray their country as crawling with idle, lazy and spiteful denizens, looking out for foreigners’ trove to pounce on.

    After the foreigners have been scared to return to their home countries, or have fled elsewhere, the mad dogs will continue pouncing on their own kind.

    That is when this brewing lunacy would fully dawn on those decent South Africans who now, for political expediency, keep mute.

    Meanwhile, puff goes in smoke, the South African tourism market.  Who wants to go to a country of hateful xenophobes?