Category: Hardball

IRONICALLY, John Yakubu Yusuf,  a former Assistant Director in the Federal Civil Service, who was sentenced to prison by the Court of Appeal for stealing about N24 billion from the Police Pension Funds, is enjoying his freedom.

According to a report, “Over a year after the March 22, 2018 judgment of the Court of Appeal, which reversed an earlier judgement of High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and sentenced Yusuf to a cumulative term of six years (two-year per count on a three-count charge), Yusuf, has not been made to serve the jail term.”

The convict is said to have appealed the Court of Appeal judgement at the Supreme Court, but the appeal is not supposed to act as a stay of the execution of the judgement. He is supposed to be in prison while he pursues his appeal.

So, why is Yusuf not in jail? Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) spokesman Tony Orilade was quoted as saying:  “After a successful appeal by the EFCC, the appellate court, on March 22, 2018, upturned Justice Talba’s judgement and handed Yusuf a six-year jail term. He was further asked to pay a more adequate fine of N20 billion, N1.4 billion and N1.5 billion on counts 17, 18 and 19, totalling N22.9 billion. If there is any question(s) on the whereabouts of the convict, it should not be directed at the EFCC but the relevant agency that should take custody of Yusuf.”

Nigerian Prisons Service (NPS) spokesman Francis Enobore was quoted as saying it was the duty of the prosecuting agency, with powers of arrest, to ensure that a person against whom it secured conviction and sentence is delivered to the prison authorities, along with the decision of the court. In other words, the EFCC was supposed to have delivered Yusuf to the prison authorities to serve his jail term.

The claim and counter-claim show why Yusuf is free to enjoy his freedom. It is curious that a convict is not behind bars because there is confusion about who should ensure that he is in prison. Yusuf’s freedom makes nonsense of the country’s criminal justice system.

This is clearly not how to fight a war against corruption. It is ridiculous that Yusuf, who has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to jail, is nowhere near prison. Ironically, Yusuf is serving his jail term outside jail. Those who made this absurdity happen are absurd.

The other day, Oyo’s new governor made a pitch: he was targeting supersonic performance, in his first 100 days, to dwarf the two terms of some other governors.

He didn’t quite name names.  Neither did he state the state of reference.  But since only Abiola Ajimobi, his immediate predecessor, ever earned a second term of all Oyo governors, and since there appears no political love lost between the two, it is safe to assume the jab was Ajimobi-specific!

Well, a bit of contextual backgrounding, on when that statement of intent was made.

The governor was unleashing his prime “supersonic” tool, in new secretary to the Oyo Government, Olubamiwo Adeosun, 43; and the governor, via his media spokesperson, tried to grab some PR mileage — no crime.

He played the usual technocrat-versus-politician card, showing off Mrs Adeosun, a seasoned pharmacist and former high-flying private sector player as his new ace — a “ technocrat” come to pull the magic.  Well, again, no crime.  The fact that Mrs Adeosun is female, perhaps Oyo’s first female SSG since 1999, enriched the spin  — and why not?  If you have it, you can certainly flaunt it!

But the over-drive came with the 100 days question, when the governor waxed lyrical and decreed he wanted to out-perform the eight-year record of his predecessor in 100 days.  Now, that was the stuff pure fantasies are made of!

Forget politics and the often blind emotion that comes with playing partisan politics: Ajimobi is as formidable as they come; both in the quantum of work and sheer style of performance.  Compared with his rather limited predecessors, Ajimobi  was the real McCoy, bristling with cosmopolitan style and substance, in an Oyo hitherto condemned to gubernatorial yokels, in spite of their undoubted education.

Now, that is the man Makinde wants to outshine in 100 days!  Well, it could well mean creative hyperbole to spice up the boys; and pump up political adrenalin.  If it were well thought out, the Oyo electorate would have been the better for it.

Still, subjected to the nitty-gritty, it’s what folks would dismiss as “talk is cheap”.  Besides, if the morning shows the day, the omens are not so good.

If the new Oyo governor is not whining about newly discovered debts, he is hollering about commandeered vehicles by the ancien regime, real or imagined, lamenting how bankrupt his state has suddenly become, or scuttling towards the Delta, hankering after gubernatorial worst practices, under the guise of tutorials.

Who knows, when push comes to shove, he might have picked up a potent manual on how to wipe out your people, at election time, so you could rule over ghosts; or at most, pacified zombies!  That would be all hot, fresh and smoking from the land of the masters, of that potent stratagem!

All of these call for serious concern about self-distraction.  That itself could be a convenient cloak for culpable lack of ideas; or flighty thinking, a manifestation of an airy mind that struggles to retain serious and rigorous thinking.  If that were so, how would Makinde deliver on his supersonic “threat”?

But Hardball genuinely hopes not — nay prays not!  For the sake of the Oyo electorate, it would be splendid were Makinde to trump Ajimobi, for all his achievements.  But you don’t do that by becoming the dreamer-farmer in the Yoruba proverb, who enthused about mowing the bushy farmland by the wild and comical swing of his arms — only to find out the reality was of sterner stuff.  That is what Makinde’s 100 days lullaby is all about!

Let Makinde go trump Ajimobi on solid performance.  Oyo — and all of Yorubaland — would be better for it.  But that can’t be achieved by colourful day-dreaming.  Let Makinde think hard, talk less and get to work.

He may yet concretize his dreams!

Now this is a tricky one. Even Hardball knows enough to step gingerly around this one; a wise man must handle the matter of the opposite sex with uncommon equanimity and the measuredness of a sage. If only because you are a man and in some way or the other, you would need a woman or her service. So matters of femininity must be treated with the delicateness they require.

Now, do not take the above title literally; it’s not about the complexion and tone of the fair sex. Notwithstanding that most of us African men now have a bit of difficulty discerning the real texture and coloration of the skin of the typical African belle. Over the years Western civilisation – not to mention cosmetics – has eroded the rich tonality of the original African woman’s skin. The much-cherished luscious glister of the female dark skin was organic aphrodisiac of sort, especially in the half dawn moments of conjugal co-efficiencies.

But this is not about new-day African woman skincare methods; far from it. Hardball is troubled here today, about the make-up (again, not cosmetic), character and constitution of the average Nigerian woman. Who is this person? What is her psychological state? Is there a common glitch bordering on the pathological and homicidal?

Now consider this story before we return to the question of the true colour of the African woman: a housewife in Owerri West Local Government of Imo State reportedly forced her niece to eat a dead chicken raw.

As recounted by a neighbour, she was returning from her shop and overheard the woman (Ugochi) telling someone to finish that thing. She was going to pass by but the anguished cry of a little girl ignited her curiosity. She stopped to look and behold, she saw the little girl (Chiamaka) eating a dead fowl raw. She was aghast and beckoned on other residents. According to the witness’s account, the little girl, who looks like a seven-year-old even though she is 12, is subjected to perpetual torment by her aunt.

The accused (Ugochi) denied that the chicken was raw: “It is not true that I asked her to eat the chicken raw, although I was angry. I came back and met my fowl dead. When I asked her what happened, she said she didn’t know. I forced her to cook the chicken and eat it.”

Hardball asks again: what is the true colour of a woman? Some have wagered that it only comes alive when you keep her in charge of another woman’s child.

Recently, cases of hot water baths, hot iron burns, solitary confinements, sometimes in chains, are rife – always against the other woman’s child. This psychopathic tendency would stand a good academic study; Hardball recommends.

Post-Ambode Lagos, with its stifling and smelly refuse gardens, pat on medians in prominent high streets and major roads, is somewhat reminiscent of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

After crash-landing in a jungle, some British public school pupils, the very epitome of British high culture and polite society, descended into savages, killing and hunting down one another.

By the time the pupils were rescued, it was clear the enabling environment was everything, as those Brits exhibited crude behaviours no one could have believed they were capable of.

In Lagos, former Governor Akin Ambode made the most tragic decision of his governorship with his refuse reforms, which promptly turned deform, that eventually hounded him out of office; and robbed him of the sympathy of voters, even if he wasn’t, by any means, the worst governor among his class.

But his refuse management grand miscalculation brought out the refuse beast, in Lagosians, that the previous Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola governorships had worked on, and thought they had buried.

Since that Ambode misstep, Lagos had leapt back, virtually centuries, into refuse atavism, with seeming savages, zooming from the stone and cave age, and descending on Lagos with a vengeance, unfazed in their environmental terrorism!

That is the environmental emergency, nay catastrophe,  Babatunde Sanwo-Olu has inherited.  As Ambode fades from memory, the new governor would find the refuse question his new plague, for which he would be eaten raw. So, Governor Sanwo-Olu had better plague the refuse decay before the decay starts to plague him, after his gubernatorial honeymoon.

Which is why the governor must roll out a bruising response, no matter how harsh, to deal with  the savages that do this dumping.  They are nothing but environment terrorists; and should be treated as terrorists are.

But first, the governor should put in place a more efficient and effective refuse-clearing mechanism, the type that would make the city always clean; and take us back to the peak of the anti-refuse success, in the Fashola years.  He should make that routine.

But that is not the worst problem in the current refuse emergency.  The main challenge would be putting in place and effective neighbourhood intelligence network, to fish out those who pack their household refuse and dump them in the middle of the road.

The governor should take a drive to Ago Palace Way, the most prominent high street in Okota, in Isolo Local Council Development Area (LCDA), and see how the high median is weighed down by indiscriminate refuse sacks, stinking and smelly.

Surely these bags were not dropped by ghosts?  The governor should put in place mechanisms to ferret out these environment felons and punish them as environment terrorists are.

If Sanwo-Olu fails to act now, he risks refuse becoming an albatross on his neck, just as it was on Ambode’s.  That could well mean that the voter-whip used to tan the old wife is there, waiting patiently in the rafters, to tan the new!

Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun said he took a loan of N7bn to pay workers’ May salaries. According to his narrative, that would not have happened if he had listened to negative advice from a senior government official.

Abiodun said: “30th day of May was our first day in office. And on the 31st, it dawned on me that it was the end of the month and we need to pay salaries…So, I called the Head of Service; I told him we must pay salary. But he said to me, ‘You are new in government and everybody understands that you just assumed office and we don’t have that expectation of you paying salaries now. They (workers) will understand. There is very little or no money. We can talk to them.’ I told the Head of Service, whether they (the workers) were expectant or not, it was my promise to the people that salaries would be paid as and when due.”

He added:  ”So, I picked my phone and called my friends who are MDs in different banks. I told them I needed to pay salaries and this is the little I have; almost nothing in the state account. I requested a credit facility to allow me to pay over N7bn which is the state wage bill. That day, my intention was that maybe one or two will oblige me, but the five banks I called obliged me.”

Questions: Why was there “almost nothing” in the treasury after the exit of the immediate past governor, Ibikunle Amosun? Would Amosun have been able to pay the May salaries without taking a loan, if he were still in office? Did Amosun deliberately deplete the treasury to create difficulties for his successor?

Abiodun said: “I cannot begin to describe in the open to you the Ogun State that we inherited… I will not because I have made up my mind that publicly and privately, I will not discuss anything about the past administration.”

But the public deserves to know because it is about public funds.  The governor’s job involves determining the extent of possible bad governance by the previous government. Good governance implies exposing past bad governance.

It is noteworthy that Governor Abiodun had paid an unscheduled visit to the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), a state-run hospital in Sagamu, Ogun State, following an investigative report published in The Nation on June 9 titled “OOUTH Sagamu: A Teaching Hospital in a mess.”

“The place is substandard,” he had observed. “This hospital is in a depressing state.” The hospital’s deterioration reflected neglect by the Amosun administration.

Those who had governed without a sense of good governance deserve full exposure.

Nigeria soared past West African neighbours Guinea, at the ongoing Total African Cup of Nations (AFCON), ongoing in Egypt.

But many couldn’t understand why mighty Nigeria could not whip Guinea’s Syli Nationale silly.

It was a slur on Nigeria’s national pride — trust Nigerians, with unfazed superiority complex, when the subject is less endowed fellow African countries!

Indeed, some even boast, asking where was tiny Guinea, when Nigerian football Trojans ruled the African roast: Muda Lawal, Kunle Awesu, Haruna Ilerika, Baba Otu Mohammed, “Mathematical” Segun Odegbami and “Chairman” Christian Chukwu; not to talk of the real contemporary masters, epitomized by the late Stephen Keshi: Taribo West, Emmanuel Amuneke, Rashidi Yekini, Kanu Nwankwo, Daniel Amokachi, Austin “Jay-Jay” Okocha, Sunday Oliseh and Uche Okechukwu (aka the gentle giant), at the back of the 1994 golden set that not only conquered all Africa at the 1994 AFCON in Tunisia but also went on to make an indelible mark at the USA 1994 World Cup.

Part of that generation would also win the Olympic gold in the football, first by any African nation, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Isn’t that enough proof that the standard of Nigerian football was crashing?  Or how do you explain Nigeria not thrashing Guinea?  Talk is cheap!

The fact is Nigeria had never had it easy with Guinea, even at the best of times.  Out of 10 meetings, before the June 26 Alexandria AFCON showdown, Nigeria and Guinea had grabbed five wins a-piece.  Though the Egypt win tilted the scale 6-5 for Nigeria, the raft of seven previous draws, between the two sides, shows how close they had been in football terms.

Indeed, though the then Nigerian Green Eagles pecked Guinea 2-0 to nick the gold medal at the 1973 2nd All Africa Games in Lagos, Guinea bettered Nigeria, to place second after champions Morocco, at the 1976 AFCON.  That was the edition where Nigeria, powered by Christian Chukwu, Haruna Ilerika, Muda Lawal, Kunle Awesu and Baba Otu Mohammed (Awesu and Mohammed emerged the championship’s best left and right wingers), started making impact at AFCON.

A year earlier in 1975, when Nigeria’s Rangers International  got to the final of the then elusive African Cup of Champions Cup (now African Champions League), Guinea’s Hafia taught Nigeria’s Rangers (of Chukwu, Kenneth Abana, Ogidi Ibeabuchi, Emmanuel Okala etc) the ABC of footballing skills, with the audacious “le petit souris” (little rat) and the razor-sharp Kamara brothers, running rings round the Rangers giants!

It was sheer celestial football, at the then thriving National Stadium, Lagos, where the Hafia boys came, saw and grabbed the cup, in the most audacious show of silky skills, contrasted to Rangers sturdy kick-rush-and-follow!

Why all this?  Just to make the point that Guinea are not football innocents and are quite a force to reckon with in African football.

The Nigeria-Guinea AFCON match was no top-drawer in entertaining or explosive football, rippling with 90-minutes action, sending the fans roaring and bawling for more.

But it was a lesson in disciplined tactical play.  Guinea was playing for draw, since that would have earned them the one point needed to go all out against debutants, Burundi, gross five points and fancy their Round of 16 qualification, perhaps after Nigeria, who had won their first match against Burundi.  But if a win came, they would take it.

With Nigeria, on the other hand, a win or a draw would do.  A draw would amass them four points before their final match against another debutant, Madagascar, en route to grossing seven points to top the group.  A win — which Nigeria eventually got — would have made it even easier: for they would have hit the Round of 16, with a match to spare.  That’s where they are now.

So, the match was not about any bragging right.  It was rather about the correct tactics for qualification.  Nigeria got its tactics right.  Guinea got its wrong.  So, give the Eagles some respect for, so far,  getting the job done.

It’s morning yet on AFCON day in Egypt!