The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • How to ‘kill’ a writer

    The above title should actually read: ‘How to kill Hardball,’ but among the first learned wisdom of a newspaper editor is to be crafty with his headlines and titles. In order words, apart from sculpting a headline to best tell the story, you must know when to ‘manage’ the headlines so it does not tell or reveal the whole story.

    This is what we have done with the above headline. The story is about the trucks armada on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway.

    As all Lagosians probably know, the scourge of articulated vehicles stretching from the ports in Apapa back into all the major roads in the city is now a sustained nightmare. For more than five years, containers-bearing trucks of all sizes, fuel tankers and indeed all manner of trucks servicing the four ports of Apapa have found convenient parking space on the any roads and bridges leading to the ports.

    This of course has imposed unspeakable horror on Lagos commuters as the already poor traffic situation of Lagos has become schizophrenic.

    Now how does this situation endanger the life of a writer, you might already be asking? Good question. Well, apart from being caught up in the attendant traffic like many other residents, journalists bear the added brunt of having to write about the self-induce malady almost every week.

    Hardball for instance must have written about this dark phenom on this page about half a dozen times. In the same manner editorials have been written over a dozen times. News reports, features and analyses have been put out ad nauseam. How could anyone write about the same problem for five years without either losing his mind or body even?

    Yet the matter remains there and like an evil mole, spreading in all directions. The current update on the Apapa ports trucks armada is that operatives of the task force set up to create order and safe corridor for commuters has grown into a huge extortion machine.

    According to a report in Vanguard newspaper which has its headquarters right in the simmering vortex of the morass: “Investigations revealed that the task force officials have converted the sordid situation into a bribe-taking venture, thereby compounding the gridlock…

    “A number of checkpoints have reportedly been set up from the Mile 2 Bridge for task force officials to extort money from desperate truck drivers…

    “At these extortion points, task force officials collect between N10000 and N15000 from each truck driver to allow them park around the area.”

    As elders in Igboland say, when you are treating hunchback and the patient’s tummy keeps growing, both the medicine man and the patient may well be in danger.

    So, Hardball writing about a five-year old madness could easily be afflicted abi?

  • Convictions count

    How should the public assess the success of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s war on corruption in the last four years?  Information, Culture and Tourism Minister Lai Mohammed thinks the success of the anti-corruption war should not be judged by the number of convictions the Federal Government secured within the period.

    He argued that the administration had “laid the foundation that would make it difficult for people to engage in the evil act.” If people are not punished for corruption, what “foundation” is the minister talking about?

    Mohammed said on a live TVC News programme –”This Morning”: “For us, the success of the fight against corruption is the fact that we have driven corruption under the table and made it unattractive… Those who are corrupt are doing so with the fear of the law. It will progressively become more and more difficult in Nigeria for corruption to be attractive.”

    He drew attention to   the administration’s anti-corruption successes: “We insisted and have succeeded in ensuring that all payments and revenues are paid into the TSA. Before we came in, the Federal Government had over 2000 different accounts in various banks which resulted in paying several billions on Naira in charges. The government then also never had an idea of how much it had as revenue. Today, over N9.3 trillion has gone into the TSA and that is why it is possible for us to invest especially in the area of infrastructure and social investment programmes.”

    Mohammed also said the Whistle Blower policy had checked corruption, and helped the government to recover looted funds. He added that the government had recovered several billions of naira and about $53 million through the policy. He boasted that the African Union (AU) recognition of President Buhari as Champion of Anti-Corruption showed that his administration’s fight against corruption was internationally acknowledged. The minister bragged that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) also recognised the administration’s anti-corruption efforts.

    The question is whether the Presidency is fighting a war without casualties. Where are the casualties of the war on corruption? The number of casualties, or the number of convictions, is important in assessing the fight against corruption because a war without casualties can’t be a war properly so called.  Punishing corruption has a deterrent effect. Not punishing corruption encourages corruption. Failure to punish corruption can’t be success. Mohammed needs to reassess his assessment of the war on corruption.

     

     

  • Christian Nuisance Forum

    These blokes call themselves National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF).  But really, they are no more than Christian Nuisance Forum (NEF), national or sectional.

    Didn’t the Bible, which they claim is their spiritual constitution, say by their deeds we shall know them?

    By Jove!  NCEF, by its comment on the Onnoghen conviction, has shown it’s the very antithesis of the Christianity it seizes and flaunts, as political blackmail tool.

    NCEF claimed former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen’s conviction, for failing to declare juicy bank accounts, mainly in foreign currency, was part of “the jihad” in Nigeria.  How so?

    Onnoghen never hid the accounts, no matter his motives?  Or he never claimed he “forgot”?  Or never said he made a “mistake”?  Or was tried before a Shariah court, against his Christian belief?

    O, he never, no thanks to the state’s high-handedness, had a battery of SANs for his defence?  Or the state abridged his right to appeal the verdict to higher courts?

    O yes, Hardball forgot!  It was Onnoghen’s Christian essence — even more ingrained than conscience — that told him to skew his asset declaration, in the greatest and noblest traditions of Christian tenets, knowing what the law says!

    And yeah: it was Jihadists, that arrested his Christian conscience, and led him to perdition!

    Except these NCEF guys can prove what Onnoghen was convicted of was Christian and Christ-like, they should just shut up and stop polluting the Easter air!

    Even Christ Himself, the few times he was reported to get furious, did so over sleaze.  “My father’s house of worship has become a den of thieves,” reggae great Max Romeo put that Jesus holy rage in musical perspective, “stealing in the name of the Lord”!

    Did it the rotten metaphor, ever occur to these Pharisees: that our Judiciary, under their “Christian brother” Onnoghen, was becoming a den of thieves, selling and buying justice, in the name of the Law?

    But the Bible said it all, when he referred to the Pharisees and Sadducees, the hypocritical lords of the Jewish religious order: a brood of vipers; and whited sepulchres, immaculate outside but extremely rotten within.

    That is what this NCEF lobby amounts to.  For what Christian body, elder or infant, would try to spin Onnoghen’s shameful fall, with a rogue skewing of history?

    “Today,” NCEF claimed, “Justice Walter Onnoghen’s removal through stealth jihad of the executive is the continuation of the jihad that began with the overthrow of Gowon”.

    Seriously?  Which powers installed Gowon and which powers removed him?  Perhaps NCEF needs to ask one of its prominent members, who was some alpha and omega in the whole military mess!

    But as anyone doomed to self-ruin, NCEF’s tale by moonlight “even get k-leg” (to parody Baba Iyabo).  Thank God Justice Taslim Elias was a Muslim.  We’re he Christian, the hollow NCEF tale could have suckered not a few.

    Some parting Easter message then, for these Christian impostors?  Away Christian nuisance, rush to your doom!

    Indeed,  Easter, the most sacred season of Christendom, is the most appropriate time to remind whoever drags the holy name of Christ to dirt, that (s)he is self-condemned to perdition!  And so is NCEF.

  • Christian Nuisance Forum

    These blokes call themselves National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF).  But really, they are no more than Christian Nuisance Forum (NEF), national or sectional.

    Didn’t the Bible, which they claim is their spiritual constitution, say by their deeds we shall know them?

    By Jove!  NCEF, by its comment on the Onnoghen conviction, has shown it’s the very antithesis of the Christianity it seizes and flaunts, as political blackmail tool.

    NCEF claimed former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen’s conviction, for failing to declare juicy bank accounts, mainly in foreign currency, was part of “the jihad” in Nigeria.  How so?

    Onnoghen never hid the accounts, no matter his motives?  Or he never claimed he “forgot”?  Or never said he made a “mistake”?  Or was tried before a Shariah court, against his Christian belief?

    O, he never, no thanks to the state’s high-handedness, had a battery of SANs for his defence?  Or the state abridged his right to appeal the verdict to higher courts?

    O yes, Hardball forgot!  It was Onnoghen’s Christian essence — even more ingrained than conscience — that told him to skew his asset declaration, in the greatest and noblest traditions of Christian tenets, knowing what the law says!

    And yeah: it was Jihadists, that arrested his Christian conscience, and led him to perdition!

    Except these NCEF guys can prove what Onnoghen was convicted of was Christian and Christ-like, they should just shut up and stop polluting the Easter air!

    Even Christ Himself, the few times he was reported to get furious, did so over sleaze.  “My father’s house of worship has become a den of thieves,” reggae great Max Romeo put that Jesus holy rage in musical perspective, “stealing in the name of the Lord”!

    Did it the rotten metaphor, ever occur to these Pharisees: that our Judiciary, under their “Christian brother” Onnoghen, was becoming a den of thieves, selling and buying justice, in the name of the Law?

    But the Bible said it all, when he referred to the Pharisees and Sadducees, the hypocritical lords of the Jewish religious order: a brood of vipers; and whited sepulchres, immaculate outside but extremely rotten within.

    That is what this NCEF lobby amounts to.  For what Christian body, elder or infant, would try to spin Onnoghen’s shameful fall, with a rogue skewing of history?

    “Today,” NCEF claimed, “Justice Walter Onnoghen’s removal through stealth jihad of the executive is the continuation of the jihad that began with the overthrow of Gowon”.

    Seriously?  Which powers installed Gowon and which powers removed him?  Perhaps NCEF needs to ask one of its prominent members, who was some alpha and omega in the whole military mess!

    But as anyone doomed to self-ruin, NCEF’s tale by moonlight “even get k-leg” (to parody Baba Iyabo).  Thank God Justice Taslim Elias was a Muslim.  We’re he Christian, the hollow NCEF tale could have suckered not a few.

    Some parting Easter message then, for these Christian impostors?  Away Christian nuisance, rush to your doom!

    Indeed,  Easter, the most sacred season of Christendom, is the most appropriate time to remind whoever drags the holy name of Christ to dirt, that (s)he is self-condemned to perdition!  And so is NCEF.

  • What was spent on security?

    How do governments in Nigeria spend public funds meant to provide security for Nigerians?  It is interesting that a civil society organisation, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), is interested in the answers of President Muhammadu Buhari and the governors of the 36 states of the federation to this question.

    SERAP sent Freedom of Information requests, dated April 12, to them, asking for information on specific details of spending of appropriated public funds as security votes between 2011 and 2019. The organisation limited its request to details of visible, specific security measures and projects executed, excluding spending on intelligence operations.

    The organisation’s move was prompted by “the growing level of insecurity, violence, kidnappings and killings in Zamfara State and other parts of Nigeria.” According to SERAP, “Section 14(2) (b) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) provides that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. It is the security of the citizens that is intended and not the security of select individuals in public office.”

    SERAP added: “Available evidence would seem to suggest that many of the tiers of government in Nigeria have used security votes as a conduit for grand corruption rather than spending the funds to improve and enhance national security and ensure full protection of Nigerians’ rights to life, physical integrity, and liberty.”

    Indeed, it is disturbing that the organisation said: “In fact, former governor of Kano State Musa Kwankwaso once described security votes as ‘another way of stealing public funds’.” It also said: “The current security realities in the country would seem to suggest massive political use, mismanagement or stealing of security votes by many governments.”

    The concerned governments are expected to provide the requested information “within seven days of the receipt and/or publication” of the organisation’s letter.”If we have not heard from you by then,” SERAP said, “the Registered Trustees of SERAP shall take all appropriate legal action under the Freedom of Information Act to compel you to comply with our request.”  It remains to be seen whether the concerned governments would obey the law or disobey the law.

    SERAP’s letter, no doubt, puts the concerned governments on the spot. This is what happens when governments do not govern as expected. It’s a shame that the concerned governments are being asked to account for security votes between 2011 and 2019. When insecurity reigns, it is unsurprising that a concerned organisation wants to know how security budgets were spent.

     

     

  • Chibok meets Prophet Joshua

    In the Old Testament days of the Holy Bible, prophets were alter egos of monarchs. Kings ruled all right but it was almost at the behest of powerful prophets. The crown necessarily had to derive enough moral and spiritual authority from the prevailing prophet. A king would neglect the divine counsel of a leading prophet at his own peril.

    But there is probably no headier aphrodisiac than monarchy in its power and glory. As the Bible regales us, it is the ethereal wisdom of Prophet Nathan that brings rampaging KingProphet JoshuaProphet Joshua David back to earth. Nathan approaches David and says, oh wise King, there were two men, in a city, one extremely rich with exceeding large herds and the other dirt poor with only one little lamb.

    But alas, the rich fellow upped and snatched the poor man’s only possession to prepare meal for his stranger. King David was wrath with great anger. As the Lord liveth, such an evil one must surely die, he pronounced.

    And Prophet Nathan said to King David: “You are the man!”

    And the wise prophet proceeds to lay it thick on the now broken crown: Thus says the Lord, I anointed you king, delivered you from your enemies, gave you your master’s house; even your master’s wives and the house of Israel and Juddah. If these were not enough, I would have given you even more. But you had to commit such evil by killing your captain, Uriah and taking his wife. David is crushed by contrition.

    Such was the power of prophets. In pursuit of David, King Saul wipes out an entire commune of prophets, and never did the bible record a woman, viler than Jezebel. The great Prophet Isaiah is saddled to confront King Ahab and his blood-thirsty wife Jezebel, after she framed up and had Naboth executed in order to possess his land. Murderous Jezebel also hounded numerous prophets to their gruesome end.

    Prophets where somewhat universal to many ancient faiths. But over the ages, and with the coming of the Messiah, prophets apparently became outdated in the celestial scheme of things. Every man is now equipped with his own ‘prophet’; the Holy Spirit, according to Christian teaching.

    In today’s Nigeria however, a certain Prophet TB Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, remains redoubtable. The man in the Synagogue is sought after from all over the world. He is not only more known than many leaders, he makes and unmakes leaders.

    Today, a five-year-old kidnapping tangle-knot that may have defied the government of the land is now before Prophet TB, as a last resort somewhat. The agonizing parents of Chibok and Dapchi girls explain: “We decided to come to TB Joshua because we have seen him on TV and we see how he works miracles and helps people. If it is our fault that these things are happening, let him pray for us.”

    A prophet to the rescue?

  • IMF: between sour grape and candour

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is sure in prime “advisory” mood, the way it shells out advice, literarily by the dollar!

    First, IMF’s loving lament, like some hot lover in scalding tryst, on Nigeria’s account.  Now, IMF is the hot lover.  Nigeria is the coy partner.

    The language of love — now, not those guttural sweet nothings lovers trade in the “other room” but the hot exchange of the international economy — is Nigeria’s rising loan activity with China.

    IMF is asking Nigeria to slow down on the China loan track.  Too many booby traps, it claims without exactly using those words, are there to snap you into international peonage, with China, which takes no prisoners, as the new international slave driver!

    What is unclear though, is IMF’s angst.  Does it want to repudiate international capitalist peonage?

    Or it simply resents the rude reality that China is emerging a hot rival to the monstrous metropolitan powers IMF represents, and on behalf of whose economies it spreads African and Third World under-development, wrapped in sweetened “reforms”, to further consolidate the Western economic hegemony on the globe?

    Whichever way, it’s good lesson for Nigeria, even as the Buhari Presidency continues to ramp up infrastructure, under an alternative economic paradigm — infrastructure that decayed, no thanks to high corruption, during the supreme reign of Breton Woods orthodoxy, in the Nigerian economy, with disastrous consequences.

    For Nigeria, it would be tragic indeed, to exit Western peonage but be snared in China’s.  There is no comfort in any slave chamber, no matter how gilded its chains.

    But it all boils down to fighting corruption with rigorous accountability.  Those loans must be used for the infrastructure they are meant; and everything must be done to ensure steady cash flow, from the new modernized rails, as booming mass transit business.

    That way, you pay back your loans without much stress, and move on to other mutually beneficial partnerships.  So, throwing the scarecrow, on the Nigeria-China loan issue, cannot be enough reason to clamber back to IMF and co., and their cruel conditionalities.

    Truth be told: Nigeria’s infrastructure, though still on the mend, is clearly far better served, with less than four years of Chino-Nigeria collaboration, than under Western capitulation, from 1986 under IBB-era SAP; and its various policy mutations, since 1999, under the Obasanjo era, that terminated in 2015.

    IMF has also been singing some not-so-new love songs on the fuel subsidy question — and Zainab Ahmed, Nigeria’s Finance minister, appears already getting charmed!

    The IMF song isn’t new — remove petroleum subsidy, and divert the gains to social services, blah, blah, blah!  That sick deja vu is rattling, for we had heard such humbug, that amounted to nothing, in the past.

    Let PMB and his government be told: petroleum subsidy is a wrong policy price the government has to pay.  However it pays it is its own business.  So, if the minister sings a tune that Breton Woods makes sense, Hardball hopes she remembers the import-processed-petroleum-journey-to-nowhere, was integral to IMF’s orthodoxy, which the Obasanjo-era again embraced like merry serfs. That dumb policy has greatly contributed to the present-day economic cripple.

    So, the minister should not delude herself the government would pass the so-called subsidy to the people and not face bitter resistance.  Instead, let the government  ramp up the processes of local refining.  That way, subsidy dies a natural death — and everyone lives happily ever after!

    Besides, this republic should have strong voices that speak for the poor and the vulnerable.  Enough of this elite selfish agenda, that pass the huge cost of avoidable policy mistakes on to the mass of the people — in form of the so-called “subsidy removal”.

     

  • Facts and lies collide

    It’s true that facts don’t lie. But it looks like the website called www. factsdontlieng.com lied concerning the votes Atiku Abubakar, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, polled in the February 23 presidential election. In his petition to the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, Atiku claimed he won the election based on results obtained from the website.

    But the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in its response, said “the website described as www.factsdontlieng. com was neither created nor owned” by it.  INEC added that it “does not share information with such an unclassified entity.” The commission also said “any information purportedly derived there from which does not accord with the result as declared by INEC is not authentic but rather was invented for the purpose of this case.”

    Contrary to Atiku’s claim that he polled 18,356,732 votes  in the presidential election,  INEC’s  Director,  Information and Communications Technology, Chidi Nwafor, said President Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate,  “was duly elected by majority of the lawful votes cast at the presidential election and scored at least one-quarter of the lawful votes cast at the election in 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, more than two-third of all the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.”

    Nwafor added that Atiku “did not win the majority of the lawful votes cast and did not satisfy the mandatory constitutional requirement to be declared winner having polled 11,262,978 and one quarter of all lawful votes cast in 29 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja” as against Buhari “who scored 15,191,847 votes cast and one quarter of the lawful votes cast in 33 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”

    It’s clear that Atiku and INEC are not on the same page. It’s unclear how the said factsdontlieng.com got its own version of the presidential election result. It’s also unclear why Atiku chose to rely on the website for the presidential election result.  Who runs factsdontlieng.com?  Where did the website get its figures from? Can the website prove that its version of the presidential election result is authentic?  Why does Atiku believe the website is more believable than INEC?

    It’s true that lies aren’t facts. In this case, facts and lies collide. When there is such a collision, lies die first.  Facts will always win in a clash with lies. It remains to be seen whether Atiku can prove that factsdontlieng.com is more credible than INEC.

  • A king and his hangman – a fable

    Once upon a time, there lived a king in a faraway land. He was well loved by his people that they desired him to live forever that he may rule eternally. But the king had a small problem, the king is emotionally blank; he could not feel. In other words, he could not understand people laughing or crying.

    He only laughed when he saw people around him laugh and he grew moody and even cried by emulating others. But none of his subjects knew this. Not even his family understood this strange phenomenon. Worse, even the king did not understand he was afflicted with this peculiar disorder.

    Incidentally, only his head guard who doubled as his chief hangman had an inkling of this royal disorder of a strange kind. But alas, Kotukotu, the hangman, totally misread, or shall we say mis-diagnosed the king’s ailment. However, he loved his king so much he would do anything to protect and preserve him. And knowing his Highnesses’ disabilities, or rather believing he knew, he was always on guard to ensure that no one took advantage of him.

    By the call of duty, Kotukotu was an abiding presence in the presence of his majesty. Even when he was removed from the royal presence by some design, he had devised a means of his own to always keep an eye on his principal. He had a hole drilled in the palace’s wall trained at the royal stool. This way, even when he is not within sight, he had the crown in his sight.

    So it happened that each time his majesty frowned – in reaction to the frowning of his subjects before him, Kotukotu took exception to such occurrence. Depending on the size and importance of such a personage, the repercussions were often severe.

    Such a one that brought a frown upon the king’s visage was often circumscribed, sequestered, quarantined or guillotined altogether. In the event that a subject’s head was brought down for the ‘peace’ of his majesty, Kotukotu preserved the prize in a special purpose House of Skulls he made not unlike a yam barn. In fact in his lighthearted moment, he called it a barn.

    So he would keep an eye on the king’s audiences and whoever elicited the slightest frown on the king’s visage was doomed. You were a prisoner or a skull altogether. Through the years, Kotukotu’s ‘barn’ grew large. He was dreaded.

    Ironically, the more the subjects went with frowning visages to the king over strange disappearances and sequestrations, the more Kotukotu’s barn swelled!

    One day, all the subjects marched on the barn and pulled it down. They frowned all day at the harvest… and the king won’t stop frowning… and Kotukotu hugged his sword…

  • Between love and hate

    Between avid love and scalding hate, there is but a thin line!  Nothing reinforces this delicate but fatal slip more than reported cases of lovers, sentenced to hang, because they killed girlfriends, or even wives, they once doted on.

    An Ondo State high court just sentenced one Chukwudi Onweniwe to hang for, two years ago, strangling his undergraduate girlfriend, the late Nifemi Adeyeoye, then an HND student of Rufus Giwa Ploytechnic, Owo.  Nifemi, the victim’s name, is rather evocative.  “Nifemi” is Yoruba for “love me”, a plea for love, or more emphatically, an assurance of love.  Love is life and peace and bliss. But alas in this case, love turned fatal!

    Another reported fresh sentence was the one involving the murder of the daughter of a former deputy governor of Ondo State.  The victim and murderer were said to have been in a four-year tryst; broke off for some time, but after resumed their romance.  The girl was also reported to be a student of Adekunle Ajasin University, (AAU), Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State.

    But again, an expected sweet tryst turned sour and gory.  Her boyfriend was said to have killed her, shaved her skull and pubic hair (reportedly for money rituals), dug a shallow grave right inside the room where she was killed, buried her and cemented the shallow grave to block any trace – Lord have mercy!

    But the foul ooze from the room gave away the secret.  The boyfriend was reported to be involved in some Yahoo-Yahoo money ritual, of which his former lover was a gory victim!  For his brazen crime, he will also hang.

    Still, what would make someone who professes love for another, to end his lover’s life in such a callous, grisly manner?  Free-wheeling crime?  Mad love for money?  Or plain stupidity that he can get away with the crime?

    It’s even more puzzling for spouses that had tied the nuptial knots, sworn to living for better and for worse, but reported to have killed or seriously armed one another, this time with wife either killing the husband, or the husband killing the wife.

    Beyond crime and punishment, given how rampant what Hardball would call “love crimes” have become, perhaps the Nigerian state should take that extra steps to probe into those hearts of darkness, that see nothing but death and torture from love.

    It’s such a great contradiction in terms that maybe a branch  of psychiatry could do serious clinical probes into such cases.  God is love.  Love is life.  Romance is sheer paradise on earth, at least for the pleasure-seeking.  Even the stoic can do with a little love, to cushion his proverbial stamina to endure.

    But when love turns to hate; and delivers cruel deaths?  Crime and punishment isn’t enough!  High time science proves into this anomaly, to save future victims.