The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • No to ECOWASS

    No to ECOWASS

    Should ECOWAS schmooze with the so-called Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) for plastic unity at the expense of core values?  A big no!  Which is why Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s suggestion to replace ECOWAS with ECOWASS is ill-advised.

    Unlike Khaki Pharisees, followed by outright brigands that came after him, and razed the Nigerian military on the altar of rabid power, Gen. Yakubu Gowon continues to retain the reverence of not a few.  His was the military era of innocence.

    So, When the General went on sweet reminiscence on the advent of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it was sweet journey, down memory lane. 

    Indeed, 60 years ago in May 1975, the impossible became possible. West Africa, hitherto split between a Francophone splash, and a middling of Anglophone states, decided to fuse into a single economic bloc.

    All the Titans that wove that ‘magic’ are all gone — except Gen. Gowon.  You can then share the pride of the General, celebrating the birthday of his 60-year old child!

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    But Hardball stormed off that party — and with a huff too — when the General started rhapsodizing over ECOWAS “unity”.  To entice the breakaway, junta-ruled Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger back, Gowon suggested that maybe ECOWAS should change to ECOWASS — Economic Community of West African States and the Sahel: hell, no!

    A bloc is as good as its standing rule.  Anyone that breaches it should face the sanction.  If because of that this trio opted out, they only act with the military outlawry and flagrant impunity that made them topple the constitutional order in their country.  They should count themselves lucky that ECOWAS is not freezing them out — all three landlocked states without reach to the sea.

    You don’t throw away order and hug outlawry, just because you want “peace”, or willy-nilly unity.  That is craven appeasement that  courts nothing but the peace of the graveyard.  That must never happen.

    If the so-called ASS feel they can stand on their own, let’s see who blinks first.  But if anyone should court the other, it should be the other way round. When they jerk awake from their current delirium and smell the proverbial coffee, the prodigals would know when to head home.  The tragedy though, is that they would have further ruined their people.

    If you belong to a bloc, you stick by the rule of that bloc — no more, no less.  So, enough of this empty mushing over “unity”.  What is needed is sticking to the core value of democracy, not power by the gun barrel.

    It’s only a matter of time before these upstarts learn their lesson, and start begging to be re-admitted.

  • Parley at Rome

    Parley at Rome

    The picture virtually set X ablaze — of President Bola Tinubu, Kayode Fayemi, former governor of Ekiti State, and Peter Obi, namesake of St. Peter, whose throne Pope Leo XIV just mounted, and Labour Party presidential candidate in 2023.

    Obi mounted an impassioned campaign against Tinubu’s “Muslim-Muslim” ticket, with endless sorties to churches; asking Nigerian Christians to “take back your country”. 

    One of such forays produced the infamous “Yes Daddy” telephone conversation with Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel, exposing Obi as grovelling and craven.

    Happily however, no dirty faith politicking this time round, with Fayemi chaperoning Obi to have a friendly chat with the president; and Obi himself grinning like some pleased school boy, effusing goodwill to all, malice to none.  About time!

    Yet, one of the X folks couldn’t just resist the banter: “Tinubu just islamized the Pope!”

    But in that joke was the irony.  Here was Tinubu, Fayemi and Obi cracking jokes.  Yet, many of their supporters would, on that same X, traduce and curse one another, after having their fill of bile, abusing either of the two leaders.

    Then, Pope Leo XIV of the Holy See, as “Christian” — more: as Catholic as they come; not some hustler Pente-rascal (sorry, Pentecostal!) mouthing prosperity to feather own nest, not win souls for Christ — invited Ahmed Tinubu (very Muslim), and President of Nigeria, to his coronation.

    Fayemi himself is very Catholic.  Yet, that has not stopped him from being Tinubu’s long-running political protege; by that acing two non-consecutive tenures as Ekiti governor and, in-between, a minister under President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Obi himself had been a two-term governor of Anambra.  His state doesn’t have a sizable Muslim population, save the itinerant northern folks, found everywhere in southern Nigeria in their “Sabo”, pushing their daily bread, just as southern folks are found in northern “Sabongeri” settlements. 

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    But there were also claims that Governor Obi’s was pretty much a “Catholic” order, against other Christian Anambra denominations, with embittered Anglicans loudly protesting that stance.  If that was true, it would explain Obi’s 2023 virulent faith campaign.

    Still, truth to tell, a “Muslim-Muslim” ticket is a big issue in some parts of the country — with northern Christians, for starters, who complain of alleged political subjugation and wilful blockage from sundry opportunities.  That should be noted — and such discriminations should end.  Our politics should seek healthy balances.

    Still, neither President Tinubu nor Vice President Kashim Shettima are rabid Muslims to worry anyone.  Chief MKO Abiola, who first essayed such a pick — and won a pan-Nigeria mandate too — was much a great friend of Christians as he was of Muslims.

    Our people have much more in common than whatever separate them.  That’s the message from Rome, with Tinubu, Fayemi and Obi chatting and  smiling as members of the same Nigerian family.  So, let’s place the politics of ideas, not faith division.

  • The trials of Timothy Omotoso

    The trials of Timothy Omotoso

    You possibly haven’t taken note of his legal struggles in South Africa. Timothy Omotoso is a Nigerian pastor whose trials in ‘Mandela country’ is putting that country’s legal system itself on trial. He gets taken in and out of jail on charges that come unstuck in their courts. And he is fighting a bid by the governing authorities to declare him a prohibited person and get him deported.

    Amidst it all, he commands cult following among associates and his church members who dare the South African government over his fate and accuses it of unjustly persecuting the cleric, which they hyperbolically stated as “fighting God himself.”

    Omotoso became a free man again last Tuesday after he was arrested over the previous weekend on immigration charges. A magistrate’s court in the suburb known as East London ordered his release from custody pending an appeal against a decision by the Minister of Home Affairs declaring him a prohibited person. By law, he is entitled to appeal or make representations over that decision.

    The magistrate’s decision came as the country’s National Prosecuting Authority announced it would appeal Omotoso’s recent acquittal from multiple charges over which he faced a marathon trial that lasted more than seven years, along with two co-accused persons, and was held in jail while awaiting trial. The 66-year-old pastor at the Jesus Dominion International (JDI) church in South Africa was arrested in 2017 on 32 charges, including rape, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. But in April, this year, an Eastern Cape high court judge acquitted him of those charges and ordered his release. The judge criticised the prosecution’s handling of the case, saying the state had not proved beyond reasonable doubt its case against the cleric and the two assistants who faced charges along with him.

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    The prosecuting authority had said Omotoso would be deported immediately after his acquittal, but that did not happen. And neither did the cleric himself lie low. He moved to East London, where he launched a highly publicised crusade titled “New Dawn,” to which his fervent followers even invited President Cyril Ramaphosa. The crusade began 4th May – exactly a month after the high court acquitted him and ordered his freedom from more than seven-year-long incarceration. When municipal authorities barred him from using public venues for the crusade, he took to a private property. He was arrested again at wee hours of penultimate Saturday as he was rounding off what his supporters described as a “spiritually electrifying vigil.” His new challenge stems, though, not from the criminal proceedings, but from allegations that he used fraudulent documentation to enter South Africa.

    So far, it is doubtful the Nigerian Consulate in South Africa is actively involved in Omotoso’s case. Nether is the Nigerian in Diaspora Commission overtly showing interest. But he is a Nigerian and can’t be abandoned to South African societal wiles.

  • Fubara comes of age

    Fubara comes of age

    The irony was lost on most: but Siminalayi Fubara, suspended Rivers governor, just junked the hare-brained strategies of his troubled governorship.  But the irony there isn’t the repudiation per se.  It’s rather that it was done during the Rivers day of tribute to the memory of Edwin Clark, the late Ijaw leader.

    With all due respect to the late Chief Clark’s memory, he championed the wild Ijaw nativist campaigns that pushed Fubara into the ditch — all based on nothing but empty Ijaw sentiments — when he ought to have been a statesmanly arbiter.

    Well, Clark is conveniently dead (God bless his soul and forgive his sins!) but Fubara still lives to hold the short end of the stick! 

    Just as well Fubara had his own back on the old man: decrying the “Oshobay” tactics the old warrior championed, without let, till he died. Remember those thundering letters of Clark, particularly against the presidential peace initiatives, which give-and-take could have tamped down the crisis?

    Still, Fubara would not be Fubara if he didn’t go into an over-drive, in his newfound coyness for power, now that the full effect of the suspension is sinking in.

    “Do you think I am even interested in going back there?” he told those still loudly chasing shadows on his account, grandstanding that he be reinstated pronto.  “Do you see how better I look?  Do you think I am interested in it?  If I have my way, I’ll say it here, I don’t wish to go back there.  My spirit has left that place long ago.”

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    Believe that, and you’ll believe anything!  It’s just sweet hyperbole! Even, if Fubara were earnest about not “going back”, the stakes are just too high right now. Rather, it was a flashing red code for his supporters to be more circumspect.

    Still, eating crow, at that very public event, shows he has come of age. Even the best of generals know how to retreat from dire battles, only to relaunch with smarter tactics.

    Now, the ball is in the court of Nyesom Wike, Fubara’s mentor-turned-tormentor.  He should also grow up.  Wike gains nothing by blabbing over Fubara’s secret moves at a rapprochement.  He ought to have kept that under wraps.

    Wike should also remember that his triumphalist vim, to get rid of Fubara and Deputy, Prof. Ngozi Odu, forced the emergency; and Fubara’s suspension — better than outright removal for Fubara, but far short of the hot vengeance the Wike camp craved.

    This freeze is good for Rivers.  Let the battling camps key into peace.  Fubara has eaten crow.  Clark is gone to meet his maker. “Oshobay” is in the morgue.

    Let Wike and co too work for peace.  That’s the only thing that can benefit the long-suffering Rivers people.

  • Sallah bonus: Aliyu’s unfinished business

    Sallah bonus: Aliyu’s unfinished business

    Sokoto State Governor Ahmed Aliyu obviously has the interest of workers in his state at heart. In 2024, he approved a bonus of thirty thousand naira each for all civil servants in the state to support their festive expenses during the Eid-el-Adha celebrations. He will likely do something similar for this year’s festivities that are around the corner. But disbursement of the largesse last year was an Augean stable and it remains to be seen how well that stable has been cleared.

    After the governor made provision for the Sallah bonus to be paid in 2024, it was found out that the largesse did not get to all intended beneficiaries. The share meant for workers with Sokoto’s local government administrations and primary school teachers under the local government education authorities was diverted and the governor got to know of it. About mid-last year while addressing a crowd of well-wishers at the Government House in Sokoto, following a successful Hajj exercise, Aliyu expressed dismay over the conduct of some finance officials, especially at the council level, who denied council staff the thirty thousand naira approved as Sallah bonus by the state government.

    “I wonder how somebody would deny our workers the stipends we gave them in order to make them financially stable during the Sallah festive season. Those who diverted those funds must return them immediately, or else we will take serious punitive measures against them,” the governor had said, adding: “We will ensure that the culprits reap what they sowed to serve as a deterrent to others.” He charged all heads of agencies where the diversion had taken place to hasten compilation of all affected workers and ensure they get paid; adding that the state administration was determined to ensure accountability, transparency and prudent management of public funds for the good of all.

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    In an address to labour unions during the 2025 May Day celebrations recently held at Giginya Stadium in Sokoto, Aliyu announced that the misappropriated Sallah bonus had been recovered. He assured the workers that the recovered funds would shortly be disbursed to rightful beneficiaries in accordance with established procedures for the Sallah largesse.

    Reports about the governor’s May Day address did not cite him speaking of sanctions for those from whom the diverted funds was recovered, and you would wonder if recovering the money was all there is to dealing with the malpractice. Aliyu, from his past pronouncements, did not appear to be in doubt about the set of officials to hold liable for the fund diversion. Recovering the money from them should not be the end of the matter, they should be delivered to justice. Otherwise, the governor would be treating corruption with kid gloves and the touted deterrence factor would be lost.

  • ‘Tiger Base’

    ‘Tiger Base’

    When about 35 civil society organisations (CSOs) jointly petition the Senate to investigate “the alarming activities” of a police unit in the country, their allegations should be investigated.  Their petition, titled ‘Urgent Call for the Senate’s Investigation into Human Rights Violations by the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Imo State Police Command, Tiger Base,’ was intended to “draw urgent attention to the alarming allegations of human rights abuses and corruption involving the Tiger Base, Owerri.”

    The petitioners said the allegations against the “notorious” police unit include “unlawful detention, torture, coercion, and extortion” and “reflect a disturbing pattern of misconduct that must be addressed swiftly and decisively.”  It was set up “to tackle incidents of violent crimes, but the activities of the unit bear no resemblance to the requirements of the law or professional policing standards,” they stated.

    To support their petition, the CSOs attached to the document “a serialised investigative journalism report,” which they said “reveals shocking accounts by victims, survivors, relatives of victims and survivors, activists and human rights defenders and witnesses of egregious human rights atrocities, corruption and flagrant abuse of power sustained by impunity and the failure of the police and police oversight authorities to investigate allegations and ensure accountability and justice.”

    According to them, the reported incidents “indicate a fundamental failure of the police to uphold the law, protect citizens, or adhere to ethical standards. The culture of impunity that allows these excesses to persist is detrimental to public trust in law enforcement and justice in Nigeria.”

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    The petitioners claimed that “Several petitions and reports about the atrocities going on at Tiger Base have been ignored and the atrocities continue unchecked and unabated,” and alleged that there were “similar police tactical units across various states.”

    They argued that “The failure of the authorities to investigate cases to ensure that perpetrators are brought to account and victims gain access to justice sustains the atmosphere of impunity that allows rampant egregious police abuse.”

    For instance, they stated,  “the silence by the police authorities over the findings from the police investigation ordered by the Inspector-General of Police into allegations of arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, torture, extrajudicial killings and organ harvesting brought against some police operatives attached to the Anambra State Rapid Response Squad (former SARS Awkuzu) by a whistleblower bears testimony to the disposition of police authorities to cover up the atrocities of their personnel rather than ensuring transparent investigations and taking appropriate actions to demonstrate that the police hierarchy is not complicit or does not condone or cover up atrocities.”

    The Senate should treat this petition with the utmost seriousness. Also, the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has a duty to look into the matter because it is in the public domain.   

  • Awka: trader vs professor

    Awka: trader vs professor

    “The last time a president visited for a commissioning was in 2012 for a brewery, but today, the president is here to commission roads spanning several kilometres, flyovers, a government house, and more …”

    Now, that was the Soludo Scud Missile (SSM) hurtling from Awka with fearsome swish and foreboding devastation!  If anyone missed it, it was certainly not Peter Obi, whose Anambra governorship claims are akin to the farmer that planted five seeds, lied he planted 10, and is doomed to harvesting five crops and five lies! 

    Indeed, all Governor Chukwuma Soludo reeled out at President Bola Tinubu’s Akwa visit were as real as Obi’s many gubernatorial claims were phantom.

    Which was why Obi gave a tearful — drip! drip! — wailing response at a Lagos Business School Alumni Association forum in Lagos, almost turned a pity party.

    Obi moaned that he was a trader; and Soludo, the current governor, is a professor.  Where he, the trader, had stopped — some study in fake self-deprecation — Soludo, the professor, who boasts better knowledge, should continue.  After all, government is a continuum.  True.

    But the problem with Obi is that he’s victim of own airy propaganda.  Now, if he had “fixed” Anambra as he often loves to claim, his threadbare legacy would not have been so stark, and the SSM would not have smashed so smack!

    But even in his crybaby defence, he still hugged bubbly claims — starting with his so-called “savings”.  Those satanic savings were hardly selfless.  Putting state money in banks you and your family have interests, is hardly praise-worthy.  It’s roguish.

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    Nay, it’s execrable; and such a clever ploy is exceedingly stupid.  Those funds were tied up earning illicit interests.  So, they were not available to fund infrastructure, physical and social.  But no infrastructure, no legacy.  That explains Obi’s gubernatorial sterility.  Yet, he loves to brag about his “savings”.

    Of course, Obi could not avoid the Soludo sucker punch, that he built a brewery — a family business — instead of building lasting roads, or even any school, all through his eight-year tenure. 

    That the brewery is now employing hundreds of Anambra youths is neither here nor there.  The real issue is the opportunity cost in Ndi Anambra’s delayed public sector investment and sustainable development.  But it was “opportunity gain” for Obi that soullessly gamed the system, yet annoy with his hollow preachments as Pope of ethical politics.  He can tell that to the marines!

    Obi’s is a classic example of a  mediocre tenure being sold as stellar.  Unfortunately for him, the more he blows his scratchy trumpet, the more he exposes his full emptiness, when the question is solid accomplishments in public office. 

    That SSM is harsh, though fair reminder.  Pitobi, carry your cross like a man!

  • Price war by reaction

    Price war by reaction

    So far as the pumphead price of petrol in Nigeria goes, it’s a contest between private-owned Dangote refinery and government-controlled Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Whenever Dangote finds convenience to peel back some margin on the cost at which fuel is made available to the public, NNPCL follows suit in obvious drive to hold down its market share.

    Curiously though, the public company and operator of Nigeria’s oil resource never leads the initiative to lower prices and ease the burden of citizens. It only fights from the back foot after Dangote bells the cat. Bottom line is that Nigerians get gasoline cheaper, lessening the inflationary pressure hobbling the economy and pushing more and more people into poverty. And this is welcome. But you wonder why the government firm isn’t proactively seizing opportunity to loosen the noose on Nigerians and tends to wait on Dangote to force its hand.

    Recently, NNPCL cut the price of premium motor spirit (petrol) to N880 per litre in Lagos from N925, and N935 in Abuja from N950. The price reduction came barely a week after Dangote lowered its ex-depot price from N865 to N835 per litre. The 650,000 barrels per day refinery had instructed its affiliate marketers to sell a litre of petrol at N890, from N920 in Lagos, N900 in the South-west, N910 in the South-south, and N920 in the North-east. Note: the new per-litre price of N880 in Lagos adopted by NNPCL falls 10 naira lower than Dangote’s.

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    The latest price cut was Dangote’s third downward review in about six weeks. Only in March, the private refinery announced a reduction of more than 60 naira in petrol price. That move came against the backdrop of a price slump in the global spot market, which benchmarks international oil pricing, and government’s naira-for-crude deal with local refiners of which Dangote is the biggest beneficiary. Dangote also said it aimed at succouring Nigerians during the Ramadan as a gesture of support for the economic policies of the Bola Tinubu presidency. The price of petrol was lowered by Dangote to  between N850 and N865 in Lagos, which NNPCL responded to by cutting its ex-depot charges to achieve price parity with Dangote.

    The naira-for-crude deal momentarily fell through and Dangote, sometime in April cited a mismatch between its dollarised crude purchase commitments and sales revenue in naira to demand that marketers henceforth off-take its products in the American currency. This translated to immediate spike in the cost of petrol at the pumphead, including petrol sourced from NNPCL. Now that Dangote has found a way around its processes to again lower petrol price, the government firm is back in price reckoning. But isn’t it better to arrowhead the initiative, and not just react?

  • Don Quixote Utomi

    Don Quixote Utomi

    No one can honestly say Prof. Pat Utomi has not given his views, as to how Nigerians could face down — and probably solve — the contemporary problems of Nigeria.

    His challenge has always been his plasticity.  This penchant is again all too glaring in his so-called “shadow cabinet”, to pronounce on the current federal order.

    Why does Pat Utomi always act and sound like Nigeria’s 21st century Don Quixote tilting at the windmills, when real issues evade him — or he evades real issues? — in his humongous passion for cloud chasing?

    When IBB and co annulled Basorun MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential mandate, Pato — as not a few hailed him — trucked out in a peaceful protest with Concerned Professionals (CP).  But when NADECO was waging the real anti-military war, Pato and CP had fizzled out like dew before the first rays of the morning sun.

    Then, the era of Patito’s Gang on TV!  Patito — read Pat Utomi — and his intellectual “gang”, white shirts with ties, sleeves rolled-up like some wanna-be American politicians pontificated, without end, on business ethics, good governance, corporate governance, sound business and growth strategies, among other normative themes.

    Yet, at least two of these corporate dramatics hardly measured up to these high ideals in real life.  Utomi lugs unflattering business failures: when the Volkswagen of Nigeria (VOA) collapsed, he was deputy managing director (DMD) and acting CEO.  At Bank PHB he was board chairman.  Both ventures sank, though through no personal culpability from Utomi’s end.

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    The other went from a high-flying newspaper columnist, got bivouacked with a failed presidency as a spokesman, raced into politics as running mate to a controversial figure — the type the Patito show would shun with white rage. Indeed, talk is cheap!

    Then now, Utomi’s “shadow cabinet” set to huff and puff over governance — to be sure, no crime in a democracy.  But the clear irony: Utomi and his so-called shadow cabinet are latter-day Labour Party (LP) emergency “ideologues” — not because they believe in social democracy, but because they tried to gift Peter Obi’s 2023 deceit and opportunism a philosophical coat it hardly merited.

    Now, LP is in chaos, but the Utomi-led philosophers are “porting” to new busybody rackets!  Shouldn’t this so-called shadow cabinet first attempt to sort out the LP demons; and theorize on Obi who couldn’t even manage a crisis in a party, yet proclaims himself the best-ever born crisis manager for Nigeria? 

    Now, LP is suspending its sole governor and its elected legislators — and vice-versa — and Utomi’s shadow cabinet is focusing attention on a tutorial for the federal order!  Seriously?  Why not fix darling LP first?

    It’s the Don Quixote in everyone of them!  Let Utomi and co keep tilting at the wheels.  People who really matter shape real events without Utomi and gang’s  comical dramatics!  Shadow cabinet my foot!

  • Laments over ‘crazy billing’

    Laments over ‘crazy billing’

    Lagos State Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat recently became the ‘poster boy’ of the crazy billing menace visited on electricity consumers by power distribution companies (DisCos). He lamented that his official residence was slammed with N29million electricity bill for April by the utility firm that the area falls under – up from N2.7million bill assigned in March.

    Speaking at a roundtable between the Lagos State Government and the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), the deputy governor said the electricity provider frustrated his efforts to install a prepaid meter, even when the meter had been paid for. “People are trying to survive, and the common denominator for them is power. They don’t have power, there are billing challenges. In fact, I’m a very good example,” Hamzat stated. “Last month, in my house, or the state house that I live in, the bill was N2.7m. This month, Eko DisCo sent us a bill of N29m. I sent it to the Commissioner for Energy. It’s crazy! I actually procured a meter to say, ’Look, don’t give us estimated billing.’ But to convert it is wahala (an ordeal),” he added.

    The deputy governor, who represented Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu at the event, said the menace of arbitrary electricity charges was affecting not just high-profile officials but also everyday Lagosians. He cited the instance of a mainland resident who was billed N2.8million while his annual rent is N2million: “There’s a place called Coker Aguda in Surulere, and the people came to me, and I was asking them to calm down. A man’s rent in a year is about N2m, they gave him a bill of N2.8m for electricity. How can the bill be more than the man’s rent for a year? Those are the challenges we have. Our people are suffering because of estimated billing.”

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    Hamzat’s lamentations perfectly articulated the experience of electricity consumers – and there are a huge number – still on estimated billing by the DisCos. In many cases, the billings come in quantum leaps even when supply, for whatever reason, recede from previous levels. Acquisition of prepaid meters, which are the property of DisCos and are a tool for ensuring efficiency in their revenue collection, has been made the obligation of consumers. But even where consumers manage to fund meter acquisition, aligning their accounts to the prepaid mode could be a drawn-out ordeal as the deputy governor pointed out. That’s the common experience.

    It was strange, therefore, that All Progressives Congress (APC) National Secretary Ajibola Bashiru dismissed Hamzat’s concern as unwarranted. “Energy is not cheap anywhere in the world. Nigeria is not running a socialist society. Let us get it very right. We are in a globalised economy,” he rejoined during a television programme. You could ask him what the capitalist formula is that explains a spike in billing from N2.7million to N29million in just a month. It’s just crazy!