The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • The treasures of a lazy man

    An ancient wisdom posits that the worth of a lazy man is often measured by the size of his tummy. Put differently, it is said that the treasures of a lazy man is likely to reside in his tummy.

    Well there must be a connection between slothfulness and gluttony; and between ungainly physique and laziness. For instance, a man who is utterly busy and pressed for deadline hardly has time to eat. Or let us say that food isn’t always what is uppermost in his heart.

    Stretched further, a man who is always hard a work for long hours – be it in the factory, farm or behind the desktop (like Hardball!), would never enjoy that dubious luxury of acquiring folds of flesh in those fecund parts of the body.

    For further disambiguation of this wise saying, when our elders spoke about lazy men, it also connotes men considered simple of mind and frivolous in character. They had in mind men who are sent off on errands when men meet to weigh the affairs of community and humanity. In some parts, such men are derisively labeled efulefu; men of no worth or substance.

    For an efulefu therefore, his treasures are usually stacked in his oft distended tummy or they lay waste for others to plunder.

    If this is not the Nigerian narrative then consider these three headlines in three different national dailies in one day.

    The first states: “Nigeria spends $2 billion annually on honey importation,” (The Punch Monday, September 3, 2018).

    The second: “$2.3 billion rice import contradicts FG’s position,” (New Telegraph, Monday, September 13, 2018).

    The third: “Pineapple import: Nigeria losing revenue, job opportunities to Benin Republic,” (Daily Sun, Monday, September 3, 2018).

    Honey, rice and pineapples; and most other food items like fish, chicken, milk, palm oil are common agricultural produce that can be produced easily in large parts of the country. But Nigeria has failed to rise to the challenge. Rice, for instance, is probably the most consumed staple food for a population of over 180 million; this is either a goldmine or a curse. Gold if produced enough even for local consumption and curse if you have to import the bulk of it.

    Now, like the lazy efulefu, Nigeria imports most of the rice she eats, billions of dollars to rice farms in Asia. Having made much puerile efforts in the last few years to grow rice and with billions of naira down the rice swamps around the country, there is still no local rice. Much ashamed, she begins to lie to herself that she now grows rice.

    But the truth is that she is too lazy to grow anything. She is an efulefu who loves all the good things of life… but can’t produce anything.

  • National interest versus rule of law

    Since President Muhammadu Buhari posited that for national security, individual liberty must give way, bang at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference, the polity has been in a whirr — torn between the lobbies of security (the law and order ensemble) and the lobbies of liberty (press your freedom and the heavens won’t fall).

    Both however would appear to hug the extreme, the fantastic black-or-white.  Much –if not all — of life is the ordinary grey.

    For starters, pristine government came with some surrender of individual rights, to a common collective.  To checkmate the strong from rolling over others, the collective craved a Leviathan, surrendered some of their rights to this all-powerful juggernaut, so the Leviathan be a protective shield for all.  It was the original “social contract”.

    But down the ages, that contract had somewhat been abused: first, by the absolute monarch, by the so-called divine rights of the king, put in place in concert with rogue priests; then some rogue theocracy itself, with the church or mosque, grabbing power; then by feudalism, in which the quickest to seize the means of production crowned themselves the lords the land must worship; down to the tragedy of military rule, where the gun, and absolutely nothing else, shot up the wielder!

    Still, all through the ages, something has stayed constant: the imperative to balance the security of the collective with the liberty of the individual.  That ding-dong is not about to be settled.

    But while this tension rages, there is always the penchant, by both sides of the divide, to wax emotive, abuse the process and swing the balance to their side.

    A law-and-order government would often wave the security imperative; and why, before it, every knee must bow — and be slaughtered.

    But that is not the only guilty party as, from the citizen liberties front, smart crooks often forge citizens’ right as shield against just comeuppance, waxing lyrical and romantic over the rule of law, even if their motive is to escape due and fair sanction.

    With the British Common Law legal system without the British ethos that makes it work, it is natural for frustrated governments, who want to do good, getting justice for the majority but being pecked back by legal technicalities, to flip; and show their frustration by waving the security imperative.

    But the good thing is for the courts to be alive to their responsibilities, to interpret the law, fair and square.

    Rule of law, though a right, comes with grave responsibilities.  That is why a convicted criminal, once in gaol, loses the most basic of citizens’ rights: liberty.  Even pre-conviction, it is trite that personal liberties are subject to collective security — and no amount of poetic gushing on the rule of law can wish that away.

    But then again, it is the courts’ bounden duty: to push back a government gung-ho on the security imperative but also hold to account lobbies that seek undue advantage, by crass abuse of the rule of law, to corral illicit gains.

    The courts therefore hold the ace to maintain this delicate balance, of personal liberty and security.  They must never surrender it, no matter what.

  • Ms May’s yellow, yellow!

    Oh mi gosh! Did you see that jacket! Hardball must can his uncanny intuition and export it to Britain. It would require some doing, some extractive alchemy, but it’s not beyond doing. Hardball could have sworn that there was something definitely unsettling about that yellow jacket donned by Ms Theresa May, the British PM as she came visiting last week.

    It could have been the most striking thing about the visit if you asked Hardball. Not just because it is bright, violent yellow; yellower than MTN even.

    But if you forgave all that and forgave the fact that the yellow jacket was ill-fitting… now this: she reveals that it was made in Nigeria!

    Here is a NAN report: “Finally she expressed the desire of the British government to assist Lagos in the development of her creative industry and alluded to the fact that the jacket she was wearing when she met with the governor was actually made in Nigeria.”

    There you have that classic British patronizing patronage. The loud dress hanging askew on the PM had to be Nigerian. Typically British, always would hand you a token patronage with a motive to patronize.

    But the yellow fiasco turned out most memorable in the hurried stopover. But first, thank goodness a British PM came calling on a crumbling former outpost. Been quite some time a PM thought good of a shambolic behemoth sucked dry and long left for dead.

    Could Madam PM come to see what is left of the house of horror? Or corroborate the ugly pictures in her head? Didn’t she quip about it when she stopped in South Africa? She spoke about the land of hunger and misery and sorrow. Did a former PM not speak about a ‘fantastically corrupt place?’

    Hardball insists nothing else about the visit stood out order than the yellow jacket. All the talk from Aso Rock to the Lagos House is one load of baloney. All yak, yak no substance.

    Here: “I was in Abuja and also in Lagos to see the thriving business community here.

    “We want to see increased trade between Nigeria and UK. Increased investment, bringing jobs here in Nigeria, jobs in the UK,” Ms May says. What’s that?

    Apart from Shell, Hardball knows no other British outfit in Nigeria that may really be call a business. We know what Shell does here don’t we?

    Why is it all about letter of credit? Where is the Abacha loot stashed in Britain 20 years on? How come we can’t export our sweet beans (ewa oloyin) to Britain?

    Hardball is not saying that Britain ravaged and abandoned Nigeria. He is saying that Nigeria is ravaged and abandoned.

    And the Chinese are picking the carcass. Thanks for stopping by Ms May.

  • Again, the poverty question

    Again, the Brit camp of Theresa May, just like her predecessor’s “fantastically corrupt” quip that put his diplomatic nose out of joint, has bombed Nigeria and Nigerians with the poverty question.

    “Much of Nigeria is thriving, with many individuals enjoying the reliefs of a resurgent economy,” Mrs May told a gathering in Cape Town, South Africa, on the eve of her whistle-stop visit to Nigeria, “yet 87 million Nigerians live on less than US $1 and 90 cents a day, making it home to more very poor people than any other nation in the world.”

    While not a few would contest the tag of Nigeria housing the most extensive colony of the teeming wretched of the earth, dismissing such as some hyperbole, the British PM’s assessment, of Nigeria’s poverty situation, would appear fair, even if brutally clinical.

    While that has put not a few on the defensive, on account of nationalistic pride or even partisan sympathies with the ruling government, others have gone into over-drive, in perverse celebration and chest-thumping to score political points.

    Even the Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural group that loves to exert political pressure, has posited that the May charge should spur President Muhammadu Buhari, and his government, to further tackle the poverty question — hardly an unreasonable charge.

    Still, the Afenifere stand has always been the standard charge, from the political environment, particularly with political mileage to be made: turning the problem to the sole “crime” of the sitting government.  But that doesn’t tell all of the story.

    The notorious fact is that a country that neglected infrastructure for too long can’t claim to be surprised the bulk of its citizens are poor.  But that criminal neglect didn’t just come by accident.  It was a deliberate ploy, by a criminal and corrupt elite, that was more interested in feathering own nest, even if the society that gifted it a rare privilege wilted — or even died.

    Until that parasitic elite is replaced by a nationalistic and social-conscious one, this situation would not change — and let no one introduce the childish age mix into the matter.  Age has nothing to do with it.

    So, let the May bomb chasten the irresponsible Nigerian elite into a higher level of responsibility, a new sense of duty and even an adorable level of patriotism.

    As for the people themselves, it’s high time they stopped being docile and unreasonably long-suffering.

    You have your vote.  So, always throw off the parasites to preserve and protect your future.  That is the only way a future British PM won’t come and, like Mrs May, mock you and your children’s poverty.

     

  • Pastor Thomas meets Jabez

    You don’t know Pastor Thomas because he doesn’t exist. He is a figment of Hardball’s imagination. But recall that Hardball is as fecund of imagination as a woman pregnant with triplets. Yes, even if he says so himself.

    Pastor Thomson is a mere model of today’s mammon evangelism. He is a perfect picture of sons of mammon who have debauched the good book; who have managed to craft carnality into spirituality and unbeknownst to them, they go about spreading Tramadol gospel and they feed the flock with aphrodisiacal of faith.

    A mammon evangelist, the verisimilitude of a Pastor Thomson is often big and swashbuckling. Or shall we say living unwholesomely by bread alone often renders him oversized and disproportionate. He therefore covers his carnal mass with profusion of garments… large, overflowing gowns, extra-sized three-piece suits and elaborate silk robes that hardly conceal his obscene flatulence. He lives in the biggest mansion and owns the biggest cars and jets. He is a god in his own carnal image..

    A mammon evangelist is often of small and humble beginning; but because his eyes are eternally trained on worldly fripperies and gems, he soon begins to trade in the Word. The Bible warns that we be wary of fake pastors who steal in his name.

    But when you organise crusades every week with the hidden motive of fleecing the lost; when you target vulnerable rich widows for special prayers; when you guilefully ‘obtain’ unsuspecting foreign missions; and you commoditise miracles, you are mammon-driven and you are merchandising the gospel. You are stealing in the name of God.

    Now what is the connection between a Pastor Thomson and good old Jabez of the Old Testament age?

    Jabez (1Chronicles 4: 9-10) is one of the most enigmatic characters of the Bible. He is a one-paragraph personality who has spawned more reviews than some books. He is introduced as more honourable than his brothers. But his mother named him Jabez because he bore him in pain.

    Then the famous Jabez prayer: “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!”

    The Bible says: “So God granted him what he requested.”

    Now Pastor Thomson and the horde of mammon evangelists of this day must have read about Jabez but they obviously have no understanding.

    Old Jabez asks his Maker to bless him and enlarge his coast and is quick to plead that God’s hands be on him and keep him from evil. Why?

    Simple: Because mammon is the route of all evil and without God’s steadying hand, you would end up serving Mammon like all Pastor Thomsons of today.

     

  • Ortom-atic agony

    Call it “Ortom-atic” agony.  Or douse it with some Latin flavour, and arrive at the rather quaint Ortom Agonistes.  You’re more or less at the same destination.  No matter how morbid it may sound, you just might be toasting Nigeria’s clear champion of political necromancy.

    In those terrible days, when “Fulani helmsmen” ravaged Benue villages and allegedly killed; as if mass killing was about to vanish and there would be no more opportunity to unleash such bestiality; and the media was hysterical with rage and morbid excitement, embattled Governor Samuel Ioraer Ortom, was Benue’s mourner-in-chief.

    You couldn’t but feel for him!  With his people at the end of their tether, among the prominent mourners was former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who even laid a wreath, at the make-shift mass burial spot.  Baba had come to contribute his patriotic zeal to Benue’s unfolding political necromancy.

    How?  Because his visit and laying-of-wreaths was the climax of opposition sorties to Benue, with Rivers Governor Nyesom Wike and Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, both PDP governors, among others, made a big show of their sorties, dropping hefty donations to apparently care for the traumatized; and pole-axing the sitting government for its security failures.  Very moving!

    Besides, it was those halcyon days when Baba first fired his “never-run-again” letter, and everything about his “Third Force” appeared on course, and a little political necromancy, a bit of morbidity for a patriotic cause, didn’t appear out of place.  But alas!  All would now appear a damp squib!

    Indeed, Benue’s political necromancy — hitting on mass killings for political mileage — started collapsing, when it became public knowledge that the outrageous killings of two Catholic priests was done, not by some “Fulani herdsmen”, but indeed by characters linked to the Benue governor’s local, if informal, security infrastructure — and a particular one of them, an ex-Boko Haram!

    Strangely — or better still, not-so-strangely — since that expose, the “herdsmen” had vanished, their mass killing with them.  Now, it’s all all calm on the Benue front!

    Since then, however, the governor’s political fortune seems to have taken a tumble.  First, it was his self-reported “red card” from his former party, the ruling APC.  But even in his “new” PDP — where he originally came from — nomination for second term appears unsure.

    So, even if Benue is feeling some relief, no so the embattled governor!  The other day, His Excellency grumbled aloud that some “Fulani herdsmen militia” were gunning for him, and were after his life!

    Well, whatever Ortom’s alarm is worth, the federal authorities should take prompt action.  We can’t have a governor, and chief security officer of his state, cower and rat around as if he has no state cover — abomination!

    There is one snag, though — and it’s this nagging doubt.

    Without prejudice to the exact opposite, could this new alarm be a not-so-rebranded executive strain of the old necromancy, a classic gubernatorial survival strategy of an embattled governor, in search of Ortom-atic (sorry automatic) nomination for second term?  Strictly, it may be either way.

    But whichever way, it would appear the clear making of the current bout of Ortom agonistes!

  • Rot University, Nigeria campus

    The rot is deep.” A nickel for you if you remembered the above quote: who said it, when, why and in which context?  It is a quote that encapsulated an era, a tombstone to have defined an age but it was never to be.

    In fact these words spoken by former President Olusegun Obasanjo upon his ascension to office in May, 1999 actually became a lode for limited vision, incapacity and inchoate ambition.

    Each time President Obasanjo was challenged about passing opportunities and inability to get work done, the retort was always that “the rot is deep.” Meaning the military era left Nigeria deeply decayed.

    It was a singsong that lingered for a while until it became untenable, especially in the latter years of the Obasanjo administration (1999 to 2007). The rot was deep indeed but it never really catalysed President Obasanjo to radical solutions. Obasanjo simply had neither capacity nor vision to lead Nigeria to a new age.

    Today, shall we say that the ‘rot’ narrative has lingered? With the coming of President Muhammadu Buhari in May, 2015, riding on the wings of change; many believed Nigeria eventually got her Messiah. But inertia soon trampled hope. And as whispers became shrieks of anguish, the retort was that this government was excavating the swamp yet. A swamp of rot, that is. In other words, the rot had morphed into a swamp.

    It is true that Nigeria has only enjoyed consistent decline since independence in 1960. It is also true that the rot set in and has continued to fester. It is even truer that Nigeria has neither been blessed with a leader who properly grasps the situation nor understands how to tackle it.

    This is where we are today. We are enmeshed in rot that has continued to expand into a swamp and ocean, even. The rot threatens to cover the entire face of the land if we do not find a head that can wrap his head around it and cleanse it out once and for all.

    Some say the rot is deeper in the education sector but Hardball says it’s all ramifying. But education is the key sector that must be cleaned out to imbue a new lease of life.

    Hardball thinks Nigeria today can be described as some mythical Rot University where everything has decayed. The ongoing admission process is a good case study. Admission is a huge, lucrative racket for Nigeria’s public universities. Merit has become anathema and almost counts for nothing.

    In fact, nothing counts in public university admission in Nigeria today than who you know or how much you have. No shame; it’s a sordid bazaar and everyone is feeding frenzy on it.

  • Refuse watch

    On the refuse crisis, the Ambode governorship has come under blistering attack, with the not-so-fantastic result of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI) experiment.

    Fair enough — for a people that zealously hail the governor for his infrastructure savvy, which has turned much of Lagos into work-in-progress, push their democratic right to bristle, even the more, to nail the governor where they feel he is stumbling.

    The refuse crisis is a classic case, and it isn’t so pretty!

    Yet, there is something salutary brewing in the Okota corridor, near Isolo, Lagos, on the refuse question.  Whatever magic the government has adopted, to clean up that area, should be replicated city-wide.

    At the sudden dawn of the crisis, the stretch of Okota road, from the Cele junction of the Apapa-Oworonsoki Expressway, became a free-wheeling dumping ground.  It was the smelly, dirty era of garbage.

    All through that route, from the popular Cele bus hub, down Okota road and branching left into the long, long stretch of Ago Palace Way, it was garbage unlimited, with nearly every spot, on the road median, bearing its filth, with scandalous glee.

    At the Okota road-Ago Palace Way intersection, the illegal dump, bang in the middle of the road, contested the right of way with the traffic, with vehicles, Okada transit bikes and Marwa tricycles squelching the refuse on the tar, setting off a rancid smell that further polluted the air.

    Further up the road, down Ago Palace Way, at a major u-turn near the popular Ali Dada bus stop, another virulent illegal dump had taken root.  At a time,  the fear was that it wouldn’t stop, until it covered, with its mountain of refuse, the entire six-lane road.

    But whoddunit?  In the last three or four weeks, these illegal refuse dumps have vanished — as swiftly as they had appeared!  Whoddunit?

    Hardball can report the salutary development, a sane reclamation of the environment, from free-wheeling filth.  Indeed, the sight is beautiful to behold!

    But whatever magic the Lagos authorities have worked on the Ago-Okota sector, it certainly can work on the other parts of the extensive city, under refuse.

    Did it ramp up the turn-around period of its refuse compactors?  Did it plant cells to arrest irrational denizens, who dump packs of refuse just anywhere, thus giving life to the illegal dumps?  Did it mount a public enlightenment blitz to discourage such barbaric conduct?

    Whatever it did, it should replicate the feat everywhere else.

    Towards that end, it should also continue to fine-tune the operational cohabitation of Visionscape Sanitation Solutions Ltd and other refuse collection players, formerly known as the private sector participators (PSP).

    It should also seriously look into routine financial infrastructure to aid the PSP players acquire better equipment, even if some of them had shown bad faith before.

    The refuse crisis is a war that must be won.  The results at the Okota sector is impressive.  Let it be transformed into a Lagos-wide success.

  • A malodorous state

    The sick and deranged never gets ashamed of his actions. Rather, it’s his brother who bears the brunt of his ailment. The sick fellow is quick to void his decent apparels as if they are an impediment to his living out his madness to the fullest. Then in the course of his eternal peregrinations, he would ‘acquire’ all manner of rags, as many as he can find. He would pick up all sorts of bric-a-brac as may catch his fancy.

    In full bloom, he has become a moving schnick-schnack; heavily burdened mentally and physically. Lost to the world or rather, living in a world by his self. In this state he has transmuted into what is termed ‘government pikin’; in this condition he has no  kith or kin any longer. It is at the stage that he has become an eternal embarrassment to his brethren. They would always duck and remain shamed-faced at the odium their kind has become.

    Such must be the pain that Nigerians bear at the odorous state of Nigeria’s sports management. Those running Nigeria’s sports of all kinds seem to have lost any sense of shame or reproach.

    So much stench seems to waft all the way from the Sports Ministry to the football house, basketball federation, athletics, indeed almost all. International bodies regulating sports must be both in shock and awe at Nigeria’s administrators’ capacity for obduracy and sheer yam-headedness.

    This week, Nigeria for the umpteenth time escaped the ultimate sanction of the world football governing body, FIFA. It took the last-minute intervention of the presidency to stave off the axe of FIFA from bringing down Nigeria’s football head, in a manner of speaking. In the first place, the presidency may have been on vacation as the war raged between two factions in the football house for nearly four years.

    It was obvious that one of the contestants, Mr. Chris Giwa became implacable and desperate that he shopped for forum almost to the ends of the world. After he had exhausted all remediation available to him on the FIFA platform, he resorted to mischief and invaded the local courts.

    But approaching civil courts is against FIFA’s dictates. Giwa and his brain-box, Solomon Lalong who happens to be the country’s sports Minister know this too well. Yet they ran the crazy gamut from the lower courts to the highest court in the land – Supreme Court.

    Yet the presidency looked on as this outrage raged. It took FIFA bringing out the axe for the presidency to rise from its slumber. This has taken almost four years. Whereas firing the bumbling Minister two years ago would have put paid to the problem and saved Nigeria from this universal shame. Truly a malodorous state.

     

     

  • What has age got to do with it?

    The Buhari 800-metre home trek, from Sallah prayers in Daura, would appear a seeming riposte to Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwal.

    Tambuwal, hosting some visiting youths in Sokoto, had claimed the president was too old; and too frail, to run in 2019.  But what has age got to do with it?

    At the advent of the Buhari Presidency, when hardship bit and there was no quick fix to the economic recession, Nigerians, not the most patient species of humans, had sought easy emotions to a hard question.  If the president lacked no “open sesame” to make the biting pains go away, then the culprit must be his age!

    Then, “open sesame”: the age-youth lobby was in full ferment! All the old ones should go and yield space to the “youth”.  They are not only old, their ideas are ancient.  Only the “youth” have the magic wand!  Really?

    President Goodluck Jonathan, under whose government about everything collapsed, wasn’t exactly an old man.  And former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose era laid the foundation for the Jonathan-era debacle, no thanks to free-wheeling corruption, was no young man either.

    The brief interlude between the two, the decent but ill-fated President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, claimed by ill health in office, was neither young nor old.  Yet, the cumulative effect of the era was near-total collapse.

    In his first coming, Gen. Obasanjo was a callow youth, extremely callous in giving the short shrift to his elders, Awo, Zik and even Gen. Yakubu Gowon, though much younger than the two Titans.  But what definitive difference did that era make, despite Obasanjo’s youth trumpet?

    The moral?  Age, in itself, is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage.  It is what you do with the age.  Indeed, every polity needs the full utilisation of its youths and grandees. Indeed, though recent developments have thrown up relative youths as leaders, witness France, Canada and Croatia, the relatively old, still hold the statistical power mode, witness the United States, Great Britain, Malasia, where a 90-year-old just regained power, and many others.

    Even back in antiquity, the Greek city state of Sparta made it a clear state policy to fully utilise every segment of its population.  Out of infancy, you entered the equivalent of a Boys’ Academy to be trained for military service.  After that, with all your needs met, you entered military and sundry services, at the apex of the sap of your youth.  When you got old, you entered the elders’ council, when you contributed to forging state policy for the younger generation.

    In Athens, though far less rigidly structured, it was more or less the same pattern, with no youth admitted to the Areopagus, the highest decision making chamber of the state.

    In old Rome, the Senate was no bastion of impressionable youth, though one of two, among the old-young, could make it, based on specific spectacular personal achievements.  Even in 20th century Britain, the great Winston Churchill didn’t attain the prime ministership, until he neared his winter years, on the virtual eve of World War 2.

    So, all through history, leadership has always been more of elders than of youths.  That couldn’t have been an accident.  Inasmuch as the youth have their vigour, the elders have their wisdom, other things being equal.

    Which is why it is a fallacy pushing youth leadership because the beneficiary is a youth.  It’s an empty, emotive argument that doesn’t make any sense.

    Let everyone come to the table and canvass with their ideas.  The brilliance and practicality of ideas should cut it, not some phantom fancy about being too young or too old.