The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • The dilemma of Mr. Edgal

    Imohimi Edgal, the police chief of Lagos State seems like an activist officer. If he weren’t a cop, he would probably be an agitator and crusader for social and societal upliftment. Hardball sees him leading the lines in street protests and issuing fiery releases in indignation of obdurate authorities trampling on civil rights. But alas, Mr. Edgal is ensconced in a lesser calling.

    Here he is apparently straight-jacketed by service apparels – starched, caged, circumscribed and frustrated. Mind you, Hardball says, apparently.

    There is no suggestion here that Edgal is a poor cop. Not in the least. In fact, he has actually turned things around a bit since he took the seat of Commissioner of Police in Lagos about one year ago. Before his advent, there was an ugly fellow/cult in town popularly known as ‘Badoo’.

    Badoo epitomized evil. He was also a brazen example of poor leaderships across board in the country. Every day he led news with gruesome headlines – as gruesome as cracking babies’ skulls with hammer and wiping out entire families. Badoo was like an evil waif of the night that could not be caged. The burgeoning town of Ikorodu was Badoo’s domain and many house owners fled the town. Badoo reenacted apocalypse while he reigned.

    But not anymore; Edgal engaged Badoo in his domain and a bloody turf battle ensued; scarlet headlines followed expositions, arrests and quietude. Though we do not know exactly whatever became of that dark angel of Ikorodu but there is quiet in that front. Fleeing landlords returned home. All thanks to Edgal and his men.

    This is just one example that the Lagos police chief is alert to his chores. There are so many other examples to show that the sprawling city of Lagos is under some security grid.

    But this is not in praise of Edgal; it is actually about the dilemma of a reformist cop caught up in the rather labyrinthine morass of systemic decay.

    A few days ago, Edgal embarked on night patrol apparently (again!) to check out notorious police formations as well as notorious cultist hot spots. And he made a warehouseful of harvests.

    In the cells of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS), Edgal reportedly found about 40 innocent suspects which he immediately freed. He ordered that another 30 suspected cultists be charged to court without delay. FSARS is supposedly an elite squad but with dungeon mentality.

    And here is the dilemma: in another breath, Edgal and his team picked up another 137 batch of suspected cultists in Lagos said to be marking the “7th day of the 7th month”.

    From this high perch, Hardball can feel the dilemma of Mr. Edgal. We are probably kindred spirits – trying to function in an utterly dysfunctional space must be quite daunting.

     

     

  • R-APC and allied ballistics

    The Nation back-page columnist, Sam Omatseye, yesterday went ballistic on adjectives and allied writers’ problems, using rAPC, as sweet case study.

    Those who coined rAPC say it is Reformed All Progressives Congress (rAPC), claiming they outed with their buzz group, which they were convinced would make quite a buzz, if not in reality, then in the sensation–popping media, with its ever combative mindset, in days of declining copy sales.

    But the other side seems clearly unimpressed, dismissing the so-called rAPC as the usual political merchants, whose billion dollar merchandise is in people’s excitability and gullibility, whose mirage market spikes at the turn of every election, where the merrily scammed are never in short supply.

    That has led to another rash of bathetic r-induced poetry: rogue, risible, ridiculous, retarded, recalcitrant, reactionary-APC, enough proof, the other side triumphantly roar, the self-named “reformers” were no more than the acute deforms in the federal ruling party!

    But as all this excitement goes on, the master-jabber of the public space, Himself the Noisy Royal, Ajeku(n) Iya, has weighed in with his latest video release, as always hot, fresh and exceedingly spicy, needing so much in quaffed lubrication, to put off the wild fire on the tongue!

    Jabbering, yammering and completely delirious, Ajeku(n) dinned — was that a song? — about how he, an umpteenth prodigal, had wandered so far away from home, and how he now begged to be taken back, like the Biblical son.  What isn’t clear now is how the prodigal’s “father”, in Nigeria’s earthly politics, would take his request.

    Not to be outdone, another has released another hit in audio.  In that monster hit, Himself the Holy Shehu, also crooned about how his r-band are leaving Egypt, and are approaching the Red Sea.  Again, it’s not clear, as in the Biblical equivalent of Holy Shehu’s parallel, who is set to part the Red Sea for their passage.

    What if the sea remains un-parted?  And the r-band are determined to cross, with their r — for rogue — past driving them to perdition?  What then?  Then democratic suicide would appear not only gripping but also magical!

    But what if the r is “right” — as in right-APC?  Perhaps they’d surf the growling waves in red triumph, erecting their newfound hegemony, right from the angry but impotent waves!

    It’s high season of equal opportunity risk, bordering on malady!

    Still, all this excitement crawls from one sobering fact: the serious crisis in Nigeria’s party system.  Now, if you don’t have parties worth their names, how can you anchor a robust and strong democracy?

    r-APC might be a faction of nPDP of the 2015 electioneering season.  Many would even push to say the band is no more than the soulless greedy and selfish folks, who never disbanded in their new party, after leaving PDP, and are incapable of shame to go back to same PDP, so long that they have high hopes their greed would be sated!  Still, whoever sates any greed?

    Still, it’s the sober pointer.  Nigeria’s political party system needs urgent fixing.  If all these drama lead to a fixing, then something good would have come of the malady.

  • Directors who are not directors

    It is interesting that the Federal High Court in Lagos on July 3 dismissed an application for a plea reversal by four companies that had pleaded guilty to laundering $15.5 million allegedly belonging to former First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan. The firms’ lawyer argued that those who represented them were not authorised to do so. The lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), reportedly declared:  “They’re just busybodies and interlopers, who were pressured to come and plead guilty. They had no mandate to do so.”

    According to a report, Ozekhome said he was briefed to represent the companies after its directors pleaded guilty despite not being authorised by the board to do so. He prayed that the trial be done de novo (afresh) and that the previous proceedings and the companies’ conviction be declared null, void and unsustainable in law.

    The prosecuting counsel, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, countered the claim that the directors who pleaded guilty were not authorised, saying there was evidence from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and from the companies’ bank accounts that they were indeed directors.

    It is interesting that the companies’ lawyer introduced this twist.  The claim that the said directors “were pressured to come and plead guilty” suggested that they were directors.  On what basis were they allegedly pressured to plead guilty, if they were not directors?  On what basis did they plead guilty, if they were not directors?

    It is interesting that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arraigned the companies with a former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to President Jonathan, Dr. Waripamo Dudafa; a lawyer, Amajuoyi Briggs, who is the companies’ secretary, and a banker, Adedamola Bolodeoku. Unlike the companies, Dudafa, Briggs and Bolodeoku pleaded not guilty to the 17-count charge.

    If the said directors were forced to plead guilty as the lawyer claimed, did those who pleaded not guilty do so because they were not forced to plead guilty, or because they refused to plead guilty?

    This is a corruption–related case involving a huge amount of money. The said directors who pleaded guilty have not said that they were pressured to do so. Who are the directors that should have represented the companies, if those who did were not authorised to do so?

    The point is that the move by the companies’ lawyer was intended to complicate an uncomplicated case. As the court ruled, the prayers amounted to asking the judge to revisit his ruling and to assume the position of an appellate court. It was laughable.

     

  • Sons (and daughters) of pad-dition

    Today, Hardball takes and onomatopoeic license. Of course ‘perdition’ you know but pad-dition you certainly haven’t come across because it is a crispy, oven-fresh one from Hardball’s smithy. But you must have guessed that it is a mish-mash of perdition and pad or padding.

    Again, perdition you know too well of course. Both from the Bible and from the lexicon of the dark world. The Good Book in moments of angst deployed this damnable word to describe people who would not turn from evil; who are impervious to goodness and graciousness.

    “…Those whom you gave me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled;” (John 17: 12 NKJV). That is Jesus praying for his disciples in his final days on earth and alluding to Judas Iscariot as bent on self-destruct as was writ.

    And you must be wondering what perdition has got to do with padding?

    Well, here is it: for the past five years for instance, officials in Nigeria’s MDAs (Ministries, Departments and Agencies) have made a dastardly business of padding their budget year in, year out without let. Billions of naira has been voted for the same recurrent expense heads over this period.

    According to a recent investigation by Sunday Punch, items such as computers, furniture, facility maintenance, stationery and kitchen equipment/tools, which are expected to last for certain number of years always appear on the agencies’ budgets every year.

    Some of the major culprits are Ministries of Defence; Finance; Budget and National Planning and Industry, Trade and Investment. The Presidency as represented by Aso Rock is not left out.

    For instance, in the Ministry of Defence, purchase of residential furniture in the last five years has gulped over N1.3 billion. This untoward practice is noticeable in about a dozen such frivolous budget heads in the Defence ministry alone.

    Some suppositions: Perhaps approvals are not backed by actual cash release; perhaps computers and furniture and stationery and consumables are not really enough for the horde of workers in these MDAs; but who is to tell? No proper review of the last budget are ever made or published. Besides, until recently, we were used to hearing about unspent budget hurriedly shared out in the wee days of each year.

    Why, our most important annual fiscal plan is so bastardized that by the time it is put into use, it is already worthless. It is padded at the presidency, in the MDAs and the National Assembly. This explains why the recurrent vote is always so bloated that there is little left for work.

    If this is not perdition for a nation, perhaps we may want to call it Paddition! How about that for a new gift from Hardball!

     

  • NFF: On the move again

    The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), with its deadly boardroom politics, appears on the move again.  No special gift for guessing right: Nigerian football may just be heading south again.

    After the Russia 2018 World Cup ouster, almost everyone agrees Nigeria has at least a modicum of a team that could compete with, and perhaps beat the world in the nearest future.

    But beating the world is not just luxurious dreaming.  It s hard work; and doing crucial things, at the right time.  To turn the Eagles into true world beaters in four years time, there would appear well laid out competitive programmes, even by FIFA and CAF calendar.

    There are two AFCONS (2019 and 2021) and one Olympic Games.  Now, if you do the right thing at the right time, NFF would try to qualify the team for all these competitions.  Even the Olympics, which features the U-23, with provisions for three over-aged players, would also be put to maximum use.  Draft as many of the present available stars their clubs can release, within the Olympics age, to join the fray.

    Even as you build, continue playing Grade A friendly matches, on FIFA Windows; and use them to hone the team, drop those whose forms are dropping and integrate new discoveries.  If you do that religiously, and over four years, the probability of welding together a formidable team would be high.

    But if morning shows the day, what is NFF doing?  Embarking on self-destruction, with partisans vying for the board chair, not without, it would appear, some government collusion.  Yet, by any standard, given NFF’s — or its predecessor, NFA’s — performance down the ages, this is clearly the best performed board ever.

    So, why is success faced with doom, as if it were some unmitigated failure?  That’s the Nigerian jinx.  At the earliest hint of any life-changing process, reactionary forces, join in with both legs to thwart it.  Like the PMB presidency, like Amaju’s NFF presidency!

    Did Hardball say “success”?  Yes!  True, the Eagles were knocked out after the first round of matches.  But that was on the field.  Previously, most distractions came from outside of it: delayed payment of coaches, players bonus problems, needless bickering, all fatal distractions.

    This last experience?  If there was anything like that, it certainly was not reported; and the nose of the Nigerian press corps is not the most inactive in sniffing out scandals and other rot.  Then, for the first time after the last World Cup in Brazil, Nigeria appears to at last have a team they could groom; and a manager ready to do the grooming with his technical assistants.

    But again, the NFF warriors have to barge in with fierce personal agenda, which has absolutely nothing to do with national interest.

    Hardball thinks the president should move in and use his influence to calm the storm.  If stakeholders are tired of Amaju Pinnick’s presidency, the board elections are around the corner.  Let them gather their supporters and let Pinnick gather his, and let’s see who would clinch the mandate.

    That would appear much better than the current farce playing out, willy-nilly trying to get out Amaju, at the tail end of his tenure.  Though the partisans thrust a reported court verdict, the sports minister would appear quite complicit in the plot.

    Hardball does not care about these individual interests.  If the narrative tilts towards Pinninck, it’s strictly on the strength of his achievement of his board.  But Hardball cares a lot about the pleasure and joy, a high performing Eagles bring to bear, on Nigerians of all faiths, tribes and creed.  You could still recapture, the roar and caper of pride that Musa’s two beautiful goals, against Iceland, elicited from Nigerians!

    Sure, that should count for something for this bickering, petty elite?  That is why President Muhammadu Buhari should call them to order, starting with his own minister.

  • After the protest

    What are policemen expected to do when they are not paid for the work they do? Riot policemen in Maiduguri, Borno State, supplied an answer to this question when they staged a protest on July 2. A report said: “They barricaded the command headquarters located on Maiduguri-Kano expressway, shot sporadically into the air while singing and marching. The riot policemen, who have been on Special Duty working with the Joint Task Force (JTF), disrupted traffic during the protest.”

    The protesters had good reasons to protest. One of them was quoted as saying: “About 10, 000 mobile policemen were deployed to the state from different commands but we have not received our allowances in the past six months…We have been facing hardships as a result of the non-payment of the allowances. We have made several complaints but nobody listened to us.”

    So the protesters decided to draw public attention to their plight, which is bad for the public image of the police. It is obvious that the affected policemen staged a protest because they were desperate to get the attention of the police authorities.

    It is interesting that the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, who spoke for the police authorities, said there was no protest.  “The Force wish to categorically state that it is not correct that police personnel protested in Maiduguri today,” Moshood declared in a statement.  What happened, according to him, was that some Police Mobile Force personnel on special duty in Maiduguri “went to the Borno State Police Command Headquarters on enquiry over the delay in the payment of their special duty allowance.”

    Does Moshood want the public to believe that the policemen who reportedly   “barricaded the command headquarters,” “shot sporadically into the air while singing and marching,” and also “disrupted traffic,” were simply on a fact-finding mission?   By trivialising the protest, and denying that it actually happened, the police spokesman unwittingly showed why it was necessary for the protesters to adopt that course of action.

    Moshood added: “The Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris promptly directed the Commissioner of Police, Borno State to address and inform them why there is delay in the payment of their special duty allowance, and also assure them that since the budget has been approved, the allowances will be expeditiously processed and paid without any further delay. They subsequently returned to their duty posts.”

    This happened after a protest that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

     

     

  • Sukumus riranmus…

    Don’t flog yourself yet for being an ignoramus in Latin language. Do not begin to bemoan the fact that you never picked a phrase of Latin in all your great learning judging by your inability to grasp the above title. Be consoled; it’s not even Latin. It’s actually a barroom wisecrack. It is a queer coinage from Yoruba saying, eni nsu’kun nriran. Meaning, even tears do not impede vision. In other words, no matter how much tears you shed, you still manage to see, and clearly too. This is why some revelers in their euphoria, would stretch the jargon thus: sukumus, riranmus, claritus… though I may be weeping, I see clearly!

    It’s a crazy joke that barroom wags could stretch to egregious lengths with thunderous and bellyaching mirthfulness. But we adopt the wayward phrase here to illustrate what Hardball would like to describe as a counter-intuitive story about a church leader.

    Here is the story in brief:

    The General Overseer of Revival Assembly Church, Lagos, Apostle Anselm Madubuko during an interview mid-June, was asked whether he was not worried that people could condemn him for remarrying only a year after his wife’s death. The man of God had actually married a Kenyan younger woman barely one year after the demise of his wife of over 20 years.

    Here is his intriguing answer:

    “Of course, my decision to remarry generated a lot of attention from the public but I don’t care about such a thing. When my heart doesn’t condemn me I don’t care. I don’t need to impress everyone. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone because I owe only God my life. Those close to me knew I was led by God.”

    He continues and it gets more interesting:

    “When my wife passed on, every woman wanted to marry me, I was getting text messages from different women, who were telling me that God told them I was their husband. I got messages from members of my church and other women. If I had stayed unmarried for two years, I cannot imagine what would have happened to me.”

    And here is the banger in Apostle Madubuko’s response to this tacky question:

    “When I finally remarried, many single women and even married ones left the church. This is not a joke; it happened.”

    Now can you see our title above unfurling most splendidly in all directions?

    Well, in case you missed it, here is it. First, our dashing GO though bereaved, mourning and probably in tears all the time, was not too lachrymal not to see and prefer his Kenyan Giselle.

    On the other hand, the ladies who left his church in protest were also not too blindly faithful not to know when they were rejected.

    And Hardball would add a closing quip: even as you pray, you do not entirely shut your eyes abi?

    Please render this in street Latin if you can!

  • The furnace next time

    The Lagos inferno of June 28 that consumed no less than 50 automobiles, and some reported nine charred lives, started with the stumbling tanker that spilled its fuel, didn’t it? No.

    Rather, it started with those irresponsible blokes that Nigeria had the misfortune to have elected to executive and legislative positions of trust since 1999. More correctly, you could logically hold it started with the soldiers-in-government, whose latter-day offspring, from the Babangida regime down, were just armed outlaws, stuffing their pockets with public funds, sorely needed to build critical infrastructure.

    But you could say these outlaws were beyond redemption, so the less said about them the better? Perhaps. But what about the elected Presidency-National Assembly since 1999? Why didn’t they make concerted difference in key and critical infrastructure?

    Under Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, the ill-fated Umaru Yar’Adua (undone by ill health but God rest his soul) and Goodluck Jonathan, the consensus was a below-par posting in critical infrastructure. If that hadn’t been so, 16 long years were enough to have developed the most basic of rail infrastructure, such that moving fuel and other heavy liquids would be 98 per cent by rail. The remaining two per cent would be intra-city and township distribution, which could be easily limited to the night, to reduce, to the minimum, combustible danger.

    Though the reckless tanker drivers are culpable for disasters that result from careless driving, among other road outlawry, the blood of the dead, in that Lagos carnage, is on the hands of these past governments that spent too little on rail, thus condemning road users to the fatal menace of tanker and trailer drivers.

    So, with the havoc of June 28, you could imagine the hundreds of future graves this 8th National Assembly is digging for innocent citizens, whose only crime is that they elected insensate, selfish and greedy legislators, incapable of taking in the big picture, when gunning for dirty pork.

    When the National Assembly makes it an annual ritual of cannibalizing the budget, chopping up critical votes for rail and strategic national road mains, to buy okada, Keke NAPEP tricycles and vote suspect roads for their so-called “constituency projects”, they know they lay the foundations for future but completely avoidable catastrophes, as Lagos witnessed on June 28.

    Perhaps, they mean well? Perhaps those rural electrification projects are what their constituents need? Perhaps Keke NAPEP makes the whole difference between going to bed hungry and having something in the belly after a hard, long day? Perhaps! But they should look for the funding outside the ones voted for strategic infrastructure.

    The time time to call your representative and senator to order is now. Not when their actions or inactions have led to the mass killing, as it was in Lagos, and then you begin to howl and bawl and scream and shriek and screech, in the bitterest of jeremiads.

    Act now before a future generation of innocents is roasted on the road because we don’t have vibrant rail to move fuel. Don’t wait for the furnace next time. Prevention is better than cure!

     

  • An emergency

    What is the latest news about the 60-year-old soccer fan who reportedly “slumped and lost consciousness” while celebrating the second goal by Nigeria’s Super Eagles in their World Cup match against Iceland in Russia on June 22?

    Emmanuel Emogware, popularly known as Papo, was watching the match at a barbershop in the Sedeco area of Enerhen, a suburb of Uvwie, Delta State, when the incident happened. He reportedly “jumped up for joy as the ball hit the back of the net.” According to a report, “Eyewitnesses said he subsequently fell to the ground and efforts to revive him failed.”

    What happened next? The report said: “He was immediately rushed to a hospital but was reportedly rejected by the doctors there. He was then taken to several other hospitals where the doctors refused to take him and demanded money first.”

    The report continued: “At one of the hospitals the doctor there collected money for consultation, but later said they should take him somewhere else,” one witness said. “They tried several hospitals but doctors either refused to take him or demanded for money first. Someone suggested a hospital in Agbarho. But while rushing him there they were caught up in traffic around the DSC expressway.”

    The June 24 report ended on a note of uncertainty: “Friends and relations of Emogware were still running around yesterday looking for money for his treatment.”

    Sadly, it is on record that many lives had been lost because people in need of urgent medical attention could not readily pay preliminary hospital charges.  What is expected of a hospital in an emergency? When a situation poses an immediate threat to life, it certainly requires urgent intervention to prevent a worsening of the case.

    It is noteworthy that the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, had emphasised what was expected of doctors in emergencies at an event in Abuja:  “Hospitals are sanctuary for the sick and injured… Doctors must show no restraint in treating emergencies, even with gunshot wounds you must treat them, thereafter raise questions. You must also treat emergencies before asking for money because life is more precious than money.”

    This logic informed the Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Act, 2017, signed by President Muhammadu Buhari last year. Emogware wasn’t a gunshot victim. Even a gunshot victim shouldn’t be treated the way he was treated. It is bad that he was denied prompt and proper medical treatment through complicating preconditions.

     

     

  • Apo-calypso dance

    Hardball is the spirit suited for these times even if he says so. He epitomises the ebb and tide of this day; he is an embodiment of the daily swirl of events, activities and news. Consider naked news assailing the consciousness of each new day; small morsels of history, now sweet, now sour, sometimes inedible.

    He has to gather up these crumbs from the endless daily bazaar – re-imagine them, rejig them, imbue them with fresh new bodies and souls and re-present them to you dear reader. For your re-edification, if you will.

    This is why he serves you today, this new dance rhythm and style called Apo-calypso. Now don’t jump. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apo district in Abuja, Nigeria’s administrative capital. Apo already has a tainted history of its own – if you remember the Apo six saga? You don’t want to hear about that sordid story anymore, do you?

    Apo-calypso is a new song and dance we have just conjectured for your enjoyment. It’s a dance created especially for this most dire moment in Nigeria’s epoch. It’s not Macarena, that chart-busting rhumba of the mid-90s but it sure serves the occasion.

    Coined, as you might have guessed, from Apocalypse and Calypso, the one is about end times, especially tragic ends foretold and Calypso is the West Indian ballad that takes its themes from day-to-day happenings. Now do you know Apo-calypso? Can you do the dance?

    But mark you it’s a sad dance, a blood dance; an end time dance. How did it happen that the ruling party was in Abuja politicking and blood-hounds almost obliterated communities in Plateau State – killing, maiming and razing the place to near dust? How is it that the state’s police, military and intelligence apparatuses got no wind of the plot; and could not stop the deathly music in its track?

    Why is it that Number One blames it on desperate politicians? Faceless, nameless politicians conniving with bandits to exterminate a mass of citizens – about 200 compatriots – under his care and no sufficient sense of umbrage?

    This deathly dance drama happened the day before yesterday, it happened yesterday, it has happened today. It is sure to happen again tomorrow. And our president will yet do the jig and blame everyone else!

    An Oriental proverb posits that the little bird dancing death dance in the middle of the road hears drumming from the land of the dead. The rampaging Fulani herdsmen kill fellow citizens with provocative impunity because they are hearing drumming from some command headquarters. They know hardly any consequence follows their blood fest. So they kill routinely and issue press statements afterwards.

    But Hardball posits that this is akin to Apo-calypso – dance of death.