The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Vote buying and vote selling

    It’s time for elections. This year, there will be governorship elections in Ekiti State and Osun State. Next year, there will be a general election. What will happen in these elections?  What will not happen? How will voters vote? How will they not vote? Until the elections take place, these are questions that cannot be answered.

    But there is a background that should prepare the public for what may happen. It is noteworthy that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) reportedly said it was prepared to make vote buying impossible during the governorship election in Ekiti State scheduled for July 14.

    INEC’s National Commissioner in charge of Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, and Oyo states, Solomon Soyebi, who represented the Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, at a stakeholders’ meeting on the continuous voters’ registration, in Ado Ekiti, said that money was used to influence voters during the last elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra states.

    “The elections in Edo, Ondo and Anambra states were largely monetised,” Soyebi said. “We are aware of this. It was ‘see and buy,’ but it won’t happen in Ekiti.”

    He also said:  “It was N5, 000 per vote in Ondo and Anambra states. We are working with security agencies not to allow it to happen again. We even seized some cash in Anambra State.”

    Obviously, something needs to be done so that politicians won’t be able to use money to get voters to vote in their favour. Interestingly, Soyebi said: “In Ekiti election, we won’t allow any vehicle to come near the polling units, because the politicians used to keep the money in the boot. With this, it will reduce because politicians can’t carry large amounts in their pockets.”

    Now that INEC has publicised how it intends to check vote buying, it remains to be seen how vote buyers would respond.  It should be expected that those who believe they can always influence voter behaviour with cash would think of ways to beat INEC. So the public should be ready to hear of new vote-buying methods.

    Must politicians buy votes? Must they think of buying votes?  To think of buying votes and to buy votes means that there are people who are ready to sell their votes. You can’t have vote buying without vote selling. So it is not only vote buyers that should be condemned; vote sellers should be equally condemned. After all, it is said that it takes two to tango.

     

     

     

  • King Solomon and the all-is-rotten ensemble

    The reigning campaign, that APC-is-bad-and-PDP-is-rotten- so-get-rid-of-the-two, somewhat reminds Hardball of the wise King Solomon and the two harlots.

    As the biblical tale went, one harlot crushed her baby by sleeping on it.  The other was more careful, so her baby lived. On the morrow, however, there was a big controversy over who was owner of the dead and owner of the living child.

    Enter King Solomon. The harlot that killed her child had a curious plea: both dead and living babies should be hacked into two, and a part of each given the two mothers. After all, she argued with gusto, no one knew for sure who owned what.

    But the other harlot countered: no need to kill the second baby. When it grew up, she reasoned, perhaps it would recognise its mother.

    That was the evidence King Solomon needed to give the living baby to its mother, and send away the other evil woman with her dead child.

    But why this biblical foray? Simple. The most trenchant of voices in this every-one-is-rotten campaign are probably hiding behind a finger, to justify wilful blindness to the current anti-corruption war.

    How about this conceited piece from Oby Ezekwesili, Madam Due Process in the no less conceited Obasanjo presidency, which endless “reforms”, led to deforms, that hit the nadir during the effete Goodluck Jonathan years?

    Hear Oby, reacting to President Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration that he would seek a second term, which by the way is his constitutional right: “The nice part of the ‘Breaking News’ is that it is good to formally know that it is directly to @NGR President @MBuhari that the Nigerian citizens will shortly be handing the APC’s own #RedCardToAPCandPDP in 2019” — a legit expression of opinion by a citizen, to be sure.

    But since when did Madam Due Process know that PDP deserved a red card — since she served as due process czarina, when Obasanjo ruled the roost or after?

    And even with her due process chores back then, how come corruption dipped for the worse, so much so that under Jonathan, the PDP continuum was almost pawning the last family silver, in a mad fit of satanic heist, that alarmed the citizenry flash it the red card?

    Sure, it is emotively fashionable to blame poor Jonathan.  But who doesn’t know he was only the fall guy, that took the can, when the PDP umpteenth evil over-flowed?

    O, does the immaculate Madam Due Process, now recharged as radical apostolic critic, think folks have forgotten that she served under a PDP government?  Fond hope!

    The good thing though is that Nigerians are not as dumb as these latter-day critics think.  Like King Solomon who saw through the evil machinations of the evil prostitute, right-thinking Nigerians can see through — and with a scornful laugh too! — those who argue with the facts on the corruption question.

    It’s a cheap Nietzschean trick that impresses no one but the extremely obtuse and gullible.

  • Poltergeist, armed and dangerous

    Rendered simply, poltergeist is an invisible force that can make a racket and move things about without being seen. It is a word of German origin which could also pass for a ghost that is albeit, noisy.

    Is this another ghost story? Well, we may say so but surely of a different kind. Just as the poltergeist is not a common specie of ghost, so is this a different kind of ghost story.

    So let’s dig into it. Early this month, the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun told the nation that 80,000 of the 371,000 officers and men on the payroll of the Nigeria Police Force are ghosts. She was briefing journalists on the latest findings of the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA)

    This meant that about 25 per cent of the Force were ghosts, nay poltergeists.These are men (and women too) who have supposedly undergone some specialized trainings including handling of firearms. These people are legitimately armed to maintain peace and order across the country.

    You may wonder at what point they morphed into ghosts? During recruitment, during training, or post-training period when they are already full-dressed armed troopers?

    We ask because this may explain a lot of things concerning the conducts and behavior of the average policeman/woman out there. Why would a properly trained and self-respecting policeman choose to demean himself by dressing up for work just for the sole purpose of agglomerating squeezed pieces of the lowliest currency notes?

    Why do we have policemen as major clients of Indian hemp dens? Why do we have their guns often discharging stray bullets and hitting innocent people?

    Why do they almost always unsettle us and make so much racket instead of granting us peace of mind as they were trained to do? Could we conclude that they are truly poltergeists, the unsettling ghost?

    It is said that roughly N22 billion was lost monthly through this ghoulish scheme. To add up the numbers and get a total for one year would amount to troubling one’s soul for some number are better imagined than worked out. For how long had this been on?

    This type of money is enough to raise an entire army or two police forces. The hierarchy of the Police Service Commission (PSC) would lose their tongues or turn to ghosts if they swear they have no knowledge of this.

    In fact Hardball wagers that everyone who has a jowl in the entire Ministry of Finance should be arrest to explain how he acquired such valuable asset. But this may explain why none has ever been prosecuted in this land of multitudinous ghost workers – everyone must be in on it!

    If the police lived with 80,000 poltergeist s, the entire military and security corps would be peopled with drones and zombies.

     

  • Waiting for Leah’s return

    So, Leah Sharibu is still held by those who abducted her on February 19. She was among 110 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists from the Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State.

    Others abducted with her were set free on March 21. The presidency said they were released “unconditionally.” That can’t be true.  Those who were released were Muslims.   The only Christian among them was not released because she reportedly refused to renounce her faith and convert to Islam.

    The insurgents reportedly brought their captives back to the town. Soldiers fighting the anti-terror war were said to have made a “tactical withdrawal” to make this happen. The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, was quoted as saying:  “What we have now is 105 girls and a boy; that makes it 106 persons released.” Sadly, five of the kidnapped girls reportedly died in captivity.

    Leah’s mother, Mrs Rebecca Sharibu, said: “The released girls told us that the insurgents insisted that my daughter must renounce her religion. But she told them she had no knowledge of Islam and could not be a Muslim.   She was then left out of the Dapchi trip. They told her that any day she accepts Islam, she will be released. Leah, we were told, was left behind with three Boko Haram women but she sent the message through her mates that we should pray for the will of God to be done in her life.”

    But Leah’s fate should not be left to her fatalism. While the Federal Government is busy congratulating itself, and expecting to be congratulated, the authorities must keep Leah’s situation in focus and take steps to get her released without further delay. It is curious that she was left out of those qualified to be released in the first place. How did that happen? Why did those who negotiated the release of the schoolgirls allow the abductors to keep Leah? Why did they not insist on her unconditional release as well?

    The Dapchi mass kidnapping compounded the still unresolved Chibok mass kidnapping in Borno State in April 2014.  Many of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls are still in captivity.

    Leah should not be an addition to the list of kidnapped schoolgirls who have not been brought back. Her case deserves urgent action; her time in captivity must not be allowed to stretch just because she stuck to her faith.

  • So long, Baba Alagbado?

    It was a bit of “Agbado revolution”, and it wasn’t pretty.  Some seething youths, angrier than a brood of vipers, descended on the Osun Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) state secretariat in Osogbo, burning flags and disrobing that building of any form of PDP paraphernalia.

    News soon after had it that the angry had the sympathies of Iyiola Omisore, former Osun deputy governor, former senator of the Federal Republic, eternal gubernatorial contender,  Baba Alagbado of the 2014 Osun gubernatorial campaigns on account of his soap box stunts and, if he makes it as guber candidate this year, newly minted techie, all fresh and smoking from Barcelona, Catalonia, with the latest arcane theories in pubic-private sector-participation (PPP), for which he has earned a PhD!

    Are Baba Alagbado and his darling PDP, which the guber veteran dismissed as nothing without federal power during the Ekiti electoral scandal of 2014, finally “porting” (in telecoms-speak) from each other?

    Omisore insists he is still a PDP member, despite Hurricane Agbado that tore its secretariat into virtual shred.

    But seizing a moral high ground, the new Adagunodo-led Osun PDP executive decreed an Omisore apology or outright expulsion, imposing a deadline to walk its tough talk. That was up from the humiliating plea-whining of previous days, when Chairman Adagunodo appealed that Omisore should not bite the PDP finger that fed him, after his old Alliance for Democracy (AD), on which platform he was deputy governor (1999-2002), had thrown him into the wilderness.

    O, those were the days of PDP high magic!  Omisore behind the bars and facing trial as one of the suspects for the assassination of Bola Ige, then sitting federal attorney-general under President Olusegun Obasanjo, romped into a ferocious victory, even in Ige’s Ijesa segment of the Ife-Ijesa senatorial district, officially known as Osun East.  P-D-Peeeeeeee … PAWA!

    From there, Omisore would ramp another stupendous victory in 2007, peaking as Chair, Senate Appropriation Committee, from where he plotted a glorious return as Osun governor.  But Rauf Aregbesola’s legal triumph, against the PDP gubernatorial heist against him in 2007, put paid to all that.

    From then on, Omisore returned to the doldrums, though still loud and bolstered by federal power — P-D-Peeeeeeeee….!

    But all that again changed with the fiasco of 2015.  “Prophet” Omisore was spot on: PDP is nothing without power.  As it turned out, a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, among his own people …  Now, see how the Osun PDP now treats our revered Baba Alagbado, despite his new techie status?

    To be sure, between Omisore and the Adagunodo Osun PDP executive, there is no love lost.  As Adagunodo’s election as Osun PDP chairman was brewing, news came from Omisore’s Facebook campaign page that a mighty force was coming from Abuja to stop all that nonsense.  It turned a classic fake news — in Trump-speak — from Alagbado studios!

    Shortly after, Hurricane Agbado struck at the PDP secretariat.  Then talks made the round that a miffed Baba Alagbado, tired of PDP ingratitude, was “porting”.  Then the counter “I dey kampe” (to parrot Obasanjo, author and finisher of the great PDP power magic years) from the Omisore camp.  Then, the recant-and-apologize-or-else… from the Adagunodo front.  It’s all so exciting!

    However the Agbado Osun PDP civil war ends, it would appear an era is coming to an end.  The big question: is Baba Alagbado “porting” from the PDP knowing the party is “nothing” without federal power?

    Stay tuned — but don’t get stunned — for fresh reports from the battle front.  Pee-Dee-Pee …!

     

     

  • Poor-verty

    Some things defy all the words even in the Thesaurus. In fact, you would literally need to reach out into space to conjure up something that would merely approximate a description of such an oddity.

    And this is what Hardball has done here. Not one to be stumped in that most malleable art of lexical engineering, he had himself undone, and then redone to reach the required nether depths.

    Poor-verty above, as you must have guessed is simply a combination of ‘poor’ (adjective) and poverty (noun) to create a new word or a nounjective if you like. Didn’t they say a strange situation must be accosted with a stranger response?

    Now consider this: a horde of Nigerians were found rampaging in a large, semi-sludgy pit; a most porcine scene not unlike a herd of pigs foraging in the muck. The video which trended in the internet is a gut-churning anathema.

    What’s going on here you would ask as you view the grimy, rampaging crew, knee-deep in muck? They are foraging for, and retrieving unsafe-for-consumption imported poultry meat which was confiscated and buried deep under this earth a few days earlier.

    As you continue to view the desperate pack almost growling and fighting off one another from individual ‘mining’ lots, you are bound to get lachrymal. You would begin to wonder why your compatriots no longer have self-esteem worthy of even pigs. Nigerians would rummage for buried ‘cadavers’ of contaminated, smuggled chickens surely signposts something below poverty.

    That a country the size of Nigeria has to rely on unhealthy smuggled poultry for so many decades is in itself, a worst kind of mental poverty on the part of her ruling class. It must be modern day wonder that 180 million people cannot deign to master the value chain of poultry production and produce enough for her teeming populace.

    Though importation of poultry products is officially banned, stew pots across the land still bristles with the stuff smuggled through land borders. Most of the so-called frozen poultry are contaminated in the bid to achieve long-term preservation.

    Here is what the Poultry Association of Nigeria says: “… high content of heavy metals like lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic are in imported chicken samples taken from local markets in Lagos, Ibadan, Port-Harcourt and Abuja. These metals accumulate in the human body over the years and cause gradual damage to kidney, liver and other organs, as it is difficult to decontaminate and excrete them from the human body. Lead causes damage to the heart, brain, bones, intestine and reproductive organs in the human body while mercury causes damage to the brain, spine and fetus (baby in the womb)…”

    If smuggled poultry would wreak such havoc ordinarily, what happens if it were buried and exhumed after some days?

    And with which word would you describe such action?

     

     

  • A list is not enough

    It is interesting that the list of alleged treasury looters when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in power is getting longer and longer.  Today, no fewer than 23 names of alleged treasury looters have been released by the agents of change. A report said:  “The list is made up of three senators, five former ministers, two former governors, three ex-military chiefs, three aides of former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki, a former Customs boss and a former permanent secretary, among others.”

    The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said the list was “based on verifiable facts, including the amount involved, the date the amount in question was collected and from where it was taken.” He described the names that have been released so far as “a tip of the iceberg.”

    Some of those on the list have protested, saying that their names shouldn’t be there. But there is no doubt that the treasury was looted and the looters should be identifiable and nameable.

    It may well be that the alleged treasury looters don’t consider wrongfully taking money from the treasury as looting. It may well be that those who steal the country’s funds believe it is the normal thing to do.

    This is why the war against treasury looting and treasury looters must not be a war without casualties. It is not enough to release lists of alleged treasury looters without ensuring that the guilty are severely punished.     A war without casualties cannot be a war properly so called.

    Why are these high-profile cases up in the air? As long as high-profile corruption cases remain unresolved, public confidence in the war against corruption will remain uncertain.

    Mohammed was quoted as saying: ‘’What was the PDP expecting when it challenged the FG to name the looters of the public treasury under the party’s watch?”  More important than what the PDP was expecting, the public expects that alleged treasury looters would be brought to justice without delay.

    What is the purpose of a list that only gets longer as if the purpose of the war against treasury looting is just to highlight the names of alleged looters for public awareness?  Naming alleged looters is simply a stage in a process.  It is not the be-all and end-all.

    Before more names are released to demonstrate that the anti-corruption war is in progress, it would make sense to show the progress of the war by what has happened to those whose names have been released.

  • Baba Iyabo and “failures”

    Chief (Gen.) Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo, the one and only Baba Iyabo, former commander-in-chief now turned finger-pointer-in-chief, has been pointing fingers at “failures” of late — but doesn’t he always?

    Addressing some youths at Abeokuta, he slammed President Muhammadu Buhari and his government as “failures”, insisting failure has no other name.

    Yeah right!  As a veteran and head of two failed presidential terms, Baba Iyabo should know — particularly of those hidden grades of failure, not so obvious to the naked eye.  As the Yoruba would say, only the seasoned, baron thief could trace the footsteps of another on a shiny rock!

    Well, if you huffed and puffed for eight presidential years, and you couldn’t make a dent on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, nor the Sagamu-Benin expressway, indeed you were a ringing failure; and there isn’t any other name to call it.

    Why, even the effete Jonathan logged a better performance on that score!  At least he rebuilt part of the Sagamu-Benin expressway, a task beyond the ken of Obasanjo when he was in power.

    But even if these two vital arteries were too far off, what of Obasanjo Farms’ Ota community in Ogun State?  The state of Ota roads, when Obasanjo left power, was symbolic of his tenure: shambolic and a glorious failure!

    Of course, the self-crowned “father of modern Nigeria” had “ported” to choppers, leaving those cratered and flooded and stinking roads to the hoi polloi, their best ever deals, in Obasanjo’s virulent strain of democratic feudalism.

    Road examples are lopsided?  Okay, let’s talk power.  The Obasanjo Presidency spent between US$ 12bn and US$ 15 bn (depending on whose source you’re quoting).  His glorious projection was that if — if, because the illicit third term attempt was on the cards — he left office by 2007, Nigeria would do 10,000 mw, after his glorious “reforms”.

    But after all the thunder and fury, his government seldom achieved more than 4, 000 mw at any material time, with power often dipping to as low as 1, 200 mw.  So isn’t Baba Iyabo then qualified to measure “failures”, since his own government was nothing but that?

    Ha, lest we forget!  When the presidential emperor was still pushing his weight in Abuja, zealously impressed by his own enormous powers, a certain Bola Tinubu, as governor of Lagos State, had cottoned in on decentralizing power supply; and thought of innovations to supply Lagos power outside the national greed.  It was this same Obasanjo, as president, that scuttled the effort.  Talk of a dog in a manger!

    Yet, his own so-called reforms led to nothing but power deforms, which Babatunde Raji  Fashola, SAN, incidentally another former Lagos governor but now Power, Works and Housing minister, is trying so correct.

    This same Fashola, under this same Buhari he petulantly dismisses as “failure”, is virtually killing himself to do routine stuff — in power and roads — Obasanjo and co should have done, during his wasted presidential years.  Talk, indeed, is cheap!

    When next Obasanjo decides to go on his notorious emotive binge, of talking down others to cover his own vacuity, let him at least realize he is not addressing dummies.  Failure, my foot!

  • Perpetual want dogs a wastrel

    The above title is not a quotation from the Holy Grail or any exotic scripture of the oriental worlds for that matter. It is merely a plain and commonsensical thought rendered in Hardball’s natural tongue. And you may please have a go at it without any fear about copyrights infringement.

    However, should you worry about its authenticity, empirical and philosophical grounding, by the time you are through with this piece, you would find that it sprouts from a rich soil of experiential abstraction.

    Let’s cut to the chase:

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is no doubt the honeypot of the nation; it is the chicken that lays the golden eggs. But the honey is perpetually frittered and the eggs largely pilfered. The part of this good fortune not purloined is wasted and the part not wasted is purloined. In the end, an overabundance of bequeathal is eternally assailed by exceeding want and deprivation.

    And it has been largely our story in the 41 years of NNPC existence. One or two examples will suffice:

    Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, junior Minister of Petroleum, once announced that Nigeria spends about $28 billion each year to import petroleum products. This sum is almost the equivalent of annual federal budget.

    Dr. Maikanti Baru, Group Managing Director of the NNPC stated early last month that Nigeria had spent about $5.8 billion importing petrol in the first two months of January and February, 2018. Projected to yearend, that would come to well over $30 billion which is in the region Dr. Kachikwu had announced.

    To think that we literally burn this sum annually importing what we should be exporting is grim enough; but when considered that it’s enough to build two giant refineries, then we must worry.

    Aliko Dangote’s upcoming refinery and petrochemical complex will cost between $9b to $12 b. It would be the biggest of such complexes in Africa. But most salutary, Nigeria will begin to export refined petroleum products and fertilizer for the first time in her history.

    And Hardball asks: why did NNPC and its successive managers choose the obnoxious path of a wastrel for over three decades.  As you read this, we are burning about N24 billion daily on fuel subsidy alone, says Baru.

    Kachikwu tells us, almost gleefully that “The foreign exchange requirement for importation of petroleum products is estimated at $28 billion (N3.35 trillion) annually, with 40 per cent of total amount (N1.34 trillion) dedicated to financing the logistics of importation.”

    He said this in June last year and we spend even more today. No concrete action by government to stem importation or attendant subsidy costs… and of course a wasteful oil-rich nation continues to lack and shrink.

  • A change that changes nothing

    Oba Abdulrasheeed Akanbi has started another controversy.  The traditional ruler who was known as the Oluwo of Iwo declared a change of title on March 31. He was quoted as saying at the installation of an Islamic scholar, Sheikh Yahquub Abdul-Baaqi Mohammed, as the first Waziri of Yoruba land: “I have decided to officially adopt Emir title today because I want to emulate the attitudes of Northern Emirs. They don’t begrudge themselves like Yoruba Obas. It will surprise you to discover that for the past two years, there has not been a meeting of Yoruba traditional rulers just because of enmities. There is nothing strange in adopting Emir title. I am the Emir of Yoruba land.”

    It is strange that Oba Akanbi, a southwest traditional ruler, wants to be known by a title associated with northern traditional rulers. It is equally strange that Oba Akanbi called himself “the Emir of Yoruba land” when his domain is Iwo. Is he also Emir of Iwo?

    His reason for the change of title is interesting but insufficient. The title of Oba is tied to age-long Yoruba tradition. The title of Emir sounds out of context and out of place.  It is a misnomer.

    Oba Akanbi got involved in yet another controversy by installing a so-called Waziri of Yoruba land. A report said: “The installation of the Waziri was against warning served on Oluwo by the League of Imams and Alfas in Southwest Nigeria, Edo and Delta States asking Oba Akanbi to desist from installing Alhaji Mohammed as the Waziri of the Southwest. In a statement signed by the President, League of lmams and Alfas, Southwest Nigeria, Edo and Delta States, Sheikh Jamiu Kewulere Bello urged Oba Akanbi to limit the title to Iwo land and not to the entire Yoruba land as being purported.”

    Oba Akanbi ignored the protest. He said:  “Iwo has used this Waziri title to announce to the world that truly Iwo is the citadel of Islamic knowledge…there is nothing strange in installing Waziri.”

    It is strange that Oba Akanbi insists on equating Iwo with Yoruba land.   The two places are not the same thing and cannot be the same thing. One is part of the other; and one includes the other.

    It remains to be seen how these developments will develop. Also, it remains to be seen which controversy Oba Akanbi will trigger next and how soon. This is a traditional ruler who likes to be controversial.