The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Leah as new symbolism

    Imagine lips curled to rail but forced to hail.  To mock but forced to praise. To condemn but forced to commend?

    Then think Leah!  How does that golden name even tumble out of corrupted mouths?

    Leah Sharibu’s heroism is now globally known.  Not perhaps since the world woke up to the bravery of Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, who faced the spiteful, murderous and vile bully tactics of the Pakistani Taliban, but triumphed to tell her glorious story, has another global heroine secured her place.

    It’s the 21st century global shame of Islamists giving Islam a bad name, going on a killing and kidnapping binge, to press their fundamentalist lunacy.  But Allah Himself would not be deceived.

    Proof?  Well, Malala survived; and is alive and well, serving as glorious ambassador against murderous fundamentalism, when the evil Taliban thought they had dispersed her to the great beyond.

    And Leah is living too.  The God that prompted her to press her Christian faith, in the face of extreme danger, and the Allah that prevailed on Boko Haram to release her other mates, will yet unite to ensure Leah’s eventual release.

    After all, shorn of partisan Christian or Muslim faiths, isn’t God and Allah the same Supreme Deity of monotheism, that even the Yoruba, in their traditional worship, call Olodumare, the supreme Lord of heaven?  By God, Leah would be fine!

    But what of the Taliban in thought, and Boko Haram in spiteful opinions; fundamentalist cynics, who saw Leah and co, as yet another God-given gravy to belch  and to rail; to strafe and to mock, in a fit  of hypocritical spite?  It’s a classical tweak of perverse bliss as deep sadness!

    Well, that fundamentalist camp isn’t fine at all — and is not likely to, for a long time to come, while fishing for more tragedies to make hay, in their blame game.

    Since the release of the Dapchi girls, you could tell the painful bliss of that camp, now forced to make Leah, the sole Christian girl still in Boko Haram captivity, the new symbol of their happy sadness.

    Many spin her odyssey in baleful Christian-Islamic Armageddon.  They forget these murderous Islamists only slander their faith.

    Others condemn themselves to delayed celebration — or no celebration at all.  But does that change the thrill of the Dapchi parents, in sheer bliss to have their kids back?

    To others, it’s a cynical resort to the Biblical parable of the lost ship.  The returned Dapchi 110 are nothing.  What matters is the non-return of one, and Muhammadu Buhari is to blame!  Haba!

    As God lives, Leah would be fine and reunite with her parents.  But people should cultivate the habit of blaming or praising when due.  Any other alternative is a Taliban or Boko Haram mentality, that scours the horizon for cynical blame, as a junkie craves periodic fixes.

    Besides, a people deserves a responsive government; which just as well thrives with a reasonable people.  That interplay is how good governance rolls.

    Blame, for blame’s sake, Talibanizes the  common psyche.  That is nothing but a triumph of Boko Haram thinking!

     

  • The sequestration of Citizen Joe

    We shall work with the common and simple meaning of the above word: sequester – to set apart, to seclude in order to act upon. Of course it is a long word and expectedly, it is rich in meanings; having variants of interpretations and origin in medicine, law and natural sciences.

    But let us concern ourselves with how it applies to Citizen Joe (CJ). Of course CJ is not the chief justice by any chance; it is actually a euphemism for the common man. CJ is that fellow at the bottom rung of the society. He is the guy who literally lives by the day; most of his daily sweat geared towards his mouth – he is the daily bread man.

    So what’s with CJ now?

    It’s something to do with a recent announcement by the Federal Government to jerk up the tax on alcohol and cigarette from June this year. And the increment, it appears, would be quite something but mercifully, FG has decided to spread it in tranches over three years.

    Hardball hereby calls this tax: Anti-Citizen Joe Tax. As we all know, cigarettes and alcohol are the repasts of Citizen Joe; let’s not call it his mainstay. Citizen Joe would reach for booze at the end of his long day to quench -not his thirst – but his painful sobriety (or sorrow if you like). Having been tossed all day by all manner of existential turbulence, he cherishes any opportunity to knock down one, or two, or … who is counting! Nothing like booze to rein in jangled nerves, Hardball can proclaim.

    FG says (though in passing) that the tax hike on booze and cigars is to help preserve the health of Citizen Joe but we also know that there is a huge haul of revenues accruing from this. But the point, which is the fear of Hardball is that this tax may become acutely counter-productive.

    Today, price of beer is already out of the reach of Citizen Joe. He actually quaffs all sorts of illicit stuff right now, sold in plastic cups, tiny sachets and small pet bottles. CJ drinks bitter concoctions which are supposedly herbs mixed with ample dosage of local gin. And they come with fitting names: mokogan, bajinotu, koboko, ogidiga, gbongbo, pakrumo, amolanke, name them.

    These gut-rots are cheap and easily available. But there is grave danger ahead; a real concern for mass kidney and liver damage among the population in a few years.

    The average CJ can’t really afford beer today. With this tax, it will be totally out of his reach. Sales will crash and breweries and allied businesses will suffer acute decline. Though government may get more cash, our lowly compatriots are further sequestrated!

  • What is the finance minister waiting for?

    Why did the authorities allow the issue of non-payment of the terminal benefits of Nigeria Airways’ pensioners get to this point where aviation unions are threatening to shut the airspace if there is no positive action in two weeks?

    This negative reaction to the Federal Government’s delay in paying N45bn severance packages to about 6,000 former workers of Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) is understandable.

    The industry unions – National Association of Aircraft Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE), National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) and Air Transport Senior Staff Services Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) –  wrote a petition  dated March 19 to the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, and sent copies to the Ministers of Labour and Employment and Finance. They drew attention to alleged insensitivity of the Minister of Finance who has not paid the pensioners despite approval of payment by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in September 2017.

    The petitioners lamented:  “It is disheartening that the Honourable Minister of Finance has… negatively prioritised the President’s directive on this matter. She has equally in a most uncaring manner, refused to heed all entreaties by the hapless ex-workers. Not even the cries of the growing list of the avoidable deaths and other afflictions created by their excruciating conditions of existence had pinched the minister’s rock hard ear. Our previous letters to the minister has failed to move her just as earlier letter from the NLC on the matter.”

    It is over a decade since the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration liquidated the national carrier in 2004. The affected workers were not expected to wait interminably for payment of their entitlements. It is inexcusable that they are still waiting for payment.

    If the unions carry out their threat, it would take the struggle to another level. The pensioners had protested on February 6, reportedly blocking the Lagos Airport road for hours.

    Curiously, Sirika, who was represented by the Commissioner, Accident Investigation Bureau, Mr Akin Olateru, wondered at the annual retreat of the Joint Union Negotiating Council in Abuja, on February 13: “When Nigeria Airways was declared comatose, the people in the United Kingdom got full payment, those in Ghana got full payment, but why is it that we in Nigeria did not get same?”

    If ex-employees of the defunct Nigeria Airways who worked in the United Kingdom and Ghana got their full entitlements when the airline was liquidated but those who worked in Nigeria were not paid, what is the Minister of Finance waiting for in this case?

     

     

  • Dapchi: Sadness and joy

    The return of the Dapchi school girls snatched by a faction of Boko Haram, has led to natural joy from their parents and loved ones.  The joy, of course, shows the reaction to tragedy is the same, no matter your faith.

    The Chibok girls, earlier kidnapped from another girls school in Chibok, Borno State, were Christians.  The Dapchi girls are Muslims, save the sole Leah (Liya) Sharibu, the brave Christian girl, among the brood, who reportedly stood up for her Christian faith, even at the risk of a continuos curtail of her freedom — or even worse.  Liya reportedly refused to renounce her faith.  Because of that, she is still being held by the Islamists.

    So, everyone could understand the sadness-turned-joy of the Dapchi parents, just as the parents of the Chibok returnees, after the negotiated return of some of the girls.

    Kudos to the government for the return of these girls.  But it must not forget the unfinished business of the remaining Chibok girls.  President Muhammadu Buhari should do everything humanly possible to bring them back from Boko Haram captivity.  That is the only way to bring closure to that unfortunate aspect of our current political history.

    Still, there is some sadness mixed with this joy of release: the agony of the parents of those five Dapchi girls, reportedly crushed in a stampede in the abduction truck, en route to the girls’ kidnapping.  Statistically, even saving nine out of 10 is nothing.  The sole doomed soul had blood flowing in his veins!

    The parents of the Dapchi 5 must be mourning and moaning: why us, and why only our five children?  Again, a great lesson: prevent these disasters, instead of rallying to minimise their impact.  Legitimate sadness there!  The Federal Government owes these parents a lot of support to navigate their pains.   It should get on that real quick!

    Still, there is another perverse sadness that simply belies all understanding, or even common sense.

    Ekiti Governor Ayo Fayose — well, the less said about that one, the better, for it’s his well documented behaviour to trivialise everything in the grand delusion that those he is dealing with are daft.

    When the Dapchi girls were kidnapped, Fayose came up with some cynical hashtag: “APC #Bring back our Dapchi girls”.  In his cynical, eternally infantile mind, that was a perfect electioneering slogan, perfectly conjured by the gods for 2019, to counter the PDP government’s failure to recover the Chibok girls, a chore President Buhari is condemned to sorting out.

    But when the Dapchi girls returned, Fayose claimed it was all a ruse!  If indeed, it was, why did he plan to make political capital out of it?  Yet, another bit of Fayose-an emptiness!  Indeed, pitied are the people whose governors behave like eternal children.

    Even in the critics’ world, there appears some suppressed sadness.  Oby Ezekwesili, a loud voice in the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) lobby, in her reaction to the Dapchi release, sounded rather low beat, even if she declared herself “happy”.  Yet, had the situation remained otherwise, she would have led her “red army” to rail and thunder at the gates of Aso Rock.

    Now, how equitable is that?  Is Boko Haram girls’ kidnap now assuming a dark politics of its own: thunder when the situation is dire; but whimper when there is some relief in the air; when you should be as happy as you were sad, when the situation was dire?

    It’s a looming Nigerian heart of darkness, apologies to Joseph Conrad, which should be decried by all.

  • Overtake overtakes overtake

    Dear reader, if you can’t make much meaning of the above title, it’s okay; it’s none of your making. What you see up there is vintage Fela Anikulapo Kuti slightly modified. “Overtake Don Overtake Overtake” (O.D.O.O) is the title of a long ago hit (what else did he release?) of the near-eccentric Afro-Juju music legend.

    It is probably Fela’s angriest song; it is actually a medley of sort mixed with an effusion of anger at the endless fusion of mess that Nigeria had become before his eyes by the turn of the 90s. It is staccato lyrics jumping from sub-theme to sub-theme hauling acerbic words to people in authority and mocking the docility of his compatriots. Here is the opening chorus:

    I get money

    Plan my plan finish

    Start to go for market

    Start to go for shopping

    Before I reach market nko o?

    Government show don enter

    My plan don spoil o

    Government show don enter

    My plan don spoil o

    Overtake don overtake overtake!

    This was a 1990 song. Who can conjecture what would have been had Fela lived till today?

    While Hardball leaves that for you to chew dear reader, overtake seems to have overtaken overtake at Nigeria’s premier sea ports in Apapa, Lagos. The story is stranger than fiction but it is true that Nigeria’s major entrepots have remained comatose for nearly five years because those charged with them cannot keep them up and running.

    The roads around the ports progressively deteriorated until they became impassable and literally died. The rail which traverse the innards of the main complex and helped to unclog the berthing vicinity had long been disused and abandoned.

    In the last two years or so, getting in and out of the ports areas to load or offload had become a futile exercise which only die-hards contemplate. Export-bearing trucks are held up for weeks often dis-configuring time-bound goods.

    Imported cargoes incur huge demurrage as containers cannot be extricated from a logjam that has become permanent and most debilitating.

    But this seems to be a stale part of a weird narrative. Today, trucks needing to be attended to at the ports have stretched about 20 kilometers into the city – on highways, bridges and by-passes.

    One side of city thoroughfares are taken over by various shades of huge trucks and petrol tankers. This of course compounds the already poor traffic situation of Lagos city.

    Attempts have been made to get the trucks to take scheduled turns but to no avail; futile also is the attempts to disperse them.

    So when the great Fela sang about overtake overtaking overtake, he never envisaged this day would come when trucks would overtake the city. And this is not a mere song.

     

  • Ineffective security

    Clearly, the March 21 release of schoolgirls abducted from the Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGGSTC), Dapchi, Yobe State, was as dramatic as their abduction on February 19 when the school was attacked by suspected Boko Haram terrorists in military fatigues who reportedly took away 110 schoolgirls in 11 trucks.

    The insurgents reportedly brought their captives back to the village and set them free after a month in captivity. Soldiers fighting the anti-terror war were said to have made a “tactical withdrawal” to allow the terrorists to bring the girls back. So, those who took the girls away brought them back.

    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. One of the released girls was quoted as saying:   “The five girls who died were buried in the bush…it was not as if they killed them – it was because of the stress.”

    According to the government, the girls were released through “back-channel efforts and with the help of some friends of the country.”  Mohammed told journalists that “the girls were released unconditionally. No money changed hands.” Then he added paradoxically: “They (Boko Haram) only had one condition: that they will be the ones to return them (schoolgirls) to where they abducted them.”  It sounds too easy to be true.

    Now that Dapchi abductees have been set free, and the Federal Government is busy congratulating itself and expecting to be congratulated, the authorities must prepare for another possible strike against schoolgirls by the Islamist terrorists.

    The Dapchi mass kidnapping compounded the still unresolved Chibok mass kidnapping in Borno State in April 2014.  Many of the Chibok captives are still in captivity.  It is disturbing that the terrorists were able to carry out the Dapchi kidnap despite the presence of anti-terrorism troops in the region.  The northeastern states of Borno and Yobe have been vulnerable to Boko Haram attacks since the insurgency started in 2009, meaning that there was always a possibility the terrorists would strike again like they did in Chibok as long as they had not been defeated. The military protectors should have seen this possibility.

    The point is that no school in the beleaguered region is safe from possible attack by Boko Haram since the group is still active. Those who are supposed to ensure that the schools are safe have no excuse for ineffective   security.

     

     

     

     

  • Holy Shehu, the untouchable?

    Who can touch Holy Shehu, the celebrated whistle blower against the Naira-glutton Senate, with their distinguished wolfing, feeding to stupor when the people they represent starve to death?

    No one, it would appear!  Is Shehu Sani, the immaculate senator from Kaduna central, then the senatorial equivalent of the biblical warning of “touch not my anointed, do my prophet no harm” — even if that prophet, in another Bible-speak, is not without honour except in his own senate (sorry country), among his own people (sorry, distinguished!)?

    Call it telepathy, but Hardball could sense a scalding hate, all the more scathing for its distinguished fierceness, for this holier-than-thou, who just started awake after almost three years of wolfing down a monthly N15.3 million running loot (sorry, costs!), among other undisclosed gravy, to blow a whistle so shrill and so devastating!

    Yeah, you could say Holy Sani grates, going about prattling after, that his “integrity” and “conscience” pushed him to unleashing the Samson complex, collapsing the chamber on himself and his gravy-sampling colleagues.  Integrity and conscience that snoozed, with sheer delight for more than two years, busy “eating” in gravy dream land?

    Still, screech he did, and not a few would make a triumphal return to the Bible, arguing that had God found a single upright — or in this case, repentant — soul in Sodom and Gomorrah, he probably wouldn’t have destroyed that high city of decadence. Besides, a few others chip in, on the terrestrial plane: Shehu’s share was an official allocation.  Technically, he couldn’t have rejected, while  others accepted.

    Yeah, right — talking of a conclave of distinguished senators morphing into a baleful coven, when the subject is wild and unconscionable greed!

    Talking of conclaves and covens: that grand chamber would have instantly transformed into a dire coven, passing a dire verdict, the very second the first shrill of Sani’s whistle hit the ear — ungrateful wretch!  And what might that be: a jumbo suspension that may well retire him, just only a little after halfway into his four-year term?

    Now however, all is quiet on the senatorial front — holy Shehu!  That chamber is struck dumb — no clatter about abridged rights, no racket about abused privileges, just a loud, ear-splitting silence!

    At this moment, you gotta remember Chinua Achebe, who probably is having a hearty guffaw, in his grave.  Do these folks, in Achebe-speak, think they have stolen too much for the owner not to notice?

    Is that why they are struck dumb, and suffer a fit of self-paralysis, of tongue and limb, so much so that even if they hate Shehu with every sinew in their body, they cannot move against him?  Toh, madallah!

    Many have railed, pushing for the Senate to be abolished.  But you cannot do that, since Nigeria is constitutionally a federation; and in such, you must balance out population (House of Representatives) with equality of states (Senate).  Besides, that argument would hold only if the Senate alone was neck-deep in the illicit gravy.  It is not.  The House of the people too is busy “chopping”!

    For the electorate, the choice is clear.  The problem is not the chamber created by law.  It is rather the gluttons and parasites billeted inside, like an army of ruin, that would not be sated until they kill off their hosts and after, die in grand folly!

    That is why the voter should flush out the bulk of this 8th National Assembly, fast turning into a national scandal.  Replace them with people-oriented citizens and reclaim your National Assembly.  And say: never again!

  • My learned colleague, the mai-guard!

    That law is an ass is not only trite; it is also a jejune statement tending on the banal. Going by recent developments, we actually should be asking: whose law is it? Even more apt is to insist that the law is everybody’s ass; so to speak.

    Now how could that be? How could Hardball begin to make derogatory imputation about one of the oldest and noblest professions mankind knew? How can it be that a calling where practitioners are addressed as learned colleagues would be so slurred as an all-comers mule?

    This is the crux of the matter today. How is it that a profession distinguished by its sepulchral shibboleths and arcane turn of phrase can easily become the handmaiden of the untutored rabble?

    But consider these wuthering examples: a curmudgeon of a 66-year-old security guard wangled his way into learned-hood and practiced as an attorney for all of 22 years. And the cheek of it: He did not stick with the magistrate court; he appeared before judges and even justices of the Supreme Court. The learned Mai-guard however reached the end of his tethers two years ago when he donned full ceremonial regalia – flowing robe and wig and joined the high and mighty of the profession during the Lagos State Judiciary 2016/2017 annual legal year. What affront!

    Another confidence trickster, 49-year-old Chris reportedly practiced law in Lagos for 15 years until nemesis caught up with him last February. In Owerri, Imo State a lady fake Beatrice had practiced for five years before she was apprehended. She was not satisfied dressing in borrowed robes, she had to dupe her client of a large sum where upon she was thrown up for what she was – a con.

    Yet another fake from Ilorin, Kwara State had been a make-believe lawyer for 10 years before luck ran out on him. ’Barrister’ Peter is peculiar because he forged a lawyer’s certificate and practiced under the assumed name.

    Of course there is forgery everywhere and quacks abound in perhaps all professions but it’s more rampant in Law and Medicine practice in Nigeria today. These are among the most regulated and controlled fields of professional practice. The educational route to attaining any of the twain is very rigorous while regulators ensure that interlopers don’t thrive.

    It is therefore a wonder how unschooled and ill-trained folks infiltrate law and medicine and thrive over a sustained period of time. Many of the folk exampled above are described as ‘successful’ lawyers.

    Regulatory bodies must institute screening and rescreening procedures lest the likes of Hardball join the fray and gun for SAN-hood! If a mai-guard can do it, Hardball will probably do it better!

     

  • Action and reaction

    Senator Shehu Sani gave the public an idea of the price he is likely to pay at work as well as the price he has paid at home for revealing what senators receive monthly to cover their so-called running costs.  He had told the world that every Nigerian senator got N13.5m monthly to run things. This fantastic figure is in addition to their salaries, he said.

    Public reaction to the information was predictably negative because it didn’t make sense that senators got so much. But Senate spokesman, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, had defended the indefensible figure, saying, “Almost all holders of elective and appointive offices have running costs allocated to their offices and that cannot be said to be part of their salaries.” Abdullahi’s defence didn’t help matters.

    Talking of reaction, Sani reportedly said during a radio programme on March 18: “I know that I will lose friends and colleagues within the very establishment that I serve… I know things are not going to be easy because when I made the disclosure, there was explosion, even right in my own house.”  So, things have not been easy for Sani at work and at home because of the revelation.

    Why would Sani lose friends and colleagues in the Senate because he spoke the truth about a matter of public interest that had bothered the public for a long time, and which still bothers the public? Why would this particular truth hurt? The answer is simple. Those who have been exposed won’t like it because the exposure showed them in a bad light.

    It is interesting that Sani said: “The National Assembly is made up of distinguished personalities – doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics and all who have made it in life. But because of this culture of secrecy and silence, people who found themselves in the National Assembly are criminalised and stigmatised. The dome of the National Assembly is being seen to house people of questionable character and integrity. So, what I did was to rescue the honour and credibility of the parliament by removing the veil of secrecy to bring it once and for all to an end.”

    Sani got it right by exposing things. But he got it wrong by thinking that it would help to show the senators in a good light.  Revealing what the senators get, which had been kept secret for so long, showed the Senate’s dirty underbelly.

  • Corporate terrorism

    Want a taste of corporate terrorism?  Go no farther than sampling the bitter broth Ikeja Electric (I.E.) unleashes, without let, on the un-metered segment of its customers.  The greedy, hungry beast in I.E, which seems to get hungrier the more illicit fare it gobbles, is determined to milk these defenseless customers for as long as necessary.

    It’s all looking like the Nigerian version of the Mobutu doctrine.  Mobutu Sese Seko Mgbendu Nkuku wa za Banga (meaning: the “all-conquering warrior who goes from triumph to triumph”) was Congo (now DRC) president (by the barrel of the gun) when one of his soldiers complained of zero salary.

    A miffed and bemused Mobutu gave him a piercing look, with no less piercing poser: What is it you hang on your shoulder?  A rifle, the other returned.  And with that, his principal roared, you still complain of no salary?

    I.E must have asked itself and its deluded staff: with un-metered customers, you still complain of no revenue?  Go serve them crazy bills, and threaten them, on failure to pay, with disconnection!  And thank God: power supply is on the upswing.  That is a perfect tantalizing tool!

    Corporate armed robbery, pure and simple — and for now it does, like Mobutu, move from triumph to triumph!

    If that is no Mobutu doctrine, as a model of I.E corporate terrorism, Hardball is open to fresh lecturing!

    For the umpteenth time, I.E has unleashed on its Okota neigbhbourhood’s unmetered belt, a flat but outrageous N12, 000 February bill, up from N8, 300 for January.  That itself came up from no more than N5, 000 the previous months.  And the N12, 000 bill is for no more than 12 hours of electricity a day.  Well, talk of bills leaping by geometrical proportions!

    And service?  Increasing only by arithmetical proportions, even with better availability of power.  Even with a pending jumbo bill, supply just dipped to half-current around 9pm on March 17, lasting all through the 12 midnight when the light usually goes off; and the four hours of the night cum morning (usually from 4am to 8am) when the light is usually on.  Yet, I.E golden meters are probably busy clocking, preparatory to another jumbo bill for March!

    Still, perhaps these consumers should thank the I.E god for small mercies.  Back in October 2016, it delivered nothing but solid darkness.  Yet, it trotted out a flat N10, 000 bill, some of which it still carries as “debts” in its sickly books!

    Just as in 2016, the area is seething with protests, with residents swearing not again!

    The industry regulators had better call to order, this act of corporate armed robbery.  You don’t steal from people with glee and expect something not to snap.  Besides, Power Minister, the hardworking and focused Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, had better take closer interests in I.E and its crooked ways.

    I.E should meter all its customers.  That, other things being equal, introduces transparency and equity to the billing business.  If it thinks it can stall that, to cheat for as long as possible, it baits nothing but utter disaster!

    A word, they say, is good for the wise.