The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Sekinat vs. the anti-intellectual state

    Barbarians at the Gate is a 1989 bestselling book by two American journalists, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. It chronicles the drama, intrigues and the caterwauling of greedy men trying to hijack a failing corporate giant, RJR Nabisco.The book and its offshoot; a television movie of the same title, proved to be among the best depiction of 90s American era of bloated business, quasi-money and junk bonds. Corporate entities grew larger than life and many crashed with a bit of a bang.

    Today, one is reminded of not barbarians at the gate but philistines on the premises pulling at the very foundations of the building. Close your eyes for a moment and see a horde of ruffians having a run at the city gate and then imagine another set of a mob tugging at the very loft of the society.

    That is the story of today as elicited by the plight of 26-year-old lady, Sekinat Mojisola Ahmad. It is the story of an incipient anti-intellectual state caught in the stark translucence of its reality. It is the story of a dim and fading state poorly lit and defenestrated.

    Pretty Miss Ahmad is an award-winning first class honours graduate of Water Resources Management and Agro-meteorology-Hydrology from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    Sekinat has been unable to secure a job since she graduated two years ago. In a recent interview with a national newspaper, she would love to be a teacher and expected her alma mater would absorb her but she has been idling away at home since. She can’t even embark on a master’s degree programme because even first degree was a tough proposition for her parents.

    Sekinat may be considered luckier compared to numerous first class students in the Presidential Scholarship for Innovation and Development (PRESSID) initiated in 2012 to sponsor Nigeria’s first class graduates for studies in world’s best 25 universities.

    It seemed to be going on well until 2015 when the new government abruptly jettisoned it and left hundreds of Nigeria’s best young minds stranded abroad

    Juanita Bashir, 25, is pursuing a PhD in Clinical Medicine Research at the Imperial College, London. Aloagbaye Momodu is another PhD student of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto.

    Abdulkarim Aliyu is one of about 450 Nigerian students in Russia under another scheme, the Bilateral Education Agreement Scholarship Awards. Like PRESSID candidates, most of them are also stranded in their various outposts.

    In our days of innocence, first class graduates were hot, strategic properties of the state. Today, even PhD holders are enlisting as truck drivers. Who cares… in this increasingly anti-intellectual state?

     

     

  • Open court is open

    A March 9 report said an Ikeja Customary Court, Lagos, barred journalists from covering its proceedings. According to the report, the court’s registrar, simply identified as Mr Yomi, said:  “We do not allow journalists into the courtroom to report proceedings due to the type of high-profile cases and the calibre of people that come into this particular court. The order not to allow journalists cover proceedings from this court is from above.” He reportedly threatened to expel any reporter who came into the court to report proceedings.

    The enforcer of the so-called order from above was also quoted as saying: “I have walked journalists out of the court before with the backing of the president of the court. Ikeja Customary Court is the number one court in Lagos State because of the calibre of people and cases that are filed there. You can never hear any news on marriage dissolution emanating from this particular court.”

    When did this court become a place where journalists are not allowed to do their job?  A court is supposed to be open to litigants and people interested in observing proceedings.  While a court may hear certain types of cases in a judge’s chambers, instead of in open court, cases that are heard in open court should be open to reporters who should be free to report the proceedings.

    What reportedly happened at the Ikeja Customary Court on March 8 against journalists who were there to do their job is puzzling. The relevant authorities have a lot of explaining to do.

    If the Ikeja Customary Court customarily hears cases that are not meant to be reported by the media, then the court should be specially designated as a court that is out of bounds to reporters. It cannot be a public place open to the public, but not open to the media.

    The so-called registrar at the centre of this ridiculous show of unthinking power needs to be enlightened about the constitutionally defined role of the media. It is noteworthy that he reportedly boasted about previous occasions when he walked journalists out of the said court with the approval of the president of the court.

    Those in charge at the Ikeja Customary Court should be told that it is absurd to bar the media from covering and reporting proceedings in open court. They must be made to understand that open court is different from a judge’s chambers where a case may be heard without media presence.

  • Ebora joins the ghoulish game

    Benue appears the ghoulish capital of Nigerian politics, and the Ebora Owu just fulfilled his own quota on that sickly pilgrimage.

    On the pilgrims’ roll have been Rivers Nyesom Wike and Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, both making thunderous declarations and cash donations to the victims.  Now, a former president of the Federal Republic has joined the proud pilgrims, to mourn the victims — hardly a crime!

    Still, you could see both Wike and Fayose ripple with political mischief, in an abhorrent bid to make political capital of the Benue tragedy, with Samuel Ortom, mourner-in-chief, grimly playing along.

    Well, in a “whistle-stop visit”, Baba Iyabo darted in and out of Benue.  But not before laying a wreath at the grave of the Benue 73.   Might that be another national cenotaph?

    One would have thought a sober Mr. Pan Nigeria, that ripples with good faith and oozes the wise statesman, not to talk of the proud and well-garlanded “father of modern Nigeria”, would have shunned a macabre play to the gallery.

    Don’t get Hardball wrong.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with going to Benue to commiserate with victims of tragedy, in the spirit of common humanity.  If that had been done in a most solemn way, no one would have griped.

    But when a former president goes to a troubled spot, still boiling with raw emotions, and starts laying a wreath at graves that belch counter-ethnic hate, as if it were some new-found national cenotaph of explosive political mischief, then it’s something very awry.  How does Obasanjo expect friend and foe to interpret his actions?

    That friends hail him as empathizing with the Benue folks — and why not?  And foes — nail him as joining a sweeping anti-Fulani campaign, just because of a criminal few?  Some “father of modern Nigeria”!

    Besides, what is his dog in that tragic fight?  Didn’t the Yoruba say that with wise elders around, things seldom — if ever — go awry?  Even if others play politics with this tragedy, must a former president and self-consecrated statesman join them?

    In fairness, Obasanjo said all the right things, appealing to both sides to sheathe their swords, adding that it would take time and great efforts; which nevertheless are bound to yield fruits with perseverance.

    But that he said all the right things in the wrong place is nothing but grand hypocrisy.  Laying a wreath, at a partisan grave, is unbefitting of a so-called “de-tribalized” former president, who ought to know better.  Indeed, it’s a new low, that plumbs him to the pathetic nadirs of the Wikes and Fayoses of this polity.

    As for Governor Samuel Ortom, a golden advice: milking the angst of the dead and the pained seldom prevents future tragedies.  How many graves does the governor have to show off to milk sympathy?  And how does that ghoulish exhibition contribute to better security for his people, a sacred duty he is charged by law?

    Instead of this funny game, the governor should explore ways with the federal authorities to mould a security infrastructure that should ensure mass killers are swiftly apprehended and brought to justice.

    That, and only that, will bring relief and succour to the Benue people.  For the Ebora Owu, a desperation for willy-nilly relevance, to use ghoulish symbolism again, might just be digging his grave into willy-nilly irrelevance — and just as well.

    Enough of all these macabre stunts!  The poor and the vulnerable are the worse for them.

     

  • Semiotics of open defecation

    It is one of those days you don’t know how best to broach a topic. It is particularly so in a something as tacky as defecation. One day Hardball shall interrogate this matter of excrement; this singular equalizer of all men, nay all animals. Pooing knows no tribe or race, gender or class … you would simply be in trouble if you didn’t do the doo-doo after three days. In fact you are already in trouble and must see your doctor pronto!

    Every man (and woman of course) does it yet we would rather not talk about it. We would rather not even mention it or speak its name aloud. As you can already see from the foregoing dear reader, even Hardball has a semantic challenge situating this phenom.

    It isn’t a word mentioned without a thought; it indeed has so many names and descriptions each suitable for occasions and circumstances – faeces, excrement, poo-poo, doo-doo and the most abused and debasing – shit. But this is not the day for the fecal disquisition promised above.

    Today, Hardball is burdened by a recent UNICEF report which indicates that 46 million Nigerians still practices open defecation.

    The report which is an overview of the UNICEF supported Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme in Nigeria also disclosed that 15 million Nigerians still drink water from rivers, lakes, ponds, streams and irrigation canals while 57 million Nigerians do not have access to safe water supply.

    While these are grave enough, the picture of 46 million people in full squatting positions morning, noon and night putting away is quite exhilarating, if you have a bit of humour in you. Imagine the dung generated daily and anon! Would this by any chance account for Nigeria’s rich soil?

    Open defecation of course means the absence of hygienic modern toilet system which allows faeces to be channeled into septic tanks in which it is contained, treated and properly disposed. If so many of us still (prefer to?) do it in the open after over a century of modern toilet system, something surely is amiss.

    Could this be symptomatic of how truly we are? Is it an acute case of arrested development? A recent study indicates that the human bowels are better cleared when we sit in a full squat while defecating!

    Again, why are people in authority not alarmed at this most alarming news of 46 million paying putrid homage to our earth every day? You would think someone would be moved enough to set up a task force to drastically reduce this modern day infamy. But nobody seems to care; perhaps it’s our way!

  • An insider’s intervention

    Police professionalism is a serious matter. It’s probably no news when outsiders say bad things about the Nigeria Police Force.  But it is noteworthy when an insider makes negative observations about the police, particularly when the insider is no less a person than Lagos State Commissioner of Police Imohimi Edgal.

    Edgal said during a March 6 visit to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Panti, Yaba:  “There must be audit of all the exhibits. Many exhibits both miscellaneous and vehicular are now in the hands of some unscrupulous policemen here. They have diverted and converted them. It is a criminal offence and I pray none of you is caught in that act because the consequence will be terrible. Every personnel here must be profiled. We must restore the SCIID to its pride of place.”

    He reportedly directed the DCP in charge of SCIID, Mrs. Yetunde Longe, to start the profiling immediately, adding that some people got to the unit through the back door.

    Also, Edgal is said to have “chided Investigating Police Officers (IPOs), who demand what he called ‘’mobilisation fee’’ from complainants in order to arrest suspects,” and “advised the IPOs to channel such demands to their sectional heads or the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of the department.”  He also “condemned those who falsified their deployment dates so as to stay in the SCIID…”

    Edgal sounds like a man who means business and won’t accept business as usual. Hopefully, he will stay on course.

    The question is: Why did Edgal meet that situation? It suggests that the situation was allowed to continue by those who could have done something about it. What will happen after Edgal?

    Obviously, police reforms are necessary to achieve the desired level of professionalism.  It is interesting that the report said: “Mrs. Longe promised to reposition the SCIID.” Why did it take a visit by the Commissioner of Police to get her to see the need to do something about the situation?

    It will take much more than Longe’s promise to correct the situation.  Edgal too has to take action quickly enough to demonstrate that he meant every word he said. It remains to be seen whether Edgal will succeed in changing a system that has probably been in place for ages; or whether the system will stop him.

  • A deadline long overdue

    A deadline long overdue

    Truck drivers get 48 hours to vacate Lagos bridges”, ran The Nation lead headline of March 8.  That is an ultimatum long, long overdue — and in those unending snakes of containerized trailers, tankers and allied articulated trucks, you see in stark ugliness the toxic nature of Nigerian citizenship.

    Yeah, there is always the call that the “government” is irresponsible, useless and insensitive.  That might well be.  But that government has a merry partner in citizens, who though daily bawl and bark at “how useless” the government is, nevertheless, by their own daily conducts, demonstrate they can outbid the hated government in these hated traits.  Sad.

    Look over all Lagos, now experiencing a refuse crisis.  Yes, perhaps the Lagos government erred on its own part by not mastering its new waste disposal system before transiting from the old one.

    Still, is this an excuse for rational citizens — adults supposed to be responsible — to dump refuse bang on road medians? Does that also justify the alleged sabotage by lobbies bent on frustrating the new system, simply because they feel thrown out of their comfort zones?

    Indeed, under those refuse lay buried the humanity and rationality of many denizens of this teeming metropolis.  It is such mighty shame.

    Yes, over the years, subsequent federal governments, especially from the military era, had milked Apapa Ports for choice revenue.  But they have dismally failed to put in adequate investments, especially in rail, to transport those revenue-spinning imports, with relatively low sweat — rail.

    That grand failure had led to a progressive cannibalization of Apapa Roads, such that both the Tin Can Island axis, as well as roads leading in and out of the premier Apapa Ports complex have comprehensively failed.  The roads bear just too much weight, and the wear-and-tear is just logical.

    That crisis has come to a head these past three months or so.  Even then, it is matched by the ugliness of the Nigerian citizenry, particularly when the issue is the urban public space.  It is an utter jungle out there, just like a set of British public school boys, who got marooned on an island, and turned near-instant savages, in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

    Indeed, it’s an ugly urban jungle of metal and concrete, with a serpentine curve of endless trucks and trailers, parked over every available space, including aging bridges, snaking from Tincan to Mile 2, and from Apapa Ports, over the delicate Ijora Causeway, to Western Avenue, spanning the National Stadium, Surulere , to Ojuelegba and even threatening the Ikorodu Road-Western Avenue link flyover.  What madness!

    That is why the March 7 ultimatum, taking effect from today (February 9), couldn’t have come at a better time.  Even better: not only were  critical stakeholders consulted before handing down the ultimatum, two parking bays, one at Orile Iganmu that can take 3,500 tankers and another, that can take 2,700 containerized trucks, though the news story did not mention the location.

    After the deadline, the authorities should move in to clear any recalcitrant trailers parked at wrong places, especially those that have seized the bridges and holding bays, despite the very possibility of collapse and even, as the military authorities alerted, possible terrorist attacks.

    While the government must take its full share of the blame, citizens too must take responsibility — and get punished — for irrational actions.  That a country faces a crisis is no licence for its people to merrily descend into savages.

    That is the current situation is Lagos.  Sad.

     

     

  • Aisha Wakil: complex lingo of the mother hen

    Aisha Wakil: complex lingo of the mother hen

    It’s not the best of times for Hardball; but worse is that it is the worst of times for motherland. It is a time of angst, sorrow and a fiesta of blood-letting.

    But in all this, the strong must stand, face and return. This was always the chant of our high school football coach those days on the practice pitch… face and return, face and return!

    We must face forward and return the ball back to the 18-yard box of our opponents (adversary): meaning that Hardball must studiously pen this moment and articulate our present restiveness lest we lose even the lessons.

    Besides, as Igbo say in that richly organic adage: if the mother hen stops making her guttural feeding sounds (kwom, kwom, kwom), her chicks would starve. In other words, even Hardball is also an existential being if you look beyond his exotica and ethereal altruism; he too does swallow with uncommon ease and he also stoops (to ‘be conquered’ if you like) in the small room – like all mortals.

    But the mention of mother hen and the existentiality of boluses of eba and amala return us inexorably to our current national anxieties and indeed absurdities.

    Now let us segue into the issue of the day and let’s try dealing with it with one mind: a certain woman known as Aisha Wakil but also known as Mama Boko Haram has stepped into the arena of our pains once again. She tells us she is in touch with the abductors of the about 110 school girls in Dapchi. In fact, the miscreants have put a call to her, she said.

    The chief kidnapper is her son… “Habib is a nice boy, he will not harm the girls, he will not touch them, he will not kill them,” she assured.

    But most notably, “He is going to listen to us.”

    But didn’t we hear similar reprise about the Chibok girls saga? Yet Chibok has remained an eternal national trauma; a morbid metaphor for a national calamity.

    Aisha Wakil reminds us of the mother hen that feeds her chicks frantically, noisily and jealously, even. All it cares about are her chicks and nothing else matters. Ms Wakil was reportedly one of the negotiators in what may well be called the Chibok debacle. Huge ransoms were paid yet many of the girls are yet to return. They may never return. Now this again!

    Now in the name of motherhood, Dapchi must not lapse into another Chibok cash out.

     

  • Playing the flattery game

    Playing the flattery game

    When you say what you don’t mean, it could lead to a problem. When you don’t say what you mean, it could also lead to a problem. It is not surprising that the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Adetunji, had a problem trying to clarify what he said about Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi.

    During a meeting the governor held with traditional rulers in Ibadan, the state capital, on March 1, Oba Adetunji had said: ”The Yoruba don’t appreciate themselves except to abuse and criticise. But when someone has done well, we must say it. I am talking about what I have seen so far. In view of this, I would have loved him (Ajimobi) to go for another term, if not that the constitution does not allow it. The governor has performed very well. He has recorded unprecedented achievements worthy of commendation. This is the only way to spur him into greater performance for the benefit of the state.” Ajimobi became governor in 2011 and will complete his second term in office in 2019.

    The king’s commendation was curious, considering that the governor had displeased him by installing 21 new kings in his domain. The installation was recently annulled by an Ibadan high court.

    Clearly, what Oba Adetunji said was clear enough. Interestingly, a few days later, he laboured to explain what he had said and why, while hosting hundreds of Ibadan indigenes at his Popoyemoja palace as part of activities marking this year’s Ibadan Week.

    A statement by his spokesman, Adeola Oloko, said:  ”As a monarch, I have no power over the election and re-election of anybody, not to talk of tenure extension, which is unconstitutional. Besides, when I was exchanging banters with the governor, I was only cracking a joke with him as a son and subject. Even, if Governor Ajimobi offended us, it would be indecorous on my part to address him harshly. Besides, there is a subsisting judgment over the controversial chieftaincy review, which awaits compliance. About four or five suits relating to the matter are still in court and have not been withdrawn.”

    In other words, Oba Adetunji didn’t mean what he said. In other words, he was merely playing the flattery game. Why did he say what he didn’t mean when he should have known that it could be misunderstood?  Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

     

     

  • DAWN of grassroots football

    DAWN of grassroots football

    It’s no weekend or Sunday, but Hardball, a football zealot, is especially excited — excited at another innovation in grassroots football.

    The excitement is not only about the  DAWN — Development Agenda for

    Western Nigeria — Commission, which has mid-wifed the proposed Western Nigeria Football League (WNFL).  It is also because that great idea is getting quality attention from the apex of Nigeria’s football house.

    As in other sectors, it is applying the credo of regionalization (read decentralization) to football, both as sports and as business. You can never lose on that score, for it follows the federalization of football and its management.

    Amaju Pinnick, Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president, on March 2, said it all, at the inauguration of the Western Nigeria Football Forum Office, domiciled at the iconic Cocoa House, Ibadan, the same regional historical monument that also houses the DAWN Commission.

    Ibadan was capital of the pace-setting Western Region, in the Awolowo glory years: first university, first television in all of Africa, first modern stadium then named Liberty

    Stadium and of course, tallest building in all of Nigeria, the Cocoa House, in which the epochal event was taking place.

    Amaju also relayed how the West produced iconic footballers in the likes of Segun Odegbami, Muda Lawal, Felix Owolabi and Sam Ojebode, still leaving out other greats like Teslim “Thunder” Balogun and of course, ace winger and hero of the 1976 Nations Cup in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, Kunle Awesu, of blessed memory.

    But what Amaju didn’t trace was the decay of the once luxuriant sports garden where all those came from, now parched; and almost desert-like.

    Proof? 3SC, Shooting Stars Sports Club (formerly Investment and Industrial Credit Corporation, IICC of Western Nigeria, also earlier known as Western Nigeria Development Corporation, WNDC) has fallen into hard times.

    The first Nigerian club side to land any continental laurel, winning the African Cup Winners Cup in 1976, it has faded from among the top performers of yore.  It now always languishes among the laggards of the Nigerian Professional League (NFL), if not completely taking the drop to the lower division, as it did after the 2016/2017 league season.  That simply means the ready streams of the Ojebodes, Lawals, Odegbamis and Owolabis are drying off.

    If the new WNFL addressees that alone, then it would have done a vital task for this generation, bring back some Renaissance on the football pitch.

    But it should be more than that really: that league, if it plumbs the grassroots, has the prospects of fully turning football in that part of Nigeria into an integrated business, spanning the local manufacture of soccer boots and other foot wears, jerseys, club merchandizing and allied businesses, from which young football talents, coaches, sports doctors, lawyers, other ancillary professionals and even local musicians are gainfully employed.

    That is the way to go, for every part of the country.  Can you now see why Hardball is excited?

  • Serious unseriousness

    When Mr. Olukoya Ogungbeje, the lawyer representing the self-confessed big-time billionaire kidnapper, Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, better known as Evans, was fined N20, 000 by a court as “punitive cost” for unprofessional conduct, the fine seemed puny indeed.  Justice Abdulazeez Anka of the Federal High Court, Lagos, who awarded the cost against Ogungbeje on July 13, 2017 said the fine must be paid before July 20, 2017

    What did Ogungbeje do wrong?  Justice Anka said: “Counsel wrote a letter seeking for an adjournment without copying the prosecution. This, to me, is unprofessional. The court hereby warns counsel to desist from such type of practice.” Justice Anka added that Ogungbeje would not be heard until he had paid the fine.

    On July 20, 2017 Justice Chuka Obiozor of the Federal High Court Lagos, declined to hear Evans’ N300 million rights case because his lawyer had failed to pay the fine. What happened in court that day? A report said: “…counsel for the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Effiong Asuquo, said Ogungbeje gave him a N20, 000 post-dated cheque. He said he rejected it since that was not the court order. Justice Obiozor agreed with Asuquo and directed Ogungbeje to comply with the order.” Justice Obiozor adjourned the case till July 27, 2017 to allow Ogungbeje to comply with the order.

    It is intriguing that Ogungbeje tried to pay the fine with a post-dated cheque. Why did he do that? Didn’t he know it fell short of compliance with the order?  Did he expect acceptance of the cheque?  These questions call into question his professionalism. Considering that he was fined for unprofessionalism, this amounted to another unprofessional move on his part, which compounds his unprofessionalism.

    It is unbelievable that the fine in question is N20, 000 only and a billionaire’s lawyer can’t pay it promptly. What kind of billionaire’s lawyer would let such a puny fine get in the way of things when his billionaire client’s freedom is at stake?

    A report said: “In his fundamental rights enforcement suit, Evans, through Ogungbeje, is seeking a court order directing the police to charge him to court immediately or release him on bail. Ogungbeje argued that Evans’ detention since June 10, 2017 without being charged to court was a violation of his client’s fundamental rights enshrined in Sections 35 (1) (c) (3) (4) (5) (a) (b) and 36 of the Constitution.”

    It should be said loud and clear: By his unprofessional actions, this lawyer is sending a signal of serious unseriousness.