The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Pictures of prison

    Pictures of prison

    President Muhammadu Buhari’s stop at Kurmawa Prison on December 6 during his two-day visit to Kano State clearly highlighted Nigeria’s awful prison conditions.  Buhari pardoned 500 prisoners and empowered them with some cash.

    A report said: “At the Prison, he said: “I am pleased with this visit and I have learnt a bit more about the conditions of the prisons and inmates. This building in front of us was built since 1910. Rehabilitation of prisoners and training of inmates is very important to us and we would continue to invest more on this. I asked one of the inmates (released) how old he was and he told me he is only 19 years old. If we have people of 18 and 19 years in the prison, and there is no continuous training, then their lives will be completely destroyed. We will invest more in education and vocational training.’’  Buhari is expected to move from words to actions.

    According to the report, “The 500 inmates granted pardon, including men and women, were drawn from various prisons in Kano State, including Kurmawa Prisons, which has 1,398 inmates as opposed to 750, the established capacity.” The difference between the number of prisoners in the prison and the number of prisoners the prison was built to accommodate is alarming.

    Overpopulation has been a major prison problem for a long time, and it will remain problematic if nothing is done about it.  Consider another picture, which gives more insight into the overpopulation problem:  “Our prisons are congested. A facility meant to accommodate less than 600 inmates currently houses over 2,400 inmates. The inmates are mostly those in the ‘awaiting trial’ category.”

    This disturbing picture of the state of prisons across the country, and the state of Owerri Prison in particular, is a cause for concern.  The Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Owerri branch, Imo State, Lawrence Nwakaeti, who made the observations, said the prisons were in a deplorable state. It is a reason to call for reforms. Nwakaeti focused on “Judicial reforms and sustainable development in a democracy,” in an address at an event to mark the 2017/2018 legal year in the state.

    The prison system needs reforms to ensure that there are adequate prisons with adequate living conditions, but what is more important in the long run is more welfare spending by the government that will help reduce crime.

  • Credit, discredit and accreditation

    An oriental wisdom suggests that while the dead lie in state, the living, if need be, would be made to lie in a state. This, Hardball would translate to mean that the same delicate art of managing a cadaver could be applied in managing walking body. Or put differently again, just because a body is up and about does not mean that it is in a proper state of mind; it may well be lying in state – vertically!

    Now why is Hardball in a morbid mode in this season of goodwill? Well, a story broke over the weekend that medical students of the University of Abuja had to spend 12 years to graduate instead of six years! And it is not because they are particularly dull-heads that needed a minimum of two years to achieve an academic year.

    No! It was actually for no fault of the students who were actually rendered prostrate by the state. It just happens that the Federal Government that owns the institution through the instrumentality of the Federal Ministry of Education must have been in a certain awkward state while this aberration persisted. Or if you prefer, government and the university administration may have been lying in state (or lying about its state) for 12 years while all this lasted.

    This is exactly Hardball’s sentiments which also inform this hoary morbidity in a time of Yuletide. And there is no credit in the explanation that the institution was broiled in accreditation matters. Again that discredits both government and institution in equal measure.

    Why would a federal tertiary institution for that matter lack the necessary prerequisite for the statutory accreditation of its courses? And why would a university admit students into departments and faculties not properly accredited by the requisite accrediting authorities? Why would government and school management watch students suffer for so long; wasting time and resources for twelve years; inflicting emotional and psychological trauma on helpless students?

    This horrifically horizontal state of affairs is not peculiar to UniAbuja; many so- called federal tertiary institutions have become a hollow shell burdened by their old glory. University of Ife for instance, a once glorious citadel has its Law and Medicine programmes in a shambles right now.

    If gold rusts! It is a known fact that most state-owned universities and technical schools are just destinations for academic dereliction. For many, they are just going through the motion of studying as a good number of their courses are without accreditation at any given time.

    What really is the duty of the National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education? They are a most discredited bunch if federal institutions of learning are suffering accreditation hiccups. Are they lying in state?

  • Work and pay

    When the State House Press Corps invited Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to a seminar with the theme, “Journalists and Retirement Plans,” there was probably no way he could have avoided speaking about journalists and pre-retirement. Well, he didn’t mince words during the December 18 event at the old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

    A report said: “The Vice President recalled his brief encounters working with media houses as legal adviser, and how in all the months he worked he was not paid despite the irregular hours he put in.”

    He reached a conclusion based on this discouraging experience.  He was quoted as saying: “I realised first of all that this is not a profession from which one could make a decent living in the first place unless you find a really good way of doing so.”

    It was a depressing assessment of journalism and journalists. Here was an outsider and observer telling it like it is. What did the insiders think of his directness?  Osinbajo went on to say why things are the way they are.  According to him,”There are a few reasons in my view why remuneration is poor. The first is that it is just simply cheating.  There are owners of media that are just cheats. They just want to get something from nothing and that is not uncommon, it is a general malaise, it is not necessarily restricted to the media.”

    Osinbajo lamented that professional associations formed to protect the interest of journalists don’t do enough to tackle media organisations that don’t pay journalists enough or not at all.

    His observation about the legal profession didn’t make his observation about journalism any less depressing:”It is also the same in the legal profession. There many lawyers if they tell you what they earn, you will certainly not want to be a lawyer.”

    Interestingly, this question of work and pay raised by Osinbajo raises questions at this time that the country is considering fixing and implementing a new national minimum wage.   Osinbajo identified a major problem:  ”The private sector does not respect the minimum wage. Even if a minimum wage is set nationally, it is not necessarily respected by the private sector and this is something that should be factored in to the status of a company and whether a company is even complying with the requirements.”

    It is said that “A worker is worthy of his wages.” It must also be said that a worker’s wages should be worthwhile.

  • So very corporal

    Did you ever interrogate the meaning of the word ‘corporal’, dear reader? Hardball can now announce to you, pro bono, that he has found that it is a most quirky word; one that borders on the bizarre. He hereby recommends that that odd word should be reinvestigated and put it its proper place or in fact, be put down.

    For some clarity, corporal to an average Nigerian is that hapless police officer, the scruffy straggler who has been reduced by his society into a gun-toting Dennis-the-menace. He is just a shade above the lowliest fellow in most uniform corps. He is a form of derogation just as his appellation has been found out to be. We shall explain shortly.

    Yes, the Nigerian police corporal is the cause celebre here but what do you make of a word that denotes ‘body’, mere mass, having no spirit or even mind if we stretch it. Imagine a heap of ‘body’, lifeless or even alive for that matter but without life.

    Corporal also means the cloth (yes, mere cloth) on which the bread and wine of the Holy Communion (Eucharist) are laid out and the same piece of cloth with which the remains of the elements are covered.

    Corporeal and corpus are also related to the very idea of a (mass) of body copious and cadaverous even.

    Sorry for taking you through a shuttle around a puerile word but this has been triggered as you might have guessed, by a recent action of a certain Corporal Ayodele Famodimu.

    As the story goes, last Wednesday, at a police check point somewhere at Oye-Ekiti in Ekiti State, Famodimu had demanded the usual N50 from a commercial driver. The story is that the driver had declined and Corporal Famodimu had opened fire.

    The driver reportedly lost control and the bus skidded into a nearby bush and summersaulted. Passengers managed to crawl out of the upended vehicle unscathed. But the driver was not so lucky. He was struck by the bullet and he passed on at the scene of the incident.

    While the corporal is said to be currently undergoing orderly room trial prelude to his being fired and arraigned in court, we come to the crux of today’s treatise. Why do we have to name this cadre of police or any force for that matter corporal?

    Does that suggest that they do not have to think or they are not expected to have a mind? Why do we have to hand guns to a  corporal cadre where there is half training, little wisdom and almost no knowledge?

    Policing has become a highly sophisticated and intellectual calling. The police authorities must rethink this system that hands gun to a corporal – a mere mass of body!

  • Beyond fanciful names

    Nigeria now has 67 political parties,” it was reported on December 15.    This new figure is a result of the registration of 21 new parties by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). It is expected that INEC followed the proper registration process and that the new parties satisfied the registration conditions.

    Now, let’s check out the names of the latest additions to the number of parties.  A report said: “The 21 newly registered parties are: All Blending Party, All Grassroots Alliance, Alliance for New Nigeria, Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party, Coalition for Change, Freedom and Justice Party, Grassroots Development Party of Nigeria, Justice Must Prevail Party, Mass Action Joint Alliance, Legacy Party of Nigeria, Mass Action Joint Alliance, Modern Democratic Party, National Interest Party, National Rescue Mission, New Progressive Movement, Nigeria Democratic Congress Party, People’s Alliance for National Development and Liberty, People’s Trust, Providence People’s Congress, Re-Build Nigeria Party, Restoration Party of Nigeria and Sustainable National Party.”

    It is unclear how these new parties formed their names, and what factors and influences prevailed at the stage of name formation.  But some of these names are curious, suggesting that they are creations of curious minds.

    The point is that names are not enough, no matter how they sound and what they are meant to say to the public. A political party will not be rated according to what its name says.  For example, the former federal ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, was not progressive and could even be said to have been ironically anti-people. It is easier to give a party a progressive-sounding name than to ensure that the party is progressive-minded.

    The questions must be asked: Does Nigeria need 67 parties?  Does the number of parties mean that they are so different from one another?  Why do more and more people think they must form parties?  How many of these 67 parties are parties properly so called? How many of these parties are sustainable?  Further questions: What will happen in the 2019 general election?  How many of these parties are strong enough to compete for power? Additional questions: Will more parties be registered? Are more associations seeking registration?

    The problem with Nigeria is not a shortage of parties, but a shortage of progressive politicians who can work for progress. The new parties must demonstrate that they are ready to move beyond fanciful names.

  • DSS bully

    DSS bully

    Again the Department of State Services (DSS) has grabbed the headlines as one of its men gave the organisation a bad name by his condemnable conduct. The news that a DSS official attached to Akwa Ibom State Government House in Uyo terrorised five journalists by threatening to shoot them in the course of their work shows that the agency needs to pay more attention to the training and retraining of its officials. The journalists are Iniobong Ekponta of Nigerian Tribune, Inemesit Akpansoh of The Guardian, Emeka Samuel of Nigerian Pilot and two others.

    What happened on December 12? A report said: “A statement signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Correspondents’ Chapel Comrade Iniobong Ekponta and Anthony Bassey, explained that “the Executive and other leaders of the Chapel had visited the Government House to keep a scheduled appointment with Mr. Ekerete Udoh, the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to Governor Udom Emmanuel, but ended being manhandled by a DSS operative manning the gate.”

    The account continued: “When we inquired to know why we should not be allowed in, the overzealous officer threatened to open fire on the reporters if we refused to heed his instruction to reverse our car out of the Government House. The DSS man became more infuriated when he discovered we were journalists, saying ‘I will shoot all of you right now if continue to stand here. Call anyone you want to call; I have worked with former governor Godswill Akpabio before in this state.’ All entreaties by some policemen guarding the gate proved abortive, as the DSS official continue to harass the reporters, accusing them of “always coming to beg for money. ‘You said you are press; is press somebody’s name? Don’t we know it is money you always come to beg here?” he fumed and shoved the journalists away.”

    This man who behaved like a bully reportedly “wore black trousers and white shirt with dark glasses to match without a name tag.”  So, who was he? His identity should not be a mystery. Indeed, he should be exposed.  Given that the bullying was done right at the gate of Akwa Ibom State Government House, the government should promptly investigate the incident, identify the official and ensure that he does not get away with that wild conduct.

  • You can’t have your cake and diss it

    Let us say that to diss is to dismiss, to disrespect or show contempt for.  Diss is one of those odd slangs that have found wide colloquial usage to the point of almost being pressed to formal lexical assignments. It long sneaked into Hardball’s repertoire of vocabs and here today, for the first time, we must acknowledge, it sits at the head of the class in this write-up.

    There is no intention to diss you dear reader but it is one of those days your subject defies a fitting title. Nothing one thinks up seems appropriate and the clock runs, stoically, intent on breasting the deadline tape before you. At a time like this, in panic, you pick what we call a working title and try working your lexical algebra to the answer you already contrived.

    One of these days, we shall devote a day or two to the daily tyrannies of title crafting. But for today, what we started with was, “The prerogative of a mistress” but that didn’t seem quite suitable and was promptly changed to what we have above.

    But the matter today is about a mistress, a royal mistress at that. News has broken of a mistress of a special kind. A certain Princess Hauwa Momoh of the Momoh Royal Dynasty in Auchi, Edo State ‘broke’ into a national newspaper yesterday and by her admission, claimed she was a mistress of Ado Bayero, the eminent late emir of Kano.

    So why would the royal moonlightings of a monarch catch the fancy of Hardball? Well, the dire after-effect of such amour is right in our face now and the lessons, are rich for those who would care.

    First, Hauwa, 51, who apparently stayed with the famous royal father till his last days, also had children for him. The relationship was never consummated, as the story goes, but Hauwa told The Punch reporter that her father, the late Otaru of Auchi, Ahmed Momoh, had handed her to the then Emir in 1984 when she was a teenager for him to be her guardian.

    But she did a little better, becoming his mistress, made children for him and was kept in comfort it seems while the emir lived. Now that he is no more, she cries out to the public that she has been abandoned by the family of the late emir. Apparently, she and her children have fallen on hard times and have nothing to fall back on.

    But the Emir’s family says categorically that “Islamically”, it is not their responsibility to take care of her; besides, that she is a spendthrift and rather ungrateful to boot.

    Moral /lesson: A princess who chose to be a mistress instead of a queen simply had her cake and dissed it. Well, for want of a better word.

     

     

  • Inhuman hospital

    Inhuman hospital

    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. This clear picture was not clear to a hospital in Bayelsa State when it faced a life-threatening emergency on December 8.

    It was tragic enough that Africa Independent Television (AIT) reporter Miss Owe Patience was robbed and shot in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital. It was a greater tragedy that a hospital rejected her.

    Here, the story as reported: “A Good Samaritan, who rushed her to the hospital, narrated how the journalist was shot. The source, who identified himself as Bokoru said: “Last night (Friday night) at about 10:40pm, I had an urgent call from James Baridi a few metres from my house. When I went it was the fresh scene of a rather violent robbery. A girl I would later identity as an AIT staffer was laying half-conscious in a pool of her blood. Witnesses said it was a lone gunman who had trailed her from Shiloh. Just in front of her house he showed her the gun, took her phone, jewellery and cash. But the animal didn’t end there. He took steps backwards and shot her at close range even as she gave him no problems.”

    This is the point where the story gets unbelievable: “Her landlady, James and I rushed her to Tobis Hospital at Akenfa. To our surprise … They would not save her life except we provide a police report and a wholesome amount.”  Who are those that rejected her?  Does it mean they didn’t care whether she lived or died?

    The story continued: “We took her to another hospital at Igbogene, the people here were humans and they commenced treatment instantly including fresh pints of blood. By morning we realised we needed to contact her family, but how? She lives alone and her phones were gone. In the area no one knows much about her except that she’s a journalist for AIT. We also reported the matter to the Akenfa police division. For a start, I called NUJ Bayelsa scribe Ebiowei Lawal who called her office. It’s been a very long day. Patience Owe will make it and we have God to thank. Our prayers will remain with her”.

    It is noteworthy that Bokoru said the people at the second hospital “were humans.”  Does this mean the people at the first hospital were not humans? There is no doubt that they were inhuman.

  • Of Maina, mess and mesmerism

    Of Maina, mess and mesmerism

    Words land with a thud in the innards of the elder. Perish the thought; this is not a Hardball original, it is ancient wisdom of the Yoruba. Oro de inu agba se gbi is how it is rendered. Hardball is particularly enamoured of this saying not just for its onomatopoeic cadences but for its laconic thriftiness and its rich, if you like, mysterious connotations.

    So many words have been landing rather thunderously in the belly of elders (and not so elderly) of the land recently. What with so many strange and befuddling things happening in rapid successions. To the point that very few can still keep track – it is at this point of utter ‘overwhelmingness’ that elders can hear nothing but the heavy thuds of words in their bellies.

    Of course one of such occurrences that make the people bend over double is the now infamous Maina-gate. Though it is only one of the numerous ‘gates’ this government has managed to generate in its short tenure, it is a blockbuster tale that is surely defining this administration.

    Maina-gate can be said to have travelled on a crazy trajectory – moving roaringly from a scandal to a messy affair and now to mesmerism of a farcical kind. The most apt way to describe this calamity is to see it as a form of terror attack on Nigeria, nay on the presidency. Yes, the presidency, because the lead dramatis personae are the president’s top men. Consider the lineup: the number one law officer of the land, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation; chairman of the number one graft agency in the land, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA); Office of the Chief of Staff to the President (CoS); Office of the Directorate of State Service (DSS); Office of the Head of Service of the Federation (HoSF); among others.

    Even the president has been mention in this expanding web of intrigues.

    And the abiding question is: how did a lowly (no, let’s say a not so highly placed) civil servant get picked in the first place to reform a multi-trillion pension scheme? How did he allegedly get access to the funds of an agency he was supposed to set on the path of rectitude? How was one civil servant known as Abdulrasheed Maina able to seemingly corral, if not compromise the highest levels of government functionaries across two regimes? How does he manage to set one top government agency against the other?

    But most telling, how has this Maina fellow, supposedly a wanted man become elusive, invisible and indeed, invincible. Call him the man that cannot be arrested.

    Why, even the president seems mesmerized and trapped under the Maina spell!

  • Before divine judgement

    Before divine judgement

    Interestingly, President Muhammadu Buhari, who is the pivot of the country’s anti-corruption war, sounded passive when he brought up the corruption problem during his two-day visit to Kano.

    Buhari was quoted as saying at the palace of Emir of Kano Muhammad Sanusi II on December 6: “From 1999 to 2014, the wealth of this country was lavishly squandered by those in the position of authority. Those who have looted the treasury will best be judged by God.”

    The President should not forget that the electorate voted for change, and change should include bringing treasury looters to justice. In other words, before divine judgement there should be human judgement.

    Nigeria’s war against corruption cannot be without casualties. It is noteworthy that in September the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, said there were no fewer than 125 high-profile corruption cases still “hanging in court.” As long as high-profile corruption cases remain unresolved, public confidence in the war against corruption will remain uncertain.

    It is also interesting that in Kano, Buhari recounted his struggle to become President. A report said: “President Buhari also told the Emir of Kano that he had seen a lot since he joined politics in 2003, adding: “As a politician, I really tasted the pains of seeking elective office. Since I joined politics in 2003, I contested for president three times but I could not get it right until the fourth attempt in 2015. I was in court for 30 months, challenging the 2007 election and in 2011 I also spent 16 months in court.”

    Buhari’s struggle to be President, and his eventual success, show a focused fighter.  The war against corruption requires focused fighting, and the country expects no less from the Buhari administration. Curiously, Buhari remarked in Kano:  ”When I was the military head of state, I arrested many people and jailed them for alleged corruption and in the end, I also ended in jail.”

    Now that Buhari is a democratically elected President, he is expected to fight corruption with greater enthusiasm and greater success. The power of his office, which is based on the power of the people, is a potent force that should be used to crush corruption. The country expects that “those who have looted the treasury” will be brought to justice by man before divine judgement.