The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • A Nobel for Rochas

    A Nobel for Rochas

    It is an old truism that a child would willy-nilly concentrate on his tummy when he bathes. Of course it’s not because his stomach area is the dirtiest part of his body but if we must wager, it’s the part that most fascinates him;  the part he can most connect with both literally and metaphorically.

    This is what comes to mind when Hardball conjectures the rationale for the strange happenings in the heartland of the southeast – Imo State, Nigeria. Recently it was the erection of anomalous statues; an act that enjoyed global uproar and earned the poor state high grades in international odium.

    Nigerians and the now captive Imolites were still trying to wrap their minds around that sordid statue of Jacob Zuma planted by their boisterous governor, and he drops yet another ‘bomb’ on them.

    While some think that the latest action is a meeting (mating if you like) of minds between knavery and ribaldry, Hardball sees an award-winning novelty.

    Here is the story: Gov. Okorocha appoints 28 commissioners; just a few short of the number of ministers at the federal level. In a state that cannot discharge such basic functions as paying pension to elder citizens; why on earth would it have separate ministries for Tertiary Education; Gender and Social Development; Rural Development; Agric and Food Security; Transport; Tourism; etc.? All of these could have been merged to have a total of not more than 14 ministries. That used to be the norm.

    But if you forgive the dicing up of ministries, what do you say to the creation of the Ministry of Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment!?

    No let’s take that back. After a full day of tumult and hysteria on social media, State Government made the vital correction that it is indeed PURPOSE Fulfillment and not COUPLES Fulfillment.

    Many commentators were already conjecturing a department of the Ministry that would be in charge of dispensing Viagra and premium coital latex to Imo couples…

    But can’t they see that Couples’ Fulfillment is more germane to creating happiness among the citizenry than the rather nebulous Purpose fulfillment? No man or woman would deign to be happy if he/she has an unhappy bedroom. This most novel ministry would have been perfect in clearing the snafus in bedrooms across the state.

    Hardball hereby appeals to Gov. Rochas to keep the Ministry as indeed: MINISTRY FOR HAPPINESS COUPLES ENJOYMENT. One thinks a Nobel awaits him for novelty in governance by the time he is through. How come no one thought about it all the while that once you win the bedroom battles, you have won all wars!

    Imagine a ministry that deals with chronic erectile dysfunction, unwarranted coitus-interruptus and frigid-at- fifty issues. That would be the day! Go Rochas!

  • Appointment and appointee

    It was unexpected and unusual.  The character at the centre of the drama, Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, pointed out its uncommon feature himself, though he did so perhaps unwittingly. He was quoted as saying to 28 new commissioners and 27 Transition Committee Chairmen for the 27 local government councils in the state at their swearing-in ceremony: “I want to remind all of you that your appointments are not business as usual.”

    Indeed, a particular appointment, more than any other one, showed that Okorocha knew what he was talking about. This particular appointment is so unusual that it can only mean it is not business as usual.

    A report painted an interesting picture of the unusual appointee with the unusual appointment: “One of the commissioners sworn in by the governor is his biological sister, Mrs. Ogechi Ololo (nee Okorocha). She is now the state’s Commissioner for Happiness and Couples’ Fulfillment. Ololo, who is married to Chuks, an engineer, was the All Progressives Congress’ candidate into the House of Representatives for the Owerri Federal Constituency seat in 2015 and she has served in various capacities since Okorocha became the state governor in 2011. She had, before her new appointment, served as her brother’s Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Adviser on Domestic Matters.”

    The new commissioner should not be envied. The weight of her responsibility is intimidating. Is Mrs. Ololo expected to create happiness or maintain happiness?  Is she expected to make couples fulfilled or ensure that their fulfillment is sustained?  Is she expected to do all these and more? Since it is said that you can’t give what you don’t have, her appointment must mean that she can give what is expected because she has it.

    So, Ololo is Okorocha’s sister. So what?  Her brother must have considered her perfectly suitable for her new role. It takes a sister to understand what her brother wants to achieve by creating this unusual position.

    Her appointment reflects the high level of Okorocha’s interest in the pursuit of what is known as “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”  Only a governor desperate to promote happiness and fulfillment among the governed could have conceived the idea of appointing a commissioner to achieve this laudable objective.

    If this sounds like support for Okorocha, his unusual appointment and unusual appointee, it is not. This is just a way of trying to understand what is not understandable.

  • Mundanities collide with inanities

    It is well known that Yoruba have a way with words and axioms. If proverbs were the palm oil with which Igbo eat roasted yam;  words would be akin to efo-riro with which Yoruba demolish pounded yam. Eforiro being that special vegetable soup that is dense as a thicket for the sheer assortment of rare condiments it is garnished with.

    But before your throat begins to suffer from salivation, Hardball is not about to introduce you to a new eateries to surpass all eateries, no. The issue at hand is about inanities in some levels of governance which have reached such a crescendo that they are now at cross purpose with mundanities.

    And it brings to mind Yoruba description of such actions and their purveyors. Some of such words deployed to describe such acts of foolishness include: kati-kati, rede-rede, woro-woro, kobo-kobo, boto-boto, and so on. And the purveyors of such actions are described as oni woro-woro, or oni kati-kati, for instance.

    Now that we have found our locus, so to speak, Hardball is worried about the recent announcement coming out from Ekiti State, Governor Ayo Fayose country. It is the Governor himself, notorious for his stomach infrastructure folly, who has struck again; impinging on our collective psyche.

    This time he has devised a grand plan to dress up about 10,000 young children this Christmas. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine trailers- load of cheap, mass produced China ersatz cotton dresses or ankara and cheap crayon apparels. The rejects and giveaways from flea markets of the West would soon be shipped in (if they are not in already).

    Now you may be wondering: haven’t we lived with discarded, refugee apparels on these shores over the ages; what’s the fuzz now? But when such dirty and despicable preoccupation becomes state government’s multi-billion project, then there is cause for worry.

    Worse still, when these cheap giveaways sourced from the garbage sites of well-off countries are passed off as costing government huge sums in foreign exchange, then there is trouble. When the governor goes on air to announce this tokenistic folly as some kind of official charity, then we can firmly say inanity has collided with mundanity.

    And this is exactly what has happened. The ruling party has described critics of this brain wave as “anti-people, myopic and unfriendly.” The governor’s party describes it “as a mark of showing Ekiti children love to partake in the sharing of the state’s wealth.”

    The PDP states further that it’s the governor’s gesture of love which is unprecedented in the history of the state. This is one of the ways to prove that he is the man of the people…”

    As PDP celebrates this emptiness of an infantile kind, it would be considered official homicide each old pensioner who dies of hunger or frustration in Ekiti State as a result of non-payment of entitlements.

  • Traffic tales

    Hardball has an idea — traffic tales!  Now, what do you think that is?

    Well, it is certainly tales about the traffic.  And if traffic is about vehicles and their drivers, including the ubiquitous Okada riders — traffic laws be damned! — it is certainly about what these drivers do or don’t do on the road.

    But while you probably would take a denotative view of all these road exploits, Hardball is taking a connotative view.  Want to take a sneak into the mind of a nation?  Then rivet your eyes on the behavioural pattern of its traffic.  Got the gist now?

    Imagine, you are driving, a law-abiding citizen; and a fellow road user just zooms at you from the opposite direction, flashing impatiently and totting on his horns.  Well, there is a fuel station which he is trying to enter and your car, on your legit lane, seems a nuisance on the way.  All the flashing and all the totting scream a single message: get the hell out of the way, you scum!

    Now, what do you do?  Scurry out of the way?  Or call his bluff by ignoring him, and seriously praying his brake is okay, so he won’t bash into your car, after a brake failure?  You probably act, according to your mindset, at that exact moment.

    Familiar, isn’t it?  Well, that unruly traffic behaviour just shows a good number of Nigerians — perhaps a majority, though there are not stats from studies to back up that claim — are simply indecorous, hasty and resort to insults, when they could simply have asked nicely.

    Again, look at your terrain, what do you observe?  A serpentine traffic, with a gridlock of truckers and tanker drivers staking their constitutionally given, not to talk of God-divined, right to inflict pains and make your day a hell on earth.

    Before you know it, a container has fallen upon a fellow road user, crushing a whole family.  Other nearby cars only escape by the whiskers.  Pronto, lucky to be alive (its Hobbes’s jungle, after all!), they scurry to the church and give testimonies on their great escape!  Not without reasons though: for far too many have perished in such wilful accidents, and seeming no action was taken, that they simply became statistics.

    Now, from this chaotic traffic, what sort of people are these?

    Peculiar people whose governments make laws but don’t have the guts to enforce their own laws.  And a minority of citizens that commit wilful crimes, yet insist on their right to such fatal wilfulness (fatal to the victims, but morbid trophies to the perpetrators), and go on to inflict even more tragedies.

    That is the sorry tale of Nigeria today.  Right now, Lagos groans under a heavy traffic; and the tormentors-in-chief are trailer drivers who have simply decided to call the bluff of the law.  And what does the government do?  Not exactly looking askance (though that seems what it is).  The last time Hardball heard, the government was trying to “negotiate” with these traffic outlaws.  But while the demonstration goes on, stress has reached a boiling point, with everyone seeming to be trapped and helpless.

    Nigeria’s traffic tales reveal a somewhat sub-human community, where traffic outlaws do as they damn wish and government appears scared to apply its own laws, even if that is what decent climes do!

  • Gubernatorial pariah

    Guess the self-made gubernatorial pariah?  He is Himself, the Osoko, Irunmale-to-nje-jollof- rice, Peter Ayodele Fayose, the enfant terrible governor of Ekiti.

    Half-stunt, half-ernest and the confusing grey in-between, Governor Ayo Fayose has stylishly and waywardly removed himself from the polite circle of governors, not unlike the Yoruba bad wood that would “expel” itself from fuelling the roaring fire.

    The other time the Osoko was in full lament — why didn’t Aso Rock congratulate him on his birthday?   Aso Rock, as usual, greeted the complaint with granite and funereal quiet — excuse me, it seemed to say with its thunderous silence — did anyone talk?

    Of course, the Osoko could well be talking tongue-in-cheek.  Still, fell  the Freudian slip from a troubled soul that has plumbed new nadirs in uncivil conduct, but still hankers after simple civil courtesies.  He probably would wait till kingdom come.

    Inasmuch as Fayose has the democratic right to choose those whose companies he may wish to keep or shun — including, by the way, that of the president of the Federal Republic who is, after all only a fellow citizen — it is the height of (un)gubernatorial folly not to know when to apply the breaks between personal cravings and state duties.

    By dismally failing on that front, he hurts Ekiti so much, given that while the governor is there for a maximum of eight years, Ekiti is an ongoing concern.  So any governor who, for whatever personal reasons, conducts himself in such a way that he wilfully expels himself, when other governors seize every opportunity to argue their states’ cases with the president, does his state monumental injustice.

    That is the cul-de-sac Fayose has driven Ekiti, and it is so, so sad.

    A few days ago, almost all of the governors had a short session with the president.  The result was the agreement to release a part of the Paris Fund deductions.  Given Fayose’s self-imposed isolation, because of his indecorous conduct, such an event would not have been possible.  If it wasn’t, the benefit derivable would never have been realized.

    Yet, in a fit of infantile stunt, Fayose in his favourite penchant for empty noise, went on a rigmarole over the money as Ekiti money (which is true) and how nobody can dictate how to spend it (which is also true).

    But is everything true right in every particular circumstance?  And the other governors that extracted the deal from the president, did they say the money was not their right?

    Of course, it is the classical Fayose-an empty babble, tailored to impress the naive and the gullible.  It is also a classic case of infantile bluff to save face.  It sounds as hollow and empty as they come.

    The disturbing trend is that it is not the first time Fayose would embark on such empty gambit.  The other time the president met with his fellow governors, Fayose craftily arranged a chieftaincy, hoping without hope the ceremony would crowd out his pariah status, because managing decorous official relations would appear beyond his ken.  If anyone was deceived, it probably was only Fayose himself.

    Still, after almost four years of pulling infantile stunts, to raucous cheers from the gullible in the streets, even the stunt-puller-in-chief knows he is becoming a bad stunt!  That would explain his latest gambit of sewing Christmas outfit for 10, 000 Ekiti kids.  Only in Fayoseland, after the so-called stomach infrastructure programme of rice and live chicken has lost its allure!

    Indeed, Ekiti has paid, with stiff interest, for its electoral folly of 2014.  But the heftier price still looms in the future.

  • NASS attack

    There is an awkward Igbo saying that suggests that the breadfruit starts off the size a baby’s head and when it ripens and is fully formed, it is the head of an adult. Of course that comes across quite obvious enough but the import of it is germane to the matter at hand today.

    The lesson from this seeming trite maxim is that trouble often starts in small, innocuous packages and when fully formed turns into apocalyptic firecrackers that leave dark imprints on unlikeliest places. Bottom line: elders of yore admonish that we nip palavers in the bud as much as possible.

    And this is what Hardball brings to the front burner following the fatal fracas in Lafiagi, headquarters of Edu Local Government Area, Kwara State, last week. Here is the gist of the story: Last Friday’s evening, youths of Lafiagi were reported to have barricaded the entrance to the town in order to bar their senator, Mohammed Sha’aba Lafiagi from entering the town.

    Note that this personage is so huge he bears the name of the town – Lafiagi. He’s been permanent fixture of sort in Kwara affairs in the past two decades or so: a former governor of the state and currently representing Kwara North in the Senate. It must also be pointed out that he is ranking Senator of huge influence in the upper chamber of the National Assembly (NASS).

    With such a towering profile why would irate youths (as some news outlets described them) think up such affront not to say execute it? According to report, the road approaching the town was in the most derelict of states for quite some time. Neither the state government nor their NASS representatives would lift a finger

    The youths reportedly raised funds through self-help to fix a particular culvert to return the road to motorability. It was this spot that the youth vowed the Senator would not ply. Thoroughly affronted, loathing the disgrace of returning to Abuja that memorable late evening, the big man had called for security reinforcement. In the ensuing fracas three youths had died.

    In retaliation, the Senator’s country home was torched.

    There has been a recent history of mob attacks of NASS members, especially in the north but never had there been any case of death. Now the incident in kwara has raised the ante… it’s beginning to get bloody; the frustration of the people is beginning to well up and the dam of patience seems about to break.

    Surely, something is fundamentally and indeed criminally wrong with the current set up. A few blokes are secretly carting away the national treasury in the midst of mass misery. If NASS does not nobly enact change, change may be forced upon NASS… and it could be catastrophic!

     

  • Where is the city?

    From the look of things, building a so-called Centenary City as a monument to the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 is like building castles in the air.  The centenary of the amalgamation in 2014 was an opportunity for the Goodluck Jonathan administration to do something worthy of the historic occasion.

    The theme of the Nigerian Centenary Project was “One Nigeria, Great Promise.”  The organisers said the 12-month long festivity would “highlight the key concepts of unity, indivisibility, virility, progress and the promise of the Nigerian federation.” The vision: “to project a united, vibrant and progressive nation that is ready to be a world leader.” The mission: “to re-inspire a sense of unity in all Nigerians.” A major objective of the project was to “institute legacy projects that will serve as a lasting reference for the Centenary.”

    About three years after the noisy celebration, it is time to ask what happened at that time. In particular, where is the over N13bn reportedly raised for the Centenary Project?  Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Anyim Pius Anyim and his wife may have an idea what happened to the money.

    A report said:  ”Anyim, his wife, 20 firms and others are being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged fraud in the massive project….According to a document, which our correspondent stumbled on, 37 investors subscribed to the project, which was floated to mark the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates in 1914 by the late Sir Frederick Lord Lugard, the first Governor-General of Nigeria. In all, $80, 750,000 (N13, 162, 250,000 then) was paid by investors.”

    Further information: “Precious Integrated Company Limited owned by Mrs. Anyim was given 5% equity worth N815m for rendering services in kind, according to a document The Nation stumbled on. The land acquired for the project was 1, 264, 78 hectares and N1, 410, 178, 599.59 earmarked as compensation for 3,868  land owners, who got N1, 234, 747, 076, 000 paid as compensation; N697, 015, 863 is yet to be paid to land owners. The document said: “Anyim was the SGF and the coordinator of the Centenary City Project, which was meant to be privately owned. Any interested investor was asked to pay $5million equity.”

    There is no question that this is another failed government project. Questions about how and why it failed demand answers. With things the way they are, this project looks like another case of political corruption.

  • Odyssey of politician Obi

    The Anambra election threw up winners and losers.  Willy Obiano, re-elected governor, is clear winner.  So, is his party, the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) which, for now, has escaped the drop.

    Still, except strenuous efforts are made, to broaden it into, at least, a dominant South East regional voice, APGA’s future would still appear shrouded, beyond the sentiments and excitement of the moment.  But even as a vibrant regional party, it would only replicate the South East equivalent of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 1999.

    Ironically, an Igbo elected as president, from a party other than APGA may well fast-track the end of that party, with the central-minded tendency of Nigerian politics and politicians, even with the clamour for “restructuring”.  So, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo destroyed the AD to consolidate his own central power base, so would a non-APGA Igbo president destroy APGA to create fresh power base for himself.  Right now, however, APGA is flush with victory — and deservedly so.

    Many say the federal ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) were losers in the Anambra election.  In a way, they are right, for APGA retained its governorship.  But in another way, coming from near zero in 2015, to gross the second position, even if distant, can’t be said to be a total loss in real terms.  So, APC could be said to have notched some vital gains in its loss.

    That cannot be said of the Peoples Democratic Party (former ruling party over there), now dropping third, below APC, the 2015 election-time “Muslim” party in a predominantly Christian Anambra State.  That should give PDP strategists a lot of concern, as the party struggles to stage a comeback in the 2019 general elections, both at the federal level and in states where elections are due.  Towards that end, Anambra presents little hope.

    But the biggest loser, by the Anambra election, is Peter Obi, the former state governor, famed for his frugality and savings while in office.

    Perhaps it was political calculation gone awry.  Perhaps it was hubris, made more reckless by the hurt of a godfather, sworn to unhorsing a brash and ungrateful godson, by taking away the gubernatorial lolly.  Perhaps it’s a medley of the two.

    But whatever it was, Obi just committed near political suicide by the result of the Anambra polls.  Packing Onitsha, the South East’s number one commercial hub, with former President Goodluck Jonathan in tow, and all Obi could deliver to PDP is a distant third?  That’s a catastrophe!

    Worse, there are already whispers about some entente between APGA and — wait for it!—the “Islamic” and “Islamist” APC!  And the way a flush Obiano is singing the praises of President Muhammadu Buhari, thanking him for letting the wish of the people to prevail—is it supposed to be otherwise? — then you can’t just dismiss such talks.

    However it pans out, both Obi and PDP face a torrid immediate future.  In the long run, however, you are either dead, or reinvent yourself.

    Again, as many have always suspected, Obi has yet again betrayed his scandalous faulty political antenna, which appears so blunt it mistakes when to attack for when to retreat and vice-versa.  The result was the Anambra debacle, where the godson, with electoral panache, just buried the godfather!

    But again, maybe Obi and his PDP could reinvent and yet resurrect?  Time will tell.  Meanwhile, joy to the godson, grief to the godfather.

    After all, every political career, as they say, ends in failure!  But don’t count Peter Obi out yet.

     

     

  • IPOB: Boo!

    The Anambra State governorship election of November 18 has been lost and won, despite the loud threat by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to cause chaos. Ahead of the election, the now-proscribed separatist group had terrorised residents of the state, threatening to make the election impossible.

    The anti-election drama began in June with this ultimatum issued by IPOB leader Nnamdi  Kanu: “If the Federal Government does not agree with us on a date for referendum, there will be no elections in the Southeast; we are starting with Anambra come November this year. There will be no governorship election in Anambra State.” He took the issue further: “In 2019, the whole of Biafra land will not vote for any president. There will be no senator, there will be no House of Reps, there will be no House of Assembly and there will be no councilorship elections in Biafra land if the Federal Government fails to call for a referendum.”

    Kanu re-emphasised this position before he disappeared while on bail.  He was characteristically rebellious when he addressed a crowd on August 27 at the Boys Technical College (BTC) on Faulks Road in Aba North Local Government Area of Abia State. According to a report, “He used the forum to reiterate that there would not be election in Anambra in November or any part of “Biafra Land” even in 2019, unless the group’s clamour for referendum got the blessings of government.”

    Even without Kanu, days to the governorship election in Anambra State on November 18, IPOB was still flexing its muscles. Members of the group marched around with a death threat in Onitsha, Anambra State, on November 3. They were quoted as saying: “If you vote you will die. Don’t go out, stay in your house. If you vote on November 18, you will die…There will be no election. We will not participate, we will not vote.”

    This muscle-flexing failed; the election was held. The group is silent; it has been silenced by the election. What will IPOB say now about its threat to foil the election, and why it couldn’t carry out the threat?  Evidently, the group can bark but can’t bite. It is toothless.

    Beyond the Anambra election, the group’s threat to ruin the electoral process in the Southeast even in the 2019 general election now sounds more delusional than ever.  IPOB’s failure to stop the election this time should warn its members that they shouldn’t expect any success in the future.

  • Mugabe and the folly of power

    Cyberspace jives, real or apocryphal, adduced to Robert Mugabe, exiting Zimbabwe president, rank among the sharpest, most pungent and most brilliant. But see the grand folly of the 93-year old, in the violent tempest of power?

    He not only endures a disgraceful overthrow — just as well, after 37 years of untrammelled power — he also risks becoming a butt of jokes, as the latest victim of, in BBC’s words, “a coup in slow motion”, the very phrase BBC had applied to the Mugabe oddity of 2008, when he dragged out Morgan Tsvangirai’s victory and handed him defeat.

    Tsvangirai’s opposition coalition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had emerged victorious in parliamentary polls, sacking long-term legislative lords of the manor, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF.  But old fox Mugabe conjured the winning tricks, despite losing the first round of presidential elections.  By the time the so-called run-off came, a scared Tsvangirai had run off the scene!  You needed to stay alive to be president!  Welcome, Mugabe’s gun-boat democracy!

    But that was the sweet side of unconscionable power.  The flip side could be bitter as the other is sweet.  So, imagine Mugabe slowly but painfully drifting out of power, as if in some bad dream, with enforcers that used to cheer him on now jeering him off.  Geez!

    It never gets more surreal.  The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF), under army chief Constantino Chiwenga, are leading the charge.  Buzz off Pa Mugabe, or be sacked.

    Then, the regional branches of the ruling ZANU-PF, hitherto Mugabe’s power rod.  From news reports, eight of the ten regions have asked Mugabe to resign as president and his wife, Grace, nevertheless seen as graceless by most, be expelled from ZANU-PF.

    More ominously, these regional branches are asking that Emmerson Mnangagwa, the former Vice President sacked by Mugabe to make room for his wife, be reinstated to the party’s core.  That effectively counters the Mugabe coup for wifey Grace, against his party’s structure.  Chiwenga and the military are, of course, pulling the strings, and a once-discarded VeePee could well be the ultimate Mugabe successor and nemesis!

    Now, most humiliating: the old war veterans, who must rise or fall with Mugabe, are taking a counter course.  On Saturday Movember 18, they trooped to the streets, with opposition elements, bawling about a “second independence”!

    And horrors of horrors!  The crowd — held back by the military from morphing into an outright mob, by sternly warning against “incitements and hate speeches” — booed the Mugabe motorcade, as it left the Blue House, the presidential quarters, in tony Harare.  Is this the same Mugabe, eternal hero of the revolution and nemesis of white farmers, to thunderous cheers from the African marginalized and the dispossessed?

    Mugabe’s tragic end should be a prime lesson to other African power antiques: Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yuweri Museveni of Uganda, and even Rwanda’s high riding president, Paul Kagame, who pretty much think without them the state doesn’t have life.  Pure fiction!

    Meanwhile, Hardball invites them to the latest cartoon video in town: Mugabe won’t leave power.  But see how power painfully ebbs out of him!  Tragic.