The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • NASS attack

    There is an awkward Igbo saying that suggests that the breadfruit starts off the size of 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 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 a 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!

     

  • Who is lying?

    What actually happened at Nkpogu junction, Trans Amadi Industrial Area, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on November 11 when the convoys of two powerful persons clashed?  The most important actors, Governor Nyeson Wike and Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi, gave conflicting accounts and interpretations of what happened.

    This is how Wike presented the incident: “I escaped assassination.” This is the picture Amaechi painted: “Governor’s security pulled guns on me.”

    The police contradicted these claims.  A report said: “Briefing reporters on the outcome of the probe ordered by Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris, Commissioner of Police Zaki Ahmed dismissed as untrue the allegations by the duo that there were attempts on their lives… Ahmed said: “I have to clear the air on allegations and counter-allegations making the rounds of alleged assassination plot by two notable figures in the country…”

    The story became even more puzzling when the state government through Commissioner for Information Emmanuel Okah accused the police of lying. He said: “The Rivers State Government has rejected and dismissed the Nigeria Police report on the convoy attack on the Governor of Rivers State by the Minister of Transport, saying the biased report is a sad development for the police force that has chosen to disgrace itself.”

    Okah followed with serious allegations that should be taken seriously.  According to him, “The Police did not investigate the matter, but acted a script written for it by the Commander of the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS), Mr. Akin Fakorede, who is a bosom friend and hatchet man of the Minister of Transport and the APC.” He added: “From the totality of the statement of the Police in Rivers State, it is very obvious that plans and strategies have reached advanced stages to eliminate the Governor of Rivers State; the incident of last Saturday is a manifestation of the plans of the police.”

    If Wike is lying, and Amaechi is lying, and the police are lying, then who will tell the public the truth?  The truth is that the incident that produced the lies shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. It is true that there is no love lost between Wike and Amaechi. It is also true that the two men are taking their conflict too far by allowing things to degenerate to the point where the public doesn’t know who to believe and what to believe. This is bad for their image.

  • And Apapa died…

    It’s most surreal, most implausible. They are probably Africa’s largest sea ports – the Apapa Wharf Terminal and the Tin-Can Island Port – two major ports on a stretch. The precincts of Apapa would rank among Africa’s niftiest residential as well as commercial cum industrial hub.

    Well laid out, carefully planned by mainly British, Lebanese, Indian and Nigerian settlers. Like all great port towns, Apapa had an abundance of banking and financial presence; huge manufacturing companies, assembly plants and of course, hordes of import-export logistics firms, clearing agencies and haulage companies.

    It also brimmed with hotels and hospitality facilities – night clubs, lounges and fun spots. It was haven to seafarers from across the world making stop overs and emptying into the warm embrace of Apapa. It was home to expatriates, fortune-hunting women, pirates and wharf rats grown fat.

    The streets of Apapa used to be lined with cash, so to speak. Many able-bodied men dressed up each day and trekked to Apapa, plodding the peripheries of the wharfs and warehouses of Apapa and they would return home at the end of the day, awash with cash. Hardball would wager that no dawn of Apapa grows into dusk without mountains of cash changing hands. Apapa is a billion dollars per day commercial proposition if properly rigged and primed.

    But Apapa is no more. Apapa has become an apparition and that is not speaking metaphorically. If Apapa were a man, he would be a dishevelled tramp, dusty and forlorn. And if she were a country, she would be designated a failed entity – wracked and soulless.

    Even her denizens deserted her. The residents of the highbrow Apapa GRA have migrated to saner parts of Lagos. The teeming population of wharf-hands, the night crawlers and waifs of the night are no more. If Apapa’s day was an apparition, her nights have long become empty and hollow.

    To boil it down, Apapa is the veritable metaphor for Nigeria – so much wealth and affluence yet so much decadence, waste and insouciance. Whoever leaves his duck that lays golden eggs unattended?

    First, the rail line running through the ports were long hampered. Second, parking lots in the port complex were auction recklessly. Third, tank farms were licensed in their hundreds on the same stretch as the sea ports. Lastly, the roads leading to the ports have failed for over a decade, completely defying successive federal governments.

    Consequently, trucks and tankers litter the entire length of the wharf roads without method or order – all access roads blocked. Most trucks wait in turn for weeks and when they are loaded it is impossible to exit.

    Exports rot on the way to the quays, and imports incur charges due to delay. Nunc Dimittis to Apapa, the symbol of modern malady

     

     

  • Odyssey of citizen Josephine

    The story could not be starker — at 50, she has neither a husband nor a child.  But in her quiet optimism, she was doing daily savings, from her drinks and grocery business, to adopt a child — at least to be a mother.

    But now, her money — all N5.7 million of it — is reportedly gone!  Just like that!  How heartless can some folks be!

    From a report in the The Nation Saturday of November 11, Josephine Okoruwa, resident of Benin, Edo State, has been saving with a micro-finance bank, over a period of time.  Though she started her trading business in Lagos before relocating to Benin, such was her long-term relationship with the bank that her transactions — mainly pooling and saving daily proceeds — had traversed four different account officers.

    But the last of the officers — according to the report, one Faith Egbi — has allegedly landed the woman in soup.  From the story trust, which nevertheless comes with the banking ethos, would appear her nemesis.

    Ms. Okoruwa tells her story: “The problem started in July when Faith introduced one Ese to me as the new person assigned to me. Faith said she had been transferred to another area.  Not long after, Faith came to tell me that I should bring the papers so that the bank could update the account.

    “I gave her the papers,” she continued, “not knowing that Faith had been sacked three months earlier.  Most times, when I had money in my store, I would call Faith and she would come and collect the money.  The next day, she would bring the tellers.  She has been doing that with the fixed deposit account.  I trusted her because I believed the bank would not send a bad person to a customer.”

    Well, call it fatal faith from the customer’s end, for that transaction would land Ms Okoruwa in hospital, with a flared blood pressure — her money was gone!

    She would later learn, from the bank’s management, that Faith had been sacked allegedly for fraudulent acts.  Now, her money appears gone — and with that her dream of ever adopting a child, to which the whole savings scheme was tailored.  Her health too would appear on the balance.

    Ms Okoruwa has taken the civilized path by retaining a lawyer to fight her cause.  That’s okay on the civil front.

    But beyond that, the state should step into the matter fast.  For starters, the police should investigate the matter.  They should haul in, for questioning, as many people as are involved from the bank.  With the case dutifully investigated, every offending soul should be prosecuted and punished.

    In the immediate, however, the state should come to the aid of the traumatized woman — help with her hospital bills, as well as link her with support groups to calm her nerves, so she could better cope with her current plight.

    Most importantly, the state should apply every legitimate pressure on the bank to ensure the woman gets her money back — and fast — and realizes her dream of adopting a child of her own and giving that child a dream home as she had wished.

    That is the only way to ease the odyssey of Citizen Josephine.

     

     

  • Break the law and be broken

    Days to the governorship election in Anambra State on November 18, the group known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is still flexing its muscles. Members of the separatist group proscribed on account of its extremism 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.”

    IPOB’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, was also quoted as saying:  ”We will put Anambra State on lockdown on November 18. This is a taste of what is to come. Nigeria should be prepared. It is also very critical to inform every Biafran, be you IPOB family member, businessman, farmer, artisan, driver, teacher, doctor, motorcycle/tricycle union, civil servant, trader, market leader, National Union of Road Transport Workers, National Association of Road Transport Owners, fisherman, market men and women, including politicians who believe in freedom and liberty of a free independent State of Biafra, to boycott the Anambra State election.”

    This same group had triggered unwanted tension when in May it came up with a sit-at-home operation in the Southeast to mark the 50th anniversary of Biafra, a 1960s secession project that failed. Just as it disrespected the right of others to freedom of association and freedom of movement then, it is showing the same disrespect now by trying to force people to stay indoors and not vote.

    The group’s confrontational language and attitude are provocative. Its members are acting like people who are out of tune with reality, and who are mistaking their delusion for reality. They may be entitled to their enthusiasm for separatism. But when their over-enthusiasm results in overreaching, it is time for the authorities to demonstrate in clear terms that there are boundaries. This muscle-flexing is absurd because the group has no muscle.

    IPOB’s plan to stop people from voting amounts to planning to break the law.  When a group that has been outlawed defiantly remains on the path of outlawry, it suggests that its members are indeed lawless. With IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu mysteriously out of circulation and wanted by the law, it is a wonder that the group is sticking to its guns and threatening to prevent the election from taking place.

    Those who insist on breaking the law should be ready to be broken.

     

     

     

  • Snake rage and aviation fuel snafu

    It is often said that we should be careful what we wish for. But Hardball says, be careful what you invoke. When the Nigerian military in their brief moment of exuberance began to name their ‘routine’ military exercises after animals, no one would have thought of a possibility of a backlash. But superstitious heads have begun to suggest that the rage of snakes in some states of the country may not be unconnected to those terms as ‘Python Dance’ and ‘crocodile smile’.

    In the past couple of months, about 250 deaths have been reported across the snake belt states like Plateau, Gombe and Katsina. Hear it from the managing director of EchiTAb Study Group, the anti-snake venom producing firm: “Moreover, we were not used to this large request. All of a sudden, people go to their farms and meet snakes in large numbers…”

    But as you may know dear reader, Hardball is not given to superstition. As oriental sages long conjectured, something made the cocoyam to begin to squeak. The requisite authorities simply are not prepared for this snake season. It’s the period of the year; after the rains when snakes come out of semi-hibernation and are on the prowl.

    For a perennial problem that has plagued a large swathe of the country for ages, our response has lacked method or rationality. First why are anti-venom drugs still being imported by Nigeria? Second, how could the drug be scarce at the most critical time when it is needed most? If the appropriate quarters were alive to their duties, the treatment centres would be well stocked at this time.

    When a female student died of snake bite poison recently in a higher institution in Katsina State, the school was at its wits end for the control of the pest that it had to deploy snake charmers! A tertiary institution in 2017 world!

    Today, it is bad enough that we cannot produce this essential drug locally; it is worse that we had to run out of stock but what is to be said of the fact that supply of the drug has been hampered for about ten days because of shortage of aviation fuel in Nigeria?

    It is said that planes coming into Nigeria to supply stock have to haul return journey aviation fuel. Again, in 2017; to think that Nigeria is a major oil producing country.

    And what’s to be done? The House of Representative calls on the federal government to declare a state of emergency on the snake bite crisis. Brilliant guffaw!

    And Hardball calls out: MAY DAY, MAY DAY! Anyone out there!

  • ‘Madmen and specialists’

    ‘Madmen and specialists’

    The ding-dong, between the Kaduna State government and the hubris-stricken Kaduna branch of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), clearly reminds Hardball of the Wole Soyinka play, Madmen and Specialists.

    Just as in the play, in the ongoing Kaduna bathos, you don’t know the mad man.  Neither do you know the specialist, supposed to take care of his malady.

    Or even Fela’s popular musical quip, Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense.  But in this bathetic drama, the teacher is not only unfazed to have taught nonsense — his pupils’ future be damned! — he is even swank enough, that his NUT openly brags, with a view to intimidating a government clearly trying to right the situation.

    Or how else would you classify teachers who reportedly failed Primary four examination topics and an NUT grandstanding over procedures for testing teachers, rather than hanging its head in shame over the disgraceful performance of its treasured members?

    O, there is the additional scandal: the Kaduna government’ s allegation that ghost teachers leapt up from the grave to “pass” the tests while the living ones failed.  Is that a sad tale of the Kaduna teaching living dead and the dead but living?

    Has Nigeria now sunk into the nadir of the value-neuter, such that not even the teachers’ organised body is ruffled that teachers promptly dispense ignorance, instead of knowledge, not unlike many of the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) billing for darkness instead of light?

    Inasmuch as Hardball insists on justice, equity and fairness for all, and that no one should be pronounced guilty except after trial and conviction, the Kaduna NUT would appear to have a manifestly bad case.  That parlous case would not vanish because of empty posturing.

    Yes, NUT must protest the interest of its members.  But not at the expense of the quality of the service they are expected to render.

    In this case, that product is not adulterated drugs.  Neither is it expired canned food.  It is rather expired knowledge (which, by the way, would appear deadlier than pristine ignorance), of which the future Nigerian generation is the victim.

    So, if the charge of their scandalous failure is true, what NUT should do is to climb down from its illusory high horse, and parley with the government on the best and swiftest way to correct the problem.

    Could it be the state government had itself stopped on-the-job capacity building, through periodic training and seminars over the years, such that the teachers had not been enriching their knowledge stock since they left school?  If so, how fast can such be reintroduced?

    What best can be done to the failed teachers?  Introduce remedial courses to make them at par with current realities, recruit better ones to augment the manpower, or explore voluntary retirements, instead of outright sack, just on compassionate basis?

     

    These are the solutions NUT should seek, not question the bona fide of the Kaduna government to ensure quality in the schools it runs.  That is neither fair to the government nor equitable to those kids, whose future depends on sound background teaching and learning.

    If Fela were to jerk awake now, how would he have commented on the Kaduna rumpus, despite his healthy suspicion of governments?  No prize for guessing right: tisha, no teach me nonsense!

  • Stories around palm oil

    Stories around palm oil

    Please perish the thought dear reader, Hardball would not dare repeat here, that silly tale about Malaysia taking a few palm oil seedlings from Nigeria in the 60s, blah, blah, blah. Even Hardball would probably cry if he hears that story one more time.

    It is a sad tale about Nigeria’s failure; everyone knows it, everyone tells it to everyone who re-tells to everyone who re-tells, on and on, ad-nauseam. We have probably told it for all of three decades yes; 30 years in case you think that was a slip.

    Yes, one whole, long generation of Nigerians have regaled themselves with this woe tales, yet concrete actions were never taken to change the situation.

    Back then, Nigeria was among the top exporters of crude palm oil. But today, Malaysia is world leader in the commodity they say, but they don’t know that this is just a small bit of the huge oil palm story.

    They do not know that other Asian countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Burma now dominate this oil trade, which has a global value of about $50 billion. They do not know that palm oil, like crude oil, can be broken down into different variants and grades. It is no longer the good red oil we used to know.

    We are still fixated on the palm oil story of the 60s, but it’s a different story now for palm oil, which incidentally, makes up more than half of the oil and fats consumed in the world today.

    It is a big industry, big business for countries, who know how to do big things. For instance, the oil palm research institute set up by Malaysia in the 60s has grown into a major Agriculture University. But its counterpart in Nigeria has become a shadow of itself, perhaps half overgrown by weeds. But why is Hardball getting so oily-soily today? It is about a report that Nigeria recently imported about N12 billion worth of palm oil in October and November. And that indeed, Nigeria needs about 2.7 million metric tons of palm oil yearly, but can hardly produce 1 million tons. She has to import the bulk of the rest.

    How can this be happening when one state in the Southeast or Southsouth can produce Nigeria’s need? How can we now turn around to claim that some states are not viable or that they cannot afford to meet basic salary bills, yet they sit on a palm oil industry that yields more than all the money that accrues to them from federal allocation?

    While the price of the much more favoured crude oil has been dropping that of palm oil is rising in global markets. The prospects for this native commodity are actually bright, but only those who are working will reap them, not those telling and re-telling old oil stories.

    The only story left untold and which desperately needs to be told about the crop ancient to our land would be a come-back story. Let the world tell how Nigeria miraculously raised the dying palm oil industry back to number one in the world in a couple of years. That would be the story!

     

     

  • Taraku ti ku

    It’s a Hardball delight today! On some good days, certain fecund issues literally fall on one’s laps begging for attention like a besotted lover. But such matters, as we have today, are like low hanging ripe cherries. Call it serendipity!

    First some perspective on the onomatopoeic title above: Taraku is a community in Otukpo town in Benue State near her western borders with Kogi State. Taraku was made famous by Taraku Mills, a massive agrarian integrative conglomerate built by the former governor and statesman, Aper Aku.

    Ta ra ku, though not a Yoruba word, sounds like one and translated literally means to die most painfully. Taraku ti ku, therefore means Taraku has died.

    And truly, Taraku Mills has died – a most gruesome death, it must be stated. Commissioned in 1989 in the food basket of Nigeria, Benue State, it was set up with a massive capacity to process soya beans, beniseed, corn and cassava into cooking oils, animal feeds for poultry, fish, cattle, etc, and brewers grit.

    It was a most insightful multiplier intervention project to create wealth for farmers of that fertile Kogi/Benue belt; to provide raw material for such industries as poultry, breweries and pharmaceutical firms. It also curbed importation of edible oils, poultry products and even raw maize.

    But Taraku has been made moribund by successive governments of Benue State. Three governors to the current one have been unable to get the mill up and running or to do such basic thing as concessioning it to private managers. Under the watch of renegade administrators, more funds have been spent trying to crank mills roll once again than was spent on building it ab initio.

    Benue is one of those states currently roiled by paucity of revenues and the attendant inability to pay civil servants’ salaries as well as pension and gratuities. One of the most agriculturally endowed patch of Nigeria, the current governor has stated openly that it was impossible for his administration to keep up with monthly salaries. Not even the bailout funds, the loan refunds and monthly allocation from Abuja would do to cater for the payment of salaries alone, according to Governor Samuel Ortom.

    Unfortunately, this is not the only industry gone south in the state. There is the Oturkpo Burnt Bricks factory; Benue Fruit Juice Factory and Benue Packaging Factory among others. These, as well as Taraku were agro-based ventures that would have become the fulcrum of a huge agro-industrial complex producing food for the population and raw materials for home use and for export. But there is hardly any factory running in Benue today.

    Hardly any development either, there couldn’t be where salary payment is gruelling. Taraku ti ku.

     

     

     

  • In the news again—Ajekun iya!

    Jimoh Akeran, a Facebook activist, has coined what has got to be one of the most devastating puns on Nigerian contemporary politics — “… scampering Kaba-kaba in Kabba …”!

    No prize for guessing right: it was at the expense of Dino Melaye, Himself the Ajekun Iya exponent and senator of the Federal Republic.

    In an eerie, even if surrealist near self-fulfilling prophesy, of Melaye’s Ajekun Iya best-selling video, the senator in the eye of a vicious senatorial storm had to scurry and scamper from reported stones and allied missiles, let fly by a mob, at a Kabba Day event, after reportedly announcing a donation of N3 million!   How so ungrateful!

    But for his police orderlies, that did a yeoman’s job of ferreting him out of danger, Dino may have bitterly tasted the grim meaning of “ajekun iya” (thorough drubbing) — and from a mob too!  Lord have mercy!

    For starters, Hardball decries any mob action, which could well have ended up in lynching.  That’s ultra-barbaric and ought to be condemned by every right thinking citizen.  On that, Dino has Hardball’s sympathy.

    But Hardball condemns no less Dino’s cynical tactics too, in his relations to his constituents, not to talk of his contemptuous penchant for others, thus dragging his high senatorial seat in the mud.

    The Ajekun Iya video, which now appears to be haunting Dino, was a direct affront to those who cautioned Dino to be more dignified and senatorial in his wild conduct.  The video was therefore to underscore his untouchability, some sort of senatorial Kabiyesi syndrome.

    Regrettably, the Kabba fracas just shows those civility cannot touch, the mob reserves the right to deal with, in their own peculiar way.  On that lane, however, everyone is lose-lose.

    Still, Dino had gone from one notoriety to another mistaking, in his high clouds of self-destruct infamy, notoriety for popularity.

    When his constituents sent him a recall notice, he responded with a legal challenge.  That however is within his legal rights; and the matter is still on appeal, after Dino lost the opening battle at the high court.  It is a legitimate legal process.  Yet, not a few has interpreted it as nothing but legal stonewalling.  Emotions are free, but until the courts give their verdict, it’s a legitimate process.

    Then, the senator at plenary, went appealing for relief, for the salary-starved constituents in the Kogi civil service.  Pronto, his senatorial peers reportedly donated bags of rice to feed the Kogi starving and hungry.

    That might well be an exercise in genuine empathy.  But it might also mean a cynical dig at controversial Kogi Governor,  Yaya Bello, doting friend turned implacable foe!

    Maybe the embattled governor turned on the screws.  Maybe Dino was haunted by his past mischiefs.  But in no time, a counter-narrative emerged that Dino, by his kind gesture, was turning his constituents into internally displaced persons (IDPs), condemned to living on other people’s charity, genuine or cynical!  Yet, shorn of the background politics, some families and households, driven to the end of their economic tether, do need those grains!

    Meanwhile, Governor Bello, hearing of Dino’s sore treatment, reportedly exercised a fast and furious u-turn, from the Kabba Day venue!   Hmmnn … a mob is no respecter of persons or offices!

    It’s certainly interesting times out there in Kogi — running kaba-kaba in Kabba, in the worst spirit of Ajekun Iya!