The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Okowa’s Sambisa forest

    Government house could be a mysterious place; not to mention spooky. A former media aide who served in Aso Rock, Nigeria’s Presidential Villa recently insinuated that there exist all sorts of atrocious denizens in that rarefied seat of power.

    Reuben Abati it was who dared to suggest that Aso Rock especially of his time, headed by President Goodluck Jonathan was haunted by demons. Of course Nigerians chewed him up, believing he was trying to make excuses for his boss’ damnable inefficiency and demonic treasury-looting during his stint.

    But Hardball would concede here that there might well be psychological and even metaphorical demons traipsing every seat of power in Nigeria. And the higher the office, the more the ghouls – both in size and number.

    This notion is triggered by the mid-term reviews going on across the land currently. Governors are now being ‘compelled’ to account for the last two years.

    While some have tangible things to show, others suddenly freeze at the realization that they have been fooling around the place in the last 24 months with nothing to show for the billions they had received. It can be a trying moment when you are faced with journalists and your people throwing a barrage of questions at you and you don’t have coherent answers.

    Hardball does not suggest that Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta State was in such awkward situation but it was at such a stewardship forum that he made it known to the world that Sambisa forest may have practically walked away from Borno State and settled in his state, Delta.

    Lamenting the menace of the Fulani herdsmen in the Abraka Axis of his state, Okowa noted: “We are aware that there are challenges at the Abraka area but I will not call it Sambisa Forest…” so what would he call it? Sambraka Forest?

    At the midterm briefing, Okowa was full of lamentations at the bloody incursions of the herdsmen in his domain in the last two years. He cut a pitiable spectacle but the truth is that the herders have really wreaked havoc in Delta, killing raping and maiming at will. Indeed about two monarchs have been put down. The cattle Fulani have actually put the fear of cattle in the minds of the people.

    But what has Okowa done about this challenge in two years? Nothing from what we can see. He neither promulgated a law as some of his counterparts have done nor did he consider the business proposition of ranching. It’s just not enough to announce tearfully that Sambisa has relocated to Okpella; what has he done about it?

  • Baba Alagbado balks

    Iyiola Omisore, ex-senator of the Federal Republic, ex-deputy governor of Osun State and eternal gubernatorial hopeful, the other day (The Nation, May 30), came firing from all cylinders.

    His grouse?  That Hardball did a piece, “Baba Alagbado rebrands”, tracing his Osun 2014 gubernatorial, corn-crunching histrionics on the stumps; to his current furious effort at an image make-over, with his newly beloved prefix of “Dr”, instead of the “Otunba” of yore.

    Well, quite frankly, polite society is the winner.  A born-again Omisore, hot fresh and smoking, as newly minted intellectual champion in the public space, mouthing the latest of cutting edge jargons, in his new love of public-private sector-partnership (PPP), is much better for himself, for Osun and for Nigerian politics and governance.  If he walks his talk, then issues would be settled after a robust cut-and-thrust in the policy chamber, not after a bloody push-and-stab, in the streets.

    So, Hardball honestly empathises with Omisore on his new project of self-improvement, self-redemption and a commendable roadmap to more civility in his political philosophy.  The Yoruba credo of Omoluabi demands no less.  Besides, after the Aregbesola years, it won’t be easy for just any demagogue to fob the people with empty dramatics.  So, welcome, Dr. Omisore, the PPP guru!

    Still, Hardball balks at Omisore’s veiled insinuation that because his Saul is turning political Paul, we should lack institutional memory to examine his political past.  Indeed, without that past, a re-brading wouldn’t have been necessary.

    Lest we forget: Omisore was there, after his well publicised boast to “deal with” the late Chief Bola Ige.  After hoodlums removed Ige’s cap (the ultimate disgrace by Yoruba culture), at the palace of the Ooni of Ife, Omisore launched into a boast, thundering  that was the last warning to the man.

    Fast-forward to 2010, when the Justice Ayo Salami-led Court of Appeal affirmed Rauf Aregbesola’s triumph at the Osun 2007 gubernatorial election, this same Omisore, it was, who wrote a tendentious article impugning the character of Justice Salami. That letter would lead to the Jonathan Presidency hounding the jurist out of office before his time — just for affirming the sanctity of the vote.

    Just before the Ekiti gubernatorial election of 2014, Omisore was fingered in that audio, in which some PDP power and principalities thoroughly harassed the then Brig.-Gen. Momoh, to compromise the integrity of that election .  That suggested Fayose’s so-called victory was a brazen rig, scientifically put together and soullessly executed.  His memorable quote, to that inglorious concave: “PDP is nothing without federal power!” He is damned right, as events have proved.

    And lest we forget: the unbridled violence of the Omisore camp, over the jostle for the PDP Osun governorship ticket, forced the late Isiaka Adeleke to hurtle from PDP to APC, where he eventually ran for the Senate.

    Hardball welcomes Omisore if he wants to change tack.  But he should not posture, as he tried to do in his May 30 retort, that there was not Saul before Paul.

    He who comes to equity, after all, must come with clean hands. Besides, such posturing would be a rude insult to institutional memory.

  • Others have rights too

    There was undesirable tension triggered by an undesirable sit-at-home order by the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). The sit-at-home order was meant to take effect in the Southeast on May 30 to mark the 50th anniversary of Biafra, a secession project that failed.

    It is thought-provoking that the groups took their renewed campaign for Biafra to such a ridiculous level.  The so-called order was laughable. It is a reflection of the delusions of these groups that they failed to appreciate their limits.

    In Anambra State: “A tour round the city showed that Automated Teller Machine (ATM) points and markets were besieged by residents wanting to stock their homes with foodstuff for the period of the sit-at-home.”

     

    In Abia State:  “The Abia State Commissioner of Police, Leye Oyebade, said the command is ready to squash any attempt by anybody, or group, to cause trouble. Oyebade, who addressed reporters in Umuahia, said the fundamental rights of the people should not be trampled upon. According to him, nobody has the right to tell Abians to stay at home and not go about their lawful businesses, stressing that the constitution is very explicit on the freedom of association and movement.”

    In Ebonyi State: “Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu has advised that the sit-at-home order declared by some rights groups in the Southeast for tomorrow should be optional… “Individuals who operate private businesses and want to stay-at-home on that day should stay, while those who want to operate their businesses should be allowed to do so. I believe that civil and public workers should be ready to go to work on that day as I appeal that no group should force people to stay at home against their wishes.”

    Why do these rights groups think they have the right to disrespect the right of others to freedom of association and freedom of movement?  It is condemnable that they chose to heat up the polity on the anniversary of a secessionist project that heated up the polity 50 years ago.

    These separatist groups are entitled to their enthusiasm for separatism. But when their over-enthusiasm results in overreaching, they must be told in clear terms that there are boundaries. If they wanted a dramatic commemoration of Biafra’s anniversary, they failed by choosing the sit-at-home approach.  What they succeeded in dramatising was an absurd drama based on absurd thinking.

  • NIMR: The un-event centre

    HAVE you noticed that event centres are Nigeria’s newest phenomenon? In the last ten years or so we seem to have suddenly caught up to the idea of creating massive halls and party places. Before this great innovation, parties were thrown in private compounds or strait-jacket hall. When they were too big, they were splashed on the streets displaying orgies of wild revelries.

    Not anymore. No well-heeled merrymaker throws a big party anywhere else but an event centre – the new paradigm and indeed paradise for chopping life (if Hardball may be allowed a bit of liberty there). Event centres started out modestly but by the day, they have become the first measure of a party throwers means and the best rating for the size of both a party and its host.

    These centres have gone nuclear (forgive the cliché); they now come made up not unlike a Nigerian woman socialite going for a big party. Of course they come in grades and sizes but for the best of them, no expense is spared in decorating them – the whole works – all the silken draperies, frills and even thrills to boot.

    Every street corner, every community, now boasts of one form of event centre or the other. We can, indeed, safely say that these centres are the metaphors for all that is good and bad about Nigeria.

    The good is that it has shown our industry, our capacity to run with new ideas and take them to great heights, even better than the originators. The obverse is that the raging enjoyment centres symbolise our raucous epicurean nature – we love our food, drinks, fashion and shows. When we wonder why we are so backward despite so much resource available to us, someone should do the maths for us on how much we burn every weekend on large parties and the appurtenances of partying.

    While you wonder why Hardball is doing this syrupy treatise on parties and party places, the point is that this event centre thing may be so lucrative that Nigerians are converting every available space. The latest may be the Biomedical Research Training and Cancer Centre of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Lagos, which may have been converted to an event centre.

    According to a report, this once-pristine medical institute may have suffered the fate of all institutions in the land. It may have become a circus show where monkeys prance and the audience cheer and jeer.

    Of course this type of environment in other climes are rarefied places but in this much moldened place, most of the originals have left and the leftovers, mainly jobbers, have long forgotten why they were there in the first place.

    So why allow a large expanse of space to lie fallow when it can serve as a good event centre in a very un-eventful medical research hub.

     

  • Osoko and Lagos @ 65

    Osoko Ekiti Kete, Ayodele Fayose, was reported to have growled, in one of his involuntary jabbering: what the hell is all the noise about Lagos at 50?  Is it the only state, he reportedly queried, that was turning 50?

    One would have thought Fayose, from his antediluvian yammering (don’t dignify those with ‘policies’), who would soon be known as the father of Stone Age Ekiti, would give Lagos at 50, or any of its commemorative events, a wide berth.

    Not Osoko, the self-named Ebora (demon) that gobbles Jollof rice!  Bang at the Lagos at 50 commemorative dinner, he appeared, prim-and-proper, delicately installing himself.

    Pray, was it the overwhelming aroma of super-Jollof rice, which might just put to shame the Wollof of Senegal, the native owners of that cuisine-turned-famous Nigerian delicacy, that pulled Osoko from Ado Ekiti, his stomach infrastructure headquarters?

    Even then, how did the high and polite company, among whom the Osoko strutted and preened, compare with the paraga rabble, he holds at thrall in Ekiti?  Did he think that after him, with his Stone Age governance, anyone would gather in Ado Ekiti, to celebrate Ekiti at 50, when eventually the state turns one, and the Fayose craved “”continuity” — of stomach infrastructure, of reckless abuse, of talking before thinking — continues after him?

    Well Osoko, that’s the big deal of Lagos at 50!  Lagos State, from Mobolaji Johnson to Akinwunmi Ambode, has always been lucky with leaders.  Even during military rule, with the possible exception of one case, Lagos had benefited from above-par leaders.

    Of course, Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Baba Kekere among the many Awolowo followers and action governor of the 2nd Republic, made a national impression, among the progressives giants of that republic (1979-1983).

    Even then, by 1999, despite the brave efforts of Buba Marwa, Lagos’ last military administrator under Sani Abacha, Lagos was decaying and grounding to a halt.

    Then came Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his movement of the past 18 years — Tinubu himself, Babatunde Fashola, SAN and now Akinwunmi Ambode — and Lagos has become a national reference in excellence.  That is continuity.  That is worth celebrating.  And that’s the big deal about Lagos at 50!

    But Osoko’s Ekiti?  A diametric opposite — and Fayose stands legitimately accused of contributing more than anyone, living or dead, to Ekiti’s almost assured future backwardness.

    Fayose’s first coming (2003-2006) ended in fiasco and disgrace.  He exited in a gale of impeachment, with everywhere filled with odium.  With the way he has carried on in the first three years out of four, he seems headed for perhaps a worse disgrace in 2018 than 2006.

    Acting President Yemi Osinbajo said something about being better to learn from history than from experience.  Fayose, as two-time governor, has learnt from neither, even if learning from experience, as Prof. Osinbajo quipped, was the harder way.  Either way, Fayose is none the wiser.  Shame!

    Well, perhaps his experience at Lagos at 50 will eventually turn him from Saul to Paul — who knows?  For Ekiti’s sake not a few would pray.  But frankly, the omens are not too good.

    Still, it is good the Osoko must have seen governance and development is far more than gubernatorial rascality of the crudest and rudest hue, for which Fayose has an undisputed patent, firing his nationwide notoriety!

    As for Ekiti Kete, it’s a grim lesson — use your vote wisely.  Otherwise you might be landed with life-regressing folly, of which Fayose is rich evidence!

  • IE: Billing darkness as winning strategy

    Have you seen the Okota district head office of Ikeja Electric (IE) on Okota Road, lately?  It reminds you of that old song: “She’s beautiful, she’s lovely, she takes your breath away …!”

    Meeehnnn, IE is totally rebranded out there!  It glows, just as its electricity market is swamped in total darkness!  Simply intimidating!

    Indeed, that intimidation reminds you of good — well, more of bad — old Poke Tolo, the fictional anti-hero of James Hadley Chase’s novel, Want to Stay Alive?  Remember that fella?  That’s right — he who declared he had found the formula, fear, to prise the wallet of the rich!

    Well, as IE Okota is rebranding and preening and is bright and beautiful, its customers are progressively dull and grumpy, wallowing in pit darkness.

    But like the fictive Poke Toholo and his rich-and-the-spoilt victims, the very real life IE has probably patented a fear-driven primer, on how a DISCO (electricity distribution company) can mint a fortune drowning its customers in darkness, while at the same time threatening them with disconnection.

    In the Okota neighbourhood, IE has developed a grim routine. There would be a total blackout for days. Then, as if jerking awake, light would come streaming, for hours on end.

    At luckier seasons, it would be on for a whole day. Or even for a whole night, near uninterrupted, long enough for the refrigerators to buzz and the air conditioners to hum; and for the denizens to remember that alas, they were still residents of some 21st century city, where electricity should be routine; and not some antediluvian jungle, where it was alien.

    By chance or design, however, this “harvest” time always comes, when the all-mighty IE is readying to distribute new bills, bills not based on any metering but on the whims and caprices of its billing merchants.

    But just when the customers were conditioning themselves to their newfound fortune, the disconnecting gang came storming!

    Based on light for a few days, they insist you paid for the darkness all month long — or else!  It is the IE equivalent of the Poke Toholo fear theory!  Meanwhile, after all the excitement, status quo ante-bellum resumed, till another harvest time of rogue electricity and forced payment for darkness!

    The joker for the near-brazen fraud would appear IE’s apparent hesitation to supply most of its customers in the neighbourhood pre-paid electric meters.  More than one year ago, the IE managing director came visiting The Nation.  His pledge was clear: in the next two years, most of its customers would have pre-paid meters, free of charge, except those who didn’t want to await their turn.  Even then, those category of clients would eventually be reimbursed, one way or another.

    For a majority in this neighbourhood, that has not happened.  But wait, why should it?  In Achebe-speak: do you spew out nuts ground for you by benevolent spirits?

    Could IE then be hedging on pre-paid meters, because the pivot of its winning billing-for-darkness strategy depends on its criminally padded billing-by-estimates?

    That sounds too nihilistic to be believed.  Still, Power Minister, Babatunde Fashola, had better warn these smart-alecky DISCOs to play by the rules, before the malevolent spirits of inflamed customers confront their disconnection gangs in the streets!

  • Ortom’s autumnal

    Over had the circus feeling? That excitement you get mostly as a child when you arrive an amusement park and a life of fun and fantasy is spread before you. You hop from the giant wheel to the carousel, the rocking horse, water bikes, and you never want to leave. While it lasts, you are oblivious of the world out there, nothing else matters and you may only be able to think straight after you have left the surreal world.

    Such must be the case with Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State. Though he may well be among the wiliest politicians around today, he comes across always as a bumbling paradox.

    Ortom who had been an LGA chairman, a junior minister and now the governor of his state, still acts like one on a rollercoaster. A man who confessed to have dropped out of secondary school and had touted in the motor park before he could re-track his life sits at the pinnacle of power today, but he does seem to lack the capacity to right the wrongs ingrained in the system.

    The other day, the Internet was awash with Ortom’s wheel barrow; a damnable implement that symbolises penury and privation. And it has a damning inscription that suggests it’s part of the ‘largesse’ from the governor. Though it has been refuted that he never ordered the inscription, he did not deny that he gave those wretched ‘trucks’ to his people. He did not see the paradox of handing out barrows to his subjects as instrument of poverty alleviation.

    But as a further prove that Governor Ortom may well be gamboling in a large amusement park, he said last weekend that the current local government system in the country is a fraud where nothing is happening except the sharing of money.

    Let us hear Ortom: “Go to any LGA during working days, you can hardly see people who are workers that are up to 10, but go there when they are receiving salary, the crowd always overwhelms the council.” He said the LGA system needs total restructuring, not autonomy. What manner of man indicts himself without knowing it?

    Hmmm, Ortom was LGA chairman; could he have been a fraud too? Now he’s managed the state for two years, what has he done to restructure the LGAs in his domain? Or does he need intervention from Mars?

    One last question: how much LGA funds has he received in the last two years? Can he publish the details? Hardball wagers that Ortom lives in denial, indeed grand delusion if he fails to recognise that governors are the bane of LGAs in Nigeria.

  • Women at war: Loretta vs Aisha

    Over President Muhammadu Buhari, two women are at war — one for; the other against — and both are taking no prisoners!

    Readers beware: this is no Chinua Achebe’s Girls at War. This is the real thing: a hot and banging and zinging verbal war!

    Aisha Yesufu, of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) fame, opened the fusillade of verbal attacks, by cutting to the chase over President Buhari’s health, his medical vacation and the very concept of Prof. Yemi Osinbajo’s acting presidency.

    “This acting presidency thing is not working,” she declared in a video that has since gone viral, waxing rather poetic, and probably loving the sweet sound of her own voice, playing the cold goddess, over another person’s health.

    Could there be some Jekyll-and-Hyde scenario here, of one person but two personalities?  Yesufu, so empathetic over the kidnapped Chibok girls, for which she earned due national plaudits.  The same Yesufu, so cold about Buhari’s health, like Dr. Jekyll that did all the good during the day and Mr. Hyde who replicated matching evil in the night?

    Like her or hate her, Aisha Yesufu takes no prisoners!

    Neither did Lorretta Onochie, the presidential aide on social media, who often set cyberspace ablaze with her fiery putdowns, of whoever tried to mess with her taciturn principal!

    She let go the full arsenal of her biting tongue, with a bazooka of attacks, telling Yesufu to get a life outside BBOG and histrionic posturing!

    “Your childish tantrums and incoherent ranting at President Buhari were totally uncalled for,” she tweeted, “especially as it is less than two weeks since 83 of the Chibok girls, gained their freedom” — ouch!

    Dismissing Aisha Yesufu as an alleged do-gooder, scared of utter irrelevance at the “grim” prospects of the recovery of all the remaining Chibok girls, Onochie advised the BBOG activist to get busy with other useful endeavours.

    Then the clincher, that would make not a few dive for cover!

    “What’s your real reason for wanting President Buhari and Acting President Yemi Osinbajo out of the way?”, the Onochie big gun primed, before releasing its big bazooka, though still zeroing: “Is there a sinister motive that you are hiding from all of us?”

    Then the point-blank, thundering bang!: “Venting your anger in the way you did in the video clearly suggests that you had expected something to happen that would bring about the end of the Buhari/Osinbajo administration, but that thing did not happen.”

    Now, that’s explosive stuff, talking about the end of an administration when it is but only a few days to mid-term!

    No wonder, not a few jumped for cover!

    As bullets whistle, the grounds quake with the booming of the big guns and the trees do the involuntary shudder and dance of death from zipping bullets, remember it’s two women at war — the battle is hot!

    Two women — that take no prisoners!

  • Age and assets: No-go areas?

    It is certainly a curious piece of information that Chief Ricky Tarfa (SAN) allegedly refused to declare his age to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    At an Igbosere High Court, Lagos,  on May 17, according to a report: “A witness, Zakari Usman from the EFCC Special Task Force Unit testified that Tarfa refused to state his age seven times during his investigation for alleged obstruction of the agency’s operatives.”

    The report continued: “The witness testified that the assets declaration form issued to Tarfa by the agency had a column requiring age declaration in seven places, but the senior advocate left all the spaces blank. He said the defendant also failed to declare his assets contrary to Section 7(a) and (b) of the EFCC Act.”

    It is curious that Tarfa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, allegedly refused to state his age in a form that required him to do so. Was there something he wanted to hide by not declaring his age? Was there something his age declaration would have exposed?  Since age declaration was not optional in this case, why would a lawyer of his status act as though it was?

    It is also curious that Tarfa allegedly failed to declare his assets as required by law? Was there something to hide? Was there something that would have been exposed?

    It is interesting that, according to the report, “the prosecution also played a video in court, titled: “Rickey Tarfa’s refusal”, which allegedly showed the defendant’s alleged refusal to fill the form.”

    The case: “Tarfa was arrested on February 9, 2016, for allegedly hiding two suspects – Nazaire Sorou Gnanhoue and Modeste Finagnon, both Beninoise – in his Mercedes Benz Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), thereby shielding them from being arrested and obstructing justice. He was arraigned on March 10, 2016, and pleaded not guilty to a 27-count charge, which was subsequently amended to 26.”

    Further information: “The agency alleged, among others, that the lawyer offered N5.3million gratification to Justice Hyeladzira Nganjiwa of the Federal High Court, Lagos to compromise the judge.”

    It is interesting that Usman was quoted as saying the investigators “wrote a letter to GTBank, and information contained in the bank’s response showed the defendant’s date of birth as February 23, 1950.”

    The public may get to hear from Tarfa why he allegedly refused to declare his age as required, and why he allegedly failed to declare his assets as required. Before that happens, the information in the public space makes him look like a dodger.

  • Dino’s helluva blockbuster

    He is no doubt Hardball’s guinea pig for interrogating official insouciance and that is putting it mildly. The truth is that he always corroborates that street fable about a heedless game that continues to chew unconcernedly even as marksmen aim at it.

    Call it Dutch courage, call it induced braggadocio, call it chutzpah of the running-nosed boy, whatever; the only point to note is the ways of Mr. Dino Melaye, the senator representing Kogi West, confound even his foes, not to mention his friends.

    Dino reminds again of another fabled character notorious for its exponential mischief. The dust of one opprobrious upheaval never settles before it rouses the very soul of hades. Such is the current momentum this senator has welled up around himself that it might seem even him has lost control of these happenings.

    Of course we all remember his recent certificate saga and how he converted what his detractors thought was  the making of  a major ‘gate’, (as in Dinogate), into a national orchestra. First, he did not only make the vice chancellor of a major university in Nigeria to personally appear before the Senate, his remaking of an old abuse song went instantly viral.

    He followed up with a full-dressed bandstand performance. Of course he led the band and again, the virtual world erupted for a senator who could morph into a juju music star.

    Now he has gone and done it again this Dino fella! Dino has written a book – and you guess it – it’s a helluva blockbuster; a 600-page tome of a book whose hardback edition sells for a whopping N50,000. Straight away, it must be said that there has never been a book like this in Nigeria. Not by our Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, or the legend Chinua Achebe.

    Such is the stuff Dino is made of, he is not unlike a hurricane, he leaves a cloud of impression in his wake. And what is Dino’s big book about you would ask as a logical follow up? Well here is it; he calls it: Antidotes for Corruption, The Story of Nigeria. Don’t gloat now, enemies of Dino, that’s supposed to be: Antidotes Against Corruption, but who cares, we already know that he was not the brightest in his class and even his VC confirmed that after seven years for a four-year course, he was only able to rustle up a third, so never mind any grammatical blips even on book cover.

    But what do you make of this: the book is reportedly a compilation of media reports, bills and motions relating to anti-graft campaign and major corruption cases ongoing under this administration. Well, you would be tempted to describe it as Dino’s Book of Corruption, won’t you? To affix your name to a compilation of works you did not author must be corruption, isn’t it Dino?