The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Jonathan is not to blame

    Books have a way of shedding light on things that need illumination. Take the new book by the Chairman of ThisDay Editorial Board, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, launched on April 28 in Lagos. Tendentiously titled “Against The Run of Play,” the book offers a thought-provoking insight into the mind of former President Goodluck Jonathan. In other words, it gives a picture of how Jonathan thinks and what he thinks.

    For instance, Jonathan said in the book: “The main problem I had was that the media and the civil society had conspired against me.” This is how Jonathan saw his unprogressive era that was brought to an end by an electoral red card in 2015.  He didn’t see, and perhaps couldn’t see, that he fell because he failed to perform.  It is absurd that he is blaming others for his failure. One question: Was he voted out of power by the media and the civil society?  Another question: Was he not booted out of power by the electorate?

    Another example shows how Jonathan still can’t see his obvious minuses that ultimately led to his unrealised re-election dream. He also said: “President Barack Obama and his officials made it very clear to me by their actions that they wanted a change of government in Nigeria and were ready to do anything to achieve that purpose…I got on well with Prime Minister David Cameron but at some point, I noticed that the Americans were putting pressure on him and he had to join them against me. But I didn’t realise how far President Obama was prepared to go to remove me until France caved in to the pressure from America.”

    So, Jonathan also blames America, Britain and France for his emphatic electoral defeat by Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who succeeded him two years ago. Rather than blame foreign powers for his fall, Jonathan needs to look inward. Does he really believe his performance as president should have earned him a second term?  If he really thinks so, then he probably needs help in two areas:  logical thinking and objective thinking.

    Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is currently facing a crisis of survival, following its historic loss of federal power. It would appear that the party needs to rethink its existence. Jonathan’s self-righteous thinking on why he lost the presidential election and why his party lost its political dominance doesn’t help matters.

    This new book has further revealed how delusional thinking contributed to Jonathan’s great fall and the PDP’s mighty fall.

  • 16 skulls or 16 painted coconuts?

    Profound words of wisdom from the east warn that it’s only palm bunches that could be cut and heaped up without raising eyebrows. Well in case you don’t quite get the picture, village folks in harvesting their oil palm fruits would make a high heap of the ripe palm bunches in the bush before they are evacuated.

    It is the imagery of this heap that must have given rise to this admonitory expression. Imagine the abomination of finding a pile of skulls in place of a heap of palm bunches? They thus warned long ago, that you could only harvest palm bunches and even though they may look alike, you could never harvest human heads.

    But recent happenings in Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma in Edo State may have repudiated these wise words. Mr. Haliru Gwandu, Edo State Commissioner of Police, briefing the media last week, said 16 (yes, 16) students of the university were beheaded in a recent bloody cult war on and around the campus.

    Gwandu noted that the savage rival cult feud involved senior lecturers of the institution. In fact, some lecturers have reportedly been arrested with firearms.

    Gwandu told reporters in Benin that authorities of AAU had invited the police to the school upon an outbreak of a bloody cult violence in which two students were reportedly killed. Upon hitting the scene, the police said they discovered 14 more headless bodies.

    This report in itself may not have been terrifically shocking considering the menace of killer cults on campuses in some parts of the country. But the school authority rose up in stout defence of its name, describing the statements credited to CP Gwandu “as totally false and embarrassing.”

    A statement by AAU’s Deputy Registrar, Information, said: “We hereby state unequivocally that Ambrose Alli University has had no issue of cult-related activities since the inception of the administration of Prof. Ignatius Onimawo and his management team. There has been no report from the police or any individual or groups for that matter concerning any incident of cultism or cult-related activities.

    “The police commissioner and his team could not have arrested any worker of the university, or found 14 students dead and not make a report, formal or informal, to the authorities of Ambrose Alli University.

    “We hereby demand that the Edo State Police Commissioner retract his statement and apologise… within 48 hours, failing which the university will not hesitate to institute legal proceeding.”

    Well, Hardball is thoroughly confused. But one fact he can confirm is that 48 hours have lapsed since AAU authorities threatened to go to court. We can also confirm that neither the Edo State government nor the Inspector-General of Police has found it fit to speak up.

    Could it be that CP Gwandu mistook 16 painted coconuts for human heads? Most curious.

  • Corporate robbery

    Want to write a thesis on corporate robbery?  Perhaps you need a detailed and intimate study of Ikeja Electric Plc (IE), particularly as it makes darkness its unrepentant growth area in its business of retailing light.

    If you desire a case study, move on to Okota and environs, where IE appears making hay, and feeling comfy, in supplying darkness, instead of electricity it is charged to do by law, and insisting on being paid — and at a premium too!

    For much of March, IE supplied near-total darkness, with no household, the schools complex, or corporate citizens in the area, enjoying no more than two hours of electricity a day. But that was even the cumulative average. Days on end, IE would just snooze, with its consumers enduring the savage and prickly heat, with no electricity to power any cooling system.

    Yet IE, comfy merchants of darkness, think nothing of trucking outrageous bills to its long-suffering clients.  In Bayo Oyewale and its tributary streets of Abayomi Adewale, Bormadek Avenue, Akpomuje, Havanna, Wilson Avenue, etc, each flat has been slapped with a bill of no less than N10, 000.  Darkness, for IE, sure must be hyper-profitable!  Now, if that is not corporate robbery of the most heinous kind, Hardball wants to know what it is.

    Of course, IE is cocksure it could force the consumers to pay, using the old NEPA roguery of using disconnection gangs.  Well, good luck to it.  But the Power Minister, Babatunde Fashola, SAN and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had better call to order these errant players, so brazen in their errancy.

    That folks are civil and law-abiding doesn’t mean their logical reaction against brazen cheating is absolutely inelastic. The authorities should not wait until the disconnection gangs are pushed off their ladders, in holy rage, as earlier reported in some Lagos neighbourhoods, before IE is sanctioned.

    Talking of sanctions, by NERC directives, IE should, by February 28, 2017 have provided its customers with pre-paid meters. They have not, in most of these areas enduring this vile abuse of bills. Might IE then be tarrying, just to milk its winning business strategy of turning darkness supply into a growth area?

    Meanwhile, many a customer who had stormed IE’s swank and tony Okota Road office, have been dribbled without end.  A principal, with her two vice-principals in tow, went there to complain. After much exertion, they couldn’t even get the phone number of the marketing officer, who manages her school’s account.

    Then, all-mighty IE has designed a one-way text message system, aka DSTV, another notorious corporate shark, harassing you on bills, but giving you no chance to text back, if you have any dissonance on its services. It’s a cavalier one-way traffic — pay our bill or else!

    NERC should read the riot act — IE should meter consumers or it loses any valid and legitimate process to bill for services (un)rendered. Any other way is encouraging IE in its corporate robbery business model. That would be tempting fate — and an avoidable social explosion.

     

  • Substandard in more ways than one

    We have discovered that the United Nations (UN) standard of policing says one policeman to 400 citizens, but from our calculation and statistics, we found out that we now have one policeman to 600, that is where the stress of policing is coming from.” That was the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Training and Development, Mr. Emmanuel Inyang. He is the Supervising DIG in charge of the  South-south.

    Inyang spoke during a visit to the headquarters of the Bayelsa State Police Command on April 20. He did not say when and how the police authorities “discovered” the UN standard. Perhaps he did not fully understand what it meant to say that the police leadership had “discovered” what the UN considered ideal for proper policing.

    Inyang unveiled an ambitious recruitment plan: ‘’So, we have written to the President to give us the power to recruit 31,000 police officers every year for the next five years. This is how we can achieve that standard; but, at least, even if we cannot make the 31,000 personnel, at least, 10,000 or 15,000 we hope to get and with that, very soon, we can meet the UN standard.’’

    Two questions: Where will the recruits be trained? How will the recruits be trained? It is noteworthy that the police recruitment process last year prompted a picture by the then Commandant, Police Staff College, Jos, Plateau State, Mr. Joseph Mbu, an Assistant Inspector General (AIG).  Mbu retired in 2016 but his words are still relevant. He was quoted as saying: “Our police colleges, both senior and junior are in very bad state. Most of the structures you see there are dilapidated and the issue of poor staffing is also there. Recruitment exercise into various cadres in the force has begun, but the major lacuna will be where to train the recruits. We need good facilities and atmosphere to make them better policemen.”

    The example of the Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, will suffice. Built to accommodate 700 trainees, it reportedly housed over 2, 554 occupants as at January 2013.

    Against this background, there is no doubt that police recruits face infrastructural challenges as well as instructional challenges. It is clear that the Federal Government needs to address these challenges urgently. Police training is too important to be neglected or left to suffer the consequences of neglect. It goes without saying that the police cannot be properly trained when the facilities for their training are improper. So, a holistic approach is necessary, beyond the narrow and simplistic focus on recruitment.

  • Hardball buys a dozen whistles

    The war has just begun. A certain village wag said he was hauling in game with bare hands then the community went and bought him a dane gun. “Now am going to bring in all the game in the forest in one day … plus the forest too!” he boasted.

    Now you know Hardball for blowing hot and shaking down the apples (both ripe and unripe) for free. Now that it’s a sweepstakes; now that a piece of the national cake is on offer, Hardball may well change his name to Ironball.

    It has dawned on us all that our country is awash with cash and that the age of the whistleblowers is here. These fellows would become the new rich; the emergent middle class. Going by the Osborne flats cash haul of about N13 billion, just one per cent of that would be N130 million. This is a decent bundle in any currency and whoever makes such a killing in one fell swoop would automatically be inducted into the elite middle class club.

    Now you see why Hardball has elected to acquire his own whistles – in a manner of speaking, and morph into a professional whistleblower?  That is the future; call it the art of the extra-intellectual intelligence or cash intelligence for short. Hardball has been scouring his mental landscape to find those family, friends and associates who may remotely be sitting on a stash of cash one can squeal upon (no paddy for jungle as we say in the streets).

    I hereby send a notice to my politically exposed friends to be wary. I will take no prisoners (me too I want to ride Ferrari).

    Now Hardball is taking this art one notch up. We are setting up an Independent Whistle-blowers Institute of Nigeria (IWIN). Imagine having well trained, wizard whistle-blowers around here. The curriculum will include acute intuition, insight, extra-sensory perception and ability to understand the nature, texture and measure of cash.

    It will also include tell-tale signs to look for if you want to track a loot; for instance, paying a special attention to politicians or bosses who claim to be farmers and purportedly own farms in some remote places, but you never know them to harvest anything. They are probably planting cash!

    Consider also, those who forever have projects they are always travelling some distance to supervise. They are more likely building and nurturing safe houses.

    Finally, watch out for those bosses who always carry large bulging suitcases to and fro work as if they are the only ones doing all the work in the world. They may be siphoning cash.

    It is a new growth field and Hardball is glad to be ahead on it!

  • Baba Alagbado rebrands

    Iyiola Omisore, who these days loves to precede his name with “Dr”, after some PhD award from a foreign university, is rebranding — and on a far more polite level than hitherto.  That cannot be bad!

    On the stumps for the 2014 Osun governorship election, he essayed playing the new folksy man of the people, after Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, who just romped to a stupendous victory over the staid Kayode Fayemi.  But he ended up — to be sure, by cynical enemies — being dubbed Baba Alagbado, after his rather suspect newfound romance with public munching at maize cobs, just to press his ordinariness; or better still, folksiness.

    But it ended up real bad with the putative gubernatorial hopeful ending up as a butt of cruel jokes, particularly in cyberspace. Nigerian politicians, and their supporters, take no prisoners.

    Indeed Omisore, on those stumps, cut the picture of the tragic Coriolanus. In Shakespeare’s dramatic tragedy of that name.  A proud, young patrician, willy-nilly, must be consul. His mother had decreed so.  So, if it took playing the humble soul, so be it!

    But these Roman patricians didn’t reckon with the treacherous tribunes, mortal enemies of poor Coriolanus, who baited the people against him until Rome banned Coriolanus to his doom. Neither did they reckon with Coriolanus’s own raging pride and bristling anger.

    Well, on the last bend toward another Osun election, the Omisore electoral disguise appears enjoying a remake on a higher pedestal.  That should thrill polite society.

    In 2014, Omisore projected, well a dire strain of sinister humility, crunching corn; and his camp letting out threats that, thanks to federal might, the Osun gubernatorial diadem was his to lose.

    In the final stretch to 2018, Omisore is talking the talk, as some “expat expert” (apologies to Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters), and waxing lyrical and poetic over public-private-(sector)-participation (PPP), in infrastructure upgrade and allied engineering matters.  Orunmila be praised.

    The other day, he held star-struck folks at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) gasping for more.  A new technocratic whiz kid just landed in town!

    But like Coriolanus too, something didn’t just add up.  The new Omisore make over as a public policy wonk is welcome.  It’s a win-win situation. You can’t claim the polity is progressing and yet political players, at election time, are stuck with the Busari Adelakun-Lamidi Adedibu-franchised push-and-pull politics, simply because the player is intellect-challenged, and would rather hide under empty bluff and bluster. So, Omisore should be encouraged in his new path.

    But then, it is doubtful if Omisore himself, like Coriolanus, ever reckoned with his unvarnished id, which would never be repressed.

    Even from his newfound fantasyland of intellectualism, Omisore blurted out with a clear tale by the moonlight — he won the 2014 election (ha!) and he was simply rigged out!

    Surprised at this pure fiction, from Samarkarland? (Apologies again to our own WS!).  Well, just be comforted by that old quip: a leopard seldom changes its spots.

    Now, you can’t beat the good, old Brits in laconic put-downs, can you?

    So long for electoral rebranding, from Baba Alagbado to policy wonk.

  • Who wants Dino dead?

    News of an attempt to kill Senator Dino Melaye is a cause for concern. The controversial federal legislator may have attracted ill will on account of his chain of loudly dramatic actions inside and outside the legislative chamber, but his theatrics should not attract a death sentence. The incident of April 15 surely deserves a thorough police investigation.

    Melaye’s account: “I got a rousing welcome from Kabba to my home town on Friday and I know it angered the power that is in the state which mobilised for this assassination attempt on my life. At about midnight, we started hearing gunshots. They fired more than 200 rounds of bullet into the house. This attempt to kill me will not stop me from speaking the truth.”

    He continued: “If I speak the truth, I will die, if I lie, I will die. I’ve decided to speak the truth and die. I’m not afraid of death. I only respect men, I don’t fear them. I am championing an administrative cause. I will continue to speak and be the voice to the voiceless. I’m not deterred; I remain resolute to make Kogi better. Noting will stop me from coming home.”

    Melaye was in his country home at Ayetoro-Gbede in Ijumu Local Government Area for the Easter holiday when the attackers struck; and his house was reportedly “riddled with bullets while two of the vehicles parked in the estate were damaged.”  It is reassuring that the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Wilson Inalegwu, has set up an investigation committee headed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of operations to shed light on the dark operation.

    It is interesting that Melaye is trying to help the police do their job, but he is going about it in a characteristically noisy way.  He has accused Taufiq Isa, the Administrator of Ijumu Local Government, of sponsoring the attack, claiming that he was targeted because of his unrelenting condemnation of the state government.

    It is curious and ironic that Melaye also suspects the police in this matter.   He was quoted as saying: “The DPO did not come to my house until three hours later. Even the Area Commander in Kabba was not notified until I called the Commissioner of Police. I suspect a satanic collaboration between Taufiq Isa and the police in Aiyetoro because the duo held a meeting two days ago. Only God will protect us in this country but definitely not the police.”

    Since Melaye has reached this puzzling conclusion, the question must be asked: What does he want?  Considering his apparent influence in the Senate, perhaps he would get like-minded legislators to probe the issue, and create yet another distraction from the serious business of lawmaking.

     

  • Voting with their fists

    Ouch!, it’s happening faster than anyone envisaged. Hardball is particularly excited he cannot fathom how to broach this matter. Sages of the east used to say that nothing stays in situ. Another version posits that when an aberration lasts too long something happens. Yet another version entreats that just because you have not figured out a solution does not mean you are not sitting on top of it; mind you, ‘it’ being the solution and not the problem.

    So what’s all this about: simple all round the world, voters are turning to mobs and marching against their fast-fingered politicians. Two examples will suffice.

    First, in Ukraine recently, an anguished mob had laid siege to a government house, bearing a large waste bin. According to them, it was a suggestion that politicians have become so corrupt they belonged the bin.

    But one evening last week they thought to demonstrate their angst: they snapped one politician; suit, briefcase and all and dumped him into the large bin and went on to restrain him there, throwing dirt on him.

    But this is mild drama compared to the action of the ‘mob’ of Minna, Niger State. Salihu Adamu, a House of Representatives member (Bosso and Paiko Federal Constituency) was beaten to a coma by aggrieved youths of his constituency. He was only saved from being lynched by the police.

    As the story went, he had gone home for a political meeting when he was ordered to leave the venue. But before Adamu could react, one of the youths landed him a dizzying slap.

    Another followed with a punch in the stomach whereupon he slumped.

    Not done, it soon turned into a mob action as all the youths descended on him as if to get a piece of the action. By the time the police got to the scene, he was already unconscious. Adamu had to be rushed to a clinic in Minna from where he was transferred to Kaduna.

    This is not the first time. A couple of years ago, Auwalu Dahiru Saleh, another member of the House representing Katagum Federal Constituency in Bauchi State was given the same treatment as he travelled home on a condolence visit: he was beaten to stupor but for his security aides.

    According to his assailants, since after the general elections, he did not return to his constituency for about two years. He never made any impact on the community yet he had been collecting constituency funds, they alleged.

    Though Hardball condemns violence and jungle justice, it is obvious that voters are losing patience with those they vote into office and may be voting more and more with their fist in the years to come.

    MESSAGE: Voters seem to be saying: If you cannot hear, you surely can feel.

  • Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!

    In the halcyon days of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when it thought power sat well with it, no matter how procured, the slogan-and-response was thunderous: PDP … Power!

    Now, in the power wilderness, just for two years, and another kind of thunder is ravaging the party: Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!  The post-power PDP appears to have locked itself in that unenviable mystic plane, where it is self-fated to utter destruction, in the most brutal and spectacular of manners

    How did Hardball arrive at this rather grave conclusion?  Well, events of the last few days, aftermaths of a well-reported reconciliation meeting to fix the party, which former President Goodluck Jonathan arranged. Somewhat, PDP appeared even more irreconciled — or is it irreconcilable? — before the so-called reconciliation palaver.  Sad!

    Well, the brickbats have, to say the least, not been funny. For allegedly denying him the “right” to address the gathering as “national chairman”, Ali Modu Sheriff aka SAS, launched an early bazooka, that would have blown up everyone in the hall, even before the meeting folded up.

    He was the present real deal, he grumbled to the media. Jonathan was a loser and albatross, under who the party lost power, after 16 years.  So, how dare he prevent him from addressing the gathering — he, the saviour come to salvage the beleaguered party?

    Later he would tell both Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike and Ekiti Governor, Ayo Fayose, former sweet collaborators now turned bitter antagonists, they were free to leave the party, if they wouldn’t stop allegedly plotting to derail it.

    Then SAS’s atomic bomb, dropped on the PDP Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Jonathan allegedly collected a cool N50 million from Wike to organise the botched talk shop, wondering why such princely Rivers money should be blown on piffle!  That has sent the other side ga-ga!

    Wike growled: “Sheriff is a mole of the APC who is being sponsored by the Federal Government. They are sponsoring Sheriff because of the crisis in the APC.”

    Talk of clearing the speck in others’ eye, when yours was jammed with a log!

    Fayose bleated, through Lere Olayinka, his sidekick and alter-ego in speaking before thinking: “If Sheriff has taken his desperation to serve his paymasters in the APC to the level of accusing Jonathan of being bribed to organise a peace meeting for the PDP, there is no reason for any sane mind to continue to respond to the continuous advertisement of his political insanity.”

    Ouch!  But when did the uncouth Team Fayose start respecting anyone?  And ay, when did that team, doing its wild gutter talks, start discriminating between political sanity and insanity?

    But lest we forget: both Wike and Fayose, in their characteristic ‘unreflectiveness’, were boisterous champions of SAS before, as the Yoruba would say, the sweet song of yore became today’s hideous proverb!

    As for their allegation of APC manipulations, well you won’t put anything past anyone in the murky waters of Nigerian politics.  Still, these men should record their pro-SAS thunder of yore and their present anti-SAS bickering, play them before their own children, and see the innocent looks on their innocent faces!  Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!

    But APC will do well to learn from the PDP fate.  You don’t betray the trust of your people, run a once vibrant economy aground, make sleaze the only serious business of government and expect there won’t be stiff consequences!

    It would appear PDP would not rest until it thoroughly consumes itself — and just as well!

     

    Pee-Dee-Pee … Bedlam!

  • Mrs. Ikpeazu’s diktat

    hardball wagers that there is a monster in every woman which when unleashed, takes no prisoners. Though there is a sampling of Shakespeare here, Hardball takes the credit for this assertion. And we have in mind here, Mrs. Nkechinyere Ikpeazu, wife of the governor of Abia State. Nkechi is nowhere near the biblical monster known as Jezebel.NO, not at all. First, she probably hasn’t the liver and second, these are modern times that provide no accommodation for such absolute monarchy of the Old Testament era.

    Besides, Jezebel was, and probably remains in a class by herself in the dark art of sadism. She who wiped out a college of prophets without blinking and who sent the great Prophet Elijah fleeing deep into the wilderness.

    Of course Jezebel’s opus in wanton bloody-mindedness was her extirpation of Naboth. If you thought King Ahab, her husband was a bad guy then you didn’t know Jezebel. One of those days, Ahab was sore sullen and would not eat. What makes you so sad my Lord, Jezzy had enquired of her husband. Our annoying next door neighbor, Naboth would not allow me move him and extend my gardens, he told her.

    Well, enjoy your meal my Lord; it is a small matter I tell you, unless you are no longer the lord of this kingdom, Jezebel told Ahab. In a few days Naboth met a gruesome death in the city. And Ahab promptly possessed Naboth’s vineyard.  (for full story, see 1King 6 v.29).

    Hardball has related this tale just to prove that there is no justification whatsoever to compare anyone with the inimitable Queen Jezebel.

    It is just that Mrs. Ikpeazu’s behavior recently reminded us of this woman of the Bible. The wife of the Abia State governor had gone to a primary school to kick-off state’s free meal programme. As the report went, after the ceremony, the headmistress in her remarks appealed to the special guest to help put in a word about the backlog of salaries owed teachers.

    What temerity, how dare a miserable headmistress embarrass the government by making it known to the world that primary school teachers had not been paid for months! Before the hapless headmistress could say “a thousand apologies” she had found herself in a remote school where she morphed into a mere classroom teacher.

    Of course, in her rustic situation where light shines neither in the day nor night, she would never set her weary eyes on anyone that resembles a first lady not to mention mustering the guts to make a demand for salary.

    As we have said, Nkechi has just tried out a poor imitation of the ‘great’ Jezebel. Let’s say that if it’s not Jezebel, it cannot be Jezebel.

    And Hardball keeps wondering that if only governors’ wives would mind their home! Where were the education commissioner and the deputy governor when Madam was acting their roles?