The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Giving NDDC its due

    It’s never easy to run anything in the Niger Delta, especially if that thing is the Niger Delta Development Commission. It is designed as the big elephant of development, but it has operated as a cash cow for the corrupt.

    One of its great pratfalls has been patronage, and there lies the challenge of the new management. The Managing Director, Nsima Ekere, showed knowledge when he declared recently in Ondo State, that the NDDC will break from its inept tradition of fattening patrons at the expense of development. This is part of his management breath of visionary fresh air of rejigging the behemoth. Ekere declared those words in rage at a contractor who shirked his responsibility over a hostel project.

    Hear the MD: “Henceforth, projects will no longer be awarded as political patronage. With measures being put in place, such incidents will not happen in the new NDDC.”

    That is the sort of cash cow that cripples development in the Niger Delta. A lot has been written about the exploitation and rot in governance in the region. The NDDC was a sort of massive intervention in the area. But it has been a story of lots of money and many more poor.

    That is the vision of Ekere and it is not helped by the Federal Government that has shirked its responsibility to make Ekere work.

    Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo recently asked NDDC contractors to go back to site, and it turned out that some of them need their money to complete their projects. In a letter to the Senate, the NDDC boss noted that since the vice-president’s order, the agency’s office has been besieged with contractors who have not yet been paid. Meanwhile, the Federal Government owes NDDC N1.8 trillion, a huge sum that can help transform many projects from incompletion to squeaky clean.

    Senator Udo Udoma reminded lawmakers that it is a matter of law that the agency should get its money under the NDDC Act of 2000. The new board should be given the opportunity to succeed or fail on its own vision rather than fail on the burden of debt. Many state governments have failed in the region from the mismanagement of so much money.

    The irony of too little money will inevitably create the same results. This puts Ekere in the middle of two forces. One is probity, where he wants to run the system with due diligence and integrity. Second, he needs money to make that work. One plus one equals success. But if NDDC does not get its due, the NDDC management could have an excuse to fail.

    In his letter to the Senate, Ekere noted that “the Niger Delta Regional Development Master Plan has not been properly implemented, as such there has been no systemic or sustainable development of the region and this is reflected in the low quality of infrastructure deliverables that decay rapidly, poor socio-economic development of the people, and pipeline vandalism which further exacerbates our funding challenges.”

    That is what he is up against. If we need a working NDDC, we need to listen to him.

  • Obj Vs CAN

    Tornado Obj, the other day, rifled through the churches, upsetting a clearly winded Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).  The thing though about bitter truth is that no matter how much you grate, in agony or in distaste, that truth must be told, for your own good.

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to be sure, not exactly himself Mr. Squeaky Clean, in perceived corruption, cronyism and allied matters, nevertheless told Christendom Nigeria what they don’t ever want to hear: on corruption, the Nigerian Church has fallen short of its own moral glory.

    Like the Biblical equivalent, when God Almighty looked down and found everyone fallen short of glory, and the cleanest were but a filthy rag, what is left of the Nigerian Church, as far as corruption-tolerance is concerned, is nothing but a can of worms — every pun intended!

    Obasanjo just told Nigerian Christendom what everyone knows, and everyday tells the Church, though high pastors resort to sophistry to cover their shame (and further expose their moral nudity): though on corruption the Nigerian Church should have been the hallowed and revered partner of the Buhari Presidency in this life-threatening morass, it has chosen instead to be hollow and empty.

    The reaction of the leading lights of the church, to the Obasanjo brutal shellacking, has been predictable: crass finger-pointing.

    O, the guilty party are not the Catholics and the Orthodox, the earliest partakers of the  Christian grace, before the free-wheeling and prosperity-mouthing Pentecostals, who tend to be nothing but Pente-rascals!

    That might well be true.  CAN, under Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, was the Rasputin of the Jonathan era, with its free-wheeling sleaze.  Why, the man of God, and CAN’s revered president, had his own fair share of scandals: witness the Nigerian aircraft, caught in the vortex of the arms-cum-currency smuggling scandal in South Africa.

    The aircraft was traced back as Oritsejafor’s private jet.  Ay, the man of God claimed it was leased to some third parties, and all that.  Well, no one has disclaimed his claim, and he would appear on the clear on the legal front.

    But on the moral front, where the Church ought to play with messianic aggression, Oritsejafor didn’t exactly come out like the proverbial Caesar’s wife — that should be above all suspicion.

    Neither did CAN.  The last time Hardball checked, the Christian body maintained a shameful silence.  Perhaps, CAN was too busy “eating” under their adopted “Christian” president!  After all, it isn’t good table manners to talk while eating!

    Still, scapegoating the Pentecostals — as penterascal as they may be — is rich.  After the ouster of Jonathan and the advent of Buhari, Father Matthew Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, was a notable Catholic that tried to rattle-dazzle everyone, that Buhari should “forget the past”, simply because Jonathan had done a “fantastic” job!

    Despite all the flak the good bishop got from an outraged public, Hardball did not see him back down from that high horse, which temper, if not the exact intent, was perceived as corruption-friendly, if not outright tolerant — simply because the person, under fair strictures, was a Christian, and his presidency, a Christian presidency, whatever that means?

    Is that not the ultimate corruption of Christian thinking itself?

    Even Anthony Cardinal Okogie’s retort that Obasanjo was part of the evil he so much declaimed was neither here nor there.  Yes, Obasanjo grandstands a lot, on morality and allied matters, simply because  he is blessed with a captive but gullible audience.

    But his forte is real-politik, not morality.  The church can’t plead such luxury.

    Let Nigerian Christendom wake up to its moral and spiritual essence or, eternally keep mum.  It is the time to stand up and be counted — or the Nigerian Church should admit it is more a willful and merry part of the corruption problem,  than be part of a solution to it.

  • Meningitis: Many gyrations

    One day, one story is actually a common saying in the Southeast of Nigeria. It is often deployed to describe a recurring state of anxiety or a situation in a flux. Then again, it’s another way of describing dubiety; for instance, a man who bears endless disingenuous tales concocted to deceive and defraud. So a one-day-one-tale man is not considered a good man or a serious one for that matter.

    Hardball would liken frivolous tale-bearing to the matter of the meningitis scourge ravaging some states in the North of Nigeria today. Consider this first tale: the number one man in Zamfara State, Northwest Nigeria, the worst hit of all the states, Governor Abdulaziz Yari, having buried over 200 of his people apparently got thoroughly overwhelmed.

    Then he comes with a tale: “God is angry with Nigeria.” Speaking to correspondents in Aso Rock, Abuja after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, he was widely quoted to have said: “People have turned away from God and he has promised that if you do anyhow, you will see anyhow, that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned.”

    Hardball grants that the sight of numerous bodies being entombed in rapid succession as if Armageddon had come would unsettle even the bravest of men. So we allow that Yari may well be under an extraneous influence. But what do we make of the Federal Government’s take on the issue?

    Let us hear the Minister of State for Health, Mr. Osagie Ohanire: “In order to allay the fear of Nigerians, we want to make it clear that this is not a sign of the failing of system, it is a fact that nature played a very different stroke this time that caught everybody off guard.”

    It may be true that a different strain of the germ (Type C against Type A that was prevalent) struck this time, but it is said again that excuses are the cheapest commodities in Nigeria. It is said on the street that we can dredge up enough excuses to fill any void of failure no matter how wide or deep. And do not forget that excuses come in the form of tales.

    It is common knowledge that meningitis visits the North yearly during dry season, and the hotter the weather, the more likely that the disease would present. It is an opportunistic disease triggered by intense heat.

    If only anyone had been proactive all these years to introduce continuous education and awareness in the meningitis belt. If anyone had been prescient enough to set up some first aid centres and rapid response capabilities.

    If this year’s was an act of God, if it caught us by surprise, what tale shall we tell next year?

  • Senatorial chichidodos?

    You know of the bird, chichidodo?  In the fierce “civil war” among the first generation of Nigerian literati, one camp bombed the other as chichidodo — that pretentious bird that claims to hate filth but thrives on it.

    Those were the roaring 1970s, when the Nigerian university system had not been plagued by the rampaging military, who turned everything they touched into ash!

    The more Hardball thinks about it, the more he is convinced that the Senate, under Bukola Saraki, is some senatorial chichidodo (apologies to those warring literary titans). It craves respect. But its instinct is going back stuff, like the chichidodo to the faeces it claims to hate with a passion, that earns it nothing but citizen scorn and contempt.

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) Senate caucus reportedly told John Odigie-Oyegun, APC national chairman, that the Buhari executive should withdraw Saraki’s case before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), as some pre-condition for peace.

    Note, these blokes, so-called “progressive” senators, didn’t ask for swift but fair trial; and if Saraki is innocent, restore his honour.  All they want is a truncation.

    Would that be senatorial blackmail induced by culpable power delusion?  Or just a worse case of the guilty being afraid?

    Yet, in another breath, Senate President Saraki whines about how citizens don’t respect his assemblage, de jure the highest legislative chamber in the land, but de facto, widely perceived as a chamber of one-day-one-racket.

    But how are citizens supposed to respect a chamber that gives the sorry impression that though its members are bivouacked in that chamber by our votes, they are nonetheless sworn to acting against the Jeremy Bentham noble dictate of the greatest happiness of the greatest number?

    Besides, how can a serious chamber, a modern equivalent of the much revered Areopagus of Ancient Athens, play the doomed role of the heady fly that often got buried with the corpse?

    Whatever charges Saraki faces with the CCT, he allegedly committed as an individual.  He certainly had no senatorial input, into making his choices. The charges dated back to years before this eighth Senate, which is seriously baiting the dubious distinction as the worst Senate in Nigerian history.

    On the Saraki case, it started with what it clearly felt was intimidation — clearing out of the chamber for solidarity appearance with Saraki at the CCT. In their thinking perhaps, that was enough to terrify everyone and terminate the trial. The Senate of the Federal Republic was angry!

    That didn’t wash.

    After that, this brazen blackmail — spring Saraki from CCT, or no legislative dice!  And if that bluff is called?  They would shun what they are voted — and handsomely paid — to do?

    Did it ever occur to these senators that they project a body language — if not actual acts — of being chummy with corruption, the public be damned? And if you work that actively against the decent grain, why would anyone respect you?

    Ironically, Saraki was right: the Senate is a key democratic institution.  In fact, with the House of Representatives, it most symbolises democracy; for it is peopled by supposed people’s representatives that have clear empathy with their electors.

    When, however, that body behaves as though it came from Mars, and had nothing in common with its electors, it only shapes its own irrelevance.

    In another two years, the eighth Senate would have been history. So, these members are dispensable. But their less-than-stellar conduct risk gravely devaluing the Senate, as an institution, in the estimation of right-thinking persons.

    That is when the full price of this current rascality would mature.  By that time, members of the eighth Senate would have buzzed after the Saraki rot.  But it is the Senate’s reputation, as a democratic institution, that would be buried with the folly.

    Talk of senatorial chichidodos!

  • Mighty network, puny subscriber

    Today, it is a tale of brazen corporate theft.

    Telephone Subscriber, 08023596231  (an Airtel line), on March 15, at around 8:30 am, had replied to a text, from a Glo line, 09099879033.  The phone indicated it was an MMS (multi-media service), which would normally attract a higher charge, though the text’s length seemed within the normal SMS (short message service), which costs N4.  The phone’s Airtel account balance was N17.

    Pronto, the government magic — pardon, telco magic — began!  With a buzz, the network removed the first N4, though the message was still in transit.  After some two-minute interval, buzz — and off went another N4.  The message was still transiting.

    Two more buzzes, and N4, in two installments, vanished again.  That left a balance of N1 and some coins.  Still, the message was as stationary as the sun, rooted to the same spot.

    But then, came the clincher: there isn’t enough money to fund the transaction.  So Subscriber 08023596231 must borrow some credit!  And if he didn’t?  Well, his N16 was gone, but his transaction remained uncompleted, though the mighty Airtel had paid itself for service not rendered.  Mighty network, puny subscriber!

    Pray, what sort of voodoo business is this, when networks fall over themselves to steal from their subscribers — systemically (it’s “pay as you go”: so you pay in advance, and your account is at the network’s mercy); and systematically (it is routinely programmed stealing).

    As at the time Hardball was telling this outrageous tale, Airtel had paid itself.  In the cold anonymity of cyber space, the money was gone, leaving the subscriber with the cold carcass of un-rendered service — and an impotent rage!

    The artificial intelligence of Airtel’s machine was smart enough to know the service charge, and to snap it up.  But it became dumb and obtuse, when it came to rendering service for money earned — more of swindled!

    This thievery has become so routine, among all of the networks, one but wonders if earnings-by-programmed- stealing is not, for them, a deliberate line of income.

    And in all of these grand heists, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the supposed regulators, snoozes and snores, while these corporate robbers feed, with manic zeal, on their subscriber-victims!  From declaring you had subscribed to services you never demanded, in the worse tradition of the corporate Hobson’s choice, to deducting from your account at will, it’s a thieving bazaar in Nigeria’s telecoms sector!

    Well, though the level of theft from 0802359623 is puny (N16), Hardball calls for NCC investigation; and ensure Airtel reimburses the subscriber, since it never rendered any service.

    Talk of corporate spiritual poverty!

    •This article was first published on march 16, 2017

  • IBB, what a drag!

    Trust pristine reggae, with its gripping pathos and deep philosophy.

    So remember Sonya Spence — she of the Jet Plane fame, legendary Jamaican and lusty love crooner of the 1970s?  Remember her love ditties, in one of which she sang: “It’s such a drag to be alone …”

    If you don’t remember Sonya, queen of love reggae, you sure must remember Jimmy Cliff, of the uncountable hits: House of Exile, Sitting in Limbo, The Harder They Fall, Many Rivers to Cross, I’m Born to Win, Struggling Man, etc.

    He too, in Many Rivers to Cross, sang: “It’s a drag to be on your own …”

    Hardball isn’t doing some foray into reggae music.  He is rather applying the concept of the “drag” into the odyssey of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria’s self-named first — and only —  military president.

    Because of the choices the General made in the past, he somewhat reminds Hardball of that Yoruba quip: tarry too long in the bush latrine, and all shades of grumpy flies are yours for company.

    Well, maybe those unfamiliar with Yoruba culture but intimate with William Shakespeare, would recognise that dire warning, put more starkly: the evil that men do live after them, but the good deeds are interred with their bones.

    Still, what if you live long enough to witness contemporary history pass its piecemeal judgment, as some co-players start pushing out their memoirs?  Then, yours could well be: the evil — and good — that men do, live right with them!

    That is IBB’s fate; and his heart could well leap into his mouth, each time another colleague comes out with his own version of IBB’s long, winding transition programme that ironically didn’t deliver life, for democracy (as promised); but blight, for IBB’s once-shining reputation.

    From what newspapers have reported so far, Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi’s memoirs, Vindication of a General, is for IBB, another bad news. First Bamaiyi, himself among the terrible khaki boys that held Nigeria by the scruff, at the zenith of their power hubris, gave his former commander-in-chief’s wayward transition programme, a stiff but vicious jab: he charmed and deceived everyone (and maybe himself too).  But it was a costly sham.

    That notorious fact is hardly a secret.

    But even that sham led to the most gargantuan political swindle of all time, at least by Nigerian standard: the IBB annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential election, which Basorun Moshood Abiola (God bless his cheated soul!) won, before IBB and his power gang started speaking in tongues!

    Though IBB back then somewhat cowed and coaxed a section of the media to refer to MKO as “presumed winner”, in yet another lexical swindle, Bamaiyi, in his new book, confirmed MKO won the election square; and IBB had absolutely no reason to cancel the results.

    So, why did he?  He suggested he had an unwritten pact with the late Sani Abacha, IBB’s Defence minister, who overthrew the pitiable Ernest Shonekan and his sorry Interim National Government (ING).

    So, to make way for the Khalifa, if the Bamaiyi supposition is true, IBB nearly set his own country on fire?  Stranger than fiction, but IBB only symbolised the terrible hubris of military rule.

    Tough luck for him, though: all the dire verdicts are coming out while he is still alive and very much around.  How sweet would it have been if the man, who once boasted of his absolute domination of his environment, had made far better choices?

    That should teach dire lessons to those prancing around the power chamber today, as if there would be no tomorrow.

    IBB — what a drag!

  • IMF’s jaded litany

    Some days are plain, outright more complicated than the others. One means this in every respect of life, but Hardball situates it of course to his daily drudgery of churning out this stuff you have before you right now. In one of those doggone days, to find a suitable headline could cost one the entire day.

    Then piecing together this hoary piece would sometimes drag to what seems like eternity; sapping all of one’s energy and creative juices. This is one of such days. To debate the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be quite daunting of course for obvious reasons. Then to delve into the arcana of IMF-speak would challenge most non-members of this global money cult.

    Consider this quote from the present IMF assessment of Nigeria’s economy in which the Fund urges Nigeria’s government to: “Remove the remaining restrictions and multiple currency practices, thus unifying the foreign exchange market and helping regain investors’ confidence…this should be supported by tighter monetary policy and fiscal consolidation to anchor inflation expectations and to limit the risk of exchange rate overshooting, as well as structural reforms to improve competitiveness.”

    As you can see, in the first place, IMF and its ilk don’t speak in English. That would be beneath their rarefied minds. They speak in coded econometrics and digitalised sound bites. This way simpletons like Hardball cannot deign to understand, not to speak of interpreting them.

    This must have presented Hardball’s first mental block that would not let him get off the headline blocks. But back to the story, we were going to headline it “Wetin IMF they talk sef?” But this would be too pedestrian to command any consideration of the issues raised here. We would then have embarked on a fruitless effort amounting to sound and fury. (As if this would not amount to naught, anyway).

    Gush! So what really is all this extended ramble about; what is Hardball’s point? Well, he thinks IMF’s litany about Nigeria and developing country’s economy is jaded. He thinks IMF is one-track minded about its prescriptions all the time.

    It’s always currency, currency; about allowing the currency to float even with no productive foundation for it to anchor on?

    Second, IMF is forever and callously pushing for increased taxes in horrifically impoverished environment where chicken feed salaries don’t even come anymore. Who would school these skinheads that our government do not really suffer from a lack of liquidity but transactional deficiencies (I hope I got that right?), or to put it in my words, it is the application of funds that is deficient.

    Finally, Hardball prays that someday, IMF would be kind enough to appeal to Britain, US and major European states to be kind enough to repatriate billions of dollars of stolen funds, some of which are stashed in some IMF outlets and channels.

    Yes hand back the loot, IMF!

  • After everything, senatorial blackmail?

    After everything, is Nigeria’s highest lawmaking chamber plumbing the nadir of cheap blackmail?  That would achieve new lows in legislative rascality.   Or what else do you call the latest threat from the Senate?

    Because President Muhammadu Buhari has refused to sack Ibrahim Magu, forced Col. Hameed Ali, Nigeria Customs Service comptroller-general, to appear before the all-mighty Senate in his uniform and throw David Babachir Lawal to senatorial shirks, the now all-baleful body is threatening to abandon its duty by law, by refusing, for two weeks, to screen new resident electoral commissioners before it!  Who does that?

    There is something to be said for respecting state institutions, particularly in a delicate democracy like ours.  So, Hardball would naturally had clambered on the Senate board; and taken up its case, rippling and swearing against disrespect to the highest legislative chamber in the land.

    Hardball still subscribes to this ethos: for democracy to grow and deepen, there must be respect for democratic institutions, for which the Senate holds a prime place.

    But respect is reciprocal.  In the best tradition of presidential democracy, all the three arms of the government — the executive, the legislature and the judiciary — must respect one another.  It is on this plank of mutual respect that separation of power and checks-and-balances are hinged.

    Not so explicit, but fundamentally implicit, is good faith.  As that trite judicial quip states: he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.  And, in any case, the Senate must now have learnt that much is achieved in a democracy, not by naked power but by soft power.  Mutual respect leads to mutual reasoning, reasonable persuasion and final agreement.

    The Senate, as at now, may fish for pity; or even muster some appeal to threat.  But these fallacies won’t help it.  Only severe self-examination would, for that chamber has no one to blame but itself.  It has willfully failed to earn others’ respect.

    The Senate wants Ibrahim Magu sacked for doing his job, the way the Senate should be doing its.  It thunders and raves on that account, pointing at a controversial report by the DSS.

    But lo!  Magu, in the cause of his legitimate work, is pushing some of its members for prosecution, for alleged corruption.  So, it appears, all the bluff and bluster to stop Magu is  nothing but illegitimate state privilege to stonewall a legitimate process.  How does the Senate earn respect with such conduct?

    Like Magu, like Ali.  Ali must wear uniform to come before it, a diktat not backed by any law.  For forcing a stalemate, the president must sack Ali, just because the one who chose to play the legislative bully couldn’t have its way.

    But it also turned out that some folks, linked with the Senate, had tried to smuggle in imported auto without paying customs duty!  Again, state bluff for private roguery.  Is that how to earn respect?

    Let the Senate put its house in order, ooze self-discipline and shun legislative outlawry — by the way, for a legislative chamber, the most violent of contradictions.

    Then, and only then, can it make a sound and sane case for itself.  This latest attempt at legislative blackmail can only send it plunging even deeper, in the estimation of right-thinking people.

  • An Emirates misadventure

    It is obviously a blowout. It is a misadventure that has stuck in the throat like a stalwart bone. The type often requiring surgery to extricate, but this time, even the procedure may turn out to be more complicated than the ailment.

    What’s this riddle about, why is Hardball speaking in parables? Well, a few months ago, our beloved telecoms giant, MTN, had consummated a marketing promotions deal with our beloved English Premier League side, Arsenal Football Club. The number one communications firm in Nigeria had tied up a deal supposedly to ride on the back of the English club to reach the heart of its subscribers and perhaps win a few more.

    Nothing wrong with this transaction which must have set MTN back by a tidy heap of pound Sterling, but Hardball is mesmerised, if not piqued by some small aspects of this matter.

    First, in the radio commercial blitz accompanying the promotion, an English commentator dramatises an Arsenal move in a game starring its chief striker, Olivier Giroud. He raises his voice very high and comes to an ecstatic crescendo!

    But if Arsenal and its star men were pulling their weight, performing at their peak, this would have been a sweet song to many. But the truth is that Arsenal is at the nadir of its life in a long while yet. Worse, Giroud, the star of the irksome commercial, is currently ‘enjoying’ his worst season.

    It is bad enough that he has been sidelined as a front-man by a midfielder, what is going for him now is his luxuriant beards and verdant backside. Plus the fact that he is more popular for his exploits off the pitch.

    Further, for the first time in about a decade, Arsenal now faces the gloomy prospect of finishing outside the top four in the EPL. Recall, (as if anyone has forgotten) Arsenal’s humiliation in the hands of Bayern Munich – 10 – 2 goals over two legs. Exactly the same miserable score line last season. This suggests a dying club isn’t it?

    Well not exactly so for MTN. But what does it betoken that a supposedly major club has no major silverware in 10 seasons? Yet Nigeria’s number one corporate entity ups and signs a multi-million worth of contract with this picaninny club whose coach is now heckled every week.

    It must be said that MTN is not alone in this marketing rascality. The roll call includes Airtel, Glo, First Bank, Nigeria Breweries, Sterling Bank, Chi Limited and Guinness, to name a few. While our big corporates ship coal to Newcastle, Nigeria’s football league suffers extreme neglect. It is not even on television!

    Let us concede that Arsenal’s half-ass performance may be good for MTN strategy, but that Giroud’s commercial grates badly, please.

  • ‘Ali mon go’ –  2

    In 1978, was Ali mon go – 1.

    A certain Col. Ahmadu Ali, played the Nigerian version of “Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher” (the unflattering ode to the late Margaret Thatcher, later Britain’s first female prime minister but then, a young minister); who removed social benefits, such as free milk to pupils in British public schools.

    Ali, as Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo’s federal Education commissioner, hiked the daily food ticket, in Nigerian universities, three-fold from 50 kobo (the going rate during the halcyon days under Gen. Yakubu Gowon) to N1.50k, under Obasanjo’s belt-tightening regime.

    The powerful National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), under the heavily bearded and fearsomely charismatic Segun Okeowo (of blessed memory), would have none of that nonsense.

    Enter, the nationwide and bloody “Ali Must Go” protests and riots, that claimed lives of students from the University of Lagos (UNILAG) and the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU).  It also claimed the UNILAG vice-chancellorship of Prof. Jacob F. Ade-Ajayi, the iconic historian of blessed memory.

    Well, the market women, sympathetic to the protests, dubbed it “Ali mon go” — and mass mobilised for his sack!

    Incidentally, Ali didn’t “go”, for his boss didn’t sack him.  Indeed, he managed a second coming, as civilian President Obasanjo’s “garrison commander” and chairman, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the heady days towards the 2007 “do-or-die” elections (Obasanjo’s exact words!)

    Now, 39 years later in 2017, Ali must go – 2 is brewing.  And it is testimony to its lack of popular appeal that no excited market folks are re-branding it in their own lingo.

    It has to do with Col. Hameed Ali, the retired soldier named as Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service.  The Senate had gone into a graceless tango with him to wear his uniform.  The man demurred and a shouting clang ensued.

    It ended with a see-saw stalemate — seeming victory for the man; but a defeat for the Senate?  Don’t bet on anything.

    Still, an infuriated Senate, growling every inch like a sour loser, branded the man unfit to occupy public office, and called for his sack — its democratic opinion, to which it has a right.

    But the president, who appointed Ali?  He has treated the whole drama with detached and bemused silence — and just as well!

    For Hardball, however, the most dramatic lesson from the Senate-Ali rumble is the public’s scornful disinterest.

    While Ali mon go – 1 fired popular imagination, Ali must go – 2 appears met with a literal yawn.  Is that a function of how low the Senate, under Bukola Saraki, has dipped into odium and public contempt?

    Maybe.  Maybe not.  Perhaps after this, if it is not to eat crow, the Senate would do well to pick its fights; and not just blunder into orders it has no power to enforce.