The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Seller’s remorse

    It doesn’t require any expertise in economics or money management to know that when there is a serious debate as to whether a country should sell its assets or not, in order to get out of the woods, it means that country is in a serious money mess.

    President Muhammadu Buhari was quoted as saying in New York recently: “It is a disgrace that a minimum of 27 states, out of the 36 that we have in Nigeria, can’t pay salaries.”  He added: “We got into trouble because we did not save for the rainy day…we did a lot of damage to ourselves by not developing infrastructure when we had money.”

    An alarming report said the government’s plan to exit the recession got the backing of the National Economic Council (NEC), and includes assets sales, advance payment of licence renewals, infrastructure concessioning and implementation of fiscal stimulus.  The NEC, the country’s highest economic decision-making body chaired by the vice president, includes governors and key ministers in charge of the economy and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor. So, its decision and the direction of its decision are worth noting and examining.

    It is also noteworthy that some experts and visible politicians have suggested the sale of some of the country’s assets, arguing that this will provide the cash to reflate the economy, reopen factories and put money in the people’s pockets. In this camp are business mogul Aliko Dangote, former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor and the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, and Senate President Bukola Saraki.

    But Labour has rubbished the idea, saying it will only further fatten a few with the wealth of the collective, and further pauperise and pulverise the people. NLC President Ayuba Wabba argued: “There can be coexistence with people coming to invest side by side and for the government to strategically hold on to these assets. NLC is totally against the sale of these assets in the name of trying to address a short-time need to address the challenges we are passing through.”  In other words: Must we sell?

    If the sale of national assets is carried out as planned, it is more likely to result in seller’s remorse, and less likely to result in buyer’s remorse. In other words, long after the buyers have bought the assets and are laughing all the way to the bank, the sellers, meaning the country, will keep wondering whether selling was the right decision or the correct choice.

  • Rice-for-child swap on the rice (sorry, rise)

    The old line in the mid-80s was a-rice o compatriots! Then essential commodities, most notably, rice was so scarce that each time Nigerians heard the word rise, in any conversation, speech or even the national anthem, they would come to attention, if only to find out the next location for the rationed sale of rice.

    There was a famous cartoon in one national newspaper of that era, which depicted guests apparently at a seminar snoring away even as the speaker pranced and puffed, presenting his speech. The great moment came when the speaker said: “In conclusion, all these would give rise…” and pronto, the snoozing audience came alive exclaiming: “Rice? Did he just say rice?! Where?!”

    Today, Nigeria’s rice conundrum has shifted another gear and downhill it seems to throttle. Two grievous incidents happened last week to buttress this point.

    Inside Government House, Borno State, Northeast of Nigeria, there was a near-fatal shootout as policemen and soldiers struggled over control of bags of rice meant for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Also in Borno, some officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) were apprehended attempting to re-bag rice meant for IDPs with a view to diverting them.

    But all these would be mild drama compared to the event last Sunday at Singer Market, Fagge Local Government Area of Kano State. A man identified as Mallam Yusuf Bala procured a bag of rice from Alhaji Suleiman Bagudu, a rice dealer in the market and reportedly left his five-year-old son at the rice dealer’s. He had promised to dash home for some more money to make payment. He never returned for his boy.

    When he was traced to his residence, he confessed he was impoverished, thus had to devise such a means to find sustenance for his family. This trick is not novel by any means. A woman had played it out quite successfully in Akure, Ondo State recently.

    With the strictures at the land borders to curb rice importation and attendant massive smuggling, it has become apparent that Nigeria, the giant of Africa boasting of a population of over 170 million, can hardly produce one tenth of her most important staple food. The prices of the imported commodity have continued to skyrocket, almost jumping out of the reach of the common man. A 50 kg bag, which sold for a little below N10, 000 about a year ago, has almost double, depending on the city you are.

    One worries that so much hoopla has been made about local production of rice; in fact, the last government had claimed it was going to achieve local sufficiency by 2015. Yet hardly can local rice be found in any significant quantity in any part of the country. So much for diversification of the economy, food security and the rediscovery of Nigeria’s rice belt, which had been the buzz phrases in the past few years?

    We knew about crude oil swap deals; now we have rice for child swaps; what next?

    • This article was first published on June 20, 2016.

  • Peace be unto you

    How did Patience Jonathan, wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, come to be known as Mama Peace? Well, it all happened almost three years ago on December 13, 2013. Her husband was in power and had power. The occasion was the launch of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme Maternal and Child Health (SURE –P MCH) otherwise known as MAMA Project. Mrs. Jonathan announced her new name to a probably bemused audience at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    Mrs. Jonathan declared: “My name is no more Patience but now Mama Peace because I believe that without peace, there will be no more women, no more children and no more health sector. Without peace, the international community will be afraid to come and invest in our country.”

    She reinforced her new-found song on “peace evangelism.” The woman who, up till that point, was known for her turbulence also preached and prayed: “Peace is from the heart and not from the tongue or lips; not what you say but what is in you. We pray for genuine peace because peace is the key to our arriving at our desired destination as a nation.”

    It was the year-end season, which is traditionally a time for New Year resolutions, and Mrs. Jonathan’s name-change suggested that she intended to turn over a new leaf. At the time, the event was heartwarming because of the promise of change. However, the public was disappointed as the publicised renaming changed nothing and Mama Peace continued to live up to her reputation as a woman of war.  Mama Peace is still fighting. It is a new battle, triggered by fresh developments over a year after her husband was voted out of power. This time, the war is about her money, millions and millions of dollars, which she claimed to have earned but which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has alleged to be ill-gotten wealth. There are other corruption-related allegations against her.

    So, Mama Peace is not at peace and cannot be at peace. There are loud and clear public criticisms against her, following the allegations of messy millions and other messes. She must be feeling really messed up.  It’s a mess she needs to clear, and it remains to be seen how she will do so.

    Today, more than ever before, it is a good time to greet her with those familiar words of good wishes: Peace be unto you.

  • O dear, Dame the game!

    Patience Jonathan, the Dame of Goodluck Jonathan’s tragic presidency, has done it again.  She just hit another bull’s eye — possibly in infamy.

    Indeed, if ever her husband gets to write a memoir on his presidential years, and he mustered enough honesty and candour, he would confess wifey was his own home-made weapon of mass destruction (WWF) — and this is real; not some fib conjured up by the duo of George Bush the Son and Tony Blair to unhorse that brutal despot, Saddam Hussein, who had it coming, anyway!

    When President Jonathan made the most monumental blunder of his presidency, dilly-dallying over the seized Chibok girls, it was this same Dame that decided his fate.

    First, she reportedly pushed and promoted the cynicism that the so-called kidnap was a bogey, by enemies, to discredit her husband. When that turned out to be fatal illusion, she carried out an inquisition, on live TV, to put the Chibok school girls’ school principal on media trial.

    However, she ended up putting herself on a macabre trial.  Its offensive but lasting image?  The satanically funny “Dia ris God oooooooooooooo!” TV debacle, which instantly became the butt of global jokes!

    That proved her husband’s nemesis; and from that time, it appeared goodbye to the presidency, as the presidential couple’s worst nightmare came to pass.

    Now, the grand dame is back again, on a grand scheme, as grand nemesis to hubby, on the anti-corruption front, even where many were prepared to give poor Goodluck the benefit of the doubt!

    Like someone suffering from a spell, Dame Jonathan, by laying claim to some US $ 31 million frozen money, appears tightening the noose on the neck of corrupt elements in her husband’s presidency.

    She virtually owned up, under the instrumentality of an affidavit, to be privy to opening voodoo accounts. In claiming ownership of the trove, she even alleged sharp practices by the proxy given the errand to open the account. It is on account of such alleged sharp practices that she is suing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    Well, it’s all in the hands of the court now.  Still, it might be interesting to know how Dame the Game would prove she came about that grand dough!

    She may well provide evidence to confound her critics, particularly the ne’er-do-wells (like Hardball, not a few would chuckle!), ever ready to believe the worst of this otherwise hardworking, gentle and industrious woman.

    Who knows?  Maybe Dia Ris God Plc was, after all, a billion-Naira, money-spinning corporation; and, by its sheer business adventure, service innovation and acute marketing genius, has bragging rights over that trove. It could, after all, be the result of its fair and legitimate sweat.

    If that were so, why not make a sensational claim, with malice to no one, in the presence of all?

    Well, that had better be!  Otherwise, as Patience’s Chibok  debacle on TV buried her husband’s presidential encore, so might this rash claim bury whatever remains of her husband’s reputation and integrity.

    But we await the court’s decision.  Let the court do justice to all!

  • TELCOS terrorism

    Have you ever been on the highway driving home after a dog’s day at work and your phone rings? You peek at it. It’s an unknown number and you ignore it. It rings off and rings again. You take another look; again an unknown number but a rather peculiar one. It’s a ‘mature’ number as a friend of Hardball would term it: In the sense that it belongs to the first or second generation series of numbers.

    And it keeps ringing relentlessly as if you are about to miss a major job if you ignored it. You reach out and manage to pick it and put it on speaker; disregarding the traffic code against fiddling with the phone while driving. And what do you get? A recording – someone desperately trying to sell you something.

    Gosh! Your brains literally explodes in ire and you reach out quickly to shut down the irritant; you miss with the first jab and the second … your car swerves a little. You ignore the phone; reclaim your wheels as the promo continues to rant searingly running its full course. Now you are probably boiling over and cursing furiously under your breath. You feel so thoroughly ravaged and your blood pressure may have gone up one notch.

    There are as many scenarios as there are GSM phone users in Nigeria. The telecommunications companies have grown from feeding frenzy on us their helpless game to the realms of terrorism. When this ravenously bad habit started about four years ago, it was enough to stay with those text-and-win promos.

    You must remember that crazy era when some of the telcos offered SUVs and millions of naira to be won if you recharged. That epoch ended when one of the firms lost its mind and offered us an aeroplane. RECHARGE-AND-WIN-AN-AEROPLANE was the promo that ‘killed’ all promos. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) eventually got shame-faced enough to snap from its slumber and tried to moderate the madness.

    No sleek-fingered telco has offered us a Concorde jet ever since but they have not stopped pecking at us like vultures upon a dying game. Hardball chose to keep his treasure of short messages from his service providers and in just one month of August, he got no fewer than 100 messages from each of the three lines he uses. The barrage of messages is a curious admixture of picking my pockets and obtaining by all manner of unscrupulous guises.

    Here are a few examples: Dateline August 11, 2016, time 20:33: Dear customer, you have successfully subscribed to MTNsports EPL and N50.00 deducted from your account. Your service will be renewed on 2016-08-18. To cancel, text stop EPL to 5836. Enjoy!

    One never remembered subscribing to the above and even if perchance I had been tricked into it as they are wont to do these days, I never received one word of information on the EPL game.

    But every week one gets the notification for renewal and deduction of N50.00. This is just one example. There are so many more from all the firms.

    If this is not criminality bordering on terrorism, then what is it?

  • This hotel named Chelsea

    It is unclear why the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the corruption-tainted former governor of Bayelsa State, named the hotel Chelsea. The name, of course, evokes thoughts of the well-known Chelsea Football Club, which competes in the Premier League of England. Perhaps Alamieyeseigha was a fan of the English professional football club based in Fulham, London.

    Another possibility, of course, is that the ex-governor might have been a fan of Chelsea London Dry Gin. Maybe he loved his gin.

    Anyway, he named this Abuja-based hotel Chelsea. Of course, there was nothing wrong with that naming. But certainly there was a lot wrong with how Alamieyeseigha came to own the hotel. Indeed, his ownership of the hotel was a wrong among several wrongs. Chelsea Hotel was linked with stolen money, that is, money stolen from Alamieyeseigha’s oil-rich state by Alamieyeseigha.

    Before the unexemplary Nigerian politician died suddenly in October 2015, he had been stripped of some of his stolen assets and some of his assets acquired by stealing, which included the hotel.

    Now this alarming September 5 report: “Almost seven years after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) handed over the N2.8billion Chelsea Hotel to the government of Bayelsa State, the hitherto money-spinning edifice is rotting away in Abuja.”  According to the report: “A Federal High Court, Lagos in 2007 ordered the forfeiture of the hotel by Alamieyeseigha after the ex-governor was sentenced for corruption. Besides the hotel, the EFCC sold other Alamieyeseigha’s assets in Nigeria and realised N3, 128, 230, 294.83billion; $441,000; E7, 000 and £2,000.”

    The report continued: “The money was remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in accordance with the law, for onward delivery to the state government as ordered by the court. Former EFCC Chairman Mrs. Farida Waziri on September 7, 2009 handed over the hotel to ex-Governor Timipreye Sylva in Abuja. The thinking was that it would be a source of revenue for the state.”

    On the contrary, the hotel has become a source of embarrassment not only to the state, but also to the country. The report said: “Seven years after the asset was returned to the state government, the hotel has become a haven for miscreants, men of the underworld, rodents and reptiles. Shady activities are being perpetrated at the abandoned hotel, which poses danger to some shopping malls and banks in the Central Business District of Abuja.”

    Who is to blame for this scandalous absurdity?

  • Now, wonder boy joins the big boys

    Scant four years ago, he was painting the Kadet FIFA World Cup red with goals.  Now, he has joined the big boys.  Are we having a sneak preview of the next global  wonder kid of football, right out of these shores?

    That question is definitely not a misnomer, and Nigeria and Manchester City FC of England starlet Kelechi Iheanacho is the exciting answer.

    Against Tanzania, on national duties, after the umpteenth heroics of the Tanzanian goalkeeper, Iheanacho belted in a missile from just outside the 18-yard box.  It was a tribute to clinical shooting, in the best tradition of the game.  Even the CNN swoons!

    In a poll rating the best goals in global country pairings, Iheanacho emerged tops, virtually by miles.  The poll awarded him 65 per cent — that meant almost seven out of every 10 polled saluted the sheer genius and class of that goal.

    The closest look-in was Cote d’Ivoire’s Jonathan Koddjila, who found the net with an amazing bicycle kick, in his country’s opening goal, in its 1-1 draw with Sierra Leone.  But a mere 17 per cent (less than two from every 10) thought it was great — not because it wasn’t great per se, but because Iheanacho’s belter was simply out of this world!

    Others mentioned: Sergio Diaz of Real Madrid (11 per cent) and Fernando Camilo of Brazilian club, Botafogo (7 per cent).  Now, if it is reckoned that Europe and South America dictated the pace of global football, leaving Africa to sheepishly follow, Iheanacho’s feat would appear to sink even deeper.

    Amazingly, when an Iheanacho struts his skills for motherland, everybody cheers: no one cares where he comes from.  No hate projections.  No senseless bigotry.  No annoying underplaying of his achievement.  Everyone just rises and cheers and salutes and hails in sheer ecstasy!

    His team too, the new Super Eagles that German, Gernot Rohl, is rebuilding:  no one is querying the motive of the coach for starting Iheanacho, ahead of more experienced hands.  Everyone just salutes the brilliance of the young lad.

    By the way, with Alex Iwobi, Nigeria team mate and Arsenal of England starlet, Iheanacho has just been rated among the world under-20 top 50 players.  That is talent, nurtured into excellence.  That would appear Nigeria’s emerging story on the football pitch, particularly with the sole Olympic bronze Nigeria’s team won at the Rio Olympics.

    So, why is the situation different and dismal on the political field?  Bad faith!  Everybody believes everybody is fake because by their mindset, anyone couldn’t have been otherwise!  Ah, political nihilism never gets so rampant!

    So, instead of quiet thinking for results, howling at sweet failure would do.  Instead of empathy and understanding, cynicism is it.  Instead of cultivated reason, raw emotion is the preferred choice!

    Still, in the midst of all the bedlam, the quiet feat of Iheanacho ought to be a penetrating national lesson.  Here was a boy, rough gold to be sure, shipped abroad.  But in less than four years, he is glittering so much the world cannot but take note.

    More success ahead, Kelechi, even if your road gets rougher!  But your country must take a cue from the spirit that drives you.

    Welcome to the world of the big boys — but the lesson is simple: hard work and good faith pays.

    Nigerians could learn a lot from that, even as they grapple the current doldrums.

  • Benue: The biometrics of ghosts

    Can it be said that Nigeria is suffering from ghost trouble; especially the kind of ghosts that ‘work’ in government offices across the country? Our ‘worker-ghosts’ may have done much damage to our psyche that our leaders act like they have lost their marbles. An entire bureaucracy to manage our unyielding ‘ghosts’ is spawning.

    So very often our finance ministers in the attempt to impress us would announce to the world how they saved N100 billion from busting the ghouls living in the crevices of Nigeria’s rambling federal establishments.

    It has happened so many times we can actually term it a conundrum. Recall that former minister Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala did not stop regaling us with stories of her encounters with her civil service ghosts. She would tell us how many of them she had exorcised and how she had turned our spooky adversity to gains.

    To be fair, she even introduced the service-wide biometric capture. While she never reported that she managed to manacle any ghosts, she presented like she had wiped out the fiends and she was full of glorious song and dance.

    Just when we thought that the sepulchral entities had been exterminated by the old regime, we may have rejoiced too soon. The ruling finance minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has simply dusted the scrap sheets of her predecessor, it seems. Every fortnight she not only tells us she has retrieved huge billions from the ghost-infested federal service; she has taken the fight one notch up. Over 20,000 ghosts (workers) have been apprehended, she said. They have been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.

    This must be a wonderland where ‘ghosts’ can be identified, arrested, held in police cells, arraigned and probably jailed. It is also a fantasy land where battling with ‘ghosts’ is ticked off as achievements of government. It may not be out of place to set up a department in charge of cleansing the system of ‘ghosts’. We can call it ‘Ghost Unit’.

    If you think you have heard all the ghoulish tales in Nigeria, then you may want to try this Benue story for your delight. A few weeks ago, the governor of Benue State in Nigeria’s middle belt, Mr. Samuel Ortom, inaugurated a 10-man salary verification committee to fish out ‘ghost-workers’.

    This is the second committee he has set up since he took office last year for the same purpose. According to the ghost-buggered governor, the biometric verification conducted earlier was not satisfactory as the bloated wage bill remained. But he is perspicacious enough to understand that “there could not be ‘ghost-workers’ without syndicates backing them.” It is a three-month long assignment and the governor urged committee members to be “down to earth.”

    Hardball thinks they may need to actually dig up the earth deep enough to find these fellows. They must also not fail to thank the ‘ghosts’ for creating such juicy jobs for them. Now a ‘ghost-workers’ sub-sector is growing in Benue State.

  • Okorocha’s formulations

    Hardball is bound to run into a lexical cul de sac someday soon. You know, the kind of condition the Yoruba in their rich lingo termed afowofa.  Afowofa would simply mean to self-destruct. This example is to make the point about precision and brevity in language use.

    But even Hardball would not learn by his precepts it seems. His is a tendency to run loose; often running off at distant tangents from the matter of the day.

    Back to the point of the day which is: why doesn’t Hardball simply say ‘Okorocha’s formula’ instead of formulations? Why does he often take too much lexical liberty which may sooner get him into trouble with lexicographers and technocrats? Even scarier, he may draw the ire of some powers that be who probably read him upside down! That would be doom’s day wouldn’t it?

    But never mind those who espouse that maxim that liberty is no licence; for as far as Hardball is concerned here, liberty is actually licentious, not mere licence. And those who attended proper J schools (that’s Journalism school) will understand the (evil) spirit pushing Hardball. They will understand that in those schools, those rascally lecturers (usually American trained) would inculcate it in you not to spare your leaders.

    They make it seem as if there is a trophy for bringing down your leader from his high perch. One can still hear such voices saying: “Your job as a journalist is not to dress up and pamper your leaders; strip them naked, give them hell! If they don’t like the smoke, they should get the heck out of the kitchen!”

    With that bit of insight, you can see that while formulas are tried and tested phenomena, formulations are untried and untested processes for arriving at formulas. Illustration: while formula is a drug from a pharmacy, formulation is a concoction from a native doctor.

    Having spent the whole day making this delicate distinction, let’s boil it down:

    Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State returned from a long overseas trip last week to reinforce his controversial policy (formulation) of civil servants in his state working only three-day week – Monday to Wednesday.

    The governor, however, allayed the fears of cynics that, “I will not cut workers’ salaries because of the two days.” But hinting at the reason for his action, he said: “Instead of being devoted to the work they are paid for, they use their official hours to loiter; they sell groundnuts, gala… among others, in the office. I decided to reduce the working days because I want to enhance agriculture in the state.”

    Among the early formulations of Okorocha’s are such brain waves like Mayoral zones and Community Government Council. All these fuzzy ideas have ‘died’ like the ogbanje.

    This too will die. Hardball urges Gov. Okorocha to acquaint himself with the meaning of ‘reform’. If a formula is no longer working, you don’t replace it with a formulation, you take pains to reform it.

  • Death row congestion

    How long should a convict on death row wait for death? This question came up again on April 13 when the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Olufunmilayo Atilade, paid a visit to the Kirikiri Prison in Lagos.

    A report said that the Lagos State Controller of Prisons, Timothy Tinuoye, asked Justice Atilade to “prevail on the government to do something”  about the 171 condemned prisoners awaiting execution in the maximum security prison.

    According to the report, Tinuoye observed that “governors had stopped signing the execution warrants of such convicts following the controversy that trailed Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s approval of the execution of some condemned criminals a few years ago”.

    Importantly, the prison chief suggested that the condemned prisoners be relocated in order to decongest the prison.  This death-row congestion is inexcusable. As long as the death penalty is accommodated by the country’s justice system, there is no justification for keeping condemned convicts waiting.

    It is clear that the purpose of a death sentence is to facilitate death by execution. It is counterproductive to have a condemned convict wait indefinitely for the execution of a death sentence, particularly because of the possibility that death may come during the waiting and consequently achieve what the sentence didn’t intend, which is death by causes other than execution. If a condemned person does not die as a result of execution, it would mean that the death sentence was foiled. What is the purpose of a death sentence that is not put into effect, and which does not achieve death by execution?

    Although there may be philosophical arguments against capital punishment, it is complex enough to arrive at a death decision, and the complexity should not be further complicated by last-minute indecision when it comes to executing the decision. If judges are able to reach a death decision without the interference of extrajudicial considerations, the authorities should be able to carry out the decision without the hindrance of extra-legal thoughts.

    The debate about the death penalty did not begin today and it is not about to end.  In the face of the emotionally-charged controversy about the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime, it may well be that the structures of power ought to take another look at the law. Hardball says: do something, instead of doing nothing.

    • This article was first published on April 18