The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Olym-picknics

    How come Hardball misses out on the ‘good things’ of this great country? Maybe he needs to call it quits with his ‘fruitless daily lexical exertions’ and go out there and ‘get a life’ as they say these days. For instance, what on earth is Hardball doing in Nigeria right now as if he were a land-lubber? Why is he not in Rio? That is where all smart, intelligent and beautiful people of the world are right now.

    Talking about missing out, let’s do a checklist: first was during the 16-year binging of PDP when petrodollar was aplenty like the waters of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. All that booty passed under Hardball’s bridge so to speak and not a morsel could he corner.

    Second, consider the so-called Dasukigate: never in the life of any nation had so much slush fund been disbursed as if the money was burning up the treasury and needed to be evacuated pronto! Imagine companies being floated overnight with some having such appellations as Knight Grenades Inc., or something like that. Again, imagine that dozens of individuals got sums ranging between N1.5 billion to N800 million. Where in the world are individuals handed such criminal cash?

    Three, you must have heard about the padding issue in the House of Representatives? Now pad of any type makes Hardball queasy. Be it sanitary pad, adult pad or nary ice pad; any sort of pad comes messy and definitely not something for public consumption – not for Hardball’s publics anyway!

    But some fellows who pretend to be legislating for you and I (people who should be legislated out of existence) have turned something as noxious as pads into the largest gravy train that ever chugged through this land. All of these are big ticket machinations or ‘projects’ if you like, by smart alecs for perusing public funds. And Hardball never partook in all these ‘epochs’. So what is he? Or better put, who does he think he is? A Martian or some delusional entity trapped in the thickets of words?

    Well and now this: every real man or woman is right now in Rio de Janeiro, that feisty Brazilian city probably founded on hedonism. The games of the Olympics are ongoing right now. But while other countries’ contingents are doing exploits and hauling medals, Nigeria’s, especially the officials, are doing what they know best: shopping and picknicking.

    According to reports, numerous Sports Ministry and Olympics Committee members’ family are said to be strewn all over Brazil now – shopping and carousing – most likely at the expense of tax-payers. Meanwhile, hardly any official duty accomplished. Contingents’ ceremonial dress could not be ferried to Rio, thus Nigeria’s athletes had to don mere tracksuits during the opening parade. Allowances and hotel bills could not be paid. It took Mikel Obi, one of the players, to bail Nigeria out. No official was present when the solitary Nigerian boxer Efe Ajagba had his first fight… a haul of tainted medals.

    What a wonderful Olym-picknic and Hardball is missing in it all.

  • In Dogara-speak

    The embattled — or it is invincible? — Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, is fast becoming the making of a legislator as a yo-yo.  He is suddenly developing the cutting-edge capability to blow hot and cold, without caring “whose ox I gored” — to use Olusegun Obasanjo’s favourite cliche.

    Yet, in his seeming hubris, he is somewhat cutting the picture of the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar. That tragic figure, at the height of his glory — and folly — thought himself ultra-special: the real deal, to put it in contemporary American-speak.

    But when hard reality set in, and humiliation, for him, was the hard road to travel to humility, he suddenly realised he was no deal, real or false!  At least, however, he got his redemption, and got cured of his hubris, even if the hard way.

    Since Abdulmumin Jibrin started his budget padding allegations against the Speaker, Dogara has indulged in bluff and bluster, which somewhat betray a disturbing vainglory, powered by full emptiness.

    Emerging from a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Speaker Dogara beamed and preened, his idea of appearing unruffled and invincible, and crooned: nothing in our statutes made budget padding an offence!

    To that extent, he smiled in triumph: he had absolutely nothing to fear — and perish the thought, should such satanic thinking course through anyone’s mind that he should resign!

    So, in Dogara’s Speaker-speak, anyone could rewrite the budget estimates, use the parliament — and ignore the people — by stuffing it with whatever he likes- just because he is a lawmaker-and go enjoy his gravy without end.  Nothin’ spoil, as they say in the pidgin street-lingo!

    Then shortly after, when seized by his sense of legislative Leviathan, Dogara made it clear to all, at another forum, that as Almighty Speaker, he could not be questioned, investigated, queried or arrested.  That was why, he quipped, he had not made himself available for police questioning, in the ongoing probe of budget-gate.

    Why? Because whatever he did in Parliament was ex-cathedral, just as a judge is master of his court and a priest is master of his pulpit. That may not be untrue in general terms.  But Dogara, as anyone, should know — if not overtaken by hubris — that even this is subject to good faith.

    But with his sweeping assertion, Dogara and his Leviathan gang may as well slaughter citizens and get their bodies displayed on national television, just to press their legislative supremacy!  Common sense posits that is bunkum.  But then, common sense is not common, particularly when you are consumed by hubris, as Dogara appears!

    Still, a few days later, Dogara ate crow as sensationally as he had crowed! He made his media assistant put it out that he was not as supreme or as invincible as he had earlier bragged.  Indeed, mercifully, Dogara is not above the law!

    But given the triteness of this new confession, shall we then legitimately dub the Speaker as scaling new heights in bluffing before thinking?

    Dogara and his co-travellers should know: being slammed with budget padding is grim and serious business. It is such a serious allegation of breach of trust that anyone thus accused should bury his head in shame.

    But now that Dogara has climbed down from his high horse, the law and security agencies should do their job. But Dogara would be tragically deluded if he ever thought anyone needed his concession to call him to order.

    Who knows? Unlike Nebuchadnezzar, Dogara may yet find his humility, without booking his flight in humiliation!

    Who knows?

  • All hail Field Marshal Hardball!

    Now do not laugh dear reader, it is not what you think, but suffice to say that interesting times require interesting responses. The matter at hand demands proper illustration and adumbration even, to make it palatable to you dear reader.

    Therefore, as the women of the East used to say with relish: never fail to master the dance steps in vogue during your time lest you live to regret when you are old. Another wise saying of old is that: do not discard a baby because its paternity is in contest, for you never can tell which head will wear the crown tomorrow. And this final one: the bat that did not hasten to find its perch in the cluster when others are doing so would have to sleep alone.

    Avid readers of Hardball would have caught the drift of today’s gist now. It simply is that this business of militancy, cultism and even terrorism is the next big boom. Anyone who cannot cotton on to it now may have himself to blame in the years ahead.

    First, these deathly phenomena are transiting from despicable vices that they were just about five years ago to a noble vocation which transmutes practitioners to the status of a statesman. In other words, if you achieve some state of invincibility for a few days or months and are able to hold out against the sovereign forces over a couple of skirmishes, then you are made. You can begin to call for dialogue at your terms.

    Having caught on to the wisdom that this is the biggest job in this town now, Hardball contemplates venturing into it. Here is how it is going to be: he has taken the title of a field marshal. Since some of these small boys have assumed the title of ‘General’, ‘Commander’ and even ‘Government’ (imagine having two governments under one sovereignty). So Field Marshal is still cool.

    The full name of the group would therefore be ‘Field Marshal Hardball Creeks Musketeers’ (aka: Full Cream Milk Boys, FCMBs). It’s getting interesting dear reader isn’t it? The beauty of this business is that you need not register or seek licence or any permission. Just announce yourself via the social or mass media and begin to cause trouble anyhow you know.

    Just consider that over a dozen militant groups have emerged or splintered from the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, since they took the ‘bold’ step about six months ago and held the rest of us to ransom.

    To summarise, the loony in Mgborokoto village told his kinsmen who gathered around his burning hut that he saw a bonfire next door and he decided to torch his own hut too so that all the fires would be put out at the same time.

    Moral: If government has decided to beatify and dialogue with all sorts of miscreants, Hardball might as well set up his own ‘shop’ too so that all the ‘dialoguing’ would be done at the same time.

  • Unilag and the suspended 17

    The witch cried yesterday and the child died today — who does not know the witch killed the child?

    That may not be scientific, or even logical.  But it is deep-rooted in a people’s universe of beliefs, that often times borders on raw faith.

    Well, the University of Lagos (Unilag), after a students protest against dirty hostel environment, alleged racketeering on the enforced sale of Unilag bottled water on campus, and allied complaints, just announced the suspension of 17 union leaders, who allegedly led the demonstration. The sentences range from two semesters (one year) to four semesters (two years).

    Among the suspended, according to a report in The Nation, are Muhammed Olaniyan (President, University of Lagos Students’ Union), Adeniyan Adenipekun (Speaker, Unilag Student’s Representatives Council), Emmanuel Afolabi (General Secretary), Ojo Oluwatobi (Financial Secretary), Akinnubi Damilola Pedro (Chief Whip) and Jumai Fabuyi (Public Relations Officer).

    The suspension of union activities and student leaders would appear to have castrated the entire formal student leadership. You don’t kill a snake without neatly chopping off its head, do you?

    But is this wisdom or paranoia?  That question is key: for suspending university students’ union activities, because the union mobilised its members to protest, was the panic button the military czars used to press with relish. It is rather ridiculous that in democratic Nigeria, the Unilag authorities are resorting to same old ham-fisted — and often hare-brained — tactics.

    But how does the witch aphorism come into all this?  Well, Toyin Adebule, Unilag’s deputy information officer, just explained that the suspension had nothing to do with the protests, per se, but with “specific acts of misconducts.”

    Well, the university can tell that to the marines!

    True, student unionism has degenerated over the years, with not a few so-called union leaders at sea with the high ideals of the pioneers. But it is debatable if the venality of the present did not result from the harsh responses of the past, which seem not to have reformed nothing but deformed everything!

    Besides, it’s a moot point if suspension, even if legal, are answers to periodic tensions, over broken down facilities, not entirely the fault of the students.

    Students must act more responsibly, just as university managements must be more dutiful in their responsibilities toward students. But rushing to suspend some students over a protest, for which the university authorities were not entirely blameless, doesn’t show much creativity or maturity, in dealing with youths — or even, for that matter, much sense of justice!

    Unilag can certainly do better in managing students, even the extremely hot-headed. Besides, suspension, for the last protest, would appear extremely harsh — and dismantling the Students’ Union, an over-kill.

    Youths would make mistakes. But you don’t correct them by slaughtering them in a fit of anger!

    That is what Unilag has done; and that is why the Unilag authorities should revisit — and reverse — these actions.

  • Economics meets mindset

    A mindset is an abstract concept but worry not, Hardball can draw a picture of this so-called mindset for you. Here we go: you know concrete, you know cement and you know iron rods? Now mix the three with some water and leave to dry to form slabs. Dear reader, this outcome, this impregnable, immovable dead weight is the closest picture you can get of a mindset.

    Economics too, not unlike a mindset, is also largely abstract – a wooly and unruly body of study with an incontinent knack for prevarication. Again, Hardball comes to the rescue here: since there is no economics without money (not minding what experts might say) Hardball hereby impetuously boils down economics to money; in fact, cash.

    Now, when economics meets (Hardball would prefer mates) mindset what do you get? A roadblock to be mild but to put it starkly, what is conceived is simply a block. This of course, is a more severe consequence for those who might know.

    This captures the impression one got when it was reported recently that government is not interested in funding aircraft repair facility. It was the Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirica, who let it out last week when he addressed stakeholders in an aviation roundtable in Lagos. To be fair, he injected a caveat to the effect that while government would support private investors who seek to build such critical facilities, government would not sink its fund directly.

    Sound economics, but one could hear the grate in the minister’s statement. The facility in question is known as aircraft maintenance Repairs Overhaul (MRO); which is self-explicatory. But Minister Sirica shed even more light on the crucial urgency of the MRO. He said such facilities have become imperative to create jobs for local aviation professionals as well as contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in addition to curbing capital flight.

    What this betokens is that hundreds of aircraft both for local and foreign operators must go abroad for their MROs. Consider the huge of revenues from the long line of values inherent in having a couple of these facilities across our major airports.

    And the next logical question is: why does the minister make it seem as if government would be doing private investors a favour if they were allowed to set up these facilities?

    Instead of waiting coolly for the so-called investors to come applying and begging, one would have expected the ministry to have done diligence, drawn policy framework; set targets and timelines and call for bids from all over the world. This is a global facility after all.

    The same mindset afflicts the hoisting of our flag in the air by way of a national career: no fund, time is not right, etc are the excuses while we have not done our own bit in many such projects that will cost us almost nothing but give the economy a huge boost.

    MRO: let us close with a stakeholder’s verdict: the biggest problem to setting up an MRO is lack of government’s policy. Mindset jams economics!

  • Avengers: whodunnit?

    Since the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA) — a splinter group from Niger Delta Avengers, the latest swamp anarchists on the Niger Delta front — released a list of alleged sponsors, it has been a fit of denials.

    The alleged list is simply puzzling, even though one or two could be legitimately charged to have motives, for stark personal gains, to be part of that organised anarchy,

    The alleged list: former President Goodluck Jonathan, Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, Bayelsa Governor, Seriake Dickson, Ijaw leader and former presidential godfather, Chief Edwin Clark, former Akwa Ibom Governor but now Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, fugitive, whose disappearance heralded the Avenger bombings, Government Ekpemukpolo aka Tompolo, AIT owner, Raymond Dokpesi, former presidential man Friday on the Niger Delta, Kingsley Kuku, Kimi Angozi and Patrick Akpobokemi, with Tompolo, docked with multi-billion Naira sleaze, allegedly committed during the Jonathan presidency.

    Besides alleged outright sponsors, RNDA also named the following as alleged “sympathisers”: Ankio Briggs, Tony Uranta, Daniel Alabrah and Olisa Metuh, former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national spokesperson, also currently docked for alleged sleaze.

    More pin-point, RNDA accused Undengs Eradiri, president of Ijaw Youth Council, whose battle moniker, it alleged, is Gen. Murdoch Agbinibo, of serving as Avengers chief spokesperson.

    To complete the alleged list of perdition, from which everybody now shies, are Oyege Mimi Brown, VIP Timothy, Joshua Macaiver and Paul  Bebenimibo, among others, as main Avenger operatives.

    Former President Jonathan has poured cold water on the list, scoffing that his mention is the figment of malevolent imagination.  So has Eradiri, who claims his listing was MEND’s revenge mission for harshly thumbing down its so-called Aaron 2 negotiating team.

    But so far, mum has been the word from Tompolo, the fugitive from the law, whose refusal to be docked, and subsequent disappearance, birthed the Avengers bombings of vital oil pipelines and installations.  Tompolo might well be innocent of any Avenger conspiracy.  But he stands fairly accused of having a motive.

    Well, it is RNDA’s words against these people; and that remains an allegation until when probed and proved.  The security agencies now have a lead.  They should not hesitate to investigate, arrest and prosecute those who have genuine cases to answer.

    But no matter how it pans out, it is getting increasingly clear that Niger Delta Avengers’ organised anarchy, to cripple Nigeria economically because Jonathan lost a free election (as many militants boasted pre-election, should Jonathan lose), is a high-powered conspiracy, well beyond some rag-tag roughnecks from the creeks.

    Hardball just marvels at how a people and leaders would launch a serious war against own environment, the political equivalent of cutting your nose to spite your face.  Long after all bombs must have quietened, Niger Delta would bear the scar — ultra-polluted creeks, poverty, high crime rate and social dislocation.

    Still since those sponsors have warred against fellow Nigerians who directly did them no harm, the state too should war against them.  Bombing oil facilities has drastically reduced Nigeria’s oil production output; and attacks on gas infrastructure have crippled electricity supply, turning the country into one huge and unending darkness.

    Such saboteurs must not be allowed to escape justice.  That is why the security agencies must fish them out and punish them for their crime.

  • Female and furious

    Femininity is second nature to gentleness, sensitivity and kindness. This soft side is more so when it comes to matters of children. Children anywhere, irrespective of their parentage ought to find succur and favour in the lush laps of fair gender. On the contrary, Hardball would probably get into trouble if he delves into what may be termed a generalised assertion to the effect that women seem to possess an uncanny capacity to become soulless, even ruthless in maltreating the other woman’s child.

    Two examples in The Punch of last Tuesday will suffice. The first report says: “woman tortures five-year-old step-daughter for bed-wetting” and the second reads: “Policeman’s wife batters 10-year-old niece for N30.00″.

    The two stories on facing pages of 4 and 5 have graphic photographs to illustrate what Hardball would describe as feminine stone-heartedness. The five-year-old little girl has her tiny, tender back scalded and pock-marked feminine vile and hatred.

    What could be the offence of this tot? The step-mother accuses the little girl of being obstinate. “She is very stubborn. If I give an instruction, she will not follow it. She is bed-wetting and I have cautioned her several times. She is also fond of stealing meat from the pot of stew. I only beat her with brooms; I don’t use any other object on her.”

    This is the blabber of the woman known as Kudirat Oyediran. The little girl’s mother had died only three months after her birth and her father had married Kudirat to take care of her. But all Kudirat seems to have inflicted on the child are pains and psychological trauma that is bound to linger into her adulthood.

    On the other story, the picture shows the back and buttocks of the 10-year-old girl with various degrees of gashes and patches of wounds. Mrs. Caroline Akanwa was said to have brought the 10-year, old from the village to help out with her petty trading. It happened that Caroline, mother of three, beats this little girl at every excuse that her back and buttocks are riddled with scars, some very fresh.

    The little girl’s school teacher had noticed the wounds and taken her to hospital for treatment. The hospital requested for a police report before treatment and the matter was referred to the Lagos State Office of the Public Defender (OPD). The two women are in ‘dialogue’ with the police.

    But the point to be made here is that what would prompt a mother to act in such furious wickedness towards another woman’s child?

    The matter of the other woman’s child obviously needs some interrogation; too often we read stories of extreme callousness like the above. Recall also, biblical King Solomon and the two women: one wanted the baby in dispute split into two! Do certain fiends overtake some women when they are charged with another woman’s child?

  • Clark joins anti-corruption corps

    Hurray, Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, unfazed presidential godfather under Goodluck Jonathan, just joined the Buhari Anti-Corruption Corps!  But his starting ranks are yet unknown!

    Speaking at the announcement of the academic year for the new Law programme of the Edwin Clark University, Kiagbodo, Delta State (ECUK), Pa Clerk serenaded President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-sleaze war, saying it was the panacea for Nigeria’s greatness.

    “This country will have to be cleaned up, and I’m happy we have a president, despite every other thing, who has now stood up to fight corruption. We should support him,” he counselled. “I know this country will progress, if corruption is reduced to the minimum.”

    Really, those were words of wisdom, well and truly spoken by an elder.  Nothing to add. Nothing to subtract.

    There is a query, though — and that query is simple.  Where was this fount of wisdom, when Godson, Goodluck Jonathan, was president; and Pa Clark never tired of bragging — sorry, crowing — that Jonathan was his “son”?

    Where was that spring of wisdom when President Jonathan was making a vacuous distinction between stealing and corruption?

    Where was it when about everyone, except the un-abashed presidential godfather and the innermost Jonathan presidential circle, was saying the former president’s body language cuddled corruption like some newly found, long lost lover?

    Where, indeed, is Pa Clark’s voice when the so-called Niger Delta Avengers were busy corrupting the otherwise legitimate struggles of their people, by resorting to brainless vandalism of key economic assets — wilful arson that not only compromise the integrity of their cause but further pollute their environment, destroy marine life and extinguish many a legitimate livelihood in the poisoned creeks?

    But perhaps Pa Clark was playing the politics of anti-corruption-speak, powered by the politics of rememberance — or forgetfulness!

    “If corruption reduces to the minimum and this country is restructured, we’ll have a better Nigeria.”. Well framed!

    “I’m not looking for a Nigeria where some people are first-class and others are second-class.  If you make some people second-class, they will fight their way through and there’ll be no peace in this country.”

    That is no subtle threat.  Whether by Freudian slip or outright declaration, Pa Clark appears voicing his support for the creek vandals, somewhat imbuing their criminality with some nobility in a classic case of double-speak.

    But what if the so-called freedom fighting, ala Avengers, is some wilful and criminal subterfuge to frustrate the due comeuppance for the mind-boggling sleaze under godson Jonathan?  If that were so, would the latest to be enlisted on the Buhari Anti-Corruption Corps be said to be a true member, or was just playing at some verbal flurry, full of empty gas?

    Besides, when for the Niger Delta, did restructuring become such a consuming article of faith: before or after Jonathan lost power?

    Pa Clark must know: it is either he is for, or against the anti-corruption war.  Straddling, by speaking from both sides of the mouth, wouldn’t do. You don’t serenade those fighting sleaze and, in the same breath, romanticise the criminality they are facing down.

    Besides, who knows? If Pa Clark had been forthright with Jonathan on the corruption issue, playing the role of a loving dad, perhaps Jonathan would still be president?

    Well, all that is history now. What is not history is that Pa Clark should be courageous enough to walk his talk.  He has not demonstrated that with this pussy-footing, in his so-called self-enlistment as an anti-corruption ambassador. Pity!

  • My drone is better than yours

    Hardball has built a drone. No, I take that back. He has conceived a super-drone in his head. Now what is this fellow called Hardball up to? You might be asking. And the answer is never mind; he can be wacky sometimes and at other times, he suffers grand illusions of grandeur. This must be one of such moments dear reader, bear with him.

    Now just because the other day he saw a news photograph of some Nigeria policemen fiddling with the console of a supposed drone, his head is tizzy about drones. In that photo, it had been said that the cluster of policemen were trying to send a drone after a band of marauders who had attacked and gotten the better of an estate in Lagos and fled through the creeks.

    Yes, those unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones which over a decade ago, were the exclusive playthings of the US military/intelligence establishment have today become as common as ‘pure water’. Almost everyone (including men of the Nigeria Police) have them. Today, it comes in all shapes and sizes and from being a precise, predator war machine, it has grown to something closer to that paper kite children play with.

    Most remarkably, everyone seems to be able to make his or her own drones now. Microsoft Corporation is currently advertising what it calls a Ghostdrone. Here is the sales pitch: “This versatile, easy-to-fly drone is fully controlled by your android or windows smart phone, and features a built-in camera and experienced avatar control.”

    Wow! Isn’t that a mind-blowing idea: to be able to own your own drone and control it with your phone! But wait a minute; this Microsoft toy is called a Ghost drone: haven’t ghosts wreaked enough havoc to non-ghosts already?

    Nigeria’s public service probably has more ghosts than the entire workforce of the rest of the continent. How we have managed to co-habit with so many apparitions is beyond comprehension. But if we thought ghost workers were ghoulish, now that we have ghost drones we are sure in for a most invidious time.

    I imagine ghost drones getting into the mind of the paymaster-general or even ‘sorting out’ the payroll themselves. That would be the day.

    Hardball therefore contemplates a SuperGhostDrone – SGD, for short. You must have guessed it –  a deus ex-machina! As we have explained, a drone is an unmanned aircraft and there are drones for nearly every human activity today – from combat drones to weather monitors and terrorists muggers.

    But Hardball is working on SGDs that may be able to infiltrate the meeting of say, militants in their coves or even detect all the currencies buried in farms and abandoned buildings across the country. Why can’t we have a ghost drone spooking Aso Rock Villa and getting to tweak the president’s mind occasionally? And how about this: imagine a super ghost camera drone in the hands of a rascal paparazzo! All our bedrooms would be endangered and the world would become one huge pornographic enclave isn’t it!

  • House of War (sorry, Representatives!)

    There is a Yoruba saying: a sheep that schmoozes with dogs is fated to gobbling faeces.

    With the latest scandals in Yakubu Dogara’s House of Representatives, Yusuff Lasun, Deputy Speaker, is finding that out the hard way: with Abdulmumin Jibrin’s allegation that Speaker Dogara and his management team are virtually buried in sleaze, and the “lafun” (yam flour) of that alleged corruption, allegedly streaking down Lasun’s mouth!

    It’s all an allegation, of course, even with Jibrin, former chairman, House Committee on Appropriations, making quite a road show of the submission of his “evidence” to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and urgently calling on Dogara and team to be unhorsed.

    Ah, it was only virtually yesterday that Lasun emerged accidental deputy speaker, no thanks to the rebellion of the n-PDP faction of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), against the party’s preferred candidates for House posts.  Lasun, though no member of n-PDP, got sucked into the plot by landing the House No. 2 position.  He balked at the party’s suggestion to vacate that position, apparently preferring a new alliance of pock to old ties that thrust him to the fore.

    Well, from what Jibrin is alleging, it would appear Lasun is bang in the vortex of the alleged corruption, involving the Dogara management, which Jibrin is swearing, by the second, to expose.

    Well, Hardball again restates: Jibrin’s are mere allegations, even if grave ones.  But until those allegations are proven with facts, we’ll watch as events unfold.

    Still, there is no denying the fierce war in the House.  If the allegations are true, and can be proved, and conviction obtained, then it would have been a worthy war — not because there would be losers and winners, but because the national legislature, at last, would be on its way to shedding its notorious image as alleged house of graft.

    For too long, the National Assembly under Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara, as House Speaker, has somewhat projected itself as some less-than-noble counter-weight to the Buhari Presidency’s anti-graft crusading.

    The Jibrin expose, if true, would therefore appear a not unwelcome meltdown, which nevertheless should be very good for the polity.

    This is why the EFCC should act with despatch on Jubrin’s evidence.  It should examine it and get to the root of the matter.

    By doing that, it should charge those who have prima facie case to answer; and diligently prosecute the case to secure conviction.  But by the same despatch, it should clear the name of those falsely accused, so that they can concentrate on their job of law-making.

    But the fierce war may yet consume many!  If along the line Deputy Speaker Lasun is cleared, he should have earned the respect of every fair-minded compatriot.  Inasmuch as we should not tolerate sleaze in our public places, we should not assume every public official is a rogue.  That would be political nihilism too costly.

    But if he is found wanting, well, he should get his due comeuppance.  In that way, the short-term “lafun” of temporary office would have caused him a diarrhoea, or maybe political cholera, which could be politically fatal!

    Meanwhile, let the war continue — until every felon, or even putative felon, is flushed out of that honourable House.