The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Don Quixote parleys Don Quixote

    The ill-fated Labour strike, to protest the increase in the pump price of petrol, has come and gone.  But lingers still, some comic relief from that rather grim business.

    Taking the proverbial cake was the Don Quixote parley with Don Quixote.

    You sure remember Don Quixote?  That ludicrous fictional figure in the tale of the Spaniard, Miguel de Cervantes; the delusional fellow that fought with windmills, claiming they were giants, and birthing that immortal English phrase, “tilting at windmills”?

    Well, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, Ayuba Wabba, cut the quixotic, when he declared, even with no serious strike to see by anyone, that the “strike continues”?

    What strike, many permitted themselves the guffaw to ask?

    What strike — with the majority of workers, in majority of states nationwide, staying off?  What strike — with the second Labour body, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) backing out?  What strike — with the powerful oil unions, NUPENG and PENGASSAN demurring?

    What strike indeed!

    Even after the collapse, the quixotic in Comrade Wabba continued when he, at the weekend, declared that his “very successful strike” had been called off.  Ah!  Perhaps there is a Labour connotative meaning for success, beyond the ordinary denotative meaning!

    Still, at Labour’s height of illusion, it was the quixotic in Mr. Wabba that went to the quixotic in Bukola Saraki, the embattled Senate president.

    Ever essaying every chance to push the public mind from his Code of Conduct alleged corruption trial, Saraki sat down with  Wabba to negotiate!

    Call it Don Quixote parleying with Don Quixote, and you won’t be wrong! Negotiate — but what credibility did either have?

    Wabba, a Labour general without an army?  And Saraki, with his near-zero moral capital with the people, no thanks to his current judicial travails, the sheer material recklessness and legislative impunity of the 8th Senate, over which he presides?

    Besides, with the division of powers in presidential democracy, how far can a Senate president go, beyond legislation, in pushing labour matters, which is more or less an executive function?

    No matter!  The duo mutually humoured themselves, and perhaps quixotically, cut a deal.

    If Occupy Nigeria 2012 featured fiery rallies and even more fiery speeches, Occupy Nigeria 2016 had its own memories too: the Don Quixote flavour!

    That should go down in history as some achievement.  For more than anything else, that parley rightly epitomized the quixotic spirit behind the strike — when Labour said a thunderous no, but Labour leaders said an equally thunderous yes!

  • Ebonyi women’s ‘naked’ riot

    The pictures are as graphic as can be: scraggy old women in various stages of nudity. Many are in mere one piece briefs; shriveled cleavages, flat as paramecia assault the eyes. Wrinkled tummies- more invidious than a failed visage are a sobering sight. And they wail and wail – you could almost hear them from the picture.

    The Amangwu-Edda women protests in Ebonyi State recently will go down as one of the most conscientious mass revolt against a perceived social ill in that part of the country in recent times. The riot was remarkable not because the women marched the streets naked or because they were elderly women largely in their 70s and 80s.

    No, the village dissents may yet become a national cause célèbre for many reasons. First, it is happening in a remote village of one of the ‘remote’ states in the South  East of Nigeria.

    Second, as Hardball can discern, it is a highly principled agitation to dislodge a seeming leviathan weighing down a rural community. But most notable, the village woman and some men are fighting for the unshackling of a leader who has come to liberate them from the forces of ‘darkness’. In literal and metaphorical terms, they insist that a leader who has brought them light must not be extinguished by an old, kakistocratic regime.

    Now the narrative as reported by the media: Amangwu-Edda community of Edda Local Government Area of Ebonyi State (formerly Afikpo South) had been a no man’s land (not unlike most rural communities in Nigeria). It is a place so dark and forlorn it was devoid of real men and women. It thrived on old and mainly widowed women; old men and young village wags who terrorised the community.

    Cultism and rape of these hapless women were the order of the day. Since local government administration had vanished from Nigeria, Amangwu-Edda people suffered in silence for long.

    Well, until recently when a ‘messiah’ came along in the person of a retired consultant gynecologist, Dr. Ndubuisi Ekumankama. Upon retirement, Dr. Ndubuisi had returned to his root to settle down – a rare and courageous move in today’s Nigeria. He did not stop at that, he contested and became the president-general of Edda Progressive Union.

    Soon, ‘strange’ things began to happen to the once–abandoned community – there is electricity supply now among other projects like culverts. Rape and cultism and most other forms of criminality have abated under Dr. Ndubuisi’s watch. But some big men of the community do not seem to like the new state of affairs, many community members say.

    Dr. Ndubuisi was therefore recently picked up on charges of demolition of a widow’s house said to have been illegally sited by a member of the old cabal. The house had been built right on an ancient community road – can you catch a whiff of impunity there?

    By the persistent protests of these half-clad women and the larger community, Dr. Ndubuisi was eventually arraigned and granted bail.

    The matter is supposedly in court but Hardball thinks an emerging liberation fight is in the offing and every Nigerian community must follow it closely.

  • And Koro makes history

    THERE is always the other side of life. There is the sunny side – bright and seductive. There is the cloudy side – dull, damp and drab. Some PDP chiefs surely know the difference after their largest party in Africa failed to retain power and, thereby, lost its foundation to rule for 60 years – in the first instance.  Now, the party is in disarray, its leadership in tatters and his followership confused.

    Thousands of miles away from all this, Musiliu Obanikoro, former Lagos Island council chairman – yes, he was, when the landmark City Hall was set on fire – former commissioner, former governorship candidate, former minister and now proud owner of a Masters Degree in History – a subject that has been unjustifically elbowed out of the school curricula here.

    He has been mentioned severally among those who allegedly turned the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) into a huge Automated Teller Machine (ATM) which dispensed cash like a faulty gambling machine.

    Koro, as many of his admirers call him – others call him “Koro Ibo”, the one who has the magic of swinging elections, “Ibo” being the Yoruba word for “ballot”, although he is not known to have won any major election — insists he has no invitation from the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

    If they want him, he said, he would simply tell them he is busy at school.

    Now Koro has made history. Of all the PDP big wigs, only he has gone to school to beg a masters. Others have been visiting the EFCC or going   to court to clear their names on one allegation or the other. Former PDP Chair Haliru Bello was wheeled to court (his son was also there to answer some charges). Former spokesman Olisah Metuh vomited the other day and he is now begging the court to allow him go overseas to attend to his health. Femi “big mouth” Fani-Kayode is cooling off at the EFCC where he is explaining all he knows about N480m he was said to have received during the failed battle to save the Jonathan presidency.

    Koro may have been disturbed by the sudden ouster of his party from power, but his academic fortune seems to have been better for it. He now plans to enroll for a doctorate degree. How sweet are the uses of adversity – to quote the bard in “As you like it”.

    By the time Koro is done and be Senator Obanikoro becomes Dr Obanikoro, the EFCC may have been tired of probing his role in the pre-election cash carnival. Even as his former colleagues are troubled by their party hobbled by fierce clash of ambitious, Lagos boy Koro has made history.

  • Contractors of yesterday

    Niger Delta ex-militia leader Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, is trying hard to counter any suggestion that he might still be interested in pipeline surveillance contracts. He will need to try harder.

    In a May 17 statement that brought unpleasant memories of the unpopular security contracts awarded by the past Goodluck Jonathan administration to even more unpopular contractors, Tompolo said: “I want the whole world to know that I am not in competition with Ayiri Emami on pipeline surveillance contract.”

    This should not be interpreted to mean that Tompolo now thinks he is too big for pipeline surveillance contracts which helped to make him fantastically big. To appreciate how big Tompolo became as a result of the contracts, it is useful to recall that $103m, (about N21 billion then), was reportedly involved in the security contract controversially awarded to the Global West Vessel Specialists Nigeria Limited linked with him.

    It is interesting that Tompolo said in the statement: “…when I had one-year pipeline surveillance contract in Delta State, Ayiri Emami was one of the directors of the company (Oil Facility Surveillance Limited) in 2012. He could not protect the oil facilities in his beat, and so I was the one that was equally doing the job. It is on record, and the authorities of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) can bear me witness, that even those in Bayelsa (Pajereos Nigeria Limited) and Rivers (Adef Energy Resources Nigeria Limited) that had similar surveillance jobs like me, could not protect the oil facilities in their respective states.”

    Tompolo obviously feels proud of his record, and he seemed to be selling his services so subtly. But he may need to be reminded that this so-called record was achieved at the expense of the country. The dubious security contracts, from which Tompolo benefited, downgraded the regular security agencies in favour of militiamen and enriched militia leaders to the detriment of the country’s security personnel who should have been empowered to perform their duties.

    It is a cause for concern that Tompolo also said: “… Ayiri Emami and others accusing me of the destruction of oil facilities in parts of the Delta are simply looking for relevance, recognition and pipeline surveillance contracts. If anyone doubts what I am saying, such should find out from the GMD and Minister for State for Petroleum, because Ayiri and his likes have been troubling the minister for pipeline surveillance contracts for some time now. The minister has even succumbed to the Ayiri Emami gimmick by appointing some of his cronies as special advisers.”

    There should be no space at all for the discredited contractors of yesterday in whatever form.

  • Sad Sam, Happy Sam

    It’s a world exclusive; or, as the anarchic “journalists” on social media would roar, even if the piece is concentrated rumour: it is breaking news!

    Sad Sam is now Happy Sam — and it is official!

    It all happened at the celebration of another Sam in Lagos, at the public presentation yesterday of Sam Omatseye’s book compilation of his In Touch column, covering the Goodluck Jonathan years.

    One of the speakers had declared, in a hyperbole that only a flattering book launch could bear, that the Nigerian media cosmos harboured only two Sams — one “sad” — Vanguard Publisher, Sam Amuka-Pemu, and chairman of the event, whose Sad Sam column, in the old Daily Times, created quite some ripples; and the other, neither happy nor sad, Sam Omatseye, who was launching his book.  Both of them, by the way, are Itsekiri.

    Aremo Segun Osoba, former governor of Ogun State, had earlier set the historic tone, saying all the media titans in the hall — himself, Sad (now wishing to be known and addressed as Happy) Sam, and Prince Henry Odukomaiya, still standing tall, regal and sprightly at 81 — were all ex-Daily Times.

    So, Uncle Sam would fit in among the Nigerian journalism titans, almost to the last man, under the guiding hands of the iconic Alhaji Babatunde Jose (Allah bless his gentle soul!).  Sad Sam made his mark among those early journalism giants.

    But the other Sam, Omatseye? Going by Greek mythology which produced the Titans, the younger Sam would fit pat among the Olympians, the class of gods that succeeded the Titans.

    The Titans had strength, huge size and all of it. But the Olympians were nimble and were a beauty to behold!  The way Bayo Onanuga, The News managing director serenaded Sam’s writing, saying it was tantamount to reading music in prose, Sam Omatseye would seem gloriously Olympian. By the way, Onanuga remembered to quip, for Titans’ ears only: Concord (MKO Abiola’s defunct newspaper chain) made Omatseye, not Daily Times!

    It so happened, among the Greeks: when the chips were down, beauty trumped might. But the Titans didn’t really contest any space; they submitted gracefully to the charm of Olympian beauty, at least according to John Keats’s aborted long poem, Hyperion.

    But in the Nigerian journalism cosmos, there is no clash at all, between the Titan, who Uncle Sam proudly represents; and Omatseye, who represents the new order.  Uncle Sam refered to the younger Sam as his Itsekiri son.  He nevertheless teased him as “Born-troway”, because the younger Sam could not speak Itsekiri!

    Because no tension existed between the old and new order, and that one side celebrated the other, the launch rippled with the best of old and new, in Nigerian journalism, in a celebration of excellence.

    But back to Uncle Sam’s transmogrification from Sad Sam to Happy Sam. When one of the speakers referred  to him as Sad Sam, he, with a jocular wave of the hand, said that era belonged to the past!  And just as well — how could Sad Sam produce such a happy and gaily Vanguard!

    And there, you have it.  Sad Sam would now henceforth be known and addressed as Happy Sam.  Other documents remain valid!

  • Nigeria’s rice troubles

    Rice, those small, whitish grains shaped not unlike rat droppings, is perhaps the most challenging of Nigeria’s conundrums. Hardball wagers that the day Nigeria overcomes her rice troubles, that day it must be recorded that she has truly achieved political and economic independence.

    Let us put the narrative in perspective. Upon the advent of the oil boom era of the 1970s, Nigerians collectively acquired strange, weird tastes for everything foreign. If it’s not foreign, it is not good enough for us. And if it’s home-made, it is local or cheap and therefore, better left for the lowly.

    That was how come that everything we enjoyed and cherished and held dear became inferior and second-rate. Thus we lost our rich native cuisines and delicacies; we jettisoned our cool fabrics and classic apparels. We became ribald popinjays living on the outer fringes of other peoples’ lives.

    That was how come we abandoned the unpolished Abakaliki rice rich in natural carbohydrate. We turned our noses up at the bulbous Ofada rice and its aromatic iru stew made with the accompaniment of seven proteins. The serendipitous mixed vegetable soup whose exotic flavour graces your nostrils when you belch even two days after you consumed it. We discarded all these.

    And like zombies, we all looked up to the West and East for our daily staple. The American long grain rice became our national staple. The per-boiled rice (thrash) of Thailand became status symbol for the most populous black nation on earth. We voraciously consumed rice and quasi-rice imported from any part of the world.

    It didn’t matter where it came from, it didn’t matter how long it had been stored or which chemical preservatives. It didn’t matter whether it had nutritious value or not. So long as it was long-grained, it was okay for the palate of new-rich Nigerians.

    Everyone enjoyed the good life of imported rice and the farmers of Abakaliki, Ofada and the Benue valley ‘died’ a natural death arising from zero patronage. Their rice growing and milling enterprise also wilted. In those years of locusts and queala birds, Nigeria achieved the infamy of 100 per cent rice importation.

    Today, reality has slapped us in the face. The oil boom has burst. The multi-billion naira rice import bill is no longer sustainable. In the last five years or so, we have been trying to return to the marshy paddy farms we abandoned and to resuscitate the mills. But it has been a tough act.

    Last week, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which has also joined the fray to bring back our rice, stated rather off-handedly that Nigeria would start rice importation in two years. But the sad thing is that we have been hearing this buzz in the last five years. The immediate past agric minister was never tired of fixing and unfixing deadlines.

    CBN which was promoting its Anchor Borrower Programme in Lokoja is of the mind that its initiative would translate into surplus local rice in two years.

    Not so fast. The rice value chain apart from funds requires patience, painstaking work, massive milling infrastructure, market mastery and clock-work operations sustained over a long time.

    It’s serious business, let’s not trifle with it.

     

  • Padding and punishment

    After a rigmarole that was as ridiculous as it was revealing, the country’s 2016 Budget was eventually formalised with just over six months of the year left. Not surprisingly, there is public anxiety about how far the President Muhammadu Buhari administration can go in implementing a budget that is about six months late.

    What really caused the delay? For the avoidance of doubt, Buhari shed light on what happened during the recent Anti-Corruption Summit in London. He told reporters:  “Yes, we have six months to implement the budget. You know why there was a delay. There is something called padding. I have been in government since 1975. I was governor of what is now six states: Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Taraba, that used to be North East. Then I was in Obasanjo’s cabinet, Petroleum for three and a quarter years. I was Head of State for 20 months. I had never heard about that one, padding, until this year.”

    What has padding got to do with budgeting?  Buhari continued: “And what does it mean? It means that the technocrats just allowed the government to make its noise, to go and make the presentation to the National Assembly. They will remove it and put in their own. When we uncovered this, we just had to go back to the basics again. Ministers had to go again and appear before the Minister of Budget and National Planning and make presentations again.”

    Buhari suggested that he is much wiser now: “This was clearly brought out by the Minister of Health. I saw with my own eyes, nobody told me. I was watching NTA and he appeared before a committee that said the minister should come and defend his budget. He looked at what was presented to him as his budget and he said he had nothing to defend, that that was not what he presented. Subsequently, we discovered that it was not only the Ministry of Health. So they allowed us to talk rubbish as government and they do what they like.”

    Who were the people responsible for this padding?  An anti-corruption administration should tell the public more, and do more to ensure that the padding professionals do not try to pad the next budget. Those who padded the proposed budget should be punished.

  • Again, the narcissist strikes!

    Again, the arch-narcissist, Olusegun Obasanjo, strikes — President Muhammadu Buhari is “not hot” on the economy and foreign affairs, but is “hot” on security.

    To be sure, the sum total of the comment would appear inoffensive. Obasanjo was speaking at a Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, seminar; and, on the surface, it would appear a comparative analysis of President Buhari’s strengths and weaknesses.  Besides, the former president referred his listeners to his latest self-adulating autobiography, My Watch.

    Still, there is always the Obasanjo-esque subversive comparison, between himself and his successors — or even his predecessors, as was the late Brig. Benjamin Adekunle, the Civil War Third Marine Commando great in My Command; and Gen. Yakubu Gowon, in Not My Will — how Obasanjo’s predecessors and successors are useless; and how Obasanjo is brilliant and stellar.

    The snag, however, is: hard facts seldom support this self-beatification!

    On foreign affairs, Hardball cannot remember any golden moment during Obasanjo’s presidential tenure (1999-2007), except the usual policy jumbles. His presidency started with an Afro-centric policy, even boasting a minister of African Integration. But, eight years later, perhaps nobody remembered Obasanjo ever flirted with African integration as state policy!

    Compare that to the Buhari era. It’s too early in the day, to be sure; and things might still change, as they are wont to do around here.

    But it would appear Buhari’s foreign policy is sharply driven by using diplomacy to repatriate Nigeria’s stolen money, by wayward past leaders. It is far conceptually sharper — and would prove more functional, if it succeeds — than Obasanjo’s “African integration”.

    But the economy is, as they say, where the real action is. Obiageli Ezekwesili claims Buharinomics is driven by “dogma”, while her own fixation with Breton Woods is not “dogma”.  Why, even the ever attention-seeking Pat Utomi has weighed in: that Buharinomics is driven by “medieval” sentiments, in a celebration Breton Woods dogma-without-dogma!

    But it is this growth-without-development paradigm that Obasanjo, with a vengeance, plunged into, from the commandist heights of his first coming as military head of state!

    The result?  Move no farther than his star policy of liberalising petroleum downstream, not by local refining, but by product importation. The stiff price of that “modern” but extremely senseless policy is haunting us all again.

    By this perverse energy policy, Nigerians will pay more for fuel, even as the price of crude appreciates!  Yet, if Obasanjo had invested in more refineries, things would have been far better.

    Still, a dog-nosed “cold” Buharinomics, even after succumbing to an audacious hike in fuel prices, seems to have a clear programme on local refining, targeting 2018, for when 70 per cent of consumed fuel would be locally refined.  Even that can’t be said of the “modern” Obasanjonomics!

    Besides, how could brilliant Obasanjonomics, which Goodluck Jonathan took to a record low, have birthed so much corruption, poverty, and underdevelopment, when it remains the golden policy?

    This self-adulating former president grates on our sensitivity. Could somebody tell him to be quiet, while his much maligned successors try to clear the mess he left behind?

  • Saraki and super riches

    Saraki and super riches

    Who says Senate President Bukola Saraki isn’t rich? Indeed, it may be an understatement to simply describe him as rich. His lawyer, Paul Erokoro (SAN), who perhaps should know, reportedly described him as “extremely rich”. Erokoro made Saraki’s riches public during his ongoing trial for alleged false asset declaration before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Abuja.

    Saraki didn’t need to become Kwara State governor in 2003 to make mega-money, his lawyer argued. He was already super-rich by the time he became a governor, he stressed.

    A report said: “He said he had $22million, about 12million pounds, 2.6m Euro and about N4billion in cash in his various accounts.” Apart from “the liquid asset,” the report stated that ”Saraki said he also possessed landed property estimated at N2billion and 15 vehicles valued at about N263.4m”.

    The report continued: “He gave details of the vehicles he acquired as at 2003 to include: Mercedes X320, valued at N16m; Mercedes X500 worth N20m; Mercedes G500, valued at N6m; Mercedes V220 worth N2m and Ferrari456GT, valued at N25m.”

    It also said: “Others are:  Navigator, N15m, MN240 worth N8.5m; Peugeot 406, valued at N2.9m; Mercedes CLK 320 worth N9m; Mercedes E320 valued at N11m; Mercedes G500 bullet proof, worth N45m; Mercedes X500 worth N300m; Lexus Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) bullet proof, valued at N30m and Lincoln Navigator bullet proof worth N25m.”

    Who wouldn’t agree that this is indeed a rich collection of vehicles, and that only a stinking rich individual could have collected such a rich range of vehicles?

    Erokoro, based on the asset declaration form Saraki submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) in 2003, reportedly “said he needed to point out that his client was very rich before he became Kwara State governor to erase the wrong impression created by the prosecution that, he could not have acquired the property he claimed to have, without obtaining loans from banks”.

    The report then added: “The lawyer was, however, silent on the source of his client’s wealth and how he came about all the property and cash he claimed to have possessed before he became governor in 2003.”

    Isn’t that the point Saraki and his lawyer need to clarify? How did Saraki come to be so rich?  What super explanations can explain Saraki’s super wealth?

  • ‘Operation car wash’

    What is what Brazilians call the ongoing graft investigation which unhorsed their president, Mrs. Dilma Rousseff. She was impeached yesterday by the country’s Senate stripping her off all immunity so she may face trial over the next six months.

    “Operation car wash” derives its origin from the fact that millions of dollars illicitly acquired from under hand contracts at the state’s oil firm Petrobras was being laundered through a currency exchange outlet in a gas station in Brasilia, the country’s capital. The gas station apparently has a corner car wash.

    Imagine the scenario: swashbuckling dark-goggled men who are fronts for big public officials come to a black market currency changer in a gas station to carry out their mega deals. While some are inside crunching large figures in dollars, others hang around a corner car wash tending their glistening four-wheelers and swaggering in the manner of million dollars men.

    Of course they are bound to attract attention and set tongues wagging. Only few mortals could sit on a million dollars without causing a stir. People must have noticed this ‘strange’ group; Brazilians surely noticed the strange, shadowy movements around a gas station. Hardball wagers that this was how come, “Operation car wash” took over the soul of Brazil since early 2014.

    When the scandal broke out in 2014, a judge, Sergio Moro, commanded Brazil’s Federal Police to commence investigation. Two years after, a big fish has been caught in the dragnet – Brazil’s number one personage, President Rousseff. Though she is specifically accused and suspended for breaking budgetary laws by taking loans to boost public spending, thereby masking the poor state of the country’s economy, she is also fingered in the Petrobras scandal.

    Dousseff, yes, the same President Dilma Dousseff had been chairman of the board of Petrobras between 2003 and 2010. Yet she claims innocence in a corruption scandal that came to a head in 2008 in which over $2.8 billion is stolen.

    It is a long-drawn criminal investigation which involves nine Brazilian construction firms, 48 sitting and former legislators, former president now a senator, Fernando Melo and former hero-president Lius Ignacio Lula da silva (Lula).

    But the plot is even thicker than you would imagine: apart from the fallen Dilma, her deputy who is now incumbent having taken over yesterday, Michel Temer, is in the Petrobras scandal loop. And so is the next (3rd) in line to him, the Speaker of the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies; and the 4th in line Leader of the upper house, the Senate. They all face criminal probes.

    Gee, corruption is an octopus isn’t it? It has a way of reaching as many people with its many tentacles. But dear smart reader must have drawn the parallel here between Brasil and Nigeria? Petrobras is staightaway, NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation). The way Brasil’s ruling elite poke grubby fingers into the coffers of Petrobras, so it is at NNPC.

    But the distinction is that while the system has institutions that can self-regenerate and unseat even a sitting president that is not the case for Nigeria today. In Brasil, even the president is beholden to institutions of state, but in Nigeria institutions are beholden to the president.

    Shall we call Nigeria “Operation wash, wash?”