The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Y’ello! See who’s got a fever

    They are fortune-hunters par excellence. When other major firms saw a sprawling dark jungle with a horde of ill-clad, ill-mannered ‘natives’, they saw over a hundred million boisterous people who could yak from morning till nightfall. They were willing to brave all odds to dive in.

    And were there odds? There were odds that could be spelt in capital letters and backwards. There were odds standing up, sitting down and even living in trees and there were numerous trees. There were odds dressed in smart suits and occupying oversized offices… let’s just call it Oddland, a place where there was no method to madness.

    That these people could see through that incubus of odds about 15 years ago when they set out to invest in Nigeria is a feat only Houdini could have wrought. And on the other hand, that other telecoms giants could not feel the din of noisy chattering as they landed the land must be a business wonder of this age.

    Well, these modern troubadours landed Nigeria in 2001 and found that they were actually in a virgin land or land of virgins if you will. And they went on a ravishing spree. It’s like a dexterous tailor who happens upon a colony of the naked. He starts by making loincloths for the price of babanriga. And by the time he gets round to donning them with that three-piece royal combo, they are already grovelling at the wily tailor’s feet, picking up anything he passes down and paying handsomely too.

    This is the story of MTN, the South African telecoms minnow that grew to be a giant upon landing the shores of the Giant of Africa (GOA). This true story as retold here by Hardball is perhaps the most current and most eloquent testimony why Nigeria is indeed the GOA. There are other great testimonials, such as Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Chevron, Exxonmobile, Agip, Julius Berger, G.Cappa, to name a few. Nigeria is a land where everyone eats fufu (cake) straight from the mortar, to paraphrase my mother chiding her children for wastefulness even in an environment of plenty.

    Some of these companies, barely known in their homeland, discovered their essence on the stumps of Nigeria’s dissonant essence (take a sip of water please!). But why is Hardball retelling an age-old melancholy tale; shedding tears over a long lost paradise?

    Well, it’s triggered by a brief news report last week that mobile phone frontrunner, MTN, envisages a weak outlook in this year’s returns. This is probably the first time in 15 years that the yellow giant would catch fever from snarling underlings in the sector.

    Hardball is not surprised at all. A pioneer subscriber, I have not recharged my MTN line in two weeks; the first time in 15 years. It is not only that MTN relishes in pissing subscribers off these days, they seem to nick credit these days. You will never find out though if you are a big-loader!

    But the impression has become rife that MTN is as miserly as a village teacher. Subscribers are not even allowed to sniff MTN’s fart even if it breaks by out chance. Smaller competitors have just proved that MB can come at half MTN’s price and that a customer’s recharge can be doubled and business would not fail! Well, grasp all, lose all they say.

  • Hallo… Okupe’s phone still ringing?

    Reuben Abati just complained his phones had stopped ringing, after the frenetic racket of his Goodluck Jonathan years.  Would somebody, somewhere please give him a call, on compassionate grounds, to save his golden phones from manic depression?

    Ah, of course, Reuben was part of the three-some — or more conclusively, four-some — that zealously harvested foes for their principal, under the guise of building bridges.  The list?

    Himself, Reuben Abati, the pious christener of the “collective children of anger”, a rather fiery and magisterial riposte to Jonathan’s traducers, in the e-jungle of (anti?)social media.

    Doyin Okupe, the literal bull, grunting and charging, in the impeccable and immaculate Goodluck crusade.  Why, “Call me a bastard!”, he famously bawled, at the acme of his power hubris, “if APC (then a fledgling opposition coalition, later turned his principal’s electoral nemesis) lasts more than a few months” — or something to that effect.

    Well, APC, the political equivalent of the Yoruba customary Ajantala (what the English would call a genius or, at worst, a precocious child), electorally slew the PDP Goliath, with its 16 mighty years of power swagger.  And it wasn’t even two years old — until July 31!

    Olufemi Olukayode (nee Femi Fani-Kayode), the voluble and fatally persuasive scion of the one and only Remi Fani-Kayode (God bless his combative soul!), the unflinching Demo stalwart, of the Western Region electoral-heist driven crisis, that torpedoed Nigeria’s First Republic.  Fani-Kayode, the future Olukayode’s razor-sharp  tongue erected Jonathan’s final Golgotha.

    And, of course, Olisa Janjaweed Metuh, the PDP publicity generalissimo who, even in what looks like political Siberia, is still very much at his game.  Olisa’s latest Janjaweed “release” is his charge that the Buhari presidency was imposing a “communist” economic policy, for checkmating an illicit run on the Naira, via suspect dollar domiciliary accounts.  Aghast?  Just scream “Janjaweed” and take a deep breath!

    This four-some cooked the Jonathan goose.

    Even then, Doyin Okupe was in a special class of his own, in contrast to Reuben Abati.

    Cherie Blair, QC (Queen’s Counsel, equivalent of Nigeria’s SAN), spouse of Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in her 2008 autobiography, Speaking for Myself,  spoke of two contrasting styles, of two giant advocates, doing their thing in court, during her legal pupillage years at London’s Lincoln Inn.  Derry Irvine, her boss and later a QC, she recalled, was “an attacking rhinoceros”.  But his match, Tom Bingham, QC, “was like a snake, smooth, charming, almost hypnotic”.

    Save a few details and, of course, making for local adaptation, Okupe, with his in-your-face brashness and block-buster aggression, could well have been the Cherie rhinoceros in the Jonathan power jungle, in which he brooked no paddy.  Abati, was quite the opposite — “like a snake, smooth, charming, almost hypnotic” — except for the few occasions (witness his “collective children of rage” comment) when, as the Americans would say, he really blew his tops!

    Well, Abati’s phones have stopped ringing.  So, has Okupe’s too stopped jangling?

    Okupe, the ebullient Remo prince and medic-turned-government-publicist, is a veteran of many controversial causes.  Before June 12, he championed the anti-MKO cause; and his grand but doomed strategy was to plumb MKO in the mud, as he felt Bashir Tofa was comparatively such an overall Lilliputian he couldn’t levitate in MKO’s stratosphere. That strategy resurrected in the Jonathan campaign.  But the result was the same, just as it was for Tofa: electoral doom!

    Now that the business has ended in the dust, is Okupe’s phone still ringing, in contrast to Abati’s?

    Hallo! Hardball is commissioning a crack investigation unit.  Please apply!

  • A question of bread and butter

    News coming from the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja further confirms that the former ruling party is bleeding externally and internally. Two months after the party parted with power, having lost the presidential election, it is still writhing around as a result of the wounds of external conquest aggravated by internal injuries.

    Workers at the PDP base are in a foul mood, following an official notification by its National Secretary, Prof Wale Oladipo, threatening their bread and butter. Their reaction to information that the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) is planning a 50 per cent downsizing of the secretariat personnel and a related 50 per cent pay cut has further exposed the PDP to public ridicule.

    It was an embarrassing and humiliating lesson for the party as the PDP Staff Welfare Association staged a protest at the secretariat on July 31. The workers threatened to prompt investigation of the NWC members by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

    In an exchange of gunfire, things were said that were perhaps better left unsaid. A statement issued by an aide to the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, said: “We are aware that anti-PDP forces have easily found a handful of disgruntled PDP staff as willing tools to attack Chief Metuh with a view to bringing him to public odium, distract him and deny our party a credible voice to propagate its positions.” More specifically, the statement said: “This is not unexpected given the role of the National Publicity Secretary in the rebuilding of our great party and how uncomfortable the ruling APC has been for his outspokenness.”

    The desperate effort to drag the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) into PDP’s internal crisis failed to credibly address the central issues in the conflict. According to a statement by the workers’  association Chairman, Ngozi Eze, and the Secretary, Dan Ochu-Baiye, “indeed, labelling the staff of the PDP could be a veiled attempt to justify the huge sum of N70 million which Metuh collected in July in the name of fighting the APC in the media.” Among other things, the workers accused Metuh of squandering “a whooping sum of N450m media fund” and demanded that the NWC members should account for over N12billion realised from the sale of nomination forms ahead of the general elections held this year.

    The implication of the workers’ point of view is that the planned staff reduction and pay cut are unjustifiable. They must be wondering: With so much bread, why should the NWC members conceive a move that would definitely endanger the workers’ capacity to put food on the table?

    It is noteworthy that the workers described the NWC as “morally repugnant and obsessively corrupt.” Word of advice from the workers: “We wish to therefore advise him and the NWC to respond to gritty issues raised in our press briefing without which the fortunes of the party will continue to dwindle.”  The problem is: A word may not be enough for the unwise.

  • Egbirin ote in Osun

    The Yoruba often talk of egbirin ote— a complex web of intrigues, sustained with unconscionable coldness: and the more you weed out one, the more others sprout, literally from nowhere!

    That appears the situation in Rauf Aregbesola’s State of Osun.

    At the heart of that intrigue, sprouting from a clinically sustained egbirin ote,  is a body that calls itself Civil Society Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun (CSCEO).  Its public face is one Adeniyi Sulaimon Alimi, who takes the title of “chairman”.

    But the real mastermind would appear one Seun Adeoye, a “pastor” in one life and journalist in another, churning out CSCEO’s endless Osun apocalyptic press releases, this time referring to Alimi as CSCEO “chairman”, and that time referring to him as “secretary”!

    Adeoye, a former Osun correspondent of The Guardian, later became the editor of the weekly Osun Mail, an answer to the then opposition Osun Defender, as the Mail railed against the opposition, in the aftermath of the disputed 2007 governorship election.

    Adeoye’s contentious resume, as he cavils against progress but trumpets reactionary causes; as well as his controversial record and tenure in Osun local Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) politics,  would appear to stand him out as a suspect crusader meet a dubious cause!

    To be sure, there is no love lost between the Aregbesola government and the Osun opposition.  Immediately after the Supreme Court threw out Iyiola Omisore’s last challenge to Aregbesola’s re-election, the governor’s supporters mocked, on facebook, twitter and allied social media jungle: “Aregbesola je gomina, Omisore j’agbado!” (literally, “Aregbesola is governor, but all Omisore could crunch is a cob of maize!”).

    That, of course, was a devastating pun on Omisore’s laughable play at “the friend of the poor” ala Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, munching two maize cobs, on the campaign stumps!  That the ploy spectacularly backfired, with the Osun electorate handing Omisore a resounding defeat, was bad enough.  That Aregbesola supporters would rub it in with such a devastating pun must have stung the Omisore camp to no end — and Alimi and Adeoye’s CSCEO appears happy to be pressed into service!

    That would explain Osun’s current egbirin ote, a rather panicky but cold-blooded get-Aregbe-out-by-hook-or-crook, milking the mass misery of a nationwide crisis of salary defaults, even if the financial recklessness of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency (which, by the way, tried all strong arm tactics to procure an Omisore’s victory, after Fayose’s in Ekiti) caused the crisis.

    Well, their intrigue has ploughed new lows.  A sitting judge, Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, has abused the sanctity of her high office, hauling reckless partisan accusations at a sitting governor.  Yet, she would not appear in the Osun legislature to defend her allegations, as she merrily threatened in her petition.

    CSCEO, a dubious human rights coalition, eggs her on.  But every second, her conduct becomes a rebuke to her core judicial constituency and her National Judicial Council (NJC) employers.  How on earth can NJC, the bastion of judicial independence, defend the reckless conduct of this judge, and protect the bench from the odium sure to follow such judicial rascality?

    Then, a so-called education summit, also vociferously promoted by CSCEO, ended a damp squib.  Though CSCEO shrilly cried blue murder as usual, the people appear to know their genuine leaders, and how to keep charlatans and opportunists at bay.

    Hardball has no business telling CSCEO to quit a barren business, for falsehood would eventually consume its vendors.  But as the Yoruba also say, you need not tell the blind the market has broken.  The funereal quiet, after the din, passes the message quicker!

  • EEDC’s two-year-old impunity

    There is corruption and there is impunity; then there is corruption meshed with impunity. Hardball will want to wager that corruption is perhaps the most versatile noun in its class. That act of impairing the integrity of a process or thing lends itself to numerous other meanings and interpretations and all of them vile.

    Here are some samples: the word corruption can also be interchanged with bastardisation, defilement, destruction, deterioration, decomposition, debasement, depravity, adulteration, bribery, wickedness, putrescence… One can go on and on. In other words, corruption is as bad as they say it is. Now when you combine this with impunity, which means simply to escape punishment; the result would be too difficult to contain in any one word.

    This scenario seems to capture the matter between Interstate Electrics Limited, owners of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and Geometric Power (GP), owners of Aba Integrated Power Project (AIPP).

    As the story goes, in May 2004, GP entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) to build an integrated power project in Aba. The MoU came with a concession of a ring-fenced area of the Aba metropolis and Ariaria districts. These contiguous areas would be the off-takers of the power generated by the project.

    In April 2005, GP upgraded the MoU into an agreement between it, the Federal Government and the National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA). And with the unbundling of NEPA in 2005, a further supplemental agreement was reached between GP, FGN and all the unbundled successor company of NEPA including the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and EEDC. Further, as part of the agreement, the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) in 2006 registered Aba Electricity Distribution Company Plc (Aba Disco) at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) as the 12th distribution company. Both the BPE and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated are shareholders in Aba Disco.

    With all these seemingly proper procedures, why is there now a long-running dispute between GP and the EEDC? Hardball seems to have no other explanation than IMPUNITY, yes with capital letters. According to a series of SOS sent out by GP, no sooner did Interstate acquire licence for EEDC to distribute power in the five states of the Southeast than it moved into GP’s Aba metropolis and Ariaria district and physically disrupted the ongoing projects. Thus for most of two years, GP has been unable to meet on its delivery targets with huge attendant costs.

    Apparently, the overwhelming impunity of the Goodluck Jonathan era was working very well for EEDC so it would not obey legally binding agreements and all entreaties even from the regulator failed so far. Impunity.

    Here is a telling statement from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC): “In view of the above mandate and the pending transfer of the ownership of the EEDC to Interstate Electrics, it is important to reiterate, for the benefit of doubt, the existence of a legally valid and binding lease agreement dated April 28, 2005 between the Federal Government of Nigeria, Geometric Power Aba Limited (GPAL), Aba Power Limited (APL), and PHCN. While the encumbrance on the property purchased by EEDC is unrelated to the issue ownership of EEDC, Interstate Electricity as the new owner is legally bound to respect the lease agreement which it is inheriting along with the purchase of EEDC.”

    You see why the impunity here is the heedless kind?

  • Tompolo’s tomfoolery

    So, ex-militia leaders in the Niger Delta couldn’t agree on the need for a July 25 meeting called by one of them, Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo. Specifically, a messy boycott by former militants, Boyloaf, Africa, Pastor Reuben, Shoot-at-Sight, Ogunboss, Ateke Tom, Farrah, and Jomo Gbomo led to the eventual cancellation of the meeting.

    The reason given by Gbomo of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) suggested that there may have been more to the meeting than Tompolo claimed publicly. The MEND spokesman reportedly said the group would have nothing to do with Tompolo or any “assembly of dubious contractors and disgruntled elements.”

    The mention of “dubious contractors” is easy to understand against the background of the $103m (about N21billion) maritime security contract contentiously awarded by the past Goodluck Jonathan administration to the Global West Vessel Specialists Nigeria Limited linked with Tompolo. The Muhammadu Buhari presidency, according to reports, had ordered the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to break business links with Tompolo’s company. In this context, it is also understandable that Gbomo referred to “disgruntled elements” because the loss of such a huge contract may likely cause frustration and irritation.

    Of course, Tompolo defended his idea. He said in a statement: “The tension generated by the meeting is uncalled for, diversionary and mischievous as no evil is intended in whatever form.” The problem with his defence is that he sounded like one who was out to possibly terrorise the Federal Government.  Tompolo’s words: “While some of us understand to an extent, the apparent delay in the continued payment of the monthly stipend to the ex-agitators in view of the seeming scrutiny of government agencies, including the Amnesty Office, by the current administration, same cannot be said of the majority of beneficiaries of the Amnesty programme.”

    Tompolo continued: “While a few see the delay in the payment of their monthly stipends in the light of the need for the current government to settle in properly, others see the delay as a template to stop the programme. The expulsion of some students (home and overseas) by their schools and training institutions particularly has heightened these fears.” What Tompolo was trying to say in so many words was that the Presidency may be sitting on a powder keg.

    It is thought-provoking that Boyloaf, one of the boycotters, reportedly advised the security agencies to be on full alert. The timing of the meeting was a big issue for the boycotters who argued that it was premature because the Buhari administration was yet to clarify its plans for the Niger Delta. Their position amounted to questioning Tompolo’s sense of judgement. Interestingly also, Tompolo’s move is believed to have been prompted by his perception of himself as the pre-eminent militant and militia commander in the region, meaning he is probably suffering from delusion of grandeur.

    The intervention of Bayela State Governor Seriake Dickson, who proposed an alternative forum at a later date, ought to give Tompolo time to rethink his tomfoolery. The question is whether he would do so.

  • Parliamentary forgery?

    Parliamentary forgery — geez, isn’t that a violent contradiction in terms?  Parliamentary language is the best of language.  Parliamentary conduct is the best of conduct.

    So, parliamentary immunity is fair exchange for parliamentary language and refined conduct, just as ex-cathedral sermons are concessions to the clergy as presumed moral avatar; and judicial immunity, as just concession to the judge, presumed fair and above board, in his court?

    So, where does parliamentary forgery fit into all of these?

    If you pardon the virtual stream of consciousness of a troubled soul, that was how Hardball’s mind started working, at the break of the latest scandal in Nigeria’s legislative horizon.  Alleged parliamentary forgery, often rigged elections: are these the fundaments of Nigerian democracy?  Awful!

    News claim the police have established a prima facie case of alleged forgery, in the controversial election that delivered Bukola Saraki as president of the Senate and Ike Ekweremadu, as his deputy.  The news claimed that the Senate Standing Order 2011, the extant one before the inauguration of the present 8th Senate, was illegally tinkered with.  That altered document, it further alleged, provided the legal platform for the June 9 inauguration and election of principal officers.

    In the often dramatic partisan world, if indeed the forgery is proved, a side would rejoice and a side would mourn.  To the partisans, it is yet another victory — or defeat — in a chain of battles in the often fierce war for partisan control.  So, life goes on — after all if you lose today, you could win tomorrow!

    But sorry, Hardball does not share such a sanguine viewpoint!  Indeed, in his view, both sides are losers — for why would anyone: a parliamentarian worth his or her name, senators, the highest ranking symbols of Nigeria’s electoral democracy, and the National Assembly bureaucracy, peopled by bureaucrats of the best crust, why would anyone, in that exalted circle, even think of, not to talk of actually indulging in, rule forgery?  And he who brazenly forges parliamentary rules, would he blink a second from forging actual laws for self benefits?  Sheer horror!

    Just as well, the Buhari presidency has sworn it would not shield anyone, no matter how highly or lowly placed, from prosecution for the alleged forgery.  Just as well, because it is good the presidency is showing good leadership in the matter.

    But the legal front appears set for the notorious, permissive Nigerian debate, that most often ruins the country; and permits felons to get away with murder.

    While some silks have thundered prosecution of whoever were involved, a very senior silk has invoked parliamentary sovereignty, claiming parliament is so sovereign the police cannot investigate a basic breach of the law that even operates its conduct!  Is parliament then above the law?  If it is, is the executive too — and the judiciary?

    If so, why do citizens drag the government (the executive) to court?  And why do judicial officers drag one another to court for alleged breach of their own rules?

    Whoever was involved in that alleged forgery should face the law — and there must be no prevarication!  Also, any talk of “political solution” should be regarded as what it is: crap!

    Only prompt and speedy judicial resolution of the matter would wipe the putative reproach from the National Assembly.

    Parliamentary forgery?  Perish the thought!  And on this campaign, every patriot worth his or her name must clamber on board.

  • Fuel marketers’ bazaar

     For fuel marketers in Nigeria, the current interlude in government, or if you will, break in transmission should last forever. They are in a boom time! They are making a killing; or more directly, they are killing Nigerians so very gleefully and they are waltzing to the bank to boot.

    Since the last days of the Jonathan administration when the almighty oil marketers executed a heist under the guise of unpaid subsidy, the market has not been the same. The subsidy logic, which was born with a bad case of ‘K’ leg, now has a bad limp. But the more warped this subsidy logic is, the better for this gang of marketers and their collaborators at the oil and finance ministries. Hardball admits that the subsidy logic is a befuddlingly complicated one. Despite the fact that he has written about this matter for more than 20 years, long before the phrase, ‘oil subsidy’ was coined; when such banalities as ‘appropriate pricing’ and ‘market forces’ were in vogue, yet this ‘logic’ beats him silly.

    Let us try making sense of this current bazaar and the limping oil subsidy logic of Nigeria’s oil cabal. A few days before the handover of government from Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari, the marketers staged a ‘coup’. It was the season of change so everything was fair in the name of change. “We are being owed hundreds of billions,” our oil marketers screamed. We cannot import, we cannot pay bank interests, etc. They soon induced scarcity and hiked pump price to as much as N250 per litre for about two weeks.

    As soon as PMB took over, they allegedly had a meeting with government and they reverted to N87 per litre. But that was to last for about two or three days. When they found out that PMB was not going to call their subsidy bluff immediately, they decided to resort to ‘stealing by trickery.’

    For instance, for nearly two months, marketers pretend to be selling petrol at the ‘subsidy’ pump price of N87.00 per litre, but that is a ruse, 99.9 per cent of them are selling at between N100 and N120 per litre. Meanwhile, the marketers’ co-conspirators, the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), tells us that the PMB administration has incurred N56.784 billion debt on petrol subsidy alone in the first 30 days of this administration. This is just petrol; what about kerosene?

    Oil marketers and PPPRA are telling us that even as they sell petrol at the pump price of (average) N100 per litre, they are still subsidising it to the tune of N47.32 per litre. They also insist that we consume 40 million litres of petrol per day without fail! What this means is that the accurate pump price of petrol shone of ‘subsidy’ is roughly N150 per litre!

    More ‘K’ legged logic: PPPRA (this sounds like loud farting!) used to tell us that ‘subsidy’ and pump price were increasing because the price of crude oil was rising at above $100 per barrel. Today, the price of crude oil has fallen to about $50 per barrel, yet pump price and ‘subsidy’ continue to rise. Well, call it maddening logic and you are in order.

  • Joshua: Same old story

    Repetition is a powerful weapon in the hands of a spin doctor, and a body known as the Nigerian Human Rights Community (NHRC) is using it for the purpose of laundering the image of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Ikotun, Lagos. Of course, the effort to show that the church is not as black as it has been painted is also an effort to paint its leader, Prophet Temitope Joshua, as an innocent player in the tragic drama in the church’s compound in September last year. According to official figures, 80 South Africans, 22 Nigerians, two Beninoise and two Togolese died following a building collapse at the church.

    Based on a Coroner’s inquest into the disaster, the Lagos State government indicated that it would take legal action against the church and certain individuals. Specifically, a statement by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s spokesman, Habib Haruna, said the government “would prosecute the contractor, Akinbela Fatiregun, of Hardrock Engineering Company Limited, and Structural Engineer, Oladele Ogundeji, who built and supervised the collapsed building, for professional negligence.”

    In addition, the government said it would prosecute the church for failing to obtain a building approval, contrary to the Urban and Regional Planning and Development Law 2010. Reports said the collapsed building was originally a three-storey structure, which was being raised to accommodate three additional floors.

    Nothing about the position of the state government is mystifying. But NHRC, self-described as “a coalition of 135 civil society groups spread across Nigeria”, introduced mystification when it said in a statement: “We use this medium to call on the United Nations (UN Human Rights Commission) to compel the Nigerian government to ensure full investigation into the matter so as to establish what was the cause of the collapsed building beyond the claims that the building fell on its own.”

    Carrying the confusion further, NHRC said it “believes that there are new evidences that link the collapse of the building to terrorism”. According to the body, “Islamic extremists may have attacked the building due to Nigeria’ s war against Boko Haram, which found a new wave of support from South Africa.”

    It is curious that NHRC repeated the same old story that Joshua told a disbelieving public when the tragedy happened. At the time, Joshua claimed that a “strange aircraft” flew over the church a number of times before the guest house collapsed. He also mentioned that an email he received showed that his church was targeted for bombing by the Islamist guerilla force Boko Haram. Joshua seemed fixated on the idea that the building must have collapsed as a result of an outside machination by those who do not wish him and his church well.

    It is clear enough that Joshua’s presentation and the NHRC’s repetition cannot invalidate the points that support culpability, namely, identified professional negligence and failure to act in accordance with regulations. In this case, repetition has served no constructive purpose. The repetition of this particular angle sounds like a fictional construction; it is farcical.

  • Crying contractors

    So, three controversial contractors held a meeting to consider how to get the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to pay the money it allegedly owed them in respect of a three-month oil pipeline security deal that took effect from March 16 in the Southwest and some parts of the Niger Delta.  From the beginning, the contracts in question were politically coloured, which is a way of saying they were corrupted by politics and politicians.

    Politics remains in the picture, considering that the political figure who influenced the award of the contracts while he was in power, former President Goodluck Jonathan, failed to get a second term in office. With President Muhammadu Buhari in the saddle, there was no way his promise of change would not have changed things for the contractors. The non-renewal of the contracts after they expired was logical and reflected the public mood.

    “We are telling the NNPC , if you don’t renew the contract, at least pay for the job we did for three months.” That was the voice of Mr. Gani Adams, one of the contractors and a factional chief of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), who was quoted in a report. Adams said: “It is true that we met in Eko Hotel, myself, Dr. Fasehun and General Shoot-at-Sight and we discussed how we are going to get paid for the job done for NNPC.”

    More importantly, Adams distanced himself from a threat credited to Dr. Frederick Fasehun, OPC founder and fellow NNPC contractor. It is interesting to note that although rivalry between Adams and Fasehun split the OPC, the two leaders are joined or conjoined by what may be described as “the whiff of money”. The security contracts are reportedly in the multi-billion naira category. However, when it comes to what to do to make NNPC pay, according to Adams, “we did not say we would carry out any protest and that is why I came out to dissociate myself and my group from a plan by Dr. Fasehun to picket the offices of the NNPC…This is not a self-actualisation struggle, but business.”

    Ultimately, isn’t this business about “self-actualisation”? Or put differently, isn’t this business about self-expansion? It is reasonable to argue that the business must have been profitable, even though the contractors keep playing down their personal increase. “About 4,000 workers were engaged by our companies – New Age Security Company owned by Dr. Fasehun; Galaxy Security Outfit Nigeria Limited owned by General Shoot-at-Sight and Donyx Global Concept Nigeria Limited owned by me.” That was Adams again.

    It is thought-provoking that Adams and Fasehun give the impression that their companies have not made any money from the contracts. Adams said: “We had to source for loans to pay part of our workers’ salaries.” Fasehun said: “We were not mobilised but we went ahead to do the job because we felt concerned that the nation’s lifeline was being threatened.”

    Now that they are crying about the contracts that made them laugh, they are paying the price for the politicisation of contracts.