Category: Hardball

Hurray, the Federal Government seems set to backtrack on her most calamitous rice policy. Before we begin to celebrate this likely reversal, recall that Hardball had been on this matter since last year, writing about three articles pointing out the sheer folly of it. Some back-grounding first: government wonks led by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina had woken up one morning early last year to jerk up the tariff and levy on rice importation to a total of 110 per cent. Why would a minister take such a knee-jerk action? Adesina had hoodwinked his bosses that Nigeria could be self-sufficient in rice production in a few years if tariff and levy are pushed up suddenly. Self-sufficiency is a great ideal but there was no sincere plan or strategy to actualise it.

He made-believe that there was a revolution that had set rice fields thriving all over the country and that milling plants segued around the farm centres rolling out tonnes of home-made rice. But in reality, very little was going on. Farmers and major rice stakeholders were neither consulted nor supported. The burgeoning rice fund became the exclusive property of government; it was never accounted for, never made public and never deployed to develop local production as it was meant to.

All that was active was the voracious increase in the levy and tariff of rice importation. The last one at a cumulative 110 per cent was the limit. Tariff in the neighbouring Togo and Benin Republic remained at 30 per cent or less thus it became impossible for genuine importers to do so through the Nigerian ports. It became highly lucrative to smuggle the commodity through our borders and that is what has been happening for the past one year. Government lost huge revenues as no rice-bearing ship came to Nigeria anymore; smugglers overwhelmed the Customs and of course compromised them thoroughly; prices of rice shot up in the Nigerian market. Some of the stakeholders and importers who had made investment in local production were in jeopardy as their backward integration efforts suffered.

This is the point Hardball had raised on this page several times. At a recent parley with members of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said that it had become necessary to review the tariff and levy regime on rice because it had created significant challenges even though it had also led to marked increase in rice out put in the country and created significant number of jobs mostly in the northern part of the country. In her words, “it caused a significant reduction in Customs revenues and has been largely hijacked by smugglers and neighbouring countries.”

While the minister is at it, it would be interesting to know how much has been realised from the levy and the attendant accruals into the rice development fund since inception in the 90s, who has been managing the fund and how has it been deployed? As for the marked increase in local rice production and generating significant number of jobs, Hardball can tell that they remain fallacies. As the Americans would say, there is nothing doing; we are still in the rice mire.

Football, which some have described as the beautiful, round leather game, has long been known as the new El Dorado, but is it the new political turf too? Just when you think wages have reached their heights, new limits are soon set. Just when you think interest in the game might wane, a new upwelling of enthusiasm is ignited. All a wretched family needs today to flee poverty is to have one lad (or lass) of great football talent and pronto, money begins to flow like ocean water. Kelechi Iheanacho and Dele Alampasu are two current examples of how football can instantly change the fortunes of families. But make no mistake there are deep political and racial dynamics and the bigger the deal, the higher the stakes.

Consider the latest £300,000 -a-week- contract signed by Wayne Rooney in his club, Manchester United Football Club (MUFC). Converted, the 28-year-old England striker will earn about N82 million per week for the next four years. This deal immediately makes him the most expensive player in MUFC’s history. Rooney also becomes perhaps the most expensive in the world second only to Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid. The question is: why would a sinking MUFC shell out so much money for one player in her time of deep trouble? The player is not playing exceptionally well right now; his club is in her worst situation of the last two decades; far adrift on the current English Premiership League (EPL) table. MUFC, which are the current EPL champions, are right now in danger of not only missing all silverwares this season, they may not make the top four which qualifies them for the prestigious pan-European Champions League.

Myriads of questions beg for answers in this deal: would former coach Sir Alex Ferguson have agreed to a deal like this? Some say the hardy MUFC legend would have done away with Rooney the way he did David Beckham and used the proceeds to get at least two talented, younger players. Some posit the new coach David Moyes was overly taken in by sentiments having first discovered Rooney at Everton, his former club. Football pundits say he has allowed Rooney to take advantage of the weak and supine position of the club to extract an unviable contract. Now he is not by any chance the best player in the club; Robin van Persie and the new signing Juan Mata maybe one notch ahead. Now the wage structure of MUFC has been distorted and every player will expect a bigger contract soon. More worrisome, Rooney has been made a king and even a messiah of the club and this could boomerang if the other players leave the ball to him alone.

There is also the issue of race: analysts have noted that no coloured player gets paid so much no matter how talented. Players like Romelo Lukaku (Everton), Wilfried Bony (Swansea), Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling (Liverpool) are sharper strikers yet hardly any of them earn half this wage. Rooney even earns more than the phenomenal Lionel Messi!

Well, for a country in dire need of heroes, England will create one for herself by all means. But with MUFC sinking deeper with every game, it is hoped that all of this will not turn out an albatross for all concerned.

It was the much fecund French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who long ago gave us the famous aphorism, “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” and it comes quite handy now in describing governments in Nigeria and their modus operandi. Those who have been around in the last three decades must watch most frustratingly as things remain almost exactly the same even as governments change all the time. In today’s parlance, it is said that only an unstable mind would do the same thing the same way all the time and expect a different result. But it seems our governments have perfected the art of doing the same thing the same way all the time and even doing it badly. Sometimes we wonder whether it is a deliberated ploy to wear us down.

Let us consider the new-found penchant by President Goodluck Jonathan to go on a shuttle of visits to Nigeria’s traditional rulers. Recently, he stormed the South West of Nigeria, visiting three monarchs in a blitzkrieg tour that took him to the historic towns of Oyo, Ile-Ife and Badagry. Last Monday, he was in Owerri, Imo State, for a brisk political business but on his way out, he made a stop at the palace of the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Acbebe, obviously as part of the current royalty rub-down.

But about two decades ago, in those heady days of the military when this business of royal validation started, the hefty royals were ‘invited’ to Aso-rock by the dozen when things got a bit too heated up. After a closed-door ‘meeting’ between the junta and the monarchs, they often would come out singing a different song to their subjects. One well-known traditional ruler is still remembered today for his dramatic summersaults after visiting Aso-Rock and driving away with a heavily stuffed booth; especially in those days of June 12, 1993 agitations.

Today, the president shuttles the royal palaces and that has its peculiar lacuna. It is bound to open up age-old supremacy tussle that had been latent since the beginning of history. No king cherishes being subordinated to another no matter how wretched his kingdom might be. In Yorubaland, for instance, the president would not pay homage to the Alafin, the Iku Baba Yeye without also calling on the Igbakeji Orisa the Ooni of Ife, regardless of the logistical calamity it might portend. And that he did recently, but where does that leave the metropolitan monarch of the ancient city of Ibadan whose door-mouth was traversed to visit those ‘bigger’ kings? What have we done to the sensibilities of the old man and his subjects? What about the ‘big crown’ in Osogbo who has already raised a red flag stating that there are three monarchs of equal standing in Oyo State?

And the Ijebu, the Egba, the Ijesha and so on, would the presidency send a ‘message’ to them through adjoining kingdoms? Same for Igboland, the President passed right in front of the palace of Ozuruigbo IV, Eze Emmanuel Njemanze, to pay homage to Agbogidi, the Obi of Onitsha as if the former was an opposition party stalwart. Before we come to the grief that is bound to be the outcome of this presidential peregrinations Hardball asks: to what purpose is all this?

Gee! What a fresh and penetrating denouncement! It carries such refreshing authenticity that it might have the impact of a thousand IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). And it may well have more effect on the rampaging Boko Haram gang than all the security agencies in Nigeria put together. We speak about Mohammadu Buhari’s recent umbrage towards the Boko Haram sect. Since last week, the sect has embarked on an orgy of blood-letting and arson in Borno and other neighbouring states of the Northeast of Nigeria. The death toll from the killings at Izge alone reached 121. More deadly strikes followed in Gwoza and Bama.

Obviously exasperated by the wantonness of the mayhem, the ex-general and former military head of state posted on his Facebook page last Sunday, what must be his most charged statement since the Boko Haram crisis started. He pronounced the Boko Haram ideology as devilish saying, “There is no justification for this wanton disregard for the sanctity and dignity of human life. Any ideology that trafficks in terror and violence is a devilish ideology that has no place in a civilised society.

“This is the time for our security agencies and those responsible for the security and well-being of our citizens to intensify vigilance in order to mitigate future occurrences.” Though one would have loved for this manner of high-cadenced and damning condemnation to have come much earlier in the budding days of the sect, we say better late than never. Now, it is not that Gen. Buhari had not been condemning the terrorists hitherto but never in this high-pitched and telling manner.

Further, while we agree that the military and security agencies of government must live up to their responsibilities as Buhari has charged, we think he and his fellow leaders of the North must stand up to be counted in resolving this sectarian matter. We refer to the large bloc of military elite of the North both retired and serving; the influential religio-traditional Brahmins, the governors and some of the money elites. We ask that for their own interest and in the interest of their region and for the sake of Nigeria, they must meet urgently.

They must move now for apart from the fact that these boys are so emboldened that they are poking their dirty fingers into everyone’s eyes there is a more clanging reason to move. And that reason is that many people are still not quite convinced that there are not some renegades somewhere up there thinking for these boys and shoveling cash to them. Their longevity and tenacity also suggest that someone in some strategic position is looking out for them, buffering them and leaking vital information. For instance, they normally find shelter in communities, they move en masse or in a convoy through communities to hit their targets and back; how can they afford such fleet of trucks, such arsenal of arms and ammunition and such cash to recruit such large number of fighters? These are the questions Gen. Buhari and his northern think-tank on Boko Haram may want to find answers to.

To paraphrase a certain bygone former general of the Nigerian Army, dis tori don get k-leg and mere abuse and hot air won’t harm the Haramists. And as our serially lazy governments are quick to say, government alone cannot do it. Ironically, this is a matter that kills leaders and it is also a matter that gives fillip to great leadership. What would it be for our dear general?

Look at Ojo Maduekwe, veteran ex-minister of many portfolios, under different governments, and you would probably see a living proof of the Biblical saying that a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, among his own people.

That quote came from Jesus the Christ himself, when faced with saucy stiff-necked Jews, who always questioned the bona fides of the lowly son of the lowly Joseph the Carpenter.

And just as Christ begot Christianity, one of the globe’s foremost religions, to show just how the ancient Jews were so wrong about him and his divine mission, the Pan Africa Bicycle Information Network (PABIN) literally swooned on Ojo’s bicycle heroics.

Just a sampler: “In a refreshing departure from the “Webenzi” (a local colloquial term for African civil servants who travel in Mercedes Benzes) Maduekwe and his staff can regularly be seen pedalling through the streets of Abuja, en route to meetings, with their formal clothes and papers strapped to their rear carriers.” Mr. Maduekwe was Transport minister then, from which Olympian heights he advocated his lowly mass cycling theory.

PABIN even put a spin to many Maduekwe’s close shaves. When the heavens broke, and a minister of the Federal Republic was drenched to his bones, PABIN quoted the minister to have gamely declared: “Rain doctors did their worst, I defied them. In this business, rain does not really matter.”

And when the minister was run into a ditch, by two vehicles on a major Abuja highway, on account of his cycling heroics, PABIN put another spin on it: “In June [2001], Maduekwe was even hit by a bus and into a ditch while cycling to work. This only led him to redouble his efforts to establish bicycle route networks in Abuja and Lagos.”

That spin suggested Maduekwe’s cycling scheme survived much longer after the accident. That was not exactly true. Indeed, the Nigerian media back then report the accident with a jeering, we-told-you-so temper. Take this Vanguard July 19, 2001 report, with the headline — Nigeria: Bus knocks down Ojo Maduekwe on bicycle — “Current campaign by Transport Minister, Chief Ojo Maduekwe to popularise the use of bicycle as a means of transportation almost claimed his life yesterday after he was knocked down by a bus while he was riding a bicycle to the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC).”

With the upsurge of bicycles on Lagos roads, however, following the Lagos State Traffic Law of 2013, Ojo Maduekwe is all but justified. With the ban on the menace called Okada (commercial bikers on Lagos roads), it is a common sight to see youths on bicycles, many on neighbourhood roads, but not quite a few too on those highways, from which Okada had been banned.

The dare-devil but quiet question from the daring riders would appear: Na Okada dem don ban, abi?, as these youths manoeuvre, not altogether different from the dare-devil Okada bikers which, by the way, had dispatched not a few to early graves or condemned them to tough limbless lives!

So, those who pooh-poohed Ojo Onikeke on his bicycle philosophy must now realise: a prophet is not without honour …