The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • ASUU: Blackmail won’t work

    ASUU: Blackmail won’t work

    Hardball is often torn between frustration and pity for President Goodluck Jonathan. Frustration because he cannot seem to get the country going and pity because though he means well, in his incapacitation, he cannot muster the requisite acuity, charm and even wiles to cut through crap and get the kind of critical results that define administrations. Few examples will help explain. In the Boko Haram affair, it took him an age to understand that the very sovereignty of Nigeria was being threatened and there was an urgent need to stem the insurgence. But he has been incapable of doing the needful and Nigeria has continued to be held by scruff of her shirt by a band of desert militia men.

    Another example is the oil industry (including the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB) which has been in the mire since he took office. Now remember that this is Nigeria’s most strategic asset which ought to be the president’s top priority. But what do we have? A rotten state oil corporation; comatose refineries; fraudulent products import scheme; mindboggling fuel subsidy scandal and suddenly, oil theft racket. Nigerians don’t hear any good news anymore from our most prized sector. One can mention half a dozen other telling instances of k-legged inertia but what is the point?

    Back to ASUU, the issue of the day which is a raging example of presidential doodling, one is pained that Goodluck Jonathan could not gather up all the presidential powers at his disposal to break the six-month old impasse. The Academic Staff Union of Universities has been on a protracted strike. When it seemed all had failed, the president intervened personally, sitting through several meetings with senior members of ASUU executives. The last meeting reportedly lasted 13 hours yet came to naught. This has, apparently, enraged the president who in obvious frustration, reached for the rod: return to work or get sacked. But Hardball must advise that force and violence are the tools of stupid and cowardly people. They are, of course, not instruments for construction.

    Constructive engagement has been thrown out the window in place of arm-twisting, threats and blackmail. In a barrage of propaganda, ASUU leaders are being painted as recalcitrant, as saboteurs and enemies of Jonathan. Some columnists (some of who carry the tag of ‘professor’) make such loose argument that ASUU ought to go back to work just because of the fact that it sat at a meeting with the president for 13 hours. What did the president offer anew? It is calamitous, to say the least that Jonathan could not wring out some agreement from the lecturers at this critical moment in this ASUU affair; we had hoped that he wouldn’t fail after all else had failed.

    Hardball could have thrown in the entire country (including ASUU) if that was what it required; if he had it to do. And for heavens sake where is the presidential chutzpah? If the salaries of the last four months were the issue, the president could have ordered it paid immediately. Everything but trying to force the lecturers back to the classrooms would have been smarter.

    And whose advice was it to draw a line in the sand with the lecturers? Who thought it through? It is obvious that the Education Minister, Nyeson Wike is out of his depth here. He simply lacks the capacity to handle this one. Being a political weasel, he would insist and advise accordingly that ASUU members are ‘political enemies’ and that instantly drains the matter of all logic. But ASUU has a good case, they are simply asking government to live up to one of its promise and responsibilities; that is not too much to ask.

    As you read this, the lecturers would have defied the ultimatum of the presidency; the president has bungled it all up once again.

  • Junaid Mohammed: Giving North a bad name

    A few weeks back, Hardball was hard-put to politely upbraid our octogenarian elder, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark on this page. The piece cautioned against the old man’s hawkish stance against the rebel governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). It also sought to discourage the current overflow of intemperance and hate. But, last Sunday, another elder, this time from the North, raised the decibel of hate a notch higher in the current sabre-rattling game between elements from different parts of the country.

    In an interview in Sunday Sun of December 1, Junaid Mohammed, a veteran politician; a member of the House of Representatives in the 2nd Republic let loose what may be described as a barrage of unguided and ill-conceived utterances. Asked whether President Goodluck Jonathan should contest in the 2015 presidential election, he seemed to have lapsed into a rage. Hear him:

    “Quote me, if Jonathan insists on running, there will be bloodshed and those who feel short-changed may take to the warpath and the country may not be the same again. His running will amount to taking about 85 million northerners for a ride and that is half of the country’s total population. So, there will be bloodshed. But we do not pray to get to that level before his ethnic and tribal advisers pull him back.”

    What malevolence, what infantile rage from a highly educated man (he is a medical doctor); a septuagenarian and an elder who ought to be a statesman of the realm. Hardball finds it hard to believe that Dr. Junaid Mohammed actually said these words. When people like him threaten his fatherland with bloodshed, Hardball is quick to ask: whose blood are we talking about? His own? Would he be found anywhere near the barricades when the streets are angry and bellowing with smoke? Would his children and grand-children be out on the violent streets exchanging futile stones for bullets?

    Mohammed’s must be the most irresponsible statement ever uttered in this country in recent times. And Hardball asks him: what was the blood count in the last post-election riots in the North in 2011? How many Nigerian youths got wasted; how many businesses and sources of livelihood went up in smoke; how many were orphaned and how many thousands are today incapacitated living with eternal handicap? I will bet Mohammed does not know and, of course, he does not give a damn. If only he cared, if he looked back, if he took stock of the mayhem, he would not be talking so glibly about bloodshed.

    Muhammed, like ilk, are just power bees; they do not possess the capacity to think deep; they just stick their nose up and trail the nectar of power. They only buzz around the nectar and gorge on the honey. If they have to waste the lives of hapless Nigerians to maintain their hold on power and its trappings, so be it. What is particularly troublous is to see a man like Mohammed, who ought to be one of the guiding lights of the nation sounding worse than those half educated militants. But let it be known that no group or zone has the franchise to violence and bloodshed; every zone would devise a means to defend itself when the chips are down so it is childish and laughable to brandish ‘bloodshed’ as a form of intimidation.

    Mohammed does the North no good when he makes such utterances that show them as if they are obsessed with power; or as if North will cease to exist without the presidency. More worrisome is the suffusion of anger in Mohammed’s heart which elicited personal abuse against the president. Hear this: “…We now have this nincompoop as president.” Love him or hate him he symbolises the nation and in gunning for him, let us be careful not to gun down the country.

     

  • The Nokia story

    Hardball wagers that capitalism is a carnivore and the market is its burial ground. This assertion is informed by the story of Nokia, the world’s number one mobile phones maker. Let’s bet again that if you don’t have a Nokia phone in your hand right now, you probably have it somewhere near you but surely, there must be someone by you who has one handy. Nokia made the best hand sets. Yes, I say ‘made’ deliberately because the Finnish firm may no longer make phones again, ever.

    A few weeks ago, Nokia shareholders agreed to a $7.4billion deal to sell the company’s mobile phone business to Microsoft. Nokia shares had slumped dangerously in the last two years and for the first time in the 148-year business life of this great company it could not pay shareholders annual dividend because it needed to keep the cash to stay afloat. So what was the problem?

    Simple, the management had a momentary lapse of memory so to speak and failed to innovate or jump on the bandwagon of new trends thus the market buried it. The smart phones emerged, Nokia did not tune in on time and consumers migrated, Nokia phone sales slumped, and the company began to bleed profusely and was going to go under calamitously until Microsoft came along with cash.

    It can, therefore, be said that the smart phone killed Nokia. The company, Nokia, is the greatest export of Finland, the little Scandinavian country that was for many years under the shadow of the Soviet Union. It was the phenomenal success of Nokia that helped to transform Finland to a world class economy. Many Finns were said to have been shocked at the sudden misfortune of a company that was at one point worth 4 per cent of the country’s gross Domestic Products (GDP). In fact, the sale of Nokia’s phone business was almost marred by agitators who saw it as a Finnish national asset.

    For Nigerians, Nokia phones have stood out as the number one brand since the advent of GSM technology here over a decade ago. It has been found to be durable, user-friendly and even trendy. It was said that if your Nokia phone dropped from your hand, it bounces about and you simply pick it up while most other phones were likely to fall to pieces. Among the first set of Nokia phones shipped to Nigeria in 2001 (3310) have proven to be so durable that some people still use them till today. A friend told the story of how he had to ‘steal’ his mother’s in order to replace it for her as she would not hear of changing it.

    The lesson in the Nokia story is that though technology, like a lady, may be flippant and flighty, business managers of today must keep their eyes on the ball 24 hours daily. It is a trying time to run business. Things change in a flash, new trends emerge in the morning and by evening they have become jaded with yet ‘fresher’ ones replacing them and of course, some companies vanishing with the old fad. We are in a faddish world of electronicity and apps.

    When Apple came up with Iphones then Ipads and all the other such products only acclaimed tecchies knew that it would mark a paradigm shift for the hand phone business. Samsung jumped into the fray, lawsuits and all. It is reaping bountifully now. Nokia still was the best, the top of the range phone makers till about two years ago. It sat pretty thinking nothing could move its nearly 150-year domination of the business. But nothing is cast in stone and no business is too big or too solid to fail, that is the ultimate lesson of the Nokia story.

  • Her Lordship, the bishop

    If Hardball dares to say it, bishops, especially of the Anglican fold (that he has taken an especial note of) are mostly portly, well-fed and expansive in their overflowing robes. They seem to be of the same genetic stock. But from next year, there will be a fundamental change in the physique and make-up of Anglican bishops: they will be buxom, curvy and full-lipped. Some may even wear lipsticks as the years roll by and of course, mount on the pedestals of dainty high-heeled shoes. Yes, all these and more will manifest because the Church of England, (CoE) the mother church of the world’s Anglican Communion is poised to consecrate female bishops next year.

    A recent report says that the CoE’s governing body voted overwhelmingly in favour of female bishops mid-November ending a 20-year impasse that would see women ordained as senior clergy by the end of 2014. The report notes further that a vote on a package of measures to endorse women bishops was supported by 378 members of the General Synod. Only eight voted against while 25 abstained. Women already serve as bishops in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Once the CoE endorses it, it naturally becomes acceptable for members around the world.

    But like the issue of homosexuality (among the clergy and the matter of gay marriage) which has enjoyed widespread accommodation in the churches of the Western world, the Anglican Church in the developing world, especially Nigeria, do not even ordain female priests yet. In fact, the body of bishops, led by Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, is vehemently opposed to it the same way it has held out against the gay rights campaign. The Bible is unambiguous about male-female relationships, Okoh and his ‘3rd World’ caucus insists. We shall do it the Bible way and we shall abide by the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, they say vehemently.

    But the Anglican faithful of the ‘advanced world’ argue that the world has changed and mankind has evolved. They are showing a fresh new sensitivity to individual rights to sexual preferences. Those who are opposed to this ‘new’ way are labeled ‘homophobes’ and traditionalists. On the women priesthood matter, they say we live in a new world of equality of genders. They insist that in the Bible eras of Old and new Testaments the world was primitive and was biased against the female gender. Again man has evolved and it has been proven that beyond physiological differences, man and woman are basically equal. Gender sensitivity is the new chant.

    The point must be made, however, that religion is not science or art or logic; it is faith, blind unreasoned belief. Can the world wise up to God? It is all there in the first consecration recorded in the Bible: “Now take Aaron your brother, and his sons with him from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to me as priests, Aaron and Aaron’s sons:” (Exodus 28 v.1). Further down the chapter, it says that, “you shall anoint them, consecrate them, and sanctify them, that they may minister to Me as priests. And you shall make for them linen trousers to cover their nakedness; they shall reach from the waist to the thighs. They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they come into the Tabernacle of meeting, or when thy come near the altar to minister in the holy place, that they do not incur iniquity and die.” And chapter 29 v.37 is clear: “Seven days you shall make atonement for the altar and sanctify it. And the altar shall be most holy. Whatever touches the altar must be holy.”

    True believers know that God does not make mistake and the Word is immutable. Even Christ did not choose women among his disciples; it was by no means a mistake. The woman is the ultimate cross bearer for procreation and she is blessed with a monthly period which forbids her to carry out altar duties. They have their duties cut out for them in the children and women ministries. Consecrating women will seem to negate God’s clear injunction.

  • Adesina, the Pied Piper of Nigeria

    Dear reader, Hardball will take it that we all know the nursery tale about the Pied Piper of Hamelin, that fellow who blew away with his pipe, the pestilence of rats in Hamelin and subsequently took all the kids of the town in tow. Each time one hears Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, our honorable Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, speak about his beat, one is instantly reminded of that fabled Hamelinian who was full of charisma and blandishments but whom you would hearken to only at your peril. Recall that Hardball had brought the matter of rice crisis on this platform once before but he might as well have thrown water on the back of a tortoise. Apparently nobody listens, nobody cares; the people leading us have a singularly insular mindset.

    Why are we revisiting Adesina and his agric empire once again so soon? Stakeholders have shouted themselves hoarse about impending food crisis and a looming hunger in the land but our minister seems lost in his own rarefied world of private jets and five-star hotels to hear or understand. On the other hand, each time he climbs down from his high-horse, he throws fictitious statistics and international awards at us hoping to bamboozle us.

    The first key issue is that without any basis, he has caused the tariff and levy on rice to be increased to 110 percent in lieu of stemming importation and growing the commodity locally. Great idea. But this fellow is not given to sitting down and pursuing anything to a logical end; he seems to have the attention span of an excited teenager. Where is the document backing this grand policy? Where are the stakeholders he works with to actualise this beautiful idea? Zero. Nothing. Meanwhile, huge levies are being collected on every bag of rice coming into Nigeria. This levy is supposed to build a fund to develop local rice production. Where is the rice fund? Zero. Who is managing it? Zero. Where is the account? Zero.

    We would not complain if only Adesina kept his rice fund and the rest of us suffer no ruinous consequence. But we are paying heavily for this guy’s rascality. First, it has become almost impossible to import rice through Nigeria’s ports because it is very costly while smuggling it through neighbouring countries has become very profitable because of very low tariffs at their ports (about 30%). Because it is so lucrative, smugglers have overwhelmed our Customs thus most of the commodity in the Nigerian market today is smuggled.

    The result is that Nigeria loses revenue; genuine importers are out of business and the modest, individual effort at growing rice locally is being jeopardised because a bag of smuggled rice is far cheaper than a bag of local paddy (unprocessed rice). According to the Customs, Nigeria loses about $1 billion daily on smuggled rice. Coupled with the Boko Haram activities in northwest Nigeria, many rice farms in Nigeria are abandoned and many plants are in a state of partial shutdown.

    What is Adesina’s response to all this: that Nigeria produce 1.1 million metric tonnes of rice in the last dry season and that she is poised to do more in 2013. Inflation had gone down to its lowest since 2008 and that Nigeria received an award from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for reducing the number of hungry people in Nigeria from 19.3 million in 1990 to 13 million in 2013. Agriculture has employed 25 million youths he said and that the Federal Government has reduced food import by N857 billion.

    But Hardball can tell you that these have all turned out to be phantom statistics and lies from our agric minister. It is sad that if Adesina leaves this job today, Nigerians would remember him as the man who dazzled so much but had little substance. Nigerians have watched with bemusement how the bright promise that Adesina held turned to a dreadful mirage.

    CORRECTION: Yesterday this column stated that seven ‘rebel’ PDP governors decamped to APC. As we have found out, only five made the move. Error regretted.

  • Pikin Dumps Papa…

    As news filtered in about noon yesterday that the G7 had bitten the bullet, an old song flashed in Hardball’s mind. It goes something like: “What’s that monster in the forest that raises so much hell and will not let us sleep? If it will eat us up let it hurry but it must quit threatening us.” Hardball, of course, speaks about the Peoples Democratic Party (or Pikin Dumps Papa- if you are light-hearted, (PDP)), Nigeria’s shambolic ruling party which has been haemorrhaging since May and seems in danger of achieving a mortal denouement. Lady Macbeth said it better: “If it is done when it were done, it were well it were done quickly…”

    Last May at the party’s convention in Abuja, key members unhappy with the turn of events had staged a walk out and had immediately moved to form what they called New PDP. Notable among such members were seven state governors along with the party structure in their states. But it is hardly done when a critical action like this is taken; consequences often follow in a trail, sometimes like a whirlwind as we have experienced since May.

    The breakaway PDP governors are Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto); Babangida Aliyu (Niger); Rabiu Kwakwanso (Kano); Sule Lamido (Jigawa); Murtala Nyako (Adamawa); Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State. These men of power, in the company of most of their supporters, have declared for nascent All Progressives Congress (APC). This crossing of the Rubicon, so to speak, has immediately diminished the PDP which boasts of being the biggest party in Africa not necessarily to a minority party but to something of ‘the second party’. That is a new reality that will dawn on the remaining members now. Second, this move has exposed the lack of strategic depth of the party, it has shown it up to being a behemoth without a brain box; a lumbering giant. How come several months of negotiations did not make a dent on the rebel governors; not even one of them could be won over. It signposts the weakness in the current leadership of the party or what is left of it.

    In fact the leadership stock has long been depleted and narrowed down to a very few people while the Board of Trustees, the apex elders forum that provides insight, dept and guidance in any party’s crucial affairs is in disarray. A number of the most influential members have been sidelined and they merely sit on the fence and watch the drama play out. Some are known to give tacit backing to the ‘rebels’ and are probably part of the unfolding game plan.

    Hardball squints into his crystal ball at this juncture to determine that this is indeed a day to be noted in Nigeria’s history as a cross-carpeting of this magnitude has never occurred in her annals. It is an augury that is at once dramatic and historic. At issue is presidential power shift which is of course compounded by a leadership most invidious. Are the ‘rebels’ overly pushy and precipitate in their desire to force change? Time will tell as events unfold in the days ahead.

    Back to the idea of piking dumping papa, in African tradition, it is father that disowns and disinherits the child. To have it the other way round is an affront; it is to challenge paternity, a call to arms literally. Again, it is akin to a giant facing defeat and possible annihilation; it will not be as smooth as David felling Goliath with one stone and hoisting his head. That was divine adventure; this is realpolitik. But the intense and heated atmosphere that would ensue would sorely need a leader or healer if you like. If the ultimate purpose of the ongoing politicking is about the people and the polity then you have to preserve the twain first because there will not be a president if there are no people and of course a place to preside over.

  • Hic! Hic! HIIC… Hiccup!

    Dear reader, this is a precautionary write-up, having taken a cue from our president going in for ‘precautionary treatment’ last week. Hardball therefore suggests that you read it with half your mind, or with one eye closed or any how the spirit leads you. But even then, it depends on what manner of spirits hold sway in your realm. We need not introduce the issue at hand to our plucky readers who we suppose are on top of the top issues of last weekend. President Goodluck Jonathan jetted off to London last Wednesday (November 20), which also happened to be his 56th birthday. He had gone to head the meeting of a body called the Nigerian Honorary International Investors Council (NHIIC) and had reportedly fallen ill.

    Recall that on this page yesterday, Hardball had taken the pleasure to ‘probe’ this so-called HIIC; questioning its value, authenticity and import. We had questioned why the president of the ‘giant of Africa’, the country with the second largest economy on the continent would go all the way to London to head a meeting of retired and inconsequential people? In all the condescension, why would our President hurl governors, some key ministers, Central Bank governor and special aides to London at huge material and time costs?

    Hardball is saying that no responsible government even in Africa would inflict such indignity upon itself as to inveigle the office of its president into this event. Without any disrespect to her, Baroness Lynda Chalker of Wallasey was a former minister of state at the United Kingdom Foreign Office. She was also a member of the British Parliament representing Wallasey. Ms Chalker, who is now an international consultant, is chairman of Africa Matters Limited, a consulting firm which specialises in African businesses. NHIIC is a sweet-heart organ floated by Ms Chalker during the reign of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo ostensibly to marshal foreign investors. She and her local comrades have been able to push NHIIC through the administrations of late Umaru Yar’Adua and now Jonathan.

    The only other equivalent of NHIIC in Africa is Uganda’s Presidential Investors Round Table (PIRT) in which she is a consultant and which advises President Yoweri Musevi on ways to improve Uganda’s investment climate. Would you imagine President Jacob Zuma herding off half of his ministerial team to London to go discuss some fictitious foreign investors? No Nigerian president ever needs to travel abroad. Considering the huge potentialities in Nigeria, the biggest investors and the most prized multinationals would work their way into this place the moment the conditions are conducive.

    Now in the midst of this doggone London carousel the President had to have a big blast of a hic… HIIC… hiccup!!! That our President went on this London trip was bad enough; to fall ill there to the point that he could not step out in the morning to address the meeting for which he left these shores was unsettling. Talk of a scapegrace and you have it streaming in nonstop from jonathan.com. Recall that this is not the first time our President had failed to meet his appointment on a foreign trip the morning after… The last time was in far away Australia where after madam’s birthday the night before, the morning after became a bit tacky. This time in London it was the night of our president’s birthday and the morning after was overhung by a sickness that required ‘precautionary treatment’. Dear reader while we remember to record this new phrase in our book of presidential speak, let us thank our stars that it was only a morning hiccup. We are most gladdened that our dear president is now home, up and bouncing again. Let him hand the remains of his ‘precautionary medicine’ to rumour mongers and detractors!

  • Yerima as ‘prayer’ contractor

    Last Friday on this space, Hardball served you a fable titled: “The Prayer Contractor” and some friends thought it was a tale contrived and wringed too taut to share any semblance with reality. It is a story about a government contractor who suddenly found that the taps of most contracts have been shut and he was down and out until he happened upon government weasel who advised him to try the prayer business. Today, I enjoy the privilege of serving you a real and un-fabled report about how the Nigerian ruling class has corrupted even the solemn art of communion with and supplication to the Supreme Being – prayer. It will also show how the so-called leaders in our midst are like entrails that slush with every movement; they do care a hoot about what you and I think.

    You must remember Ahmed Yerima, governor of Zamfara State for eight years and currently a Senator of the Federal Republic. You could not have missed that handsome and ebullient man with verdant mullah beards. Or, you surely must remember that fellow who invoked Sharia rule in his domain leading a few other copycat governors to follow suit and almost bringing a horrific ripple of ethno-religious crisis upon our beloved country. Yerima terrorised his state and his hapless people with this sacred law, actually cutting off the hand of one poor cattle thief called Jangali and setting up another miserable woman for stoning over what was adjudged to be an adulterous act. He almost succeeded in returning us to those ancient, brutish days when humans were stoned like diseased animals by a mob until they passed out. But the entire world rose as one to tell him hey, enough is enough, you can’t do that; this is 21st century and there is something called common humanity.

    Yerima tactically backed down upon noticing that the whole world was primed to battle him to the ground, should his peculiar Sharia claim another victim. It eventually turned out that Yerima was merely playing politics with Sharia and worst of all he could never have stood the test of Sharia the way he applied it to his people. Nobody mentions Yerima’s Sharia any longer because it has been proven to be a sham; a political gimmick he deployed for his selfish ends.

    Then, of course, you must have heard about Yerima’s last escapade: his snatching up of a 13-year-old Egyptian tot as a wife. A serial matrimonist, if there was any such thing, the Casanova would love to change nubile brides like disposable diapers but for the fact that a ‘busybody’ world would harry and expose him until the very venture he craves loses its flavour. Child rights activists have conjectured that it was because of Yerima’s penchant for marrying children that the Senate was made to tinker with the constitution to favour him and have him marry babies if he wanted. Again activists and the media got on the case and shouted themselves hoarse, forcing the Senate to reverse it self.

    What has all this Yerima yarn got to do with the prayer business we started with you might ask? Well, nothing really, except that Yerima, the grand schemer has found another line of shenanigan to engage in – prayer pimping. Yerima’s main preoccupation these days is to harvest ‘strong’ malams and marabouts from across the land and beyond and ship them to Aso Rock for prayers for our dear president, Goodluck Jonathan. Of course, even you can guess the content of the prayers, incantations and shaman-like wailings: 2015. No man born of woman would stop you from retaining power in 2015 and even beyond, they would tell President Jonathan.

    On a last note, Yerima is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, yet he is a major prayer contractor for Aso Rock? To think that this fellow was a governor and currently a Senator! See what stuff our leadership is made of.

  • President, Nigeria Governors Forum!

    Hardball always had the prognosis that this presidency suffers from Acute Smallness of Mind Syndrome, (ASMS) but he never made a pronouncement because he sought a second opinion. But in the last few days, he found convincing evidence that this presidential diminution is quite large and dangerous. To begin to see what we mean, consider an elephant being hoisted on the limbs of a goat. Driving the point home, a certain Ahmed Gulak who is described as the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters in a recent interview stated that the presidency recognised Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State and not Governor Rotimi Amaechi as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. It seemed like a kind of slip until Mr. Gulak reiterated his position on the matter.

    Gov. Amaechi in response to Mr. Gulak’s interview pointed out that during the NGF election held on May 24 this year, his colleague-governors had returned him to office by 19 votes to 16. “We know that 19 is always greater than 16,” he said. As if Mr. Gulak had been living with a difficult-to-be-unrelieved pain over Gov. Amaechi’s NGF status, he fired back immediately at the governor insisting that his boss and the entire clan at the presidency knew only one NGF chairman and that is Gov. Jang. Hear him: “If Governor Amaechi is claiming that 19 governors re-elected him as chairman of the NGF, let him present the 19 governors. You are aware of the poor attendance at the retreat he organised in Sokoto. That was a sign that he is not the leader of the forum.”

    First, why should it be a source of such intense concern to Gulak and his boss who leads the NGF? Recall that in the heat of the NGF crisis, the presidency had claimed to have no hand in it noting that the president was not a governor thus would never have anything to do with an affair that was strictly about governors. Though no one believed the president and his mouthpieces then, Gulak’s classic Freudian slip has now proven otherwise. President Goodluck Jonathan, it has now come out, is actually obsessed about who heads the NGF and morbidly obsessed about seeing to it that Gov. Amaechi does not head it. This explains why the president committed the moral suicide of hosting in Aso Rock Villa, a renegade gang led by Jang who shamelessly posed as winners of the NGF election even when it was clear to the watching world that they lost. We also now have a concrete explanation why Gov. Amaechi has been subjected to intense persecution and harassment by the presidency using the police and by instigating his former aides; including several attempts to abort his very rule through a faction of the state’s House of Assembly.

    That the presidency which sits atop the entire country would be so sorely disturbed and distracted by a ceremonial body of 36 governors takes us back to the issue of a small-mindedness that is large and tottering dangerously. Yes, the NGF could pull political strings and wield enormous influence but all their machinations would pale beside a monstrous presidential might. Was it not said that there are a thousand ways to kill a cat? And isn’t the easiest and most innocuous way is by simply delivering on the numerous promises to the people?

    Well, since nothing else seems to have worked in the attempt to ‘kill’ this cat of an Amaechi, Hardball would suggest that by some executive fiat or an affirmation to be promoted by the Jang-led band, President Goodluck Jonathan be made the head of the NGF, even if honorary. In doing so, we shall declare that NGF’s headship would no longer be titled ‘chairman’ but ‘president’. Since no citizen would dare challenge the president over this title, he simply becomes president of the NGF by acclamation. Case closed.

  • World Cup and the Keshi phenomenon

    Now let us try out some Hardball logic: because the world is round, great footballers who are masters of the round leather game can be said to have the world at their feet? Yes or no? Well, yes to the extent that every week, about half the world’s population sit at the edge of their seats to watch (or worship) these new gods of today’s world. Yes again to the extent that the best of them are valued and paid better than the world’s greatest leaders (one player by name Falcao reportedly earns about £450,000 (about N117million in one week!). On the other hand, no to the extent that even the greatest footballers with all their world-wide fame and renown hardly grow to become national political leaders.

    But what might happen in 20 to 30 years’ time? Would football have completely conquered the world or would perchance, the world have done away with this ‘delirious virus’? Today, our winning teams are showered with cash, choice property and national honours, what would it be tomorrow, 50 years hence? Would it be political appointments or would great players automatically become alternate presidents of their countries? How would football play out in 50 years?

    This brain wave seized upon Hardball as he contemplates Nigeria’s qualification to partake in mankind’s biggest one-game festival – the FIFA World Cup football tournament and the trajectory of Stephen Keshi in Nigeria’s football history. Last Saturday, the Nigerian senior team, the Super Eagles flew over their Ethiopian counterparts, the Walya Antelopes by a four goals to one aggregate to win a ticket to the soccer fiesta in Brazil next year. To qualify to play in the World cup is to rank among the elite foot-balling nations. That is what Nigeria has indeed become to the pride of millions of her citizens and credit for the current resurgence of Nigeria’s football may well be ascribed largely to one man – Stephen Okechukwu Keshi. He is Nigeria’s senior team coach/manager and he is the most remarkable Nigerian today in so many ways.

    Keshi was captain of the Super Eagles that won the 1994 Africa Nations’ Cup and he captained the Nigerian team that made it to the first World Cup in 1994. Today as a coach, he has led our team to conquer Africa and also picked a ticket to play in the World Cup. What a feat! Particularly salutary is the fact that he has practically helped his country to pick the pieces of her football life, so to speak, once again. For many, since the 1994 exploits in Africa and the world, Nigeria’s football has been in decline both in the administrative office and on the football pitch. Apart from occasional sparks from the age grade teams, it was a harvest of sorrow for the teeming fans of the senior team. Numerous foreign and local coaches were tried without a positive result. It became quite difficult to cobble a national team in a country that had hundreds of professional footballers all over the world.

    Even Keshi was tried and discarded until about a year ago when he was reappointed. This time, he did what most coaches had neglected to do over the years he chose to look inwards at the home league, selecting some of the promising ‘local’ lads he matched them with a few foreign professionals while discarding the jaded foreign ‘super-stars’. It has worked like magic since then leading to the lifting of the continental diadem.

    Now, it is not only that we have a team but more significant is that we have a national team with growing form, character and depth. When they play the world champions Spain in the Confederation cup recently they proved they can hold their own. And last Monday against the Italians many of us saw in that outing, the Nigerian verve, gusto and our peculiar skills. As we go to Brazil next year, we go with high expectations not necessarily of lifting the greatest gold trophy on earth but of regaling the world with the great African brand of soccer.