The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Bode George and the boy pastor (II)

    Why would Hardball return to this rather faustian fellow after devoting this space to him last week? Simple, one has a duty to seize any opportunity to hoist our tormentors up the pole and literarily impale them as a token of our angst and outrage. Last week, Hardball had dissected Chief George’s cant and irreverence in his interview in a national newspaper. The subject of last week’s tutorials to Chief George and his ilk is: never abuse or talk down at an ordained man of God, especially if you claim to be a Christian. It is something close to a sacrilege in Christendom to publicly disparage a priest for his sermon from the pulpit.

    Why did he dash to the church straight from the purgatory if he detested the truth? He was obviously peeved that all the men of God had not joined his uniformed horde of sycophantic reception train singing and drumming his triumphant return from the ‘battlefield’. He was particularly “livid” because it was “that boy” pastor, of all the clergymen at the Cathedral who had the temerity to tell him not to sin.

    Today, Hardball goes a step further to insist that Chief Bode George has no grounds to show so much umbrage and righteous indignation over the young priest’s admonition to him to “go and sin no more” during the thanksgiving service upon his return from jail. First, a true Christian of Chief George’s age ought to have learnt that no man is without sin as we are all born with sin only to be saved by grace if we believe, repent and obey.

    Second, Chief Bode George is the archetypal Nigerian leader and politician, who is unrepentant and who indeed, glories in his crimes and evil ways. The polity is dismal and derelict today because our leaders have become inured to corruption and vices. Many are philistines, who have forgotten the proper code of ethics and behaviour. Chief George insists on his innocence even after he had been tried and convicted for corruption and abuse of process while he was chairman of the board of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). He has returned to court to contest his innocence even after serving term. He seizes every opportunity to rail and rant that his conviction was orchestrated by enemies; he swears by everything that his tenure at NPA was squeaky clean. But most Nigerians, including Hardball, would swear that if that be the case, then Chief Bode George deserves to be sainted, he would indeed pass for an angel. It seems most improbable, going by the records of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). We all know that some ‘rich’ government agencies have become sluiceways for the party’s slush funds.

    Why, for instance, has the NPA board chairmanship always been reserved for the party’s big wigs and ‘warlords’, who often have deep interests in the party’s campaign efforts? Apart from Bode George, some of the prominent PDP strong men who have been on ‘special assignment’ at the NPA include the chief Tony Anenih, currently chairman of the board of Trustees and Chief Ahmadu Ali, former chairman of the party.

    Besides, Bode George kicks and shouts as if we all don’t know that board appointments are largesse and settlements for party stalwarts across the land. They are ‘payback’ jobs for party loyalists, who are entitled to a chunk of the commonwealth on the account of the fact that they belong to the ruling party. Going by the recent appointments to boards, which feature all sorts of strange fellows, it is obvious that boards are no longer constituted to add value but to breach the system and debase the economy.

    Yet Chief Bode George seeks to harangue and browbeat us into accepting that his stint at the NPA board was without a stain. That would be a wonder of our time.

  • ‘This earth, my brother, shall witness a crashing collapse’ – Awoonor

    The above is a quote from Kofi Awoonor’s book, This Earth My Brother, a book that may be described as iconoclastic for breaking the bounds in African literature of the early 1980s era. It is unique for Awoonor’s deployment of the stream of consciousness device in telling his story. He took liberty and exercised great literary licence by intermingling straight narrative with the rich effusions of his pithy mind. The book set in Ghana, explores the post-Nkrumah and pre-Rawlings eras of the great African state that went awry.

    Awoonor x-rays an age when the “Black Star (independence ) Square was black” as a result of power outages in the nascent nation and crass power struggle. It is an elegant depiction of Ghana caught in the throes and contradictions of its new-found independence. Kwame Nkrumah, the incandescent liberator of Ghana had fallen from grace, the way of all heroes and his revolution had unravelled also the ways of all revolutions. The new nation-in-the-making was stewing in the crucibles of its newly won independence and self-governance. As one leader fumbles and tumbles after another, the nation spins and flounders. Awoonor gives a peek of it when he presents a government official on duty as “a veritable picture of human lethargy translated into power at the most resigned and unconcerned pivot.”

    Awoonor’s protagonist, Amamu, a tragic hero not too dissimilar to his country, is a foreign-trained native, who returns to a country that is too much in a swirl to find accommodation for him. Amamu breaks down. Not unlike Ghana of that period which also broke down.

    This Earth is a classic and more fascinating in that it is a book you could never finish reading; the more you read it, the more you find new deeps, new meanings and fresh juicy pickings. It has also been said by those who knew Kofi Awoonor that the more you knew him the more you wanted to know him. A novelist, poet, scholar, diplomat, world citizen and a man of immense learning and culture, Awoonor was killed last Saturday in a manner this master prose stylist could never have penned in all his literary fecundity.

    Though he wrote that the world shall witness a crashing collapse but he would never have conjectured that such universal calamity would loom so soon or so close home. Ever willing to share the sweet wine of his rich knowledge and push literary renaissance in Africa, Awoonor had gone to Kenya to participate in an African literature talk shop and it turned out to be his last. Terrorists had stormed the Westgate Mall in Nairobi Kenya last Saturday and the great man of letters had been cut down by the staccato poetry of hooded men who compose their verses with Kalashnikovs.

    This is Hardball’s special tribute to the 62 dead and over 170 injured people in the mall attack; it is an especial dirge for the soul of one of Hardball’s kindred spirit and an inspirer. Awoonor is sure to find citizenship on the celestial plane as he so easily found among men and of course his soul will find solace and repose and eternity. On the other hand, those who trade in violence and relish a repast of hate will find no peace here and will indeed, end up in the raging inferno of hereafter. That is divine injunction. Adieu Awoonor, spirit of light and enlightenment.

  • Bode George vs. the boy pastor

    Chief Bode George is the classic Nigeria ‘big man’ of the 21st century. He epitomizes today’s leader, especially of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mould: they are remarkable for their deep vacuity and starkly unreflective ways. Suffering through a florid two-page interview Bode George granted The Punch last Saturday was most stomach-churning but it served a nobler purpose of showcasing the ingrained kakistocrat in him and explains why with leaders like him at the helm, Nigeria will forever be sitting at the brink of the precipice peering down her doom.

    It wasn’t Chief George’s puerile, narcissistic politics that rankled Hardball into noticing and reading the interview but his profanity and his poor understanding of the Christian mores. Any Christian worth the name would have been stopped short by the headline of the interview in question which reads: “I was extremely angry when that pastor said I should go and sin no more.” For those who may be unaware, Bode George, an ex-naval officer and Military Administrator of Ondo State, is a staunch PDP chieftain from Lagos State. He was former Deputy National Chairman of PDP, South. He was convicted and jailed for two years for fraudulent activities when he was chairman of the Board of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

    Though he and his co-convicts have continued to insist on their innocence and have actually returned to court, but he today, remains a returnee from jail, determined so by a court of competent authority. Bode George upon his release, went from the prison cell to the church for thanksgiving; a jamboree more like. In his homily during the Service, the priest had admonished that Bode George should “go and sin no more.” How did you feel when the pastor said, “go and sin no more”, he was asked?

    Here is Bode George’s answer: “That young boy said it, he had leanings with the opposition. He was in form four when I was governor of Ondo State. I was livid but I said I was in church. This young man would not derail my thanksgiving to God Almighty;… I went the following morning to challenge the provost; they said no, that is not what he meant.’ I said ‘you don’t know this boy; he is an apologist to Bola Tinubu and co.’

    Not done in his righteous indignation towards a reverend gentleman, he said that he decided to go straight to church because of God’s grace towards him through the period, “so when this young man was talking garbage there, you know you can’t respond there. I went to the provost, this was an anomaly, a misnomer, absolute rubbish, I didn’t come here for this boy, of course nemesis caught up with him too. They’ve taken him out to a smaller church, that’s where he deserves…”

    You would wish Chief Bode George did not speak in this manner; wouldn’t you? For an elder, a former governor and a leader in the ruling party, how could he be so irreverent and foul of mouth, especially towards an ordained man of God? Hardball is hard put to have to give our dear chief some tutorials in the manners of Christendom: no true Christian ever refers to an ordained priest as “this boy” or “this young man” for that matter. A priest is a priest or our father in the Lord. Even if that young man was Bode George’s son, he ceased to be a boy the day he was ordained.

    And to say that a priest is “talking garbage” or “absolute rubbish,” that really is the limit and Hardball’s sincere advice to Chief George is to seek out that priest in that smaller church (no such thing) where “nemesis has taken him to, kneel before him and ask for forgiveness. Or does he prefer to “go and keep on sinning?” As for the totality of the interview, let’s just say that it is as hollow as the PDP which explains why he is a leader there.

     

  • The Kelvin ultimatum

    The country that would unravel must necessarily suffer from little masked men toying with long rifles.” That is no divine injunction or a line from Machiavelli, it is a Hardball original and you may go ahead and quote it dear reader! Of course you would not be surprised I made such cast-in-bronze assertion if you are any circumspect about what has transpired in our harried polity in the past weeks. Samplers: An Archbishop was abducted in Port Harcourt, Rivers State; a prominent lawyer was snatched in Benin City, Edo State; some folks in Nasarawa State called Ombatse have been giving our security operatives sleepless nights and last Thursday, September 19, somebody by the name Kelvin who sojourns in the creeks of the Niger Delta has raised an ‘army’ against the State and has gone ahead to give us all a 60-day ultimatum. And you still think our dear country is not unraveling?

    The Kelvin’s (his surname is Ibruvwe) ultimatum galled Hardball to no end. Not because of the ugly sight of rebellion he and his miserable gang presented. Did you see the Kelvin story on the front page of this paper last Thursday? It was a bold, albeit sad picture of hooded men in army camouflage uniform totting AK47 rifles. It was a gaudy terror posse complete with charms and amulets meant to scare the hell out of mere mortals like you and I. But Hardball was not in the least impressed. Such duplicitous bandits have been with the world from the beginning of time. They are merely seeking to have an undue advantage over everyone else in the quest for the ‘good’ life.

    What impressed me about the Kelvin challenge is that his group seemingly took its photograph in front of a mass of villagers, mainly women, children, young boys and girls who looked thoroughly enamoured of the scene. It was as if to say, thank god for giving us our own militants too to protect us and ‘shoot-out’ our rights for us from Abuja. And to confirm Hardball’s grim concern, on page 2 of the newspaper under reference, an elderly woman, obviously a grand mother from Kelvin’s Kokori community, Ethiope East Local Government Area (LGA) who spoke with correspondents was quoted as saying: “We thank God for using our son, Kelvin to fight for our course (sic). He and his group are fighting for what is just, equitable and legitimate. Therefore he should not be given a bad name.”

    Unless this is some kind of subterfuge hatched by desperate politicians, this Kelvin’s affair should worry President Goodluck Jonathan, it should afford all the security chiefs a loss of face. Kelvin is reportedly a well-known kidnapping kingpin. From his ignominious trade, he has metamorphosed into what he calls Liberation Movement for the Urhobo People (LIMUP). His liberation rhetoric is well-known and surely, well-worn: his community Kokori in spite of being oil laden and having produced oil for about 50 years, is still very impoverished. He therefore gives government 60 days to build factories, provide amenities and give jobs to the youths or all the installations kokori hosts would be blown to pieces.

    What will President Jonathan do now that the country is going pieces under his watch? Our leaders in the last few decades (Jonathan inclusive) simply refused to lead but preferring to ride on the gravy train the country has now reached a point of no return. Our LGAs have been left forlorn and bereft of governance for so long. Any group of bandits numbering just a dozen with half a dozen rifles can easily overrun any portion of our countryside. And such groups are multiplying across the country. Can President Jonathan put his foot down and reclaim the country from hoodlums or will he continue to wring his hands and dole out more amnesty ‘bribe’?

  • For whom the NYSE bell tolls

    For whom the NYSE bell tolls

    What an irony most viciously twisted that President Goodluck Jonathan has elected to ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Monday. A most symbolic duty usually conferred on personages of means and renown, by that bastion of global capitalism, NYSE. President Jonathan egged on perhaps, by some overzealous handlers, has been corralled, albeit unwittingly, into having to sound what Hardball fears amounts to an ominously morbid alarm. Now how is it that a seemingly innocuous bell that merely gives opportunity for a few pictures for international news media is being twisted into a dark Elizabethan tale?

    Simple: as Jonathan performs the symbolic bell-ringing at the centre-point of the world’s largest, most vibrant and most prosperous economy, his minders and indeed all patriotic Nigerians would have to be in fervent prayers and supplication so that some rascals do not begin to question his locus and temerity for taking that prestigious spot and feigning to belong there. We must pray that nobody as much as googles ‘Nigeria in global economy’ if only for the sake of basic information. If anyone did, they would easily be confronted by what we Nigerian journalists call ‘shock find’. It would be revealed that Nigeria ranks among the poorest pool of economic development possible in the entire world.

    According to the World Economic Forum, WEF, Global Competitive Index (GCI) for 2013-2014, Nigeria ranked 120th out of 148 countries on the list. Nigeria under President Jonathan dropped five places from 115th position of last year. By this, the country ranks among the most wretched countries of the world like Liberia, Laos, Mali and Yemen. The survey under purview would become the more depressing when Nigeria’s case is viewed against the 12 major parameters employed which include weak institutions on which it ranked 129th out of 148. Others are engrained corruption, undue influences, weakly protected property rights, insecurity (142nd), poor infrastructure (135th) and poor primary education enrolment 146th out of 148th.

    A little more casual browsing will show that the man gaily ringing the NYSE bell runs a hollow entity called Nigeria which is considered the worst place to be born, the worst place to live and the country with the worst primary school enrolment record. It would be discovered that women still die almost unrestrainedly during childbirth and even babies seem automatically at risk as they are born into the Nigerian space. It is surely the country with worst power infrastructure known anywhere with about a measly 2000 megawatts for a population of about 160 million. And on account of this, and since our president pretends his country, Nigeria, is still a member of the global economy, many manufacturing firms had to recently relocate to neighbouring West African countries.

    Further checks will show that Nigeria imports nearly everything, including staple foodstuff like rice, wheat, palm oil, corn meal and even fruits to name a few. All these stuff we really ought to be exporting to the rest of the world. We will also find that Indians, Chinese and South Africans have taken over the productive economy, including retail trade, eateries, hotels and hospitality businesses. They will find to their bemusement that the president enjoying the rare ‘privilege’ of ringing the bell at the NYSE is actually overseeing a geographical conundrum that currently spins malevolently at a precipice. He oversees a banana republic that seems to be at the end-stage of a terminal affliction. Hardball can only make silent prayers, for the sake of country at least that no rascal picks on our president as he heaves that sacred capitalist bell. ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’: that was Ernest Hemingway writing in 1940 and we paraphrase him.

  • PDP’s ceasefire: I dey laugh o !

    No, it is not Hardball laughing over the miseries bedeviling the ruling party, far from it. One is just conjecturing what former President Olusegun Obasanjo (Baba) would say if you asked his comment about the rapprochement (or is it ceasefire) recently reached in his fractious party. “Jonah, I dey laugh o!” his trademark salvo which he popularised during his eight-year reign, would no doubt be his off-hand retort. A man steeped in guiles and most versed in pernicious political intrigues, Hardball can see his face mildly twisted by a wry smile, deeply enjoying the moment, he would be sure to add to the retort, a knowing roadside wisecrack. Hardball again wagers that Baba would drill in his message with something like: “the pikin wey say him papa no sabi settle matter, wey say na him go settle am by himself, eh, I dey laugh o!”

    We all must be conversant with the long-running sad tale of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and how its umbrella was rent in two at its last convention, giving rise to a virile splinter group known as the new PDP. At the August 31 meeting to select new national officials of the party, former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar had sprung a shocker when he led a group to form a parallel executive of the party complete with a chairman and all the other positions that make up a new party. Since then things have not been the same for the party and of course, for Nigeria. Morning, noon and night, the ruling party has served us a repast of crises – for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner, it has been calamity a la carte.

    A torrent of activities followed immediately with professional mediators stepping out to seize the moment. Former President Obasanjo soon rallied a group with the fatuous title, PDP elders committee to reconcile the objectors made up mainly of just over half a dozen governors and their supporters. But Obasanjo was soon branded ori na crisis i.e. he who enjoys the odious duality of inciting a crisis and benefitting from settling it. He was shooed away and he has since retired quietly to his corner. Of course he is sulking, if Hardball knows him at all and so long as he remains Baba, he would vow that this matter can never be put over him. No goat would chew grass on Baba’s head while he still breathes, to corrupt a local saying.

    But Jonathan chose to face his ‘aggressors’ eye-ball-to-eye-ball, shoving aside the party’s ‘professional’ mediators, including the wily Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih who obviously ‘blinked’ in the heat of the battle and ordered his principal to bite the bullet by declaring ‘now’, his intention for 2015. A major condition given by the ‘rebel’ PDP is that Jonathan must denounce his quest for a second term in office. It was at this juncture that Jonathan took over the negotiations personally. He segregated the recalcitrant governors and took them into the inner recesses of the entrancing Aso Rock and wringed out a deal from them. It was deft of him, Hardball must concede, to have deferred the touchiest matter of 2nd term in 2015 while he made concession on all other small matters.

    Of course the governors hold all the aces in the party’s scheme of things and if they have been ‘talked’ (not bribed, mind you) into a deal then one can begin to moot a ceasefire. Part of the package is that they would ‘help’ select new ministers and heavens knows what other blocks of concessions would have been thrown in to oil the deal. It is the way of the PDP world; it is all about deals, deals and more personal deals. When they quarrel, it is hardly about the people but about their pockets and positions. But has Jonathan killed the snake of rebellion in the house or has he just scorched it? While we wait and watch, as for Hardball, I dey chuckle o!

     

  • PDP crisis hits Jonathan’s home

    The Biblical refrain that a prophet is known save in his own place takes a resonance in the ongoing crisis of identity in the Peoples Democratic Party. The initial anxiety in the ruling party rose in the seven states where the governors inspired fissures and a turbulent schism. Analysts had viewed this as a geo-political statement depriving the president of a playground in key parts of the North as well as in Rivers State, a pivotal Niger Delta hot spot, where Governor Rotimi Amaechi has manifested an independence of spirit.

    This week the crisis came home to roost, literally, in Bayelsa State, which should ordinarily stand as a fortress for Jonathan. Loyalists to former governor Timipre Sylva stirred some rumpus when President Goodluck Jonathan rallied his supporters to a meeting with a view to solidifying his hold on the state. Some of Sylva’s loyalists ran a full page advertisement in some newspapers pillorying the high-handedness of the president.

    They were victims of the Jonathan dispensation in Bayelsa State, when the president manipulated the machinery of state and the party to disenfranchise Sylva’s supporters, imposed a candidate in Seriake Dickson in whom Jonathan was well-pleased, and set up an aggressive military machine for a kangaroo election. The police, army, air force and navy, in a proverbial use of a sledge hammer on a fly, imposed a governor. Before that, President Jonathan lied he knew nothing about it before he confessed that he knew everything about it in a shameless political rally.

    “Let the old PDP of impunity and injustice pass away,” proclaimed the advertisement, “and a new dawn break over Nigeria with the new authentic PDP. Nigeria has never been more divided. The Niger Delta has never been more divided. Bayelsa State has never been more divided. The new authentic PDP is our only hope. Let’s keep promises! That’s what Ijaws are known for.”

    The president, in trying to put his party in order, must develop charity, which has not begun at home.

  • Power play

    The above title is actually a wee bit misleading; it ought to be, playing with power – the power sector reform that is. If you have focused on Nigeria’s government as long as and as intensely as Hardball, you are bound to begin to see government officials as a bunch of comedians who have turned comical acts into statecraft or vice-versa. They seem to be possessed of the will, the wile and the immense capacity to do everything else but that which will benefit the people. And like people who are permanently afflicted with some peculiar dementia, they carry on their puppetry from age to age, from generation to generation without qualms.

    Why is Hardball going off the tangent in this manner? Simple, one would think that after all the hoopla about Nigeria’s power situation, all the money gone down the drains and the need to respond in an emergency fashion if need be, would drive the government of the day to pay an especial attention to the sector and deliver results at all costs. But that is not the way of the Nigerian government; nothing is sacred or sacrosanct for government around here it seems. The power roadmap which was presented to the public with fanfare by President Goodluck Jonathan had neither a road nor a map as it crashed shortly after the ‘show’.

    About two years down the line, the power sector reform agenda has been topsy-turvy with results (if really any) coming in fits and start. Just last week, labour issues of the staff of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, which have lingered for so long and which we were told was to be sealed last May still linger. PHCN workers vow to resist handover to the new power firms, was the ominous headline last Monday. And the story reads: “Employees of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria have vowed to resist the takeover of the electricity distribution and generation companies by successful buyers until all outstanding payments are made.”

    About N400 billion was reportedly set aside for this huge pay off after a most protracted – well, let’s call it negotiations – and we were told that 75 percent of these soon-to-be-laid-off workers have been paid. But here we are, the job apparently has only been done after the fashion of comedians. However, nothing has so far exposed the lackadaisical and duplicitous manner of the so-called power sector reform than the current shenanigans at the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, (Enugu Disco). Out of the 14 preferred bidders seeking to take over Nigeria’s generation and distribution companies, all but one met the August 21, 2013 deadline for paying up. The rule is that when the preferred bidder fails to pay on deadline, the reserved bidder almost automatically steps up to give a go at the bid.

    But the Bureau of Public Enterprises, (BPE) ,under such circumstance, ought to promptly trigger a meeting with the Technical Committee (TC) of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP). Such crucial meeting has however been stalled endlessly leaving the chairman of the TC, Atedo Peterside, with no recourse but to go to the press. Peterside says in a recent statement: “The reason we are unable to meet is because the DG of BPE… has surreptitiously vetoed all my efforts to convene a meeting of our technical committee of recent.” He added, “As you are all aware, the Technical Committee serves as an advisory/due process watchdog over the BPE and we are accountable to the NCP. Accordingly, I find the DG’s surreptitious attempt to keep us in the dark objectionable in the extreme.” It is said that Peterside had earlier written the DG of BPE informing him that allowing an extension to a preferred bidder amounts to granting it an unauthorised discount apart from degrading the integrity of the privatisation process.

    What is at issue here is power play; playing around with the destiny of the people and a troubling, ingrained corruption that seems to have no cure. Still wondering why we grope in the dark ages?

     

     

     

  • NASS, thy name is narcissism

    If what ails our National Assembly, NASS, is not deep-seated narcissism then we must find a new meaning to that word of Greek origin which intimates about pathological self-absorption. Narcissistic tendencies will drive you into a self-love that is ultimately destructive and lead you to seek gratification only for yourself and your ilk. Can you see that the NASS fits beautifully into this mold going by their recent antecedents? One proof is their rare ability to win the world champion laurel not as the most conscientious but as the highest paid lawmakers in the world.

    If only the authors of that survey knew half the story. But if you think no bad story can be hidden under the sun for too long, Hardball will change that to be: really big bucks can never be concealed under the sun. A few days back, a lady who ought to know informed Nigerians that we have handed out about N8 trillion to our money-mongering assembly men since 2005. She even challenged them to a public debate but they would not dare take her on. Just because they are cash-goblins does not mean they are stupid enough to take on a fight that jeopardises all they have worked for. They allowed the fight to pass hoping that they would be left alone to enjoy their public service harvest.

    A native saying hurriedly paraphrased warns that he who steals a wretched man’s fowl has only managed to steal his own peace of mind. Has NASS aborted its own very peace by its own grabbing ways? Well let’s see: last week, the chairman, Senate Committee on Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, Mohammed Ali Ndume blurted it out that a total of N900 billion has so far been appropriated for constituency projects for the NASS since 2004. Apparently oblivious of the import of his speech, Ndume said that the constituency projects were for grassroots development and that the choice of contractors by legislators was for accountability and employment generation. “Accountability”, “employment generation”, gee, just because these fellas are not thinking they imaging the rest of us brain-dead.

    Ndume unwittingly threw up not a few unsavoury issues about NASS in his ill-digested treatise during what they called a one-day stakeholders forum on constituency projects. First, such huge amount in eight years on invisible constituency projects? Dear readers, does anyone of you out there have such projects in your area? Would it be asking for too much dear Sen. Ndume to demand a breakdown of such projects, places of domiciliation and costs?

    For the first time, Ndume revealed to us that NASS members who had sworn they knew nothing about how the projects were awarded, actually appoint the contractors for the jobs. It’s an old Nigerian trick we all are familiar with isn’t it? The third point to note is that how could constituency projects funds (which we all know are democracy dividends for our law makers) create jobs and develop the communities when most of our legislators have shunned the statutory requirement of setting up a viable constituency office in their locale. Finally, the idea of constituency project is an aberration that has no locus in any law of the land.

    It is a fraud perfected during the Olusegun Obasanjo era for shoveling ‘shut up’ money to NASS when the members got restive. Today, it has become a major appropriation head just as our dear Ndume is assiduously working on a Bill to give the projects ‘legal backing’, whatever that means. But is sure to happen is that a rampart NASS will increasingly suborn the roles of the executive for the purpose stuffing more and more cash into its members’ pockets.

    But surely these execrable exertions of theirs will come to naught sooner because their action is self-defeating and their motive not viable. This overly self-loving narcissistic gang will have to give account one day, sooner or later.

     

     

  • Beware Dangote they said it couldn’t be done

    For more than three decades, the sad tale had been that it could not be done. Refineries and petrochemical industries are not viable under the current petrol price regime in Nigeria; no investor would build refineries unless the prices of petroleum products are raised to high heavens. But the more they increase the prices, the more they needed to increase it still. They became like a man suffused with brine who could not stop taking water.

    Successive federal governments in cahoots with the petroleum ministry, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and fuel import contractors had perfected this fraudulent fiscal regime and economic crime of shipping off Nigeria’s crude oil and importing at premium, refined products. For decades, they had perfected what is probably the greatest fraud in modern day economics. Not even the national protests in January, 2012 which shook the government to its foundations would make them have a rethink. A change of mind seems impossible under the current ruling party regime because petroleum products importation is the most viable source of huge slush funds.

    President Goodluck Jonathan and his oil minister, Dieziani Alison-Madueke would first build Noah’s Ark before they would contemplate a refinery in Nigeria. In the afterglow of the January 2012 upheavals over another thoughtless fuel price hike, the Federal Government had promised to build what it fancifully called six modular refinery plants (it called another one Greenfields refinery plant) at the cost of $4.5 billion and which were to be operational in 18 months. An MoU was signed with so much fanfare between the so-called American sponsors and the Federal Government. The first ones were to have started operation last month but as you read this dear readers, Hardball can confirm to you that no such has been turned anywhere in the country for this project. It is all a scam, apparently.

    Another case to prove that Federal Government is Nigeria’s number one enemy is the Olokola LNG project (OKLNG). This project company was formed in 2007 by NNPC, British Gas, Shell and Chevron to build a giant facility where natural gas would be converted to Liquefied Natural Gas for export. But eight years after, all the joint venture partners were so thoroughly frustrated they had to withdraw because NNPC deliberately delayed the final investment decision, thus killing a project that would have amounted to Nigeria, more foreign earnings, more value added to flared gas, and more jobs for our teeming youths. The decadent and near-moribund situation of Nigeria’s oil industry suits the kleptocrats managing it fine. They will never grow it.

    This is why we sound this caveat to Africa’s richest man and industrialist, Aliko Dangote, as he vigorously exhausts himself in the attempt to build a $9 billion petrochemical complex in Nigeria in the next two years. Dangote plans to establish the largest refinery in Africa which will virtually end the fraudulent importation of PMS, diesel, aviation fuel, kerosene, etc into the country. This will also mean causing the winding down of the offshore refineries built by unpatriotic and wayward Nigerians; stopping round-tripping of Nigeria’s crude, eliminating a high powered syndicate of fuel smugglers and of course killing the importation racketeers.

    Hardball thinks Dangote will have to exterminate so many people in government and as well as the oil industry cabal, including the International Oil Companies who have also insisted that refining is not profitable in Nigeria, in order to have his way with his oil complex. In other words, Hardball is saying that unless Dangote has thought about all these, heaven and earth may pass away first before another refinery is built in Nigeria.