The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Offa rerun: Tori don get k-leg

    As far as comic reliefs go, local government elections across Nigeria today are jokes taken too far. In recent years, it has been sweepstakes for the state governments that conduct such elections as they simply carted away the ‘booty’ wholesale. But there is a new twist in the council election in Kwara State last Saturday in which a re-run was ordered in Offa LGA. The twist is, of course, peculiarly Nigerian as Hardball found that it is a phenomenon we are much at home with going by the rich repertoire of phrases we have for describing it.

    Tori don get k-leg, as our title goes, suggests that the plot has gone askew or knock-kneed and there is pretty little to be done to rectify it. Alarm don blow suggests that you have been caught out in your well laid stealthy machinations; the alarm simply goes off and you are caught in the act. Ise fo, is Yoruba street parlance for all of this, that is to say, your monkey business has simply been shattered. Water don pass garri, suggests to us that the Nigerian staple, garri, made from cassava has suffered the misadventure of being sodden whereupon it becomes damaged and inedible. There are so much more, like yawa don gas or kasala don bust. All of these corroborate the same theme of being caught in the act or beaten in your game.

    Now let’s see how they figure in our story: a certain Mr. Afolabi Jimoh was the councillorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the Shawo South West ward in Offa LGA of Kwara State in last weekend’s council election. Jimoh had been declared winner in the re-run and had been announced along with others over state radio and television by the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commision, KWASIEC. Of course, PDP swept everything down to the last councillor.

    Now tori come get k-leg: on Wednesday, while other ‘election’ winners in the state were still celebrating and throwing even more parties in expectation of the huge windfall that follows public office in Nigeria, this fellow Jimoh (is he a crank?) addressed a press briefing that he did not win the election! What, this man must be a citizen of Mars or some outer worlds like that. Many Nigerians have been in court in the last two years trying to corral the judiciary into awarding them election victory and here is a man who has been declared winner ‘counter-declaring’ that his opponent and not him, won the election! Only in Nigeria. We can equally say this: it is only in Nigeria that we rig ourselves to death in an election and also in Nigeria that we are capable of ‘unrigging’ ourselves out of a rigged position. This must go to the Guinness Book of Records.

    Hear Jimoh: “I did not win that election. In all the eight polling units, APC won convincingly, we did not win. I am a loyal member of the PDP, but first and foremost I am a Muslim and as a person I won’t allow anyone to take what belongs to me to another person.” He said further, “In the interest of peace and justice in Offa and Kwara State, KWASIEC should release the authentic results of last Saturday’s election. “In the interest of peace and justice in Offa and Kwara State, KWASIEC should release the result of the council poll in Offa..” But trust our doughty politicians, they go down fighting. Even if you catch them with a smoking gun, they simply say it’s a gun-shaped pipe. But let’s watch this tori wey bi like say him don get k-leg.

  • PDP: Humpty-Dumpty is having a great fall

    Even in those days of baby innocence when they made us chant alien nursery rhymes about this awkward fellow sitting on a wall and having an irreparably great fall, Hardball had so much trouble fathoming why that articulated ball-head chose to sit on the wall in the first place. As one grew older, one learned another twist in the tale that Humpty-Dumpty may have actually been pushed as part of a larger political plot by all the king’s men and all the king’s horsemen who pretended to seek to mend him after his calamitous fall.

    The Humpty-Dumpty tale may well be child’s play but does it not seem the verisimilitude of what is happening in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) today? PDP is in the midst of a great fall, though an opposition member like Senator George Akume believes it has not only fallen, but that it will never rise again, the party would soon be buried and nobody will ever hear of it again, the former governor under the party was quoted to have said. But if Hardball is asked, PDP went into decline immediately after its birth thereabouts 1998 and not many of us would be surprised if it takes its final gasp 15 years after.

    After the Group of 34, the founding fathers who were driven by the passion to oust an embarrassing military junta from power morphed into PDP and grabbed power, that seemed to have ended their ambition. The group which comprised some of the elite and tested politicians in the land quickly returned to their old ways of power, perks and the pleasures of office. Sadly, they learnt no lessons from the horrendous years of the military and did not muster the commonsense to set some ground norms, ideological leaning or even imbue the fledgling with a viable manifesto. They simply returned to their prodigal ways which result is being reaped today. The selfsame licentiousness that led to the fall of the first republic and the attendant turbulence of about three decades of military rule was being re-enacted by the PDP in the last 15 years.

    PDP started its decline from day one as has been asserted earlier because founding fathers like Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Chief Solomon Lar, Chief Bola Ige and Audu Ogbeh, to name a few, were soon sequestrated if not hounded out of the party, making room for a horde of hawks, power mongers, kakistocrats and megalomaniacs to flood the party and mould it in their image. So the party had really drooped southwards for nearly as many years as it has existed. The party became known more for its numerous and endless crises than lofty ideals for building a modern Nigeria. In fact, Nigeria has been in decline in real terms in the last one and half decades having not witnessed much improvement in any sphere of life.

    Will PDP fail irretrievably? Most likely so because what is at stake is the 2015 presidential election. It is simply a tussle between President Jonathan and the North over the top job and the main condition for peace is a renunciation of the desire for a second term by the President. That is not likely to happen; the PDP umbrella is therefore caught up in a violent storm that is likely to rent it into at least two parts. So Humpty-Dumpty has fallen to his fatal end? Well so many Nigerians would probably say good riddance, what the heck was it doing sitting around on that damned wall anyway?

  • The recklessness of Buruji Kashamu

    Sometimes our politicians do not only lack decency, they also lack finesse. Hear what one of them, a prince, said in a recent interview in The Punch: “I’m ready to contribute resources for mobilisation but this is what many politicians don’t like doing. For example, I am ready to spend even N1billion to ensure the success of the PDP governorship candidate in Ekiti State during the forthcoming election. It would be a shame on my part if I failed to do that,” proclaimed Buruji Kashamu who parades himself as a PDP chieftain from Ogun State.

    As if the shamelessness was not enough, he ranted further, “I am ready to do the same thing in Osun and Oyo states.” This is a man who is clearly more interested in drawing attention to himself. He is from Ogun State, where he claims to be a party wheel horse. Why did he not even refer to the state? Is it because they won’t give him an opportunity to spend his money?

    For a man to say he gloats over the success he had in fighting former governor, Gbenga Daniel, to a standstill, one would have thought he would concentrate in his state. He probably has surrendered because he lives in Ogun State and has seen that he has no prayers against the good work of Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

    Maybe he has not travelled enough in Ekiti State to see what Governor Kayode Fayemi has transformed the state into. Maybe he will think twice about wasting his money.

    But he may be doing a world of good to the economy of that state by infusing N1billion into its economy, and Hardball is sure the people will receive his money with open arms. It is clear from what he says that he does not abide in the world of ideas. What is he fighting against in Ekiti? Is it the infrastructural developments that his PDP Segun Oni could not do in about six years? Or is it the quality enhancement of education, or is it healthcare or strides in tourism, or social security for the elderly?

    Kashamu does not speak ideas. He only speaks money, and the people of the Southwest know good money from bad money.

    Clearly he has not travelled to Osun State to see what Governor Rauf Aregbesola is doing, or Oyo to witness Ajimobi’s performance. If he has and he still wants to spend money against the good thing, then he will fall into what people in the Niger Delta call “money miss road.”

    In the interview he also had the indecency to say that he contributed 17 Sports Utility Vans (SUVs) and trailer loads of Ankara for Timipre Sylva, former Bayelsa State governor’s, election. He said the Ankara clothing materials were embossed with his picture and his deputy and he also gave Sylva “lots of cash.” He claimed later that Sylva gave him the IGR and that he transformed N200 million to N1billion monthly. So he is a contractor waiting to make profit for himself!

    This is recklessness on a high stage. We need restraint from our politicians, not the brutish extravagance, the type of public desperado like Kashamu wants to feed the public with.

     

  • Why Jonathan must hearken to Nwabueze

    There is a Yoruba saying that the dog that would be lost would never hear the hunter’s whistle. But the hunter must blow his whistle all the same in the forlorn hope that his woebegone kennel might by some chance pick a strain of it. As with the hunter’s dog, so it is with the Nigerian politician who wishes to contest election. There is no dissuading a politician in this clime who seeks an elective office for numerous reasons. One, a horde of ‘supporters’ would have massed around him telling him there is none like him, addressing him in the borrowed garb of the office he contemplates, for instance, “Your Excellency”, “distinguished”, “Honourable”, etc. This immediately puts our poor fellow into a mindset of no return.

    The next step is to build scenarios and bogus plots about how to ‘capture’ the office; the more he listens to them review these ‘foolproof’ strategies, the more he is convinced of his chances and indeed sees himself seated and even working out of the office he seeks. Still living in their dream world, they even go out to allot the positions to emerge from the office in question. And for the Nigerian politician who is an incumbent in an elected office, the worst offence you could mete out to him is to dissuade him from contesting for a second term. It is worse than a capital offence. The reasons they behave this way are everywhere for anyone who cares to see. For instance, the powers attached to elective positions are out of this world be it councillorship or presidency and of course, they are among the best paid and richest in the world.

    Why is Hardball rambling on and on as if he has lost his marbles? Well it is about the advice Professor Benjamin Nwabueze handed to President Goodluck Jonathan not to contest for the 2015 presidential election last week. Nwabueze is a cerebral lawyer, scholar, statesman and an octogenarian to booth. He is the leader of the influential group, The Patriots which boasts of other eminent Nigerians like Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Solomon Asemota and Commodore Dan Suleiman, to name a few. The Patriots had paid a courtesy call on the President in Aso Rock to discuss matters of urgent national import as they see them. Addressing State House Correspondents after the meeting, Nwabueze had told them that, “if I were him, I would choose to become a hero to lead the country into transformation and abandon the ambition of a second term. That is what I said and I still stand by it and that is what I would do if I were the president of this country, but unfortunately, I am not.”

    If I knew anything about how these things work in Nigeria (and trust me, I know a little), President Jonathan and the cabal (this word again) that must hold him hostage now (so that nobody might make him see reason over 2015) would still be laughing as you read this. “Imagine that old man, he must be senile,” they would bellow in raucous laughter! “The papa doesn’t know what the world is talking about, imagine telling oga to carry power and dash another person; this power wey we hold for hand so, no bi with power you go do transformation abi na magic we go take command transformation?,” They will laugh some more while quaffing some fiery golden liquid.

    But Hardball suggests that in his sober moment when he is alone and all by himself he must think over Prof. Nwabueze’s profound thoughts. He would even do well to call him to a private meeting where the two of them would debate the issue. Of course, it is one of the toughest decisions any leader could possibly make and each side of the coins is rich in consequences. Let’s just say that it is worth a long, deep, sober thought, thank you.

  • Daniel’s desire

    A friend of mine who is now middle-aged and portly would look back at his teenage years and shake his head in wonderment. With an indulgent smile tingling his extraordinarily handsome face, he would tell you he has no reason to be alive today and in fact, he really ought to have died many times over. “They were wild, wild days when I believe evil blood was coursing through my veins; what I did not do was what I did not conceive; 13 to 19 those were really the days of my life.” Tony, his name is, would regale you about his escapades – his first brush with sneaking away with daddy’s car and driving it through a fence; his first and momentary escape from home and from his ‘jew’ parents; first escape from the boarding house, his first beers and subsequent addiction to alcohol, his first cigarettes and other ‘smoking’ stuff, his first hump as he is proud to describe it (but let’s call it conjugal experience) with the big house help, then an aunty, then… oh never mind.

    But my friend Tony in all of his braggadocio about being a tough teenage prankster, he has been shamed by 13-year-old Daniel Ohikhena. The brave heart from Benin has been in the news in the past week for achieving a feat no other lad has accomplished successfully. Dan hitch-hiked – not like those silly runaway teenagers who stand by the roadside and flag down motorists – but he hitch-hiked a plane purportedly to America but found himself in Lagos. He stowed away safely in the tyre compartment of an aircraft and rode the skies, the storms; he cruised at about 30,000 feet about sea level and endured the turbo-charged rambunctious touchdown and taxing of a jet… whoosh! Hardball wagers that he would have strolled over to the international terminal and continued on his journey to the U.S. if he had not been caught out at the Lagos domestic airport after a most successful first leg of his expedition.

    Dan is the typical ‘crazy’ teen except that he possesses extraordinary derring-do, spunk and an overflow of Dutch courage. He always told his siblings he would surprise them some day and bring his family’s name to limelight. Daniel has done just that by this singular 45 minutes adventure. Some people have been splitting hairs about security lapse at the Benin Airport and the negligence of the pilot and crew. All of these may well be and Dan would be a wake-up call to airport personnel across the country.

    But teens will be teens and they will get up to their pranks even to extremities such as this. The lesson is to pay more attention to our teens – at family levels, at community levels, schools, local councils, churches, corporate bodies, on and on. How many playing fields do we have in neighbourhoods these days? What about youth centres, civic centres and sports clubs? All of these have vanished from most of our communities today. Who is engaging our teens creatively these days on volunteer basis especially during long vacations? Local councils used to organise activities but even they are comatose now, needing help. Quizzes, debates, talks, essay and art competitions, etc would keep minds like Dan’s from wandering off to crazy schemes.

    We have heard some people making loud offers of scholarship to Daniel as if he has just won an important competition; Hardball thinks the offer is misguided and apt to lure other impressionable teens into undertaking suicidal stunts. What he needs is a thorough psychological examination and sustained counseling. We could take it a step further by setting up a sort of foundation around him for counseling youths and helping them manage their ambitions; role models would come and give talk for instance and let teens know that you don’t ever have to travel abroad to succeed in live – something like a comfortable TALK CENTRE for kids.

  • Okagbare: Flying without wings

    Would Hardball be overly negativist to assert that Nigeria is in the age of degeneracy? On all fronts, we seem to suffer debilitating atrophy; in my humble estimation, we seem to shrink in size, wane in strength and fall in the esteem of the rest of the world. Consider for instance, a band of ruffians by the tag of militants or terrorists challenging our military might (air, land, sea and even spooks) and holding the giant of Africa to ransom for years. How about the so-called ‘oil thieves’ making a mess of the federal might and stealing enough crude oil to serve the whole of Africa? They have rendered the government in power impotent and effete. How much more detestable can a country get if a 13-year-old lad would loath it to the extent of creeping into the tyre compartment of a domestic flight (Benin to Lagos) purporting it to be headed for the United States of America? We can go on and on but to what end?

    The point here is not about the unending woes besetting our dear country, no, it is about our track and field queen, Blessing (let’s call her Okapi) Okagbare who recently wiped the shame off our face at the recently concluded World Athletics Championship in Moscow, Russia. She was the only bright light of the Nigerian contingent having won a silver medal in long jump and a bronze in the 200 metres race. Okagbare, the quintessential athlete, lithe, endowed with the doughty beauty of a super sportswoman was virtually flying without wings. She excelled in spite of all odds and oddity that Nigeria has become; by sheer divine unction she has refused to wither under the crucible of the Nigerian situation, the way the talents of thousands of her other compatriots have come to naught.

    Track and field, table-tennis, the lifting games, boxing and of course football are Nigeria’s areas of particular strength. In the 80s and early 90s, Nigeria did not only sit atop Africa but dominated the world. Remember Modupe Oshikoya, Charlton Ehizuelen, Oliver Orok, Chidi Imo, Dele Udoh, Atanda Musa, Yusuf Ali, the Ezinwa brothers, Francis Obikwelu, Chioma Ajunwa, Mary Onyeali, Falilat Ogunkoya-Osheku, just to list a handful. Nigeria’s dominance especially in sprint became a global phenomenon when American scouts took numerous young Nigerian talents to study on scholarship in U.S. colleges. They were exposed to the best of facilities, training and tournaments such that in just a few years they became world beaters because they possess the streak of Nigerians’ natural strength and athleticism. The great athletes of U.S., Jamaica and Cuba are of our ancestry, the will to succeed makes all the difference.

    Today, sports, as all other spheres of national life, suffer neglect, a lack of vision and initiative. Round pegs are ensconced comfortably into square holes and everything has come to a near standstill. Today we jubilate over Okagbare’s silver medal; but at the last Olympic Games in London Nigeria returned virtually empty-handed and shame-faced. We vowed to return to the drawing board but nothing was done beyond the vow. Who is seeking out our talents and making sure they are trained to be world champions? To think that every school in the land has a potential world beater in one sport or the other; we just need to pick the best from school sports and harness them.

    Today, Okagbare is being hosted and toasted over a modest effort and there it ends. But there is a need to elevate her to a federal project, a Nigerian brand and an anchor for the repositioning of athletics in Nigeria? Having lost gold medal by just a tiny notch there is need for a ministerial or even presidential push to help her achieve her potential and beat the world in her fields. We must avail her wings to fly and have her beat the path for others.

  • Suntai: Between honour and mendacity

    Oh what a veritable moment of history! Once in every lifetime, providence transports a man to the crossroads where he is faced with the wide, beautifully paved road to perdition and the narrow, unbeaten track that leads to sunshine and eternity. The one is a well-worn road thronged by merry travellers and revellers while the other is less travelled, wearisome and lonely but it is the road to life, the path of honour, the quirky way of history.

    This is the road that beckons to a certain Mr. Danbaba Fulani Suntai but the gentleman, apparently undiscerning and overwhelmed by the moment, is bent on joining the multitudinous throng down the merry beach of vacuousness. Suntai has been governor of Taraba State in the northeast of Nigeria for more than six years until he was involved in a freak air crash 10 months ago. It must be by a certain divine favour that he lives still. After a 10-month medical sojourn abroad, Suntai returned last Sunday and seeks to return to office to tick off (so to speak,) the remaining 20 months of his two-term, eight-year tenure. But Suntai can barely stand erect unaided, he seems not fully conscious, hardly speaks and it is doubtful whether he can write (who will sign off the cheques?).

    How can Suntai deign to run a state under this condition? Particularly so, Taraba the vast land of so much unfulfilled promise; the country of the exotic Mambila Plateau and the rolling mountainous plains by the borders of Cameroun. Taraba is home to one of the world’s last virgin forests at Gashska Gumpti; Taraba would have been paradise if it had been blessed with leaders of vision. But it remains nature’s nubile damsel waiting to bloom. It is to this rural cocoon that Suntai seeks to creep back to mark time and serve out 20 months. Being used to the sedentary, unroused and unrousable life of a well appointed Government House in Jalingo, the state capital, he and his minders cannot imagine life outside this enclave.

    Barely 24 hours upon his return, Suntai has allegedly transmitted a letter to the State House of Assembly seeking to reclaim his seat; a job he held for all of six years without many landmarks of note, how much difference would 20 months make when he would probably govern by proxy and subterfuge? If only men could see. Hardball thinks providence is bent on lifting Suntai from inconsequence and eventual obscurity unto the Olympian heights of statesmanship and the realms of legends. If truly Suntai had written any, the path of honour, wisdom, statesmanship and history ought to have been a long letter to the House and the long-suffering people of Taraba State, acknowledging their patience and goodwill and electing to set Taraba free from the captivity of his obvious incapacity.

    This is the dictate of Section 189 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If therefore, Suntai would not toe the path of honour, if he chooses to be mendacious and live a lie, the Speaker must act according to the dictates of the constitution. It is simply a call to duty and in the better interest of the people of the state. To do otherwise is to act on the basis of sentiment in a matter of utmost importance to the very lives of a people. While the Taraba drama unfolds, Nigerians will wait still for that glorious dawn when great men will arise from these shores, men who have the courage of their convictions and who would ride on the tiger of honour to a glorious new dawn all for the edification of our great country, Nigeria. And on a last note, is Taraba all about Suntai; what would he lose if he doesn’t serve out his term?

     

     

  • When corruption meets impunity

    Nigeria’s lawmakers had long mastered the fine art of farming out a chunk of the national treasury for their personal well-being which deservedly earned them the singular ‘honour’ as the most money guzzling legislature in the world. But before The Economist comes up with yet another survey on the most corrupt executive cabinet in modern time, Hardball would want to put it on record that the Goodluck Jonathan administration will have no rival in this regard either. The reason is that corruption in this era now co-habits with impunity giving forth a wanton and licentious result.

    Over one week ago, a national newspaper had run a front page story about a female minister in President Jonathan’s cabinet who travels by chartered jets and who has run up a bill of over N2 billion in the last two years. The story itself emanated from a civil society group, Crusaders for Good Governance, CGG, which had deposited a petition at the office the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, exactly two weeks ago. Even though the details of the petition are gross and highly unsettling, not a word has come forth from the Presidency, the EFCC or even the minister in question. Mum has been the word from all the concerned quarters, perhaps in the full knowledge that Nigerians are not only inured to the bad ways of their leaders, but that they also have a very shot attention span and will soon forget about this one too.

    That may be so but the report is grievous and damaging: to this Presidency, to the minister and to the image and essence of Nigeria. According to the co-ordinator of CGG, some of the allegations include, one: that a parastatal maintains a private jet, Challenger 850 Visa Jet, at $500,000 per month for the minister; two: that every trip she makes abroad she does with a chartered jet at the cost of $300,000 per trip. Even in trips with the president, this minister would rather cruise a private jet instead of flying in the presidential jet. They cited some of the presidential trips to include those to China and South Africa. Three: during the last Easter break, the minister was said to have also flown her family to Dubai in a chartered private jet as the cost of $300,000.

    As a proof to its allegations, CGG directed the EFCC chairman to verify its claims through the records of aviation regulatory bodies like the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN; the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA; and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA. There are numerous other allegations against this minister but these few are mind-blowing enough. In most other countries of the world, such a minister would have been suspended promptly while a public inquiry would have been empanelled to investigate the allegations. But condoning corruption and shielding corrupt officials has become the hallmark of the Jonathan administration to the ruin of his administration and the utter dismay of the international community.

    There are over a dozen examples to prove that the president is quite comfortable with unbridled corruption going on in and around his cabinet. First the EFCC was defanged at the outset of this administration by strapping it to Office of the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice who himself seems not only quite cozy with, and unperturbed by financial malfeasance around him but has clearly lost any sense of umbrage and moral sufferance towards official corruption. In over half a dozen cases, officials of multinational companies doing business in Nigeria have recently been tried and convicted in the U.S and France for offences committed in Nigeria. But their partners in crime in Nigeria have all been shielded. And when corrupt activities go on for years unchecked, impunity sets in. It is a damaged society in which government officials assault the treasury in this manner.

     

  • Ezekwesili versus our lawmakers

    There is a wacky Igbo saying that if a man undertakes to single-handedly devour a snake (out of greed of course), the slithering serpent would simply regenerate and live in his tummy happily ever after to the greedy man’s eternal discomfort. This seems to apply to our legislators’ ‘gerrymandering’ with our treasury. Remember Hardball had stated on this space that it would not let up on this issue until our compatriots in the National Assembly come to terms with us on what they truly earn.

    And it isn’t only Hardball who is aggrieved seemingly. Since after the damning survey by The Economist of London, which ranked our lawmakers as the highest paid in the world many Nigerians have expressed their bitterness at NASS’ obduracy in the face of unspeakable rapacity. They are worried that the members have elected to live in denial of a situation most of us know as a matter of fact. Last week, the crusade (that is what it has become) got a boost from no mean a personage than Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili who weighed in that NASS members have spent N1 trillion in 8 years. “Since 2005, the National Assembly members have been allocated N1 trillion,” she said noting that “82 per cent of Nigeria’s budgetary cost goes for recurrent expenditure.” She also suggested that: “Things will improve through part-time legislation. It will reduce the number of people who will go into the National Assembly. You must have means of livelihood so that you won’t have to depend on public funds,” she surmised.

    Of course, the NASS would not hear anything of a part-time tenure and they had promptly shut down the idea in the budget amendment debate but that will be a matter for another day. Now we must dam the river of waste flowing through the legislature. Mrs. Ezekwesili is no attention-seeking rabble-rouser; she was a minister twice in the Olusegun Obasanjo administration and former World Bank vice-president for Africa. She spoke at a public lecture and she has a reputation for being rigorous and facts-driven.

    Senate Majority Leader Victor Ndoma-Ebga has described Ezekwesili’s statement as “blackmail” while Victor Ogene, Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs provided more obfuscation than clarification. But the facts of the matter are public and inviolable; a tally of the budgetary allocation to NASS since 2005 amounts to a little over N1 trillion just as Ezekwesili had pointed out. The lawmakers have also tried some finger-pointing by comparing themselves to the executive arm of government; they talk about the fleet of Presidential jets and excessive overhead and we say that we know and we agree but neither the executive nor the legislature is allowed to run loose and licentious over our national treasury.

    Besides, NASS has a bounden and statutory duty to keep a keen eye over our national treasury and do all that is within its powers to see that it is not violated. We do not need The Economist to tell us that we are being utterly profligate with our resources and that our current expenditure profile is not sustainable. Indeed, we do not need experts to prove to us that there is a direct relationship between the unbridled wastefulness, especially in the executive and legislative arms of government and the incipient social upheavals and grinding poverty in the land today. There is no running away from it that the NASS has no choice but to surgically purge itself of the serpent that has curled up in its tummy. It must start on a clean slate. This is the only way it can earn the moral authority to check the recklessness that goes on in the executive. In as much as Hardball loathes to sound apocalyptic, if the NASS would not take the initiative to make amends, the people would have no choice than to force the change someday soon.

  • Dame’s downer

    Some fellows who go by the title, protocol officers in high public offices can take their jobs to derisive lengths sometimes. This observation is more so with those who serve governors, presidents, ambassadors or even in great royal courts who appear sometimes comical when they are in full flight. I have seen for instance, a protocol man pointing out to a governor the path to veer or the exact spot to step on when he arrived at a public function as if the governor was blind. Protocol, by the way, is a system of rules about the correct way to act in formal situations especially by public officials and modern world has made a wonderful vocation of the art of managing protocol.

    Because high public officials are prone to blundering at public functions – of course not because they are stupid but because even the most gifted of us are bound to commit errors should we rely on our spur of the moment judgment – they must be chaperoned and guided through the delicate moments when they are under intense public glare. The whole exertion of the protocol officer is to avoid a breach of protocol which does not only have the portent to mar a state function for instance but one bad breach could ruin an entire political career or worse. The story is told of how an erstwhile Nigerian president who was in the company of foreign dignitaries and ex-heads of state at his farm house, had veered off to a corner of the vast complex to, strike a pee-pose and proceed to wet the grass the natural way to the utter discomfort of his guests. Some have wagered that this singular protocol hara-kiri may have made a big blot on this leader’s quest for a top UN job. Though that is difficult for Hardball to determine but the scene must have remained lasting memorial for those visitors.

    A more recent protocol debacle was as enacted by the wife of President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Rivers State, last Sunday. Dame Patience Jonathan was visiting her home state and a motley crowd of government officials had thronged the airport to welcome her as it is the practice in this corner of the world. Among the reception team included the Rivers State deputy governor, Mr. Tele Ikuru and the secretary to the state government, to mention a few. However, Ikuru and his team could well have been an ugly installment, an unsightly artistic impression of a welcome band, for all Dame Patience cared. She decidedly ignore them, her security details shielded them while her protocol officers veered her toward the preferred column headed by the wife of the Bayelsa State governor in the company of whom Dame drove off the scene leaving Ikuru and company chagrined and wooden footed.

    If Dame’s action was a downer, her responses to it were even worse. First her aides denied that Ikuru was snubbed. A few days later, they made a release which suggests that Ikuru was shunned because no official of the Rivers State government had paid the president’s wife a condolence visit on the demise of her mother. “It should be noted that while several groups and individuals from across the country came to condole the First Lady and Mr. President on the death of her mother, no official of Rivers State Government deem it fit to pay the first family condolence visit, yet they claimed the First lady is a daughter of Rivers State,” according to a statement from her office.

    But even if the above claim were true (even though we know it is not entirely so as the wife of the Rivers’ governor had paid a condolence visit), shunning Ikuru in public was utterly indecorous; a protocol gaffe that can only diminish the status of the president’s wife; it’s a downer for her.