The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • The food importing giant

    Do you sometimes imagine Nigeria to be a big circus show? Do you sometimes think you are in a banana republic that is destined to go bad anytime soon? Are you sometimes gripped by fear that this self-acclaimed giant is bound to self-destruct by the sheer weight of its contradictions? If you are ever troubled by such pangs of worries as these, you have a great company in Hardball.

    Before you begin to wonder the source of this lamentation, let me throw you this poser: are you aware that Nigeria engages in heavy importation of palm oil reaching about 500,000 metric tons annually? While Malaysia, on the other hand, exported about 24 trillion metric tons of palm oil in 2012 to the U.S, E.U, China and India, earning about €20 billion. In a period of about 40 years, Nigeria has declined from being the largest producer and exporter of palm oil to becoming a net importer. Malaysia, a small island country which supposedly got seedlings from Nigeria about five decades ago, has developed palm products into a major economic sector.

    While we have remained at the primary level of crude palm oil, Malaysia has taken the reddish oily substance of African origin to unimaginable heights. Every month without fail Malaysia ships to the world millions of metric tons of not only crude palm oil but over half a dozen other improved derivatives of this product which include: RBD (Refined bleached Deodorised) palm oil; RBD palm olein; RBD stearin; crude PKO (palm kernel oil); processed PKO and oleo chemicals, to name a few. These commodities are sold on the international futures mart so monthly deliveries are guaranteed as if they were minerals from the soil.

    Palm oil is not the only agricultural commodity Nigeria ought to sell to the world but which she ends up buying from around the world. Tomato puree is another; she is said to import an estimated 70 metric tons at an estimated cost of N11 billion annually. Nigeria also has the capacity to produce enough rice to feed the whole of Africa but her annual rice import bill of over N500 billion is among the highest in the world. We import N217 billion worth of sugar and the N635 billion we spend on wheat is about the second highest the world over. Nigeria also imports fish, chicken, fruits and fruits concentrates, leather, textile materials among other agro-based commodities.

    In the same way we have perfected the fraud of sending our crude oil abroad for refining while we import petroleum products at a premium, so are we nonchalant and lethargic about developing our agro-resources. Since the late 70s when Nigeria began to enjoy huge oil earnings, we have lived large solely on crude oil export. Not only have we not bothered to developed even the oil sector that sustains us, we have abandoned nearly all other economic spheres. Government after government; from Yakubu Gowon to Goodluck Jonathan, not one has been able to break the mould of feeding from crude oil rent.

    One cannot help but wonder what manner of ruinous governments Nigeria has had successively over the past five decades. Why is it that not one has been able to muster the grace or gift to break the spell of the crude oil curse? For 50 years, all we have done is to earn huge petrodollars and ship same right back whence it came from through the importation of food and all sorts of junks from across the world. To think that some of these things can be achieved by sheer executive directive or pronouncements: can’t we just declare something like, “we grow our tomatoes, or we eat no tomatoes”. We can make the same declaration for all other food commodities like rice, garri, fish, palm oil etc. Agro technology and economics have been perfected for over a century even down in Southern Africa. What is lacking is mere will and wisdom to initiate and drive change. What a great change a simply declaration from a visionary leader can make!

  • Oteh: Legislative terrorism?

    Double jeopardy: that is the abiding lot of women who are extremely beautiful and extremely intelligent to boot, especially in this part where half the men start processing their thoughts from around their waists. Half of we men would love to have the deep, delectable damsels and the other half would rather hound them so either way, the bright and beautiful gal is doomed. Hardball confesses he is not an expert in the exotic art of feminine psychology but his hunches suggest to him that Ms Arunma Oteh’s unceasing troubles seem to lay in this – let’s call it – bar room hypothesis.

    Now consider the story, hardly was Oteh appointed as the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), about two years ago, than the body was put under a probe by the House of Representatives. The Nigerian bourse was actually at its nadir with stocks having crashed to near zero in most cases and investors worsted and disconsolate. Oteh was actually brought in to clean up the mess and restore confidence in Nigeria’s capital market. The House’s probe was headed by a very young man, Herman Hembe, who incidentally, was the chairman, House Committee on Capital Market.

    As a matter of fact, by way of back grounding and with no intention to disrespect, Hembe was probably still in high school when Oteh was making forays in international financial institutions as Nigeria’s flag-bearer. It turned out that the probe was not really a probe but an institutionalised extortionate binge in which Hembe was the leading act. On many occasions as his ‘probe’ went on Hembe demanded and received ‘assistance’ from Oteh’s SEC. Yet when they went before life television, Hembe would bully, harangue and put down big Aunty Oteh until one horrific day, right there on live television, Oteh banged the probe table and said enough was enough of this charade. Is this a probe or a soap and who really ought to be probing whom, she must have asked.

    First it was becoming a weird public show of an inquisition, second, this small fellow of an impostor didn’t know the difference between a bourse and a bus thus cannot deign to be probing something he was so illiterate about and lastly if she did not put a stop to this mess thus far and cut her losses, she would come out of it all worse than a stale pot of potage. That was how Oteh up-turned the table and spilled the beans on Hembe.

    The House probed Hembe, found him guilty and promptly removed him from the probe. A new chairman, Ibrahim El Sudi, was installed whose conclusion on Oteh was that she was not qualified to head the Commission. And verdict: Oteh must be sacked. When the Presidency would not yield to the House’s directive (or was it an order?) the lawmakers chose to force its wish on the executive by denying SEC its statutory right of a budgetary allocation in the 2013 Appropriation Bill.

    Last week, the chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Zakari Mohammed, noted that SEC was spending its internally generated revenue to beat the budget ban by the legislature. Muhammed described the development as “an act of impunity,” noting that the House would take up the matter when it resumes in September.

    It’s its prerogative to stick to its guns but here are a few questions the lawmakers might want to ponder as it enjoys its vacation. One, the National Assembly’s duty is largely oversight and approval; does it include termination of appointments of members of the executives? To insist that Oteh is not qualified for the job is to indict both the Senate and the Presidency; would it take orders from the executive arm to sack its own appointees? If this is not a witch hunt and undue high-handedness, does the NASS have such powers to deny a statutory government agency its due budgetary allocation? Can’t NASS see that no president would allow the legislature dictate whom to be sacked in the executive cabinet? If the House gets away with SEC, would it not someday invoke zero allocation on the Presidency too? Unless there is more to it than we know, the House would do well to rethink this seeming legislative terrorism in this Oteh affair and allow the fair lady be.

     

  • When Boko Haram’s Shekau is found

    The United States Acting Assistant Director of Diplomatic Security Threat Investigations and Analysis Directorate, Ambassador Kurt Rice, has said that wanted Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, could be tried for terrorism in the United States or in Nigeria where he hails from if caught. To this end, the U.S. on Monday placed $23m bounties on five leaders of terrorist groups in West Africa, including Shekau. The Boko Haram leader alone attracted a highly tempting seven million dollars bounty. News reports pointed out that the U.S. action coincided with the Nigerian government finally determining, after endless waffling and prevarication, that Boko Haram is indeed a terrorist organisation, and its leaders and members liable to be tried for terrorism.

    Nigeria, which is increasingly finding it difficult to define and guard its independence and national pride, has not protested against any suggestion that its homegrown terrorists cannot be dealt with at home and under home rules. Boko Haram has not just attacked home targets; indeed foreigners have also been among its victims. However, except for a brief foray into Cameroun, and perhaps a base and launch pad in Mali, the sect’s attacks have been limited to Nigeria. As Britain showed in the case of Michael Adebolajo, the British terror suspect who was coaxed from feeble Kenyan hands in 2010 in order to be investigated under British rules, nations recognise that their sovereignty is infinitely much more nuanced than first view and ordinary definitions suggest. Nigeria needs all the help it can get to curb terrorism and bring Nigerian terrorists, or any other terrorist who commits crime on Nigerian soil, to trial. But it must be understood very clearly that Shekau is our problem, and except he goes to another country to carry out terror-related activities, he remains strictly our problem, no matter how far-reaching the consequences of his actions.

    Nigeria has never presumptuously attempted to intercept foreign terrorists on foreign soils. Therefore, this generation of Nigerians must never be seen as condoning foreign governments extending their laws creatively or collaterally for the purpose of apprehending and prosecuting Nigerian criminals. It is of course evident that Nigerian governments have been slothful in dealing with their criminals, either because of plain juristic inefficiency or because certain individuals in government connive at crime and criminals. This is, however, not enough reason for other countries to invade our sovereignty under any guise. In fact, it must be emphasized that even if Shekau were to be apprehended in, say, Mali by U.S. forces, it is important that he should be handed over to us for prosecution. Thankfully, Ambassador Rice has herself left a window open for the wanted terrorists to be tried in their home countries. Nigeria must emphasise its unequivocal preference for this option.

    But if Ambassador Rice contemplates the option of subjecting Shekau to the U.S. justice system, it is simply because Nigeria has consistently and enduringly projected a weakness of national character that has made it possible, for example, for Diepreye Alamieyeseigha to be ‘handed’ over remorselessly to British authorities for prosecution, and for our country to quite puzzlingly rejoice that a James Ibori foolishly preferred to wash his dirty linen abroad. If our laws are weak, by all means let us strengthen them. If our courts are inefficient, let us make them more efficient. And if our justice system is too convoluted to competently dispense justice speedily, let us remedy the problem. Let us do anything but display a weakness of national character that makes Nigerians prey to foreigners. Surely we are smart enough to know that prosecuting Shekau abroad, if he is apprehended, would define the country as a people of weak resolve and slow thinking. But if, failing everything, our courts let us down, then let us at least have the common sense and essential practicality to live with our faults.

     

  • Behold, the bench-warming senators

    It was a brilliant piece of enterprise journalism, the kind of scoop creative and thinking reporters would in a manner of speaking, manufacture. And mind you, there are dozens of such reports out there especially in an environment like ours where our public office has become an amusement park and office holders are sight-seers and revellers. We refer though belatedly, to the mid-term assessment report of the Senate as reported by Daily Trust of July 31, 2013. The paper showcased a front page lead story of 34 senators who did not table a single bill in two years. The newspaper also made a splash of the names and photographs of the bench-snuggling lawmakers.

    Regardless of the defenses some of them may have put up, Hardball insists that being bill-blank after two years as a senator is a veritable testimony that such a fellow is not fit to occupy a seat in the hallowed chambers of Nigeria’s elite legislative conclave. The cases of the laggards become the more inexcusable when in the same number of years and under the same circumstance, some other senators have turned in as many as 24 bills. How could Senator Ndoma Egba have managed to table 24 bills during the same period, Senator Benedict Ayade, 18, Senator Ita Enang, 12 while three others (Smart Adeyemi, Domingo Obenbe and Ifeanyi Okowa) tabled 11 bills each.

    During the period under review, a total of 342 bills were introduced and out of a total of 109 senators, 74 sponsored at least one bill. Of the 342 bills, 191 emanated from senators from the South, 85 were sponsored by northern senators while 42 were executive bills. The remaining 23 were bills originating from the House of Representatives requiring concurrence. Though the senators from the North are more in number being 57 out of the 109, they could only muster less than half of the total bills compared to their southern counterparts.

    Of particular note is the fact that most of the senators who were former state governors all had zero bills in two years. Consider their roll call: Ahmed Makarfi who held sway in Kaduna for eight years, Ahmed Sani Yerima governed Zamfara for eight years while George Akume also led Benue State for two terms of eight years before retiring to the senate. Others are Bukar Abba Ibrahim who was the overlord in Yobe State; Danjuma Goje was in Gombe State, Chris Ngige ruled Anambra State and Kabiru Gaya was in Kano. One would think that with their experience in managing their various states and participating in national affairs at a very high level, they would understand some regional and national issues that would require legislation. But apparently, they either do not understand or they pay no mind to such issues. Indeed, the Senate may well have been a retirement home for these former governors who have not capitalised on the unctuous platform provided by the Senate to make some impact in national affairs.

    The non-performance or dormancy, if you like becomes irksome if you know that these 34 senators would have taken home a total of about N1 billion in pay in the two years in review. While it may be argued that tabling bills is not the only duty of the lawmakers, it is a major plank and not being able to think through one bill in two years says something not too savoury about any senator. Beyond bills, most of the laggard senators have not proven to be active in various other ways like championing the causes of their constituencies or being upfront on national issues. The Senate is the place where great politicians make their marks. But not so these bench-warmers.

  • Boko Haram: Unending bloodletting

    What an age of unremitting blood fest: from Kano to Borno to Sokoto, there is no letting up as the Boko Haram insurgents remorselessly re-enact themselves with a confetti of body bags and broken limbs. No week seems to pass now without a report of a bloody attack in one part of the North. Last Sunday, the sect struck at a mosque in Konduga, outskirts of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State. The worshippers had come under a massive gun assault in the midst of prayers with no fewer than 40 people killed and several injured. The attackers were said to have been decked in army fatigues.

    Boko Haram also scored a big hit in Kano, July 29 when it let off multiply explosions killing about 45 persons. On Saturday, July 27, about 22 were killed in Dawashi and Mainok in Borno State. Though the activities of the sect came to limelight in 2009, it has been engaged in near full scale war with the Nigerian military with the imposition of state of emergency in the states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa on May 14. There was massive deployment of troops to these Northeast states and environs which led to initial successes upon the routing of the insurgents. But it may have turned out that what was won was a pyrrhic victory. The insurgents have continued to prove invincible by regrouping and striking through guerrilla methods.

    Fighting a phantom, moving enemy must be trying for even the best army in the world; and grappling with an environment of possible sabotage, blacklegs and fifth columnists would be daunting to say the least. Then again, fighting rebels without any concrete cause beyond the espousal of hate, bigotry and half-baked religious mantras is outright daunting. So throwing more soldiers at them as we seem to have done so far will only prolong and muddy the war. The war must be prosecuted more at the realm of mind games and gadgets; we seek advantages through telecommunications, surveillance and air power. We must be able to profile them, pre-empt them, second-guess them and rout them. We must develop highly rapid response capabilities. But most importantly, the military top hierarchy cannot afford to take nary a nap, as the ‘boys’ would seize any opportunity to pull surprises.

    Now that it has become obvious that the terrorists are largely cross border elements who are enjoying enormous foreign support, every Nigerian must stand up to support the effort to chase them back where they cam from. Sunday’s attack on worshippers in a Mosque in Konduga must be the first direct, premeditated assault on Muslims. It only proves that the group is desperate and seeks to make some quick and notable gains, it wants to maintain a semblance of invincibility. As it stands most of the North of Nigeria has been devastated by the activities of this violent Islamists. Apart from bombings and gunfights, there are also armed robberies, kidnappings and the destruction of the school system among other government infrastructure.

    For the North of Nigeria which was lagging behind the rest of the country, the Boko Haram carnage will take decades and huge funding to put to order. While we chase the destroyers over the hills and across the waters, are we ready to join other members of the world community to begin to do things the proper way? Are we ready to begin to attend to the conditions precedent to these crises? Like curbing corruption, implementing our budgets faithfully so that its impact will be felt down to the lowest individual in the society? If we do not enact a radical change in the manner we run our country, we will always be dogged by challenges such as Boko Haram, kidnappings and all such vices. We may never be able to stop this cycle of bloodletting.

  • Jang-led NGF meets!

    How, a great headline is made of this: “Jang-led NGF meets in Abuja.” This was cast by a national newspaper last Monday and it spontaneously tickled my fancy whereupon I had immediately adopted it as cannon for Hardball’s fodder. Many had accused Hardball of being near misanthropic toward Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State but how can one possibly help that with the man availing us a headline like this in addition to other freebies. So if the NGF (Nigerian Governors Forum) faction led by Jang meets in Abuja and the story comes out sounding like jangled NGF, Hardball can hardly be blamed if a power drama suddenly becomes eerily onomatopoeic.

    Now jangled as we know it, means when objects strike or are struck together and they make ringing and irritating noise. Thus when Jang gathers a horde of 15 fellows who are supposed to be governors and they claim to represent the majority of Nigeria’s 36 governors and they meet and purport to take deep-reaching decisions that include constitutional amendment then dear readers, it will only be appropriate to say that they are jangling, not meeting. Let’s recall quickly that the NGF has been an object of intense politicking and feuding among the ruling elite of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) since last year. The leaders of PDP had tried to stop Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, the incumbent chairman of the NGF from seeking a second term in office for obvious political calculations that point towards the 2015 presidential poll.

    But Amaechi would not budge; he had gone into the election against his party’s candidate, Jang. He trounced him by 19 votes to 16 in a keenly contested, free and fair poll conducted by people of no mean status than governors. Since they could not have their way, the Jang-led (!) group turned it into a mud-fight – what Lagosians would call roforofo fight. Of course not many who are used to winning by hook or crook (like the PDP) would live down the fact that one jug-headed governor had taken them apart. This is the genesis of this now famous Jang-led NGF which is fastidiously engaged in this mock parade.

    They held a press conference quickly claiming victory, not minding what Nigerians and the watching world saw or even think. They paid a courtesy call on the president who not minding the stench of their affair, received them with fanfare in a naked endorsement of perfidy. Egged on, they quickly set up a counter-secretariat and ever since, the jang-ling body has continued to pretend to meet as if all was well. Their meetings have not only constituted an irritating noise, it has continued to evolve into a repudiation of all decency, a national shame and an assault on the Nigerian psyche. If our governors, our prime leaders of the moment could before our eyes and the eyes of the world, enact a lie, insist on the lie, propagate the lie, live the lie and spend our resources on the lie, then that acutely portends doom.

    When such a woebegone body now seeks to amend our constitution then they really have carried the sacrifice past its destination, as the saying goes. It may well be time for all to challenge this charade and tell them that enough is enough. We must take an especial note that top on the outcome of the meeting of this Jang-led NGF is that the, “the forum constituted a five-man committee to streamline the proposed constitution amendment.” This abominable group deigns to make constitution for Nigerians! This joke surely jangles.

  • Prof. Wanjala weeps for Nigeria

    His eyes must have misted as he beheld the musty edifice of shame at Iganmu in the Mainland of Lagos. The National Arts Theatre which in 1977 was a symbol of Nigeria’s emerging power and influence in Africa and the world has withered into utter dereliction and abandon. For many years, the Theatre, Nigeria’s showpiece architecture and cultural hotspot had become at best, the hub of drunkards and at worst a paradise for miscreant and marauders.

    This is Nigeria’s sad reality that must have evoked tears from a visiting Kenyan professor, Chris Wanjala. The don who was in Nigeria for the conference of the Nigerian Oral Literature Association, NOLA, had lamented: “I was here in 1977 when we had FESTAC and it was built anew then. It had several compartments where plays and cultural activities were being performed in so many places. It represented a centre for the promotion of the arts and culture across the continent. Ironically, there has been so many controversies around the National Theatre, talking about its neglect and all … its neglect over the years is a tragedy because that is what we, in Kenya and across Africa are emulating. It is even (more) a loss to us than to Nigerians because we have always felt that is how we want to organise our own cultural institutions. It is a shame.”

    Wanjala is a poet, novelist and a Professor of Literature at the University of Nairobi since 1985. Author of a recent novel, Drums of Death, he is cited as being deeply aware of the disruption of traditional rural culture by modernity. This, of course, explains Wanjala’s agony over an edifice that ought to have been the fulcrum of Black and Africa’s arts and culture. After the staging of a great arts and culture festival in 1977, more ordered countries would have latched unto that template to convert Nigeria into the centre for Black and African culture. A less philistine government and people would have developed the National Theatre, 37 years after, into a cultural tourist centre of global renown; outposts and mini sites would have sprung up across the country to harness our rich cultural endowments. Many tertiary institutions from across the world would have been affiliated to it to benefit from a rich archive and documentation trove. It was designed to be the centre of excellence for creative art, design, traditional music, drama, folklore and more.

    Prof. Wanjala probably expected all this as he visited Nigeria and hurried to that poetic edifice of sublime presence situated at the crossroads of Iganmu, by the brackish water where Lagos Mainland meets Lagos Island. The scholar was shocked; he didn’t believe what he beheld, the ugly remains of a Theatre he probably had boasted about in his country as a model. “This is where there is a tragedy,” he echoed, “Our leaders have become even (more) brainwashed than the people they are leading. In other words, they put so much value on economic issues and other sectors where they get handout from.”

    If Prof. Wanjala had look closer, he would have seen the pockmarks of philistinism all around the country and he would have noticed that this theatre of shame is only a metaphor for how we live today. It is emblematic of the regression which has been our national narrative since in the last few decades. If only our leaders paid attention to “economic issue”, a lot would have been different but they have paid attention to nothing of substance. That is why the national telephony broke down, national carrier crashed, power quenched, energy sector stymied, education failed – name it, anything the Federal Government ought to tend to in the last three decades has been left in a sorry state. If only Wanjala has seen the old Federal Secretariat at Ikoyi, Lagos… what monumental waste!

     

     

  • Hon. Manwe’s Freudian slip

    Let it be known that the jumbo pay controversy dogging the National Assembly, NASS, will not be shaken off until the offensive heap of cash members haul home has been reduced to reasonable limits; this is the magisterial postulation of Hardball on this matter of urgent, grievous, national concern. Recall that this matter which has been eating up Nigerians (both literally and metaphorically) was elevated to an international pedestal recently when The Economist of London published a poll of the take-homes of lawmakers across the world. Our NASS members of course won the world cup in this regard beating stupid, their counterparts from countries like USA, Germany, Britain, Japan, Singapore, you name it.

    Since this publication hit us mid July, Nigerians have continued to yelp like wounded dogs while the NASS overlords have responded mutedly and gone back to the drawing board to restrategise and plot new ways to fend off the ‘bowling barbarians’. And the results are trickling in: the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, has been inveigled into the plot; the Commission came out recently with an elaborate explanation to prove to us that our lawmakers are not treasury raiders as we purport. RMAFC claims that our people in the legislative chambers actually earn a little over N12million per annum as basic pay and not nearly N30 million (basic) as claimed by The Economist.

    But when RMAFC tallied up all the imponderable bonuses and allowances, the pay turned out to be truly frightening and out of this world. We also did not fail to notice what seems like a caveat in the RMAFC rebuttal. It says: “that the remuneration package contained in the Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders Salaries and Allowances etc, (Amendment) Act of 2008 states the actual amount being paid to legislators and other public officers, adding, however that any other allowance(s) enjoyed by any political office holder outside those provided in the Remuneration Act of 2008 is not known to the Commission and the Chief Accounting Officer should be held accountable.”

    This suggests that there is actually a chance that certain allowances outside the purview of RMAFC may well be enjoyed by the NASS and perhaps other political office holders. And they know it, we know it, everybody knows that there is much more to this matter than they let us see. Early this year, the boss of RMAFC had bemoaned the stack hauled home by legislators and warned that it was inimical to the economy and not in the least sustainable. A few years back, the Central Bank governor had also lamented the fact that a huge chunk of the country’s earnings is carted away by the NASS.

    In all of this, however, one member of the House of Representative, Mr. Jerry Manwe, who is chairman of the House committee on Electoral Matters, showed the stuff he is made of when in an attempt to weigh in on the matter recently let off a fat Freudian slip. Manwe blamed the jumbo pay of NASS members on, “people’s orientation and Nigeria’s style of politics”. At least he is honest enough to admit there is a jumbo pay. Let’s hear his justification: “Our politics here is different. Go and check all those countries you compared us with; how much do they spend to contest election there?

    “A situation whereby a member will spend an average of N150 million on an election is not healthy…nobody spends less than N100 million to run for an election here.”

    Phew, if only our dear Honorable Manwe can decode what he has said, but in this slip lay the answer to the riddle of Nigerian lawmakers’ world-beating pay. It must be so very convenient if not wonderful that “Nigeria’s style of politics” is made topsy-turvy so that some people can reap from the unending crisis. Some people actually spend a life time leveraging on crises. But let it be known to Manwe and all his colleagues that their primary assignment is to change this ugly style of politics that enriches them and deprives the larger populace. Yes there is something they can do.

  • Torture by re-validation

    The virulent witch destined to perdition would give birth to even more female children. This nifty speak of our fathers captures the state of the ruling PDP today. We thought they reveled only in kakistocratic tendencies but they have revealed that they also love a dash of recidivism in their repast. We may then safely conclude that the fellows at the Peoples Democratic Party have elected to hurtle down the road of no return willy-nilly. The recent drafting of the old war horse, Alhaji Umaru Dikko into the party’s ceaseless affrays is a pointer. He has been appointed chairman of the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the PDP.

    What will these people do next, you must be pondering? The PDP hierarchy seems to derive an especial pleasure in teasing and taunting Nigerians as they huff and puff through what has become a most onerous task of managing even there own affairs. And we ask: if you can’t run your party, how can you deign to be governing a country? The other day, it was a certain school drop out, certificate and age forger, Salisu Buhari who was exhumed from his well-deserved state of obscurity and hoisted on the governing council of one of the country’s better regarded tertiary institutions, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). Why would any group of people inflict such injury on itself? If you thought self-annihilation does not manifest in cruder form, wait for this.

    Alhaji Umaru Dikko was the face of Nigeria’s Second Republic’s ruling house, the National Party of Nigeria, (NPN) and that face was shaped like the medusa. Dikko was the champion, the kingpin and fixer of that atavistic era. He was the steel hand in the gloves, the repugnant enforcer and the bogeyman in a Republic manned by a supine and flagellating president. Though he was merely a minister (of Transport), he happened to be a power wonk who noticed a large vent in the nation’s power equation and simply occupied it. Dikko soon became the soul and spirit of the bumbling NPN (not unlike today’s PDP) and he was more regarded and feared more than the president, Shehu Shagari, a modest and self-effacing gentleman. Such was the story that at the peak of his power, both the party, NPN and even the country was virtually run through the orbit (or office if you like,) of Alhaji Umaru Dikko.

    Because he controlled the thought, the purse and much of the contracts of that shambolic era, he was not the most loved man in the land. When the military finally moved in to help themselves and also to relieve NPN (and Nigeria) of their misery, Dikko was their prime target. But in the way of cowards, which he turned out to be, he escaped to Britain to bask in the cusps of a free, egalitarian and ordered society which he was too dim to engender in his homeland. Just as bullies are the worst cowards, despoilers are innately vagabonds. The military regime under General Mohammadu Buhari would not let him go scot free, he was required to come clear the heap of crap he left in his homeland, he would be crated like toxic cargo for export to the 3rd World but was saved at the port of exit by eagle-eyed British Customs officers. What inglorious history Dikko would have earned had Buhari pulled off that patriotically gung-ho expedition.

    It was not to be. The humgruffin got away lucky, he never answered; he never gave account of the blight he brought upon our generation. He was soon to be pardoned; he sneaked back into the country and has known better to stay quiet and silent for quite a while now. It is not even known if he carries the card of any party. Now this: the PDP has dredged up this relic of our sad past to head its disciplinary body! Is there a more sadistic way to scrape an old wound and to visit pain on a people; is there a worse punishment to a people’s battered psyche than to inflict torture by revalidation?

  • Divorce made simple

    A ‘heavy’ matter lands in the stomach (make that mind) of an elder with a gentle, intelligent thud. This, of course, is by no means the wise word of Hardball, no; it is the profound saying of Yoruba sages of ages gone by. So why are we rummaging the archive for ancient sayings? Simple, we want to brooch the very sensitive matters of marriage and divorce and bearing in mind that Nigeria’s super star actress, our own Funke Akindele (of Jenifa fame) recently married and recently divorced, it is only meet to let this issue land in the bowels of Hardball with an indulgent thud.

    Let’s face it, man and woman marriage (yes we must make that distinction) is getting to be a tough proposition in this digital age. Surely, marriage as we used to know it – the holy matrimony of man and woman coming under oath to live together, no matter the weather till death part them – may well need to be re-tinkered for the modern man. It is either man has upped his game or he has reached the end of his tether. For instance, our maker did not configure man to sleep with fellow man or to be joined in matrimony. But today’s man has reconfigured himself to co-habit with fellow man and be joined together as man and ‘wife’ or maife if you prefer.

    Shall we then say that at this evolutionary juncture of man, the traditional marriage has become an analogue concept if not doomed entirely? And remember that even for the best of us marriages can sometimes be trying; so many marriages are actually being endured as one or even both parties seem to live in perpetual hurt. Though most unmarried people who are of marriage age would do nigh anything to get their own life partner, but the obverse is that many in a marriage relationship wished they could get a break from it or just break it up entirely. A family friend, (a couple), have been considering an idea Hardball finds novel which entails taking a break from wedlock, something like ‘marriage leave’.

    Marriage in its traditional form is truly endangered and statistics are grim. It is said that about 50 per cent of couples in the U.S. are likely to get divorced. About 11 percent of adult population is assumed to be currently divorced and 25 per cent of couples will get into at least one divorce in their lifetime. Britain is said to have the highest rate of divorce in the European Union with about 2.8 break-ups in every 1000 couples. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has found a growing trend of more divorces after 20 years of marriage which was a rarity hitherto.

    So far, we have been speaking about citizens Joe and Jane. Celebrities as you know are in this plane but they are not of this world. They do everything to death and that is exactly what they have done to your good old marriage. Super celebrity, Sinead O’Connor’s marriage lasted 18 days; Britney Spears’ lasted 50 days; Kim Kardashian’s was on for only 72 days and our own Funke Akindele’s, lasted about 14 months. Remember these are not mere mortals like you and I, these are otherworldly denizens living in a realm probably near the clouds. Just one awkward, offhand sentence on the World Wide Web and its all over: so simple, so uncomplicated way to untie that troublesome marriage knot.

    But for those who still care, there is some succour yet to be found in the story of St. Rita of Cascia. She is the obscure patron saint of abuse victims, impossible causes and marriage difficulties. She conquered a tortuous marriage with prayer and fasting and by “living a life exemplified by patience, kindness and humility.” Though obscure, she is still there interceding for troubled souls.